10 Simple SEO Tips for Beginners [Ultimate Guide]

Don't be tired! Here are some easy and simple SEO tips for beginners. A comprehensive guide for non-techy bloggers. Start ranking on Google today!
seo tips for beginners

SEO also known as search engine optimization plays a very important part in today’s marketing. For starters, learning basic SEO tips is the way to go. If you’re looking to create an online presence for your business or company, then you need to adopt various digital marketing technics. This include; SEO, SMO, AdWords, Social Media, among others.

SEO tips for beginners; is for non-techy individuals who do not want to deal with the huge digital marketing phrases. 

But, are interested in learning easy SEO tips that will help them drive traffic to their website. If that's you, I've got you.

It takes a lot to appear on Google’s first page. You have to practice both on-page SEO and off-page SEO to increase your chance of ranking above other websites on search engine.

Backlinks from authoritative websites and blogs as well as choosing the right keyword for each blog post, plays a vital role in positioning your website above others.

In this article, I have outlined various SEO tips for beginners. If you’re a newbie, this article is for you. Learn what is working for the top notches and most beginners, and how to implement them to increase your website’s traffic and rank above your competitors.

Easy SEO Tips for Beginners
SEO Tips for Beginners - [Pin me]

SEO Tips for Beginners – Double Your Traffic in 3 Months

Use Short & Descriptive URLs

One easiest way beginners can practice good SEO is paying attention to their URL. Does it contain my keyword? Is it short enough? Is it descriptive? This and a few questions need to be asked before you publish a web page or blog.

Avoid using URLs that do not describe your post or have relevant keywords.
  • https://myblog.com/post/article288282738398830020/ (Inappropriate, don’t do that)
How short should my URL be? Well, around 35 – 60 characters. This makes it easier for search engine to capture everything in your URL. It also enables search engines to best understand what your article is about.
  • https://www.myblog.com/cheap-and-best-digital-marketing-service-is-available/ (Bad URL)
  • https://myblog.com/marketing-service-ghana / (Good URL)
  • https://myblog.com/cheap-marketing-service-in-Ghana/ (Good URL)

Use Description Meta Tags

A description meta tag gives search engine a brief summary of your webpage. In addition to that, it tells search engines what your page is about and what topics your page covers. A good description meta tag should be not more than 160 character long and should contain your targeted keyword

Use Long tail Keywords

Ranking for shorter keywords is a very difficult task. All factors play a vital role in ranking for short-tail keywords. Domain age, domain authority, backlinks, SERPs, etc. helps to position your blog ahead of others. For a beginner, you should focus on long-tail keywords. It’s less competitive and hence, quite easy to rank for. For instance;
  • Instead of: Marketing tools (short-tail)
  • Use this: Cheap marketing tools (long tail)
The idea should be that; the shorter the keyword, the higher the competition. This is not to say that all short-tail keywords are competitive. Some might not be.

Use LSI Keywords

Using LSI keywords can help you rank for multiple keywords. LSI stands for latent semantic indexing. This is one of the essential SEO tips for beginners or rather anyone struggling with traffic.

Example of LSI keywords for this post may include;
  • SEO tips and tricks for starters
  • Simple SEO tips for beginners
  • Easy SEO techniques that boost traffic
  • Beginners guide to SEO
  • Basic SEO practices
As you may have noticed, all these keywords relate to each other or at least, have semantic relationship. Although this practice is entirely safe, you should note that it must be done with care. If not, it will be considered as keyword surfing.

Optimize Your Images for SEO

Use image descriptions, better known as alternative tags. Search engines understanding of images are different from that of human. Search engines do not understand what the image represent, and/or what texts are writing on the image.

One trick to rank and get more traffic is making an effort to ensure that search engines better understand your images.

Renaming your images before uploading them is also an important step for ranking. For example;
  • IMG00245.JPG and,
  • marketing-tools-for-small-businesses.jpg
Which is more descriptive and contain your keywords? Of course, the second. Meaning, it has a higher chance of ranking than the first.

An image with an alt tag should look like this.

<img src=”/marketing-tools-for-small-businesses.jpg” alt=” marketing tools for small businesses.”/>

Add Internal Backlinks

When we say backlinks, the first thing that comes to mind is external backlinks. Although external backlinks are awesome, internal backlinks are great too.

Basically, when I say internal backlinks, I’m taking about linking from one article to another on your website or blog.

Before you do that, note that only relevant articles are deemed as a good practice. This help readers to gain access to more resources. You can link to other articles by using anchor texts. This informs search engines that the linked articles are related.

Monitor Your Site Speed

The faster your website, the higher your chance of ranking. Make sure your website is user-friendly and loads fast. If your website is slow, it has a direct-negative impact on your overall SEO and/or ranking.

Check if your site is fast by using the Google Site Speed tool.

Check if your site is mobile friendly Mobile Friendly Test

To make your website faster, this is what you can do:
  • Try a different hosting service.
  • Reduce the amounts of plugins on your site.
  • Remove all underperforming widgets.
  • Remove anything that slows your website
  • Use lazy load for images and videos

Submit a Sitemap

Having a sitemap is like having a health database. You doctor gets to know about your health history.

Sitemaps tell search engines about your webpages and contents. It tells Google, Bing, Yahoo and the rest about changes made to your webpages or if they have mistakenly missed any article or page on your website. You can submit different sitemaps to search engines, making it easier and faster to crawl all your pages.

Let me know if you’re finding it difficult to submit your sitemaps and I’ll help you through it.

Add Robots.txt

Just like sitemaps, robots.txt is another part of your SEO. Robots.txt informs search engines on what pages to crawl and what pages to avoid.

If you don’t want any of your webpages to be indexed or crawled for whatever reason, you can instruct bot to avoid those pages by restricting using a function called; “disallow”.

Add an Awesome 404 Error Page

This page is an important part of SEO. If you should have a broken link, this is where your readers would be directed. Make sure you add a call to action, like BACK TO HOME button with some useful information.

It is important to note that your 404 error page should not be allowed to be indexed on search engine. In case you find it indexed, remove it using your webmaster tool.

Bottom Line

If you adopt all these easy beginners guide to SEO, you can be certain that they’d be an adequate improvement to your SEO. It takes time to rank, be patient. And before I forget, this article is based strictly on SEO tips for beginners . However, if you already know much about SEO, there's still a lot to learn.


Although, I intentionally covered only on-page SEO techniques and not off-page, however, it is important to note that both off-page SEO and on-page SEO practice determines whether a webpage should rank higher. Basically, this is just one of two factors that determines where you should be in terms of ranking.

To conclude; to drive traffic to your blog, you should focus on a number of things. That is; on-page SEO, off-page SEO. You should consider social media as well. As it does some awesome stuffs too. Backlinks are good. However, quality is better.

About the author

Enoch Amenuvor
Entrepreneur, Blogger, Digital Marketer & Brand Strategist.

5 comments

  1. Bold Nerds
    Bold Nerds
    This is awesome. I've been struggling with SEO. I don't seem to understand how it works. Thanks for sharing this great tips with us.
    1. Enoch Amenuvor
      Enoch Amenuvor
      Thank you. I'm happy this helped you in a way.
  2. Rosemarie Jones
    Rosemarie Jones
    Thank you for your helpful article on SEO. Your post described SEO in an understandable format.
  3. Rosemarie Jones
    Rosemarie Jones
    Thanks for the helpful information regarding SEO. Your post helped me understand how SEO works.
    1. Enoch Amenuvor
      Enoch Amenuvor
      I'm glad it did. When I was writing this, I thought about novice who barely understood SEO. and that's how come I wrote a detailed beginner's guide to SEO.
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