Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019
Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019 44

Learn SEO in less than 1 week

Beginner to advanced SEO Training Course 2018-2019

The most trending topic today is SEO. Nowadays people are crazy about the digital world. And so the level of competition increasing day by day.

Now, let us move to our topic that is how to learn SEO. Before moving forward we must understand what SEO exactly defines. Yes, keep calm and read the full article, you will definitely find it interesting.

>Before you learn anything about SEO you should know its basic. So, let us go ahead with the SEO basics. SEO basics will helps you to do search engine optimization on your own.

Basics of SEO

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Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019 46

About Search engines

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Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019 47

On-page SEO

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Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019 48

SEO & Content

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Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019 49

Keyword research

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Link building

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Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019 51

UX and SEO

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Free beginner SEO training guide for 2018-2019 52

Get certificate

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SEO resources

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SEO Basics 1

Chapter 1

SEO Basics

Before we dive into specific techniques and aspects of how to learn SEO in 2018, let’s start with the first chapter which deals with the basic terms. Welcome to the ultimate SEO guide for beginners!

Now we are diving into our first and foremost chapter which contains the basics of SEO. So, keep patience and start learning with us. We welcome you to The Guide For Beginners In SEO.

We understand that you are a fresher in SEO and also there are so many questions moving in your mind about SEO. Now, let’s get started with basics of SEO

About SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a process which improves the search results position in search engines. Optimizing the search result will increase the number of users watching it. The higher the positions of the particular site the more popular it becomes and also the traffic for it increases.

SEO emerged in 90’s when search engines came into the scene. Earlier it was not popular but nowadays it has become an essential marketing strategy for various growing industries.

Now before we begin you should keep in mind that SEO requires a lot of creativity, technical and analytical skills. There are many techniques for SEO and all have different goals. But the main point which is to remember is to keep the search engine results higher in any organic search. Don’t get confused by word organic search it is simply those searches which are non-paid.

SEO is about how to run the right website for the right person. It doesn’t involve any technical perfections or background of the website. Rather,  your website must have quality and well-optimized content which meets the needs of your visitors. So the content should be good enough so that it can be linked by other sites.

SEO is complex and you should give your full attention. The best part of this is as it evolves all time so that website you need to focus keep up with the changes.

Why learn SEO and why it is important?

There are many search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo! And many other indexed websites which creates an order based on various ranking algorithms. How to identify these algorithms? And can you even identify it? As Google uses approximately 200 ranking factors from which few even are known by you such as content, backlinks or any technical things such as site speed, but few have not revealed.

SEO Basics 2

 

Now when we use search engines yes it’s a very easy question but you must know that search engines play an important in SEO. Yes, use search engines when we need any information regarding something. When you start your search you type a keyword and that keyword matters a lot in SEO.  It doesn’t matter that you belong to any industry like you want to sell any product, service or writing any blog or anything which you want to keep it above from other websites need search engine optimization.

Your website needs to be indexed by the search engine in order to get more views and more traffic. A wiser SEO improves your ranking in the search engine results page (SERP). The higher will be the ranking the more traffic your website will get. The main point to be noted is that we need to do SEO in order to get succeed.

Now you know why you need SEO and why it is important, moving forward on how to learn SEO.

How to learn SEO?

Learning SEO is not a big task but when you are a beginner you must understand each and every important point in SEO. Basic changes can make a huge difference for your website on how a search engine sees it. In this The Guide For Beginners In SEO, we are covering all the important and critical topics with all the basics of SEO. Even you yourself will gain enough knowledge to do SEO.

After you cover all the important topics you will have to do a lot of practice and study in order to get perfection in SEO. Even you can find a lot of useful information for SEO (even How to learn SEO ) over the internet but while choosing any site you should be smart. Also, you can attend various seminars, online classes or courses. And if you don’t have much time to attend or take classes you can go for SEO consultants, specialists or agencies for help. But this can be expensive.

Basic Terms in SEO

1. On-Page: On-Page SEO is basically when you optimize your website in order to affect search engines result. It about everything you can do on the website from content to its technical aspect and also to its design. Some important terms are as follows:

  • Meta tags
  • Images optimization
  • Content
  • Headings
  • URL structure
  • Website speed and its size

And there are many others too. We will further deal with more terms in details in the next chapter.

2. Off-Page: In Off-page or we can say it off-site SEO  it covers all the activities you must do in order to improve domain authority by getting backlinks from different websites. Ways to get them are as follows:

  • Social media
  • By exchanging backlinks.
  • Buying backlinks.
  • Guest blogging.
  • Cooperate with influencers.
  • Content must be valuable so that people do visit it again.

3. White Hat: What is white hat SEO? White hat SEO is a set of ethical techniques that stick to the guidelines and the rules. The basic part of white hat SEO are:

  • Quality content with its relevance to the title.
  • Building links
  • It is a long-term strategy oriented for the customer experience. To become a good SEO you must be in a proper direction.

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4. Black Hat: What is Black Hat SEO? Black Hat SEO is a set of unethical techniques which improves the ranking of the website on the search engine result page. These are designed in order to affect search engines without taking a human being into consideration. It helps in getting your website on the top of the SERP in a very short period of time. But, most probably search engines penalize and ban such websites. Some list of violating practices can be found in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines or  Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines.

5. Grey Hat: Grey hat SEO they are similar to black hat SEO but are less risky as compared to it. Grey Hat techniques are not clarified by Google and in this way, you can easily increase the traffic on your website. This way you will not be penalized as well as you can rank your website.

About Search Engines 4

Chapter 2

About Search Engines

In the 2nd chapter of our SEO guide, you will learn how search engines work, how people use them and what type of search queries they submit. Take a look at the technical background behind Google.

I think you must have got an idea what is SEO. Now we will move on to our second chapter in which search engines are explained in detail. In the chapter, you will get to know about search engines and how so they work. Firstly, we will learn about the technical background of Google. Now, moving to the closer look at the search engines and the most typical ranking factor to be focused on.

How do search engines work

Search engines consist of mainly three points and these are as follows:

  1. Crawling.
  2. Indexing.
  3. Picking results.
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Crawling:

Crawling is similar to the crawling of the spiders. It means crawling the websites, its sections, content, keywords etc. by various bots over the internet. Data found over the website is done by crawling. Crawlers used to detect the numbers of hypertext links on a website which points to another website. Further, they parse those pages for new links again and again. Bots used to crawl the whole internet in a regular manner in order to get updated.

Indexing:

After crawling indexing occurs. Suppose the index is a gigantic catalog or you can say it as a library which is full of websites from all over the world. Websites indexing occurs in a very short span of time. Furthermore, every time it is changed but crawlers used to scan again. Updating can only be done on the website when are indexed otherwise they won’t get visible on the search engines.

Picking Results:

As we know that results are important for both for developers and users. As the users submit a search query on search engines it starts digging into the index and accordingly show the results. The process is about to start checking the query against a number of different websites which are based on different algorithms. Companies which are running search engines such as Google, Bing etc. they keep the exact calculations of their algorithms in secret.

Ranking Factors

Brian Dean from Backlinko has made a nice list of Google ranking factorsIt’s not important that you have to know all of them to learn SEO, but you should have a basic overview of it.

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Backlink profile is one of the most important ranking factors. It mainly depends on the amount and quality of backlinks leading to the website.

Some of the main and important ranking factors are:

  • Relevancy of the backlinks coming to your site
  • Relevant and good quality content
  • SEO metrics like click-through rate (CTR)
  • Size and load speed of a site
  • Keywords density and the use of keywords in HTML tags, alt tags, meta tags, and page URL
  • Minimum grammatical or spelling errors
  • Domain authority
  • Social authority
  • Mobile optimization of a site
  • The user interface, and more

Ranking factors are further divided into on-page factors and off-page factors. We will be discussing it in chapter 3 as well as chapter 6.

How are search engines used

Before you invest in any technical SEO, it is important to take into account the usage patterns. Do not avoid the user’s point of view for the search engines.

In the example shown below, you will see the basic steps when a user enters a search query:

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The main principle to interact with the search engines is something like below:

  • The necessity for a solution or answer
  • Typing what you need as a search query in the search engines
  • Making the first results priority
  • Clicking on the search results that lead to a website
  • Websites are scanned to get the answer
  • First SERP is seen more. If no relevant result is found, the search query is changed.

The market share of search engines

In the given data by Netmarketshare, you can see which search engine platform is used the most by users.

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Types of search queries

There are mainly 3 types of search queries:

  • Navigational search queries- These types of search queries are made for a specific brand or company product. When users type for any query, they enter the name of any specific site to get its result. Talking about the most searched websites, YouTube, Facebook and Google top the list. They have the highest search volumes along with other navigational search queries.
  • Informational search queries– This type of query is made when the user searches for some particular information. No specific website name is used. An example of such type of query can be, “How to make pizza”
  • Transactional search queries- As the name makes it evident, such type of query involves words like “where can i buy____” or “price of ___”.

1st position ranking or 1st-page ranking?

All around the world, people update their website daily, weekly or monthly. The Internet has a new thing every single day. With new websites, changes or updates, the indexing keeps changing. And thus, organic results may also experience significant changes.

Google algorithm also keep changing every now and then. Minor changes may not affect much, but major changes may show big impacts. Hence, even if your website ranks on the top, an algorithm change can bring you down instantly.

Below is the data for organic click-through rate (CTR) distribution for April 2018 by advancedwebrankingHere you can see the importance of getting high ranks in Google.

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No wonder first position is of most importance, you should also take “zero-position” into consideration. By “zero-position” we mean the featured snippets.

Featured snippets give the exact answer to any query. And thus, even the first rank results is ignored at times by the user.

For example, if you search for “how to bake buns”, the featured snippet itself is sufficient enough.

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On-page SEO 11

Chapter 3

On-page SEO

On-page SEO includes quite a long checklist of tasks to do. A few years ago, it was mostly about meta tags, over-optimized content and headlines. If you want to learn SEO in 2018, you’ll have a lot more fun. Let’s dive in.

There was a time when websites got good rank by keyword stuffing meta tags, page titles and content. But now the times have changed and so are the Google algorithms.

If you want to learn SEO, it is important to be updated with the latest knowledge. One of the major changes is that the search engines now focus on user engagement.

Meta Tags

It is a part of HTML codes that describes website content. It consists of meta titles and meta description.

Unlike before, there is no need to stuff your title and description with keywords to get better ranking. But all it does is that it affects your click-through rate (CTR).

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If you have a WordPress website, there are many plugins and tools such as Yoast. This tool lets you choose a focus keyword for the page content. The content and meta tags are then analyzed in the terms of this focus keyword. It also analyses alt tags, keyword density, use of a keyword in HTML tags and more.

The checklist for On-page SEO

Let us now discuss what all features you get in a content management system, such as WordPress

1. Analyse what topic do people search the most for

Before writing content on any topic, it is important to analyze what people want to read. Also, see if you can provide a unique content on the same or not. There are many ways to do this, keyword research and analysis included. We will discuss more it in chapter 5.

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2. Title tag and Headings

Do not forget to use your keyword in the meta title, description and the heading you use in your content. A well-written meta description can be a good opportunity to focus on your CTR (click through rate). Analyse your competitors and see what works for them. Adopt the same techniques or something even better.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Google has updated the length of meta tags in May 2018. The word limit for meta title is up to 70 characters while the description has to be between 150 to 160 characters.
  • To enhance the content readability, use HTML tags such as <H1>, <H2>, <H3> and more.
  • WordPress plugins such as Yoast give you a preview of the meta tags.

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3. SEO- friendly URLs

Auto-generated URLs have random numbers and characters. Use URLs that are relevant to your content. WordPress gives you set an option to choose a custom URL.

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As per some SEO specialists, short URLs are better if you want to rank in search engines.

4. Multimedia

Use images, infographics, charts, and videos to create a attractive content. Websites that use multimedia have a low bounce rate. Using videos acts as a driving factor for people to like and share your content.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • You can optimize your images with the related file name and alt tag.
  • Use embedded video or charts.
  • To keep a hold of important keywords, use transcripts.

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5. Internal links and outbound links

Make sure to use at least 1 outbound link on your page from a good authority source. You can also promote your other articles and blogs with the use of internal links. Users will easily visit your other articles as well. User engagement increases. Bots easily understand your website structure with internal links.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Outbound links do not directly affect your rank but it enhances your site trust.
  • Using 2 to 3 links is sufficient according to the content length.
  • Web crawlers scan every page, so do not use broken links.

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6. User engagement

According to Steve Rayson of BuzzSumo, social sharing has dropped to half ever since 2015.

Having a social share option on your site is a better option to facilitate instate sharing.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are no doubt the most used social platforms. Consider using other sites as well such as Reddit or Pinterest.

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The checklist for technical SEO

1. Search Console

One of the basic SEO tools is the Google search engine console. You can easily monitor the presence of your site in Google search results with this tool.

You can manage your content for crawling, choosing what should be indexed and what not, site errors or code errors.

You can analyze the rank of your keywords, CTR, Google penalty (if any), and more on search Console.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • First, verify your website to use Google search console.
  • Connect your search console with Google analytics  (check for image)

2. Site speed

A slow site has more bounce rate. According to a survey by Akamai and Gomez.com, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. Users will leave your site if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • You can check your site speed on a trusted tool such as PageSpeed insights.
  • Optimise images, enable HTML compression, JS and CSS minification to lower down the server response time.
  • Select a trusted web hosting platform

3. Optimise your website for mobile devices

People use the internet more on mobile than on desktop these days. Having a mobile-optimized website is a must to enhance your SERP rankings.

The mobile first indexing by Google came out in March 2018. By mobile-first indexing, we imply that Google will follow the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking.

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) should also be taken into consideration. AMP is an HTML code with custom properties that help in creating static mobile-friendly pages.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • You can check how responsive your website is by taking a mobile-friendly test.
  • Monitor the ranking of your keywords for mobile search results

4. Sitemap

It is like a map that guides the web crawlers through your website. It is always a good option to create a sitemap especially if you have a large site. You just have to create a sitemap and submit it to Google. There is no penalty for not using it, but using it is always a better option.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Sitemaps are not necessary for every site.
  • The limit for sitemaps is restricted to 50 MB and 50,000 URLs.
  • The sitemap should be in the root directory of your website.

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5. Robots.txt

It is the section that notifies the web crawlers which section of a website need not be crawled.

Its visibility is public and its syntax is:

https://sitename.com/robots.txt

It is of importance when you don’t want certain images, files or pages to be indexed by crawlers.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Do not hide content from search engines by using robots.txt
  • Malware robot ignore robots.txt
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Chapter 4

SEO and Content

Are content & SEO two independent terms or one ideal couple? A lot of marketers used to think that they are separate players. Let’s find out how you can benefit from their synergy.

There has long been a myth that SEO is not needed for perfect content. There have been certain traditional beliefs, such as-

  • SEO is for search engines only
  • Content is for human beings only

But in reality, SEO and content are best together!

All you have to do is just write a unique content and optimize it for the search engine as well as users. This is also known as SEO content.

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What is the idle SEO content?

Any content that you write should be unique, original and audience engaging. There is a variety of content to choose from:

1. Blogs

Blogging has been very popular over the last few years. A blog is a good way to enhance user-engagement for e-commerce websites as well as bloggers. Many bloggers also earn huge amount of money through blogging.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Write original content to stay out of the crowd
  • Do research and use unique data
  • Length is not an issue until the quality of your content is good

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2. Product Pages

If you have an e-commerce website, the content on your product pages should be of utmost importance. The product pages often are used as the landing pages for PPC campaigns and paid social media campaigns.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Be simple and descriptive for the product pages content
  • The photos you use for your products should be professional
  • Website speed and UX are equally important

3. Review pages

You can become a trustworthy looked-upon influencer but writing reviews for various products. Once you become popular, you can even gain profit from it by giving sponsored reviews.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Write reviews on one particular topic
  • Create your own standard and level of writing
  • You have to be consistent in your performance to become a big name

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4. Case studies

Share the data you have collected on some particular topic. Do various experiments and challenge the standard myths. Case studies are generally unique and give new information to the users each time. For more SEO tips, view this SEO Blog.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Take as much time as it takes and comes up with some original data.
  • Also, give your users some behind the scenes insights of your business
  • Be as creative as possible. People do not like to read dull boring content

5. Infographics

These are informative and interactive graphics and images. They are a great alternative for texts. Create infographics in a way that information becomes exciting and comfortable to read and understand.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Infographics are shared a lot. So focus both on content and design.
  • Include only necessary data in it
  • Use charts and pictures
  • Also, include transcripts with it for the web crawlers

6. How-to and Guide pages

Many blogs include “How to____ ” posts as a guide to do something. The same topic might already have hundreds and thousands of posts on it. So you have to be creative while writing yours and come up with something new.

Do not copy the content from others. Include new tips & tricks.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • You can use a video of your own or use custom screen recordings.
  • Get in touch with the owner of the product you are going to review. You can get good backlinks or more social exposure.
  • If you are going to write about your own product, you can include the guide on the landing page.

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7. E-books

E-books enhance your lead generation tactics. There are many websites that ask for a verified email address to download the ebook.

If users are giving their details, they wish to get the best. Ebooks are generally in PDF format and contain lengthy content.

8. Videos

The most important benefits of video content are-

  • High user engagement
  • Social sharing and likes
  • More backlinks
  • Increased leads and conversions

The conversion rate for your website can increase significantly by using video content. As per the reports “53% of users prefer more video content.

Some tips to keep in mind-

  • Write a script and practice it
  • Always include a transcript
  • Make a marketing plan for promotional activities

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9. What is the idle content length for blogs?

In the earlier times, content that had lots of keywords ranked at the top. But it is not the case now. User attention is equally important. Focus on your page title, first paragraph and the overall structure of content. Use HTML tags such as <title>, <h1, h2, h3, …>.

According to the data submitted by Medium, the average idle reading time for a content is 7 minutes.

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From an SEO point of view, long posts rank better.

10. Duplicate Content

There comes a point where we have to repeat certain keywords and content. If the duplicate content on your website is pretty much, you can use 301 redirects or rel=”canonical”. To know more, read the official article by Google.

Re-using your own content is ok but copying someone else’s content is a totally different case. It is plagiarism and you may face Google penalty.

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Keyword research 28

Chapter 5

Keyword research

Keyword research definitely belongs to the SEO basics. In this chapter, you will learn how to find your niche and how to find profitable keywords you can rank for.

Before you start writing a content, make sure you have done proper keyword research. To get more site traffic, content optimization is important.

Before you start with your keyword research, you should consider the following aspects in mind:

1. Google keyword planner

In 2016, Google Keyword Planner came up with a huge change. As per the change, users who do not spend sufficient money on Adwords will not have access to the Keyword Planner tool.

Later in March 2018, Google came up with a new rule. They will deactivate the Adwords accounts that have not spend anything for the last 15 months.  And then almost at the same time, Keyword Planner brought some new features for both PPC and SEO.

2. Keyword optimization or user experience

Earlier keyword research was done only to find the best keywords that have a high search volume. The keywords were then stuffed in the page content to get better SERP ranking. But now, keyword research has become complicated.

3. Google RankBrain algorithm
This algorithm considers two things-

  • User interaction with search engines
  • The intention of the search

It was fully implemented in October 2015. According to Google, RankBrain is third in the terms of ranking signal. It is an algorithm that incorporates machine learning. It understands the search queries made and measures the level of user engagement.

Important factors for keyword research

Long Tail keywords that have high search volume and low difficulty of a keyword are the three most important factors for keyword research.

1. Long Tail keywords and search volumes

If you have a website that publishes various pizza recipes, you should focus on long tail keywords rather than the word “Pizza”.

If you search for pizza on Google, search result has Pizza Hut and Dominos on the top. It will be very difficult to compete with them. Also, the word pizza is not very related to your website.

Keyword research 29

Long tail keywords have fewer search volumes but plenty of opportunities for you. Users who come to your website with long tail keywords will have more engagement with your content. And thus, more conversion rates. Long tail keywords show specific results, And its easier to rank on the top for such keywords.

Keyword research 30

2. Keyword Difficulty

It is a metric tool for keyword research. It indicates the value for any keyword on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the value, the more difficult it gets to rank for it. There are many tools available for calculating the keyword difficulty. The most trusted one is Semrush.

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3. LSI Keywords

LSI stands for latent semantic keywords. These keywords are related to the main keyword in a semantic manner. LSI keywords keep changing based on the latest trends. LSI graph is a great tool to get LSI keywords for your main keyword.

Keyword research 32

What to avoid in keyword research?

  • Do not select a keyword that has more chances of being searched.
  • Do not rely on just Google Keyword Planner to do keyword research. There are many other tools available.
  • Do not choose just 2 to 3 keywords and use them all over your page title, meta tags, HTML tags, and alt tags.
Link building 33

Chapter 6

Link building

In the 6th chapter of our SEO for beginners guide, we will discuss link building – one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization. Let’s learn how you can build a quality link profile.

Link building is the process of creating backlinks for your site. Backlinks serve as hypertexts that lead to the pages of your site. These links are crawled by search engines. These links should be placed on good websites as it enhances your web authority.

Importance of link building

Link building is a great way to get your site recognized by web crawlers and search engines. The authority of a website is determined by the authority passed by other external websites.

The link profile for your website is one of the most important ranking factors.

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1. Different types of backlinks

  • Do follow backlinks pass the authority of the external site to the websites linked to it. Such links enhance the link juice of the websites. Link juice is nothing but the authority passed from one site to another.
  • No follow backlinks pass no benefits to the site linked to it. The HTML tag for such links indicates the search engines and crawlers do not consider it.

2. Anchor Texts

Anchor text is the word or a phrase on a webpage that links to another webpage. The is the most important factor when the search engines consider backlinks. It determines the keywords a website will rank for. Do not over optimize your anchor texts. This may lead to a penalty by Google.

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Different types of anchor texts:

  • Keywords and phrases (for example- “Pizza recipe”)
  • Brands (for example- “webdesignplus”)
  • Branded terms (for example- “pizza recipe by webdesignplus”)
  • Generic anchors (for example- “recipe”)
  • Naked URLs (for example- “webdesignplusseo.com)
  • CTAs (“click here, “learn more”)

How does Google determine the quality of backlinks

There are 3 important factors to determine the quality of any backlink-

  • Domain Authority
  • Page Authority
  • Other link profile quality metrics

By link profile quality metrics we mean, some good metrics by Moz or Majestic that evaluate a link quality. Some important metrics by these tools are:

  • Moz Page Authority (PA)
  • Moz Domain authority (DA)
  • Majestic Trust Flow (TF)
  • Majestic Citation Flow (CF)

A high value of these metrics indicates the better quality of backlinks.

Trust flow means that sites that have links on a trusted website will have better scores than the ones linked to a poor trust score site. Citation flow determines the overall influence of a URL depending on the number of sites that link to it.

Make sure that the site you put your link on, should be relevant to the content on your website. If you have a site dedicated to pizza recipes, you can not put your link on a travel guide website.

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The place you are putting your link on is equally important. Link placement should be in the main article or some important section of your content. Links placed on headers or footers have less value. Choosing sitewide links also is a good idea. They appear throughout your website. They are usually put in the footer, header or sidebar. Their potential from SEO point of view might be less in comparison to single links. But they do bring in a lot of site traffic.

Link building techniques

Some popular and fruitful link building techniques are:

  • Content-based- Try to write content that will attract backlinks in a natural way. You will also get good and natural referral traffic and social shares.
  • Engage in social media- Share the content on your website on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. Social media is a good way to interact with your target audience in a broad way.
  • Guest posts- You can get much good quality and relevant backlinks by submitting guest posts. You can buy Guest Posts Here.
  • PR articles- These articles are written by professionals and published on various news portals. This may take up a bit of your budget by they also give good quality backlinks.
  • Forums and Q/A sites- You have to be little cautious while using them. A major number of such sites are nofollow sites.
  • Email outreach- Analyse the websites that link back your competitor site. Contact the people from these sites with a good content to get a link to your website.
  • Niche Edits: these are basically contextual link that is placed inside an established and aged niche related page or blog. You can buy niche edit backlinks here
  • Grey or black hat SEO techniques- A good example is private blogs network (PBNs).

Penalties for Grey and Black Hat SEO techniques should also be considered while you use them. Try to be as natural with them as possible. PBNs are a group of websites that link to some other website. This might be quite costly. You will have to pay for domains, hosting and some blogs. Google may even ban such links if you are even a little bit careless.

Best tips for Link Building

  • Link building requires regular efforts. It is not a one-time effort.
  • A few numbers of good quality backlinks is better than many low-quality backlinks.
  • Avoid getting backlinks from any spammy network.
  • Focus on link placement that can generate referral traffic.
  • Try to replace competitor backlinks.
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Chapter 7

UX & SEO

UX and SEO are a very dynamic duo. In this chapter, we focus on their synergy so you will find out how you can positively influence your organic rankings by doing a little extra optimization.

UX (user experience) is all about website design and how to enhance it even more for the best customer experience. The user experience comes into action even before the user visits the website. As soon as a user enters a search query, user experience starts.

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What is the user experience?

It is basically the experience a user gets when he interacts with the company website or products. This user experience in turn influences product development, design, advertisement, and customer care.

This SEO guide is all about the user engagement online and the relation with SEO. You should think of different and unique ideas to design a website that will take care of all the user needs.

UX is a continuous process that has no end because user expectations never end.

Web UX involves both good content and technical aspects. Everything depends on user satisfaction. The user satisfaction is guaranteed only if they have a good user experience.

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SEO challenges faced by UX

Some of the most general conflicts between UX and SEO are-

1. Website

For the comfort of users, putting everything necessary on one single page is a good idea. This will enhance the user experience for the site. But an important factor that you should not forget is that half the traffic comes from organic search. Many users visit a website when it appears on the SERP for any query. A big part of the site traffic can be from referral links such as blogs, social media or PPC campaigns.

2. Structure of your website

SEO experts take into consideration the landing pages, proper use of keywords on landing pages, meta tags and page titles. A good UX will look for minimal navigation efforts from the user.

Try to incorporate smart navigation hacks such as autocomplete for the search bar, internal linking or instant customer support.

3. Infographics

Infographics can be an excellent way to present any information in an interactive manner. But from the SEO front, infographics are of very little value.

4. Videos

A video is one of the best ways to get backlinks for your website. It is one of the best ways to engage your target audience. But to make sure that your keyword is noticed, include a transcript with your video.

How to measure UX and SEO

There are many options such as special reports and internal data that can be used for this. We will be discussing some of them here.

1. Engagement Metrics and behavior in Google Analytics

The basic user interaction can be found with the help of “Bounce rate”, “Pages per session” and “Avg. session duration” on Analytics. These metrics can be analyzed for various sources of traffic.

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Behavior flow tells us how many users went through the whole site or left in the middle.

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The behavior section gives us a detailed view of how a user interacts with the website. You can decide what page you want the report for.

2. Conversion Funnels

Conversions funnel is used to analyze your goal conversion. It will give a step by step view of where a user started from to reach your conversion page. It gives the exact number of users who visited the last page or dropped off in the between.

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3. Heatmaps and Recordings

Heatmaps present the data in a visual manner. Google analytics gives a visualization of all the date for the desired time period. You can exactly see where do people click the most, what time do they use your site the most, how they scroll and interact with your site and more.

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4. Internal data

Internal data is totally cost-free and comes from within your company or business. It may include:

  • Customer questions
  • Feedback forms
  • Comments on social media
  • Customer complaints
  • Marketing reports
  • Email responses

5. Testing website site speed

Do not forget to test your site before you launch it. Beta testers will review from the user point of view. Your colleagues and friends can help you with the usability testing of your website.

2020 local seo hand holding a magnifying glass

Chapter 8

2020 Local SEO Strategy: How to Outrank Your Competitors

Optimizing your website shouldn’t be a one and done thing. You must keep it consistent and consider it as an integral part of your business strategy – that is if

Optimizing your website shouldn’t be a one and done thing. You must keep it consistent and consider it as an integral part of your business strategy – that is if you want your business to be discovered. If you want to establish your presence in the online world, Search Engine Optimization is the way to go. 

Online businesses take advantage of this the most, but even for a local brick-and-mortar store, you can still take advantage of SEOs. There’s this thing called local SEO where you put your focus on the local keywords, which will help boost your rankings on various search engines.

When it comes to overtaking your competitors, these 2020 local SEO strategies are what will put you ahead. If you want to learn more, read on.

Get Listed On All Local Directories laptop with drawer containing files for online directories

When trying to increase your visibility, it’s much better to put yourself in front of your customers than trying to gain new ones. The best way to do so is through your local business directories. When your business is listed on business directories, it will include small info about you, reviews, testimonies, and contact information.

There are tons of directories that are available for anyone and for you to increase your chances of attracting new customers, you need to try your best to be listed in every one of those directories.

Having a Consistent Contact Information Across All Directoriesbusiness information

In SEO, consistency is key. You need to have all your contact information consistent throughout the different platforms and directories that you are listed. This will not only significantly help your SEO, but will also keep your branding accurate.

Your contact info should include your name, address, and contact number. Experts have been using a master directory to make updating information significantly easier and quicker rather than going through every single one and updating it.

It’s not just your contact information that must stay consistent through it all, it also includes your branding elements such as your logo and brand ideals. Using an old logo in one directory and an updated one on the other is a huge no. It’ll only cause confusion among your customers.

Use Google My Business Listingholding a smart phone with google maps showing a business location

Out of the many search engines on the internet, Google is the biggest. Utilizing Google My Business will give you a significant visibility boost. The process of listing your business onto the directory can be a bit tedious, but the payoff is well worth the time investment.

Once your listing is verified, it’s now time to painstakingly fill out every field in order to increase your visibility. The most mundane point and information must be filled out to increase your chances of being found locally. You can also add helpful information such as operating hours, location, photos, videos, and testimonials.

Optimize Your Website and Content for Local Keywords keyword cube with keyboard background

Optimizing keywords is certainly one way of getting found, but that doesn’t mean you sacrifice the quality of your content just so you could insert a few keywords in. You must find the right balance. Websites with great content as well as great use of keywords tend to be ranked higher than those who don’t.

Make it a habit to post blogs on your website along with effective keywords. Location keywords are one of the best ways to attract new local customers.

Optimize Your Website for Mobile Usershand with mobile phone

You may not know this, but the majority of the people browsing the internet are on their mobile phones. When you have a mobile-friendly website, it significantly boosts your chances of ranking high on search engines – especially when you have a fast loading website.

When a visitor visits your webpage and it isn’t mobile-friendly and on top of that loads slowly, best believe, they’ll be clicking out of your website immediately. 

Do Inbound Marketing

Marketing magnet engaging followers. social media likes and follows magnetism

As mentioned above, having high-quality content is essential to increase visibility. This is why it’s imperative to know your customers and audience are so you can cater your content to them.

When churning out relevant content for your customers, they’ll be turning to you for any credible sources of information. And having poor content isn’t going to lead them there. Make sure that your contents are relevant to your customers – something like answering one of the most common questions asked, etc.

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