HOW TO BECOME AN SEO EXPERT?
Traditional definitions of SEO look like this:
“Search engine optimization is the process of improving the rankings of a web page (or website) in a search engine,especially Google.
However, to become a true SEO expert, you need to understand that EVERYTHING can have an impact on your search rankings.
WHAT IS SEO?
Although SEO is often seen as a broad and complex topic, it doesn’t have to be difficult.
The following steps breaks down everything you need to know about SEO into easy-to-digest articles and videos that you can consume at your own pace.
To save your hours of searching online, we’ve handpicked the best content from the top SEO experts online today.
Note 1: There’s no fluff here. Every strategy discussed below is industry-proven and has been used by our team to dramatically improve our organic search performance.
Note 2: Because SEO is constantly changing over time, the content in this guide is continuously monitored for accuracy.
Let’s get started..
5 MASTER KEYS OF SEO
In case you're not kidding about turning into a SEO master, there are 5 "Ace Keys" you have to know.
These Master Keys are the 5 most significant subjects in the realm of site design improvement.
Also, the better you comprehend these 5 center points, the more achievement you'll have.
Along these lines, how about we make a plunge.
Finding and Choosing Keywords
Catchphrase research ought to be the initial step of ANY SEO crusade.
Pick the correct watchwords?
You'll see your site rocket to the highest point of Google's first page for catchphrases that a large number of individuals scan for consistently.
Pick an inappropriate watchwords?
Your site will be covered at the base of Google's fifth page.
Catchphrases truly are that significant.
In the event that you need to get familiar with catchphrase research, continue perusing..
•Content Marketing
No SEO preparing would be finished without a segment on content showcasing. That is on the grounds that it's practically difficult to rank in 2019 without marvelous substance (regardless of whether your site is splendidly upgraded for web indexes).
•Optimizing Content
Once upon a time you could stuff your substance with watchwords… and it would rank. Streak forward to this year, and on-page SEO is considerably more advanced.
Indeed, regardless you need to remember catchphrases for your page. Be that as it may, that is only the start.
Utilize this video to get a comprehension of fundamental and progressed on-page SEO techniques (counting huge amounts of genuine models).
•Specialized Optimization
Specialized SEO is one of the most misjudged pieces of SEO. It's significant for pretty much any site. In any case, specialized improvement is ESPECIALLY significant for enormous sites with a huge number of pages (like web based business and news locales).
Regardless of whether you run a little blog or a media brand with 500k pages, these assets will assist you with acing specialized SEO:
The Beginner's Guide to SEO, Chapter 5: Technical OptimizationSEO Marketing Hub: Technical SEOTechnical SEO in the wild: Real-world issues and fixesThe Ultimate SEO AuditAn 8-Point Checklist for Debugging Strange Technical SEO Problems
•Third party referencing
There's no chance to get around it: third party referencing is a HUGE piece of SEO. Also, that is not liable to change at any point in the near future. That is the reason any SEO master (even one that has some expertise in specialized SEO or substance) should be great at building backlinks.
•Put SEO Into Practice
You can find out about SEO throughout the day.
In any case, on the off chance that you need to be great at SEO you need to DO SEO.
—Learn SEO Essentials
These basics incorporate HTML, how cutting edge web crawlers work, and too significant positioning variables in 2019.
What's more, when you place these SEO nuts and bolts, you'll be well on your approach to acing propelled subjects (like third party referencing and versatile advancement).
How about we begin.
•Comprehend The Basics of HTML
You dont should be a coding ninja to be great at SEO, however you have to comprehend the rudiments of HTML.
•For what reason is this significant?
Since Google doesn't see your site like people do. Rather, they take a gander at your site's code. And in the event that you don't comprehend that code, it's practically difficult to advance it the privilege way.Plus, on the off chance that you at any point run into any specialized SEO issues, you will be totally lost.
In any case, when you in any event know the rudiments of HTML, enhancing your site gets A LOT simpler.
How Search Engines Actually Work?
Next, it's a great opportunity to give you how web indexes work.
Web crawlers send out search motor spiders to discover pages on the web.
Next, they slither each page's code.
When the page is slithered, the page is added to the web search tool's file, which is a stored assortment of pages.
At the end of the day: when you do a Google search, you're not getting back live outcomes. Rather, Google is giving you pages from its file. That is the reason you get Google results inside milliseconds.
Google has over 130 trillion pages in its list!
At the point when somebody look, Google searches for pages in its list that match the individual's question.
What's more, they rank those pages dependent on many factors in their calculation.
We will discuss:
•Website audit
•Keyword research
•Content creation
•Backlink building
•Helpful links
•Website Audit
This is an essential step to ensure your website is being properly indexed by Google and that there are no technical issues holding your website back from performing in search.
For example, a slow website can be detrimental to your rankings.
This 16 step website audit, created by Joshua Hardwick, takes a few hours and costs $7 if you don’t already have a subscription with Ahrefs.
•Keyword research
Keyword research is one of the most important components of SEO.
If the content you create is targeting the wrong keywords, one of two things will happen:
Your articles won’t rank or drive any organic traffic; orYour articles will drive unqualified traffic that won’t convert.
To avoid these problems, you first need to come up with a framework that:
Targets keywords you can compete and rank for; andTargets keywords that align with your business objectives.
Regardless of the strategy or tools you decide to use for your keyword research, it’s important to respect the two statements above.
The following are two examples of how to structure your keyword research.
1. Topic mind map with business value keyword segmentation
This is the exact strategy we used at PageCloud. It was developed by combining multiple techniques that we tested over time.
Step 1 - Selecting topics and subtopics
To create your content mind map, you will need to brainstorm the main topics and subtopics for your blog or website. The goal of the mind map is to drive keyword research, content production, and overall content strategy.
Ideally, this brainstorming session is a group exercise to remove personal bias and to align all content efforts.
Keep in mind that your mind map should contain topics, not keywords.
Keywords will come later.
Step 2 - Create your mindmap
There are several tools you can use to create your mindmap. We’d recommend using coggle as it’s free and easy to use.
Once you’re done, download your mind map to use as a reference for the next steps.
Step 3 - Find relevant keywords
Note: As you come up with keyword ideas, we’d recommend adding them to a spreadsheet. More on this below.
Step 2-Seed keywords
Using your mind map as a guide, you will want to come up with a list of seed keywords related to your subtopics. For example, if you’re in the health and fitness category, you might have a subtopic called “diets”.
There are a million ways to come up with keyword ideas.
•Competitors
A very efficient way to come up with keyword ideas is to look at the queries your competitors are already ranking for. If they are competing with your seed keywords, chances are they are ranking for many relevant keywords you haven’t even considered.
The only downside to this technique is that it costs money. We have yet to find a free tool that provides accurate keyword ideas that can be sorted and filtered based on a competitor’s URL.
Here are the top 2 tools that provide this feature as well as how to use them:
Ahrefs
SEMrush
Step 4 - Refining your keyword list
Now that you’ve got endless keyword ideas, it’s time to refine your list based on:
•Search volume
•Business value
•Keyword difficulty
Here’s why these three filters are essential:
•Search volume: if there isn’t sufficient search volume, there is no point in spending time and effort to produce content that won’t be seen.
•Business value: if your target keywords aren’t driving qualified or at least potential leads, your business will not benefit from an increase in traffic.
•Keyword difficulty: if the keywords you’re targeting are too competitive, it can be almost impossible to rank for them.
•Keyword / Topic
The “parent keyword,” also known as the main keyword the upcoming article will target.
Search Vol (US)
Monthly search volume estimates in the United States for a given keyword. This gives us a quick overview of whether the keyword is worth pursuing.
Business Value
To fill this column, we ask ourselves: “How important is our product in relation to this keyword/topic?”
If there is no way to at least mention our product, then we won’t write the article. The more the article relates to our product, the better.
Best Articles
If the keyword is still worth pursuing, we add top 3 URLs that rank for the parent keyword. This gives us an easy way to refer to what Google considers best in class and what will be required to outrank them.
Traffic
We use Ahrefs to estimate how much monthly traffic the top 3 URLs are getting. This sets a solid benchmark for how much traffic we could expect to get if we were able to rank our pages in the top 3.
Note:This is much more accurate than keyword search volume as pages tend to rank for several keywords at once.
Linking Domains
Keyword difficulty varies dramatically based on several factors. One of the most important factors is the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to competing pages. This is why we add the number of linking domains for each of the top 3 positions. This helps us determine if the keywords are great opportunities or if they are too competitive for now.
Status
The status of an article helps us manage multiple keyword and article ideas.
A new keyword gets added to the “To be determined status”. Then, if it shows promise, it gets moved to “Up Next”. While we work on articles, they have the “In progress” label until they get published.
Before going to the “Done” pile, articles spent a few weeks in “Completed - Distribution” because articles need to be promoted, shared, and receive backlinks in order to rank.
Notes / Links / Results
This is an area where we add notes as we do our research. For example, if all the top ranking pages are outdated, slow loading, incomplete, have terrible designs, or something that could be improved, we noted it in here.
Using a combination of research techniques and various sorting mechanisms, we are able to determine what content should be produced and in what order.
Dashboard framework - Targeting Interest and Intent
Although the keyword research strategy described by Beth Morgan on Neil Patel’s blog is different than the one we use at PageCloud, both concepts focus on keywords that convert.
Another great part of this framework is how it was developed by an agency running paid search campaigns on Google AdWords. There are a few great lessons that can be learned:
You can test the value of a keyword by running a paid search campaign before spending the time to create organic content.Long tailed, high intent keywords convert better than broad keywords. They are also less expensive in paid search and easier to rank for in organic search.PPC specialists tend to become very good at SEO as there are so many similarities between the two channels.
Now that we’ve covered keyword research, it’s time to start producing some outstanding content.
•Content Creation
Before jumping in and writing your keyword-targeted blog post, it’s important to perform additional research to properly structure your content.
Here are the questions you’ll need to answer:
•What format should be used for the article?
•What topics should it cover? (like chapters in a book)
•What will make it better than what’s currently ranking?
To help demonstrate, we will explain the step-by-step process we used to rank 1st on Google for “how to add custom font to website”.
•What format should be used for the article?
A quick Google search for your target keyword will help you quickly determine the type of content that is currently ranking. These could be blog posts, product reviews, forums, videos, and everything in between.
It’s also important to note how the content is being displayed. Is it in a list?
Every single piece of content that ranks is a step-by-step guide. Because the audience’s intent is to learn how to do something, this is the format that was required to rank.
As we look at the SERP, you can see how the majority of the content is more than 5 years old. This made it easier to rank as Google considers freshness of content as a factor in ranking.
Are all these topics necessary?Are there any missing topics?Can these topics be explained in a better way?
Here’s what our initial outline looked like:
You’ll notice that we simplified some of the topics and added two new points that hadn’t previously been covered by other articles: “How content management systems support custom fonts” and “How website builders support custom fonts”.
This made sense because most people aren’t hand coding their websites. They want to know how to accomplish this task using their website building platform.
Let’s dive further to see how we could improve our article.
What will make it better than what’s currently ranking?
We already knew that this article was going to be more recent and more comprehensive than what was ranking. But could we do more?
From a user experience (UX) perspective, they all had specific things that could be improved:
Dull introduction (doesn’t entice visitors to read further);Undersized font (legibility issues);Busy design (ads and unrelated material);The format made the content hard to digest (forum).
These are the reasons why it’s essential to have strong writing skills and to incorporate UX best practices into your website and blog design.
So, to make our article even better, we incorporated these elements.
Note: since Google’s RankBrain update, the algorithm incorporates user-behavior signals to help rank pages. For example, if someone returns to the SERP because your website is too slow or has a boring introduction, it can hurt your rankings.
•SEO Copywriting
There are several approaches you can take when writing your article.
Some SEO experts will get super technical by saying things like:
“You need to be aware of your keyword density or you need to add more LSI keywords.” - Typical SEO Expert
We recommend simply using copywriting best practices such as:
No spelling or grammar mistakes;Short and concise (no unnecessary fluff);Provide actionable advice;Using synonyms to avoid redundancies;Using emotional triggers, hooks, and cliffhangers.
Let’s be honest, when it comes to SEO copywriting, there are tons of things you can do to improve.
However, here are three main areas where you want to focus a little extra attention:
Your introduction
The titles in your article (heading tags)
Your title tag and meta description (these dictate how your page appears in a SERP)
Writing an attention-grabbing intro
The introduction is where you build trust with your visitors and where they will ultimately decide if they should keep reading or head back to the SERP to find another answer to their query.
Needless to say, this is extremely important.
Take note of how simple and to-the-point that introduction is.
The first sentence talks about the key benefit while the second sentence jumps into the process and explains what the article is about. The third sentence shows the additional topics other articles don’t address.
The table of contents in blue helps visitors get a quick overview of your article and navigate to the sections that are important to them.
Choosing compelling titles
When people land on your page, they will do one of two things:
read your intro and scan your titles; orscan your titles and read your intro.
In both cases, they are trying to figure out if they should invest time in your article.
As mentioned above, you will want your titles to reflect the topics you’re covering while creating interest amongst your readers.
From a technical SEO standpoint, you will want your main title to be an h1 tag and your subtitles to use h2, h3, and h4 tags based upon their relative importance to the core topic.
Here’s a visual representation of how titles appear for your site visitors and search engine crawlers:
To really master your titles, check out the Search Engine Journal’s article on heading tag best practices.
Click-worthy Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Title tags and meta descriptions are important elements that help make up your page’s snippet in a SERP.
Here’s how they appear in the head section of a website (code) and in a SERP.
Note:Google can choose to modify your meta description to show something that it considers more relevant.
The key to writing strong page titles and meta descriptions is to quickly convey the value and relevance of the page while enticing someone to click on your link instead of the ones next to it.
For example, if you were looking to add custom fonts to your website, what link would you click on?
Most people would choose PageCloud’s link.
But why?
Although it doesn’t exactly match the search query “how to add custom font to website”, it does seem like an easier article to digest than the second one.
To replicate our strategy, here are some high level tips on writing awesome page titles:
Title tags should be limited to ~60 characters to not get truncated by search engines.Use natural language and avoid keyword stuffing.Be creative with symbols and numbers to make your link stand out.Use action words, adjectives, and emotional triggers.Be inspired by existing ads.
When it comes to your meta description, it’s a little different.
Here are the main things you want to keep in mind:
Maximum of ~160 characters before your description gets truncated;Google does not check for keywords in your meta description (however, it does bold them in your snippet which can increase click-through-rate);Google will modify or replace your description if it considers something else on your page more relevant.
How to optimize your page for SEO
If you’re not a technical person, here’s the good news:
For the past few years, Google has made it easier for high quality content to make its way up the rankings despite not having “perfectly optimized pages” from a technical SEO standpoint.
However, there are a few things that you absolutely need to rank.
•Have a fast loading website
•Use Google PageSpeed insights, Pingdom, or GTMetrix to ensure your website is fast loading.
•Have a mobile-friendly website
•Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly test to ensure your page looks good on mobile.
•Consider using SEO-friendly URLs
•Unfortunately, some website building platforms and content management systems automatically create ugly-looking URLs that are hard to understand for both search engines and your site visitors.
CONCLUSION
Through this detailed SEO tips you might have understood how to grow your website.
So just go and follow these latest Master tricks for SEO.