Quick SEO Tips for Beginners

Post date: Aug 25, 2017 12:40:48 PM

Easy Seo Checks (SEO 102)

Are you doing it right? Are you doing it wrong? Does anyone really know for sure? I'm going to let you in on a little SEO secret. Before I knew anything about easy SEO, Elance considered me an SEO expert. They let me in the elite SEO clubs. I haven't bothered to check in with Upwork's testing options. There's no need. I'm a top rated freelancer on Upwork. I know all I need to know about quick SEO tips for beginners. Most people naturally do well with SEO without even knowing a thing about it. Just in case, let's discuss some easy SEO checks you can do right now.

First, lots of old school and new school SEOS disagree about they way things should go. These quick SEO tips for beginners are very basic for the newbie. If you use WordPress, you can add a plugin like Yoast (any SEO pack will do.) Don't fret if you don't always get the green light. Those SEO plugins are a little testy. But, Blogspot, Google Sites, and other website platforms don't make SEO as simple. You have to go it on your own, and if you don't have the the right tags turned on in settings- you're going to get very frustrated. Do you need to pay and SEO expert to help you? No way, you can totally do it on your own. Starting fresh is kind of fun! Editing old SEO errors and updating hundreds of website pages is a TOTAL DRAG. For this reason, I say, don't do it! 

What's that you say? Don't do it? You don't need to panic and update all of your old pages at once. Start small. It might not be necessary to do all of that work. I mean, I'm sure every single one of your pages is getting like a million hits a day, right? Not. The only reason you might want to update all pages on your site, is if you have product pages. Even then, I'd start with just a few. For those who don't, we're going to focus on your top 10 most popular posts/pages. How do you know what are the top 10 most popular pages? There are several ways to figure this out, but the best way is to add Google Analytics to your site. 

• Sign in to Google Analytics

• Go to Audience in left sidebar

• Click on Overview

• Click on the Date drop down on the right side of the screen

• Click on Custom in the drop down

• Go to the Calendar and click on the day you started your site or added Google Analytics

• Then, click on Today's Date

• Next, scroll down to Behavior in the left sidebar

• Click on Site Content

• Click on Landing Pages

• Boom! Your top 10 posts of all time appear!

If you don't have Analytics, you'll have to find another way to discover your top 10 posts. Google Analytics is the most accurate way, and the results may surprise you.  A landing page is the first page people landed on when visiting your site - either through referral traffic, social media, etc. The same post may appear several times- to get the top 10, you may have to click through the list using the arrows at the bottom of the table. Once you've compiled your list, you're ready to update that SEO!

SEO for Blogpsot/Blogger Sites

If you read other pages about easy SEO tips or simple SEO for beginners and you have a blogspot blog, your mind might become boggled. That was my first experience. Every site told me to insert keywords into my meta tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, and title tags. I did a search to find out what the heck a meta tag and meta description was. I discovered that a meta description was simply a search description. Um, okay... I couldn't find that anywhere. When I asked other blogspot (Blogger) bloggers, they said- it's in your post. It's your post description. Still stumped. Know what I found out? Some Blogger templates don't have it turned on! You have to go into settings and turn it on. Here's how:

• Go to Settings in you left sidebar - the first page that pops up has a site description. Fill that in, that's a tag for your site or a description for Google and other search engines. Use the keyword and phrases that describe your website. Mine is just a list of all the keyword phrases people search to find my blog. (Kids Creative Chaos)

• Now, under settings click on SEARCH PREFERENCES. Here's your META TAG or where you enable your search descriptions. If not enabled, click to turn it on. Then, fill in the description with rich keywords and phrases that will make users want to click over to your site. Think of it like the blurb on the back of a book. 

• When you go to write a post, you'll see 'labels' which on other website platforms is simply another word for 'tags.' Tags no longer help with SEO (that's so 1990's.) People were using them and stuffing keywords there. Tags/Labels can help with PAGEVIEWS. Use sparingly!

• Now, (if you never saw a search description option on your posts before) you'll have the option to fill in a search description or a meta tag for the blog post page. Hooray, you weren't crazy, it wasn't there! Always fill this in with a few descriptive sentences with rich keywords but enticing for human readers.

Search Description Tip: Copy  and paste the portion of your opening paragraph that includes the H1 Title of your post. For me, that's usually the last two sentences of my first paragraph:

'I know all I need to know about quick SEO tips for beginners. Most people naturally do well with SEO without even knowing a thing about it. Just in case, let's discuss some easy SEO checks you can do right now.'

SEO For WordPress

Add an SEO pack plugin. Most of them are fine. Use it, it will walk you through the key tags needed for SEO. However, it's still a good idea to learn SEO basics.

Quick SEO Basic Tips for Everyone

Ready to roll? Do a quick check on your 10 top posts of all time and update them accordingly. From this day forward, use these basic SEO checks to ensure you're hitting all the right places for SEO site optimization.

Use HEADING TAGS appropriately.

• The Post title (that you fill in) is almost always an H1 tag. Never add an H1 tag to other titles on your post or product page. 'Quick SEO Tips'

• Add an H2 tag to the top of your post content. It doesn't have to be the same order of words, but should be similar keywords that drive traffic for that topic. 'Easy Tips to Improve your SEO'

• Between Paragraphs, add additional tags, H3, H4, etc.  For Blogger/Blogspot these are titled Heading (H2), Subheading (H3), Minor Heading (H4). If you feel the need to add even more headings for additional paragraphs, be sure that they are listed in order from the top of the page to the bottom H1 to H10 (whatever your heart desires.) You'll likely have to go into the html to code these. Blogger/Blogspot click the html at the top left of your post editor. Heading tags look like this:  <h8>Quick SEO Tips</h8>  and appear like this (depending on your template code): 

Quick SEO Tips

How do you know what keywords to use? There are many technical, time consuming ways to find keywords for SEO. I hate complicated things, don't you? If it seems too complicated, I keep procrastinating and may never get it around to it. That's why I use this secret,  a simple keyword tool. Okay, it's not really a tool. It's my best friend. You've met her. Google! Google it. But, not all of it. Start typing the main word or the first few letters of the word you want to use as a keyword for your website. Don't complete the phrase! Also, if you've Googled the phrase a lot - it won't work for you unless you clear your history. You can also ask your human friends to Google it for you. 

• Go to Google

• Start typing the beginning of your word or phrase (I prefer keyword phrases also known as long-tail SEO) 'Seo t'

• Look at the drop down list Google populates for you. Use these phrases. Try to sprinkle several of them into your body text or paragraph headings.

• Booyah! You're almost an SEO expert.

SEO FOR SITE CONTENT (Body Text)

In your first paragraph, as early as possible, you should repeat your title verbatim (word for word.) The title that you Googled for SEO, 'Quick SEO Tips for Beginners.' The Title that is your H1 tag. I don't always do that. The Wordpress SEO packs get mad and don't give me a green light. It's the best practice, but as long as all of the words appear in the first 150 or so characters, (as close to the beginning as possible) the search bots will find them. Let the search engines know it's super important to you by making it bold - or even better hyperlinked (clickable.) Tip: If you're hyperlinking it - make sure it goes to another page on your site that uses those same keywords. Don't send people away in the first paragraph of your content, they won't come back!

Side note:  I sprinkled in lots of SEO phrases in my first paragraph.

IMAGES: Add ALT TAG and/or TITLE TAGS to at least one image in every page. I add them to all images and change them up based on the Heading tags that they are closest too. Meaning, I copy a heading tag, 'Easy SEO Checks' and paste it into the title tag or ALT tag on the image. On most website platforms, you'll click to edit the image and the tag boxes appear. For Blogger/Blogspot (it loves to be difficult) click on the image, click on properties and the boxes appear. This helps people find your images. I've noticed (especially in Yahoo) that these tags help my images rank top in image searches- often when the posts don't. Yeah, go do that!

Under another keyword phrase with a title tag, write about your topic and sprinkle in all of those suggestion that Google shared with you. Continue to write your content. At the end of your post content, write a brief summary using your title again. Ta da! That's it. Use the SEO quick check below to make sure you hit it out of the park. You can use this post as a template. Just don't confuse bold words or phrases as H tags. Use 'inspect element' to see where I placed my H tags. Highlight a title, hover, right click, scroll down and click 'inspect' on the box that pops up- bet you always wondered what that was, huh. It shows the html code. This is also how brands discover if you made a link no-follow or do-follow (more on that in another post.)

SEO QUICK CHECK OPTIMIZATION LIST  (Edit your 10 most popular posts and write posts this way starting today.)

• Add at least three Heading tags in numerical order (H2, H3, H4) as headings before content. See this post as a reference guide.

• Never use an H1 tag - it is probably already in use. Don't use more than one of each tag.

• In your first few opening sentences, (150 or so characters) repeat the H1 Title tag. Sprinkle in other keyword phrases.

• Use your best friend, Google, to find the most popular searched phrases for keyword optimization (long-tail keywords.)

• Add tags to at least one image. Use your title/H1 keyword phrase for the first image, H2 for the second, and so on.

• Sprinkle a mix of the keywords Google shared with you throughout the content of your post.

• Don't confuse labels and site tags for Heading, Title, and ALT tags. Use site tags sparingly. They help your readers find similar content.

• Add a search description to every post or product page. Make sure it utilizes your tags and is written for humans. Once Google indexes your page and enough people have visited, this description will appear under your post title in Google Search listings.

• Make sure META tags and other site description tags are filled in with rich keyword phrases that describe your entire website.

• Hyperlink to keyword phrases within your site that you want your site to appear for when searched. Open all links to your site within the same page and all links to other sites on a new page.

Final Note, this website isn't really a website at all. It's a product of Google Sites for Business. Basically, it is an SEO's worst nightmare, but I do what I can with it. My other site, Kids Creative Chaos, ranks on the first page of Google for many keyword phrases. Hopefully, this one will too. I've only recently started using it as a blog. 

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