SEO for Beginners: The 2024 Guide

Do you want to get started in the SEO field? Learn about SEO for beginners in this guide.

Did you know that 80% of SEO is extremely easy.

The remaining 20% ​​are where things get difficult, such as technical SEO, competitor research, backlink analysis, site audits, etc….

Have you ever heard of the Pareto 80/20 rule?

She says 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. If you focus on the right SEO basics, you can get a head start.

If you want constant traffic growth? This tutorial on SEO for beginners is for you!

The reason we decided to write this in-depth tutorial for beginners is to help guide YOU in the right direction and get the best results from search engines like Google.

Contents :

What is SEO and how does it work?

Before diving into the SEO tutorial for 2024, it is good to know what this SEO is all about and how it can increase your website traffic and sales.

Have you ever wondered how search engines decide to display the first, second, third, etc. in their search results?

There are hundreds of websites vying for the top spot in search results. But only sites that follow SEO rules win the race. SEO is a set of rules to follow if you want to optimize your website for search engines and improve your search engine rankings.

Google currently processes over 63 search requests per second, which translates to 000 billion searches per day and around 5,6 trillion searches per year worldwide. according to HubSpot statistics.

Imagine what this number means and how it can change your business if you manage to get your small share of traffic from the billions of monthly searches. Traffic from search engines is the most valuable traffic source for any website and can lead to more conversions. SEO is very important for your online success.

Here are the two terms you need to understand in the SEO world:

On-page SEO
Off-page SEO

I have divided this tutorial for beginners into 2 simple parts so you may find it easy to digest and implement. Are you ready ? Let's get into the details without further ado.

PART I – Learn SEO basics

On-page SEO

If you are new to SEO, you should understand the importance of on-page optimization.

How you optimize your content can have a huge impact on its ability to rank in search engines like Google.

Whether it's on-page optimization or off-page optimization, the goal is to optimize individual web pages so that they rank higher and drive more traffic in search engines. On-page SEO takes care of optimizing the content and HTML source code of a page, the user-friendliness of your site.

In other words, it's everything you can do on your website, like page titles, internal links, meta tags and descriptions, etc. On-page SEO is made up of all the elements of SEO that you can best control.

Here are the three main things you need to worry about if you're serious about doing online business.

Create a solid content strategy

Content is king. Why should people visit your site? If your site has information they are looking for, then yes, they visit it. A user feels happy when he finds the result that best suits his needs. So you need to write great content.

Google decides whether to rank your site higher or not based on your content. Google always wants to give the best to its users, so provide that best through your content.

Here are the factors that make for good content:

• Brainstorm for a while, then come up with a compelling headline before writing your content.
• Make writing a daily habit and you will reach the top very quickly.
• Once you start writing, be sure to include all useful statistics and information in your content.
• Without keyword research, even great content fails. Include your targeted keyword in your article title and throughout. Choose your keyword before you start writing.
• Keyword stuffing won't work anymore, so carefully use your keywords in a meaningful way.
• Google loves fresh content, which means posting new content or updating your old posts.
• If you write a clear answer, Google will recognize it as an answer to a particular question.

Quick note : If you want to get the most out of on-page SEO, you need to do some keyword research first. Find a main keyword for every blog post you write. You can then use this main keyword in page titles, meta descriptions, alt tags, etc. to quickly increase traffic to your website.

Place your main keyword in the page title

The headline is what attracts readers. Whether or not your article is read depends entirely on the title of your blog post. For Google, the title is very important. Experts say you can include a maximum of 50-60 characters in the title.

You must use the main keyword in the page title. When someone searches with that keyword, the search engine highlights it and displays it in search results.

Place your keywords in the meta description

After including the main keyword in the page title, it is important to also include this main keyword in the meta description section.

How is this useful? The main objective is to generate massive traffic from the Google search engine. However, the search engine does not use this meta description factor in its algorithm but it uses the CTR (click-through rate) to determine if the link of your article is good to show or not.

So you need to include your main keyword in the meta description.

Keep this in mind when writing the meta description:

• Use calls to action somewhere in the meta description like “Learn more”, “Seize the offer”, etc… in order to entice readers to click on the link.
• Always write unique content in the meta description, around 135-160 characters. Never write more than that.
• Never insert keywords that are irrelevant. Users think it's spamming and immediately hit the back button.

Don't Ignore Metatags

In every blog post, it is mandatory to write meta keywords. In the meta keyword and meta description sections, use only targeted keywords. In the meta tags section, use all possible relevant keywords for that particular blog post and also indicate the type of keywords that users can search for.

Search engines get information about your blog site through meta tags and thus index your site. Meta tags also describe what your blog post is about.

Optimize your URLs

Keep your URLs short and simple. If possible, try to include your main keyword in it. Use clear, user-friendly URLs for all your blog posts. These are displayed in the address of the web browser.

Suppose you have written a confusing URL for your blog post and there is another blog that writes similar content but has a simple and clear URL, search engines will consider simple URLs.

Optimize your URL for search engines.

How to proceed ?

• If possible, include a keyword in the URL, but don't use it unnecessarily. The URL must make sense.
• Make it as short as possible. It is said that 50 to 60 characters are enough. If it exceeds 100 characters, you should probably rewrite it.
• It would be good if your page title and URL match, but when doing so, don't write imprecise URLs.
• For example, the title of your article is “7 Best Yoga Exercises for Women”, then you can optimize the URL as follows: yourblogname.com/yoga-exercises-women.

Use H2 and H3 tags as subtitles (including your keywords)

Title tags, whose very name indicates that they will be used to write titles. Obviously you should use title 1 for the blog post title.

To write the subtitles of the article, use the h2 and h3 tags. For the subtitle, use the h2 tag and for the sub-subtitle, use the h3 tag. For what ?

To give readers clear information about what the article is about and how it will be useful to them. If they find it useful, they will read the whole article and share it on social media. It is therefore very important to write interesting subtitles. It also helps Google find the main topics very easily and makes the article more user-friendly.

Just read the subtitles for users to see more clearly. If possible, include keywords in the subtitles, but don't overdo it or they might lose their meaning.

Image Alt Tags Are Important

A picture speaks louder than thousands of words. In your blog post, use images related to your article.

Including images helps get massive shares on Pinterest and Twitter. To improve the accessibility of your blog site, you should write alt text for the image you upload.

The alt text describes the subject of the image.

How is this useful?

• If Google does not display the image, the alt tag will at least be displayed. Indeed, search engines find it very difficult to read an image. So the search engine can understand if you write alt text for the image.
• It also helps the visually impaired who use screen readers. Using alt text for the image is therefore good practice. Always be unique when writing alt text for an image.
• Use keywords in the image's alt text if possible, as this increases the chances of the image appearing in search results.

If you are using WordPress, it is very easy to fill in the alt text of an image because it shows an alt text dialog when you upload an image.

Use your main keyword in the introduction of your article

Your blog post introduction should be very interesting to read. Don't add too much information. Use statistics related to your blog post in the introduction. Use your main keyword at least once in the introduction.

Internal links are very important

Internal links are nothing but links that point to one of the following

Why Create Internal Links?

• Your old articles find new life when you add a link to your new article. Only include relevant links. If you think any previous blog post will be useful to the reader while reading the current post, include only the link.
• This improves their search engine rankings by increasing their Page Authority (PA).

You can only build internal links if you have a lot of content. Create quality content. Write many articles on your blog.

Quick note : Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, I have a simple tip for you in this SEO tutorial for beginners: start using the plugin Rank Math SEO. It's free and you can do all the above things (on-page optimization) easily, even if you're not an SEO master.

Provide excellent user experience through site architecture

A good website architecture provides an excellent user experience when browsing your page. There are a number of things you need to optimize in order to get a good search engine experience.

• Make your website easy to explore : Ease of crawling is the ability of search engine robots to crawl and index the pages of a website. If your site's links are formatted in a way that is not search engine friendly, your site's crawlability will be considered extremely low.
• Myths around duplicate content : Republishing your content on other websites or republishing your guest posts on your own site does not hurt your SEO. The best way to fight duplicate content is to set up a 301 redirect from the duplicate page to the original content page.
• Make your site mobile-friendly : More than 500 million Facebook users only use Facebook daily only from their mobile phone. You can check your site's mobile compatibility using the Google tool.
• Page speed : Time is everything and long load times can absolutely kill your conversions. Use pagespeed insights to verify it.
• Change the structure of permalinks : Edit the permalink structure of your WordPress site. Go to Settings, click Permalinks and select Post Name. Include your targeted keywords in your blog post URLs instead of dates or random things.

Off Page SEO

In the previous step, we just learned the basics of On-page SEO. Now, let's dive into Off-page SEO.

In general, most people think that off-page SEO is all about links. No, it's not just links, it's even more. Off-page is all about building and increasing your site's authority through links, social shares, user engagement, and more.

Here's what to know about off-page optimization to take your website's organic traffic, ranking, and authority to the next level.

What is Off-page SEO?

Although there is no precise definition, I can say that it is an act of optimizing your brand presence online and offline using content, relationships and links. In other words, these are the techniques that can be used to improve the position of a website in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Benefits of off-page optimization:

• Increase in website ranking: The website will rank higher in the SERPs, which also means more traffic.
• Increases PageRank: Google measures the importance of a website through Pagerank, which is a number between 0 and 10.
• Your website is better exposed: when your website ranks well, it automatically gets better exposure, receives more links, more visits and more social media mentions.

Here are the four main points you need to take care of if you really want to increase traffic to your website.

Building Trust: Learning to Build Trust

To rank pages in the top 10 search results, Google takes PageRank into account. Trustrank is a way for Google to determine whether your site is legitimate or not.

Here are the four ways to build trust:

• Improve authority : The overall authority of your site is determined by two types of authority. One is domain authority, which relates to the reputation of your domain name, and the other is page authority, which relates to the authority of the content of a single page.
• Rebound rate : This is the measure of the number of people who view only one page of your site before immediately leaving it. Content, load times, ease of use, and attracting the right readers are all things that reduce bounce rate.
• The age of the domain is important : If your site isn't up and running yet, find an expired domain at an affordable price and start using it.
• Highlight your personal identity : Having a brand or personal identity online is an important trust signal for search engines. However, it takes time to build it.

Link Building: The Most Effective Off-Page SEO Method

Links are very important to Google. In fact, it's nearly impossible for Google to determine the value of your webpage, no matter how useful, fresh, or deep its content.

This is the most popular and effective off-page SEO method. If you want to bypass your competitors and rank higher, you need to build external links to your website. Don't wait for people to link to you, take the initiative to ask for them.

Be sure to follow these three factors when acquiring backlinks:

• Quality is essential: the quality of your links matters much more than their number. Reach out to the right sources and offer value in exchange for a solid link.
• Anchor text: Anchor text is the text used when other sites link to you.
• Number of Links: Build high quality backlinks at scale.

Socialize: Be more active on social media to rank higher

When Google recognizes your participation in social networks, it's more likely to show you results from those brands, or even personal contacts you have. Being active on social media helps you rank better.

Here are the two main influencers on social media:

• Google cares about the people who share their content : If an influencer in your niche shares your content, this sharing has more value in the eyes of Google. How do you get them to share your content? Before you even post, include them by quoting or interviewing them. You can find a similar post using tools like Buzzsumo and find the influencers who shared it. Then let them know that you've published a new article on the same topic.
• Number of shares : If your content goes viral, it automatically gets more shares. Be sure to post quality content that is up to date.

Participate in forums and related forums

If you want to get noticed by your target audience and influencers, visit the most popular blogs in your niche and leave thoughtful comments. Engage more on Quora and Reddit related to questions and topics in your niche.

Relationships forged on these platforms can prove to be very fruitful and very valuable for off-page SEO.

If someone notices your comments on one of these platforms and starts following you on Google or LinkedIn to learn more about you or your brand, it will eventually lead them to your website, which will lead them to sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your blog.

Both On-page SEO and Off-page SEO are very important for the success of an online business. If you do online business, you need to understand the importance of these two processes in order to get organic traffic from search engines.

They are what allow your websites to be found by search engines when someone searches for particular keywords related to your site.

Write answers on Quora (link to your content)

You can drive a lot of traffic to your blog by writing answers on Quora.

What is Quora? This is a Q&A website that provides quality answers to any question. It has over 4,6 million registered users.

Imagine, if you could write really good answers on Quora related to your blog's niche, how much traffic you could generate from Quora alone.

What can you do on Quora?

• Define your bio and interests.
• Use your blog link in your profile bio. Never give confusing information, because if one of your answers goes viral, the majority of people will read your bio. You must therefore bring these visitors to your blog.
• Only subscribe to topics you want to appear in your feed.
• Select topics based on your blog's niche.
• Write useful answers to the most discussed and consulted questions.
• Add your blog post link in the answer if it helps.
• If you don't have such an article on your blog, add your blog link at the end of the answer.
• You can ask a question and answer it yourself.

What not to do on Quora?

• On behalf of the promotion, do not give links in the answer like "Read more answer on my blog", "check out my blog". In this case, your answer will be downgraded.
• Never send spam. There are many successful entrepreneurs. So be careful when writing.

Attract high quality backlinks

If you want to gain authority and rank higher in search engines, one of the most important things to do is get relevant, high-quality backlinks to your site.

Besides content, links are the number one ranking factor. Yes, Google cares more about links. But wait, not all links are created equal, you have to be very careful when starting a link building campaign. Make sure the links you build are natural so that Google doesn't penalize your site.

The importance of backlinks

If you are a beginner blogger, you are probably wondering how to get links from authority sites. To become a successful blogger, you need to get authority links to your blog.

Link building is a powerful strategy for improving your article's search engine rankings. If you want your blog post to appear on the first page of search engine results, you need to take building links from authority sites very seriously.

What is an authority site?

It is a site that has a lot of influence in the digital world and is trusted by many users. These are the sites that are ranked at the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). These are the sites that provide useful and high quality content.

What are the benefits for your blog if you can get links from authority sites?

• More organic search traffic to your blog.
• More social shares for your blog posts.
• Increase the domain authority (DA) of your blog site.

The question now is how to get links from authority sites.

Do guest posts

Make a list of influential bloggers in your niche. Come up with a topic idea and start emailing them.

How to find sites to write guest articles?

• Type “your blog niche” + “write for us” into Google. For example, "health blog" + "write for us" shows all results that allow guest posts.
• You can also use the terms “your blog niche” + “guest post”.

Fill content gaps

Not all bloggers cover every topic completely. Even a great blogger forgets some details when writing his article. For example, in an article, if he mentions to find his competitors and start building links, he may forget to mention where the company's website is. But he can forget to specify where to find them.

This is incomplete information. When you find such blog posts with content gaps, contact the blog owners and let them know. You offer them to fill in the gaps in the content. So you can get a link to your blog.

Remember that you should only find such blog posts on authority sites and related to your blog's niche.

Spy on your competitors

There is nothing wrong with spying on your competitors. Observe where they get backlinks and follow them. How to check?

• You can use Semrush and type in your niche keyword, it will show all your competitors URLs.
• You can also use free tools such as open link profiler and submit each of your competitors URLs to observe their backlinks. Once you analyze their backlink sources, you can easily find various opportunities to attract those backlinks to your sites.

Check for broken links and contact the site owner

By checking for broken or dead links on authority sites, you can get a link. How to check the broken links of your competitors in order to profit from them?

• Type the keywords that interest you into Google and select a URL.
• Then go to the website of broken link checker, submit the URL and check for broken links. If one of the links displayed refers to the 404 error page, you have found it.
• Email the blog owner and suggest that they replace that dead link with your post link. Make sure you have an article related to this content in your blog.

Update old articles

It is recommended to update old articles from time to time in order to keep the site up to date. But that's impossible for bloggers who have hundreds of articles on their site.

If you can help them update their old posts, you'll get a backlink as a reward. So find the outdated content in the authority sites of your blogging niche and contact them to tell them that you will update them for free. Lots of people (even me) enjoy receiving detailed and informative contributions from other people and I don't mind giving a link back as a reward.

Ask the best bloggers

Interviewing influential bloggers in your industry is the fastest way to increase your online visibility, social shares, links, and traffic.

To increase your credibility in the digital world, to drive traffic to your blog, to build relationships with other bloggers, to attract readers to your blog, interview influential bloggers in your niche.

When you contact them for an interview, don't ask them too many questions. The best bloggers are usually very busy, so ask them few questions, but important questions that will help your readers. Here are two other effective methods.

• Building broken links : Find broken links on a website related to your niche and email the content owner notifying them of the broken link. Suggest a similar link from your website and ask them to update their article. Download and install it Google Chrome plugin called Check my Links to find broken links. When contacting them, be friendly and introduce yourself.
• Use infographics : This is one of the most popular methods for attract traffic on your website and gain valuable backlinks. Track trending topics and see what people are searching for, then create your infographic using statistical data. Then submit your infographic to directories such as visual.ly, Reddit, submit infographics.
• Also create internal links : They are very important for the success of a blog. With a good internal linking structure, you can help users navigate your website easily and improve the overall user experience.

You can spy on your competitors backlinks using Monitor Backlinks. You can use the Semrush tool to analyze where your competitors are getting authoritative backlinks from. If you want to build backlinks to your website, you have to do it carefully and knowingly. Never ask a webmaster directly for a link. By doing so, you risk damaging your relationship with them.

You now know the basics of SEO. Create beautiful content and promote it. Do email prospecting to promote your best articles.

PART II – Master SEO

Optimizing your content for search engines and website visitors is one thing, improving the ranking of your content is another.

If you want to know how to improve your search engine rankings, Off-page SEO is key.

Build a list of profitable keywords

You need to find the right keywords for your blog. If you can list all the profitable keywords, then it is very easy to generate massive traffic. Once you have a good list of keywords, you can start writing content around those keywords.

Before building the list, you need to know the long tail keywords.

If you're not using long-tail keywords in your content, that means you're missing out on a lot of search traffic. These are the keywords that are profitable to target. Did you know that Amazon gets 57% of its sales from long tail keywords?

If you regularly post in-depth content on long tail keywords, you will see an increase in search traffic and you will attract paying customers. What are long tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are four or more more specific keywords that generate less search traffic, but generally have higher conversion value.

Here are the tools that will help you find long tail keywords for your niche:

• Google keyword planner: You can get information directly from Google, which is the search engine you are most likely to target when optimizing your website. It generates many long tail keywords.
• Ubersuggest: This tool gives you all the keywords and data you need to make informed decisions. It also provides you with keywords that are not available in Google's Keyword Planner.
• Soovle: This free keyword research tool provides autocomplete suggestions from a variety of sources to help increase your search volume.
• Bulk keyword generator:  If you are researching local keywords for your business, this tool will come in handy. All you have to do is enter your location and click on “Generate keywords”. You will get a list of keywords.
• 7search:  Visit 7search and click on the “Advertisers” tab, then the “Enter your keywords” tab to continue. Enter your keywords, for example "Marketing tips", then click the green button. You will get a list of long tail keywords.

Always start with your base keyword to find long tail variations. You can add commercial intent to keywords Commercial keywords are those that modify or qualify long-tail keywords. These are words such as Buy, Review, Coupon, Discount, Offer, Order, etc.

Using any of the above tools will give you a list of long tail keywords. By using Google's Keyword Planner, you can get a rough idea of ​​traffic levels for those keywords.

You now have long tail keywords. Let's analyze how difficult it will be to rank for a certain keyword. To do this, download the SEOQuake Chrome extension. It transforms each site's relevant SEO data that displays under each search result.

You can choose which parameters to display.

Based on seniority and traffic for the list of keywords you have compiled, optimize your content around those profitable keywords.

Create long content

Everyone says that you have to write long and amazing content to increase traffic and attract potential readers. All bloggers know that short content is dead. 600-word articles are out of place.

For a new blogger, writing long-form content is a real challenge. To increase Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA), to drive search engine traffic, it is essential to write long-form content.

Just because you've written great content doesn't mean you'll get results. What more do you need? It should be keyword-focused and useful. When writing content, you need to make sure you follow these principles:

• Who is my target audience? What exactly am I going to convey to them through this content?
• How will this content benefit them? How can this article solve their problem?

That being said, how do you create long-form content? How to structure your blog post for long content?

Well, I am saying that more than writing long content, you need to write quality content that is useful to your readers. You are not alone. There are many people who struggle to write long and useful content. To generate organic search engine traffic, you need to create 1000-3000 word articles, which will also help you get more social shares. See the picture below!

When you search for a subject, for example “yoga postures for weight loss”, the search engine brings up a large number of articles. To be competitive, your content must be the best.

Content is king and you have to accept it. If you want to stand out, only content can help you do that.

When writing a long article, your readers might get bored. So, to make it interesting, follow these tips when writing:

• Add visual elements to your message to make your content even more interesting.
• Never repeat what your competitors say about it. Be unique.
• Write content that engages your reader. If you're giving a speech in public, you need to know how you'll say it...the same way you'll say it in your content.
• Use statistics related to your article. This builds the trust of your readers.
• Use graphics whenever necessary.
• Write catchy titles in your blog post to entice your readers to continue reading. For example, "How did I lose 15 kg in 15 days?" »
• Search, search, search. To write long-form content, you first need to have information. So do your research thoroughly before you even start writing your content.
• Format your article correctly. Use captions and subtitles.
• Provide up-to-date information in your content. See what the trends are in your niche. To find the top performing content in your niche, use Buzzsumo.

Break your content into smaller pieces. For example, let's say you're writing about "weight loss." Make a list of ideas related to this topic and try to talk about them in your blog post.

1. Is it possible to lose weight in 1 month?
2. What diet should I follow?
3. What are the exercises that help to lose weight?
4. What happens to your body if you lose weight immediately?

Similarly, you should make a list of ideas to support your topic. Now create impactful titles in your article. Make it more engaging instead of just writing advice. Express yourself practically rather than logically.

Some tips for writing:

• Start writing every day.
• Avoid distractions while you write. Turn off social media sites until you've finished writing.
• Concentrate while you write. You can check for grammar mistakes once you start proofreading your article.
• Write your article. Make a plan and start developing your article.
• Meet deadlines and reward yourself once you're done.
• Analyze your competitors.
• Be sure to write your content based on your blog keywords.
• Use videos, images, quotes or presentations in your content.

What if you write a 3000 word article?

1. It connects you with the right audience.
2. It attracts backlinks, which increases organic search traffic.
3. If your content contains in-depth information, readers will not go to other websites because they will find all the information they want there.

Everything seems hard at first, but once you start it becomes easy. The same goes for writing a 3000 word article.

Did you know that famous blogger Neil Patel's most shared posts are 5000 words long? If anyone can get the best results from consistently creating long-form content, so can you.

Start creating long-form content now if you want SEO success.

Spy on your competitors and reap the fruits of your labor

If you want to grow your business, spy on your competitors. To dominate your competition, you need to know what they're doing from every angle: what keywords are they ranking for? How do they engage with social media? Where do they get quality backlinks? What marketing strategy do they use?

Competitive analysis is an essential part of marketing. A successful marketing strategy is based on the analysis of customer behavior and an in-depth analysis of the competition.

You might be wondering how to get more shares and ultimately grow your audience. You can get all this information by analyzing what your competitors are doing. That's what you can do with Semrush.

With this tool, you can easily analyze which are the top performing keywords of your competitors. It also allows you to analyze the ads displayed by your competitors and get the right keywords for your SEO and PPC campaigns.

Here is how you can use Semrush to perform competitor analysis.

Log in to the dashboard and enter your competitor's site URL. You can also choose the country you want to analyze. Here, I entered "amazon.fr"

By clicking on “positions” in the “Organic search” section, you will obtain the keywords for which your competitor is well placed in the organic ranking. To know its positions in paid search engines, click on “positions” in the “Advertising research” section.

Here is how you can use Semrush data:

• Enter your main keywords in the search bar of Semrush and several websites will be listed.
• Write them down and check your top 5 competitors.
• Click on each of them in turn and write down the same information. It helps to know the top 5 keywords they are using as well as their top 5 competitors.
• Compare their keywords with yours.
• Now click on “Positions” in the left menu and review more detailed information about your own site and that of each competitor. This will allow you to better understand the performance of the different keywords used by each of them.

You can compare your competitors' traffic to yours and the paid traffic they have. This will tell you how well your competitors' sites are performing compared to yours and which keywords they are using best.

Semrush offers a unique suite of tools to perform effective analysis of the keywords your competitors are using to rank in Google.

Apart from keyword research and competitor research, this tool also helps you accomplish two other important tasks: site auditing and backlink analysis. With the Site Audit tool, you can perform an in-depth audit of your current SEO and ensure that your pages are properly optimized for your most important keywords.

With Semrush's Backlink tools, you can see where they get links and try to get some of those same links for your website.

You will be able to see the following information about your competitors' links: total number of backlinks, number of referring domains, number of referring IPs, number of follow and no-follow links, type of link (text, image, etc.), list of backlinks for a given domain, anchor text for each link, number of external links and internal links.

The backlink comparison tool allows you to compare links from up to 5 different domains. This is a great tool to track your progress against your competitors and another way to see their link profiles.

Semrush shows you search engine results pages (SERPs) and keywords, all updated in real time. Since it provides real-time keyword and competition information, you can create content that will interest your readers.

Track your SEO progress

Once you're done practicing on-page SEO, backlink building, and off-page SEO, it's time to monitor your results by tracking your SEO progress.

The importance of SEO tools

Like I said, SEO is a huge ocean and you can't dive into it without having access to the right tools. Yes, there are hundreds of SEO tools available, but the majority of them don't give the right results. I've used hundreds of tools over the past six years and here are some SEO tools I highly recommend to start your SEO journey.

Rank Math SEO : I really like this plugin. It is free and easy to use. If you want to boost your on-page SEO (which will be covered later in this beginner's SEO guide), this plugin is a must for you.

Semrush : I have been using this SEO tool for over 6 years and have not only tripled my overall search traffic but also my website sales. It's a MUST-HAVE tool for anyone who really wants to improve their search engine rankings and sales.

Here are some examples of what you can do with this tool.

• Search for competitors
• Search for keywords
• Backlink analysis
• Checking a site's traffic
• Domain to domain comparison
• Site audit to troubleshoot your site issues
• PPC
• Search ads

You can literally find anything about any website in the world (including their top performing keywords, ads, backlink sources) using Semrush. It is therefore the perfect tool for all your SEO needs.

Here are some main tools you can use for this purpose:

• Google Analytics : Want to know more about your visitors? Monitor your organic search traffic sources to find out what keywords people are using to find your website in search results. This will help you know which keywords to target in your SEO campaign.
• Authority Labs : You can use this tool to track the ranking of your website's keywords to see if they are moving up in search results. Create a free account which you can get after using the 30-day trial version of the pro account.

Start by using these tools to find out if your SEO efforts are making a difference or not.

SEO FAQ for Beginners

Here are some important SEO questions for beginners.

Other resources:

• 15 Best Blog Examples to Inspire You to Start a Money-Making Blog
• 10 popular types of blogs that make money
• How to write a compelling blog description?
• 18 Strategies to Promote Your Blog Posts: Increase Your Traffic
• 20 Best Free Blogging Resources
• 5 Best Laptops for Writers and Bloggers
• Buying Backlinks: Everything You Need to Know About Paid Links
• What is Personal Branding: Examples of Personal Brand
• How to quickly boost your website's search traffic
• 11 Powerful Secrets to Boost Your Website Traffic in Less Than 60 Days
• How to use Google Trends to make money

Final thoughts on this beginners tutorial

SEO is not difficult. I have practiced it for many years and I know that it becomes easy when the basics are well mastered.

That's why I decided to write a detailed tutorial for beginners to get better search engine rankings and better traffic. If you're just starting out, focus on one SEO technique at a time to reap the best results.

What do you think ? Did you like this tutorial for beginners? Do you have any other tips to share? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.