First Steps in SEO for beginners

Today Internet has become a potentially source of huge earnings and so businessmen who normally operate "offline" try to expand their business to new sphere. In most cases these people first become overwhelmed by the number of new terms and information. Usually they become bombarded by offers and spam messages from people who call themselves SEO experts and offer tremendous results within short time. In order not to waste your time and money on a service with doubtful quality, read this article first.

Let's start with several questions to people who are new businesses. What do you expect from SEO? Do you want to use it because you want to see your website on the top page of search engine listings? Or would you like to know what people want and seek in products like yours and want to apply SEO because it's known as a mirror of people searches?

If your primary aim is to become #1 in your field, think again prior to starting. Today search engines use complicated algorithms that involve multiple factors and it is, in true, unlikely for any new business to become high rated by search engine within short period of time. You will have to wait and, maybe, you will have to wait for a long time. Are you prepared for this?

I may suggest you have seen so many "super offers" that promise to make your website popular and "defeat Google", but believe me, these are nothing but marketing tricks that have one aim – make you open your wallet and pay. If you purchase one of such programs, most probably the only thing you get will be some basic SEO knowledge that can be accessed online for free and, maybe, a couple of tricks got from blogs devoted to SEO.

In general these "super programs" are nothing but a waste of money. Search engines like Google have crews of talented programmers who work on the same problem – how to make sophisticated search algorithms and better crawl websites. Even if some individual programmer finds out a "gap", it will be closed pretty soon.

So you may wonder there's no way to become top ranked within short time. No, there's one way and it implies spending money. This means you should participate in paid listings. Sign up for Google AdWords program, select your keywords, set up highest winning bid and your website will appear at the very top and in right column of search results that include your keywords. It sounds simple, but there are several problems that must be mentioned.

First, not all businessmen have sufficient funds for such Internet campaigns. If you just start your business online, most probably you're ready to spend some cash, but you'd like to escape serious investments. Second – people who use Google often know where paid advertisements are located and they expect to see paid service or product there. That is why people usually prefer clicking the results of organic search first.

So now let's move back to the question posted below. SEO is really important for new businesses because this is the only way to make search engine pay attention to things you offer and they may be pretty close to the products wanted by your potential customers.

The points that will be important for beginners:

- Proper keywords. Find out what people type in their search engine bars when they try to find a product similar to the one you offer. Make sure you use these keywords in your content and most important one is present in your domain name and titles.
- Check your sitemap. It should be well-organized and provide error free data. Check inner linking system. It should be simple, but effective.
- Someone has told famous "content is king". Today this phrase is still very true. Content rich in keywords wins. Do not turn your website into a bare price list. Each product should have a description between 300-700 symbols. Note images are good for people, but search engine robots cannot index information on pictures, so try to create a combination between images and text.
- Incoming links and outcoming links. When you post links to other websites, be careful. Post links wisely and preferably to related websites. Avoid numerous links to unrelated ones as this may cause lowering in the rank. In worst case your website can be considered as spam by Google.

Posted in: Search Engine Optimization,SEO,SEO Expert,SEO Steps