Beginners guide to SEO?

A few basics to think about.

1. Create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google and the other search engines: https://ahrefs.com/blog/submit-website-to-search-engines/
2. Create a meta description for the website: https://yoast.com/meta-descriptions/
3. Create quality backlinks: https://backlinko.com/high-quality-backlinks
4. Make sure your page loads quickly - especially on mobile. Google likes that. https://moz.com/learn/seo/mobile-optimization
5. Create quality content that is optimized for search https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide/anatomy-of-perfectly-optimized-content/
6. Use Schema.org structured data (link in 4 above explains)
7. Test. There are some basic SEO principles to follow however you need to test how Google reacts to your site. Putting an emphasis on certain things may lead to bigger gains.

Hey @newbee Check out this guide by Moz :https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo. It should help.

Blog! Blog a lot related to your website. I have seen many websites pulling organic traffic right through their blog.

Thanks,
Yugen (IG : @yuxen)

backlinko.com/blog/learn-seo

I just wanted to say that this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for asking @newbee!

Just came across this and wanted to add, I just wrote an ebook as an intro to SEO here, if you check it out let me know what you think!

Also, I gave your website a look - from what I can tell it's just one page, this will take time. Your best bet if you want to start seeing your rankings increase is to understand your target audience and start creating content that answers questions they are asking. Blog as regularly as you can (even once a month helps) and you'll start positioning yourself as a thought leader. You're in a great space as there are plenty of people who have questions on personal finance and are researching this.

Happy to answer questions on SEO any time :)

If your website is new, it can take quite a while for pages/posts to rank on Google (1-6 months based on my experience) as your site is inside what's known as the Google 'sandbox'.

So don't expect your URLs to rank immediately.

To quicken the process, you need to request indexing from the Google Search Console each time you've created a new page/post and target long-tail keywords in your niche if you're writing posts.

After you forced indexed those URLs, they'll be somewhere in the SERPs (search results) within 24 hours.

People already shared some great resources, so I won't repeat myself but would love to add a little perspective.

SEO is a whole new world and to actually get results, a lot needs to be learned, and then through trial and error you can figure out what works, but this takes a LOT of time.

So set your expectations right. Do NOT expect to rank by reading a few blog posts. You wouldn't say

"hey, I would like to be a doctor, where can I read a few things to get started?" - the same goes for SEO.

Please do read the resources that other shared, this will be enough to get you off the ground and get you familiar with SEO, but if you are serious about this, be prepared to invest a lot of time here.

Ahrefs Youtube channel is awesome and so is their training, Moz.com also has amazing resources. I would just stick with them as mentioned by others as you run the risk of over-complicating things if you think too much about it.

Pain point SEO requires you to understand your audience and I always suggest it as the route to go down. "Best X for Y" and "Why does Y happen? How can I fix it" etc. Not massive volume but much further down the purchase funnel.

I began my journey with SEO with Hubspot and then upgraded to Ahrefs, they have a free course that's called "Blogging for business" that I think you could find very useful. Best of luck!