What is SEO? How does it work? What tools should I use? These questions are common among beginners who want to get started with SEO.
If you are looking for a complete guide to SEO, then you’ve come to the right place – we have put together a list of all the tools you need to be aware of, and the ways in which these can help to boost your SEO game.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimisation”. It refers to the practice of optimising websites so that they appear higher in the rankings of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This helps increase their visibility and traffic.
There are several ways to optimise your site. Some of them include link building, keyword research, social media marketing, and much more. In this article, we’ll go over some of the basics of SEO.
How does SEO work?
The process typically starts by identifying keywords that people type into search engines when looking for certain products or services. Once you know what keywords people are using, you can create content around those terms. You can generate videos, articles, infographics, podcasts, whatever you feel will attract people to your website.
The next step is to share that content on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. When people share your content, they will be sharing it on their own timelines. And if other users happen to click on those links, you may end up ranking high in search results.
Now, there’s a lot more to SEO than just creating great content and getting it shared online. There are many factors involved. One of the most important things to consider is how well optimised your site actually is.
This means checking your page speed, making sure you don’t have any errors on your site, and making sure your images load quickly. The last thing you will want is to lose potential customers because your site takes too long to load.
Another factor is whether or not your site has been indexed properly. Most major search engines now offer free webmaster tools where you can check to see if your site is being crawled correctly.
If you discover that your site isn’t being indexed, you can hire an SEO company to fix the issue.
But before you do that, make sure you read reviews about them. A good way to find out if someone is legit is to look at their portfolio – for example, MR SEO are an SEO agency based in Essex, with a strong reputation for helping businesses to monitor and manage their sites.
The top SEO tools
There are a number of top tools that you can use to boost and monitor your SEO, and these include:
- Google Keyword Planner
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO. They determine what people type into search engines to find your business. So, knowing what words people are typing into search engines is essential.
One of the best places to start is Google’s Keyword Planner tool. Here, you enter a few key phrases related to your industry and it shows you how popular each phrase is. From here, you can select the ones you think would be best for your site.
You can also use the tool to help generate new ideas for your site. Just add a few different phrases, and then compare the popularity of each phrase. Once you have selected your top keywords, you can use these in the rest of your SEO strategy.
- Semrush
Semrush is another tool that helps you identify which keywords to target. It does this by analysing your competitors’ backlinks and comparing them to yours. This allows you to see what keywords your competitors rank for, and you can learn from their mistakes.
It also gives you insight into what kind of traffic your competitors are receiving, so that you can decide whether or not you should try targeting similar keywords.
- MozBar
MozBar is a useful tool that lets you track all of your site’s performance over time. You can easily set goals for yourself, and keep track of how close you are to reaching them.
You can also create custom reports, and even export data into Excel. MozBar is available for both desktop and mobile browsers.
- Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that provides detailed information about every aspect of your website. For example, you can view your backlink profile, analyse your competitor’s backlinks, and even see who links to your site.
This makes Ahrefs great for identifying areas where you need to improve. If you notice that your competitors have more backlinks than you, you will know that you need to work harder.
- BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a social media analytics tool that will show you exactly how many times your posts were shared across various platforms. This means you can quickly identify which types of content perform well, and which don’t.
If you want to get more shares, BuzzSumo can help. The tool will tell you what kinds of tweets, Facebook posts, images, and videos performed best, and you can replicate those strategies.
- Search Console
Search Console is Google’s free tool for monitoring and reporting on your site’s SEO performance. You can use it to check how often your pages are crawled, as well as how long they take to load, and you can also report any errors that occur when Googlebot crawls your site, such as 404 Not Found errors.
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an excellent way to monitor the success of your marketing efforts, and has a sterling reputation within the SEO industry – this is a tool that has been around for many years.
You can use the tool to see how many visitors come to your site, and how much time they spend there. You can also find out how many people click through from one page to the next, and if they stay on your site for longer periods of time.
The main benefit of using Google Analytics is that it works with most other tools, so you can combine the results of several different metrics into one dashboard.
Final thoughts
Mastering SEO is an important step in ensuring that your business is seen by the right people, and learning the skills for this should be a key priority for any business owner.
Fortunately, you do not have to do everything yourself – the top tools outlined above will help to smooth the road and make the process easier, allowing you to boost SEO and monitor results with minimal stress and effort.
