Learning SEO(for Beginner)
As long as I can remember, the best way for me to learn has been to do, especially for SEO. I have gone through countless checklists while trying to understand search engine optimization. The following is a compilation of the most useful checklists I have completed in order to learn SEO.
The Beginner’s Checklist
Build a basic website
Before diving into SEO techniques it is important to know the basics of web development.
Code a website that contains the following:
All styles with CSS. No Tables!
Homepage has 3 unique paragraphs about you
3 pages total; homepage, contact and portfolio
Register a domain name and find hosting - This is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. I recommend Hostgator or Lunarpages as good options.
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tool and verify your website, Upload the sitemap.
Learn about SEO
Now for the fun part. Learn basic SEO techniques and apply them to your glorious website.
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, verify and read everything – This phenomenal resource will show you how Googlebot sees your website and point out any SEO problems you have on your site. Be sure to familiarize yourself with it. The information it provides is formulated toward Google but applies to all the search engines.
Add a robots.txt file and a sitemap - Although these are not really necessary for such a small site, familiarizing yourself with these files will be indispensable.
Apply your knowledge – Optimize your Title Tags, Anchor Text, HTML structure (H1, H2), and keyword usage. This is the bread and butter of onsite search engine optimization.
Link build – Add a link to your website on all of your favorite social media/networking sites. Feel free to try your luck with linkbait, although for a site with no competition this isn’t really necessary.
Track your site on Yahoo! Site Explorer – Wait a week or two for Yahoo to find your links and then check to see what links are being counted. Be sure to select “inlinks except from this domain to entire site.” The links should be displayed roughly in order of importance.
Check Google Analytics – By this time you should see more interesting data from your analytics tool. Use this data to learn the basics of analytics and use it as a reference point while link building.