Intro To Seo

DIGITAL MARKETING COURSE
Introduction to SEO
With Innocent Mushamba
The internet is like the city of Harare
Think of websites as the buildings.
Think of links as the roads that lead to each building.
SEO therefore would be the equivalent of constructing a building

that is the tallest (most visible) and easiest to get to by road. It is
the building of an authoritative website that is the most visible in
search results and has the most links to other relevant websites.
How does Google Work ?
Crawling: The process by which search engines discover your web pages.
Indexing: The storing and organizing of content found during crawling.
Ranking: Ordering search results by relevance to the query (words typed into
search bar by the user
Crawling, Indexing and Ranking
When a site is crawled (how google finds content) , a copy of

the site is stored in Google’s servers. This is Google’s index. It
has billions of pages. Google then uses an algorithm to look at
that list of pages it pulled from the index, to sort that list so that
most relevant sites are placed on top of that list. That is called
Ranking, hence your search results. It's all based on relevance
to the user
SERP Layout
Featured Snippet:
Summary pulled from an authoritative site with title and url
1. Paragraph snippet (most)

2. List snippet
3. Table snippet
Featured snippets also come in the form of PLA
(Product Listing Ads for shopping results), Site
Links, Image packs, In-depth articles widget,
Knowledge Card, Knowledge Panel, News Box
(drawn from Google News), Related Questions
“People Also Ask”, Tweets or Videos
How The Google Search Algorithm
Works
The 5 Key factors that determine which page ranks ﬁrst and
which doesn’t:
1. Meaning of your query

2. Relevance of your web pages
3. Quality of content
4. Usability of your web pages
5. Context and setting
Meaning of your query
Larry Page once described
the perfect search engine
as understanding exactly
what you mean and giving
you back exactly what you
want.
Intent is deciphered
through Google’s language
models that initially took
over 5 years to develop
Example for the practical use of intent based search:
Millennials have moments of need, and Google identifies
these as micro-moments:
1) Want-to-know moments
2) Want-to-go moments
3) Want-to-do moments
4) Want-to-buy moments
The relevance of your web pages
The most basic signal that information is relevant is when a
webpage contains the same keywords as your search query. If those
keywords appear on the page, or if they appear in the headings or
body of the text, the information is more likely to be relevant.
Beyond simple keyword matching, we use aggregated and

anonymized interaction data to assess whether search results are
relevant to queries. We transform that data into signals that help our
machine-learned systems better estimate relevance.
-Google
Quality of content
Beyond matching the words in your query with relevant
documents on the web, Search algorithms also aim to
prioritize the most reliable sources available. To do this, our
systems are designed to identify signals that can help
determine which pages demonstrate expertise,
authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.
Usability of web pages
E.g. browser compatibility &
Page speed
For further info:
https://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184
Context and settings
Information such as your location, past Search history and Search settings all
help us to tailor your results to what is most useful and relevant for you in that
moment. --Google
How to do basic SEO
You need three things:
1.On-page SEO (everything on your site)

2.Off-page SEO (everything off your site)
3.Technical SEO (everything “behind the
scenes” in your website, i.e coding related)
On-page SEO
Submit xml sitemap to be
indexed by Google
Google “xml sitemap generator” and get the files
indexed by Google.
Keyword research
You need a primary keyword you wish to rank for
Tools:
Google search
Google Keyword Planner
KeywordsEverywhere
https://keywordtool.io/
Plan and write content that is optimized for
search
Tools and Tips:
For WordPress, install the Yoast SEO plugin

Include target keyword in H1 tag
Include related keywords at least once in the content
Use internal links for pages, with anchor text(clickable hyperlink)
Use outbound links for links page from other sites
Optimize your images
First, make sure your image size is appropriate.

Second, make sure the target keyword is added to each image in the alt tag
Tools:
https://www.gimp.org/
https://tinypng.com/
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
WordPress dashboard has an alt text option

Yoast aslo has this
Off-page SEO
Audit your site and competitors site for backlinks
Check for broken links (links that don’t work)

Tools:
Screaming Frog
Ahrefs backlink checker
Uber Suggest Backlink Checker
Google Search Console
Begin doing some link building
I.e. get other quality websites to link back to your site
Tips:
● Find the websites that share broken links and reach out to
recommend your own content via email, phone call etc
● Write guest blogs/articles and link back to your site
● Use paid ads
● Promote your content on social media
● Write research and white papers for authority sites
● Feature as a guest in a podcast and link back to your site
Setup & optimize Google My Business account
Local SEO is a vital part of off-page SEO
● Use at least 10 images on your GMB

● Make sure location is correct and appearing correctly in
Google Maps
● Put your most customer-centric phone number first in
your contact details
● Make sure that phone number is clickable
● Get reviews from customers and reward them for it
Technical SEO
Https
This is http (Hypertext Transfer

Protocol)
Site is not secure
This is https (Hypertext

Transfer Protocol Secure)
Site is secure
Https
This has been a Google ranking factor since 2014, and we are moving
to an all-https internet
When you use a website that’s not secure, it messes with your Google
Analytics data, because traffic from HTTPS to HTTP won’t be
recognized as referral traffic (people visiting your website from other
sites via link without using search engine to find the page). Instead it will
go under direct traffic.
Make sure the website is mobile friendly
Take a mobile-first approach in your web design

and development.
Test it out using Google’s mobile friendly test

Site speed
Always take a mobile first approach here. Google’s

algorithm does not promote fast loading websites per se,
but it does penalize slow loading ones. Besides, no one
wants to use a website that takes forever to open its pages.
https://webpagetest.org/
https://gtmetrix.com/
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Url optimization
Have url that’s short and sweet, use hyphens to

separate pages and never use capital letters.
Check broken links with a site checker

THANK YOU

Intro To Seo

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Intro To Seo

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Intro To Seo

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

DIGITAL MARKETING COURSE

Think of websites as the buildings.

Think of links as the roads that lead to each building.

SEO therefore would be the equivalent of constructing a building

When a site is crawled (how google finds content) , a copy of

Summary pulled from an authoritative site with title and url

1. Paragraph snippet (most)

1. Meaning of your query

Beyond simple keyword matching, we use aggregated and

1.On-page SEO (everything on your site)

You need a primary keyword you wish to rank for

For WordPress, install the Yoast SEO plugin

First, make sure your image size is appropriate.

WordPress dashboard has an alt text option

Check for broken links (links that don’t work)

I.e. get other quality websites to link back to your site

Local SEO is a vital part of off-page SEO

● Use at least 10 images on your GMB

This is http (Hypertext Transfer

This is https (Hypertext

Take a mobile-first approach in your web design

Test it out using Google’s mobile friendly test

Always take a mobile first approach here. Google’s

Have url that’s short and sweet, use hyphens to

Check broken links with a site checker

You might also like