From Zero to SEO Hero! An SEO Strategy for Beginners

Alright, so you are just starting out. When it comes to a website you have nothing, well not nothing. You have your business and you’ve bought your domain but other than that? Zilch, nada, zip, zero. How do you optimize when you have nothing? This time on the Helix House blog we’re going to give you the actionable advice you need to start your SEO off right. Here's our advice for your first SEO strategy.

Foundational Steps to a Functional SEO Strategy

Strategize Your Site

If you already have your website, great! Skip ahead to Create the Content. If you don’t, we got you! Obviously, the first step is to get your website built. But before you roll up your sleeves and get to coding, you should take a moment to strategize what your site is going to be, what needs when it launches, and what it may need going forward. You’ll want a Homepage, a Contact page, an About Us to start. Now what about pages for each service, maybe for each product (depending on how many you have)? Create a structure that works now and will be easy to build upon in the future. We can’t tell you how many times a client has shot their growth in the foot by accidentally limiting their website’s potential with poor structure.Now with these pages plotted out, it’s time to perform some keyword research to find opportunities for each page.

Create the Content for your SEO Strategy

With the site mapped out, it’s time to actually build the content that will go on these pages. You want to build your pages with those keywords in mind and following best practices. Those best practices for your SEO strategy, in Fast and Furious fashion:

• Have robust, rich pages of easily readable and relevant content.
• Include text, images, and video where applicable.
• Include the focused keywords in:
• URL Slug
• Title
• Meta description
• Image Metadata (where applicable)
• At least 3 times in the page’s content

These are the best practices, but it’s important to know when and how to use them and when not to. Don’t try to stuff your pages with keywords and jam a square peg in a round hole. That will just hurt you in the long run. You want each page to address what your customer is looking for and hoping to find out as well as hit those keywords – luckily, when done right these are one and the same. Don’t try to over-extend and rank for keywords that don’t speak to your business and services, it will only waste your effort.

Design and Develop Your Website

You have your domain, hopefully something like ‘your-business.com,’ and now you have the website site map and content all planned out. It is time to get designing! You need to create the robust, beautiful website your customers will interact with. For SEO purposes you’ll want to nail a few things, all related to the user experience and interactivity with the website. You want it to load lightning fast, to be intuitive to read and navigate, and for it to have any extra functionality your business needs, whether that’s eCommerce potential etc.

Write Good Blogs

Write a few robust, keyword focused blogs. These will be your first steps towards the distant goal of total SEO domination when you launch your new site. Blog content is a great way to show your expertise to your audience, as well as to Search Engines. They are informative pieces that Google or Bing can point searchers to in order to find answers. Searchers will then spend time reading the content and potentially engaging with other pages on your site, giving Search Engines the big Thumbs Up that this site is a good one! Now keep writing them! Ongoing, regular, and relevant content is a huge factor when it comes to long term SEO growth, so don’t neglect it! You don’t need to overdo it to start your SEO journey — one blog a week is a perfectly good place to start!

Let’s Get Link Building

Now that your site is up and running and content is posting regularly, it’s time to do some work on the world wide web to net your site huge gains. It’s called link building and it’s all based on acquiring your site backlinks.Putting it briefly, backlinks are links pointing from one website to another. If you are linking to another site, they have a backlink from you, and if they link to you, then you have a backlink from them. In the eyes of a search engine, a backlink is essentially a website pointing at another website saying, “Hey look over there! That’s something neat to check out!” It also imparts a bit of authority to the linked site, from the linking site. This helps the linked site grow in the eyes of Search Engines over time. That makes it a crucial move to start link building early!Using a Citation Builder like Bright Local is a great place to start. Here you’ll be able to get your business listed in a bunch of web-based indexes and directories, places where customers may be searching for services just like yours. Meanwhile, these placements also come with links pointing to your site, giving you a boost in authority.Over time you’ll want to start working your way up, getting links and placements with other higher authority sites. This might take the shape of doing an interview and getting a link placed with a local news outlet, or doing some guest posting.

Success! Now What?

You've put it all together and you're on your way! Now that you’ve got that settled it’s time to track your data through Analytics and Ahrefs, follow your growth, jump on opportunities and fix problems before they develop. The SEO game is a long one, there are no quick schemes here.  Just good hard work, done right and done over time. If that sounds a bit daunting to take on in addition to your other roles as a business owner – call Helix House today! We’re an award-winning agency that handles everything digital.

Give Helix House a call today and start your SEO journey with the right team!