A Quick Guide through the SEO Process for Beginners

Many online businesses today turn to the services of SEO companies to help their business gain more exposure online. While SEO may be nothing new to some, it's an untouched marketing tool to others.

If you're a business owner looking to utilize the services of an SEO company, prior to searching for a company, it's important to understand the SEO process. This will help you better understand the underlying purpose of an SEO company and the steps and strategies involved.

It's important to note, however, that the SEO process differs depending upon what you are aiming to achieve. For example, businesses may be looking for an SEO company to help them with reputation management or social media optimization.

While each campaign differs depending upon what you want to achieve, campaigns share many similarities. But, first, let's understand SEO and what SEO companies do.

Understanding SEO
SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. SEO is an online marketing strategy used to help a website become more appealing to search engines and drive traffic to the website. The main focus in SEO is the use of keywords. These are the words that are typed in a search engine when searching for something. After typing in a keyword, users are directed to the search engine results page (SERPs). Businesses want their website to appear at the top of the SERPs in order to gain traffic to their website.

Businesses utilize the services of an SEO company to help their website appear higher in the SERPs. SEO companies know the latest tools and tactics of the search world. They carefully monitor and examine your website and use the best practices to help you reach the results you're looking for.

Now, let's take a look at the general SEO process for essentially any type of campaign:

Have a goal
The first step of the SEO process is determining the goal of the campaign. What are you looking to achieve? Do you want to optimize your website to increase its visibility online? Do you want your website to appear higher in the SERPs? Do you want to drive more traffic to your site? Whether you're aiming for one or a few, having a goal will help an SEO company work in your best interest. 

Understand competition
Competition is everywhere in online marketing world. Therefore, it's crucial that you understand what you are up against and where you stand in comparison to them. When you work with an SEO company, they will help you by examining and studying your competition.


Keyword selection
Keyword selection plays a vital role in the SEO process since these are the words that will be used to help your site gain more online exposure. Of course, you want to choose words that pertain to your targeted products or services, but also words that people are searching for. Google Analytics is a fee tool in which you can research the competition among keywords. When you work with an SEO company, they will perform heavy keyword research to find words that people are searching for, suit you and aren't so challenging so that your chances are making it into the SERPs are slim.


Create content
Next, it's time to create content, both on your website and off site. This is a crucial part of the SEO process. All content, whether onsite or off, should be original and creative, which means devoting time to writing unique content. Search engines and web audiences love content that's fresh and innovative. 

One vital step in content creation is the use of keywords. When creating content, you want to use the selected keywords, but your writing should flow and be readable. Also, avoid stuffing links in the content. The links serve to help your site be recognized by search engine crawlers. Overly stuffing content with keywords not only hurts a reader's eyes but is viewed negatively by search engines.

In addition to creating content, you also want to create title tags and meta descriptions for each page on the site. The title tags appear at the very top of the page and describe what the page is about. You want to write titles that are fitting and contain keywords. The meta descriptions serve as miniature advertisements and appear in the SERPs under a link, informing readers as to what the page is about.

Build links
In order for your site to reach an audience, create links pointing back to your site. This can be done a few different ways. You can write articles with keywords embedded in which the articles are submitted to an article website for readers. Also, you can submit links to directories in which you provide a brief description of the link or guest blog on another site similar to yours. 

Remember, these are the general and common step of an SEO process and not every process is the same. By working with an experienced SEO company, they will help guide you through an SEO process that suites you best.