Thumbnail-Step-By-Step-SEO-Guide-Ren-Hao

A Step-By-Step SEO Guide To Do SEO (Ultimate Beginner Guide)

A Step-By-Step SEO Guide To Do SEO (Ultimate Beginner Guide)

Updated 10 September 2022

Thumbnail-Step-By-Step-SEO-Guide-Ren-Hao

Learn How To Start SEO in 7 Easy Steps

How to Do SEO the Right Way

It may seem simple, yet you’re still not seeing great results. The truth is, many people think SEO isn’t worth it because they don’t realize its true power. Others claim it’s too hard to get results.

I was curious, so I dug deeper. As it turns out, they wanted quick results with minimal effort. But let’s be honest—is that really possible?

The Power of Google in Driving Traffic

  Let us look at this 2022 latest data, it shows 92.49% all web traffic coming from Google, it proves how much value Google can bring to us if you know how to do it. You have to look at it seriously if you have a website right now.

Why Mastering the Basics Matters

I know what you’re thinking. If you believe basic SEO isn’t enough to rank, think again. Ask yourself: do you truly understand SEO, or are you just chasing high search volumes?

Worse yet, are you using unethical tactics? These could lead to issues in Google Search Console—or worse, a Google penalty. In the end, mastering the fundamentals is the key to long-term success.

A Step-By-Step SEO Guide To Do SEO-Infographics-Ren-Hao

1. What is SEO

Let’s break it down simply—SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” In short, it’s the process of improving your website’s visibility when people search for products, services, or keywords related to your business. Search engines like Google and Bing use SEO to determine rankings. The better your website ranks, the more attention your brand gets. This makes it more appealing to both potential and existing customers.

Now, after reading How Do Search Engines Work? Beginner to In-Depth Guide, you’ll have a solid understanding of SEO. You’ll learn the fundamentals and how ranking signals influence search results. This will give you a strong foundation to start optimizing your website.

As we know, SEO is essential for ranking a webpage in Google search results. It involves boosting hundreds of signals to improve visibility in organic search results.

1.1 What Are The Benefits From SEO

a. SEO increase brand awareness

Compared to other search engines, Google has become the most popular “Search Place.” Whenever we want to find something, we go straight to Google. Do you do the same?

Branding is more important than ever. Most of the time, we choose products based on the brand. But why does this happen? Does it mean a product isn’t good if it doesn’t have a brand?

Think about it—why do we prefer branded products, especially for expensive items?

Is it because we trust the brand and believe it offers value and quality? Exactly! That’s why branding matters, whether you’re a start-up or a big company.

Now, when you combine SEO with branding, your website can appear on SERPs (search engine results pages). This boosts brand awareness and attracts more organic leads—all without spending a dime on ads.

Featured Snippets
Recipe-Review-Rich-Snippets
Recipe Rich Snippets

b. SEO leads to more traffic

People tend to click on the first few positions in search results. That’s why the higher your website ranks, the more traffic you get. According to a 2020 study, that most click first organic result is 28.5% and the Second place is only 15.7%, which is half of the position #1, we can see that the percentage decreases steadily thereafter.

  Not only that, it showed a huge difference between position number #1 and number #10, which is more than ten times higher CTR here.  So, by following this study, we can see that having SEO on your website, it is not only can get a higher position, but it is also getting you more traffic to your website.

c. SEO leads to higher conversion rate (Search Intent)

You’ve got a lot of traffic—great job! But have you noticed another issue? Your conversion rate is low.

Didn’t you start doing SEO to increase conversions? The goal isn’t just traffic—it’s getting more visitors into your marketing funnel and turning them into customers. Isn’t that what you wanted?

Search-Intent-Funnel

If you understand what users are looking for when they type in targeted keywords, you can attract more valuable traffic. By designing content that matches their needs, you create a stronger funnel on your website—leading to higher conversions. Doesn’t that sound better than your current situation? What do you think?

Many people overlook search intent and simply focus on using keywords. But now that you know its importance, why not give it a try?

To dive deeper, check out User Search Intent to refine your keyword research and content strategy—helping your funnel achieve higher conversion rates.

d. SEO leads to consistent and sustainable traffic (Unlike Paid Traffic)

SEO offers both consistency and passive traffic, unlike paid ads or social media traffic. But why is that? Let’s break it down.

Why SEO Traffic Is More Sustainable Than Paid Ads or Social Media

First, paid traffic works on a simple formula—what you spend determines how many people see your content. Once you stop running ads, your visibility disappears. Unless your brand is already well-known, you won’t get impressions or clicks. Paid ads are great for quick testing, but they don’t provide long-term results.

Next, social media traffic depends heavily on fresh content. If you don’t have a solid strategy to grow your social media presence, it’s tough to maintain steady traffic. Platforms prioritize new content, making it challenging to achieve sustainable, long-term results. Would you agree?

On the other hand, SEO traffic is different. Since people consistently search for the same topics month after month, Google traffic remains stable. Once your site ranks well, it continues bringing in passive, sustainable traffic—as long as you keep optimizing. This is why SEO can provide steady growth over time.

e. SEO leads to “Free Traffic”

SEO vs. Paid Traffic: Why SEO is “Free Traffic”

Unlike paid traffic (such as Google Ads), SEO brings in free, organic traffic. This is a game-changer because ranking for competitive keywords through ads can be costly due to their high value.

However, if you leverage SEO effectively, you can target those same keywords without spending a fortune. Not only will this save you money on ads, but it will also help you build sustainable, long-term traffic for your brand—without paying for every click. That’s why SEO traffic is truly “free.”

How a Blogging Website Achieved $300K/Month with SEO

Let’s take a look at a successful blogging website. Over three years, the owner built massive traffic and keyword value. Today, his highest monthly income exceeds $300K—all thanks to SEO. He uses multiple strategies to generate revenue through his blog. You can watch his video here.

Of course, ranking blog content on Google isn’t entirely free. It requires SEO skills, strategy, and continuous improvement. However, compared to paid ads, SEO is a much cheaper long-term investment. This real case study shows just how powerful Google SEO can be.

2. SEO Fundamentals

Why Google Needs to Find Your Website

Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps you rank higher, build brand awareness, and drive traffic. But if Google doesn’t know your site exists, it simply can’t rank it.

While Google will eventually find your website, the process can be slow—especially if you have few backlinks and no internal links. To speed things up, check out SEO Link Building Strategies and Resources (Complete Guide), which covers effective outreach and backlink-building techniques.

Submit Your Sitemap to Google for Faster Indexing

One of the best ways to get discovered faster is by submitting your website sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC). This ensures your site becomes searchable sooner, helping potential visitors find you more easily.

If you’re unsure where to start, we offer a FREE SEO Website Audit (Value: $499). Get a clear roadmap on how to optimize your website, fix SEO issues, and improve rankings. [Get Your Free Audit Here].

Haven’t Submitted Your Site to Google Search Console Yet?

No worries! Google Search Console is completely free. All you need to do is sign up for an account, submit your sitemap, and you’re good to go. In the next section, I’ll walk you through the exact steps to do this.

3. Setting Up SEO

Before you start to do SEO for your own website, whether for a business or your own blogging business, if you do not have a website yet, go BlueHost.

Step 1: Web Hosting Selection

BlueHost is the Best Self-Hosted WordPress platform for new bloggers and business owners who want to have their own website of choice.  It just needs only one click and automatically installs WordPress from your hosting dashboard to start a blog and own website.  It is easy to use.

Step 2: Select Theme

The first time you go to your dashboard, you need to select the theme first.

You can follow what it says step by step until you are done.

Step 3: Add SEO Plugin

A plugin is essential and there are sets of tools to integrate your website and extend its features.  When you are starting a website or blog, it is important to choose the best ones for SEO and site speed.

There are 4 best Plugins I suggest you need to add them to your website.

Elementor Pro is a WordPress landing page builder, it let you easy to manage your website like the design part.  

They also have a free version of Elementor, but if you want to have a function and template, the Pro version can take you to the next level.

Smush compresses all of your images and screenshots so your pages load faster.

WP Rocket is an all-in-one website speed plugin that can do everything from minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, integrating with your CDN, reducing database bloat, and more.

For me, I’ve tried many other speed tools, and if you want better and more convenient control, WP Rocket is your best choice.

You can get started with WP Rocket for $49/year.  If you want to try others, I suggest you W3 Total Cache.

Yoast SEO is one type of SEO Plugin to help to do SEO like Sitemap, Meta title, description, Schema and so on.  The free version is available.

4. Create Content

Congrats! You’re starting the content creation process.

First, blogs are no longer just about writing and hoping for traffic. Today, they are Google-driven websites that rely on organic search traffic. To succeed, you must ensure search engines understand your content.

Let me share some helpful tips for writing your blog. Focus on one main keyword per blog and place it strategically:

  1. Include your keyword in your permanent URL whenever possible.

  2. Include the keyword in the meta title and meta descriptions.

  3. Add keywords to the first 150 words of content.

  4. Include keywords in your headings (H1, H2, H3…).

  5. Add keywords throughout your blog content whenever the sentence is suitable. (Include semantic keyword) 

You can see my example below.

Once you have done your keyword research and have your top 10 focus keywords ready, you can start writing now. You can learn more about How To Do SEO Keyword Research (Step By Step Beginner Guide) for a more in-depth understanding of SEO keyword research methods and what kinds of content we should write in our Blog.

Not only that, for a business website or SEO blogging business, you can add additional content to your blog to give your readers a deep understanding and easy to absorb what you share in your blog, it can include audio, video, photos, infographics and other types of visual content perform best and keep readers engaged.

4.1 Writing Blog That Match User Search Intent

If you know what content is popular and keep writing them.  It is good, but do you know how to get the traffic to convert to your customer and you make money from the traffic and, at the same time, you can use your knowledge through content to help them grow.  Have you thought of this before?

  Not only that, given what users want to see when they search for your target keyword online is important instead of keeping writing content that focuses on keyword only, I will suggest you get to know first what content is included in search intent before doing keyword research, you can check at How To Do SEO Keyword Research (Step By Step Beginner Guide), it will help you grow much faster and work high efficiency when you are planning your content strategy.

Let’s see an example here:

In this target keyword, we can see the “how to get loss fat” keyword, the search results show more about how to fast and prove ways to lose fat.

How-To-Get-Fat-Lose-Ren-Hao

So, avoid writing headlines like “5 Ways to Lose Fat” or “I Lost 10kg in 2 Months—Here’s How.” That’s not exactly what users are searching for. If you check the search results, you’ll see many headlines include phrases like “Proven Methods” or “Scientifically Proven Tips.” These terms make them sound more authoritative and trustworthy.

Instead, focus on creating solutions that match reader intent. This approach helps you stand out because you’re offering real value rather than just a generic claim.

Of course, quality content alone isn’t enough to rank well. To boost SEO traffic, keyword rankings, and conversions, you need to understand SEO strategy, technical techniques, and funnel design.

Additionally, you can analyze the title tags of top-ranking content. By reverse-engineering the search, you’ll discover extra terms that improve your headlines and SEO performance.

You can have a spreadsheet for tracking these data in your future posts:

  1. Target Keyword

  2. Keyword Difficult

  3. Blog Title

  4. Monthly Search Volume

  5. Search Intent

  6. Priority

  7. Internal Link Building (if you want to record)

4.2 4 Core Page

There are 4 main pages I suggest you must have on your website.

1. Home

 This is your main URL here (yourdomain.com)

On this page, you must clearly communicate your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). If visitors don’t understand your USP within two seconds or less, they might leave and never return.

The good home page should contain:

  1. Own image with headline and sub-headline
  2. Small section to tell the reader who you are.

  3. The call-to-action button to take readers to your funnel or collect data like the email list opt-in form.

  4. Internal links to important pages’ content to make it easy to navigate around your site and drive more organic traffic to other sites.

2. About

You should let the reader know more about your story including who you are, what you stand for, and your past story transformation.  In this section, you need to connect with reader on a deeper level.

  You should include these on your about page:

  1. Who you are?

  2. Why will you start to do business/ in your current area?

  3. What struggles did you meet?

  4. How do you solve them?

  5. Your success story

  6. Call-to-action

 

You can go here to see my about page.

3. Blog

It should have a blog post section, this is a suggestion for you if you are developing your first new website. It will be easy for you to design the website structure.

4. Contact

You can have a simple contact form for people who want to get in touch with you.

Please make sure the user receives a confirmation email after the user has successfully submitted the form, which can be as simple as “Thank you very much for contacting us. We will get back to you as soon as possible.”

5. Template Blog

You need a blog template as a fundamental to start a blog to help you write efficiently.

It should be like this:

  1. The font is black with a white background. (Reference)
  2. Your text should bot wider than 850px, it will be making it difficult to read.
  3. Proper line spacing and no more than 3 lines of text before a paragraph break. (reference)

5. How To Do SEO

We can differentiate SEO into 3 sections, which are On Page, Off Page and Technical SEO.  We will talk about 5 more important things you should know when you do SEO basics no matter whether it is a page or post. (No 1-4 is On-Page SEO)

1. Meta Title

This is one of the On-Page SEO factors, this section will let the user know what is your post/ page content inside after they key in the keyword in the search bar and get the result.  If you keep optimizing it and keep improving it, it can affect your search results Click Through Rate. (CTR)

  It can be the same or title word with your heading in content, be sure you title much attractive and same with what you say in content after they click into your website.

  In this part, you are suggested to write less than 60 characters will be the best display mode on the Google search engines results page. (we call search results)

  Remember to include your targeted keyword ideas inside.

2. Meta Description

Meta-Description-SEO-Ren-Hao

A meta description is another On-Page SEO factor here, in this part you will let the user know deeply what actually your page/ post content talk about, if you are good at persuasion, it may help you to increase CTA in search results.

 In this part, you are suggested to write less than 160 characters will be the best display mode in the Google search engine result page. (we call search results)

  Also, remember to include your targeted keyword ideas inside.

3. Heading

Meta-Heading-Ren-Hao

  Here, you need to have a clear arrangement for your content heading (H1, H2, H3…), to make Google crawler know what is your title and subtitle.  It will be good for your On-Page SEO part.

4. Image

Image-Optimization

For all of the images you upload to the website, please compress them before use in order to make your website load speed much faster to improve SEO performance and increase user experience.

  You can go here to do a compressed image, tinypng.

5. Submit Sitemap

 Once you have done your On-Page SEO, remember to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.  To let your website can much quickly show on Google.

  You can learn more about The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO in 2022 (Step-By-Step Guide) here to go to more details about the On-Page SEO Section.

Start a blog/ Website now with Bluehost and get 63% off your hosting plan ($2.95/month).

Start a blog/ Website now with Bluehost and get 63% off your hosting plan ($2.95/month).

6. Set Up Google Analytics (GA) Integration

Google-Analytics-User-Interface

By setting up GA, you can learn more details about what’s happening on your site, such as how many users visit your site, total traffic, channels to acquire users and so on. You can go to Google Analytics Settings for a step-by-step installation.

    As a beginner Google SEO Specialist or if you just want to start your own website SEO, I recommend you to master the GA user Interface and its settings in order to help you grow faster in the future.

6. Promote Them

Promote your content, Why?  Let us assume you have the best content in the world (actually nothing is best, always has better things come out), you do not have search volume, which means nobody knows it, so that is no value for your content, is not it?

  Promoting content means getting the outreach link building, also we call it backlink.  I suggest you use Guest Post to start.

  Link like the currency In the internet world, the more quality link you have, the more Google will take you seriously to get ranked higher.

6.1 Guest Post

I can say that Guest Post is one of the best ways and a good start to promote your blog.  It includes cold email outreach and relationship building.  It is one of the link-building strategies.

Guest Post Process - Ren-Hao-SEO

  Remember, it is about value exchange, Think about this, what you can provide to others to get a chance to do the guest post, it can provide value to their readers, as a partnership with the site owner to help them to get a backlink when you publish a guest post in

  Guest posting is a great way to build your website authority and brand authority, meet other bloggers and get exposure related to your niche and get backlinks on various forums.

  You can learn more about link building at SEO Link Building Strategies and Resources (Complete Guide), you will know other methods to build backlink and how to start it.

6.1.1 How We Find The Guest Posting Opportunity

At here, I will share with you how to easily find guest posting opportunities. The following contains two strategies.

1. Google Search

Just replace the following “Keyword” with your industry keyword.

        a. keyword “write for us”
        b. keyword “submit a guest post”
        c. keyword “guest post”

Example:

Your industry is about fitness content, you can find, fitness “write for us”.  Then, you will get the search result below and you can see many of the websites are looking for someone to help them to write a guest post.

Write-For-Us-Guest-Post-Opportunity-SEO-Ren-Hao
2. Find Sites that Already Have Guest Post

You can find the author of your industry guest post and search for their name on Google, then ask for a guest post on a site that has already been posted.

  Just search Guest post authors name +author.

Example:

You find Adam Enfroy author, like I share just now, he is a full-time blogger, and his highest monthly income is now over $300K/ month.  

  You will get the search result below and you can ask for a guest post opportunity if the site is your target site.

6.2 Link Building

There are many other ways that can help you to build the link.  Besides the guest post,  I will share with you the another 3 strategies link-building ways to let you easy to start.

  Before I go to that part, please make sure your content is a “linkable asset”, which means your blog post content needs unique and high quality, I believe this is the basic to start outreach link building.

  To take your blog to next level, you need to add other visual elements to your content such as infographics, videos, statistics, case studies and so on.

Here are 3 strategies link building ways:

1. Broken Link Building

Use SEO Tools like Ahrefs to find out the blogs in your niche audience with broken link, you send them an email to tell their link is broken and you have better resource option. This tactic is great because you’re helping bloggers fix their 404 errors and (hopefully) get links at the same time.

2. Link reclamation

Enter your blog’s URL into the Ahrefs Content Browser tool to find instances where your brand is mentioned but not linked to.  Here you can contact the author of the post, thank them for the mention, and ask them if they can add a link.

3. Link partnership

Form relationships with other bloggers in your niche to get links in their guest posts and vice versa.

 You can learn more details at SEO Link Building Strategies and Resources (Complete Guide).

7. How To Track SEO Success

Build, Measure, Learn

Nothing is perfect, we need to keep improving them to get better.

  You need to start with a simple post first, let Google index your content and improve them later, then learn from the data and keep optimizing them. Please do not wait until you think your content is perfect before uploading, it is a waste of time waiting for Google’s crawlers to crawl and update your content.

We need to use some analytics tools to analyse our content to improve them, we can use Google Analytics (GA) & Google Search Console (GSC) to know how our blog is going and what next step we should go.

  By using Google provide Free Tool (GA and GSC), we not only can know what keyword phrases are beneficial for ourselves and we can track keyword rankings immediately, but it also shows know which page is performed better than others and other interesting stats. 

  For example, you can go to the Google Analytics dashboard and to view metrics such as total traffic, new and return visitors, the average time in your site, total page view, most visited pages and so on.  These metrics help you to improve your SEO performance.

  If you are using SEO Tool now, Ahrefs is the best Search Engine Optimization Tools (SEO Tools) to help you to track your site and post ranking and inbound link.  You can view the current keyword you are ranking for and which site are linking to you and a lot more.  You can have a try by yourself.

Summary (How To Do SEO)

Finally, you are here! As you know, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is easy to start but if you want to have a better result, you need to keep learning from data and you have to improve your SEO Knowledge.  

  So, you have to start SEO right now and do not wait, it wastes time to wait for crawlers to crawl your website to index in Google.  Rome is not built in a day, keep learning and improving! I think content strategy, outreach link building, and monetization are quite difficult parts if you do not know how to do them.  

Enter your name and email here to get more SEO knowledge sharing with you, it is free!

 Let us recap the 7 steps to start doing SEO:

  1. What is SEO & What Are The Benefits Of SEO
  2. SEO Fundamentals
  3. Setting Up SEO
  4. Create Content
  5. How To Do SEO
  6. Promote Them
  7. How To Track SEO Success

Starting your SEO success is hard work.

To read more about SEO knowledge, check out my other guides:

Now, it’s your turn to start SEO Today.

Start a blog/ Website now with Bluehost and get 63% off your hosting plan ($2.95/month).

Ren Hao is a full-time Google SEO Specialist and Funnel Designer.  Join Ren Hao’s SEO Community and read on renhaoseo.com to learn how to scale your influence at Google. Before becoming an SEO Specialist, Ren Hao is a Full Stack Web Developer, who helps companies develop their business website. Now, Ren Hao helps companies achieve sustainable traffic growth and reach the right target audience to get higher conversion rates with a strategic plan. He fully combines White Hat Google SEO & Content Funnel Design for sustainable traffic growth and conversions.

Table of Contents

Author

Related Articles

How Do Search Engines Work? Beginner To In-Depth Guide

How To Do SEO Keyword Research (Step By Step Beginner Guide)

The-Ultimate-Guide-to-On-Page-SEO-in-2025-Step-By-Step-Guide

Free Resources