In this comprehensive SEO tutorial for beginners, we will cover the essential fundamentals of Search Engine Optimisation. This tutorial is divided into 3 sections:
If you finish reading this entire guide…
You will understand SEO better than 90% of beginner internet marketers out there.
When you enter a keyword into any search engine, you instantly get results (webpages) that are closely related to or match your search query.
To an average user, this doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary. But to many businesses, being right in front of their customers every time they show interest in a related product or service can mean big bucks… and I mean steady, monthly recurring income.
First, what is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the process of optimising a website’s visibility on the organic search engine results pages (SERPs) for a target set of keywords/phrases.
The higher the position of a webpage on the organic search results pages, the more “visible” the page will be.
Related: What is SEO Marketing and How it Works
Search engines use algorithms to calculate how worthy a page is to a relevant search query. There are hundreds of factors (Google uses over 200 ranking factors) that are used to calculate the authority of a webpage, and PageRank (based on a scale of 0 – 10) is one of them.
Google assigns PageRank to every webpage it crawls. When another website links to your website, some of its PageRank is passed on to you. The more sites there are out there linking to you, the higher your PageRank will be and the more trustworthy your site will look to search engines.
Search engines use bots or “spiders” to crawl billions of pages across the web by following links they find on billions of pages around the web.
Search engines then store the information they collect in their index.
When a search query is entered, a search engine digs into its index for pages matching the user’s search query, then sorts and displays the most relevant results to the user.
The order in which the pages are displayed is calculated by search engine algorithms, taking into account hundreds of ranking factors. Each page is then given a ranking score.
To rank highly on the search engines, your site needs to score higher than all the other sites that are eligible to show up for a relevant search query.
However, be warned that if you engage in shady methods and try to deceive the search engines, you will get yourself burned. Google is very strict on sites that try to manipulate their rankings, and if you’re caught doing so, your site will get penalised and removed from the SRPs a.k.a. the “Google Slap”.
Every year, Google changes its algorithms some 500 times, that’s 1 – 2 times on average each day. Every once in a while, Google rolls out a major algorithm update, and when they do, many sites suffer a drop in rankings while many others enjoy a rise in rankings.
Well, just avoid doing Black-Hat SEO and you’ll be doing White-Hat SEO!
We will cover essential on-page SEO such as image optimisation, good internal linking structure, quality and uniqueness/originality of the content, and more later.
To give you a better picture of SEO, let’s pretend you’re building a new shopping mall.
Before constructing your shopping mall, you first have to take into consideration internal and external factors. Most importantly, you have to take into consideration what makes a great visitor experience.
Internally, what is your shopping mall about? Is the theme of your shopping mall unique? Are different shop themes categorised into different levels? Do visitors find it easy to find their way around the mall?
Externally, have you taken the steps to put the word out that your shopping mall exists? Is your shopping mall listed in map directories, roadside signboards, or brochure stands in neighbouring malls?
If you’ve taken good care of both internal and external factors, chances are your mall will be booming with business.
Similarly, before building your website, it’s important to evaluate both internal and external factors that influence its performance on search engines. A well-structured, user-friendly, and content-rich website has a higher chance of ranking well on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Have you clearly defined what your website is about? If you’re unsure of your site’s core purpose, search engines will struggle to understand it too. A well-defined focus helps search engines categorise and index your content accurately.
Is your website’s theme unique? Search engines prioritise original, high-quality content and penalise duplicate or scraped content. Ensuring your website offers distinctive, valuable insights increases its chances of ranking higher.
Are your content themes well-organised and interlinked? A website with a clean, structured hierarchy makes it easier for search engine crawlers to navigate and index pages efficiently. Organising content into logical categories and linking related pages improves both SEO and user experience.
Does your website provide easy navigation? Search engines assess how user-friendly a site is, and poor navigation can result in higher bounce rates, which negatively impact rankings. A well-structured site with a clear layout enhances user experience and search visibility.
Have you actively engaged with other webmasters and communities in your niche? Search engines value websites that contribute to their industry, as this helps establish authority and credibility.
Is your website attracting natural backlinks? If other reputable sites link to your content, search engines view your website as trustworthy and valuable. Earning high-quality inbound links boosts rankings and visibility.
Are you leveraging social media to share your content? High-quality, shareable content naturally attracts backlinks and increases online engagement. If your content is useful, engaging, and widely distributed, it has a greater chance of gaining organic traffic and backlinks.
If you’ve answered yes to these questions, you’re on the right track! Search engines are designed to enhance user experience, so websites that prioritise clarity, usability, and valuable content will always have an advantage. Keep focusing on delivering a seamless, user-centric experience, and your site will perform well in search rankings.
Having good knowledge on the topic of internal SEO and on-page ranking factors will help you better organise your site structure (arranging different categories according to specific themes) to deliver a great user experience, construct a good internal linking structure for better user navigation, and make your site more engaging, resulting in higher conversion rates.
Claim and optimise your Google My Business (GMB) profile to appear in local search results. Ensure your business details (NAP – Name, Address, Phone) are consistent across local directories like Google Maps, Yelp, and local business directories.
Encourage customer reviews on Google and other platforms, as positive reviews contribute to better local rankings. Also, use schema markup (LocalBusiness schema) to improve search engine understanding of your business details.
Protecting your online reputation is getting more and more important these days as more and more consumers search for brand names on search engines instead of just entering the direct URL, i.e., “brandname.com”, and the last thing you want them to see is a bad review of your company ranking above your company website.
Read: What is an SEO Strategy and Why You Need an Integrated Marketing Strategy?
There are 4 main steps for internal SEO – Keyword Research, Organising Site Structure, Constructing Content, and On-Page Optimisation. Let’s go through each step one by one.
Before diving into each step of internal SEO, it’s helpful to note that Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have transformed how we execute on-page optimisation. From keyword analysis to content writing and internal linking, AI can assist in creating user-focused, high-ranking web pages faster and more strategically.
AI can be leveraged to streamline various aspects of your content optimisation process. It can generate first drafts of meta titles and descriptions, saving time and providing a solid starting point. AI is also useful for analysing and summarising competitor content, helping you quickly identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities.
Additionally, it can recommend appropriate schema markup based on your page content to enhance search engine visibility. Beyond structure and SEO, AI tools can assess readability, sentiment, and clarity, ensuring your content is engaging, user-friendly, and aligned with your brand tone.
The key is to use AI as a co-pilot, not a replacement. Always revise outputs to reflect your unique voice, authority, and brand positioning.
When starting, you want to look out for as many long-tail keywords as you can. Long-tail keywords (more words) are easier to rank higher as compared to generic keywords (fewer words). Long-tail keywords are also more specific to a user’s search query and are more likely to result in a conversion.
Start with a generic theme. For example, your list of keywords can be expanded from “Website Design” to “E-commerce Web Design”, “Affordable Web Design”, etc…
Use the Google Keyword Planner to conduct your SEO keyword research.
If you’re building a brand new site, keyword research should be the first thing you do before populating your site with content. If you’re already running a site, it is also good practice to constantly expand your list of target keywords.
Keyword research can help you discover what consumers are searching for. When you know what your consumers are looking for, you can better design your content to answer their queries by speaking to them in their language.
For example, if you know people are searching for the exact key phrase “How do you make a website”, you can create an article titled “How to Make/Create Your Website”.
You can develop a variety of content ideas just by going through your list of keywords.
You want to build a long list of keywords before you start constructing and organising your articles.
Referencing the above list of keywords, a web design firm will have a good idea of which keywords to optimise for and how to structure their website (SEO Siloing). i.e.
Web design packages
=> custom web design
=> affordable web design
If your site has already been up and running for some time, you may want to sign up for Google Analytics (if you haven’t already) and check which keywords your current visitors have been using to get to your site. These keywords in your analytics report are likely the keywords that you are already ranking well for, so you want to put more focus on them first.
Once you’ve identified these keywords, the next step is to focus your internal optimisation efforts on these keywords in the next 3 steps — organising site structure, constructing content, and on-page optimisation.
AI tools like ChatGPT, Frase, and SurferSEO can help you discover long-tail keyword opportunities beyond what traditional tools offer. Instead of relying solely on Google Keyword Planner, you can use AI to:
Tools like AlsoAsked and AnswerThePublic use AI to generate visual maps of user questions that can inform content planning.
Remember the shopping mall example? Let’s say you love electronic products and your focus is on building the largest electronics shopping centre in town. Comparing your shopping mall, which is a specialised electronics centre with a curated list of electronics tenants, to a downtown mall with a few electronic retail shops amongst hundreds of other tenants, chances are your electronics centre will stand out in consumers’ minds whenever they think of buying any electronic products.
Similarly, Google and other search engines like Yahoo! and Bing give preference to theme-specific sites when deciding which results to show for a relevant user search query. But if you’ve already built a multi-themed site and want to rank for theme-specific search terms, it’s not the end of the world.
As mentioned, Google, Yahoo!, and Bing favour sites that are theme-specific. Sites with clear structures, relevant high-quality content, and written in clean and neat code (eg, no flash, minimal JavaScript, use HTML for most of their site) also tend to do very well in the search engines.
Therefore, it is safe to assume that you do not need to have only one topic on any one site to rank well for a theme-specific keyword.
Another scenario would be a box of macarons.
1st Scenario: A box of green, brown, and red macarons mixed.
In this scenario, search engines will likely classify this site as “A box of Macarons”.
2nd Scenario: Green macarons, brown macarons, and ed macarons all separated into different boxes.
In the second scenario, search engines will likely classify these 3 sites as:
3rd Scenario: A box of green macarons, brown macarons, and red macarons organised into separate sections.
In the third scenario, search engines can clearly distinguish between the 3 different themes of macarons and index them according to their specific themes.
A silo is a group of theme-specific subjects or topics in a website.
AI tools like ChatGPT, MarketMuse, or HubSpot’s AI planner can support your content strategy by identifying logical topic clusters based on a core keyword. They can also map internal linking suggestions to reinforce a silo structure and evaluate whether your content thoroughly addresses a topic or if there are gaps that need filling.
For example, if your main silo is “Affordable Web Design”, an AI tool might recommend child pages such as “Affordable Web Design for Small Businesses”, “Budget-Friendly E-Commerce Designs”, and “Low-Cost Web Design vs DIY Builders”. This approach not only builds thematic depth but also aligns with Google’s preference for topical authority and structured relevance.
Instead of rigid SEO siloing, modern SEO relies on topic clusters and internal linking to improve content relevance.
Topic Clusters involve creating a central “pillar page” that covers a broad topic, with multiple “cluster pages” linking back to it, each covering subtopics in-depth.
For example, if you have a digital marketing blog, your “pillar page” could be ‘SEO Basics’, and your cluster pages might include ‘On-Page SEO Guide’, ‘How to Do Keyword Research’, and ‘Link-Building Best Practices’.
Above example: How a dating niche content site organises its site structure.
Reference:
Bruce Clay on SEO Siloing – https://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo/
You also want to create an HTML or XML sitemap and submit it to the search engines. It’s recommended to include an HTML sitemap for your visitors to refer to and an XML sitemap to submit to the search engines.
You can create your sitemap using free sitemap generator tools like https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
To submit your sitemap to Google, you will need a Google Webmaster Tools account.
What are landing pages?
Landing pages are the pages that your visitors directly land on when they click on a search result. Your landing pages must capture your visitors’ attention and lead them to the inner pages of your site.
If your landing page doesn’t answer the search query or isn’t compelling enough, and the majority of visitors landing on your landing page click the “back” button and go back to the search results, you’d likely see your rankings dipping over time.
There are three steps you should follow in order when constructing your landing pages:
1) Plan your article using your researched keywords.
2) Write your article, keeping your keywords in mind.
3) Insert your keywords where appropriate. In the title tag, content body, image alt tags, and subheadings.
Once you’ve completed steps 1 to 3, you’re ready for step 4 of the internal SEO process.
Refer to the above diagram when performing on-page SEO, or SEOgoodguy’s Make a Blogpost SEO Friendly article.
Google’s Core Web Vitals are essential ranking factors that measure user experience through three main metrics:
To improve Core Web Vitals, optimise images, use lazy loading, enable caching, and ensure mobile responsiveness. Google’s Mobile-First Indexing means your site must perform well on mobile devices to rank higher.
What is external SEO all about? External SEO, more commonly known as off-page SEO, is link building/marketing. It is the process of acquiring the most relevant backlinks from as many relevant high authority sites to achieve and maintain high rankings on the SRPs. A relevant backlink is an inbound link from one of the pages (with relevant meta information such as the title, description, etc.) of another similar-topic website.
To plan and execute a successful link-building campaign for your site, you first need to understand that link building is a long and tedious process. One that requires skillfulness and extensive knowledge on the topic of SEO.
However, if you persevere, stick to white-hat rules of SEO, animal-proof (Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird) your SEO campaigns by staying updated, you will eventually taste the fruit of success.
Before we begin the link-building process, let’s first go through and understand some fundamental concepts.
A backlink is an inbound or incoming link (hyperlink) to a particular website, referenced from another website. Search engines rely on links to crawl the web and evaluate the authority and relevance of millions of websites.
An anchor text is the text you click on that takes you to a referenced URL. For example, this sentence is an anchor text.
It is recommended that the anchor texts of inbound links be diverse (mix of target and non-target keywords, brand mentions, synonyms of target keywords, non-related words, etc.) and not all “exact match” to the target keyword that a site is aiming to rank highly for on the SRPs.
A link profile with the majority of inbound links that have exact-match anchor texts looks very unnatural, and search engines will devalue these inbound links or even de-index the site.
All inbound links pointing to a website’s main domain (www.example.com) as well as its internal pages contribute to the domain authority.
Getting a backlink from a high domain authority site is always valuable. Sometimes, that is all you need to get on the first page of Google for a target key phrase.
All three factors show how external sources like high-quality articles, directories, and websites can impact your website’s ranking. By gaining links from high-authority websites (articles, directories, or niche websites), the target site (the “Shoe Website”) can improve its search engine ranking and visibility.
In essence, off-page SEO revolves around building a website’s authority and trustworthiness through quality external backlinks, which is exactly what this visual is illustrating. Each of the three elements (website, article, directory) contributes to the SEO ranking of the “Shoe Website.”
Sites that receive a lot of quality, relevant inbound links are more trusted than sites that receive lots of inbound links from low-quality, spammy sites.
Getting a link directly from a very trusted site such as Entrepreneur.co,m will increase your site’s TrustRank tremendously. Obtaining a second-tier, third-tier, or fourth-tier link will also increase your site’s TrustRank, but the value starts to drop the further it goes.
Let’s have a look at the following scenario:
Your website provides financial consultation and you are not able to get a link directly from Entrepreneur.com. However, you’re able to obtain a third-tier link from one of the websites that Entrepreneur.com links to.
Entrepreneur.com => Financesite.com => Bizservices.com => Yourfinancialsite.com
100% TrustRank => 50% TrustRank => 25% TrustRank => 12.5% TrustRank
The above figures are made up and only used to demonstrate the point.
If you are getting inbound links from an external page (Page A) and it is linking to Page B and Page C, which are both relevant to your site’s content topic, this is a strong signal to search engines that your site is relevant to that particular topic.
The page title should summarise the page’s content topic. Or rather, the main content topic should reflect the title of the page. Search engines use the page title as an important ranking factor when it comes to displaying relevant search results to the user.
Similar to the above, the Relevant Page Title ranking factor, an inbound link from a page with a relevant content topic to your site will increase your relevancy score.
Anchor text—the clickable text in a hyperlink—is an important ranking signal that search engines use to understand the relevance of a linked page. Before the 2012 Google Penguin Update, keyword-rich anchor text was widely believed to be a strong ranking factor, leading many webmasters to over-optimise their inbound links by using exact-match keywords excessively.
However, the Penguin update penalised websites that manipulated rankings through over-optimised keyword anchor text, causing many sites to experience significant ranking drops.
To avoid penalties and ensure healthy link-building practices, anchor text should be diverse and natural. Instead of using only exact-match keywords, aim for a mix of different types of anchor text to create a balanced backlink profile.
For example, a real estate website should use a variety of anchor text types:
Having a few exact-match anchor texts from high-authority domains can still be beneficial, but they should not dominate your backlink profile. The key to effective anchor text optimisation is balance and natural usage—it should feel organic as if someone were mentioning your brand in a conversation rather than deliberately inserting keywords.
By following these best practices, you can improve your SEO rankings without risking penalties, ensuring your link-building strategy remains effective and compliant with Google’s evolving algorithm updates.
The location of the backlink is also an important factor. A footer link isn’t worth as much as a sidebar link, and a sidebar link isn’t worth as much as an editorial link in the main content section.
How long a page has been in Google’s index is also a ranking factor. Creating a website is getting much simpler. There has been an increasing number of fly-by-night sites, and many webpages come and go frequently. Therefore, the older the page, the more trustworthy it is (provided it is frequently updated).
Similarly, the older the backlink, the more TrustRank it gets.
Dofollow links are regular links without the rel=“nofollow” attribute in the HTML code, and they allow PageRank or Link Juice to be passed on to the linked page.
Example of a regular dofollow link (allows PageRank to be passed on):
<a href=“http://example.com/”>anchor text</a>
Example of a nofollow link (doesn’t allow PageRank to be passed on):
<a href=“http://example.com/” rel=“nofollow”>anchor text</a>
While you’re in the process of acquiring dofollow links, you also want to obtain nofollow links.
Although you won’t get any PageRank from a nofollow link, the main reason you also want to include nofollow links in your link profile is that search engines can crawl a nofollow link and read its anchor text.
Even though you don’t get any PageRank flow, you’d still be awarded points for relevancy. Not to mention a link profile with thousands of dofollow inbound links and without a single nofollow backlink looks a little fishy.
You want to acquire as many backlinks from other sites that are closely related to the topic of your site and your site’s internal pages.
You also want a diverse and natural-looking link profile;
Links from different types of sites (blogs, news sites, .edu & .gov sites, forums, directories, social media, etc) with natural linking patterns and a good mix of dofollow and nofollow links. (No heavily keyword-optimised anchor texts!)
External SEO is link building and creating social signals for search engines to determine the authority of your site as well as the context of your site. Here’s a guide to SEO link building you should check out.
Do be careful, however, not to violate any of Google’s Content Quality Guidelines or participate in link schemes (a.k.a. Black-hat SEO) while in the “joyous” process of link building. As long as you avoid doing any Black-hat SEO, you’re most probably doing White-hat SEO.
If you’d like to learn practical techniques on how to search engine optimise your website internally (on-page SEO), as well as externally (off-page SEO), you may want to attend our hands-on SEO course in Singapore.
I hope this beginner’s SEO tutorial has given you a better understanding of the topic of SEO as a whole. To have a more holistic digital marketing landscape, we cover the core modules of Digital Marketing that include:
The completion of these modules will lead the learners to attain a Certified Digital Marketing Strategist Certificate. Please also feel free to browse our complete list of digital marketing courses held in-person in Singapore or online.
Receive the latest blog articles right into your inbox.
Dylan Sun is the Founder of Equinet Academy, a SkillsFuture Singapore WSQ-Accredited Digital Marketing training organisation. Passionate in all aspects of Digital Marketing and SEO, he extends his passion to helping people implement effective digital strategies to their businesses. Follow his blog at Equinet Academy to learn more about Digital Marketing.
This blogpost entails useful SEO tools that are free of cost.
Reader Interactions
41 Comments
I have read this all SEO tutorial and i found this such a valuable tutorial. Thank you very much.
Hello Dylan,
I appreciate your skills, this article is to much helpful for me. Although i was searching new SEO updates which clear my doubts.
Could you please suggest me the new off page activities which should need to do for website ranking method.
Regards
Astro Raj
http://srastrovastuconsultant.com/
nice
Awesome. A must-have for beginners.
Great article… Very understandable and systematical approach of writing and explaining. I find it very helpful.
Please suggest some stuff to learn about dofollow and nofollow links.
Very Good…..!!!
Excellent search engine optimization guide for the beginners. All the content is very unique. Good work Dylan Sun.
Manshu Ydoxy
Seo Specialist
http://ydoxy.com/
Really helpful to us.thanks
I like this tut
Great Tutorial of SEO explained in a single page! Hatsoff
these were implemented on my site and ranked better.
Excellent guide for SEO beginners.Thank you so much.
Its really Understandable & easy to Learn about SEO.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for explaining SEO where I can actually understand it!! This is helpful for a beginner!
Thanks for sharing fruitful information about on page seo.
I have read this all SEO tutorial and I found this such a valuable tutorial.
Thank you very much.
Very nice tutorial for SEO beginner.
Thanks to share .
Excellent Article, Dylan!
Very useful indeed.
Thanks for being generous with your ideas.
Equinet Academy is truly impressive!
Thank you very much for this piece of info. I have always wanted to rank for long tail keywords and i have found all I think i should know in this post.
Thank you for the article Dylan it is useful for my further job training.
Very well researched and written an in-depth article which will help a beginner to expert to consider some important tasks before asking Google for website/blog rankings.
great article, by this article i have got clear idea on seo.
Good information for SEO beginners. Keep it up!
Thanks for explaining SEO, It is really Understandable & easy to Learn about SEO where I can actually understand it!! This is helpful for a beginner! Thank you, Dylan.
Thanks for this amazing SEO guide for beginners.. I really love your post.. and it also help me to do seo in right way, here i got some new tricks..
Thanks .. Keep updating with such helpful blogs.
very informative for biginer
Thanks
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a combination of approaches that makes a website easier to find through search engines like Google and Yahoo. Search friendly websites are the ones you see on the first three pages of search results, and by just implementing search engine optimization basics you can greatly increase the chance of your website getting there.
Although there are ways of applying SEO at any time throughout the lifecycle of a website, we suggest thinking about SEO from the earliest stages of development. Otherwise, you might run into complications that make your website easier to rebuild completely than to fix. If you want to know what does SEO friendly mean, continue reading this article.
If you’re new to SEO, or if it isn’t your primary focus, you might be neglecting tactics that will really move the needle.
this is a very good topic for begginers that are want to take seo as her careers.very good thankyou
I applied some of your steps on our website Smoothstack, the result was really great. 😀 The guide you shared was really helpful and I hope you could continue creating great SEO article guidelines. Thank you
These steps are best for optimizing a website for search engine in a proper way. Thanks for sharing.
I am a beginner in the domain and a step by step SEO guide like this helped me a lot to understand about SEO. I applied some of your tips here and they really helped me. Thank you so much for sharing such a wonderful article with us, keep sharing such articles.
Thanks for sharing the knowledge on SEO, this is very useful for beginner bloggers like me.
Hello Dylan.
Superb Work…
I want to ask one question that Is there any Google Algorithm update related to website content. Because my website ranking suddenly drops. I searched for it but does not get a suitable answer to this. Can you help me out…
Waiting for your reply.
Thanks
Thanks for this amazing SEO guide for beginners. I love your post—it helps me do SEO the right way and I’ve learned new tricks. Keep updating with such helpful blogs. Thanks!
Trackbacks
[…] Here’s a nice visual representation of essential on-page SEO factors, courtesy of Equinet Academy’s SEO tutorial: […]