How to Get Started with SEO

Every small business with a website should implement search engine optimization (SEO) as part of their growth strategy.

This article will take you through the journey how a small company decided to increase their search engine rankings: from the basic steps of deciding on the SEO techniques to start with, finding the relevant keywords and organizing keywords with keyword tagging. Most importantly, it is a story by someone who is not from an SEO Agency or a Consultant. A humble SEO beginner who, with a little effort and by finding the right rank tracker, started the journey in search engine optimization. This article will give SEO beginners some concrete suggestions and tips on how to use AccuRanker to understand keyword rank tracking and your audience.

First Steps in Search Engine Optimization

We all have our own theories about what SEO is all about. While some sources are more scientific in their approach, others tend to be based on individual experience. We can all, however, which also SearchEngineJournal confirms, that the three pillars of modern SEO are Authority, Relevance, and Trust. With those values in mind, I decided to approach my first real SEO-project.

After having worked in various product areas on the web and catered for thousands of webmasters needs, I knew that I wanted to do something towards the betting online area for Swedish users. More especially a guide that gives users objective reviews about various betting sites. Prior to deciding on what specific area that I would like to focus on in this field I knew I needed to do a proper research to understand them and their needs better. This is how I did it.

Finding the Relevant Keywords

Keywords tell you a story. More then that, it gives you a better context to understand the end users no matter what area you are focusing on. My approach of dealing with is it to start with the very basic generic keywords. As mentioned above in my case it would be “betting” or perhaps “betting online”. So as a first step to define my topic area, I included these two very broad keywords in AccuRanker to get an idea about their average monthly search volume.

Next step in my journey is to decide on relevancy. Between these two “betting” is much broader but covers a lot of other information for seekers that are interested in the subject, but don’t necessarily want to bet online. Therefore I could conclude that “betting online” would be a good starting point before taking the next step.

How to Pick Keywords

The next step takes place at any selected keyword research tool. In this case, I have used Ubersuggest to get keyword suggestions based on my keywords. It is an easy way to get suggestions on what other types of searches that have been entered. You can also use Google Ads Keyword Planner, Google Correlate, and other free keyword research tools out there to quickly find relevant keywords instead of guessing them.

Extra tip: download the free keyword research template made by Jellyfish Training who also offer SEO training courses.

Clean Up and Find Your Low Hanging Fruits

As shown above, I got a total of 282 keyword ideas related to betting online. Neither I or you should have the ambition to aim to get rankings on everything. The cleaning up process is, therefore, a vital part of your SEO strategy. First and foremost, to have a more focus. Secondly to get a good overview of how much volume each keyword generates.

Main reason why I prefer AccuRanker before any other rank tracker is that I can, within a matter of minutes, pull out all the keywords that were suggested above and let AccuRanker do the rest of the job to serve all info needed about search volume, SERP features, but also give me a good indication about who the competitors are and what they rank on. For your convenience here is a step-by-step guide on how to find the low hanging fruits (the keywords that with little effort can make your site rank higher).

1. Insert all keywords that you find relevant to the subject that you want to target. You can import all keywords in bulk via CSV file upload.
2. Let AccuRanker’s algorithm work its magic meanwhile you have your first coffee (or fifth?).
3. Study the keywords and their potential and pick out the ones that you find suitable for your project.

With AccuRanker you get updated data on your keywords every 24 hours, but if you need to see live SEO data, you can manually refresh keywords.

Keyword Tagging

Once you found or at least have a good idea about your niche, my suggestion would be to use AccuRanker to tag keywords in selected groups. When you are on this step you have most likely a good idea in what direction you are heading. The feature of being able to tag keywords and group them is especially valuable to those who are targeting a lot of keywords. When I was on this step in my very own project I decided to go for the domain Bästabettingsidorna.se which would be best betting sites roughly translated. You can find a step-by-step guide on how to tag your keywords in the help section here.

By doing the initial process of finding tons of relevant keywords and then I decided to aim for SEO -presence on three different areas within my business and therefore used three different tags that I divided my keywords by.

By doing this I can more efficiently plan my work and more importantly – maintain focus. It also gives me an easy overview when I want to work on my internal link structure by having a more clear hierarchy which is something that the SEO expert Lukasz Zelezny mentioned on his guest blog.

Another useful practice from tagging your keywords is that it enables you to optimize per URL rather than just keywords. So besides the practical aspect, I have found it to be a convenient way to overview and optimize my daily SEO work.

Another useful tip to help you keep your keywords organized is to add stars and notes to your keywords. You can add stars to your most important keywords to have a better overview. When you are working with some keywords (for example, updating landing page with certain keywords), you can add a note to those keywords in AccuRanker so you can remember them and see the results of the SEO projects you have been working on.

Desktop and Mobile Keywords

Another thing to think about is tracking keywords on desktop vs mobile devices. Here you have to remember to take a look at your audience. Where is your online traffic coming from? You can use Google Analytics to see what percentage of your audience uses desktop vs mobile (and even which mobile devices they are using). Depending on your business and your audience, you might need to track keywords for both mobile and desktop, or one of them. If your audience uses both mobile and desktop devices when searching, it is important for you to track keywords for both mobile and desktop as they keyword might have different search volumes and rankings on mobile vs. desktop. And it is possible to track both mobile and desktop keywords with AccuRanker. If you are already tracking keywords for desktop, you can simply copy them and track the same keywords on mobile devices.

SEO Basics

I hope that I have given some useful pointers in SEO basics to the readers out there who are fairly new in working with keyword research. I will never really be able to figure out what is behind Googles algorithm with +200 variables. But I believe that understanding the consumers’ point of view will help you find the best SEO strategy. By analyzing what they search for, you will get to know your audience better. The better you know them, the better you can cater for their needs and provide them with the information they search for. Therefore I am thankful that AccuRanker has been able to make a great a product that gives me the recipe to find the inner DNA of my end users.

For more quick tips on Search Engine Optimization, take a look at the SEO Tutorial for Beginners by Linkio.