SEO for Begginers | Climb the Google Rankings (2018 Tutorials)

SEO Beginners Guide 2018

Step by step seo guide for beginners by ahrefs. Watch the full video or read the blog.


Video Transcription 

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3.5 billion searches are performed
on Google every single day.

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Seriously, no matter what you do, people are
looking for your products and services on Google;

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cell phone repair shop: 1,700 monthly searches.

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iphone charger: 34,000 monthly searches.

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best smartphone: 41,000 monthly searches.

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And these search volumes are
only for US based searches.

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But here’s the thing:

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Even though there are billions of searches
every single day, our recent study shows that

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91% of content gets no traffic from Google.

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So how do you join the other 9% of web pages
and start getting free, consistent, and passive

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traffic from Google?

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If you’re a beginner to SEO, then you’re
going to want to watch this whole tutorial

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because I’m going to show you how to
start attracting customers from the

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world’s

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largest

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search engine.

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Stay tuned.

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[Music]

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What’s up everyone, Sam Oh here with Ahrefs,
the SEO tool that helps you grow your search

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traffic, research your competitors,
and dominate your niche.

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This tutorial is called “SEO for beginners”
because even if you haven’t got the slightest

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clue what SEO is, you’ll have very clear
and easy action items that you can implement

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into your website right away.

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So we’ll be covering the most important
things that you should know to ensure that

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your website is optimized for search.

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Let’s get started.

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So what is SEO?

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SEO stands for search engine optimization.

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It’s the process of optimizing your website
and webpages to get free organic traffic from

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search engines like Google.

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Think of Google like a filing system in a library.

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The library has billions of books with hundreds
of trillions of pages.

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So let’s say that you want to find something
on, “global warming.”

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Then Google would search through these books
and extract pages that contain your keywords

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or closely related words.

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But as I’m sure you know, search results
aren't returned in any random order.

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Google tries to return the most relevant results
first by using sophisticated algorithms.

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And they're so good at this, that most of
us never have to click through to page 2 of

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the search results.

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Nobody knows exactly how these algorithms
work or the exact factors it looks at to rank

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a webpage, but we do know a lot of the so-called
"Google ranking factors," so we are able to

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make some optimizations.

Buy Ahrefs from Gstack Group Buy at $20 ONLY

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So your job is going to be two-fold:

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Number 1, we need to make sure that it's easy
for search engines to understand what your

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page is about and create that content that
matches what we call, “the searcher’s intent," right?

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And number 2, we need to show Google and
other search engines that it’s ‘worthy’ of ranking.

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So throughout this tutorial, let’s say that
I’m a new and budding photographer and I

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live in Toronto, Canada.

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I’m starting my new wedding photography
business called “Sam PhOHtography.”

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Yup, I’m pretty awesome...

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but I don’t have any friends, so referrals
are out of the question.

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Alright great.

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Step 1 is to find relevant keywords that people
are searching for and see how these search

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queries fit into your business.

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The easiest way to start finding relevant
keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of

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a potential customer.

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So I would think that a bride or groom looking
for some magical wedding photos would search

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for “wedding photographer in Toronto.”

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Makes sense, right?

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So I’ll go to Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer
tool, which is one of our SEO tools that provides

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rich data on Google searches, and I’ll enter
in that search query here.

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I’ll also change the country to Canada since
people in other countries, they probably

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aren’t looking for a Toronto
based photographer as often.

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Now, I’ll run the search.

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And you can see that there are only around
60 or so monthly searches for this keyword

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phrase, which is far from exciting.

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But looking below, you’ll see that the parent
topic for our query is different.

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The parent topic determines if you can rank
for your target keyword, so the one that we

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originally entered here, while targeting a
more general topic on your page instead.

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In this case, the parent topic is showing
that more people search for, “toronto wedding

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photographer,” over “wedding photographer in toronto.”

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Now, if we scroll to the bottom of the page,
you can see the top 10 Google rankings for

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your target keyword and a bunch of keyword metrics.

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I’ll just touch on two of them for this video:

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traffic and keywords.

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Take a look at these two ranking pages.

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You can see that they generate well over a
thousand search visitors every single month

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and next to that, you’ll see that each page
individually ranks for hundreds of keywords.

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If we click on the number of keyword rankings
here, you can see all of the different keywords

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and the ranking positions in Google search.

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This is a good thing to do because you already
know that Google is ranking this single page

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for all of the keywords, so why wouldn’t
you be able to rank for these keywords and

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maybe even more?

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Try and remember this part, because we will
be exploring things like keyword usage multiple

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times throughout this tutorial.

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Alright, now that we have a list of keywords,
it’s time to optimize your pages.

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In the world of search engine optimization,
this is called “on-page SEO.”

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Since we know the keywords that people are
searching for in Google, it gives us clues

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on the language we should use to let both
Google and potential customers know what your

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page is about.

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For example, knowing that “toronto wedding
photographer” is a more popular search query

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than “wedding photographer in Toronto”,
that will help us make smarter copywriting

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decisions.

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So for your homepage content, you might want
to say, “Hi I’m Sam, a Toronto wedding

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photographer. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” instead
of “Howdy, I’m Sam and I do wedding photos

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for couples in Toronto.”

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But I do need to make two things very clear:

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First, you don’t have to use your exact
match keyword since Google has gotten pretty

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smart at understanding what your page is about.

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And second, it’s very important to note
that you shouldn’t try to trick Google by

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using keywords where they don’t belong.

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Your first priority should be to optimize
for people because the last time I checked,

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robots aren’t going to pay you for your services.

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Here’s an example of what you shouldn’t do:

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"I’m a Toronto wedding photographer that
does Toronto wedding photography for your

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Toronto wedding.”

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This is known as keyword stuffing and long
story short, it does more harm than good.

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So key takeaway?

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Don’t do it.

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So for on-page SEO, I want to pass on 4 very
basic, but important tips that you can use

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on every page you optimize.

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First is to optimize your title
tags and meta descriptions.

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When you look at the Google’s search results,
you’ll see this part in blue and the text

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below.

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The top part is called your title tag and
the other part is the meta description.

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The purpose of these is to entice someone
to click through to your page.

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And if people are actually clicking through
to your page, then that’s telling Google

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that your page is likely relevant to the reason
why they had searched for the query in the

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first place, right?

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And you can see that Google actually even
bolds these keywords and similar keywords

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within the search results making them stand out.

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With that in mind, I might create a title
like, “Award-Winning Toronto Wedding Photographer,”

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and then my brand name.

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But of course, if you’re going to do something
like this, it should be true.

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Then for the meta description, you can explain
in a couple brief sentences what the page

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is about.

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But rather than putting a generic description
that everyone else is doing and calling yourself

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the best, you can put something like:

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“Sam Oh was rated the Star’s Best Toronto
Wedding Photographer.

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He combines creativity with science to capture
life’s happiest day in a million pixels.”

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Awww...how sweet is that?

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Now this would make me as a consumer want
to find out who this awesome photographer is.

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The last part of on-page optimization is the
most important and that’s the actual content

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on the page.

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For a typical wedding photography home page,
I might have some images, a short “about

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us” or “about me” section, possibly
the services that I provide, and some testimonials

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from happy brides and grooms.

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Without over complicating things, you’ll
likely want to use your primary keyword phrase

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in the main headline, often referred to as an H1 tag.

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And looking at one of the top ranking pages,
you’ll see that they did this right here.

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An example of what you probably shouldn’t
be doing is something like this:

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hello there.

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The H1 or heading tag here says, “hello
there” which doesn’t help anyone understand

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what the page is about.

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And remember, your job is to help Google best
identify your page as being relevant to the

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user’s search query.

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I’ll go back to the organic keywords report
in Ahrefs to see one of my competitor’s

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keyword rankings and see if there are any
other ideas that might help Google better

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understand what my page is about.

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You can see some other relevant keywords in
here like bridal, photos, and GTA, which stands

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for the Greater Toronto Area.

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So as you’re writing the copy for your page,
you might want to keep these in mind and sprinkle

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them in where it makes sense
and reads naturally to visitors.

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Alright, so let’s take this Sam PhOHtography
example one step further.

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Let’s say that my business was growing,
I got a lot more experience under my belt

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and I found out that I have some mad skills
in areas like landscape, portrait, travel,

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product photography.

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So I decided, heck, I’m going to offer those services too!

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Rather than trying to rank my homepage for
keywords that aren’t exactly related, I

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could easily create new services pages.

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So I’d do the same thing by first going
to Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.

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Then I’d type in something like “toronto
product photographer," and I’ll quickly

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look at the search volume and see it has 100
or so monthly searches in Canada.

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Then I’ll take a look at the parent topic
that has around 200 searches.

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And here’s a quick but super interesting side note.

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With wedding photographers, people seem to
be searching for “Toronto wedding photographer”

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the most.

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While people looking for product photographers
in Toronto are searching for “product photography

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Toronto.”

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So this step is vital to ensure you’re targeting
keywords that will provide you with the most

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exposure for your pages.

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So for our services page, we would do the
same thing as we did before with the title

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tag, meta description, and the content on the page.

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The last thing you should do is to include your
primary keyword phrase in the URL of the page.

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So for a product photography services page,
your final URL might look like this:

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If you’re a Wordpress user, you can just
click here and edit it using hyphens to separate

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spaces.

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So in this case, I would change it to product-photography-toronto.

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A really quick hack you can do is to look
at the top 10 rankings and see how they’ve

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optimized those pages to rank there.

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So if we look at the Google search results
for, “Toronto product photography,” you

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can see that some of the pages are keyword
stuffing in the title tags and that the meta

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descriptions are all kind of cheesy or they're truncated.

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Clicking through to this result, you can see
that it’s just a classifieds site, similar

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to Craigslist, so it’s clearly not optimized.

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Clicking through to this one, you can see
that they included their keyword phrase in

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the heading and title tags, but then there’s
pretty much no content on the rest of the page.

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And then clicking through to this one here,
this one seems to be over optimized for their

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keyword target.

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And if I do a ‘find’ for the word “photo”
you can see over 110 instances of it on this

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page, which again, will do more
harm than good in the long run.

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What you’re seeing here is an opportunity
to overtake these search results.

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Basically, Google has no choice but to choose
the best options from a bad pool of pages.

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Alright, so by this point, we’ve optimized
our main pages for our different services,

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and we've covered the basics of on-page SEO.

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And if you’ve done this for all of your
key pages, then I can assure you that you

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are miles ahead of a lot of your competitors.

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The next part and arguably most important
piece of ranking high on Google is off-page

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SEO.

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Off-page SEO often refers to link building.

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And link building is the process of getting
other websites to link to your web pages.

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Basically, links act as votes or other people
vouching for your website saying:

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“hey, these people are really good at what
they do and I trust them enough that I would

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send my visitors to their website.”

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It works in a similar way that you would refer
your friend to buy a product from whatever

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store because you’ve tried it, used it, and loved it.

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In general, the more quality backlinks you
can get from relevant pages, the higher you’ll

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rank in Google.

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Now I’m putting the emphasis here on the
word “quality,” because there are a lot

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of different types of links you can get from
like forums, directories, and editorial links

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to name a few.

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But if you think about it, a place like a
forum where virtually anyone can place a link

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will likely hold less value than a link from
someone else's blog.

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But to be clear, other types of links will
still hold some kind of value, but probably

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not as much as links like editorials would.

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So if you’re focusing on quality, then you’ll
probably want to prioritize editorial links.

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And the main way to get links from other people’s
blogs is through something that SEOs often

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refer to as “outreach.”

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And outreach is exactly the way it sounds.

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You’re contacting people and asking them for a link.

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But you can’t just email someone and be like, “yo!

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I need a link.

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Hook it up.”

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It doesn't work that way.

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There are a three things that you need in
order to make your outreach campaigns more

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successful.

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1. You need people who are actually
interested in the stuff that you do.

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2. You need a good reason to contact them.

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3. You need a pitch that somehow benefits them.

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Let’s go through a few examples, shall we?

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First we need to identify people who are interested
in what you are doing.

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The most commonsensical one in the context
of link building are websites that have already

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linked to your competitors.

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You can find these pages by going to Ahrefs'
Site Explorer and entering in a domain or URL.

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So I’ll enter in mangostudios.com, who also
does wedding photography in Toronto.

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I’ll also narrow our search down to pages
that are linking just to their home page.

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From here, I can click on the backlinks option
in the left column.

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And here, I’ll use this filter to narrow
down the backlinks to only links within content,

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since I mentioned that I want to get some
editorial links.

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On the left side, you can see the websites
that linked to the target URL or domain and

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on the right side, you can see which page
they linked to and the context of the backlink.

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Next, let’s click through to this one on
"Jaw-Dropping Gorgeous Wedding Flower Ideas."

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You can see that there are a bunch of pictures
of flowers.

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And hey!

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I actually have a great one that’s way better
than all of these.

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So let’s check that off on our checklist
for successful outreach.

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We now have a prospect.

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So I can contact the author, Nicole, and let
her know about one of my pictures that was

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published in some kind of wedding magazine,
because it’s that awesome.

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So this now fulfills checkbox #2.

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We have a good reason to contact her because
we have something relevant to her piece.

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And of course, I’d be giving her rights
to publish my photo, which also checks off

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#3.

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As a side note, it doesn’t mean that she’ll
publish my photo or give me a link.

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As a general rule of thumb, the better the
‘excuse’ you can come up with to contact

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the author, the better your chance will be
to get the link.

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Another good reason to contact someone is
to offer a guest post.

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Blog owners are always on the hunt for new
content and since your site is new, you’ll

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be getting in front of someone else’s audience
in exchange for some of your time and content

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where you could easily use some watermarked
photos that you’ve taken.

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With guest posts, your reason to contact them
is pretty reasonable and you’ll be providing

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value, which is free content (that should
be good), that benefits them and/or their

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website.

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The next outreach prospect you can find are
businesses in a lateral non-competing niche.

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So as a wedding photographer, you might want
to contact other local flower shops, reception

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halls and wedding planners.

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If you look at the “jaw dropping flowers”
article, you can see that there are two people

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mentioned in the article.

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There’s Mango Studios, which is the site
that we’re analyzing, as well as an event

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and design planning company.

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You can contact these people
to form meaningful relationships.

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Just think about it for a second.

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Your businesses go hand-in-hand and you can
pass on referrals to each other, you can link

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back to each other as a ‘preferred vendor’
or link to others’ content in guest

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posts where it's relevant.

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And this isn’t limited to just local businesses.

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This applies to everyone.

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So, find some solid partners who are on that
same journey as you in a lateral niche and

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help each other out.

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Now with link building, there are numerous
tactics and strategies, so if you want to

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expand your knowledge in this sphere, then
I highly recommend watching our series on

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link building where you’ll get a full scope
of how to do this effectively.

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Alright!

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We are on to the last SEO tip that I see a
lot of beginner’s avoiding.

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Now, if you have something to sell, setting
up your homepage and product/services pages

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is probably the first thing that you’ll do or
did and for good reason.

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These are the pages that will directly generate
leads and revenue for your business.

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But here’s the final tip: start blogging.

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Now, I’m not telling you to write about
how you changed your storefront sign from

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red to green.

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By blogging, I’m referring to providing
practical content that can and will help your

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prospective customers solve problems.

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In Dr. Jonah Berger’s book, Contagious:
"Why Things Catch On," he shares his research

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on why content gains popularity and even goes viral.

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Content that provides “practical value”
was one of the key factors to success.

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People don’t just share funny
cat videos or emotional stories.

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They share things that help others.

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And the same goes for gaining links.

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People are more likely to link to your content
if it’s helpful, actionable, and solves

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a problem.

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Look at what we do for the Ahrefs blog.

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We have numerous SEO tools, but we tackle
different big topics like keyword research

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and link building.

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And even if you don’t use our tools, you can gain
a ton of value through these monstrous posts.

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But you’ll see that we include shortcuts
or hacks where our tool can make doing SEO

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a whole lot easier.

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To further prove my point, if you look at
the “top pages” report inside Site Explorer,

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you’ll see that the pages that generate
the most search traffic for us, mostly come

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from our blog articles.

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Blogging lets you reach large audiences.

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For example, we saw that
Toronto wedding photographer

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had around 900 monthly searches in Canada.

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Let’s look up something like “wedding
venues Toronto” in Keywords Explorer.

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You can see that it has around 1,400 monthly
searches in Canada.

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If you’ve been in the wedding photography
business long enough, then you’ve probably

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done shoots at numerous venues.

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So you could create a post with
helpful and practical value.

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For example, I might create an article of
some of the best venues that I had taken photos

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at and display pieces from
my portfolio within the blog post.

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I would also detail pros and cons of each
place, pricing information, location details,

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items on their catering menu, or anything
else that would be genuinely helpful to a

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person visiting this page.

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And if you think about it, people usually
book the venue before the photographer.

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So there’s a solid chance that after people
see some of your stunning watermarked photos,

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they might look through your portfolio, and
contact you for a quote that can generate

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more customers for you.

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And if you think about it, they may have never
discovered you through a different means because

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they didn’t type in a keyword phrase like
“Toronto wedding photographer," or their

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friends didn't refer you to them.

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When you’re thinking of these ideas, put
yourself in the searcher’s shoes.

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What would they be looking for and what would
help them solve the query?

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Now, when you’re picking topics, try and
stick with ones that provide value to your business.

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So as a photographer, I would want to almost
always showcase my work because I would be

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judged by my portfolio.

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As a software company, we showcase how our
tools can help in people’s SEO process because

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people will buy our tools if they see how
it benefits them.

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00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:54,509
As a coffee roastery, you might show them
how to make the perfect cup of coffee or an

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article on how to roast beans.

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I cannot emphasize enough, how much a blog
can help you boost your SEO efforts.

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It’s a great way to get ahead of your competitors
who have been in the game for longer than

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you, but they've been targeting only these
‘obvious’ keywords.

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From here, you can just rinse and repeat the
keyword research process, the on-page optimization

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tips, and continually build links to your
content and articles and start climbing the

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Google search rankings.

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We have a ton of really helpful videos where
we expand on these topics, so I’ll leave

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00:19:23,669 --> 00:19:25,639
links to those in the description.

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00:19:25,639 --> 00:19:29,940
Make sure to subscribe for more actionable
SEO and marketing tutorials and if you have

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00:19:29,940 --> 00:19:34,880
any questions, feel free to leave a comment
and I would be happy to jump in and help out.

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Sam Photography, signing out.

Courtesy: Ahrefs.com