Basic SEO Tips for Beginners

SEO, it turns out, is more complicated than keywords and links. Understanding SEO at the surface level may be beneficial in the short term, but understanding the “powers that be” behind this form of optimization will help you keep up with this ever-changing field.

Take it from Grant Patterson, a webmaster in charge of a nearly 10k-page website belonging to Visit Indiana and whose advice makes up this article. SEO is worth learning about. It’s Google’s scorecard, and you’re a competitor whether you like it or not.

So, what are these “powers that be” that influence SEO techniques? Google uses programs called spiders to search every available webpage in order to determine whether that webpage should be at the top of Google’s search results. What these spiders are looking for, however, is a secret.

What isn’t a secret are the practices that make those spiders tell Google to put you on the top of the search results list in your field. These practices are relatability, readability, accessibility, and reliability.

Relatability

Think of the internet as a global conversation. Where within that conversation does your content belong? You can indicate where it belongs through your use of keywords that a user interested in your content is likely to enter into their search bar. It’s important, however, to take the user’s search intent into account.

Let’s say you’re advertising tickets for Taylor, Michigan’s Summer Festival. People searching “Taylor tickets” are likely not looking for tickets to your event. They probably want to get a seat at the upcoming Taylor Swift concert, and you don't want to compete with Taylor Swift. The key phrase “Taylor Michigan Festival Tickets” is more likely to be a better target since your competition will be smaller and you will be catering to the right audience.

Readability

Make sure your content is of the highest quality, both for your users and for Google’s spiders. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are with SEO—if the copy on your web page or blog post is poorly written or unhelpful, users will click off of your page and Google penalize you for it.

Not only that but if your page’s blurb (the description Google shows underneath each search result, including yours) isn’t polished, people aren’t even going to click on your page in the first place.

You also want Google’s spiders to be able to read your copy. The spiders can’t read text in an image unaccompanied by alt text, for example (more on alt text next). For this reason, it’s best to put your text on your page as text.

What the spider will notice, however, are headings. When text is entered as a heading according to your site’s settings (or its coding), Google will give more weight to the keywords within that heading. The spiders will not recognize bolded or larger text as a heading.

Accessibility

Everyone uses the internet, and each individual person has different needs. Attending to those needs is in everyone’s best interest. Using alt text provides a short description of images on a web page for blind users (as well as Google, who can’t see your images either). The same idea applies to captions on videos or transcripts.

You also want to ensure that your web page can adapt to mobile devices; if not, your web page could be unrecognizable and unusable when viewed on a phone. Since most internet searches are performed on phones, you don’t want to ignore this aspect of accessibility.

Reliability

Are you referencing experts in your field? Create hyperlinks on a phrase within your copy that relates to the content on their page. It shows users that you have your knowledge on good authority, and it enters you into a larger conversation.

When another web page backlinks your content (or links your page on their page), Google sees your content as reliable. Google will also notice if you buy backlinks, spam your links in the comments of other people’s posts, or create other accounts that backlink to your content, and you will be penalized. Besides, there are better strategies for using links.

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There is, of course, a lot more to SEO than anyone could cover in one blog post, but these fundamental ideas are a good place to start. Platforms like Semrush and many others can also help you get started by finding keywords and phrases that relate to your content.