I am a beginner in SEO

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Elrey Resultan: I am a beginner in SEO. I was assign to on page optimize a built website about Travel & Tours. But I don't know what to do. I've read some SEO Articles and I get it but the thing is I don't know what to do because the site has its content. Now I am using Google Keyword Planner to search for keywords and I am getting low competent keywords in paste it on notepad. But again the thing is I don't know where to start and what I will do. And I am not good in typing long content. ;
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  Michelle Dear: Do they need you to optimize just the content, or are they looking for you to do an entire technical optimization of the site?
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  Gayathri Muthusamy: Is this a new site? Do you know about meta titles,keywords, descriptions?
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  Elrey Resultan: +Gayathri Muthusamy ;+Michelle Dear ;They built it last 2013 I think, and they said their weakness is/are SEO. That is why they wanted me to SEO the site. But my boss told just to do first the On Page Optimization. I know about Meta Title and Description. My boss said he wanted to make pages(Homepage, Hotels and Tour Package because this is a Booking Engine Site) in Google SERP. I don't know what woulb me my first move. I am familiarizing Google Keyword Planner for Keyword Research. Is it ok to target keyword with High competency but High volume of searches?
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  Rob Maas: I would say: talk to your boss ; ...?
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  Gayathri Muthusamy: Is there any keywords are ranking in google ?
  Did you check it? Because it was live in 2013. So please check it out. If there any keywords are ranking for your website. It will be good to start your on page related to that keywords. Starting your on page with high competency keywords it won't give you best results. So just start with Medium Competitive keywords (Long tail keywords).
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  Elrey Resultan: The is only one keyword phrase ranking for the site it is "philippines hotel reservation". Then I've scanned the content of the page. I can't find the keyword "philippines hotel reservation" included in the content, meta tags etc. What would be my first move in optimizing the site? Sorry for my stubbornness. ;
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  Gayathri Muthusamy: can you please send your website url?
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  Michelle Dear: Man... The first thing I would start with is a site review. You need to document EVERYTHING about the site. Pages, indexing, optimization... You really can't do anything without knowing where you are with the site first. Then you can plan on where to go from there.
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  Tim Capper: "How did you get the Job" .... sorry I am tired and grumpy.
  
  I reckon, you need to start at the beginning of your education : moz dot com/beginners-guide-to-seo
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  Michelle Dear: +Tim Capper ;means that there's a guide from Moz that you can use that is helpful for beginners with SEO. Take a look at that and it can help you answer some basic questions to get you started.  ;
  
  Take a look and see if this helps for some of your beginner questions. Once you've read that, let us know what questions you have from there. ;
  
  And don't let Mr. Grumpy Cat bother you. ;-)
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  Elrey Resultan: +Gayathri Muthusamy ;www.philbooking.com, this is the website
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  Elrey Resultan: +Tim Capper ;I am a fresh graduate of Information Technology but druing my college days we did not focus on SEO. The company the I am working for posted a job on jobstreet about "SEO Specialist" position and qualification must be with 1 year exp. But since they cannot find with 1 year exp. they focus on fresh grad.
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  Elrey Resultan: Sorry for bothering you guys and for being a stubborn newbie.
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  Michelle Dear: +Elrey Resultan ;You are not a bother at all! This is what this community is all about. Please don't worry about +Tim Capper ;. Sometimes he is a grouch, and he needs a bit of coffee. He's a loveable fluffball, I promise. ;
  
  Please do read the Moz guide.  ;It's one of the first things we recommend to people who are new to SEO.
  
  And really, when someone does ask you to take over a site and do SEO for it, usually the first thing to do is a site review. Google "SEO site review" and how to and see what you come up with. Because there are so many tasks involved with it, and it would be hard to put it all in the comments.
  
  Don't forget that we will be addressing this in Thursday's panel discussion too, so be sure to either watch, or check it out afterward when it's posted. I'll make sure we address the tasks of a site review as well.
  
  And never worry about bothering this community. We're here for these kinds of things! I'm glad you're here, and I'm glad you are participating!
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  Michelle Dear: Okay, +Elrey Resultan ;. I'm looking at your site right now. Yeah, this is a really complex site. You've got a lot of pages, a fairly decent design, but it's definitely not optimized. Keywords and description are the same on multiple pages where they shouldn't be. ;
  
  Do you have a site map? Put together a site map first. Do a site review, gather all the information on the current SEO per page. Document anything that's been submitted to Webmaster tools, anything historical from analytics, etc. first off. I'm sure there's tons more, but in order to optimize you need to know what you have and where you've been. ;
  
  This is going to take some time. Make sure management knows this. This is not a 2 week endeavor--this first part. You have to gather the data, analyze it, determine the optimization, then make a plan, have a test environment, then implement. Once that goes successfully, you can implement into production.
  
  The reason I say you need to go this way is because your site is so complex and you don't want to hose production.
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  Elrey Resultan: +Michelle Dear ;Thank you so much for the help!
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  Gayathri Muthusamy: I just see your website url. Site speed it too good. can you get ideas how to do?
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  Tim Capper: Had some coffee, feeling better.
  
  If it for travel, I assume you will be having categories / different places.
  
  Spend some time on these Landing pages.
  
  What format is the site going to take >> blog, properties >> booking. ?
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  Elrey Resultan: +Tim Capper ;It is a Booking sir.
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  Tim Capper: Then you landing pages will be very important.
  
  Look at the big boys:
  
  Tripadvisor
  Expedia
  Booking.com
  
  One of my favourite small UK ones mrandmrssmith