MCR SEO Blog

Lay Solid Foundations for your SEO — 6 Easy Steps

In this article we give 6 simple steps that anyone can implement to begin their SEO journey.

Whether you’re launching a brand-new website or trying to recover ground you’ve lost to competitors, every great SEO strategy starts with the basics. Get these six fundamentals right and the rest becomes much easier.

1. Add Google Search Console

The first basic step on your SEO journey is to add Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) to your site. Introducing a simple line of code will give you access to essential information about the way Google evaluates your website.

You’ll learn the recommended number of pages your site should have, whether the titles and descriptions of your web pages are duplicate or not, the exact search queries for which your website ranks, as well as any potential malware issues present on your site. Search Console is a valuable tool to use to address a great deal of SEO-related aspects.

Optimise your title tags and descriptions

2. Optimise Your Page Tags & Descriptions

A second important SEO rule is to ensure that each page of your website has a unique and distinct title and description. The title is the main part of the link to your website, whereas the description is the smaller black text beneath it — and these two serve as an advert for your website to visitors.

This is the reason why they should be as eye-catching and compelling as possible.

3. Create Great, Unique Content

The third step is to understand that great content is what really counts in terms of basic efficient SEO. The text, images and video material featured on your website should be both interesting to users and relevant to your business. Moreover, these elements have to be unique — copying the content of other websites is not recommended.

Quantity has an important role as well, and you need to provide enough content (a few images accompanied by a single line of text won’t do) so that Google can label it appropriately and rank your site for the corresponding search queries.

4. Don’t Take the Easy Route and Buy Backlinks

A fourth primary SEO rule is to not buy links. In the past, a way to gain a better ranking in the Google search results was to buy links. However, this is no longer the case — Google now penalises users that resort to this practice. Avoid doing this: there may be a short-term gain, but long term it will be detrimental to your search engine position, or worst-case scenario, you’ll be removed altogether.

5. Relate Your Business to a Location

The fifth basic step to achieving your basic SEO foundation for your website is to narrow your keywords to a local area.

For example, if you run a takeaway in the UK, you are advised to focus on keywords that are local to the location in and around the takeaway.

Therefore, the area where your business is situated and the type of restaurant you run represent two main sources of keywords.

This way, you will be competing with fewer similar websites and your content will be more relevant to your visitors.

6. Keep Constant Track of SEO Developments

The sixth and final step on your SEO journey is to regularly keep an eye on the latest SEO developments.

SEO is always evolving to adjust to changes in both Google’s algorithm and searchers’ behaviour — therefore it is very important to keep up to date with the latest information out there.

You do this by referring to valuable related sites, such as:

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