How to Get More Website Visitors: SEO Beginner’s Guide

Who here could use more traffic to their website? 🙋🏼‍♀️

Very few of us have as many website visitors as we want and that can be a big frustration, especially if you have an online business.

But fear not! There are many ways to drive traffic, and this week I’d like to focus on search engine optimization (SEO) for beginners. After all, what do we all do when we are looking for something? We Google it!

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Easy SEO for Beginners

SEO is something people sometimes neglect–I included. When you write for a website page and put it on the world wide web, you may be thinking about the things your ideal target customer needs–and you totally should be.

But there’s a second important audience to think about as well: the search engines. It doesn’t matter how great your content or product is if nobody can find it. Although search engines use numerous factors when evaluating a site’s ranking, here are a few tips that can help Google (and other search engines) get you to page one on the search engine results page (SERP).

Start with Keywords

When starting a blog post, we tend to think first about what we want to say. But the words and phrases you use might not be exactly what your potential customers use. I’m talking about the specific words they put into the search bar. If you select keywords that are too broad, your site will get lost in a sea of higher-ranking sites. If they’re too narrow, nobody is searching for them. Like Goldilocks, SEO involves finding keywords that are just right.

Note: for clarification, a “keyword” can be a single word, or a phrase, called a “long-tail keyword”. Think of words or phrases your ideal customer would be searching for and check the search volume.

Doing keyword research before you start writing is an important first step that people often neglect. For the research, I recommend using a tool like Ubersuggest or Moz (they both have free plans) to find keywords that are both highly searched and have low competition from other pages.

Each website page should have 1-3 focus keywords per page, so find the best ones and concentrate on those. Try searching for keywords that are similar to each other, since they can vary widely in search volume. For example, the keyword “marketing strategist” gets 1,300 monthly searches while “marketing strategy” receives 22,200 monthly searches. As you can see, tweaking a few words can make a big difference.

Remember that you want to pull in visitors who are looking for exactly what you’re offering. A broader keyword might get you more traffic, but if it’s not the product or content they are looking for, they will click away, increasing your bounce rate, and undermining your SEO efforts.

You will probably have the best luck with keywords that are more specific (but not always; see the example below). For example, if you have a furniture store, and you are looking for keywords for contemporary glass and metal coffee tables you’re selling, you might try the following:

As you can see, it’s really a balancing act. The most specific keyword–metal and glass contemporary coffee table–had no monthly search volume. So it’s essential to test to see what keyword you should focus on for that page because the most obvious one to you might not be the most obvious one to your customer.

Where to Use Your Keywords

There are a few places where you should make sure your keywords show up. (Note: if you have a WordPress site, I’d recommend downloading the Yoast SEO plugin to help with this process.)

You don’t want multiple pages on your site to have the same keyword. That’s an indication to the search engines that your content is thin or stretched. Use variations of your keywords depending on the specific page content.

Here’s a list of where to put your keyword on your page:

H1 Headline

Every headline you have on each page of your site has a hierarchy. The H1 tag is most important, but use only one H1 headline per page. H2 tags are next in importance, then H3, H4, paragraph tags, and so on. Google uses these tags to learn what’s the most important content on your page. Your main keyword should be in your H1 headline, but it can also be in the other headlines, along with similar related keywords (from your keyword research).

The First Paragraph of your Page

If you’re anything like me, you love to start an article with a good story. But the search engine gods honor those who get to the point fast. So including keywords in your page’s intro paragraph is good practice, even if it does hamper your inner Hemmingway.

URL Slug

The slug is the part of your URL after your domain name, like this: https://mysite.com/slug-with-keyword-here/.

Throughout your Page

Use your keyword and similar relevant keywords throughout your page, as you would naturally include them in your writing. Don’t force them into your text, Google calls it “keyword stuffing” and views it as an unnatural way to try to manipulate your page rank. It will get you down-ranked.

In Anchor Text

Anchor text is a word or phrase that’s linked in a paragraph, such as putting keywords right here in this linked sentence. These words anchor two pieces of internet content together.

Meta Description

This is the page description that shows up on the search engine results page (SERP). You want this to be just the right length (between 150 and 160 characters long) and contain your keyword. There should be a different meta description for each page. Note: sometimes Google, for reasons unknown to us mortals, will rewrite your meta description, so don’t be alarmed if that happens.

Meta Title

Your Meta title is the title that will show up on the top row of your page description on the SERP. This should be 150-160 characters long. It will also be the top line of the page description in search engines (see image above).

Images

When adding an image to your site, pay attention to the Alt Text box. Including a keyword-rich description of the image will help the search engines know the content of the photo and help your on-page SEO. In addition, including it will allow people who are visually impaired to mouse over the image and get an audio description. Overall, including it is a good thing.

Other On-Page SEO Tips

Link to Other Content on Your Site

For example, link to relevant older blog posts. It helps your customer dig deeper and increases search engine ranking to other pages on your site.

Fix 404 Pages or Broken Links

404 pages (pages on your site that are unavailable) can hurt your SEO. If you have a WordPress site, I recommend downloading a redirect plugin (there are several) so the pages can be redirected to a different live page on your site (known as a 301 redirect) so your visitor doesn’t reach a dead end. Ahrefs offers a free link checker here. 

Speed up Your Site

How fast your page loads can impact your SEO as well, especially on mobile sites where people may have connectivity issues. Videos and large images are often the culprits. You can disable large images on your mobile site since mobile users often have different priorities (such as finding your location) than desktop users and photos may not be as important to them. Test your site speed here to see if it’s an issue on your desktop or mobile site.

Submit Your Site to Major Search Engines

It can take a while for search engines to crawl every page on the internet. Fortunately, you can let them know when to crawl it. Submitting your site to major search engines such as Google and Bing & Yahoo, when your site is newly updated, can help improve your organic search engine ranking.

URL Structure

The URLs on your site should make sense and be in a hierarchy. For example, if you sell clothes and shoes on your site, the URL for a page selling sandals might look like this: clothingsite.com/shoes/womens-shoes/sandals. It makes sense because sandals are a subset of women’s shoes, which are a subset of shoes. This makes the process easier for your customer, which is why search engines like it too.

SEO Takes Time

As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of nuances to SEO, and this is not a comprehensive list. Generally, if what you’re doing on your site makes it faster, clearer, and easier for your visitors, the search engines approve.

But one thing to remember: SEO is a long game. Adding backlinks and keywords will pay off for you, but it takes a while before your numbers climb. But focus on these tips and you’ll get there!

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