This is a detailed SEO tutorial for 2021.
If you want to learn search engine optimization (SEO), then you are in the right place.
In this SEO tutorial guide I’ll describe all major aspects of SEO, step by step how to,
But first, let me explain to you what is SEO and how it works…
SEO full form “search engine optimization“, help you get top rank in search results (Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines) and generate organic traffic to your website, as well as exposure to your brand.
Although SEO is not difficult, it varies. But if you follow the basics and even a small amount of SEO knowledge can bring big changes in your website ranking.
In simple words, search engine optimization (SEO) takes your website to the number 1 rank in Google search.
How Many Types of SEO
There are two types of SEO:
Why SEO is Important
Paid advertising, social media, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, but not forever.
While you do SEO with a solid piece of content and the right keywords, your traffic can increase over time, while advertising requires constant money to drive traffic to your website.
Search engines are getting smarter, but they still need our help… optimizing your site will help gives better information to search engines so that your content can be properly indexed and displayed in search results.
Should I hire an SEO professional, consultant, or agency?
You can perform basic SEO yourself. But for advanced SEO, you can hire SEO professional, consultant, or agency.
If you want an SEO expert, it is important for you to know that many agencies and consultants “provide SEO services”, but may vary in quality. There is an article on Moz which saves you a lot of time and money on how to choose a good SEO company.
White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO
“White Hat SEO” refers to SEO techniques that follow the search engine rule. Its primary focus is to provide more value to the website.
“Black Hat SEO” refers to techniques that attempt to fool search engines. Black Hat SEO can give instant results, but over time, it also has the opposite effect, this puts your websites at risk of being penalized and de-indexed (removed from search results).
Google Webmaster Guidelines
Basic Principles:
Avoid the Following Techniques:
Follow Good Practices Like These:
How Do Search Engines Work?
Google follows three basic steps:
The first step is finding out what pages exist on the web. There isn’t a central registry of all web pages, so Google must constantly search for new pages and add them to its list of known pages. Some pages are known because Google has already visited them before. Other pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page. Still other pages are discovered when a website owner submits a list of pages (a sitemap) for Google to crawl. If you’re using a managed web host, such as Wix or Blogger, they might tell Google to crawl any updated or new pages that you make.
Once Google discovers a page URL, it visits, or crawls, the page to find out what’s on it. Google renders the page and analyzes both the text and non-text content and overall visual layout to decide where it should appear in Search results. The better that Google can understand your site, the better we can match it to people who are looking for your content.
To improve your site crawling:
After a page is discovered, Google tries to understand what the page is about. This process is called indexing. Google analyzes the content of the page, catalogs images and video files embedded on the page, and otherwise tries to understand the page. This information is stored in the Google index, a huge database stored in many, many (many!) computers.
To improve your page indexing:
Serving (and ranking)
When a user types a query, Google tries to find the most relevant answer from its index based on many factors. Google tries to determine the highest quality answers, and factor in other considerations that will provide the best user experience and most appropriate answer, by considering things such as the user’s location, language, and device (desktop or phone). For example, searching for “bicycle repair shops” would show different answers to a user in Paris than it would to a user in Hong Kong. Google doesn’t accept payment to rank pages higher, and ranking is done programmatically.
To improve your serving and ranking:
How to Check if Your Website Is Indexed
If you want to check how many pages of your website are indexed in Google, there is a way to check. Just type “site: yourdomain.com” in Google search and hit enter. This will show the index URL of your site.
Apart from this, you can also check in Google Search Console. Go to the Coverage >> Valid tab.
This shows you the number of pages on your site that Google has indexed.
You can also see what these pages are by clicking the “Submitted and indexed” or “Indexed, not submitted in sitemap” links.
If your website does not appear anywhere in the search results, there are a few possible reasons why:
If your site is indexed in Google but does not appear in search results, here’s a guide – 17 Reasons Why does My Website not Show Up in Google Search
Now you have a better understanding what is SEO and how it works…
Let me take you to the depth of the SEO tutorial…
Submit Your Site to Google Search Console
First, create an account and click on Add Property.
Next, enter your website URL.
After clicking on the Continue button, you will need to verify your website that you own. You will get 5 methods to verify ownership. But here I will use the HTML tag.
If you are a WordPress user and use the Yoast SEO plugin, then the HTML tag is the easiest method. Just go to the Webmaster tools (SEO >> General> Webmaster Tools) section of Yoast SEO and paste the HTML tag.
After saving it, return to Google Search Console and click on the ‘Verify‘ button… and you will receive a Success message and Google Search Console will start collecting data for your website.
But if you do not use Yoast SEO, you can paste the HTML tag into the <head> section of your site. For this, you can use the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. Click on Settings >> Insert Headers and Footers and paste your HTML tags in the ‘Scripts in Header‘ box.
If you want to verify Site Ownership without a plugin, you can use the first method HTML file. Simply download the HTML file and upload it to your website’s root folder and return to Google Search Console and click on the ‘Verify’ button.
Once you do this, you can move on to the next step.
Submit Sitemap for Your Site
Sitemap contains URLs of your website that help search engines crawl your website better.
However, it does not boost your search ranking, it can help to fast index and better crawl your content.
If you are using Yoast plugin on your WordPress site, then you already have a sitemap. Just need to submit to Google Search Console.
Click on Yoast SEO >> General >> Features and turn on the ‘XML Sitemaps‘ feature then click on the ‘See the XML Sitemap‘ link.
This will take you to the XML sitemap page. As you can see in the screenshot.
Copy the URL from the address bar of your browser. This will be your Sitemap and will look like this,
https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml
Now, we have a Sitemap. Let’s submit it to Google Search Console.
On the Google Search Console dashboard, in the left column, click on the ‘Sitemaps’ option, then paste the last part of the URL (sitemap_index.xml) and click on the Submit button.
Note: Submitting a Sitemap is not necessary for small sites But for large sites (like e-commerce sites) a sitemap is very important.
Keyword research is the most important component of SEO. It provides search data that help you find out:
Here I have explained some keyword types:
What Are the Benefits of Keyword Research?
There are many benefits of keyword research. It is important to increase blog traffic and to rank well in search engines.
Best Keyword Research Tools
There are many great tools and websites available in the market that can help in finding good keywords. Below is their list:
How to Use Google Keyword Planner for Keyword Research
Google Keyword Planner is completely free. But to use it, you must have a Google AdWords account. To get started, click on Go to Keyword Planner.
Google Keyword Planner gives you two options to get started:
However both options take you to the Keyword Plan but differ slightly. Let us see how to use these two tools…
1. Discover New Keywords
As the name suggests, it helps to find new keywords. If you want to find new keywords, then this tool is ideal. Just “Enter words, phrases, or a URL related to your content or business.
The keyword planner will give you hundreds of keywords suggestions for any search term or URL that you input. Here are the suggestions for “SEO tutorial”:
For each keyword suggestion, you’ll see:
Not only this! You can get keyword idea by entering multiple keywords at once.
Apart from this, you can also get a huge list of keyword ideas by entering a domain or a page URL. It also gives an option, you want to use the entire site or only this page for keyword ideas.
2. Get Search Volume and Forecasts
If you already have a list of keywords and want to see their metrics. Just copy and paste them into the search field (you can also upload your keyword list), and click the “Get Started” button.
This will take you to the forecast section where you will only see data for the keywords you have entered. This will show how many clicks and impressions you can expect in the next 30 days for your chosen keyword.
Filter and Sort Keyword Results
When you do keyword research, it gives you lots of keyword suggestions. Most of them are not useful.
So you can set the location, language, search network and date range to get the best keywords. This option appears at the top of the page.
Above your keyword results, you will see an Add Filter option. This gives you lots of filtering options. You can see the screenshot below,
Here I will tell you about the required filtering option:
Avg. Monthly Searches – You can use this feature to filter keywords with high search volume. Just click on “Avg. Monthly Searches” to sort the results.
This will show you the keyword with high search volume (popular keyword).
Clicking again on “Avg. Monthly Searches”, it will show low-volume keywords.
How to Choose Best Keywords
There is no tool in the market that will tell you – this is the best keyword. At the time you choose keywords, you have to take care of a lot of things which I’m going to tell you here.
This is a bit tough! A lot of factors are used to find a good keyword. But don’t worry, I will help you find the best keyword through Google Keyword Planner.
Go to Discover New Keywords tool and type your focus keyword or targeted keyword.
For example, if you want to write a blog post about a mobile phone with 6 GB RAM, do not just use the keyword “mobile phone”. Because it will not give the best result.
But keywords like “mobile phone 6 GB RAM” will work fine. So enter that keyword in the field and click “Get Updated”.
This will take you to the keyword results page and show a keyword suggestion for your search term.
Now how to know which keyword will work best. Below is the process of finding the best keywords.
1. Find Low-Competition Terms
Always select low competition keywords. There is a chance of ranking for your website. Here are the reasons why to use less competing keywords.
2. Higher Search Volume
These types of keywords have a large search volume. The more people search for a keyword, the more traffic you can get. Keywords with low competition and high search volume can give a good boost to your site traffic.
3. Long-Tail Keywords
Contain 4 or more words called Long-Tail keywords. If your site is brand new or you want to target keywords with less competition, then long-tail keywords can be effective. Here are some benefits:
Get Exact Keyword Search Volume Data in Keyword Planner
It is a bit tricky but not difficult. First, choose a keyword from the list you want to target.
Then click on Add to Plan. You can see the screenshot below,
Now click on plan overview. Here you will see the “Impressions” option. Which tells how many people search for that keyword every month.
Just like that, you can get exact searches volume data for your other keywords.
Apart from this, you can find the volume, competition, and CPC using Keyword Everywhere. This is the fastest way to get the exact search volume. You do not need to check every keyword repeatedly.
But you have to install the Keyword Everywhere extension in your browser and get an API key.
After installing and getting the API key, go to Google’s keyword planner tool. Type your target keyword and hit enter. It will show you keywords suggestions with Search Volume, Competition, and CPC.
Use High Ranking URLs To Get Better Keywords
You can also generate keywords from a URL. You can check the keywords of your competitor’s website or page. Just copy your competitor’s website URL and paste it into the search field. It pulls keyword ideas from their website.
Use Suggested Keywords
When you search for a keyword idea, it provides some keywords related to your search term. You can further improve your keyword list by using them.
It is an amazing way to find initial seed keywords before you start narrowing things down.
Find Questions People Are Asking
If you want to know what questions people are asking related to your keywords, you can know through the Keyword Planner.
Filter >> Keyword text >> contains >> enter following words: how, what, why, when, where.
Alternatively, you can use the Answer The Public tool. This gives a good overview of your keywords with questions.
Implement On-Page SEO Best Practices
On-page SEO is about optimizing the elements on a webpage so that Google can understand what it is about, how good it is, and whether it deserves to rank.
For this you do not need to work hard, you just have to follow some SEO tips and process. And you can rank your website.
Publish Quality Content
Content is King
Quality content improves both traffic and ranking of your site. Always write something unique, interesting and new on your blog so that readers stay on your blog longer and read your blog with fun.
Write Lengthy Blog Post
Compared to short content, long content performs better in search engines.
A lengthy blog post has many benefits. You can optimize your focus keywords well, visitors will spend more time on your site etc.
A long blog post should be at least 1000 words. But don’t write nonsense to increase the length of your content. Because after reading your content, visitors will not like to come back to your site again.
Here’s a guide on Search Engine Land for better understanding: The SEO And User Science Behind Long-Form Content
Create a Compelling Title
This is a simple SEO tip makes a difference in CTR and your website ranking.
Searchers read your content only after seeing your title. So, always try to create a descriptive and compelling title (and descriptions).
Unfortunately, there is no exact tool for writing compelling titles and descriptions. It’s really about understanding your target audience and finding out what matters to them – then crafting a title that forces them to click.
Here are some steps that can help create a compelling title:
Here is a guide: 8 Best Practices to Create SEO Friendly Titles
Keep URLs Short and Descriptive
Creating SEO friendly URL is very important because it is the most important part of on-page SEO. And also it is a Google ranking factor.
Include the keyword you are targeting in the article. This increases the chances of ranking in search results. The following steps will help in creating SEO Friendly URLs:
… But do not worry, you can easily change it into SEO friendly. Just click on the Settings >> Permalinks option and select “Post name”.
Drop Main Keyword Once In The First 150 Words
This step makes your content even more targeted and SEO friendly.
Make Sure Your Content is Easy to Read
This step is all about making your content easier for people to read.
Along with optimizing your content, take care of the user experience as well. If your content is difficult to read, readers will exit your site.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing makes your content unnatural and puts a bad user experience on readers. Keep keyword density 1.5% – 2% in your content. Also, use related keywords. SEO is negatively affected by filling keywords in blog posts and this strategy leads your site to penalty.
Make Habit of Internal Link
Linking one page to another on the same domain is called internal linking. Internal links have many benefits:
Image Optimization
Images are the biggest reason of slow web pages. So compress your images before uploading. Also, choosing the right image format is very important in image optimization.
Learn more about choosing image formats in Google’s image optimization guide.
Always provide proper names and alt text for images. Alt text (alternative text) is used to describe images. Also search engine bots crawl alt text to better understand your images.
To ensure that Google can crawl and index your images, submit an image sitemap to your Google Search Console account. This helps Google find your website images.
Improve Page Speed
Speed is also a Google ranking factor… and faster loading gives better ranking and better user experience to visitors. If your site takes longer to load, the effects:
… and many more.
Here are quick tips to improve the website loading speed:
Here I have published an article in which everything is covered – How to Speed Up WordPress Site
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Mobile search has completely dominated desktop search and more than half of searches are done from smartphones.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, it can be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. To read content on a non-mobile-friendly site, users need to pinch or zoom.
You can use “Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool” to check whether your website is mobile-friendly or not. Just paste the URL of your website into the field shown below, then click “Test URL.”
Quick steps to make your WordPress website mobile-friendly:
Here is detailed guide on how to make your WordPress website mobile-friendly
Install SSL on your site
Google just wants a more secure web. Therefore, Chrome 68 and above versions are marking all non-HTTPS sites as “Not Secure”.
HTTPS enabled sites rank higher in SERPs. Here is a guide – How to Properly Move WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS
Create a Perfect Robots.txt File
It belongs to technical SEO.
The robots.txt file is a small text file found in the root folder of your site. It commands search engine bots about which part of the site to crawl and which part is not. In plain english, when search engine bots come to websites, they follow the robots file and crawl the content.
A small mistake while editing/customizing it will prevent your site from being indexed in search engines. To know more in depth about robots.txt file, you can visit this guide: What Is A Robots.txt File? And How Do You Create One
Find and Fix Broken Links
Broken links, also known as dead links that no longer exist on the website.
A broken link occurs when the page has been deleted or moved, or if its URL has been changed without proper redirection. It greatly affects user experience.
There are many third-party tools available in the market that help in finding broken links on a site. After finding broken links redirect them with 301 redirection. Here is a guide on how to find and fix broken links in WordPress
Link Building and Become a High-Authority Website
Links are an important part of search engine optimization (SEO) and help in getting top ranking positions in SERPs.
If you get links from high-authority websites, the search engines will trust you and rank higher in the search results.
In this SEO tutorial step, I am going to cover EVERYTHING that you need to know…so, let’s get started.
What are Dofollow Links
Dofollow links are links that help to increase page rank, boost your website SEO, strengthen your backlink profile and your site rank higher in SERPs. Dofollow links allow search bots to follow links (linked websites). It passes the “link juice” from the source website to the linked website.
By default, all links are dofollow, so you don’t need additional HTML attributes to make the link dofollow. And look like this:
<a href=“https://justbrightme.com”>JustBrightMe</a>
What are Nofollow Links
Nofollow links have no effect on search engine ranking… and don’t allow search bots to follow links (linked websites). The nofollow link has an HTML attribute (rel=“nofollow”) and looks like this:
<a href=”https://justbrightme.com” rel=”nofollow”>JustBrightMe</a>
What’s the Best Ratio of Nofollow to Dofollow Links
There’s no “best” answer for nofollow and do-follow backlink ratio. Some SEO experts believe 50/50 is a good mix, some say 40/60, and still, others target 30/70 nofollow/dofollow links.
To check the ratio of do-follow vs no-follow backlinks for your website, you can use SEMrush or Ahrefs. HFor in-depth information about Dofollow and Nofollow Links read the linking guide – Dofollow and Nofollow Links in SEO: How They Impact Rankings
Now you have a better understanding of dofollow and nofollow links… So in the next step, I will explain how you can create backlinks for your website.
Get High-Quality, Relevant Backlinks
Backlinks are very important and one of the most important Google ranking factors.
First of all let me tell you, what is backlink?
Backlinks are incoming links from another website. A page with a lot of quality backlinks tends to perform better in Google.
What are the Benefits of Backlinks
SEO experts say that the more and better quality backlinks you have, the better ranking and traffic you will get..
How to Create Quality Backlinks
Building high-quality backlinks is not an easy task. But by following the right techniques and strategies, you can easily get quality backlinks for your blog.
So let me now tell you quick tips to make high-quality backlinks for the website.
Promote Your Website
Content promotion is an important part of SEO.
Most people hope that after publishing the content, visitors will visit it and share it. But the truth is that unless you already have a large audience, you need to promote your new content.
Creating content is not your last step because it will not be able to get much traffic and all efforts to create it will go in vain. So once you have created your content, the next step is to get more traffic for it.
… and for this you can use promotion. Here I am going to explain some of the best ways to promote website and to bring visitors to the website.
Social Media Promotion Done Right
Today every user is connected to social media sites. There will probably be a user who does not use the social media site.
So after publishing your post, don’t forget to share it on popular social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Pinterest. These platforms can help you in getting lots of traffic and promotion.
And one thing does not spread spam on social media sites. Add some important part of your content to social media posts. It increases CTR on your content. Let’s look at a quick example.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is one of the best ideas for website promotion and gets high-quality backlinks. Just you have to write a blog post for other blogs to promote your business.
But make sure, you are publishing your content on the right place (relevant to your niche) and people are interested in your content.
To find the best blog related to your niche, you can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer or SEMrush. Just type a keyword related to your niche. It will show you the list of the most popular websites.
Here I used SEMrush.
Now you have a list of well-known blogs relevant to your niche. Next step, you will have to contact the blog owner for guest blogging.
Share Your Content on Reddit
Reddit is a place where you can share stories, images, videos, etc and discuss any topic. But on this platform, you have to promote your website smartly.
To find subreddit related to your website just search on Google site:reddit.com <your niche> -inurl:”comments”.
It reveals a bunch of subreddits where you can submit your link.
Use Quora
Quora is a question-and-answer website where anyone chooses to either ask questions or to answer them.
You can answer questions related to your niche and include your blog link. It derives a huge amount of traffic to your website.
Here’s some guidance on how to promote website on Quora:
Join Quora and create a stunning profile. Show that you are a professional. Then find questions to answer that have lots of views and followers. Write your answers and show that you know the subject deeply. Don’t forget to use images where possible and link to other helpful information.
Use Medium
Medium is an online publishing platform, anyone can write and publish a story or blog post. If you aren’t a top influencer, you can use Medium. This establishes a presence within your niche and makes some connections in the industry.
Always add an image after your headline. And post interesting content regularly.
Bookmark Your Post on Mix.com
The mix was formerly known as StumbleUpon. This is a great social bookmarking site and can generate a good amount of traffic to your website. Here you can bookmark your content. Users browse content based on their interests.
Share the Post on Scoop.it
Scoop.it is the best content curation tool for sharing and organizing content on various topics. It comes with three pricing plans (annually). Its free version allows you to submit 50 posts only.
Share Posts on BizSugar
BizSugar is also a very good platform for website promotion. You can share your blog posts, videos and other content on it. The community votes on the submitted content. Posts with the highest quality and more votes are displayed on the BizSugar’s homepage.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most scalable online marketing strategies. You can send an email to 10 people or 10,000 people.
There are many businesses that focus on attracting new customers through email marketing. Set up an email newsletter subscription box on your website. Next, attract visitors for membership and then create and send great content regularly.
Here is an ultimate guide that will tell you 16 effective ways to promote your website for free
That’s it… What do you think about this beginner SEO guide? Small request, find this SEO tutorial helpful? Don’t forget to share!
