Well, until you get used to the game, I recommend playing on servers w/ as few people as possible
http://www.izurvive.com/
Find yourself on the map using road signs. Easy way to do it is to leave a town and follow the main roads from the treeline, and if you see a road sign, run up, write down the name, and find it on the map I linked. This will make navigation and finding things like wells much easier.
Go to Cherno, Electro, or Novo, try to loot enough food and water to last you a couple days. Make sure not to loot dead items like weapon cleaning kits, lockpicking tools etc. Things you'll want will be clothes w/ inventory space, a drybag, something to open canned food, and a weapon.
When you go to loot a town, you have two options more or less. You can sprint from building to building like a madman and hope to outrun the zombies after you're done, or crouch and sneak through the city, hitting important building like fire stations, police stations, hospitals, supermarkets, etc. They're easy to find because they're the building that /aren't/ copypasted.
Ideally, you'll want to get enough food, water, and a weapon to go loot the airstrip/ military base. That's the motherload, as it's loaded with weapon spawns and good item drops.
There's much much more, but this'll do good for starting you off.