Introduction to SEO for Small Business: SEO Basics To Turbocharge Your Website

1. Introduction to SEO for Small Business: Every day, billions of people come to Google to search for answers to their questions. Over 8.5 billion searches are done on Google every single day. Things as simple as, where's the closest nail salon or brown shoes in size ten, Or how about emergency plumber in Fort Worth, Texas? And what appears are the searches that closest match the search query that the person has actually made. Now, this that appears here is what Google and the other search engines think is the best result to actually match the search query, set the most relevant result. But how do these websites appear here at the top of the search results? It doesn't matter if you're a small local business or an international giant. We all want free visitors from the search engines to our websites. But how do we do it? Well, that's what we're going to discuss in this training on an introduction to SEO or search engine optimization. Hi, I'm Kiron Doyle. I've been an SEO and digital consultant for over 15 years on line. We've worked and consulted with everything from small local businesses to national giants, to international commerce stores, and even the US government. And every single client, every one of them, no matter big or small, is always vying for that top spot on the search engines. And the question I'm always asked is, how do we get there? And this is what we're going to cover in an introduction to SEO, how can you get there? Seo, or search engine optimization, is the magic behind the scenes that can take a new or existing website to the top of the search engines. It's also able to restore aging sites that potentially aren't getting much traffic. Seo can turn it around and actually start getting new visitors and new customers. Seo is one of the most valuable marketing vehicles every business should, doing it, No matter how big or small you actually are, no matter how many customers you think you already have. Seo is key because I can guarantee you this if you're not doing it, some of your competitors are. And that means that they get customers, they get visitors, they make sales, and they build and grow, and they dominate more. So let's make a change for you. Let's start your online business acceleration off in the right way. And this all starts with keyword research, understanding what your audience is actually searching for, related to the services or products that you actually offer. This is the foundation of SEO. Then comes what we call on page SEO. So this is everything that actually happens on your pages, on your website. And this in terms of I talk web pages here, that's single pages that we look to rank in the search engines at the top of the search engines for particular keywords. When we rank these web pages high, we obviously get visitors which then in turn turn into customers. Then we have off page SEO. This is about building a strong network off of your website. And we gain trust and authority through what are called back links. And let's not forget technical SEO. This basically is going to ensure that your website can be crawled and indexed by the search engines without any hitches. Each one of these that I've mentioned has so much more that we can actually dive into multiple parts and so many opportunities for your online business. So whether you're a small website or a big company, whether you're local or national, regional or international, SEO is going to help you get more customers, make more sales, and grow your business. Join us as we dive into this introduction to SEO, unraveling its mysteries and understanding how you can elevate your business, be that online or offline with the power of SEO. Let's embark on this journey together. Look, I'm looking forward to meeting you. I'm looking forward to seeing what you actually do. I see you inside. 2. Setting Your Business Up For SEO Success: So in this short video, what we're going to do is we're going to look at how do you actually look at your business before you even start SEO. So we're going to look at creating a business overview of what it is that you actually do, the products or services that you actually sell, the marketing channels that you're actually utilizing. So we're going to fill this in. You have a sheet attached with this video as well. So let's get into it now. One of the things that I always like to do before I do any SEO work or create any content is to actually have my business overview down, okay? So I need to get it down on paper. This is before I do anything, this is before I create any content. It's before I put anything up on line. And the reason that I always create this is because you want to keep everything consistent. You want to understand exactly what it is that your business does, the products and services that it offer, the language that you actually utilize. So as you can see here, I've created this for a fictitious business called Scor Max Online Test Prep. Okay, so my fictitious company is actually targeting the online test prep niche. Okay, so as you can see here, there's a business overview. You've got my products and services, you know, we've got my courses that are offered. Then we've got learning pathways, live tutoring. Then we've got things like, so these are the products and services. Then we've got things like my target market, okay? The business model that I'd be using, my marketing strategy, revenue streams, keywords that I'll use. Okay now, so let's run through these one at a time, business overview. Okay, so it's always good to have written down an overview of your business. It helped you stay on track when it comes to SEO, ensuring that you only choose things that are extremely relevant to what it is that you actually offer. So this comes down to when you're looking at different keywords related to the content or related to what you're looking to target. Because sometimes you'll see keywords that are similar to what it is that you offer, but aren't correct when you're going to be creating content and it's going to create a different type of content than what it is that you need to target. Okay, so this is super important. Okay, Next up, I always like to make a list of things that I specialize in, as these are going to be the things that I can create about the content. Okay, so let's say Score Max offers online test prep courses for a wide range of standardized tests such as GED, SAT, ACT, GRE, G, Matt, Lst, M, Cat, and many more. What I can basically do from the start there is I know that I can target keywords around GED, ACD, GRE, M, L sat, and M cat. Okay? So they're keywords that I'm going to be able to start looking for. Okay, we scroll down here to my target market. I'm going to go, this is a great one to have also at hand when you're doing your keyword research and creating content. It helps you target in and specifically speak to the person who fits within that market. So our primary target market includes high school and college students preparing for standardized tests. We also target working professionals seeking to undertake postgraduate studies, requiring them to take tests like the GED, GRE or Elsa. Okay, so then I could target it specifically to RE ED's four working professionals. Okay, something along those lines. And then that gives me a more specific keyword that I can actually target. Then I'm coming down to my marketing strategy. It's always important to know which marketing avenues you're going to choose, as it's far too easy to pick something, not see much results instantly, and give up before you've even given your marketing a chance. This is especially relevant here to search engine optimization. Because search engine optimization is a long term marketing vehicle, it's not something that you do for a month and you give up. This is something that you do over time and it solidifies and compounds over time to get better and stronger. Okay. So be aware of that. So you have access to this sheet and what I want you to do is I just want you to get all your information down so you can just put in all the things that you actually do. Your business overview, products and services, target market marketing strategy, revenue streams, future plans, et cetera, et cetera, Okay? So you have access to that. Make sure that you download that sheet and actually complete it. 3. INTRO: What is SEO?: So this is a course all about SEO. So I should probably start with, you know, what is SEO and what are the benefits for you and your business. So over the next couple of videos, that's exactly what we're going to do. We're just going to look at what is SEO and what are its benefits for you. So let's get into this. 4. Introduction to SEO: Understanding the Basics and Importance: In this short video, we're just going to look at briefly what is SEO, why is it important for you as a business, and how it's going to help you. So let's get into this video. So what is actually SEO? Well, it's really just about getting people to your website by pushing your webpages to the top of the search engines. So kind of like this right here. So don't worry about this. Notice that this is sponsored. This is an advertisement. Okay? This is position one that has used SEO to get to the top of the search engine. This is position two that has used SEO. This is position three that has used SEO to get to the top of the search engines. Now what I want you to notice is that when somebody searches online for something that your business actually offers, then you want to be appearing in the search engines. You want your web pages to actually show up. And notice that I say web pages because it's not the whole website like the mainpage.com It's actually the pages within your website that you look to get to the top of the search engine. So all of the separate pages and all of the separate content that you actually create on your website, you're looking to get those individual pages to the top of the search engines. And that's what SEO is. So instead of just ranking, like instead of just being in the search engine for one keyword like test prep online like these people are here, you're in the search engine for multiple, even ten 2000s, thousands of keywords, you're in the search engines four. And why do you want to be in the search engine for so many keywords? Well, it's really simple. The more keywords that you're actually in the search engines in good positions in the more of a chance you have of getting lots of people to your website and converting those people into buyers, or subscribers or whatever it is that your conversion goal is. So more keywords basically equal more money. Okay. So the more keywords that we have like this is a keyword, the more of these that we have in the search engines, so p, press test, practice tests, et cetera. The more of them we have in the search engines related to the content we create, the more people we get to our site, the more money we make. And notice I mentioned keywords here a lot. Okay? Keywords are the thing that myself and yourself, we type into Google to get a result that we're actually after now people. What they do is, and which I'm going to show you how to do, is to actually create your content with a singular keyword in mind. So that when somebody is actually searching for a keyword that you have created content for, that your content actually appears at the top of the search engines. That's what SEO is and we will go into keyword research in a little bit to give you more of an idea. And as you can see in our business plan here, I have some keywords already made. And that is exactly what I'm going to show you to do in a couple of videos time. So thanks very much. 5. The Immense Benefits of SEO for Small and Medium Businesses: In this video, we're going to look at the benefits of SEO and why it's important for you as a business to actually be utilizing SEO versus different marketing channels. So let's get into this one. So what I want to do now is I just want to look at some of the benefits of SEO and why they are so important for small business. Well, number one, SEO helps a business increase their visibility. So when I'm talking about visibility, I'm talking about how you are found on the search engines. How people actually find you on the search engines. You see when a website is actually optimized with relevant keywords and high quality content, it's more likely to appear in the search results and so your potential customers can actually find the products and services that you have, okay? Not only that through SEO and creating great content with good keywords, we can actually target people. Remember what I said here back in our business overview, our marketing strategy and our target market, We can target specific people by actually creating content that talks directly to them and utilizing keywords that are actually related to them. So that basically means we target our target market effectively. So by using relevant keywords to our products and our services and our target market, we're going to attract potential customers who are actively looking for what it is that we offer. And when we do this, it results in obviously a higher conversion rate. The next point we're going to make is about cost effective. How cost effective? All right, so compared to traditional forms of advertising, SEO is, you know, it's relatively cost effective. So once a website is actually optimized initially, it can continue to attract organic traffic over time without the need for ongoing expenditure. Now that's not to say that you shouldn't be constantly improving your SEO all the time and adding content, but it is saying once you've set it up correctly, it's going to start bringing in traffic and not going to stop for a very, very long time, okay? Versus the likes of paying for ads where you pay for an ad. You set up an ad and somebody clicks on it and you pay for it. Also, SEO helps with improved user experience. So you know, SEO involves making websites actually more user friendly. So this includes things like making the site load fast, okay? Making it more mobile friendly. Also ensuring that it's kind of like easy to navigate so people can find things easily on it. And all of these things that I just mentioned, these kind of join together to create what is called that user experience. You know, it helps increase engagement, it helps people actually navigate your content easily. And most importantly, it helps them feel comfortable in the content that you've actually created, Making them have a higher likelihood of converting into a sale. And the next point that I want to make is that SEO is great for local exposure, especially for a small business. So if your business relies on local customers, well, SEO, what we call local SEO, this is going to increase your exposure actually in your local geographic area. This includes strategies like optimizing for local keywords, like the name of your location, creating a thing called a my business or my Google business profile. And also gathering on line reviews. These can result in higher rankings in the local search listings and in the Google Maps. So they're just some of the benefits of SEO for your small business. 6. INTRO: What is Keyword Research?: So over the next few videos, what we're going to look at is keyword research. What actually is keyword research? How to find good keywords and also tools that we can utilize to actually find these keywords as well. So this is kind of like, you know, this is more of a hands on one. You're going to have to start writing and all that kind of stuff. So I'm excited for this for you. I hope you are too. Let's get into it. 7. Diving Deep into Keyword Research: The Cornerstone of SEO: In this short video, we're going to look at what is keyword research? What are the actual things that people are searching in the search engines and why are they important? So let's get into this one. So what are keywords and why are they so important? Well, these are what people use when they're searching for what it is that you offer on line. So keywords basically equal people to your site. So like I showed you here, test prep on line, That's a keyword that somebody would actually type into Google. And if my content was there, well then it's going to appear at the top of the search engines, okay? And as you can see here, it has a volume that means that 2,400 people are searching for that per month, okay? Now, this is a little plug in that I use called keywords everywhere, which just basically gives me the volume of the amount of searches that are actually being made within Google. So you might not have this thing on your page at all. Okay? But do not worry about it. It is, it's just something that I use for quick information. I'll show you how to use it as well in a later video. But it's not the keyword tool that I'm going to use mostly and recommend actually for you. So what I was saying about keywords here is when we rank website, we're looking to rank web pages. Okay? Now, each one of these web pages has to rank for an individual keyword. You don't try to rank multiple web pages for the same keyword. Okay, So the more pages that we actually create with unique individual keywords, the more of a chance we have to rank in the search engines for multiple pages. That basically means more keywords equals more pages on the search engines. More pages on the search engines mean more people coming to your site mean higher conversion rate of people to purchasing your products or services. 8. Techniques for Finding Effective SEO Keywords: A Practical Guide: In the last video, we looked at what is keyword research. In this video, we're going to look at how do actually find those keywords for your business when you need to actually look for them. Okay, so let's get into it now. Before we even start doing any keyword research, we need to do brainstorming or idea generation when it comes to keywords that we are actually going to look to create and look to rank for. So this is why at the beginning I asked you to create a business overview of your business and what it is that you're actually doing. Because this is going to help you understand the types of keywords that you're actually looking to rank your content for or rank your website for. Now, you will know what your business is. You will know the types of keywords or the types of products that you have. The ones that actually earn the most income. The ones that earn the least. So the ones that obviously earn the most income, you're going to want to be looking for keywords related to those, okay? The ones that earn the less you're going to want to look for those as well, but they might be secondary, okay? So it's a good idea to make lists of different keywords and then rank them in kind of like super important, important, okay? And then less important, okay? And then you can target your content and target your actual creation of content around that as well. So if you look here, the main one that I'd be targeting is test prep on line. As you can see, I already showed you here. It's got 2,400 searches a month, Okay? Now, when I actually started looking for that, I didn't realize that it had that amount of searches. And that's okay. That's not what I'm looking for here at all from you. I'm just looking for brainstorming based on what it is that you're actually looking to rank. Now, you might not know what it is that you're looking to rank for, but what I want you to do is I want you to think about your business and I want you to say, hey, look, that's my profitable product or service. That's my profitable product or service. And I want you to make a list of them and actually think, how would you search on line for your products or service if you were your customer? Okay, So I want you to do that now. I want you to just make a list at the bottom of your sheet like this, and just pop in your first five or six keywords, okay? So that's all I want you to do here. This is just the idea generation phase, okay? 9. Ubersuggest: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool for SEO Enthusiasts: In this video, we're going to take our keyword research. A next step forward, we're going to actually look at a great little tool that I use called Uber suggest and actually how to utilize it to find not only keyword search volumes that you're using for the keywords that you've searched, but also to find new keywords that potentially are easier to rank for. So let's get into it now. Once you have these keywords actually chosen, put down like this, remember don't overthink it, just pop down the keywords that you think that you would like to rank for. And then what we're going to do is we're going to actually do keyword research, utilizing an online tool that's going to help you discover which keywords you can actually target and focus on. First of all, okay? Now there are multiple keyword tools actually on the market, okay? A lot of them are paid, some of them are premium, which basically means you get a number of searches per day and then you basically get cut off and you have to upgrade your subscription to actually get more. Okay. Now one of the ones that is a premium tool is called Uber Suggest. There are others that are free like the Google Keyword Planner, but those tools aren't so good in terms of accuracy of data. All right, so the one that we use and the one that I'm going to recommend for you is called Uber suggest. Now I'm going to recommend this for you because it's super simple and gives you some great ideas for keywords as well. Okay, so Uber suggest, I will leave a link in the sheet attached with this training. Okay. And this will bring you to Uber suggest. So you just sign up with your Gmail account or whatever. Okay. And then you're going to want to come here and it's going to say put in your get detailed overview for your keyword. Okay, you're going to pop in your first keyword which as you can see, I've popped in my first keyword here. Then I'm going to choose my language and I'm going to choose my location. Okay, And then I'm going to click search. Okay. And what's going to appear is look, so you're using a free version of Uber suggests two out of three free daily search is available. Okay, So we can upgrade if we want. Okay, But what we're looking for here is this. All right, so this is saying that the search volume is 1,300 Okay? The number of searches for this particular keyword has during a month, okay? So it's a little bit different than this one here, which is keywords everywhere. Now here's the thing with them. Different keyword cools get their data from different places. So not everything is 100% accurate, but you get the idea that there is quite a few searches actually being done for this. But what I want you to notice here is this most important thing is called SEO difficulty. Now that basically means how difficult it's actually going to be for you to rank a piece of content utilizing that keyword test prep online. Okay, so for me I see that 58 out of 100, it's on a score out of 12100 or 02100. I can see that the SEO difficulty of 58 is actually pretty high. Okay. And for you as somebody new to SEO, I don't want you to be looking at a keyword difficulty or an SEO difficulty of that high. I would recommend that the highest you actually go as somebody new to SEO is 30 out of 100. Okay? 30 out of 100, I would recommend even trying to find SEO difficulty that is less than that. Okay. And then you've got a thing called paid difficulty and cost per click. Paid difficulty basically is how difficult it is in the search listings that are not search listing but the paid ad listings and not relevant to what we're doing here with SEO. Okay. So when we scroll down here, continue scrolling down, what it's going to do is it's going to give us keyword ideas related to our main keyword that we just put in here. And so you're going to see practice GED test, practice test online for a permit, for online for a driver's license. So this one is really super relevant to us. This one is not relevant, this one is not relevant. Practice tests online, that's relevant, that's not relevant, that's relevant, and that's relevant. But what I want you to notice over here is this is why I love this tool. It gives us our search volume, but then it also gives us our search difficulty. And as you can see, 1,817.19 these two are not relevant, so I'm not going to choose them. And these are relevant. Most of them are relevant, but they're actually pretty high. Okay? So they're over our threshold that we want to actually be targeting. So I find one keyword here which is a search difficulty, SEO difficulty of 18. And so I just make a note of that and it's about 3,600 searches. Just make a note here. Okay. And we're just going to put 3,600 searches. Okay? And that's going to be one of my keywords that I'm actually going to start with. Now. It could go and I could see if there were any other keywords in here related to that, that I could actually target. But as you can see, even through searching that there, I'm pulling up some search difficulty that are pretty high here. Okay. But one thing I do want you to notice here, you notice Illinois has been putting in here Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri. These are locally targeted keywords that I spoke about before in one of the videos, local SEO. But what I want you to do for yourself now is to just go through all of your keywords, okay? And find at least one to two keywords that appear, that are related to these in Uber suggests. Okay? So that is your job for this video. 10. INTRO: What is Onpage SEO?: Okay, so we've just finished the whole keyword side of things. Now what we're actually going to look at is what is called on page SEO, Okay? Now this is everything that happens on your website. It's your content, it's your images, it's your keywords, it's all this kind of stuff. Okay? So it's where we put it all together on your website. So this is a very hands on one. Again, we're looking forward to you getting into it, getting stuck into it because you know, this is the only way that you're going to get good at it is if you learn and apply. Learn and apply. Learn and apply, that's okay. Don't ask how many websites I've gone through. Okay? So thousands upon thousands. Okay. So just take your time. Go through it step by step. Okay? 11. Mastering Web Page Creation with SEO Best Practices: In this video, we're going to look at web pages. Okay, so we're going to look at specifically a web page that is created extremely well on line. And also how you can do similar things with your web pages to ensure that it's properly SEO optimized. So let's get into this video. So in this video what we're going to look at is on page SEO. Now on page SEO is everything that happens on your website. The content you create, the images you use, the titles you use, all these kind of things, okay? And hands down, this is probably the most important thing for your website because this is what actually interacts with your website visitors. So you've got to make sure that your content actually speaks to your target audience and it's exactly what they're looking for. And that's why I got you to create this business overview before. So creating information about your target market, kind of the products and services that you actually offer. Because this is going to enable you to target and create the content that actually really is for the person when they're searching for the keyword related to the content that you've created. So when I searched on Google for my keyword here, practice test, GED on line. Here's one of the top articles that actually appeared. Okay, so GED, so this is kind of like this is they've got a good title here. Then they've got welcome to the GED practice page. Click the start test button. So boom, Straight away what it basically does is it gives a person test practice right off the bat. Now I absolutely love this. I think this is well done. They basically, they aren't messing around. They're giving the person exactly what it is that they want to actually have and what they've actually searched for. And if they click on the button, well, then they're brought to the test. Okay. And I think this is brilliant. I think that's a really good use of their website. But now let's look underneath here. What they've got is G, D online courses, G, D study guide, G, D flashcards. And these are well placed as well, really, really well. Then they've basically got a table of contents. Okay? So they got GD Practice Test by subject, so a person could click on them. And if I click on one of these, what it will do, it will bring me down the page. Okay, so as you can see here. All right, so very nicely done by these guys here at Momentricskayn's nice and graphical. It's nicely laid out. They've got another title here which is related to this here. Then they're going to have another title here, Lovely laid out. Another title here, little titles in here, little titles in here, little paragraphs. What I would recommend for these guys though, true, looking at this, it starts off really well. This is all lovely, starts off, but when it gets to this area here, the paragraphs are too tight together. So there's too many sentences that in one paragraph. And the reason I say this, it may not look like it when we're looking at the screen, but you will find that most of the people who are actually searching for your website are going to come via mobile. So what this actually on mobile is going to look much different than what it actually looks like on your screen. So as you can see, that's a big old bunch of text. So that's what it looks like on mobile. Okay. You scroll down another big old bunch of text. So you should be breaking these bits of text up. Make it much easier. I normally just would choose something like a sentence on a bit and then I would make a break. A sentence on a bit, and then I would make a break. Okay. And that's what these people should be doing. But in terms of how they laid this content up, it's really, really nicely done. Oh, wonderful. And at the end, what they've got is an FAQ. Now an FAQ is really, really important as well, because basically these FAQ's, if they're set up correctly, basically have the ability to rank in Google as well, underneath the listing of their website. Okay? And what that basically does is that increases the amount of search, real estate that a person actually has. So that basically means, you know, the way we normally have kind of like a title and then we've got a description of what it is underneath that. If these FA Q's are set up correctly using a thing called AQ schema, If you're utilizing Wordpress, you can use a plug in called Rank math. And they have an FAQ that will automatically do it for you. You just put in your questions and then you answer them. These actually show up underneath your web listing in Google. So they increase the amount of space that is actually there, heightening the awareness of your listing to somebody looking for what it is that you're actually offering. Okay, so I really love this page. I think this is a great page. But what I want to show you also is how they've actually laid it up. Okay, so I'm gonna show you that in the next video. 12. How to Structure Content for Optimal SEO Impact: One of my favorite things about SEO is actually creating structure for your content. And this basically means creating a structure that not only humans follow, but also that the search engine bots, like the spiders that come from Google, I know that tend to be crazy. But how these actually understand your content and the structure that you need to give your content, for it to be easily understood by them. So let's get into this video. It's pretty cool. Okay, so let's have a look at how they've actually laid that up. And what I've done is I found an image that's going to be really useful to you, okay? And basically we're going to look at this image and we're going to go back to this article here. Okay? So an article, a piece of content. Before I had mentioned that you've got to make it extremely user friendly. Okay? But you also have to make it search engine friendly. Okay? And a search engine is a machine. Okay? So a search engine basically has these little things called spiders or bots that come out to your website. And we'll actually go through your website to find out what your website is about. Now when we set up the website in a structural way that this little spider or bot actually understands, then we give it a better chance of understanding what our information is actually about this company moment actually or matrix have done it extremely well. All right, so I'm going to show you why. First off here is the structure of how you actually structure a page a h one. Now we call this a heading one. All right. This is your page title and you only use one page title per page. H two is your subtitle. Okay, A secondary title. So you can have multiple ones of these in page. Now this is the secondary title. So this is like, if you've got to speak about a couple of different things, okay? Now, a H three, these are sub subtitles, so they only fit underneath a two title. Okay? And then H four is another subtitle, and they only fit underneath H35. Only fit underneath H four. And H six is only fit underneath H five. To be honest, I only pretty much use down to H four. Very seldom, it's normally just H1h2 and H three. Okay. And that's what I think these people have done here within their content as well. So first off, this is going to be, so this is their main title of their page. Okay. There is another thing called an SEO title. Okay? And that's what this thing is. Right up here, you see that free GED practice test. Okay? And that includes our main keyword here, G, D test question. And that basically I will show you in the next video how to utilize. Okay? But in terms of the H one tag, they've only got one. And how do I know it's a H one tag? Well, I know it from experience, but how you can know if it's a H one tag, you can use inspect here. So right click and it will open up your site or open up this little bit of text here. Don't worry, I know it's all confusing, but have a look as it says H one. Okay. So GED test practice. Okay. So that's well done. Okay. And then some they've got that and they've got a little bit of an introduction. They give a person what they want straight away. I absolutely love this. I can't stress how well they have actually done this here. This is really, really nice, okay? What it's going to do is it's going to give the person the ability to get stuck straight in. And the search engines can see this, okay? The search engines understand what they have done here, and that's why this company, actually, this web page, ranks really high. Next of all, they've got an overview of the article. A person can click on any of these and go to the one that they're actually interested in. Okay, then they've got this GED test practice by subject. Okay, can I ask you what do you think this might be? Yeah, you're right. I reckon this is going to be a H two. All right. Because remember we only have one H one and yeah. Okay. So a H two. So GED practice test by subject. And again, we've got some information in here, et cetera. How about this one GED outline? I'm going to say that it's a new topic within the main topic, so it's going to be a H two again. Okay, And right. Yeah, it's going to be a H two again, so you can start to see how this is coming together again. We're going to see a H two here again and yep, a H two. Now, what about this one here? I'm going to reckon that it's a H three. It should be a H three anyway. Yeah. All right, so how to study effectively. Okay, great. So what they've done, they've done this really well. As I said, the only thing I can fault in here is the spacing. They should have more spacing in here, but these are well done. Absolutely love this. The structure of what they've done, brilliant. And the SAQ's at the end. So there you go. So now you understand how you actually set up your content with your page title and then your secondary topics within there, and then the subtopics within your secondary topics. Okay, so that's how you structure a piece of content, okay. 13. The Art of Crafting SEO-Friendly URL & Meta Titles: So in this video we're going to look at some really important elements of SEO for your website. We're gonna look at your URL and your title and your meta, okay? So these are super, super important to understand what they are and what they're used for. Okay, so let's get into this. So the next thing we're going to look at is your URL, your title tag, and your meta description. Okay, So these basically are the things that Google see. This is the stuff that, well, actually Google sees it. But not only Google sees it. The person who's searching on Google sees it. Okay, So let's look at it. The URL is this thing here. We know what a URL is. Okay? So that's kind of like the URL. That is what we call a URL. Okay? Now what we have here, this is called an SEO title tag. Okay? So this is super important, This is different than the page title tag, but equally important. So three things are super, super important for your content. Okay? That's the URL, the page title tag, and the SEO title tag. And these should include your main keyword. So if my main keyword was practice test GED on line, I'm going to utilize my main keyword in my U RL in my title and also in the method description, but also in the, in the page title as well. So in this area as well. So okay, this is what these guys didn't do so well, but that's potentially because they're not giving away a free test. But if they are and if they were targeting that keyword specifically, then they should have done it. Okay. I haven't gone too much in depth into reading it, but I've only glanced over it and can see that it's very well sorted out. Okay. So, I just took this from Google. I made a list, I made a luck of it for you. Okay. So as you can see, the URL, it's taken. The GED. Practice test. Okay. Practice test, GED online. I would have actually just put in the practice test GED on line there myself. Okay. That would have been very good for them. Then I would have had it in here. Practice test GED online, practice test GED online that. And then I would have kept that. And then 200 test questions. I probably would have had it like that myself personally. Okay. And I would have had the practice test GE D on line like that. Okay. So that's how I would have laid up that URL and that's how you should be doing it as well as thinking when you are creating your URL that you're actually thinking of the keywords that you're using. Okay, now what I don't want you to do is get a keyword that's like 15 words long and utilize that you want to keep the URL keywords to a maximum four words like this. Okay? Maximum four words like this if your main keyword doesn't fit into it. If it's a five word keyword, well then basically see how long the words are. If it kind of like passes something like a ***gth like that, you don't want to be using it. All right, Next of all, you want to look at your title tag. We looked at that. And then you want to make sure that you're actually putting your practice test, GED on line into Hero as well. So take our free practice test, GED online right now to see if you are ready for the GE pinpoints. All right, so there we go. Take our free, take our free practice test, GD online right now to see if you're ready for the GED test. Pinpoint your weakness and strength on the exam. So that's how I would have updated it, actually, for them utilizing the keywords that people are actually searching for in the actual way that they're typing it in as well. All right, So that's what we want to do with that. And that is the U R L, which as you can see is this one here. This is the SEO title, okay, And this is the method description, but we also want to be making sure that we have it in this title here as well, so in our H one page title as well, Okay? 14. Enhancing SEO with Image Alt Text: A Step-by-Step Guide: I love this part of SEO because it's so simple, but yet it's so massively overlooked and this is the optimizing of images, utilizing a thing called alt text or alternative text. Okay, super easy to do. You're going to really enjoy it. So let's get into this one. You know, one of the things that this company didn't do correctly here was actually utilize media. Utilize images within their content, okay? And the reason being is because images, when they're optimized well within your content, have the ability to show up in the search engines as well. And Google Search is still one of the biggest ways to actually bring visitors to your website because so many people are actually searching in Google images. And when they see something that's interesting to them, they click on that image and they come to your website. Now they don't only come to your website if you don't optimize them correctly though. Okay? So you have to optimize your images correctly. And that comes down to two things, okay? So when you create an image, let's say you need to give it a file name, okay, So that is what you call your image. So many images, are so many people who don't know how to do SEO, do this in the wrong way. What you need to do is you need to name your image, your main keyword. Okay, So that's the file name, so that will be G. Okay? And I prefer to use Pg than dogs because they are less intense or resource intense, so they're not as heavy as weighty as PNG's. Okay, so your main keyword and then what we do is we have a thing called an alternative text. Okay, so in most web platforms where you'll actually be creating your business potentially Wordpress, when you upload an image, there's going to be a thing called an alternative text. Text. Now this is an area, let me have a look, I'll do a quick Google search for you, a text. Okay? So let's do an image search here. Okay? So you might see something like this. Let's open open this image in a new tab. Okay? So what you'll see here, this is actually in Wordpress, and this is the one that I use myself. Okay? What all text is, how you would describe an image if the image weren't actually visible to a person. Okay? So this area here, it comes from a time like way back when the search engines and all the internet browsers, they didn't show images. And what would replace an image if the browser didn't show it? Well, then text about what the image was about. Now we use this to actually utilize or insert our keywords into the image. Now when we put our keywords into those images, it helps Google note, and this search engines note what the image is about and helps those images rank in the search engines. So that's why it's super important to always add what is called this alternative text to your image to ensure that your image is showing up on line. Okay, so for us and my keyword of practice test GED, if I had one image file name, I would call it practice test Jpeg. Okay, so that will be my file name. That, before I even upload it, if I look into my desktop, let's say right here, my file name, This is what my file name is. Okay, so we get you calls or it would be practice test GED online. Okay, So we make sure that we are updating our name of our images. Okay, We're updating the name of our images, the file name of our images. Okay, Now when we're updating that content on a website like in our Wordpress, it's going to ask us to give an alternative name. So an alternative text name. Okay, And again, we're going to call it practice test on line or we could even say for free like that. Okay, So that will be our main image on our page. It's going to be the file name and it's also going to be the alternative text. Now this is called image optimization and it is super important now when you have multiple images, you don't want to be utilizing the same keyword all of the time through those images. You want to make different permutations of that main keyword and update your images accordingly. So that is a good overview of on page SEO for you. We have covered quality content, what it looks like, we've covered structure, what it is. We've covered the URLs, the meta tags, the title tags, and we've also covered all of the old tags for the images and the file names. Next we're going to look at off page SEO. 15. INTRO: What is Offpage SEO?: So in the last lot of videos we went through on Page SEO and before we had gone through keywords. Now what we're actually going to do is we're going to look at what is called off page SEO. Now this is everything that is related to what happens off of your website but is related to your website. So that's kind of things like back links which is a link back from other people's site. It's also the social media that you create and where you share your content. It's also things like online directories and forums and also things like guest posts or writing for other people to get a link back. Okay. It's all about boosting your authority off of your website. So it's super, super important and should not be overlooked. Many people overlook this part. Okay. Don't be one of them. Let's get into it. 16. Backlinks in SEO: Why They Matter and How to Get Them: In this video we're just going to have an overview of what actually is a back link. Okay, so this is all about what we're talking about off page SEO, so everything that happens off of your page. So we're looking at what actually is a back link in this video. Interesting. So let's get into it. So now in this section we're going to talk about off page SEO. In the last section we talked about on page SEO, this we're going to talk about off page SEO. So this is everything that happens off of your website. Now the first thing we're going to discuss is actually what are called back links and what are the role of back links in SEO? Okay, a back link basically is a link from another website. So as you can see here, site A or website A links to site B. Okay? So site A has an external link to site B. Site B has a back link from site A. Okay? So this back link from website A to website B is like a vote of confidence for your website. So if people love what it is that you're doing and what you're actually writing about, the products and services that you actually have, then they're more likely to actually create a vote on their website, which is a link back to your website. This basically says, hey, Google, these guys are great. Okay. Now the better and more trustworthy that a website actually is, the more that that vote is going to actually be worth. What I mean by this, if website is just a small, no one's heard of website at all, then the link to website B, even though it will be counted, is not going to be as powerful as if the link was from a website like let's say NBC News or something very, very high. An older website. An authority in that niche. Okay, That's not to say that they're not important links, but it is to say that if you can get a vote of confidence back from website A, and website A is a very influential website within your space, well then that vote is going to be so much more. That back link is going to cost so much more for you and it's going to help you so much more. Now these back links, they're seen like votes of confidence. And what they actually do is they help Google and the other search engines take note of your website. They actually make Google say, hey, this website, it's creating great content. It has great quality products and services. How do we know this? Well, number one, they've got great content. But number two, this website here said, so this website here said, so this website here said so and this amazing big authoritative website also said so as well. Okay, so we've got to look to acquire these back links. So how do we do that? Well, the first thing that we actually want to do is we want to look at our competition. So this is going to be our competition. And we're going to look at the types of links that they have and see can we actually get those links as well. So that's what we're going to do in the next video. 17. An Overview of Moz: The Premier SEO Software for Professionals: In this video, we're going to look at a really cool software that you can actually use called Mas. Now this is going to enable you to actually look at your competitor's website and see what backlinks are actually pointing to them. I really like this software, plus it's free to use mostly. So let's get into it now. What we're going to do is we're going to actually look at the links that are pointing to our competitors page. Okay, so for that we're going to utilize something called Mas Link Explorer. Okay, we're just going to come over to here to our competition. We're going to grab this or we're going to copy it. We're going to come back over to the Ma's Link Explorer, as you can see. And just link Explorer and we're going to type the URL into here. Then it's going to say get free link data. Okay, I might ask you to log in, so if I log in, okay, what it basically is doing is it's looking at these, telling me there's a page authority of 50. Now if I scroll down here, it's going to tell me the links that are actually pointing to this website, okay? What I can see here is that I've got a Yahoo question. Let's have a look here. I can open this up, translate, and accept. All this is just a link back from Yahoo. How about this? So this is a blog that obviously mentions them with a link back. Let's have a look here. Let's have a look. The GED, there might be. Let's have a look. Control moments, okay. All right, so they talk about Mori here and they link back to the Moments website to this here. Okay? So that you can see here. Now, if you were new and you were getting started out, you might like to get in contact with prep and actually say, hey, Christine, I saw your article. Maybe you want to update your information and here's our business, this is what we actually do. And potentially Christina is going to add your link into here. Okay. So what you're doing is you're slowly but surely getting the same links as your competition. And if your content is better and you're getting the same types of links that you're getting, and potentially some more links related to the post that you're actually trying to rank, well then you have a better chance of rising up the search engines. Okay, as you can see here, here's a library guide, All these kind of different ones in here. So what you do is you just go through each one of these. See the links that are here. See if you can get your link on there as well. Okay, There are different ways to get your links on there, but most of the time it's getting in contact with the person who's running the page, finding some content information and actually saying, hey, look this is what we do. We notice that you actually had a list of schools, or we notice that you have a list of businesses, or we notice that you talk about products or services or something like this. This is what we do and we'd love if you included us in, in your article. Now what that's going to do is that's just going to give you a free link back to your website as well. Now there are, these are the types of things that are kind of they take a little bit of time to do so That's the outreach to websites that already have your competitors links on them. Now there are different ways that you can actually get links back to your site as well, but this is just one way. Okay. So it's actually going to something like Mas and seeing the websites that are actually linking to your competition. Okay, And seeing if you can get those links onto your website. What we're going to do next is we're going to look at SEO. And after that we're going to look at on line directories. And finally we're going to look at guest blogging, okay? And we're going to utilize them for getting links back to your website as well. 18. Leveraging Social Media for SEO: Strategies and Benefits: In this video we're going to talk about utilizing social media. Yet the likes of Facebook and Twitter for your actual search engine optimization, it's a pretty cool strategy. So oh yeah, and it's super important, okay. It really is. So let's get into it now. Another way that we can actually build links back to our site is via social media. So social media has more than just the benefit of going on there and communicating with your friends and all these kind of things. You can also share your content from your website on there. So if you have a personal Facebook profile or if you have a business Facebook profile, or if you have a Twitter profile, you can share your content on there. And this is going to help people find your content and it's going to give you what is called a viral spread. The more you do it, the better you get at it. With sharing, all you do is you grab the URL and let's say you come over to your Twitter and you type in, you paste the URL in there. And what's going to happen is it's going to give you a link there and it's going to say exactly what it is. Now what you can do is you can just grab some information off of here, whichever it was related to you are talking about, and you just paste it in there. And Twitter works on these things called hashtags. Okay, So what you want to do is you want to find out the hashtag associated with your business or a few hash tags associated with your business. And it could be test prep on line. So it could be something as easy as that test prep on line. It could be your main keywords, et cetera. And then all you're going to do is you're going to click Tweet. Now not only does this basically give you, share it amongst your fans and people who like your pages or whatever it actually does, But it also has the potential to get your content seen by Google much quicker because Google is constantly searching on the likes of Twitter for new links for new content so that it can add the news to its search engine. So when you put up yours there, it's going to see your content there and it's going to go, hey, alright, once it sees your content on Twitter, it's then going to be able to know that it's on your website. It's going to visit your website, and then it's going to index your content. Now you can actually place links from many different platforms on Twitter. Okay, So if you've created content for Pinterest, you can do the same. If it's Google sites, do the same, you can paste them all onto Twitter and get your content indexed really, really quickly. 19. Boosting SEO with Online Directories: Tips and Tricks: You've heard of the Yellow Pages before? Well, this is what is known as a directory. Now, there are hundreds or thousands of these directories all on line that contain lists and lists of categorized websites. Okay? We want to put your website into it, so we're going to find out what are these online directories and how you can utilize them for your business. So let's get into this one now. Another way that you can actually get links back to your website and notify people about your content is using what are called online directories. These again, are great. Okay. These help Google see that you're a good professional business and that also you will get links back to your site from these directories as well. And they're super easy to find and they're super easy to sign up. All you're going to do is you're going to put in your main keyword, followed by directory, and then obviously as you can see, they start to appear here. All you're basically going to do is you're just going to open one of these, you're going to sign up for it, and you're going to be able to add your link in here. But I could also kind of like put new posts in there I can get involved in the community. And the more you do that, the more people are going to link to you, The more people are going to like your content, the more people will potentially link back to your website as well. So as you can see, it's super simple, your keyword plus directory, okay? Or it could be keyword plus forum. Okay, so let's if we put in test prep forum. Okay, Here's a test prep forum. Test prep, test prep discussions. Okay? So again, you can go and you can sign up for them, and they are really good for getting links back to your website as well. 20. The Power and Importance of Guest Posting in SEO: In this video, we're going to look at what is actually called guest posting. This is basically finding opportunities on other websites that want people to write for them. And then going and writing on those websites and getting a link back from that site to your site. Okay. It's a simple process. It's a simple thing to do. So let's get into it now. Another way that you can get links back to your website. Remember what I said about links? These are like votes of confidence. Okay. So these are votes from other websites back to your website. So we've talked about, we've talked about searching, utilizing a keyword tool or a search tool like Z, and seeing websites that are there, seeing if you can get your content onto them. We've also looked at social media. We've looked at online directories and forums. Now this next one is guest blogging or right for us elements. Okay, so this is basically where you write a piece of content for another website and in exchange for that you get a link back to your website. So it's really easy again. So let's say it was test prep and then all you're going to put in is right for us or something like that, okay? And what you're going to see is a lot of places will come up, right for us, right for us, right for us, right for us, right for us, right for us. Okay? So you go on and you say, look, I'd love to write for you, this is what I do. I do test prep on line, and here's a sample of the work that I've actually done. And then basically if they like it, they're going to say, great, yes, I love this. And then you're going to write for them, but you're also first going to ask, can you get a link back? This is super, super important. You've got a great link back from a great site. Okay, so that's super important. So there you go. There are some, well there's a really good overview of what off page SEO is. Now, I'm not going to tell you that this is the definitive guide on it because it isn't, because it's just a quick overview of what they are. To get you started with it, I do recommend you study more of this. Okay. It's super important and it can make the whole difference between your website appearing number one in Google, and it appearing number ten in Google. Okay, so bear with me, get stuck into it, and let's move on to the next topic. 21. INTRO: What is Local SEO?: So over the last few sessions we've looked at on page SEO, we've looked at keywords, we've looked at off page SEO. Now what we're going to look at is what is called local SEO. Now this is basically about ranking or keywords within your local vicinity or your local town or city or whatever, okay? Now there are a couple of different things that we'll actually look at. There's something called Google mine business, There's also local directories, and there's also local focused keywords. Okay, So we're going to dive into them. Let's get into it. 22. A Deep Dive into Local SEO: Targeting and Engaging Local Customers: In this video, we're going to look at what is called local SEO. Okay? So this basically means anything that is related to locally marketing your business in the search engines, it's extremely, extremely important, especially for small local businesses or even big international with local kind of, you know, local area places that it actually functions. Okay. So I think I said that in the best way. So look, anyway, let's get into this one. So the next thing we're going to look at is actually local SEO. And this is about the visibility of your website on the actual local search results. So when somebody's actually looking for something within their local facility, they're going to put a search into Google. Something that they can walk to or something that they can actually drive to. So as you can see here like GED Prep, New York, and obviously this is going to be high conversion rates, so it's super, super important. The first thing you'll notice is the keyword that I used. Okay? So let's say we're just GED prep. Okay, So we talked about this. All right, but how about New York? Okay? Or how about an area within New York? Okay, So that's what I mean, the local part is this. So it's your main keyword plus your location. Okay? So main keyword plus location. Okay? And then you can even go further into the New York area if you want it into a specific location within there. I'm just going to utilize it as New York at the moment. So that's what I first want you to get to understand. Okay. So that local is super important, has high conversion rates, and it's really simple to turn your keywords into local keywords as well. So it's your main keyword plus location. So take this on board and do a bit of a search on Google for your main keywords. And see what's happening there. See the types of websites that are actually appearing. So things like ready set, test, new high school equiva***cy exams, GD preparation, GD, New York classes. So have a look at there. But what we're really looking for is this section down here. This is called Google Mats or Google Business, which we're going to look at in a moment. 23. Maximizing Local Visibility with Google Business for SEO: You have most likely seen this online in Google when you're actually searching on line. And this is Google Business, or Google Maps for your business. So this is the ability to actually put your website onto Google and for it to appear for local searches. Okay. It's called Google My Business or Google Business. Now it changes names quite a bit, but anyway, it's extremely important. It's easy to use as well. And once you go onto Google business, it's so simple to set up. You just follow the steps and get it done. Anyway, here's a look at what Google My Business is, or Google Business is, and how it's useful for. So what is Google my Business? Well, it's a tool that enhances your local exposure and it acts as almost like a mini website for your business. It also allows you to gather reviews, as you can see here. And better reviews are going to obviously get more people coming to your business. So that's why it's super important reviews, what do reviews do? What do you think they do? Will they increase trust and they also increase the visibility of your business as well? And it's super easy. It's free to sign up to Google business and you just go through the steps. It's a very easy step by step. So it's going to put you onto Google Maps and you're going to reach more people in your local vicinity, You know, with your website, with your Google business, with keywords targeted to local specifics. And you also have your local directory listings, so you're actually fulfilling lots, again, just like we talked about before, your keyword. So you can even go new business directory. Okay? And what that's going to do is that's going to give you New York business directories. You could even go New York education business directories, see if there's one for that. New York State directory of small business programs. New York directory of small business programs. Okay, so just go through what I'm showing you here. So your city or your town, and your business directory. And if you can try out your niche as well. Sometimes with the local business directories you don't get so niche, but other times you actually do. So just give it a try to see what is actually appearing there. And just like I said before with the other directories, you're just going to fill in your details, you're going to submit your content, and then it's going to create links back to your website as well. And it's going to show people your content within your local area. The more of that content that you actually have, the more people are going to find you. They're going to come to your website and well, they're going to convert into users, buyers, subscribers, whatever is the goal that you're looking to target. So you have some really awesome things there that you can do with a local SEO, from forums to directories, Google business, and specifically the location targeted keywords. So I recommend really paying attention to this and learning more about it and getting it on. 24. Technical SEO Demystified: Behind-the-Scenes Essentials: In this video, we're going to look at what is technical SEO. Now when I say that, when I first heard about technical SEO, I was kind of like, oh no, God, that sounds like this crazy stuff. And look, it can be, but it cannot be. Okay. Just a note on this. Technical SEO is about how well your website actually runs, how it appears on the search engines, how the search engine technical elements can access your website. Okay. Now there are some easy tools that can help it actually get really work really well. But also if you have a real problem with a technical issue, look the simplest thing to do is go to something like fiber.com or upwork.com and ask somebody who's technical to fix the issue for you, okay? Sometimes you fooling around with a website trying to fix technical issues can make more of a mess, okay? So I want you to take, take a breath. If something happens to your website, that's technically a technical glitch. Let's say glitch, let's say I want you to just take a breath and go, Okay? So Kiron said check out upwork and fiber and go on and just search for people who will be able to actually understand your problem. All right, so let's get into this video. We're now going to actually look at what is called technical SEO. So technical SEO is all about how your website actually performs, how the technical side of your website actually performs, how fast it is, the security related to it. So there are certain things that Google want to see when it comes to technical elements of your website. And the first one that we're going to discuss is actually called speed. Okay? Or page speed. Now what this is, is this basically is how quickly your website loads when a person clicks on a link to enter your website, okay? And as you can see here, there is a tool in Google called Page Speeds Insights, okay? And it allows you to see how fast your website is actually running, how your website is performing technically, Okay. So the website I'm looking at here has a performance of 14. So that basically means that it's not very good. This is out of 100. So all you do when you're kind of going to perform a speed test, technical test on your website is you come here and you put your domain name in here, okay? And then you just click Analyze. And as you can see, this is on mobile and it has a very slow time. All right, so the first contextual paint basically is this. So this is when it takes 2.8 seconds for it to register something, but then it takes 16.4 seconds for it to fully load, okay? Which is extremely, extremely slow. You should be looking at 3 seconds, 1.5 seconds if you can, to get your website to load. Okay? Now there are certain things that will cause your website to be slow. One of them is having images that are too big, okay? Or that are full of useless information. And the thing that you can do to actually sort this out with images is to actually go and compress those images. You could use a tool like a tiny PNG, T iny.com or tiny Peg.com Okay, And all you're basically going to do is you're going to come here and you're going to upload your image. And then what it's going to do is it's going to compress that image. So if you have a slow website to start when you see this, then basically start doing this with all of your images, compressing your images. So if we upload one, let's say we upload this as you can see it compressed it by 79% okay? So that'll give you an idea. Next you want to have a look all the way down. Check all these kind of things in here, your accessibility best practices. But to start with, okay, just check your speed. And that is mostly going to be associated with your image size. Okay? It also is associated with code, but that's a little bit too technical to actually get into. Now what I want you to do as a beginner to this and only finding out about SEO and technical SEO is check your image sizes, okay? You can also one actually, before I move on to hyper forming website, what I want to say is sometimes what you'll find is that you upload an image to your website and actually the dimensions are so big where you might only need like a 600 pixel width, you might upload like a 3,000 pixel width. Okay, so if this is happening, well then you know that the image in itself is far too big as well. So you can change the size of that. You could change it for three in the likes of Canva. Okay, So you'd upload it and then you scale it in Canva to a smaller size, okay? Now when you've got a good functioning website, okay, it's not going to look like this even though there accessibility best practices in SEO aren't bad, you want to have something like this, okay? So this is what all websites should aim to be like. Okay? So performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO. Okay. So this is basically a website called E Commerce CN and it basically is a site that does SEO correctly, which does basically technical SEO, which does on page SEO, which does off page SEO correctly. Okay, so that is one thing that we got to look at with technical SEO. The next thing that we want to look at with technical SEO is actually mobile friendliness. Because this is a big thing for websites nowadays, considering that huge percentages of people actually access the information. I think it was like 83% of people access websites from their mobile phone. So if your mobile or if your website isn't mobile optimized, well, then you're in trouble. Okay. Then Google aren't going to put you into the search engines. They're not going to rank your content because mobile is so important. Okay, So again, Google have a tool called the Mobile Friendly Test Tool. And you can basically just put your website in again, and what it's going to say is it's going to tell you or if your website is mobile friendly or not. And again, this site that I showed you before isn't mobile friendly. And it tells you, all right, the clickable elements are too close together. The content is wider than the screen and the text is too small to read. Okay, so then what you do is you'd go into your content and you'd fix those elements. All right, now this again just the same site that got the high speed scores here. You know, pages usable on mobile. No problems at all with it. Okay, so that's what you want to be looking for. You want to be looking for these green ticks. So you've got your page speed insights and you've got your mobile friendly. Okay, So another thing that you should have on your website is what is called an XML site map, okay? Now, a site map basically is a map of all of the content on your website, okay? And this is what the search engines go to look at. So they go to look and navigate through your site map to find all of your content. Okay? And as you can see here, this is the site map index and it has a post site map. So for pages it's got for team it's got for element categories, post tags and author site map. And we could click on one of these. And then what it's going to say is, right, we've got all of these pages in here. Okay. Now one of the things I do want you to notice here is the last time that anything was uploaded in here was back in 2022. Okay? So that's really bad. That doesn't work well. You want to be updating your content. You want to be adding new content into your website all of the time. You also want to make sure that you have something like an X M L site map. And these are really simple to add if you utilize something like Wordpress, which most people do, okay? And also things like square space and all as well, these are already included. Okay. So if you're utilizing Wordpress, install a plug in like rank mat or Yost or all in one SEO. Okay? And that will add a site map element for you and it will create that map of all of the content that you're creating. Okay, So that's super, super important. And now I just wanted to look at what is called the URL structure. This is actually the URL of your website or of the pages on your website. So what you'll notice, I just grab the URL from here. This is E Commerce Can.com and then the URL is Web hosting Singapore. And what you'll notice is they are keywords that this article is actually trying to rank for. Okay, so as you'll notice here, you've got your title of your page, Web Hosting Singapore. Best Five Web Hosting Singapore. And then you've got in your URL, you've got Web hosting Singapore as well. So you want to be actually putting keywords into your URL structure. You want to make sure that it's not more the four words. Well, that's what I like to try to do anyway. Okay. So keep it less than four words. So four or less and don't go over very long. Okay? So that's what you want to do as well. And the reason that you do this is because it's a signal to Google and the search engines about what your content is about. So if you can put your keywords into there, Google immediately knows that your site or the piece of content that they're gonna read is about web hosting in Singapore. Now, if I just had that as let me copy this here. And I had it kinds like this. If I just had it like website hosting. Okay. Google basically will be able to see that it's website hosting. But if it was targeting Singapore, they wouldn't kind of know that it was targeting Singapore specifically. Okay, so the more detail that we can put in there related to the keyword we're actually targeting, the better it is. Okay, so make sure this is super, super important for your technical SEO aspects. Also because it helps the search engine spiders understand exactly what your content is about. And finally, what I want to look at here is this element here, okay? So this is what is called a HTTPS. And what it is is it's the security associated with your website. So this is a necessity for every single website that appears on the likes of Google because it shows that your website is secure and there's no threat of hack or loss data. Okay, So this is important for you. You will not rank as well if you do not have one of these like HTTPS on your website, okay? So you have to make sure that you have HTTPS on your website and if you're utilizing something like Word Press, you can get it for free. You can download a plugging called really Simple SSL, which stands for Really Simple Security Socket Layer, okay? Or if you're on some hosting like Dreamhost, Dreamhost will give you the HTTPS for free. There are so many different ways that you can actually get it, but most of the time you can actually find the HTTPS SSL for your domain for free. But it's super important. Don't overlook how important it is actually for your website. So there you go. You have a great intro into what technical SEO actually is and the things that you need to look for on your website. Now, seeing as this is only an intro course, there is so much more for you to learn. But at least you'll be able to actually apply the few certain things that I've shown you here that will enable you to actually make those little changes And hopefully speed up and improve the performance of your website. 25. INTRO: Google Analytics and Search Console: And now to wrap up these videos, what we've got is we've got a few videos related to how your site and your content is actually performing. Okay? So what we're going to be looking at is installing a couple of bits of code, let's call them, okay, onto your website. It's super, super simple to do. The first one is Google Analytics. Now Google Analytics lets you see what is actually going on on your website, how people are interacting with your content, okay, how long they're staying on your site, et cetera. The next one is called Google Search Console. Now Google Search Console basically shows you what position your content is ranking and for what keywords on what search engine. It also tells you kind of like if you've got a problem with slow pages, it also tells you kind of the links back to your website as well. So it's super, super important to get familiar with. Okay, so we're just going to go briefly through these, so let's get into it. 26. Harnessing Google Analytics for SEO Success: A Comprehensive Guide: Wouldn't it be good if you actually knew how people interacted on your website? So they come to your website, what content do they actually like? Do they like your content at all, you know? Or maybe they're thinking that your services are too expensive or, you know, what are they doing when they're actually there? That's going to turn into income. Okay? All of these things we can look at when we utilize something like Google Analytics. Okay? A free tool by Google to actually monitor action with on your website. So let's have a look at Google Analytics. Now what we want to do is basically we want to understand what people are actually doing when they come to our site. Okay? We want to understand, one, how people come to our site and also how our site is running. And we also want to understand how people are interacting on our site, If they're liking our content, if they're not liking our content, if they're coming to a page and jumping off it. If they're coming to a page and reading it and then continuing onto another page, we want to know all of this information. Okay. And there are two free tools by Google that enable us to actually do that. The first one is called Google Analytics. And it's free to join Google Analytics. All you basically do if you sign up for Google Analytics and you're going to put in your details of your website. It's very, very straightforward in terms of what you want to do, and especially if you're using something like Wordpress, you're going to utilize a Wordpress plug in for Google Analytics. So once you've done that, what you're going to do is you're going to copy your Google Google Analytics ID. And you're going to paste it into Wordpress wherever it actually says, within your plug in. And this is going to enable you to measure absolutely everything on your site, how people are coming to your site, the keyboards that they're actually using to find your content, how long they're actually on your site, are they reading your content? Are they leaving you the website? It's going to be able to show you the best performing posts on your website as well. So if a post is performing well, well, then you're going to go all right, So let's make a few more posts related to what this is, to strengthen this post, okay? And to strengthen this topic that's working well for our business, but also it's going to enable you to see what aren't working well. So what posts need to be updated? What post you need to add more content to to make better. Okay, so that is what Google Analytics is going to enable you to do. It's a really useful tool and you just come to type in Google Analytics and then just come here and then all you're going to do is you're going to go through the whole process of setting it up, which is super, super simple. And just click Start Measuring, and then bump all the way through, okay? So very easy, Give your account name, et cetera. Then next, and you should be good to go. So the thing with this is it's not going to start collecting the data straight away. So give it a couple of days to actually start kicking in and getting that data for you. So that is Google Analytics. In the next video, we're going to look at Google Search console. 27. Mastering Google Search Console for Effective SEO Monitoring: This is one of my favorite tools. This is actually called Google Search Console, and what it basically does is it tells us how people are coming to our site. Okay? So it tells us the searches that they're coming to our site on, but it also tells us if we have issues with any of our pages, like if our pages are running slowly, okay? Or if there are elements on our pages that are difficult to read that maybe the search engine bots for the mobile cannot understand correctly. So it's all here within search console. So let's go into the this overview of search console and give you an idea of what you can actually see in there. Okay, so let's get into it. So what we're going to look at now is Google Search Console. So what Google Search Console does basically, is it monitors what is actually going on on your website, how well your website is actually working, and how people are getting to your website. This is super, super important. So it tells you what keywords your website is actually ranking for on Google. And it tells you what position those are actually in as well. Which is awesome. Which is so, so good. So it's enabling you to track your website's SEO performance. Show you the keywords that it's ranking for your organic traffic. And also you're then able to see what position those keywords are in. And then you can start to make improvements to your content to try to rise them up the search engine. It also tells you if your website is running slow, and it tells you that there are certain things that you're going to need to fix on your website to ensure that your website is working at top speed. Top notch speed. Should I say, these things are super important. And again, it's just like analytics, this is super easy to set up. You just click Get Started now, or click Start now. And then you're going to enter your URL. And this is going to register your domain name with the Google Search console. They're going to give you a code. And if you're utilizing a Wordpress plug in, which is my recommended platform, then it's super simple to do, utilize a plug in like rank math and then you can just put in your code into there if you have any issues with doing that. Just kind of like do a quick Google search. Say Google, adding Google Search console to rank math plug in. Okay. And then it's easy for you to actually do. But once you've done that over time, you're going to start to see how many clicks your website's getting, how many impressions it's getting. The average click through rate, what position you're actually getting. And you know, for me I love to see like once you get past three months, you're going to get so much data within this and anything like SEO is a longer term game, okay? So you're going to be able to see how your website is functioning over this three month period. You're going to see it from the start, like within the first few days. But over the three months, as you add more content, and more content and more content, you're going to start to see more and more keywords appear for your business that you're actually ranking for. You're going to start to see the Google Analytics showing you the content that's resonating with your customers Google search console, which is going to give you the positions of your keywords for your articles. And then what you're going to do is you're going to update your articles with those keywords to make them better. And what this is going to do is this is going to help rank your articles better in the search engines. And then you can watch as your positions go, your keywords rise up in the rankings as well. So it's super important to get familiar with all of these. And Google has free training on how to use these as well. You know, you can go to Youtube and you can find Google training that will teach you how to use these properly. But these are super, super important. Google Analytics and Google Search Console. I will leave links to them in the sheet attached with this training as well. 28. Google Lighthouse: The Tool for Ultimate Website SEO Optimization: If you ever want a quick overview of what's going on with your website, it's performance, it's accessibility, it's SEO. Well then, lighthouse is probably the coolest and easiest thing to actually utilize. It's a Chrome extension that you click on and it will analyze the web page that is actually that you're on at that time. Okay? And it just tells you if it's running well or if it's running slow. It tells you how good your SEO is for it, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a cool little tool. Okay, let's get into it. And finally, if you want to find out how your website is actually performing in Google, there's an extension, a Google Chrome extension, excuse me, an extension that I want you to download. And it's called Lighthouse. Okay. So you're going to come to Lighthouse and then you're going to add it to Chrome. As you can see, I've got it added here already. So what you're going to do is you're going to have a little lighthouse in your browser. And then you're going to come to the pages on your website. Once you're there, you're going to click that lighthouse and then click Generate. And after a few moments, what's going to happen? It's going to generate a report for us to see how our pages are optimized for the search engines. It's that simple, and if we find problems on them, well, then we can go and actually get them fixed. We can do it ourselves if we know how to do it, or we can hire a developer to actually do it, okay. So this website here is the free GED moment is done pretty well. Okay. So it's performances 74, which isn't bad. Okay, It's not bad. It's not perfect though. But the other things, it's accessibility. Best practices and SEO are actually very good. So performance basically is things like how fast their website loads, okay? This is a great thing for user experience. As you can see, they're 74, but they need to be a little bit faster in speed, okay. So their website needs to load faster. So for me I'd just say to lighten the load on their website and potentially get faster hosting. Now if they got faster hosting and better hosting, that's going to help them actually get a faster website. I'll leave a link in the sheet with my recommended hosting that I use. That gets super fast website hosting. So if you haven't gotten hosting for your business yet, you're going to need to get a super fast hosting. As you can see here, this company's accessibility is great. An accessible website not only helps users with visual or hearing impairment, but also means your website can be used on a keyboard, on lots of different devices. There are other stuff is top notch too. If there are issues, what you'll see is you can come in here and you can have a read in here. Now, a lot of this is quite technical, so you might want to have a technical developer to look at it for you. And this is going to, you want to be look at. I prefer to have everything in the green. Okay. It just makes you feel so much better about your website. But not only that, it speeds up your website. Google, love it. And if you have this all green, well then you have a higher opportunity of appearing up at the top of the search engines for your content. Because not only are you providing great content with awesome back links, but your technical aspects of your website are working on point. 29. Your Class SEO Project: So what we're going to cover here within the training, obviously you want to actually apply this. You want to know how it fits within your business. So that's what we're going to do. So I know the importance of actually learning and applying. This is what I want you guys to do. So I have an exercise with that in mind that's going to take the key skills that you learn here and then how you apply them in your business. So we've got my exercise here, I'm going to read it out for you, okay? So number one, what I want you to do is I want you to do keyword research. Okay? So the first thing that I want you to do is I want you to brainstorm ten keywords for your business. Now, if you're only getting started in this, this is a great thing, okay? Because this will get your juices flowing. If you already know your business, then these should come to you pretty easy. How are people actually searching for what it is that you provide or yourself? Okay. So then what I want you to do is I want you to look at on page SEO, to start with, we're going to look at the title tag, meta description, and the URL. Okay? So I want you to look at how you would format those. And don't forget, you want to ensure that you're utilizing your main keyword in there. After that, what I want you to do is I want you to set up, write your article. Okay? Write that article and actually structure it in the way that I showed you, Ensuring again that you've got your keyword in there, make it about 1,000 words or so. That's up to you completely, okay? But I would aim for 1,000 And then what I want you to do is I want you to find at least two images, okay? And I want you to rename the file names. I want you to rename the old tags. And then I want you to gather everything together. Now again, this is 100% up to you. You could either do it this way, okay? You can put this onto your website, which I recommend because that's far better practicing on your website. Or you can put it into something like a word document as well, and you can submit it here. It will be better on your website though. I'd love to see it on your website. So that is what I want you to do. It's simple, but that's what SEO is. Seo is just doing simple things again and again and again, and becoming so good at them, okay? That little attention to detail, so get stuck into that exercise.