SEO for Beginners

SEO & Social Media

SEO for Beginners

Seeing as I came to Lucidica as an intern, with no experience in SEO, I thought I would write a blog on it and hopefully help other beginners to improve their Google rankings.

I must admit, when I first started learning about SEO, it all seemed very overwhelming and incredibly in depth (which it is). But if you break it down and take it stage by stage, it doesn’t feel quite so complicated.

Where to Start

The first thing I did was read ‘Becoming a Clockwork Pirate’ by Kelvin Newman.

It explains what SEO actually is in a basic level and gives a good insight into the topic. I also listened to a number of podcasts from Sitevisibility. Some are really helpful – if you click on ‘podcasts’ there are over a hundred there, so there’s a lot of choice, depending on what help you need.

Once I had an idea of what SEO is actually about, I attended an SEO seminar, which gave me more of an idea of how to actually do it. Thomas goes through each stage step by step and shows examples of how it’s done. I would recommend any beginner to attend a seminar on SEO; it’s so in depth and hearing about it from someone who has a good level of experience does helps more than just reading about it.

Making Connections

Once your website is up and running (if not already), I would recommend getting a Twitter and LinkedIn account. I recently got these and it opens up connections for people and organisations to see news about your company. I am still working on getting more connections and followers, but the more you follow, the more people you open up to. Also, link your accounts together – all my Tweets are connected to LinkedIn, meaning that contacts from both accounts see my news and links I’ve made to our website. This doesn’t only mean more people are seeing what you have to say, but it also saves time!! I have been Tweeting about 3 or 4 times a day – this means that your contacts aren’t likely to forget you. Make sure they’re relevant and interesting though, otherwise they may decide they don’t want to follow you anymore!!

LinkedIn also has an answers section (LinkedIn Answers) – you should use this to answer questions and link back to your page. Don’t just copy the link in though – make sure you answer the question first and show some interest into what has been asked… THEN at the end, suggest reading more information about the topic with a link to your website. Yahoo answers is another website you can use – it’s very similar to LinkedIn Answers, all you need to do is search for the questions that you’re looking to answer.

Getting Technical

Now this is when it starts to get technical. Anchor text is an important part of effective SEO. I am still learning myself, but there are a number of tutorials out there on how to use it. YouTube has a number of short videos which are quite handy, one I used is available here and was pretty straightforward and easy to follow. This can be used for LinkedIn too – instead of it saying ‘company website’ on your profile page, you can change it to being keywords about your site, which can help to improve your rankings. So for example, my LinkedIn profile will say ‘IT Support London’, which explains to Google what my site is about and is another vote for my website. In text it’s not just important to have the hyperlink related to your website or field, but also the text around it – this will also tell Google what your site is about, so keep it as relevant as possible.

Writing blogs on your website about relevant topics and news also helps (like the one I am writing now). You can then promote it via your social media sites and go to LinkedIn answers and Yahoo answers and so forth and link them back to your page.

So far… this is where I have managed to get to and still have a lot to learn on the subject myself, but this is a start. Hopefully I will have more to offer later down the line, but for now, I hope that this is making it easier to understand for other beginners like myself.

If you’re a little more technical than us beginners, go to our SEO section, where you can fina a little more detail.

Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Lucidica provide SMEs in London a combination of IT support, training and consultation