Top SEO Questions and Answers for Beginners

Table of Contents

• What Is Seo?
• Top SEO Questions Answered
• Key Takeaways
• Conclusion

If you run a business or blog, SEO is of importance to you! And it is a lot more than just using the right keywords. In this blog, we look at how to do your website’s SEO right to improve your visibility, traffic, exposure, lead generation, conversion, and ultimately, revenue. Before we start with the top SEO questions and answers, let’s understand what SEO is.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is a collective term for strategies that aim to improve your website’s organic traffic and natural visibility from search engines. What it means in simple terms is that when someone looks up a topic you deliver in, they should be able to reach your business virtually. The better your SEO game, the higher your positioning in search engine results pages (SERP). 

A majority of website tracking is driven by some important search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Search engines offer you two results: inorganic and organic. Inorganic search results are sponsored and paid campaigns, which, needless to say, require investment. However, organic results need effort, patience, and hold over a domain. Overall, it’s all about the strategies you use so that your website gets a high ranking and attracts more visitors. 

Top SEO Questions Answered

Scroll on to find out the answers to some of the most frequently asked SEO-related questions. 

How does SEO work?

SEO is all about how you can increase the visibility of your website to get a higher ranking on a search engine. Search engines work on algorithms, which analyze your content and match it with the right queries. To get picked up by a search engine, you have to ensure your content has the right keywords, context, images, and meaningful content. Doing all these the right ways can land you on the first page of the search engine you were aiming for!

Why should I opt for SEO for my business?

SEO is important because of the following reasons: 

• It helps improve your visibility and virtual reputation.
• It brings in more traffic.
• It helps you make sales ultimately.
• It positions you as a domain authority. 

What is metadata? Is it important for SEO?

Metadata is a small piece of information that viewers can see about your website or blog when they organically see you in the search results’ list. Your metadata comprises a meta title and meta description. 

Source

You have to restrict your meta title to under 60 characters to provide a full view of the sentence, and the meta description can range from 140-165 characters. They should help your audience understand what your article is going to be about.

How can I find out if I am using the right keywords?

There are no specific rules that can tell you about the right keywords that you can use. The answer varies based on the niche, demographic, etc., that you are targeting However, a good practice is to just process what a user would search for. In your blogs, you can make sure to include the most used search terms. Another way of doing this is by making use of software tools, free and paid, to find the right keywords.  

Why has my organic traffic dropped?

It could be due to a number of factors, such as your website getting de-indexed or removed if the search engine thinks it is inappropriate to the users or unfit to be featured in any way. Other factors include heavy size, long buffers, spammy content, etc.

What are internal and external links?

In SEO, both internal and external links are important. Internal links take the users to another page on the same website, whereas external links are those that take users to other websites from yours. 

What is indexing?

Indexing is the process through which a web page is added to the search engine. Search engines use a crawler to decide what content they want to index.

Is it necessary for me to know coding for SEO?

For basic SEO, you would be fine without learning to code too.

Should I appoint someone to help me with SEO?

It is always good to appoint SEO strategists or campaign planners for your website, as it can give you great outcomes. However, SEO isn’t set in stone, meaning it keeps evolving, so if the person you have hired isn’t evolving with it, your expenditure would be in vain.

How long does it take to get results from SEO?

You can expect results from your SEO efforts within 6 months generally. However, it depends on the quality and quantity of your content. 

Should I promote my website on social media?

If you post your websites on social media, it will increase awareness among users and help pull genuine traffic to your website. This will increase your site’s visibility. Optimizing your brand’s social media profile can also help in increasing its SEO rankings. 

How is loading speed important?

Websites that load slower have a high attrition rate, meaning users leave the page quicker. When this happens too much, the algorithm you’re trying to hack for a search engine would disqualify the website. This will, in turn, lower your position.

What is a robots.txt file?

A robots.txt file helps search engines understand which page can be scanned, thus helping them in indexing it too. 

Why do I need to add alt text for my images?

Adding alt text to an image is important. Sometimes, your image doesn’t load, which is when it becomes easy for your users to check what the image is about through the alt text. It also helps the visually impaired who have screen readers to check what is on your page.

How many internal links should you have on each page?

There is no specific rule with regards to how many internal links you need to have on your page. An advice is to have more internal than external linking.

What are some popular SEO tools?

Some of the best SEO tools are Ahrefs, Yoast, Google Search Console, Moz, and SEMrush, among others.

Is SEO management a good career?

Yes, it is definitely a good career, as it has vast opportunities. An SEO manager can start by working on their own website to gain visibility and eventually do so for other people’s websites too.

Key Takeaways

• Factors affecting SEO: Content quality and quantity, website design, and speed
• SEO is more than keywords
• It is a good idea to optimize your images and website in general. 
• Spammy content can lead to a drop in your organic traffic.
• Metadata is an important part of SEO.

Conclusion

SEO is an all-encompassing term for functions that help with your website’s visibility and search engine rankings. Having a user-friendly website, backlinks, appropriate keywords, fast-loading web pages, are all part of the SEO gamut. We hope that these top SEO questions and answers helped you understand the basics of SEO. Also, remember to always raise SEO-related questions, as it will only help further your understanding of the subject.