Strategic SEO: Your Quick Start Approach to Reach a Wider Audience

1. Intro to SEO: Welcome to the exciting world of SEO. And it's exciting because it means that you are going to be searchable and also discovered. And that's exciting because it means that what you put out into the world will be well-received. So this is a practical SEO segment. I'm going to be guiding you through how you can ensure that search engines and algorithms can smoothly access and index your content. There are following key areas that will give you a clear understanding of how this works and how you can leverage it for your own success. My name is Peggy Dean and I am an artist, author, an educator, and completely self-built, which is why I know a thing or two about this heavy, heavy research. Our time together, we're gonna be covering how to think the way that your target market things we're going to look at effective Keyword Use is we're gonna look at content strategy, strategic headers and sub headers, making your images discoverable, metadata, etc. by the end of this course, you're going to be well-equipped with the tools that you need to elevate your content and improve visibility online. Because that's Seo is not about quick wins, it's about steady long-term gains. So let's embark on this SEO journey. Let's get you found online 2. A Quick Personal Story: I am so glad that you've decided to dive into the world of SEO so that your incredible content and your services and offers products, things that you provide. It can actually be discovered online. Quick Personal Story. When I first started teaching online, I was not much into SEO. And if you aren't either or haven't been, this stands for Search Engine Optimization and that means optimizing your content so that it actually shows up in search engines and whatnot. So yeah, I didn't really think about this much in especially my first couple of years. In fact, I ports so many of my own networking and exposure eggs into one platform and you guess which one it was. I was consumed by it. What I wasn't actually thinking about, however, was how once I posted something, unless somebody was going to spend time scrolling through my feed for who knows how long they weren't going to ever see what I was posting. And that was the case then. And it's the case now. So basically if I was trying to reach a target audience, hopefully my timing was just right, or hopefully the Algorithm decided to be nice to me that day. It's not the best plan for discoverability. So in this practical SEO segment, I'm going to be guiding you how to ensure that search engines and algorithms can smoothly access and index your content. And the following key areas are what we're going to cover. It's going to give you a clear understanding of how SEO works, how you can leverage it for your own success. So in our time together, we will be covering how to think the way your target market things. We're going to look at effective Keyword Use, content strategy, strategic headers, subheaders, making your images discoverable, metadata, and indexing Your Site so that search engines can crawl it effectively. By the end of this, you will be well-equipped with the understanding and tools that you need to really elevate your content and improve your visibility on line. Seo is not about quick wins, but rather steady long-term gains. So we're going to jump in and we're gonna get you found online. So I will see you in our first lesson. 3. Targeting Strategy: Let's kick off. I want to encourage you to think about the types of platforms that your content lives in, or were you want it to live, whether that be this existing structure, your own websites, even your marketing efforts through shares. I want you to remember the words evergreen content. This is the type of content that will come up when it's in search results over and over despite the date that it was published online. So think about blog posts. Let's say you want to find how to do some things. So you plug your question into Google search engine and you find a tutorial on somebody's blog, you click the article, find the thing that you needed and you're set. Did you also happen to notice the date from the blog post that you clicked on? Chances are it's two plus years old. This is evergreen, so I want to help you be that discoverable. However, in order to effectively stretch your reach to your target market and hopefully way beyond, you need to be able to speak to them with a full understanding of what it is that they want and need. So you should have your ideal avatar, their age group, their occupation, their shopping preferences, their music preferences, hobbies, their big goals and dreams, blah, blah, blah, hurdles, setbacks, struggles. These are just as important, if not more. These should be all memorized to your offers. Ideal customer. And when you can essentially walk 10 mi in their shoes before ever starting to do keyword research. You're going to have a much better impact. And here's why. When you can competently predict the questions that they would ask, the information that they would research, the methods that they go about doing so and where they source that information. You'll be much more comfortable. And throughout their thought processes, understanding them in order to meet them where they're at, instead of waiting for them to find you. Because your goal is to reveal the language that they speak and allow that to guide you in the way that you present your information and your content. If you haven't put together a profile for your target Avatar yet, we'll visit this again. So hang tight because a refresher might just be what you need. I think that this refresher as good for any stage no matter how well you know your audience. The reason it's important to have an ideal avatar is because that person represents the exact market that you want to reach. It might at first seem like this brilliant idea to create an online course or a product or service that appeals to everybody. That's an endless audience, right? Wrong. In reality, trying to appeal to everybody can actually hurt you. And typically the most profitable businesses and solo printers are the ones that are directed toward a particular audience. Not often, always. When we try to appeal to everyone, I know we end up keeping our product or the message or the content that we're trying to put out in the world way too broad. And two things happen when we stay too broad. The first one, trust me, I know this is that your audience gets confused. They don't like, I mean, they don't fully understand what it is that they're going to get from what you're offering. So of course they're hesitant to buy in or option two. They buy your offer and they don't feel like they necessarily walked away with anything valuable. Why is that? When you can't address exactly what your audience actually needs beyond the surface, you'll never be able to fully create comprehensive offers for them. You'll never be able to really serve your people. So there will always be pieces missing, which leave those who do invest in you underwhelmed. We don't want this. So the other thing to think about is that you cannot please everyone. Let's face it, no matter what you do, you will never be able to please everybody when you put your efforts into a specific audience with similar interests, your impact will be greater. Yes. There are too many people with too many interests and personalities. And the style of your offer and the style of your content. Even your personality may not be a good fit for them. That's okay. In fact, it's really good because the stronger that you repel, the stronger you will also attract. When you develop your own smaller engaged audience, you get to know them better. You get to know their collective personality, their expectations. You start to understand what they like, what they don't like. And from there you can create courses, products offers things that appeal to their wants and their needs. So this results in a much higher interests rather than trying to keep everything vague so that everybody wants it. Because spoiler alert, they don't and they won't. Now, your goal is a business creator or entrepreneur, is to build something that both you and your audience are excited about. When you sell to everyone, you begin to lose that personal touch. Your topic Be something that you're much less passionate about and that's going to show and what you put into the world. So instead of coming across as an individual with something unique to offer, you'll just have something general that everyone has seen before and you aren't selling a Keyword, you're selling yourself as well. And it's much more important to be personable than to be general. I mean, that goes without saying, but the goal in this moment for you is to really define your ideal avatar. So discovering a pain point they have and identifying an answer or a solution to their problem. Once you have your solution, then you're ready to start marketing. That includes your SEO practices, pep talk Done. I'm going to walk you through an exercise that I encourage everyone to do because you'll be reaching a specific avatar. Yet that avatar exists times thousands times hundreds of thousands even. So, this example, let's say her name is Anna. All begin to determine how to reach Anna. Let's say that she is 36. That makes our age range for most people that we're trying to reach, like, let's say 35 to 55. Just remember that you determine these numbers. I'm simply just using this as an example. So getting even more specific FUN questions, answer them like what do they listen to? Where do they shop? You can see how I'm totally creating a person. I know their habits at this point, I know what they listened to, I know where they shop. That says a lot about a person. Continuing on, let's say that Anna works as a nurse. She makes 90,000 a year as a nurse. I don't know if that number is correct. I'm throwing something out there. Let's say that car guilty pleasure is something like chocolate covered fruits of all kinds, which is a huge mistake. But do you see how all this is coming together? We're getting to know this person. They're becoming a friend to us, but we're getting comfortable with our Target Audience. Suddenly they're not a stranger anymore. It's easier to find them where they live or where they, where they exist. I'm online or elsewhere. And of course you can build any additional details that you might want to add. You can get as specific as possible. And the more details that you add, the more you understand your target Avatar, the better you'll be able to speak to them to your target market. Now that we have this specific traits and facts about Anna, we're going to turn around and we're going to show up at all the places of her interests. So that could mean forums, that could mean social. It could even mean ads. If you opt to place Facebook ads or Pinterest, add something like that. The beautiful thing about those is that they do offer such a specific demographic reach to where they'll show up. So Anna are, Anna's will absolutely see what it is that you're offering. And what happens is that that person, Anna, who you might not have thought would see your item. Now, it's right in front of her face and she might click it and that's huge. You obviously don't need to go the abs route, but that's just worth noting. There's a lot of organic reach in bulb two. So how do you come up though with your target markets attributes? Truly, I think that this can be anything that you want it to be, but you should factor in that. You then have to present to your version of Anna all the time. So how do you want to present yourself and what you offer? How do you want to show up authentically, even more so, what does your version of authentic even look like? When that's established? Think about who's going to be receptive to that. You might be trying to reach someone who likes more of a finer, luxurious lifestyle. Let's say they show, I don't know anybody like this. Let's say they shop at private appointments with designers and they're fine ART collector. I mean, I might love the idea of a luxury client. Sure. But suddenly, in my mind, I'd have to put on a collared shirt instead of overalls and not literally, but you know what I'm saying? That's personally not my ICA. It's great if it's somebody else's. It's just not my personal brand is so tied into me as a person. It doesn't mean it's the wrong market though. It just means that you would show up a bit differently. So your offer should really relate to them. It can come across beautifully polished and still relaxed because that's okay too. Don't overthink it. You can even embrace your ideal avatar office. Somebody that you know, it could be a friend of yours or a family member or someone you admire, maybe even your best friend. Your target market is who you're talking to all the time. Who do you want to spend time with? Right? On the flip side, target markets and demographics are not interchangeable, so they do closely relate, but think about them in segments. Demographics like age, location, occupation, education. These could be considered segments under the umbrella of your target market. Speaking directly to a specific demographic and your marketing efforts will deepen your reach to them. Specifically. It's not removing others from your target market. It's rather just applying a temporary laser focus on one group to grab their attention. Next. Deepen your understanding by taking time to focus on asking yourself who you don't want to target. This is going to help you stop trying to Reach Everyone. I suffer from this because while I do have my target market identified, I also innately want to reach everyone the more the merrier ISA. But Marketing does, it doesn't work that way. So take some time to really figure out who your target market isn't. This is even more difficult than determining who you do want to reach because the idea of exclusion isn't Fun for anyone. But remember you're not excluding, you're simply not marketing directly to them. So exclude away because they will also inevitably see and be involved. They are definitely still invited to the party. It's just going to help you avoid poorly positioned offers and actually end up increasing your sales, your leads, etc. rather than losing them, we're going to take a quick break. And then after you do this digging in identifying exactly who your target avatar is, we're going to go even deeper. 4. Speak THEIR Language: Alright, after you do some digging into identifying exactly who your target avatar is, you're not done. If you base your marketing efforts only off of this superficial person that you came up with and you stop there. Your progress will also stop there. And this is because you need to figure out what kind of language they use. So before you answer the following questions, I want you to challenge yourself to release all bias. It can totally derail the opportunity to reach your target market. So when I say that confirmation bias, It's essentially assumptions that we create in our heads by misinterpreting or perhaps misinterpreting preexisting beliefs. And this is especially hard as creative entrepreneurs because we get all pretty inside our heads and we don't always have a sounding voice to help us route through our influence of desire on beliefs. Release what you think you know of people. Now, identify what specific words or phrases does your target market lookup when they search for the type of content that you're offering, how do they describe what they're struggling with? If you're having trouble coming up with how they may speak. You can take a look at forums on how Cora, Facebook groups, even like specific search planners or results, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, you will easily find similarities of the way that things are asked and how things are stated. And you can also go through your messages on social media and your email anywhere that to uncover the kind of questions that people typically will ask, you want to pay attention to all of these questions and the way they're presented. Because they not only tell you exactly what kind of content to create, but also how to phrase your language in order to reach them effortlessly. So, for example, Answer the Public. I want to show you just how vast the results are. So let's say I want to draw a strawberry. I could put tutorial in there. They want to keep things one to two words. I think three would be okay. Because I'm specifying drawing. I think I might do paint, paint strawberry. I'm going to get rid of tutorial. Okay, so let's look at what these results will be. It takes a minute and you only get one or two a day on a free account, but it's still totally worth it if you have a specific thing that you're looking for. So the reason I like this one is because it shows different types of questions and the way that they're asked. It shows indicators on what's highly searched, average lower. So paint strawberry. You can see here we have h2, which how, what, how, how to paint strawberry blond hair? How to paint strawberry seeds. And it looks like this is relatively searched, like in the middle, which is great to know this one's less searched how to paint strawberries with acrylics, but it's still makes the chart. And these are really valuable assets if you're doing something having to do with painting strawberries. We have what so what color? How to paint strawberry leaves? I don't know why this ended up in the how but it did. And then we'll Y, so just different, different things here, but as we scroll down, we also see different ways. So without paint, without streaks. So this is informing us of different things that people might want to know. This is exactly what the search terms are entering. So strawberry painting on rock, which I would never think that would be involved. This is specifying realistic strawberry, strawberry leaves. These are things that week that might inform us of content to include or content to create. As we continue on, we have even more so like and, or verses, verse. So something might show up here. It looks like this is a little bit repetitive. It's not really showing this up, showing up in this area, but sometimes uncertain topics it might. And then we have literal alphabetical the whole way down on different search terms, which is incredible. This is answered the public. We have so many. I wonder what this paint strawberry rocks is. Somebody knows something. I don't know. A lot of people apparently. Okay, so that's answered the public. Now, let me show you Google Keyword Planner. Google Keyword Planner is really helpful. Just look up Google Keyword Planner. You'll have to have an Ads account. It doesn't have to be active or running or paying for anything. You'll still be able to use this. So if I was to look up the same thing, strawberry or let's say paint strawberry. I can get results. And then I'm going to see all of these. Now, what I see here are not only the different types of keywords. And this is by relevance, which will also show the average monthly searches and competition. So these are the two columns I pay a lot of attention to because if it has a higher monthly search, like up to ten K versus 100 to one K. That's telling me, okay, this is searched quite a bit. However, the competition of how many people are using this keyword is also high, which means that my discoverability may not be as high because other people will be competing for that. When I see medium and low, those are sweet spots. However, when I see 1,000, I can see, okay, well that's also not necessarily going to do much for me because it's not searched very often. When I say sweet spot, I should have, I shouldn't have used that yet. This is ideal. How about that the sweet spot is finding low to medium with a higher search. Her. And I might not find that on this in particular, but I will find it. It's okay to use the high ones. I just want you to be aware of that so that you can cross compare those two together to see what has a high average monthly search, what has a lower competition, if possible, that would be perfect, that would be great. So those are the two resources that I like using the most of course there are many, many others that can be used, many sites and things like that. But this is a great kickoff spot. 5. Effective Keyword Use: Welcome back. So you just did a good bulk of work by identifying exactly who you'll be speaking to and how to speak to them. Those steps are way more than a lot of people. Everything to do so congratulate yourself for this dedication to this process. You will inevitably skyrocket your reach by being intentional with focused messaging, rather than using umbrella terms that really don't provide much information to people. So well done, my friend. Now, it's time to find how to properly use these in place, these keywords. As we reviewed, you don't want to compete with 1 million other keyword uses, but you also want your keywords to be effective like whoa, right, so you can do that without hiring and SEO master. Once you've discovered your pool of solid keywords, here's where those places should be. In the first example, I would use a blog post. So your headline that should be instantly eye-catching. It should spark immediate curiosity and you know what else? You probably guessed it, but you should include your primary keyword. The next major point is that Google robots, they scroll that headers and the subheaders inside of a blog pages. If you've ever looked at text formatting on a page, you probably see them labeled, at least on the backend, not on the Brennan. You probably see them labeled as H1, H2, H3, H4, more. These are all headers of sorts, but the largest and most Content Aware are the first numbers. So H1 is your main largest headline. Google really likes to look at H1 and H2. H2 is smaller than H1, but it's still quite prominent. So think of these as you would like an outline. So in this case, I'm teaching you SEO. So here's an example of how headers can be used. H1 could be to learn to boost SEO for explosive growth, then a slightly smaller H2 header to using SEO to reach your target market. H three could be types of target markets and keywords that they use. So it's kind of sandwiched inside of the outline and other H2 effective Keyword Use. This is another bullet points. I wouldn't keep using H1 because that is primarily like my entire article or my entire page, but H2 is almost reinforcing that over and over. And then h3 keywords in headers and sub headers. That could be an example and so on. Then I want to point out all the words that I've called out. You'll see that each sub-header has at least one keyword that is relevant to my main headline. So if I can do that without sounding like a repetitive robot, I want to try to include a keyword or keyword phrase in the first sentence of my Post or my page. I don't, You don't want to get crazy with keyword stuffing. So if you can't do that without just avoid, but if you can still make it relevant and you can make it sound organic, it's going to significantly boost your discoverability. So that was like the longer form, but the same principles apply in a lot of other places. So Pinterest is a good example because when you search for something on Google, Pinterest, content comes up all the time. So how can you increase the odds of that happening for you? Think about your target audience, of course. So for example, if your content relates to DIY crafts, you could, could create a generic file like DIY crafts, home ideas. Or you could get more specific with them. And it can be named something like handmade wedding stationery ideas or DIY Halloween costumes in the supporting text, whether it be a caption or article metadata, anything within a site, you're going to add additional short keyword phrases that also apply. For blogs. Best practices might be trying to create something that's called a long-tail keyword phrase. That's when you have basically several, a threat of words within a sentence or two that describes what something is all about and includes the relevant keywords and the short tail keyword phrases within it. So an example of DIY Halloween costumes might be ultimate list of cheap DIY costume ideas for family Craft time to enjoy as you get dressed up for Halloween. So I have a few keywords in there that would land really well, such as cheap DIY costume ideas. Even shorten to DIY costume. There's also costume ideas even. But then there's family Craft time, dress-up, Halloween. You see how it makes for much more optimized search results by using these keywords. But I worked it in, so it made sense. Then you want to take advantage of metadata. Additionally, alt texts, which assists with accessibility and visibility. So most websites have a separate space that you can customize for what shows up on search results and social media platforms do as well. It's a bit like when you get an email and there's a subject line and a preview texts, you want those two places to nail that info so that both of them come up in search results and hook your target market. You've done this space work. You know who your ideal avatar is and you know what keywords will shine. So just use that formula and you'll see the results. So recap Quick reference list as well. Here's some critical places to include your keywords for the best optimization. The title tag is your most important to include your keyword. It's the first thing that users and search engines see when determining the relevance of whatever you're putting out there to a search query, your meta-description. This is your brief summary that appears under a title tag in search results. This might look like Meta. On a webpage, you'll see a little box that lets you put a description in. It might look like a caption on Pinterest, including your keyword here can improve your click-through rate because users can very clearly see that your page is relevant to their search. Then there's headers and sub headers. So structure your content to make it easier to read, which also helps search engines understand the content on your page. You also will include at least one of the keywords in your subheadings. To enhance your SEO, at least in one subheading it's going to be every single one. But in most of them, then in the first 100 words, this isn't something I mentioned yet, but you want to try to include your keyword within the first hundred words of your content. I say the first sentence. Because search engines tend to prioritize the information found at the beginning of each page or blog post or what have you throughout your content. This seems like a dub, but when you're keywords are in your headers and the beginning of your content, I think that they, it will be very helpful to have them also appear naturally keyword and naturally throughout your text. So you want to avoid keyword stuffing is what it's called. That's going to lead to penalties from search engines. Essentially, it's not going to like it. The content should still read very naturally to a natural human reader. And then the URL of your page is another place that you should really include your keyword. And I would keep this to a minimum of five words if possible. It's going to help search engines understand what your pages about. And it also makes the URL more user-friendly. I always put dashes in between my words so that it acts as a space. It's easier to find. Google knows that's a space rather than having everything smushed together. That brings me to alt texts because search engines can't see images, but they can read alt texts. This also, I'm gonna pull in filenames for images because including your keyword in both alt texts of at least one image on your page. Also of at least one image in the filename include dashes, so you know the spaces are there that can boost your SEO and make your site more accessible. So these are some best practices for your keyword placements. You can create well optimized content for both search engines and for the whole of being able to digest your site. And remember, SEO is much more than keywords. It's also about providing that valuable, high-quality content to your audience. In the next lesson, I'll dive more into images and I'll show you just why they're so important in optimizing your reach. So I'll see you there. 6. Images Matter More Than You Think: Alright, in the last lesson, you learned how to take all of the quality keywords that you've now have up your sleeve and apply them to different places online as you upload your content. When it comes to imagery, I'm gonna cover a very, very important element to your discovery online. Your filename matters. I'm not talking about the title of your blog post or a PDF that you uploaded, although of course those counts. But I'm actually talking about the backend sitting in one of your folders on your computer filename. I know that we all have our own organization methods and you can totally keep that as is. My suggestion, would be just to create a temporary copy of the file that you'll be uploading online and name that file according to what somebody would be searching for in order to find it. So if I'm uploading a watercolor galaxy tutorial, I could save the image as how dash two, dash. You get it to a galaxy or galaxy watercolor painting tutorial. It's simple and effective and it tells search engines that is a result to that search. This example, I searched this exact thing and if I toggle over to images, Google knows right away that this blog post has some great content to provide for its users. And this happens to be my blog and that's the third image results. So this is excellent in order to, for discoverability because Google doesn't know how to interpret IMG 18593 to two dot JPEG as a watercolor tutorial. You know what I mean? So along with the proper filename, it is equally as important to add relevant alt texts. I know I mentioned that, but you'll see the option to add alt texts on most platforms. And this is just short for alternative text. It's really used to help describe images to people who are using screen readers have images disabled and who have sight loss. And search engines also rely on alt texts and images to, or image titles rather. In order to provide the relevant results for people, choose these keywords carefully for your images as well. The next lesson we'll dive into more ways that you can show up by doing a little bit of digging 7. Beat the Algorithm: Welcome back. Okay. I've got an opportunity for you. If you had searched anything on Google in the last few years, you know, that results have become so smart that content snippets are being used. Video suggested start points are shown. People also searched for is being utilized. And all of this is to help users discover exactly the type of content that they want to find. So it's time to do a little digging. So you can take advantage of that algorithm. I want you to look at what's being presented and use that language in your own SEO. Especially when people also ask section is present because it indicates the most relevant parts of a video in relation to the search keywords. These can also serve as guidance on how to structure your own content. So scrutinize what search engines seemed to favor and what terms seem to pop up often and what links are being pushed to the top. This isn't just search results. This is also your roadmap to successfully planning your digital content. So take note of the questions and phrasing being used. And then these can give you insights into what your potential audience might be interested in or confused about, which is even more, I think just as equally if not more helpful. You can use those questions as inspiration for future content even you can refine your existing content and your SEO strategy. So when you align your content with the type of queries that people are making, you're not just optimizing your SEO, but you're also creating a lot of value for your people. And this is your key to being favored by any search engines Algorithm as well. So now that we have a deeper understanding of how to utilize search engines, intelligent features like this to our advantage, we're gonna take it a step further. Our next lesson takes it up a notch to help Google crawl your site. Don't let it scare you. I'll give you step-by-step directions. I'll see you shortly. 8. Indexing Your Site: You have learned the main crucial ways to control your discoverability online. It is as simple as we've gone over. It seems like a lot, but when you get an into practice, it just becomes second nature. You've begun to explore how to implement them in relation to what it is that you do. I'm going to tell you a bit more about cleaning up your site index. And to put this in simple terms, when Google crawls a website, it saves information that ends up in relative search results. And here's a little secret. You have a surprising amount of control over what pages the Google Library and takes note of and which it overlooks. So you might not be the Puppet master, but you certainly have your hand on the strings. You can actually make it so that some of your pages or left off and even get some Removed. Why would you want to do this? Good question? Well, a couple of reasons. The first is so that the people who are searching for you don't stumble upon some filler page that doesn't really guide them through your website the way you intended or doesn't provide the type of engaging journey that you want them to experience on your site, but it might still be unnecessary page within your site. Secondly, this one's crucial. Google evaluates the quality of your entire site based on all of its pages. So allowing them to only see, allowing Google to only see highest-quality pages can improve the overall ranking of your site. Now, first and foremost, you want to make sure that Google can in fact access your site to index it. You'd be surprised that it might not be well index. So you want to make sure that it is first to do this, just login to Google Search Console and search for your main URL. If you don't have an account set up, it's free. You can do that. You want to make sure in your URL that the HTTP colon slash slash or the HTTP colon slash slash www, whatever your URL as you want to make sure it matches. Because if it doesn't, It will not show up correctly indexed. After you do that, you'll see a final diagnosis. You'll be able to address anything that might be preventing Google from effectively crawling your site. And if there are any pages that you don't want to show, you can disable them from search engines either from within your website host or via Google search console. And just like that, you'll clean her up and that's all you need to do. It is simple and easy. 9. Off-Page SEO: Alright, I consider this a little bit of a bonus because I don't think many SEO overviews really take a good look, see off-page SEO. So this is the part of the discovery optimization world that lives away and off outside of your own website. So this is encompassing all the activities that you do away from your own pages and that's improving your site's ranking and visibility. The main components we'll focus on include building a strong back link profile and managing your online reputation and leveraging social media. So backlinks are simply just links from other websites that point to your site. So the quality, quantity, and relevance of these backlinks play a major role in your site's ranking. However, not all backlinks are created equally. A link from a very highly respected website like a major news outlet or a high traffic blog, something like that. It's going to carry a lot more weight than maybe a lesser known site. So that's why part of your off-page SEO strategy should involve reaching out to other reputable websites and blogs and your industry with a view to getting them to link back to your site. Your online reputation is made up of what other people think, say, and feel about your brand on the Internet. So this includes review sites like Google Yelp and then comments on social media, like even mentioned on other websites. All of this stuff, these positive mentions can improve SEO and negative mentions can hurt it. So you should monitor mentions of your brand and respond appropriately to both praise and criticism. You want to encourage happy people to leave positive reviews if you have a review space and then also handle any negative feedback promptly. This is going to help you a lot. And then there's social media, social media and SEO. It may seem, I mean, they may seem like separate entities and you're not wrong, but they can compliment each other in powerful ways to amplify your digital presence. So I know the direct correlation between social media activity and ranking higher in search engines. It's not definitively proven, but there are indirect benefits that can positively influence your SEO efforts with social media. So the first one is increasing your website traffic. While social media links, they don't have the same weight. They don't as links from other websites, however, they still matter. Sharing your social content on social can increase visibility, bring more traffic to your site. They can indirectly improve your SEO when you're sharing that high-quality content from your site to your social media profile, you encourage your followers to visit your website doing this, search engines do notice these traffic sources. It may make your website considered more popular, which potentially improves your search ranking. And I will say I do know that search engines, in fact, you take note when your websites mentioned on social media platforms. And then on the flip side, remember that many social media platforms also act as search engines for a lot of people where users are going to search for content directly inside of platforms like YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook. So by optimizing your posts for search on these platforms, you can reach a much wider audience, content promo, and link building. This is when you share content on social media and it's shared by others because that is significantly extending its reach and that increased visibility raises your chances of your content being linked to buy another website, your backlinks. So that is a powerful factor in SEO. And the more quality backlinks that your content receives, the better your chances are to rank higher in search engines. Social media profiles as a whole can also rank in search engines. Because when you type in a business name into a search engine, it's social media profiles often do appear in some of the top results that can improve your brands online real estate, it can provide users with more ways to interact with your brand. And also I always encourage engaging with your followers, responding to comments and questions and even encouraging discussion. So by effectively managing these elements of off-page SEO, you can build your websites reputation and authority, which leads to higher search ranking over time. And that's a long-term strategy. But it's one that can significantly improve your visibility and success. Knowing the backlinks when done correctly are crucial for improving SEO and that they act as endorsements from external sites. Strategies for actually doing this. Let's look at them. So creating high-quality content is the most natural way to earn backlinks. Maybe you create content that's informative, interesting, and valuable. Other websites will want to link to it. It's just as simple as that guest posting. So this is when you write articles for other blogs in your industries, in most sites will allow you to include at least one back link and your author bio. So I might even let you include texts links throughout. I've had this happen many a time. Then there's collaborations with other influencers in your industry that can provide a significant boost in your backlink strategy. They could mention your brand in there content that also leads to quality backlinks. Broken link building is a big one so you can easily find relevant websites with broken links and then suggest your content as a replacement. There's tools available online that can help you find broken links in your niche. Pretty simply broken link finder, anything. Definitely dive into that. Infographics. They're great way to learn, backlinks. They're really easy to understand and share, which makes some popular amongst a lot of bloggers and content creators. Case studies, original research, things like this. It can attract backlinks because they offer unique insights. And then testimonials, testimonials for products and services that you've used in. Companies will often publish these on their website, and a lot of times will link back to yours. So using those Strategies, know that this is something that you can put into place, maybe not right away, but later on it's something to think about like opportunity mindset. What else can I do to really leverage? I'll see you in a moment. 10. Next Steps: Alright, thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn and implement the best SEO practices. When you apply what you've learned here, you will inevitably grow on Pinterest alone. When I started applying my knowledge of SEO, I'm not kidding you. I went from 500,000 viewers a month, which I know is a lot. That's why one of the reasons that I leaned into this because I'm like, I'm not doing anything on here right now. And I'm still getting this much. This is a missed opportunity. So I went 500000-4, 0.5 million in a matter of like six months. So when we skip these small steps, we're really doing ourselves a disservice. Apply these practices everywhere that you have content online that you want discoverable. If you want to be found, name it properly, add metadata, add alt texts, add proper keywords. It's as simple as that, it becomes habitual. So take time, implement some changes, and move forward with these general rules. Because when you monitor what's being searched for, you're going to be able to meet people where they're at and that's gold at the end of the rainbow. Be sure to grab your cheat sheet. I've created a checklist for you that you can refer to every time that you post so that you can make sure that you are checking all the boxes. And literally that's all for now. And I will see you on the Internet where you're will be highly discoverable and searchable and I can't wait to see it. See you soon.