Modern SEO: The Ultimate Guide For SEO Beginners

The online world of digital marketing has been taken over by SEO. Those who are fluent in the basics of SEO are reaping the number of advantages it has to offer. And beginners wish to learn more about it faster. Anyone that is trying to establish an online presence acknowledges the importance of SEO in the process.

While the common concept amongst beginners is that SEO is very tricky to get the hang of, it’s not quite true. When it comes to SEO, best practices are as important as the right practices. If you know where to start from, SEO can be pretty easy to use and benefit from. Here is a guide that will help you get started with SEO services in Dubai, telling you everything that you need to know.

Efficient Website Audits

When you start your journey of SEO , the very first step should be conducting an SEO audit. An audit for your website, when done efficiently, will help you find the essential details that you require in order to build a strategy that is tailored to provide the best for your website.

But how exactly can one conduct an effective website audit? The answer is by using the right tools. There are a few tools that one can use for their website audit. These include a number of  SEO tools, Copyscape, AHrefs, Moz bar, and some other tools such as word counters. Using a number of tools isn’t necessary, but the more reliable tools you use, the better the auditing results are obtained to be. While you go through this process, there are a few things that you need to ensure.

First of all, you need to make sure that there is one browsable version of your site and that it is crawled, analyzed and indexed on google. If not, you may not be able to achieve any ranking at all. Once done with that, check the google search ranking of your web page and then perform some basic on-page Optimization checks. While you are at it, make sure to check for any thin or duplicate content as well. Identify and rid of any structured data errors on your web page.

Once you have checked and rechecked all of the above, you can start analyzing organic search traffic, and along with that, analyze your backlink profile. In the process, if you come across any broken links, fix them. In the end, find where the content gap lies, and try filling it up with effective keywords that will take your site higher on the google website ranking list.

Complete Keyword Research

Keywords are a very basic component of SEO. This is what any SEO agency in Dubai will tell you. If you keep adding content to your web page, without any attention being paid to keywords, you may not get very far. And the lack of payoff can be very demotivating.

To avoid that, you need to do proper research that would allow you to identify the right keywords for generating the right quality of traffic.

 

If you are wondering how to find keywords, do not worry. There are a number of ways to do so. You can either find a seed keyword and use that to find better keywords. Or you can just use Google suggestions or other keyword tools. Such tools would allow you to find all the right, appropriate and related keywords for you, generating traffic with greater potential and a better payoff.

Therefore, whether you pick keywords yourself, or use a keyword tool to do it for you, make sure you have put in a sufficient amount of research and chosen the right ones for your webpage.

When it comes to picking the right keywords for your site, you can rely on the good old tripod rule of keywords. The tripod rule gives three criteria that your keywords must meet in order to be effective. It must be popular, rank-able, and relevant.

Image Source: Mangools

That’s it. That was easy, wasn’t it?

Another factor that can help you is choosing the right types of keywords for your webpage. Here is a quick summary of the types of keywords that you can use, so you understand better what works for you and what doesn’t.

Types Of Keywords

Keywords used for SEO purposes can simply be distributed into seven types. These types allow you to determine where you can use certain keywords, and when they can be used.

It is important to classify these keywords correctly and use them accordingly, or you will simply be putting all your efforts down the drain. Here are the seven types of keywords that you need to know about.

1. Market-defining Keywords

These keywords are those that are generally used by a target population when talking by a specific industry or a business. These keywords define the market that is associated with them. They include a group of very broad and generic terms. Ranking in these keywords may be considerably harder, but they still play a very important role.
Examples

2. Customer-defining Keywords

In the way that market-defining keywords represented the market or industry that they are associated with, customer defining keywords describe the associated customer. These are keywords used by audiences to describe themselves. In order to pick the right consumer defining keywords, you need to know what your customers call themselves, and how they refer to others.

For example, if I want laptop repairer to find the the solution for laptop company that I own, search keyword would be:

• Laptop repairing solution
• Laptop repairers at your door step

3. Product Keywords

These keywords are exactly what their name implies them to be. They are the keywords that describe the products that you sell. When picking out product keywords, one needs to be sure to list very specific terms instead of using very generic terms. Using brand names would allow a better reach when opting for product keywords.

4. Industry Thought Leaders

This is a unique group of keywords. It consists of names of individuals, or groups, that are a part of your industry, market, or business that are very well known and respected. These are not just any other people, but people that everyone in the business knows. Their names are not perfect for your home titles but do help you reach a better audience within the industry or market.

5. Competing Company Names

Using the names of competing branding communication companies as your keywords may not sound like a grand idea, but it can be very helpful. And that too in a number of ways. This gives you a good idea of how your competing companies for  are being responded to by your audience. It also plays a little role in pulling their audience to your own web page.

6.Related Vertical Keywords

Related vertical keywords are a group of keywords that help you reach out to a greater variety of audiences. They reside within the ecosystem of your target segment. They may not be the exact specification for your business, SMO Services, or product, but they have quite a relevant and obvious connection with your audience. Such keywords allow you to reach into other niches that are closely linked and target potential audiences.

7. Geo-targeted Keywords

Geo-targeted keywords are specific to your locality. Such keywords are essential in targeting the local audience. Using these keywords can target a greater amount of potential customers. If your  services are limited to your locality, then geo-targeted keywords are of great essence for you since it attracts the audience that is specifically looking for SMO services in your area, and not elsewhere.

Technical SEO

While SEO may seem all hands-on practice, there are a few technical aspects of it that you need to be familiar with. The keywords that you picked out with the help of the above-mentioned guide needs to be read and processed by the internet before it is presented to the audience itself. While you don’t need a deep technical knowledge for this, there are a few basic concepts that need to be clear for you.

Basic Working Of Websites

The first thing that you need to understand is how websites work. It is really not as complex as you think. And we are going to start from the very beginning. And that is purchasing a domain name. You can purchase domain names from a number of domain name registrars that are available over the internet. Once a name is purchased, it is linked to an IP address.

An easier way to understand this is to think of IP address as the computer language for the internet. Where you see xyz.com, the internet sees a series of numbers and identifies what the required destination is. The internet then requests the code for your web page, and once receives, it displays it to the audience, assembled, in the form of a proper page. At times additional requests are required before these pages can be viewed, such as passwords or verification. For a web development company in Dubai, this is a good choice to go with

Search Engine’s View Of Websites

A search engine on-page optimization is designed for viewing the same websites a little differently. Search engines used a number of tools known as schema markups that allow you to provide an overview of what your website contains, instead of it having to scan your entire content. Schema allows labeling and organization of content. The content on your website is basically unstructured data. Schema turns it into structured data and feeds it to the engine allowing it to display appropriate results when required.

User Interaction

The final aspect of technical knowledge that you need to be aware of is regarding the interaction of users with your website android app development and iOS app development. Users prefer web pages that are responsive and intuitive to use. Developing mobile-friendly pages is very important since these are the devices that are most commonly used to access a number of sites. The content of the pages must also load in a small amount of time and not leave the users waiting too long.

Meta Tags

If you are looking to make the best from SEO, then using Meta Tags is an absolute must for you. Before you understand how these meta tags can help you out, you need to understand what exactly meta tags are.

These are basically small snippets of text that can accurately summarize the contents of the page or give the reader an idea of what they’re about to read. It is essential that the meta tags be very precise and very concise in order to grab the reader’s attention and give them an accurate description.

Are They Visible?

Now, these meta tags do not show up anywhere on your webpage itself. So, where do these tags go? Whenever you search for something on a search engine, you see a number of links to sites show up in the results. Under each of these links is a small text that describes the contents of the web page. This is the meta tag that is associated with the particular page itself.

What’s the difference between tags visible on your page and those that are not? Just the location. The meta tag that is associated with your web page is present in the HTML only. But despite the fact that it does not show up on your page itself, it helps a lot with SEO.

Types Of Meta Tags

These meta tags are usually of four types.

• They could simply be a series of keywords instead of proper sentences. These keywords need to be relevant to your webpage. Such a meta tag is called the meta keywords attribute.
• Then there is a title tag. A title tag is nothing more than the title of your page, and choosing this may not be as effective for your SEO.
• A meta description attribute is a type of meta tag that includes a brief description of your page. Unlike the previous two meta tags, this type consists of proper sentences.
• The last is the Meta Robots Attribute. This type of meta tag simply gives an indication to the search engine crawlers. They decide, with the indication, what should be done with the page.

Alt Tags

An Alt tag is also sometimes referred to as an alt attribute or even an alt description. It is simply an HTML attribute that is associated with image tags. This attribute provides text as an alternative for an image to the search engine. If you want the images from your sites to show up on searches on the search engines, then an Alt tag is what you need.

How Do They Work?

The simple change of adding images to a number of alt tags can really improve your ranking on the search engines. But how do they work? The essence of using alt tags to boost your ranking lies in the fact that a lot of consumers look for images rather than texts while looking for specific products or services. But the internet itself cannot read images.

• Alt tags serve to bridge this gap between the preference of the audience and the inability of the internet.
• It turns the images, which are unrecognized by the internet, into recognizable tags that can be matched to relevant searches.
• Even if your site ranks highs on the search engine, it may be overlooked by a product whose image shows up first.
• Adding alt tags to the images on your site can help those images show up on search engines when those tags are searched for.
• Since images usually pop up before sites, you will be a great advantage here.

Robots.txt

If you know anything about Robots.txt, then you’d know that these are one of the simplest files that you have to deal with on your website. But, as simple as they are, they are equally easy to mess up with. Simply missing one character, or even misplaced, it can turn your entire SEO process and strategy upside down. Just a small mistake and search engines will no longer be able to access your content at all.

This ease of mishaps and misconfigurations is what makes Robots.txt very important to understand and dealt with correctly. But before you do that, you need to understand what it exactly is and its nature.

What Is Robot.txt?

A robots.txt file is like traffic police for your site. It directs the search engines to the parts that can be accessed and keep them from parts that can’t be accessed. A robots.txt file usually enlists all the content that you want to keep away from the search engines.

Why Do You Need It?

The question that stands is, do you really need a robots.txt file. The answer is no. You don’t necessarily need a robots.txt file while making your web page, but if you want better control of the content that the search engine displays, a robots.txt file becomes very important. It prevents crawling, by a number of search engines, of the duplicate content available on your web page. It can also prevent the server from overloading and prevent wastage of your crawl budget. And lastly, it can play a great role in keeping a number of your site sections private.

Sitemap.xml

While you are on your SEO journey, you want to ensure that Google or other search engines crawl through all the important pages of your website. But at times, you end up with pages that no internal links point to. Regardless of how important these pages are, without internal links pointing to their existence, they become extremely hard to find for search engines. This is where an XML sitemap comes in to save the date.

What Does It Do?

The job of an XML sitemap is very simple, yet very crucial. All it does is, it lists all the important pages of your sites. This allows search engines to find and crawl through all these pages. Furthermore, it also provides a better understanding of the structure of your website.

Does Everyone Need It?

While XML sitemaps are really simple and can be added very simply, does this simplicity mean every website should have one? Not necessarily. While every website can have one, it may not provide the same benefit for all. Websites that are very big and have multiple pages can surely benefit from it a lot since there is a greater chance of there being pages that no internal links point to. But for smaller sites that do not feature as many pages, these sitemaps may not be of great benefit. They won’t harm the page, but won’t show any result either. It would be better advised to not design one for such pages, and invest the time elsewhere.

Backlinks

We have all found ourselves browsing through the internet on a specific website where we click on a link and find ourselves being redirected to another website. That link that we have been clicking on all those times is what a backlinks really is. These links are often referred to as inbound links or incoming links. And if their importance is not already evident from what you have experienced, let us tell you.

Importance In SEO

The key relevance of backlinks in SEO comes from the fact that these serve a certificate for confidence from other websites to your site. If you see X product being mentioned on the site of Y product, which is one that you trust, you will find some confidence to look into the X product as well.

This simple element of trust is interpreted not only by an audience but by search engines as well. When a number of sites link back to a similar page, the search engine automatically ranks it higher. This allows a great boost to your ranking. But these backlinks need to be earned. And that too by trusted sites that can really impact your ranking positively.

Link Types

But, are all Backlinks the same? Absolutely not. There are about ten types of backlinks. Some of these you need to earn while others you need to avoid. Here is a quick summary of which is which.

• Editorial Backlinks: These are one of the most advantageous backlinks for your site. This is basically a backlink that is placed amidst high-quality content that allows a better rating for your page.
• Guest Blogging Backlinks: This is when you collaborate with another creator and leave a guest post on their website with a link that takes the audience back to your site. This is also desirable for your website.
• Backlinks In Business Profiles: If you create a digital profile for your brand on any of the present and active listing sites, you can add backlinks for your site on the business site, which would also help your rank increase.
• Backlinks From Webinars: Links from Webinars hold great value and can serve to provide great advertisement as well
• Free-Tool Backlinks: Offering a simple tool to other sites can help you earn a backlink that is from a trust and reliable source. It may come at a small cost, but one that is worth paying.
• Acknowledgment Backlinks: These are small tokens of appreciations that come at a number of events, these not only help with SEO but help earn a better name as well.
• Comment Backlinks: These are links that you can leave yourself in comments on other sites. They are smart, but one needs to be careful not to overdo them.
• Paid Links: You can also pay sites for backlink instead of earning them. But this may have a negative impact since most content is usually assessed if it’s genuine or not.
• Links On Low-Quality Content Sites: Any backlinks that are present on sites with low-quality content can be harmful to your own website.

Creating Backlinks

Now that you know what backlinks are, why they are important, how they work, and what their types are, you can finally get to learn how to create them as well. While there are a number of ways to create backlinks, here we are going to discuss two very important ways, that are guest posts and infographics.

And here is how you can do each one of them.

Guest posts:

Guest posts are one of the easiest and simplest ways to create backlinks. When we speak of backlinks, you always want to be sure that your backlinks are present on trusted and reliable sites and that they are present among high-quality content with a positive outlook. And what other way could be better than leaving a link yourself with the content of your own choice? That is exactly what guest posts allow you to do.

In order to create a guest post, you must first be in contact and on good terms with your choice of website. Communicating through email and keeping a good relationship is very important for this. This would allow room for a collaboration where you could leave a guest post on their site. This can also be possible if your business or page has a positive impact on the website of your choice. But once you have earned this opportunity, it is in your hands to make or break your chance at a better ranking.

While you are drafting your post, there are two things that you need to keep in mind.

The first is to create a very genuine post that features a very positive outlook. This is very important since this is what will make the audience, as well as search engines, judge your backlink. If you post low-quality content that comes off as tacky or forced, then your backlink will simply backfire instead of having a positive impact. If you are writing about SEO in Dubai, try highlighting the positive aspects of it, rather than the negative.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind is the placement of the backlink. While it is necessary to place it in a position where it is obvious to the readers and invites them to visit the link, you must also make sure that it isn’t forced. It should not look like the purpose of the post was simply to lead the audience to your page, even if it is.

Infographics:

The second easiest way to create a backlink is simply by using infographics. This method, even though very common, is found to be very tricky for a lot of people. But that is only because they are going about it the wrong way. Infographics can allow you to create backlinks very easily, only if you know what you are doing.

Infographics are a combination of informational text and pictures that provide your audience with a great understanding of a number of topics. These are designed to help out audiences that want to gain considerable knowledge without reading large chunks of texts.

Why Infographic is Important? 

In order to earn a backlink with your infographic, all you need to do is design and publish an infographic with a link to your site. Now, as you share and promote this infographic on social media, it will start taking rounds on a number of sites. And if you have designed the infographic well enough, it could go viral before you even know it. Advantage? Your link is now all over the internet. And all you had to do was, be creative!

Conclusion:

SEO is a vast, deep-sea that goes a lot deeper than the layman’s understanding. Mastering SEO takes a considerable amount of time and effort, but it definitely pays off. These were a few important aspects of SEO that will allow you to start your SEO journey, but in order to reach the level of mastery that you want, you must spend a lot more time learning about various trends and technicalities in the field.

FAQs

While this article attempts to cover all the basic knowledge that a beginner needs about SEO, there might still be a few questions left lingering in your mind. If you still need to know more, then do not worry. Here we have answered some of the most frequently asked questions by other beginners at SEO.

How Long Will It Take To Learn SEO?

SEO is not a proper course or degree that comes with a specified amount of learning time. How long you take to learn SEO really depends on how much time you invest in the process. But if you go at a reasonable speed with a sufficient amount of interest, you can learn all about SEO in about 6 months. For SEO best practices consult SEO experts Dubai located companies.

Can I Get Free Backlinks?

Backlinks can be paid, but those are not the desirable kind of backlinks. The ideal types of backlinks are usually earned and free. From creating infographics and guest posts to making inspiring others and requesting favors, there are a number of ways to earn free backlinks.

Do Backlinks Help YouTube Videos?

Yes! Backlinks, specially backlinks from high-quality, trusted, and reliable pages for all sorts of sites can play a very positive role in the ranking of the site on any search engine. Be it YouTube, or WordPress; backlinks will always be beneficial.