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SEO Basics The Essential Beginner's Guide

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SEO Basics: The Essential Beginner’s Guide

This guide will walk you through the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), from understanding how search engines work to implementing basic optimization techniques.

SEO might seem complex but it is simpler than you think, we’ll explore the key concepts, simple strategies, and actionable tips to help you improve your website’s visibility and attract more organic traffic. 

Whether you’re a blogger, a small business owner, or simply curious about how to get your website noticed, this guide will provide you with the essential knowledge to get started. 

What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving a website’s rankings in organic search results by making the website easily understood by search engines and attractive to users who find it through search results.

Organic search results are the natural, unpaid results that appear in search engines based on the search engine’s algorithm.

These results are determined by hundreds of ranking factors, including the quality and relevance of a website’s content, technical aspects of a website, and the number and quality of backlinks from other websites.

In contrast, paid search traffic comes from paid advertising campaigns, such as Google Ads. These ads generally appear at the top of search results pages and are typically labelled as “Ads” or “Sponsored”.

From the definition, it is clear that we must understand how search engines work so that we can optimize our website to be easily understood by the search engines.

We must also be aware of the needs of our target audience and focus on creating high-quality content that is valuable and helpful to the target audience. Google’s core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience.

SEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous effort and improvement. This involves staying updated with the latest tools and technologies, as well as keeping track of the target audience’s needs and providing a great user experience.

How Do Search Engines Work?

When we search on Google, Google Algorithms and ranking systems scan and sort through billions of web pages and other content stored in their search index to present the most helpful, useful and relevant results in the blink of an eye.

Google Search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including the words of our query, the relevance and usability of pages, the expertise of sources, and our location and settings.

The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of the query. For example, the freshness of the content plays a bigger role in answering queries about current news topics than it does about dictionary definitions.

Most of the Google Search Index is built through the work of software called crawlers. These automatically visit publicly accessible web pages and follow links on those pages.

They go from page to page and store information about what they find on these pages and other publicly accessible content in Google’s Search index.

When crawlers find a web page, Google’s systems render the content and note key signals—from keywords to website freshness. All of this is tracked by the search index.

The crawling process runs to keep up with changes in web pages. Crawlers notice how often content seems to change and revisit as necessary.

It’s a complex process, but here’s a simplified breakdown:

1. Crawling: Search engines employ “spiders” or “bots” to crawl the web. These spiders/bots find web pages and queue them for indexing.

2. Indexing: As the bots crawl, they collect information from each page, this collected information is then stored in a massive database called an “index.” This index is like a giant library catalogue, allowing search engines to quickly find relevant information.

3. Ranking: Fetches relevant pages from the index based on the search query and orders them, based on the ranking factors.

Why Is SEO Important?

SEO is an essential component of any successful online marketing strategy. It takes time and effort, but the long-term benefits are significant. According to a BrightEdge report, organic search’s share of all web traffic increased to 53.3% on average across industries.

Also, a FirstPageSage report on Google Click-Through Rates (CTRs) by Ranking Position in 2025 indicates that the top-ranking organic result generates 39.8% CTR compared to 18.7% CTR of the second-ranked organic result and 10.2% CTR of the third-ranked organic result.

Overall, the top 3 organic search results receive more than two-thirds (68.7%) of all clicks on the Google Search page. Compare this to the top-ranked paid result which gets only 2.1% CTR.

Having a sound SEO strategy in place can help you achieve your goals and objectives, here’s how:

  • Increased Visibility: Higher rankings in search results mean more people will see your website.
  • Increased Organic Traffic: More visibility translates to more visitors to your website from organic search results.
  • Improved Brand Authority: Appearing at the top of search results establishes your brand as a trusted and authoritative source.
  • Increased Leads and Conversions: SEO helps you nurture and convert your target audience into customers, leads, or sales depending on where they are in the buyer’s journey.

    It might be that they are in the awareness stage, where the buyer realizes they have a problem or need, and begins to research it.  

    The consideration stage is where the buyer has defined their need and is committed to addressing it. 

    The decision stage is where the buyer evaluates and decides on a company and product.

    Creating helpful and valuable content aligned with the target audience’s needs at each stage of the buyer’s journey is a vital aspect of building a sound SEO strategy.

  • Cost-Effective Marketing: SEO requires time and effort but research has consistently shown that it’s more cost-effective in the long run compared to paid advertising campaigns.

    SEO helps you generate consistent organic traffic that will continue to grow with time, unlike paid ads which stop generating traffic when the campaign ends, making SEO a more sustainable and profitable long-term investment.

  • Competition: Organic search is a very competitive space with many of your competitors already using SEO to rank higher in search results.

    It’s imperative that you too have a SEO strategy in place to stay ahead of the competition. Also, by optimizing your website for search engines, you gain a competitive edge over businesses that neglect SEO. 

Laying The Foundation For SEO: A Website Checklist

In the super competitive world of search, simply having an online presence isn’t enough. To ensure your website ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs) and potential customers find your site, you need to build it with SEO in mind from the very beginning.

Here’s how you can set up a website for SEO success:

1. Choose the Right Domain Name and Hosting

Domain Name:
– Keep it short, memorable, and relevant to your business.
– Ensure it’s easy to spell and pronounce.

Hosting:
– Select a reliable and fast web hosting provider.
– Look for a hosting provider with fast loading speeds: Crucial for user experience and SEO.
– Server location – Assess your target audience’s location and choose a host with servers in the same country as most of your traffic. You can also opt for a CDN service that store copies of web content on servers close to users. 
– Uptime guarantee: Minimize downtime to avoid losing traffic.
– Good customer support.
– Security: Check if you get a free SSL/TLS certificate which is an essential component of web security.

2. Selecting the right Content Management System (CMS)

Assess your technical skill level and content needs to choose the CMS that is right for you:

Non-technical users should look for a CMS with a user-friendly interface, drag-and-drop functionality, and readily available templates while developers should consider a CMS with robust customization options, APIs, and flexibility to build complex features.

If you run a simple blog or portfolio, a lightweight CMS like WordPress or Squarespace might suffice while for complex websites with lots of media types, you can explore options like Drupal or Joomla that handle diverse content formats well.

Some popular CMS options and their strengths are:
– WordPress: Highly customizable, large plugin ecosystem, user-friendly, great for blogs and small businesses.
– Shopify: Ideal for online stores with robust e-commerce features and payment processing.
– Squarespace: Visually appealing templates that are easy to use for design-focused websites.
– Drupal: Powerful for complex websites with advanced content management needs, good for large organizations.
– Joomla: Versatile platform with a wide range of features and extensions.

3. Optimize Website Structure and Navigation:

– Clear Site Architecture: Organize your website with a logical structure, an effective website structure helps search engines find, understand, and index all your site’s pages while optimizing the user experience and making your website attractive to users who find it through search results.

– Simple Navigation: Make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. Use a clear menu and internal links.

– URL structure: It’s very important to have a logical URL structure in place when you are building a website with SEO in mind. A well-structured URL is more than just a web address – it’s a valuable signal to both search engines and users. Clear URLs help search engines understand the hierarchy and context of your website’s pages.

Best practices for creating a logical URL structure:

* Keep URLs Short and Concise: Avoid overly long URLs.
* Use Hyphens (-) to Separate Words: Hyphens improve readability and are preferred by search engines.
* Incorporate Relevant Keywords: Include target keywords naturally within the URL.
* Use a Consistent Structure: Maintain a consistent URL structure throughout your website. Changing the URL structure at a later stage may lead to broken links and can be bad from an SEO perspective.
* Avoid Dynamic URLs: Dynamic URLs (containing session IDs or other parameters) can be difficult for search engines to understand.
* Use 301 Redirects: If you need to change a URL, use a 301 redirect to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the new location.

– Make your website mobile-friendly: Mobile-first indexing is a Google algorithm that prioritizes mobile versions of websites when ranking search results so it’s very important that the website is responsive and looks great on mobile devices as well as desktop.

4. Prioritize Page Speed:

Page Speed is a ranking factor for mobile and desktop searches, while also enhancing user experience. Page Speed can be optimized in the following ways:

– Optimize Images: Compress images to reduce file size without sacrificing quality.

– Minimize HTTP Requests: Reduce the number of files your browser needs to load.

– Enable Browser Caching: Store website files on users’ browsers to speed up subsequent visits.

– Minify code: Combine multiple CSS and JavaScript files into a single file to reduce file size and improve website performance.

– Prioritize above-the-fold content: Focus on content that appears at the top of the page. As this is your web page’s “first impression”, users are likely to scroll down and read through the article only if they think that the content meets their needs. Otherwise, it’s likely that they go back to the SERPs for other articles.

Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and optimizing the website for a mobile-friendly design also help improve Page Speed.

5. Implement Basic SEO Features:

– Install an SEO Plugin (if using WordPress): Yoast SEO and Rank Math are popular options.

– Create an XML Sitemap: A sitemap is an XML file that provides search engines with a list of all the pages on your website. It acts as a roadmap, guiding search engines to discover and index your content efficiently.

You can use tools like Sitemap Generators or when using WordPress, plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO can help you generate Sitemaps. 

– Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to allow Google to crawl and index your website effectively.

– Use HTTPS – Always encrypt your site with SSL/TLS.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. It’s about understanding what your target audience is searching for and optimizing your website to appear in search results for those specific terms.

Keyword research helps you understand your target audience’s needs, interests, and search behaviour.

By targeting relevant keywords, you can increase your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract highly targeted traffic to your website, increasing the chances of conversions.

Moreover, understanding what your audience is searching for helps you create valuable and relevant content that resonates with them.

Here’s how you can follow a process for finding relevant Keyword ideas: 

1. Brainstorming:

Start by brainstorming a list of relevant keywords related to your business, products, or services.

2. Find Niche Topics

Find Niche Topics using Buyer Personas, Wikipedia, Forums, Reddit.

3. Competitor Analysis:

Analyze your competitors’ websites to identify the keywords they are targeting. Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to find their top-ranking keywords.

4. Keyword Metrics

Keyword metrics help you identify the most valuable keywords for your business. Collect Keyword Metrics using Tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest.

– Google Keyword Planner: A free tool that provides keyword ideas, search volume, and competition data.

– Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz: Paid tools that offer more advanced features, such as competitor analysis, keyword difficulty, and search volume trends.

– Ubersuggest: A free alternative to paid tools that provides valuable keyword suggestions.

Following are the keyword metrics that you should consider:

  1. Search Volume: Indicates how many times a particular keyword is searched for in a given month. It’s important to note that high volume doesn’t always equal high value, consider competition and user intent as well.
  2. Keyword Difficulty: Estimates how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword. For new websites, targeting lower-difficulty keywords makes more sense while established websites can look to compete for keywords with high difficulty.
  3. Cost-Per-Click (CPC): While focusing on organic SEO, CPC data can give you an idea of the commercial value of a keyword. High CPC Keywords often indicate high user intent and potential for valuable conversions.
  4. User Intent: Keywords can be classified based on user intent as follows:
    – Informational: Users are looking for information (e.g., “how to bake bread”).
    – Transactional: Users are looking to buy something (e.g., “buy iPhone 14”).
    – Navigational: Users are trying to find a specific website (e.g., “Amazon”).
    – Commercial: Users are researching with the intent to make a purchase or engage with a business (e.g., “best earphones 2025”).
  5. Competition: Analyze the websites currently ranking for your target keywords.
Additionally, you can check if your keywords trigger SERP features. SERP features like featured snippets can significantly impact your visibility.

5. Keyword Targeting & New Content Creation based on metrics

Based on the metrics, you can then determine keyword targeting and proceed with content creation aligned with the selected keywords. Few things to consider for effective Keyword targeting:

  1. Focus on Relevance: Prioritize keywords that are highly relevant to your business and target audience.
  2. Consider Search Volume: Aim for a balance of high search volume and low competition.
  3. Track Keyword Performance: Regularly monitor the performance of your keywords and make adjustments as needed. The search landscape is constantly evolving, so keep your keyword research efforts up-to-date.

It’s generally advisable to focus on long-tail keywords (more specific and longer phrases). They often have lower competition and higher conversion rates but there is no right answer as such.

It is important that you assess your own circumstances with the metrics and concepts discussed, then figure out the best approach for yourselves.

On-Page SEO Basics

On-page SEO is optimizing various elements of blog posts and website pages to improve their search rankings. Once you have decided on the keywords you are going to target, then it’s time to align and optimize your content creation around a keyword. 

Let us discuss the tactics involved in optimizing the critical On-page elements:

Title Tags

Your title tag is your website’s first and often most crucial impression. Appearing as the clickable headline in search engine results pages (SERPs), it plays a pivotal role in attracting user attention and driving organic traffic.

Best Practices for Writing Effective Title Tags:

  1. Use clear and concise title tags that accurately reflect the page’s content. 
  2. Include your target keyword naturally in the title tag. 
  3. Keep title tags within the recommended character limit (usually between 50-60 characters).
  4. Create Unique Titles to avoid repetition.

Meta Descriptions

Meta description is the descriptive snippet that appears in search engine results usually below your page’s title and provides a brief summary of the page.

Best Practices for Writing Effective Meta Descriptions:

  1. Use clear and concise meta descriptions that accurately reflect the page’s content. 
  2. Include your target keyword naturally in the meta description. 
  3. Keep meta descriptions within the recommended character limit (usually between 150-160 characters).
  4. Create Unique meta descriptions to avoid repetition.

Headings And Subheadings

Headings and subheadings provide a hierarchical structure to your content, making it easier for users and search engines to understand the flow and organization of your information. This improves readability and provides context to the search engines about your content.

Best practices for using headings and subheadings:

  1. Use heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to structure your content and improve readability.
  2. Include relevant keywords in your heading tags.
  3. Use heading tags in a logical order (H1 being the main heading, H2 for subheadings, and so on).
  4. Each page should have only one H1 tag.
  5. Avoid Keyword Stuffing: Avoid overusing keywords in headings, as they can appear unnatural and may even negatively impact your rankings.

URL Optimization

URL optimization is a key aspect of On-page SEO, contributing significantly to both user experience and search engine visibility. A good URL structure leads to better readability as well as better memorability. URL optimization leads to enhanced crawlability and improved CTRs.

Key Principles of URL Optimization:

  1. Keep it Concise: Use short, descriptive URLs that are easy to read and understand.
  2. Use Keywords: Incorporate relevant keywords into your URLs, but avoid keyword stuffing.
  3. Use Hyphens (-) for Separation: Use hyphens to separate words in your URLs for better readability and crawlability.
  4. Avoid Special Characters: Avoid using special characters like underscores (_) or ampersands (&) in your URLs.
  5. Use Lowercase Letters: Use lowercase letters for all characters in your URLs.
  6. Maintain Consistency: Maintain a consistent URL structure throughout your website.

Image SEO

Optimizing your images helps you tap into a new source of traffic as these images can rank in Google Images. You can optimize Image SEO in the following ways:

  1. File Names: Use descriptive file names that include relevant keywords.
  2. Alt Text: Alt text is essential for accessibility as it provides a textual description of the image for screen readers. Naturally incorporate relevant keywords into your alt text. Describe the image accurately and concisely, keeping Alt-text under 125 characters.
  3. Image Size and Format:
    Compressing images and using the right format is key. Reduce file size without sacrificing image quality, smaller file sizes lead to faster load times.
    Use Image formats like WebP which often provide better compression than PNG or JPEG, which means faster downloads and less data consumption.
  4. Lazy Loading: Load images only when they are about to become visible in the user’s browser window.
  5. Don’t include extra words like “Image of” or “Photo of.”
  6. Capitalize the first word and include a final period. Avoid all caps. For repeated images, use consistent alt text.

Google advises to use empty alt text in the following situations:

  1. The image is decorative (not informative), such as an image of a horizontal line that is meant to be a visual border at the end of a page.
  2. Consider making a decorative image a CSS background image, since background images are always ignored by screen readers.
  3. The image duplicates information that is already expressed in text on the page.

Internal Linking

An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a web page to another page or resource, on the same website or domain.

Why are they important?

  1. Improved User Experience: Internal links enhance user navigation, allowing visitors to easily explore and discover other relevant content on your site.
  2. Search Engine Crawlability: They help search engine crawlers discover and index all the pages on your website, which makes it easier for search engines to understand your site’s structure.
  3. Link Juice Distribution: Internal links distribute “link equity” (Link equity, also known as link juice, is the value that a page passes to another page through a link.
    It’s a significant factor in search engine optimization because it helps determine how well a page ranks in search results) from one page to another within your site.
  4. Keyword Optimization: Internal links provide opportunities to incorporate relevant keywords in the anchor text (the clickable text of the link).

Best Practices:

  1. Create a Clear Site Structure: Internal links should support a logical and hierarchical structure for your website.
  2. Contextual Linking: Link to relevant, interesting and related pages aligned with your overall site structure.
  3. Use Descriptive Anchor Text: Instead of generic phrases like “click here,” use descriptive anchor text that reflects the content of the target page (e.g., “read our guide to On-page SEO”).

Additionally, it’s important to optimize your website for mobile-friendliness. Ensure that your website is responsive and looks great on all devices (desktops, tablets, and smartphones). Optimize the Page Speed of your website for fast loading speeds on mobile devices.

Off-Page SEO Basics

Off-page SEO focuses on building your website’s authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines. This is done by earning backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites. 

What are Backlinks? Backlinks are incoming links from other websites to your website. They act as “votes of confidence,” signalling to search engines that your website is valuable and trustworthy.

Here are some popular backlink-building strategies:

  1. Guest Blogging: Writing guest posts for other websites in your industry.
  2. Content Marketing: Creating high-quality content that naturally attracts backlinks.
  3. Public Relations: Engaging in public relations activities to earn media mentions and backlinks.
  4. Social Media Marketing: Sharing your content on social media platforms to increase visibility and potentially earn backlinks.
  5. Online Communities: Participating in relevant online communities and forums.
  6. Directory Submission: Submitting your website to quality directories in your industry.
  7. Link Building: Link building involves identifying prospect sites and manually reaching out to them for backlinks

Technical SEO Basics

Technical SEO refers to the optimization of a website’s technical aspects to improve its search engine rankings and enhance user experience.

Let us discuss the tactics involved in optimizing the critical Technical SEO elements:

PageSpeed

Optimizing PageSpeed is a critical element of improving user experience. PageSpeed is a confirmed ranking signal for both desktop searches and mobile searches. 

Google uses the mobile version of a site’s content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking. This is called mobile-first indexing so optimizing for mobile devices is strongly recommended.

Here are some resources that can help you measure, monitor, and optimize your PageSpeed:

  1. Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google Search results: Learn more about Core Web Vitals and how they work in Google Search results.
  2. Search Console’s HTTPS report: Check if you’re serving secure HTTPS pages and what to fix, if you’re not.
  3. Check if a site’s connection is secure: Learn how to check if your site’s connection is secure, as reported by Chrome. If the page isn’t served over HTTPS, learn how to secure your site with HTTPS.
  4. Avoid intrusive interstitials and dialog: Learn how to avoid interstitials that can make content less accessible.
  5. Chrome Lighthouse: This toolset from Chrome can help you identify a range of improvements to make related to page experience, including mobile usability.

Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page. Core Web Vitals metrics:

  1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load.
  2. Interaction To Next Paint (INP): Measures responsiveness. To provide a good user experience, strive to have an INP of less than 200 milliseconds.
  3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1.

Tools to Measure and Improve PageSpeed:

  1. Google PageSpeed Insights: Provides detailed reports on your website’s speed and offers specific recommendations for improvement.
  2. GTmetrix: Another popular tool that provides an in-depth analysis of website speed and performance.

XML Sitemap

Submit an XML sitemap to search engines to help them discover and index your website’s pages. A sitemap is an XML file that provides search engines with a list of all the pages on your website.

It acts as a roadmap, guiding search engines to discover and index your content efficiently. You can use tools like Sitemap Generators or when using WordPress, plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO can help you generate Sitemaps. 

Robots.txt

Use robots.txt to instruct search engine crawlers which parts of your website they can and cannot crawl.

Generally, you can find your website’s Robots.txt at: https://www.domain.com/robots.txt

HTTPS

Use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) to encrypt communication between your website and users’ browsers. HTTPS signals to users that your website is secure and trustworthy.

Moreover, Google has been using HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014. If you are running a website on a HTTP domain, we highly recommend that you migrate to HTTPS.

Mobile-Friendliness

Ensure your website is responsive and looks great on all devices (desktops, tablets, and smartphones). Google primarily uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking.

Local SEO Basics

Local SEO is optimizing your online presence to improve your visibility in local search results.

Optimizing your Local SEO leads to:

  1. Increased visibility which means you appear prominently in local search results like Google Maps and local packs.
  2. Increased foot traffic: You can drive more customers to your physical location.
  3. Enhanced brand awareness helps build trust and credibility within your local community.
  4. Competitive advantage: You gain an edge over local competitors who are not optimizing for local search.
  5. Improved customer engagement: You can easily connect with potential customers actively searching for businesses like yours in their area.

Let us discuss the tactics involved in optimizing the critical Local SEO elements:

Google My Business Profile Optimization

Best Practices to optimize your Google My Business Profile:

  1. Ensure your Google My Business profile is fully and accurately filled out, including business name, address, phone number (NAP), service area, business hours, photos, and more.
  2. Keep your profile updated with any changes to business information, hours, or services.
  3. Respond to customer reviews and questions.
  4. Ask satisfied customers to leave reviews on your Google My Business profile.

Citations & Local Link Building

  • Ensure your business information (Name, Address, Phone number) is consistent across online directories (Yelp, Facebook, industry-specific directories).
  • Claim and optimize your business listings on major online directories.
  • Build relationships with other local businesses and organizations for potential link-building opportunities.
  • Participate in local events and sponsorships.

On-Page SEO & Local Keyword Research

Identify relevant local keywords that potential customers are using to search for businesses like yours.

If you have businesses operating in multiple locations, it is recommended that you create dedicated pages for each location. Then optimize each page with the correct business information and the relevant local keyword.

Optimize your website and individual pages with local keywords, location pages, and local citations.

Online Reviews

  • Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews on Google My Business, Yelp, and other relevant platforms.
  • Respond to both positive and negative reviews professionally and promptly.

Tracking SEO Success

SEO is a long-term strategy, and it’s essential to track your progress and measure your results to ensure you’re on the right track.

Tracking allows you to see what’s working, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of your SEO efforts.

You can track SEO success through these Key Metrics:

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is the number of visitors coming to your website from organic search results. 

You can use Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to monitor your organic traffic over time. 

Increasing organic traffic numbers generally indicate that your content resonates with the target audience, your link-building is on the right track and your keyword selection is optimal.

Decreasing traffic numbers indicate that your website may be affected by technical SEO issues or you may need to re-assess your keyword selection.

It can take some time (months) for your SEO strategy to show good results if you’ve only just started implementing the SEO tactics and strategies.

Keyword Rankings

The position of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs) for your target keywords is a clear indicator of the effectiveness of your SEO tactics and strategies.

You can use tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs and SEMrush to monitor your keyword rankings.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action (e.g., make a purchase, fill out a form, subscribe to a newsletter).

You can use Google Analytics to track conversions and calculate your conversion rate.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate is the percentage of users who click on your website’s listing in search results.

You need to optimize your title tags and meta descriptions to attract more clicks.

You can use Google Search Console and Google Analytics to track CTR.

Track User Engagement

You can track user engagement by tracking the following metrics:

  1. Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page.

    To lower your bounce rate, you need to improve website content, navigation, and page speed to encourage users to stay longer.

  2. Time on Page: The average time users spend on a specific page.

    Create high-quality, informative, and engaging content to increase time on the page.

  3. Pages per Session: The average number of pages a user visits during a single session on your website.

    Use internal linking to encourage users to explore more of your website.

You can use Google Analytics to track the above user engagement metrics.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Calculate the return on investment of your SEO efforts by comparing the cost of SEO activities to the revenue generated from organic traffic. SEO is a long-term strategy, it’s important to stay patient (especially at the start) and keep tracking and optimizing the discussed tactics.

Regularly monitor the number and quality of backlinks pointing to your website.

Also, keep a check on your Domain Authority (DA) / Domain Rating (DR): A metric that predicts how well a website will rank in search results.

Use tools like Moz (for DA) or Ahrefs (for DR) to check your website’s authority.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve now grasped the fundamental principles of SEO. While it may seem daunting at first, remember that every journey begins with a single step.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results overnight. Focus on consistently applying these basics, and you’ll be well on your way to improving your website’s visibility and attracting more organic traffic.

We’re here to support you on your SEO journey – feel free to reach out with any questions!