Top SEO Tips: A Full SEO Guide for the Beginner

ONQOR Admin

August 28, 2019

One of the most frequent questions we get from our clients here at ONQOR is ‘what is SEO and how does it work?’. Are you a business starting to build your website or going through a website redesign? Do you hear the words ‘search engine optimization’ or ‘SEO’ and feel a bit intimidated?

Have no fear — We are here to guide you

As a top SEO agency in the UK, we are here to prove to you that SEO doesn’t have to be rocket science. As such, we have compiled a list of 12 SEO tips that you can start using right now, so enough with the small talk and let’s get down to it.

SEO — What is it?
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SEO is the process of optimizing your website to get organic, or unpaid, traffic from the search engine results page (SERP). In other words, SEO involves making certain changes to your website in order to make the site more attractive to search engines such as Google. Implement the right tactics, and the result will be your website (hopefully) appearing on the first page in the search results page, and in turn, attracting visitors and converting customers to your website (and that’s the goal!).

In short: SEO improves your visibility online via search engines.

How does SEO work?
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Most search engines are created to show the most relevant websites matching the user’s search query and intent. As such, search engine bots crawl, or scan, all websites to better understand what the site is all about.

The healthier the website, and the closer it matches the user’s search intent (think about all the questions regarding the topic user’s might have!) the better the ranking is going to be. Factors such as domain rating, or “DR” plays a big role in the ranking factor as well.

Domain rating, also known as domain ranking, is the overall strength of your website. This is determined by how many other websites links to yours, and the quality of the link. If a big and trustworthy company such as BBC would add a relevant link to your website, this would definitely help your DR. The higher the DR, the more competitive keywords will be available to you.

Sounds complicated? No worries. This is all part of forming a holistic view of the topic.

SEO tips and quick fixes
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Now that you have basic knowledge of what SEO is and how it works — what can you do right now?

There are many things you can do to enhance your domain health — here is a list of simple SEO tips and tricks to boost yourself in search engine rankings.

1. Name images

Do you use images on your website? If you don’t, you should. If you do — amazing! Are these images named?

We’re not talking ‘IMG.12345’, we’re talking actual words describing what the image is, all in lower case and connected via dashes.

2. Alt-text

Alt-texts (alternative texts) are used within an HTML code to describe the image if, for example, the image isn’t loading or if the search engine needs further description. Put simply, search engines don’t have eyes, and cannot see images like we can. Instead, naming your image and adding an alt-text will let them know what’s going on in the picture.

Example: Let’s say we are uploading an image of a girl talking to another girl in the office for our wellbeing at work website page.

Let’s take a look at an example

You’ve just uploaded an image of your colleagues at a company event while they’re eating cake.

Name of the image?

“colleagues-having-fun-at-party”

Alt-text?

Good: “Colleagues having fun at party”

Better: “Colleagues having fun at company party”

Best: “Colleagues having fun at company party eating cake”

3. GMB account

Google My Business Account — have you got one?

If not, get one! This is the box on the right-hand side of Google which comes up when you google search a business.

Don’t you find it frustrating when it’s clear a business has a GMB account, but it’s not up-to-date? Make sure you’re using & updating your account. If your opening hours change — add them in, if you have a promotion running — put it on there, if you’ve moved recently — make sure GMB knows!

4. Reviews

Reviews also show up on your GMB.

Did you know? Google loves reviews as it proves that you are trustworthy, and that real people are engaging with your business. They really help your SEO — so make sure you ask people to review you on GMB.

5. Keywords

Think about what your searchers would be searching to come across your website & content. It’s these words you want to have throughout your content, which the search engines will pick up. Therefore, enabling your content to come up when people search with those terms.

Obviously, the keywords should be related to what you’re talking about in the specific content. For example, if you are selling shoes, maybe you should stay away from keywords including chocolate-cake.

Long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are keywords that contain 3 or more words. The longer the keyword is, the more specific they are, and the easier it is to rank for them. “Shoes” might have a million searches on Google, but it’s also quite vague. “Red gum sole nike shoes” however, is more specific, and also way easier to rank for.

If you’re a small business, or have just started out, collecting long-tail keywords is a good way to receive traffic.

Tip: Don’t be a ‘keyword stuffer’ (yes, it’s a thing). Stuffing loads of keywords into your content can seem inauthentic. If you stuff your keywords, search engines pick up on this and makes you drop in rankings.

6. Meta-title and description

The meta description on your website & website pages tells a search engine more about what each page talks about. It also enables people clicking and visiting these pages to gain a better understanding of what the page is about and if it’s relevant to what they’re searching for. Don’t forget, the meta-description should include your keyword!

Since the meta-titles and descriptions is the first thing that a potential user would see in the SERP (search engine results page), make sure to be clear and concise to make a good first impression.

7. Heading and subheading tags

A simple SEO tip is to give your page one (1) heading (H1) and sub-headings (H2, H3, H4). These make your content easier to read for viewers and improve your SEO. The different heading tags will help search engines better understand what your content is about. Headers carry more value from an SEO perspective than regular body text, so good practice is to include keywords in the headers.

One very important note is to have a consistent heading flow. This means that you cannot immediately jump from H2 to H4 in a text, but that the sub-header of the H2 should be a H3. Always remember not to use the heading tags as sizes, but attributes.

8. Backlinks

Backlinks are links to (or from) external pages. Make sure you link to other websites, whether it be people you’ve worked with or somewhere showcasing your blog post.

Example: Let’s say you have a page on your website about a charity you work with or raise money for, in your text copy on that page insert a backlink to the official website for that charity for people to find out more information.

NO BROKEN LINKS — Using Google Search Console is a great way to check broken links.

TIP: Be careful who and what pages you link to — just like in real life, ‘be careful who you associate yourself with’ on your website.

9. Internal links

Internal Links are links to other pages on your website. Having these links keep people on your website for longer, but also has a lot of value from an SEO perspective.

On your website, different pages has different value, and the home page usually carry the most. From the home page, links go out to all corners of your site, and search engine bots follow these to crawl. If a bot lands on a not-so-important page, adding a link and linking back to the home page is good practice, as it leads the bots around the website.

You can also “push” pages. Let’s say you’ve added a new page for a product. You can link to this page from other parts of your website to make it more relevant in the eyes of a search engine.

10. Blog

Writing a blog is an easy way to get keywords in — you can put them in the first sentence or title. [Keywords Everywhere](https://keywordseverywhere.com/) is a super-helpful plug-in for Google Chrome. Always make sure you research your keywords before writing a blog, and stick them in the title as well as in the meta title and description.

11. Mobile first

A large proportion of people using search engines will be using a mobile device — ensure that your website is friendly for mobile users. You don’t want people bouncing off the site because it’s not mobile-responsive. At times this will require some development efforts, but with a stable SEO strategy and [**web development services**](https://onqor.com/development/), this is all possible.

A few years ago, Google also announced that their bots would mainly be crawling sites with a mobile bot rather than a desktop bot, so keeping your website mobile friendly is a win-win situation.

12. Load speed

The loading speed of photos or videos might be another reason why people visiting your site might bounce. You may have an amazing website, but if it takes too long to load, then people visiting your site might bounce. The average user will wait up to 3 seconds for a website to load until they lose patience. Reduce your load speed to avoid missing out on potential customers.

Not only do people get frustrated with slow websites, but Google also isn’t keen on them either! Load Speed affects your rankings.