SEO Guide for Beginners
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 5:14 am
Would you like to learn about SEO but just hearing some terms makes you want to run away? In this post I will tell you in 7 simple steps everything you need to know to start positioning your website on Google.
Many people ask me: I've heard that SEO is a good thing, but why? My answer is increasingly "simple": when you are good at it, your website will be on the first page of Google. Then they answer: Ah! That's cool! I want it!
When I first started learning about SEO, I was pretty lost with terms like “crawlers”, “backlinks”, “anchor text”, “no follow”, “do follow”... Do you feel the same way? Then you are in the right place.
First we will start with the most basic…
What is a search engine?
What a search engine does is collect information and content from everything on the Internet to store it in a database.
NetMarketShare tells us in its November 2018 report that 73% of searches are done through Google, followed by Bing with 7.91%. Quite a difference, isn't it? So, what is the difference between one search engine and another?
The size of your database
How they determine which pages are relevant
Your specialization in the market and the type of content.
Well, now that we know that Google is king and it is he who must be pleased, let's get to work!
How does Google work?
Crawling (crawling of web pages)
Imagine you have to explore an unknown country. You would start in one small town, take a road to the second, then to the next, and so on. If you drove along all the roads that connect one town to another, you would end up discovering all of them.
This is how Google works, except that cities are web pages and the roads that connect them are the backlinks.
Google starts with a website, finds the links on it, and follows them to discover more pages.
How does Google do this?
It uses programs called “crawlers” that scan the entire web universe. In SEO we want to do everything possible to make the job easier for these “spiders.”
Indexing
Once Google has found the pages, the spiders extract the information they contain and store it (or index it) in the Google database to then display it in the search results. It collects information such as: title and meta description of the page, main keywords, links, etc.
With SEO, we aim to ensure that the information that Google indexes after dental email database lists crawling is as accurate as possible, as this increases the chances of positioning us where we want within searches.
Too much information? Don't worry! After reading these 7 simple steps, it will be even clearer.
1. UNDERSTAND WHAT KEYWORDS PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING FOR
People search for your brand or business in very different ways.
For example, let’s say you’re a hairdresser in Madrid. People might search for “hairdresser in Madrid,” “Madrid hairdressers,” or even “hairdressers near me,” so it’s really important to find the most popular ways people would search for you.
The drawback of Google Trends is that it doesn't show the volume of results for each of the searches, but it does tell us that the winning search term is "Madrid hairdressers" so with this information we can create content on our website around these words or we could also adapt the content we already have. If we want to obtain more information about the keywords, such as the search volume for each of them, Ahrefs is one of the best options.
Important : Keywords should always be chosen on a page-by-page basis. For example, if you sell different products or services you should search for different keywords based on that because Google ranks pages, not websites!
Remember also that in general it is not good to use very generic keywords such as “hairdressers” as there will be a lot of competition that will be practically impossible to overcome.
Which brings us to…
2. CREATE CONTENT THAT SEARCH ENGINES WANT TO SEE
Do you want to rank for a specific topic or keyword? Then you will need to optimize your content according to the “search intent” of users.
The beauty of this is that we no longer have to guess search intent since Google’s algorithm works to serve the most relevant content for each search. You just need to look at the results that rank higher to find out what people are searching for.
Let's get back to the subject of hairdressers.
Obviously I can't guess what people want to know about this topic: do they want to know more about hairdressing techniques? Do they want to find a good establishment? To do this we can use the MOZ tool , where we can find a tab that will help us with our keywords. One of the options it offers us is to see the first results on Google.
As we can see, all the results are posts on different blogs. The internet search is clear: you need to write a post if you want to rank for your keyword “short hair”
Let's use the (very) generic word "hairdressers" as an example.
As we can see, there are all kinds of results. Some are hair salon websites, others are posts from different blogs, and even a Wikipedia entry is shown. The search intent is not at all clear in this case, as there are many and very diverse options.
Remember what I mentioned above. Using very generic words means that the less you refine your keyword, the less clear the search intent is.
Moral: Spend time analyzing what people are searching for on the Internet and make sure you show them what they want to see.
Many people ask me: I've heard that SEO is a good thing, but why? My answer is increasingly "simple": when you are good at it, your website will be on the first page of Google. Then they answer: Ah! That's cool! I want it!
When I first started learning about SEO, I was pretty lost with terms like “crawlers”, “backlinks”, “anchor text”, “no follow”, “do follow”... Do you feel the same way? Then you are in the right place.
First we will start with the most basic…
What is a search engine?
What a search engine does is collect information and content from everything on the Internet to store it in a database.
NetMarketShare tells us in its November 2018 report that 73% of searches are done through Google, followed by Bing with 7.91%. Quite a difference, isn't it? So, what is the difference between one search engine and another?
The size of your database
How they determine which pages are relevant
Your specialization in the market and the type of content.
Well, now that we know that Google is king and it is he who must be pleased, let's get to work!
How does Google work?
Crawling (crawling of web pages)
Imagine you have to explore an unknown country. You would start in one small town, take a road to the second, then to the next, and so on. If you drove along all the roads that connect one town to another, you would end up discovering all of them.
This is how Google works, except that cities are web pages and the roads that connect them are the backlinks.
Google starts with a website, finds the links on it, and follows them to discover more pages.
How does Google do this?
It uses programs called “crawlers” that scan the entire web universe. In SEO we want to do everything possible to make the job easier for these “spiders.”
Indexing
Once Google has found the pages, the spiders extract the information they contain and store it (or index it) in the Google database to then display it in the search results. It collects information such as: title and meta description of the page, main keywords, links, etc.
With SEO, we aim to ensure that the information that Google indexes after dental email database lists crawling is as accurate as possible, as this increases the chances of positioning us where we want within searches.
Too much information? Don't worry! After reading these 7 simple steps, it will be even clearer.
1. UNDERSTAND WHAT KEYWORDS PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING FOR
People search for your brand or business in very different ways.
For example, let’s say you’re a hairdresser in Madrid. People might search for “hairdresser in Madrid,” “Madrid hairdressers,” or even “hairdressers near me,” so it’s really important to find the most popular ways people would search for you.
The drawback of Google Trends is that it doesn't show the volume of results for each of the searches, but it does tell us that the winning search term is "Madrid hairdressers" so with this information we can create content on our website around these words or we could also adapt the content we already have. If we want to obtain more information about the keywords, such as the search volume for each of them, Ahrefs is one of the best options.
Important : Keywords should always be chosen on a page-by-page basis. For example, if you sell different products or services you should search for different keywords based on that because Google ranks pages, not websites!
Remember also that in general it is not good to use very generic keywords such as “hairdressers” as there will be a lot of competition that will be practically impossible to overcome.
Which brings us to…
2. CREATE CONTENT THAT SEARCH ENGINES WANT TO SEE
Do you want to rank for a specific topic or keyword? Then you will need to optimize your content according to the “search intent” of users.
The beauty of this is that we no longer have to guess search intent since Google’s algorithm works to serve the most relevant content for each search. You just need to look at the results that rank higher to find out what people are searching for.
Let's get back to the subject of hairdressers.
Obviously I can't guess what people want to know about this topic: do they want to know more about hairdressing techniques? Do they want to find a good establishment? To do this we can use the MOZ tool , where we can find a tab that will help us with our keywords. One of the options it offers us is to see the first results on Google.
As we can see, all the results are posts on different blogs. The internet search is clear: you need to write a post if you want to rank for your keyword “short hair”
Let's use the (very) generic word "hairdressers" as an example.
As we can see, there are all kinds of results. Some are hair salon websites, others are posts from different blogs, and even a Wikipedia entry is shown. The search intent is not at all clear in this case, as there are many and very diverse options.
Remember what I mentioned above. Using very generic words means that the less you refine your keyword, the less clear the search intent is.
Moral: Spend time analyzing what people are searching for on the Internet and make sure you show them what they want to see.