SEO tips for beginners from a 9-year industry veteran

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This Q&A is edited from our AMA session with Tim Soulo, chief marketing officer at Ahrefs.

What are the most essential things in SEO and your advice for a beginner? — Vicky P.

The most essential thing in SEO, in my personal opinion, is getting backlinks.

It’s not that hard to create content if you’re a real expert in your niche. It’s not that hard to get technical SEO right if you have web development experience—and if you don’t, it’s easy to find someone who’s technical enough and can fix your website.

But backlinks is something that the vast majority of people who have websites struggle to get.

My advice to beginners is to get in the shoes of website owners and understand what would make them link to certain websites/pages. Figure how to get backlinks, and you’re almost guaranteed to rank well in Google.

What’s the one mistake that people often do with SEO? — Putra Muskita

The one common SEO mistake is going after a small number of very specific keywords related to their business, instead of exploring the total search demand around their niche.

For example, if you own a flower shop, you’re going to be obsessed about ranking for “buy flowers online.” But what many people don’t realize is that they can get clients from a search query like “which flowers should I get my aunt for her birthday.”

So if you want to get a ton of free search traffic from Google, you have to study everything that your prospective clients search for and address these searches on your website.

We all know that SEO algorithms change all the time. Do you have any advice on how to keep up effectively? — Pratama Agus

Yes, the Google algorithm changes all the time. But its core part has stayed the same and hasn’t changed much in the past five to eight years.

To rank well, you need to have quality relevant content on your website and links from other websites. If you nail just these two things, you’ll be getting a lot of traffic from Google.