When you type a question on a search engine like Google, several search results are displayed on your screen in seconds. The most noticeable factor is that the words that appear in your search results are an exact match or have similarities to the word/phrase you typed in the search bar. You will also notice Google suggesting other searches related to your main search, carrying similar word components.

The search results that appear on your screen are collections of files that search engine crawlers index; they are not live results. For a search engine like Google, spiders-bots are the smart messengers that crawl into pages on the internet to find data. These spiders crawl and index each pages’ code. Google’s index is a collection of pages with different data, arranged according to specific keywords or phrases. Therefore, when you type a particular keyword or phrase, Google retrieves answers from its indexed pages with data that should answer your query.

Your goal is to ensure Google indexes your pages and ranks them high on the search results page as a website owner. There are many factors and algorithms that Google uses to rank pages. One of them is excellent SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the heart of website marketing, and it will generate a significant number of organic traffic to your website. With a solid SEO foundation, you can enjoy the results that sustainable traffic to your website will bring.

As much as Search Engine Optimization is the mother of online website marketing, not every person is an expert in the field. The good news is you can become an SEO specialist and catapult your website to higher ranks by learning a few strategies. SEO strategy is arranging a website’s content around and by topic to make it easily understandable by search engine web crawlers. To become an SEO expert, here are tips you can learn to improve your expertise.

The Basics of SEO

To understand how Google decides which pages to index and rank, you should understand the ranking factors that make up for good SEO. 

• Relevance: Your website titles and descriptions should match the intent of a visitor’s search.
• Authority: This is how much Google trusts your page and its content. We will discuss how linking builds authority. But basically, the more quality backlinks you have, the higher you are likely to rank as an authoritative source.
• Quality: This is your site’s reputation and how well users interact with it. Your content and site structures play a significant role in quality analysis.

Once you have the basic set, you can now understand and build SEO for your website. The bone and structure of SEO are divided into four main pillars, namely:

1. Technical SEO
2. Content
3. On-Page SEO
4. Off-Page SEO

Technical SEO

When learning to become an SEO expert, technical SEO may seem a little daunting because of the coding terms. But in simple terms, technical SEO is making your website pages accessible to web crawlers so that they can easily read and explore your content. It also involves optimizing your website for positive user experience. 

Content Management Systems software is beneficial in this stage, especially for a learner. Since a large part of technical SEO involves your website’s design and development, these CMS software can guide you on optimizing your Html codes, using canonical tags to avoid duplicate content, removing broken links, and optimizing robots.txt for efficient crawling. It should also be clear which pages you want the search engines to index and those not to index. At this stage, if you are not sure about which codes to use, seeking the knowledge and guidance of an SEO consultant will help you maneuver such complexities and become an SEO guru. Here is an example of a robots.txt file:

(Image Credit: Ahrefs)

Your page speed and structure are also SEO building strategies that fall under technical SEO. These directly impact how users and search engines interact with your page. Google will most likely not index a page with slow speeds because this is a negative user experience. And even if it is indexed and appears in search results, users will barely interact with your website, which pushes your site to lower ranks.

Research shows that 40% of visitors will abandon websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load, and they may never return to that website. Optimizing your website’s loading speeds is part of improving user experience and placing yourself in the direct google view to get higher ranks. Check your website’s themes, plugins, and files to see if any of them might be causing slower speeds. Certain CMS software and third-party plugins may reduce loading speeds; thus, you may want to consider using fewer plugins and software that do not run down your website.

Remove broken links as these are a red flag for search engines. You do not want your users to keep getting 404 errors whenever they are navigating your pages. Search engine optimizations dictate that your links should be viable and whenever you delete or move contact, create a redirect link. 

Generally, technical SEO is quite simple for smaller businesses that use WordPress with a few pages. However, for a website with many pages, technical SEO is complex, as in the name. In this case, your SEO skills will need additional resources to have a flawlessly working site.

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On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is one of the most critical factors in Search Engine Optimizations. Among the tips to become a specialist, On-Page SEO is crucial because this is where you add flesh, beauty, and intuitiveness to your website. Suppose we could look at a website as a house, On-Page SEO is all the additional interior designs, furniture, and portrait arrangements, and centralization of family rooms to create a consistent flow of elements in the home.

Several elements make up On-Page SEO, and when you master them, the process of how to be a SEO consultant becomes much more manageable. These elements include the following;

• Keyword research and optimization
• Meta descriptions
• URL optimization
• Title Optimization
• Image Optimization
• Internal Linking
• Content Optimization
• Website Structure and layout
• LSI keywords

As you continue to learn how to be a SEO guru, you will meet many more elements as you dive into the exciting SEO skill pool. But the above are essentials you should know how to make use of for On-page SEO.

Keyword research and optimization is the first thing you need to do, even when creating a website. To be an SEO expert, you must set out to do keyword research; a single keyword can break or build your business. Therefore proper research is crucial. Once you have identified a niche where your website specializes, write down keywords that accurately describe your website or business and what you are all about in one sentence.

Afterward, you can set out to discover what other websites in your niche use them and how these keywords perform. SEMRUSH is handy at this point as it gives you real-time statistics of how specific keywords are performing. Choose long-tail keywords with high volume but low competition. Discover the trends of these keywords not just within your region but in the other areas too. For example:

(Image Credit: SEMRush)

Once you have settled on a keyword, it’s time to incorporate it into your titles, meta descriptions, alt tags, URLs, and content. While ensuring your URLs are short and descriptive, incorporate your target keywords or phrases in the description so that when search engines scan your URLs, your content is recognizable from the description. The same applies to meta description and image alt tags.

Optimize your keywords throughout your content and pages so that users do not just land on a single page on your site but can peruse through multiple pages while spending more time on your website. Internal linking comes in handy when you can anchor a link within certain texts to redirect users to other pages in your site with more information about their area of interest. Also, arrange your website structure so that user navigation is easy, intuitive, and enjoyable.

The use of heading tags, categories, and subcategories can make site perusal easy and engaging. The more time visitors spend on your site, the easier it is for Google to trust that your website has quality information. Also, header tags make everything look more appealing and easier to read.

Content Creation

Now, of course, your website’s body is the content, and every SEO strategy you optimize is to direct visitors to your content. Your content tells your audience what you are all about and why they should keep visiting your website. Therefore, a veteran SEO consultant would tell you that in learning how to become an SEO expert, you need to excel in content creation.

Ask yourself who your target audience is and what information is of interest to them. Research about your industry and ensure you always have the correct information. If your website is that of a service provider, creating content that includes marketing information, testimonials, case studies, and portfolios is excellent in telling your potential customers who you are and what they can get from subscribing to your services.

Incorporate other types of content like audios, images, and videos. A proven fact to note is that more people tend to click on videos and visual retention is higher compared to readable text. Take note to use audio-visual elements that load faster, are downloadable and shareable. You should also include your target keywords in the descriptive titles of the videos and images.

Off-Page Optimization

If you aspire to become an SEO specialist, On-Page Search Engine Optimization is not enough. You need to know Off-Page SEO, a key online marketing strategy for websites. This SEO strategy means promoting your website and building its authority online. As we initially noted, building authority stems from link building and nurturing online relationships with reputable websites.

Again, Off-page optimization involves several factors that you need to attain to be an expert in this field. Some of these include:

• Link building techniques
• Anchor Text Optimization
• Link Management
• Content Marketing and Promotion
• Citations

Link Building is a lengthy process, but the fruits are steady traffic to your website when done with proper planning. It is also important to note that links can be hard to get and harder to decipher correctly. Google is keen on detecting illegal link building techniques, and that is why, to avoid breaking your site entirely, have a plan. 

First, you need to create something worthy of being linked to on other pages. Then, link internally to this content with your target keywords. Once that is set, you can then proceed to promote this content on other sites.

The process of promoting your content to other sites and getting links to your site is called backlinking. It can be a technical process when you are just starting, but that is the thing with marketing. Some common link building strategies include fixing broken links, guest blogging, participation in online forums, and reciprocal linking. Here is an example of a guest blog:

(Image Credit: Ahrefs)

Before you fix a broken link in someone else’s website, first reach out to them and inform them of the situation. Then you can politely ask if you can fix the broken link by replacing it with one of your viable links. You can also do reciprocal linking with websites relevant to your industry, but this should not be a ‘buy links’ type of exchange. Reciprocal linking should be based on appreciating one another’s work and connecting to provide your clients with all the information they could want. 

Another simple way to link building is commenting on online forums such as Quora and Reddit and linking your website whenever applicable. But for this, your content creation and data should be top-quality even to get upvotes. Besides, take care as such forums quickly notice link spamming, and this can damage your reputation.

The same rule applies when commenting on blog posts; do not spam the comment section with your website’s links. Consider the topic of discussion and how relevant it is to your website. If you have resources available on your site that could add to this, comment politely and add to the thread. Afterward, you can ask users to click on your link for more information on the topic.

Link Management

Link management is something you should know as you go about link building. Keeping tracks of both your internal and external links will ensure you avoid 404 errors and duplicates. Since you do not control the content from external links, as they may delete or move their content, having a link management system enables you to fix these gaps as they come up to ensure your audience does not get frustrated. For example, here is an example of the UTM link management tool:

(Image Credit: utmbase)

Citations

Citations on and off-page are great resources for links and website promotional tactics. Putting your website in Local Business citations is a cheap and easy way to get links to your websites and promote local SEO. Ensure your descriptions are clear, capture your keywords, and include correct contact information if there is any.

We hope that you found this article useful.

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Start a blog

Blogging can help build your content creation and push you to research more on your industry niche. A blog that you can connect to your website enables you to consistently create and post content, refresh old posts and review your audience’s new interests. When you consider guest blogging to market your website and promote off-page SEO, it is much easier to have a reputable blog. Other bloggers relevant in your fields can also guest post on your blog, link back to their website, and equally create a link back to your site, pointing out the article they have written.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

In the past decade, mobile usage was not such a significant determining factor in search engine optimization. In these times, getting your website to function efficiently on mobile devices is essential. As you may know, over 60% of Google searches originate from mobile devices.

Optimize your website for mobile devices such that speed, image download, and video streaming are as efficient as those in desktop computers. Some plugins can help you optimize your site for mobile devices if you have not done so yet. There are tools to test if your website is mobile friendly. For instance, here is a test done by Google Search Console:

(Image Credit: Search Engine Land)

Create Infographics

Infographics pack up SEO and can generate hundreds of natural backlinks for you. When creating one, consider content and design for an appealing and performing infographics. Besides, create longer content of not less than 2000 words as that will increase your high-ranking chances. Incorporating visuals in your infographics gives your audience an aesthetic appeal, and they can digest the information better. Take a look at this infographic showing examples of infographics:

(Image Credit: SPINX Digital)

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is essential to understand SEO is a lengthy and time-consuming process. Therefore, in your journey of learning how to become an SEO expert, know that it is continuous. You will need patience and commitment to grasp all the key aspects of search engine optimization. You can set daily, weekly or monthly goals for your SEO learning process and track your progress. Diib Digital can help you stay on track to meeting (and even exceeding) your goals and help you understand how to apply SEO analysis. Here are some of the features of our Dashboard we’re sure you’ll love:

• Customized Objectives give you simple tasks designed to optimize your website
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• Keyword, backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
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