Transcripts
1. Introduction: SEO for Bloggers & Solopreneurs: Hey there, Skill share. This is Maddie Azman, and you might be familiar with me if you watched my other sculpture class the only other one of the time of this recording, which is house you write a kick ass flag posts. And this talk actually became a little popular in the outside world and resulted in a speaking session for word Camp Denver, as well as a training for I themes training. And there's even talks of me giving it life for another WordPress group. So I was really overwhelmed by the positive response to this specific topic to the point where I thought it was worth a follow up. In terms of focusing on a concept that isn't it's an important part of blogging in general , and that's S E. O. So in order to more clearly define what that means and what's important for you from kind of a basic learning standpoint, I've put together course called S E. O. For bloggers and solo preneurs, it'll be about the same length of time is the other course. It will also include some of the same information. You'll definitely notice a little bit of a crossover, but because we're able to focus in on this topic more specifically, will be able to dive a lot deeper and hopefully answer some of the questions that you have about the topic. So just to give you a little bit of background if you didn't see my other skill share course, you know, first of all, go back and watch it when you have a chance. But, um, my name's Maddie Osmond. Like I said, I write for publications that tend to be industry leading digital marketing publications. So you might have heard of Search Engine Journal Spreads Social and W pmu Dove If you're interested in connecting after this class, I'd love to chat with you on Twitter and very responsive, especially if you have any questions regarding any of the topics were going over here. And then finally, you confined my home on the Web at the dash blacksmith dot com. I love to talk about this sort of stuff in my black There, I've been a little bit leaves you with it, but I'm picking it up in the new year. So how much a girl this slide actually is similar to one that I shared before in that other class we used to think so my memory is a little shaky, but I wanted to touch quickly on how content marketing grew. My company, which is Aziz, you know, know the blacksmith? Um and content marketing s seo are very much similar. Concepts is hard, Teoh see one without the other. So it's worth touching on. It's worth, you know, breaking it down a little bit as to how I've achieved my success. So the first thing I wanted to touch on is this idea of back links. And if you're unfamiliar with the term, it's basically the idea of somebody linking to your website in passing on their authority. So, in essence, Google sees you know, all these different sites that are linking to you and it it makes up its mind about you know how influential you are, how influential your website is so back links are important. That said, you don't want to back link from just any old website has to have some sort of relation to what you do in order to actually help you and not hurt you. Because for all the right things you could do with SC. Oh, they're also wrong things you can dio, And one of those wrong things is being is collecting spammy back links. So kind of an aside, let's let's look at the specifics here. So first of all back links help to grow the blacksmith. First of all, through something that you should sign up for a two day, it's called Haro. Help. A reporter out in Haro of essentially gives you a list of, um, different types of topics. So, like business, travel, lifestyle and so on. And it allows reporters to submit queries for articles they're working on, um, and allowing you to submit your own expert opinion, including a link back to your website. So this is definitely helped the blacksmith to gain a lot of what Google refers to as domain authority. Or at least what s CEOs refer to his domain authority. And that's you know, that some up of all the people who have linked to your website so sign up for that. They send a couple roundups looking for sources every day. It could be overwhelming, but it's definitely a good use of your time for building back links. Um, there's also the fact that I am a paid freelance writer. And a lot of these publications, especially the ones that I've already mentioned, allow me to publish things under my own name. And usually that also includes Link back to my website. So it's kind of just a self perpetuating fact of being a byline freelance writer. But for you, this might also mean, um, you know, pitching Gust blog's. Even if you are a writer, just pitching blog's to post there and you know, for the purpose of being exposed to a new audience and to get links, and that's that kind of leads me to this last point here is just doing unpaid guest posts on high authority websites for the purpose of exposure to a different audience. Also authority building my own authority has definitely been a boon for my business because the more expertise or the more expert that people assume that you are, the more likely they are to pay you what you're actually worth. So, first of all, we've already touched on the fact that I have an association with some high quality publications. Do what you can to get those associations Aziz guest posts, or even as writing for them is a paid freelancer. It's different in every knee. She'll have to do a little bit of digging to figure out what's most relevant to you. Another thing is making friends in high places, so this could be influencers, you know, other solo preneurs, other bloggers. But the more friends you have, the more of an audience you have for helping you to share the content that you create. So that's an important part of S CEOs having other people share your content. Whether that's on social media or is the link on their website bulls Concertante, we help you. And then what I'm doing right now on skill share is trying to teach, you know, trying to pass on this knowledge that I've gained through my own trial and error. My my goal is to help other people to break out of that corporate 9 to 5 job and find something that they love to do on their own terms. So this can help you do that. Then I've achieved my goal. And then the last thing I want to touch on with regards to content, marketing and the blacksmith success is this idea of staying top of mind. So ah, lot of different things go into doing this. The first is that I have a weekly content roundup newsletter, and all included a link to that later. If you want to take a look, whether it is to learn from it because they share a lot of content, marketing and seo stuff or, you know, if it's something that you want to use to model your own version of that, another thing is that I'm constantly posting on social media. My strategy is very much top of mind. I don't like doing a hard sell. I'd rather that people be aware that I'm here and when they need me, then they know where to find me because I've been outspoken on social media about it. Um, and I also have kind of like a distinct sort of brand. Look, I use Campbell to create templates. It's something that you could also adapt for yourself, but not something we're going to go into today, Um, and then finally, I am involved in a lot of local networking groups here in Denver, Colorado, where I'm currently based, um, they all serve a different purpose. One of them's a WordPress Group, one of them's for business marketing professionals, and one of them's through freelancers. I really like Teoh stay in touch with all these different sides of my own sort of personality and professional life. So doing that helps me to find new clients on and even sometimes to find new opportunities for, um, getting an ASIO boost for my own website. So with that, that's a little intro here. Actually, it's kind of a long intro, but hopefully it's helped you to understand how I might be able to help you with your own content, marketing and SDO efforts. Next will be getting into, you know, some of the basic tenants of S E O that you need to understand in order to be effective with it.
2. SEO #Basics: so if you're the type of person who thinks s E O wtf, then this lesson will be hopefully a little bit eye opening for you. We're gonna go over just super high level basic stuff, and then we'll get more deep into, you know, the specifics of how to be effective with US CEO. So let's just start with you know, what is US CEO? Um, you probably already heard that it stands for search engine optimization. I see it as a conscious effort by marketers, bloggers and other online entities to be found by search engines. That's the gold's. It's the idea of optimizing your website your content so that it's found in search engines . But the other key part of this is that it's found by relevant people on search engines because the thing is, you could, you know, optimize your content for a specific keyword that has very high monthly search volume. But ultimately, if those people aren't your audience or if it's not the audience that you're creating content for specifically, then it's not really going to matter if those people land on your website because they're probably just gonna immediately leave, it's not going to solve any business purposes. It's not going Teoh, you know, achieve any specific goals for you. Um so it's important to realize that you're not always interested in having the highest volume of traffic. What you are interested in is achieving the most relevant relevant searcher to come to your website. So anyways, the question you have to ask yourself is, What do you want to be found for? Furthermore, it's important to talk about a CEO in terms of these two different sides of and actually to be honest with you, I would say there's actually three sides ASIO. But I'm gonna explain these two first. So onside ASIO includes any sort of s e o factors that could be affected on your site without outside intervention. Essentially, what I'm trying to say is these are things that you can do on your own. You don't need another website to be, you know, trying to influence it. We talked about back links a little bit, and that's actually what's involved in offsite ASIO, which we're about to talk about. But the idea is that on site S CEO is something that you can totally affect on your own and you should in orderto have this sort of salad foundation when it comes Teoh attacking ASIO asshole. So then there's offside US CEO and offsite. SDO includes any factors that can Onley be affected off site. Um, you know, it's something that you might be able to influence, but it would be an indirect influence, since you're not the one who's actually, you know, making changes or, you know, inserting a link to your site on somebody else's website. So, for example, this includes things like generating back links, social media activity, which doesn't. It's important to note that social media activity doesn't directly affect US CEO. But it's something that, of course, makes your content be seen by more people when done correctly, which might lead to more back links. So it's it's an indirect sort of thing. Online reviews. If you're working with local business, if you are a local business, that's something that can affect offsite s CEO for better, for worse. And um, you know, for the purposes of this presentation, we're gonna focus. Excuse me primarily on on site s CEO, just because it's something that you can easily affect. It's something that if you get it right? You're almost all the way there will save the back links discussion for another time. But one thing I want to add before we terminate this topic of S e o basics is what I've hinted at, Which is the fact that I think there's actually three sides of US CEO. So my three different categories of US CEO would involve on Site s CEO as it relates to keyword use on different factors that we're gonna go through coming up here very soon that have to do without that to do with the on site nature. Um and then you could also split on site s CEO into this other consideration, which is technical ASIO. So that's kind of like your website structure. If you If you decide that you want to learn more about Seo after this after this class Ah, one thing that you'll start to see are different things about you know how Google ranks your website in terms of how it's how the technical structures built. So one thing that you'll hear about is the fact that, you know, mobile websites are being preferentially indexed on Google. It just means that as long as your website displays while I'm mobile, you're fine. But if you don't have a mobile version of your website or if it has, like a very weird display when you bring it up on mobile, that's gonna hurt you and it's going to make it so that any other on site factors that you attempt Teoh employ, we're just not gonna work for you as well. So that's one thing to keep in mind is the fact that you know, you can do all these things you can have, like perfect keyword implementation. You can have, like all the back links in the world. But if your website doesn't have a sound technical structure that's gonna hurt you, and that's something that you're gonna want to discuss with your Web developer. And I'm also going to give you some tools for figuring out if there are any problems at the end of this class. Another thing that I want you to be aware of is page load time. So another thing that Google has determined kind of in line with their idea of always putting the user first is that if a page loads super slow, then that's a bad user experience. So that's another thing that you're gonna want to keep in mind. And I'll show you how to figure out if your page speed is not up to par. But with that, we're going to move on to the next topic, which is all about keywords. How to find the best ones for you.
3. How to Find (Relevant) Keywords: So at this point, we've kind of just gone over the basics. We've, you know, figured out how s CEO can be broken into a couple of different things. And you know what? You can focus on immediately to get results and you know, other things that you're gonna want to look into to be as effective as you possibly can. For right now, we're gonna focus on keywords because they provide a pretty important foundational element for really anything that has to do with onside. ASIO there they're unimportant. Consider issue for S E O in general. So without further ado, let's look into how to find the best ones for you specifically. So keywords definitely a hot buzzword in S CEO. And for good reason is we've already gone over there, essentially the descriptive elements that you want to rank for on search engines. One thing that's really important to keep in mind is that keywords cannot relate Teoh a user's intent. So think about this concept of the buyers journey. Think about it in terms of yourself. Even when you are contemplating a purchase, you know, there's the first stages where maybe you weren't even contemplating it. at all. But you saw something and it made you start thinking, you know, oh, I want say, for example, a new pair of Hudson's. So there's this awareness state stage and then, you know, after you become aware that you want or need new headphones, when you go into kind of a consideration where you're like OK, well, which headphones do I want? Which ones You're going to be the best for me, and then you know you'll you'll compare competitors. Andan finally will get to the point where you're ready to actually make a purchase. And so at that point, you might be thinking, Can I get a discount on this? You know, can I at least get free shipping if I'm purchasing it online? All these different situations that I've just described referred to different types of intent in this buyers journey, so we actually have different types of keywords that we can use to target for intent. And those three are, Google says. There's four micro moments, but I say there's three sort of overarching, um, ideas for intent. First of all, when people are typing into Google specifically with regards to intent, there's navigational intent there's informational intent, and then there's transactional intent. So navigational intent is like when you're typing in Google, um, Facebook. Log in or something would. You probably don't do, but maybe your mom does, or something like that. It's just the idea that you're using Google Search to find a specific page of a website, and you probably already have some sort of relationship with that website or some sort of passed with it. It's not like you're going there for the first time if you're using those types of keywords . So largely we don't really worry about optimizing for a navigational intent because it's just not really necessary. Um, but what we are worried about is optimizing for informational and transactional intent. So informational is really anything to do. Was like how to how to do this, how to do that? Whatever. It's something that would happen early on in the buying in the buyers journey that I've already described its, you know, during that sort of consideration, you haven't made up your mind to buy something yet, but, um, you know you're interested in it, so it's it's something that could peak somebody's interest. Um, and like I said. How to is typically the term associated with that type of thing. So then we have transactional intent, which is that you know, somebody is finally ready to buy. And and as I've already kind of touched on, we want Teoh atomize for Q words that have to do with buying. So, you know, free shipping promo code. You know, next year brand name stuff like that, it's better. Teoh offer that type of thing yourself, then toe. Let somebody else, you know, get a cut in on that. Whether they're in affiliate or, you know, whatever, it is better to control the narrative than to let somebody else control. It was what I'm trying to say, so that's really a high level overview of intent. But the point I'm trying to make is that it's ideal to be creating content for every stage of the buyers journey. If you're trying to make them, you know, buy something, or even if you're just trying Teoh get about a certain action, then you can't just be creating content that's informational. You have to also consider the transactional and really you know, anything else that comes in between those stages. So um, when you're thinking about keywords for your own blog's or for the blacks for clients, you know, First of all, think about like, what are some of the common topics? Because that's where you're gonna want to start with your own keyword research, and then you're going to drill it down from there. And here's the thing. You can't You honestly can't just guess what a great key where it will be. Because even if somebody is searching and a lot, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's something that you could rank for. So we have these two sort of competing ideas off the difficulty of ranking for a certain keyword and also the monthly search volume. So I'm going to show you just the basics of Google keyword planner coming up after this eso I probably shouldn't move the slide closer to that, but anyways, I'm just going to tell you the basic process for using Google keyword planner, and what it is is you input your search term. So whatever you think, the key weirdos start vague. Look at the search volume after you've typed it in, and you can see what it looks like based on historical trends. It's definitely a great free tool that you can use for keyword research. And then you'll see competition listed in terms of, actually Google keyword planners and AdWords tool. So what they're referring to when they talk about competition, which will be listed as low, medium or high, is in reference to pay per click campaigns. So it's not a 1 to 1 comparison of how difficult it will be to rank on search for those terms, but it can certainly be a useful benchmark. And since you know it is a free tool, it's a great place to start. In general, I like Teoh enduring for the low to medium competition keywords, especially if you're just starting out with s CEO. You're not gonna rink for the high competition, and you're probably not gonna ring for the medium either. So it helps to aim low when it comes to keyword difficulty. And essentially, what you'll do is Google's. Put up a bunch of results related to your keyword, and you can keep refining your search as you go along. So before we get into, I'll show you some screenshots with 12. Before we get into that, I wanted to talk about long tail versus short tail keywords, and I've provided an example to kind of illustrate the point here. So short tail is basically like a one word keyword. Or maybe it's two words Long tail refers Teoh a phrase. It's you know, when people hear keyword. Usually they think it's one word, but it could be a phrase to and actually it's probably better if it is a phrase, because that means that you're reaching a more specific audience. So let's just go through my example here we have, for example, food recipes, which is super big doesn't mean anything to anyone. The only people that are gonna rank for that or probably food network in our buzzfeed tacy . You're not gonna ring for that. I promise. Um, then we have healthy food recipes, which is still pretty big, and then we have healthy gluten free bread recipe, which is better. And then we have healthy gluten free chocolate chip banana bread Recipe, which is super specific, definitely attracts a very specific type of person. I haven't actually tested this on Google keyword planners to don't go and plug it in. If you have something perfect for that. But the idea is that you know, you're trying to target a very specific person if you'll notice there's a huge difference between the first term, which is food recipes. And then the last version that we've, you know animals to to here, which is healthy gluten free chocolate chip banana bread recipe. So, um, a couple more things we talked a little bit about user intent, so just giving you a couple more examples here, Um navigational, informational and transactional on. And you can see a couple different example searches here. Teoh, help you understand this concept a little bit more. It's definitely something worth researching A little bit more too. If you're interested in S e o. Since this is just a super high level overview on and then the last thing that I want to talk about with regards to just sort of this philosophy of keywords is the idea of semantic keywords. So when you go to Google and you type in a search, usually Google will suggest what they think that you're trying to type, and it might give you, like, five examples or something like that. Also, when you type in your search new click enter, usually at the bottom of that search page or search engine results. Page is what it's called. You'll see some other suggestions that you can click on for related searches. So essentially Google's giving you a gift. They're saying these are things that people are searching for that are related, and you want to be proactive in collecting those terms and then using them within your blog's. You know, whatever Web content you're writing for S e o purposes, it's It's important, as Google's search engine becomes more and more sophisticated and, you know, understands human language, better to connect ideas. And that's exactly what semantic keywords do. They say. Okay, Google, you know, here's some other related terms. Here's some other related ideas. My topic is really the best one, because I connect all these things. So again, this is free information. You can get right from Google, grab it and take advantage of it. So with that said, we're done with the major ideas of how to find keywords. I'm not going to show you how to use Google keyword planner, and then after that, I'm going to show you how to use the keywords to be effective with on Site s CEO
4. Using Keyword Research Tools: So at this point, we've talked a little bit about doing keyword research and finding keywords that are going to be ideal for your purposes. Now we're gonna talk a little bit about how to use Google. Keyword planner. We've already discussed it a little bit, but I just want to show you some screenshots and also an alternative tool. So here's this first screen shot here on the left is what it looks like when you initially log into Google keyword planner, and they've kind of past where it locked it. You have to have a Google account to access it, which is free. So if you don't have one, just make one, um, and you're technically, they're kind of moving it so that you only have access if you have an AdWords account, which is kind of weird, but you should still be ableto have free access to it. You might just have to create you know, that version of your Google account in order to do so. But anyways, there's a lot of fields here that you'll notice, and actually the only important one is the top one, the one where it says under one or more of the following, and then your products there's your product or service. That's the one where you would enter. You know what you think your keyword is going to be for the purposes of refining it and figuring out what it actually is. The only other saying that I would recommend toppling at this point, if it's relevant, is under targeting all locations. If you wanted to target a very specific location like a specific country, that would be a good place to do that on. And then also, there's some different keywords stuff you can do in terms of filtering out. For example, high competition keywords which, like I said before, you're probably not gonna ring for, especially if you're just getting started unless you're working with, like a really high authority client. Even so, it's just not really a good practice to try to ring for those things anyways, if you go to the right, this is what you'll see As soon as you click. Get ideas on that first page here, and it'll give you some different ideas. So you're actually seeing ad group ideas? I should have had a keyword ideas because then you'd see more specific examples. But either way, it's gonna look the same in terms off. You know, the key word itself on the far left, and then the average monthly searches, competition and so on. So average monthly searches. Um, you might think that the higher the butter, but that's not necessarily true. I would even venture to say that anything over 20 monthly searches is something worth ranking for, depending on the topic. Girly, you know, if it's super Inish, that also means that the people who were clicking on it and who are searching for it are super Neech themselves and their more qualified oven audience to be going to your website. So you know, don't don't discount the 20 the average monthly searches that start with 20 anything under that, I would say, is definitely not where it's going for, because there might be zero. It Google usually shows you, you know, 0 to 10 monthly searches, but that could just mean zero anyways, competition as we'll see here. Like I said, low to medium is what you want to be ranking for. Um, it's not an exact match research, it refers to add words, but even so, it's a good thing to be aware of and to use in your research. If you're using this free research tool, suggested Baby can be interesting because it can show really how high that competition actually is. It refers again to Google AdWords and what people would be bidding on those keywords for from an AdWords perspective. But you know, unless you see super big numbers that then it's not really something you have to pay attention to. So all that said, I'm super obsessed with this tool called a graphs. It's actually like a competitive back links tool or something like that, but I actually use it for their keyword research tool. So, for example, I've shown you what? What happens when you, Serge Solo preneurs um, with your keyword research tool? And as you can see, it shows you the keyword difficulty and as you can see as kind of a sub? No. In that section, it says you'll need back links from about 16 websites to rank in the top 10 for this keyword so really actionable information really straightforward in terms of what's actually possible for you. Um, you can also see the search volume trends. Um, It gives you some information about pay per click advertising up there and how that relates . It gives you a global search volume. It breaks it down by different territories. Um, sometimes it will also give you the parent topic. In this case, it is the parent topic, but in some cases it can show you a little bit more insight into that keyword, you know, for for just research purposes and drilling it down to the bus one you can have what I really love here is the key word ideas, and Google gives you a version of this, but it's not exactly the same. So it breaks the keyword ideas down into different sections, and, you know, that's just one aspect of a giraffes. It's also really great at finding back links that I'm not aware that I even have the caviar , of course, is that it's like $99 a month. You can buy an annual plan that gets you a little bit cheaper. But, you know, obviously that's a huge investment for a year or for a month, or, you know, however long you want to use it, so it's probably not something I would recommend Unless you're doing it for client work and congestive I it that way. Or, you know, if your website is really ah, hub of getting more clients and or, you know, passive income activities or something like that, it's It's definitely an expensive tool, But I absolutely love it. And as you can see, you know, Justin, this screenshot here gives you so much more data, and it's super actionable. So, you know, I'm going to cut off my love fest with a cross here and we're gonna move on. Teoh. You know, after you do the keyword research, how do you actually use them?
5. How to Use Keywords & Onsite SEO Best Practices: all right. So by now you know a lot about on site s CEO in terms of looking for your key words. But it really all comes down to how you use them because you could find the best keyword in the world. But it's really not gonna matter unless you actually implement it with other proper on, say, sdo best practices properly. So once you've got that, you know, perfect keyword. Next, you're gonna want to think about where to put it. So the first thing here is the URL or what you might see referred to as the slug. If you use, for example, WordPress is your content management system or if your clients dio so there's definitely a hierarchy of importance in terms of actually using these key words. You know, I'm gonna give you a bunch of different places to use them, but it's not all equal. They're not all going to equally help you. So it's important to use all these things, is what I'm going to try to get across. So, for example, when you're using the key word in the slug, it might look like point to in these bullet points, which is you know your black dot com slash keyword. Um, you do have to use dashes in between the keywords if you have. If you have more than one word and your keyword phrase Sochi, we're dash, you know, word to dash word three, for example. Um, Google is not gonna be able to interpret it if it's just one big, you know, throw upward. That's just all together. So you have Teoh definitely use formatting in the URL. Make sure that your keyword is understood. Furthermore, from more of a technical s CEO standpoint is that you want to eliminate the categories and dates in your you're all structure. So going back to that link there your black dot com slash Maybe you have, you know, slash the month slash the date. Um, and that's a permanent structure that you can set in again WordPress because it's my favorite content management system. But really, one of the things that's important to understand about Seo is like the more sort of, like buffer and blow that you put between your keyword and you know, the rest of your you earlier page content or whatever the longer it's gonna take for Google to interpret it. So you know, it's I'm talking about the oral specifically, but I could be referring to really any part of your website. You know, if you have just a bunch of, I don't know, code like extra code in it, um, that's going to hurt you. I'm not going to dwell on it, though. Let's keep moving on. So the next place that you might put your keyword is in your title or you're heading, so the title would be like the title of your black posts. It's usually this H one tag here, but it's actually possible that your H one heading tag and then the meta title, which is what the search engine reads, is your title. They could actually be two different things. Using a tool like Joost for S CEO on WordPress, you can actually distinguish having a different meta title than whatever your page title is . Whatever your blag H one titlists. So that's important to know if you have to kind of like right and awkward meta title just to fit in that cured. But the thing is, you can also create one that faces your readers that's in the hat awkward and not sacrifice This s e o Jews that you're working on here, so definitely added to the H one tag. Um, there should only be one of these per page. So sometimes people get lazy and they use heading tags. There's actually six that you know. It's basically to help you categorize the content in terms of, like, sub topics and stuff like that. Some people don't use it for categorization, though they use it as a way to format. Text is like a certain font size, but especially when it comes to the H one tag. This is a huge problem. If there's more than one per page, it confuses Google. It's just bad news. Don't do it, Um, and you know, as have kind of talked around so far, each one heading tags signify relevance to search engines. So it's kind of on par with that you are all in terms of or the URL slug in terms of importance of where to put your keyword, you know, if you put it anywhere, make sure it's in those two things. So while we're talking about meta titles, we could also talk about meta descriptions on those air, basically a descriptions that display under the title and a search engine results page. It's kind of like your teaser for why somebody would want to click through on your link over somebody else's that's displaying, you know, for those same keyword results. So make sure to add your keyword. People will argue as to whether or not you actually need to use your hue word for ASIO, but I want to keep it in as a best practice, just in case and then also, like I said, a compelling reason for why somebody would want to click through. So we've talked about this. We've touched on this in the last point, but subheadings or another place where you might want to use your keyword definitely add it to the H two tag to at least wanted to tag. And you know many block posts, especially if they're short. Black. Post will probably only use H two tags, but you also have aged three through age six. Is if you have you know that many sub topics of your sub topics one little trick that I used to make sure that I use that keyword in and H two and my black posts is I just repeat the title at the very end of the block post. Right before the conclusion, you might say something like final thoughts semi colon, the title of the Black. And since you've already put your keyword in the black title, then you know it's really easy to just copy and paste that for your each to tag. So while you can't use multiple H one tags, you can certainly is multiple H twos through age six is so then we have the actual text content in your blood. Um, and as a general now you want to use it as many times as possible, but not over doing it to the point that it sounds were not over doing it to the point that it sounds unnatural. So you want to add keywords or your keyword or cured phrase, whatever to your content at least four times for 500 words. The thing is, as with the matter description thing, I just told you nobody and s e o actually agrees on what the perfect keyword density is. But this seems to me like a pretty fair number, um, for making sure that you have a pretty good one that's not overly spammy on, and then another thing that's you know it's not necessary, but it's something that could help a little bit. Is using different text decorations to add additional relevance to your keywords. So, like underlining italicize ing and bolding the cured? Of course. You know, as with all of this other stuff, you don't want to do it to the point where it looks like weird or unnatural. Just if you can do it. If you can't, it's OK, not the most important thing. What is kind of an important thing are your images. So you want to use keywords and images in a couple different ways, and it starts with actually like saving that image or naming that image So your keyword should be in the file name. Like with the URL slug. You gotta add dashes between the different words and your keyword phrase in order for Gould to be able to interpret what the heck you're talking about. Also, super importance is all tagged. You want to add your keyword to the all tag, but it's also important to note that the all tag is supposed to be an accessibility feature of websites. So, for example, people that are, um you know, using a screen reader like if they're blind to be able Teoh, consume the content on your website. You want to make that all tag also descriptive, but I think that you can do both. You can add your keyword and be descriptive and, you know, make everybody happy and and then, usually on content management systems like WordPress, you can also add in the title. In most themes, you won't see the title. But again, it's just another way to add in your keyword. And you know, if you're already doing that for the all tagged, you can just copy paste whatever you have. For that, it's easy. So make sure to do this for every image on the page, you know, certainly or feature image. But, you know, if you use examples screenshots, etcetera and you should from an S e o perspective, the more images, the better. You know, assuming that you're not over doing it in a weird way. One thing that I would recommend if you do use WordPress is a plug in and called. I think it's actually called Smush now not WP smush, but it's an image optimization plug in. And this is one of the things that always comes up when I run Google page speed and sites to see you know how pages load If if they're not loading fast enough, optimizing your images is one of the quickest ways to improve your page load time. So from a technical s CEO perspective, as we talked about earlier, super important. So let's talk about a couple s CEO slam dog Caesar, things that you can dio that are related to on site s CEO. Well, actually, the first ones not but indirectly it is. So add social share buttons to your content so that more people you know are encouraged to share it with people if there aren't social share buttons. And usually people just give up because then they have to do all the formatting themselves . And it's super annoying. Just Adam. I like social warfare is a plug in. I might even mention it in one of these next slides on and then also add some click to tweets because people share a lot of articles specifically on Twitter. You can, you know, highlight quotes from certain people are interesting. Statistics are just important takeaways. It's just another thing that you can do to ensure success with your article when it's published. Also, don't forget to be optimizing for Pinterest again. That social warfare plug and I mentioned is awesome because you can add a specific Pinterest image and description so that when somebody goes to paying your posts and add dependent button, too, so that when they go and do that, then it's formatted the way you want it to be. And like I said before, Social on S E O don't have a direct relationship with each other. But that said, you know, the more exposure you get to your articles, the more back link opportunities you have. So it's it's worth doing. We also have. We also want to be worried about licks, so internal links are links Teoh other types of related content on your website on your client's website, whatever. I like to have a least two per 500 words. Same goes for external links. You want to be, you know, proving the value of the sources of the things you say in terms of the sources that you got them from the higher the authority of the source, the better. It helps a little bit with a CEO. And, um, post length is another important factor which you talked about. Just make sure that your, um you know, constantly trying to create basically the best guy to the topic that you write about. And, you know, the length will come from that. The ASIO will come from that I would recommend that you have at least a minimum of 1000 words for any article that you're trying to publish with an S E o purpose. And what would actually be a lot better is if it was 1500 words. So, you know, it depends on the topic. It depends on how deep you can get into it. You don't want to be writing just for writing sake, so you have to find a balance. But all that said, post length is definitely important when it comes toe CEO. So I want to talk a little bit about Black Hat Seo, and these are the things that can get you in trouble. These can get to you a penalty from Google that results in your website being D index, which means that it won't be able to be found on Google for anything anymore. So it's bad you don't want to do any of these things. Paid. Links would be like if somebody paid you to place a back link on your site, for example. I mean, it's hard for Google to suss this out, but if they, you know, crackdown on one person and then they see the same links on your site, then you could be in trouble. Ah, spam comments are really annoying. So one thing that I always recommend is that people that use WordPress install a kid's mint . It's a free plug in that moderate spam comments. It deletes the majority of them before you would even see them. And then, you know, calls attention to others that might be OK, but might be span. Duplicate content is basically just copying and piecing somebody else's. Are you to call in claiming that it's your own? Obviously, that's not good. Article spending is basically rewriting an existing article without any news, sort of like unique content. It's a little bit harder for Google if people figure this one out, but it's not impossible. Like I said, they're becoming more sort of in touch with, you know how humans right and talk and stuff like that. So this is something that, as they released new algorithm updates they're going to be better at finding this, Uh, cloaking is like when you, uh when you kind of, like right your meta title and description as if it was going to lead to a certain type of page and then you get there and then it's not what you thought it was gonna be. It's just a deceptive way of driving traffic. Keyword stuffing is just using the key word so much other it appears unnatural. We've talked about that a little bit, and then invisible text is like if you were using the keyword, but then you used him like HTML code Teoh, move it. You know, Teoh part of the page or somebody couldn't see it or you, you know, made it. Why it to match a white background just for the purpose of getting more keywords. And so in general, that's a very quick overview. But these are all things that you shouldn't dio. So I'm gonna end off our discussion of how to use keywords here. And, you know, some of these s e o bus and worst practices, and then we're gonna finish this all off by talking a little bit about some of the tools that I recommend to help you with implementing s CEO.
6. Recommended Tools for Blogging & SEO: congratulations. You've made it to the end. At this point, we're really just crossing our T's and dotting her I's and giving you some tools to help. You kind of check yourself. You know, make sure you're doing the right thing. So first I want to start with a recommendation for a blogging or website platform. And thats WordPress and all say the same thing till the day I die unless they totally screwed up. But I really doubt that that's gonna happen. WordPress is just, you know, it has a very sound technical ASIO structured to begin with. It does little things behind the scenes that you don't have to worry about, like for example, generating a site map, which is basically like Alling, sign your website. It's some information about how they relate to each other, like categories and stuff like that. It does this automatically so you don't have to worry about that. And that's just one example of how WordPress is awesome. Also, it comes with a lot of different tools, like plug ins that you can insult to improve your ASIO. You know, as you get better at this as you learn more about how to do it right. You'll find that WordPress really grows with you. So I recommend that strongly as a place to start. Um, and on that No. And S E O plug. And if you use wordpress that you should definitely uses yos just because once you've figured out what keyword you want to use, you plug it into yos and Joost, make sure that you use it in all the important places that we've already discussed in the previous lesson. So Yost isn't going to tell you if your keyword is right. That's why it's important to know how to find really good keyword. But again, it will help you make sure that you've used it in a way that will help you to actually rank for that keyword. So another tool that I would recommend, um, kind of if you haven't existing website and even if you're building a new one just to make sure that the technical structures right from a nuncio perspective is first of all, S e o site, check up. You can sign up for a free trial, you know, get your report, hopefully make some changes before that trial is over. And then you know, see how that has affected your technical structure and then totally free all the time is Google Page Beit Insights, which again has to do with page load, and you know some of the problems that might be getting in the way of that. And usually what I see on Google Page load their page speed insights is that usually anyone feels those has an image optimization problem. And like I said, smush is the plug in that I recommend for fixing that. Or they have what's called a cashing problem or an issue with men if eyeing different files , which is also, if you don't really need to worry about. If you have a Web developer that can help you to do like a speed optimization on a small WordPress website, it shouldn't cost more than like 50 bucks to do that. So this is all stuff that you can achieve you know, very reasonably on your own without having Teoh, you know, spend a lot of money on it. So then just a couple more things here. Aziz Faras Web hosts co. At Love site Ground just because they're really easy to work with. If anything, ever goes wrong. They're quick to fix it. They can transfer your site from an existing host for free with any new plan. Um, you know, they're just They're my go to You can host multiple websites on one plan, so and they're really cheap too. So definitely somebody that I'd recommend if you're new to this, you know, blogging or building a website practice. And then I try to collect my best articles that I've written about Seo on my website. So that's something that you want to learn more about. This whole class is kind of a high level overview of stuff and focus definitely on beginner sort of best practices. If you want to dig a little bit more deeper into it, whether it's, you know, for you, for client, for whatever, check out my website dot dash blocks with dot com slash portfolio underscore category slash CEO. And with that, we are officially done here. But I am definitely open to any questions you have again. You can find me on Twitter by tweeting at Matty Azman Happy answer any of your questions there or on skill share whatever works for you. Hopefully this class has taught you something new. And if there's anything else that you'd like to learn with regards to this I love to hear from you. Thanks.