TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lesson 1: Welcome to our SEO Course

Lesson 2: Introduction to SEO
Lesson 3: Technical SEO
Lesson 4: On-Page SEO
Lesson 5: Off-Page SEO
Lesson 6: Local SEO
Lesson 7: Mobile SEO
Lesson 8: Advanced SEO
Lesson 9: Conversion Optimization
Lesson 10: HTTPS and SSL
Lesson 11: Website Security
Lesson 12: Website Speed
Lesson 13: SEO Success Story
Copyright Information

Note: You can use the PDF Version for reference but it is highly recommended to
take the course using the online interface. Video content is not available in this
version.
 Lesson 1

Welcome to our SEO Course

One of the most beautiful things about the Internet is that you can find
information about any topic for free. While this is great and exciting sometimes
it’s not the best solution, especially for topics like SEO and Digital Marketing that
change all the time.

When you search for SEO advice, you want to read the latest trends and not
articles that were written months or years ago. You want to see examples, case
studies, step-by-step instructions and an in-depth analysis of what to do and most
importantly how to do it.

You want to have all the information in one place without having to spend time
searching and bookmarking articles you will forget about or reading content that
is outdated or incomplete.

You want a complete solution that is always up-to-date and reliable so you can use
it to learn and apply the latest SEO practices on your website.

You want this information to be provided by experts who have achieved great
results over time and you want to learn those little secrets that can make a big
difference, but nobody will tell you for free.

You want to read about success stories with real websites you can view online and
get the inspiration you need to work hard until you get the results you want.

You want to know the big picture, that goes beyond SEO, on how to effectively
promote your website online.

If this sounds like you, then this course is for you.

I’ve been working in the SEO industry for more than 18 years now and I recently
realized that there is a big gap between SEO advice that is freely available online
and what you should actually do to ‘get things right’, in the fastest possible way.
After doing thorough research online, I found that while a lot of people share
their experiences and provide how-to-guides, there is no single point of reference
that someone can use from start to finish and learn everything they need to know
about SEO and website promotion.

That’s why I decided to create this course. In the course lessons, you will be taken
through a journey that starts with the basic SEO concepts and ends with more
advanced topics like link building and conversion optimization.

You will learn how to optimize your website for SEO, how to get featured in big
and well-known websites and a bunch of other practical tips and concepts related
to SEO and website optimization.

The course is separated into a number of lessons that you can follow individually
depending on your needs and knowledge level.

In each lesson, you will read the theory behind a guideline, review real examples
and associated case studies, view pro tips and get actionable advice with a
checklist to make sure that you will not miss anything important.

I also included more than 200 images, videos and screenshots with annotations to
make it easy for you to implement the changes without needing to be a tech guru
or developer.

To ensure that you will always read up-to-date information and stay in-synch with
the latest developments in SEO, this course will be updated frequently and you
will get the new versions for free.

My promise is to make this course the only course you will ever need to
study to succeed in SEO now and for years to come.

How to use this Course

The Complete SEO Course is structured in such a way so that each lesson is
autonomous i.e. you can read it without having to read the lessons before or after.
At the same time, the order they appear has as specific logic. This is useful for
beginners to SEO, who are not sure where to start and what to do next.
The course covers all aspects of SEO and I know that its too much information to
process at once, so I added this short topic to give you some ideas on how you can
approach learning and maximize your benefit.

STEP 1: TECHNICAL SEO

Read the topics under the Technical SEO Lesson and create a checklist of all the
things you need to optimize related to technical SEO. You can use the checklist at
the end of the lesson to guide you.

Don’t omit this step even if you have done this before. It’s a good opportunity to
revise your technical SEO and ensure that you have a solid foundation before you
proceed with the other lessons.

STEP 2: SEO COPYWRITING

Read the Lesson about On-Page SEO and create a list of all optimization changes
you can apply to make your content SEO friendly.

Depending on the size of your website, this may take a lot of time and effort but it
is definitely something that can give you better results in the long term.

Before making any changes, remember to take note of your rankings and traffic
(before and after the changes are completed).

If you are not familiar with Google Analytics reports and how to correctly
measure your traffic, it may be wise to jump to the Google Analytics Course.

Also, don’t forget that it takes time for Google to process any on-page SEO
optimizations so the results may not be immediate. Patience is the key to SEO
success.

STEP 3: MASTER KEYWORD RESEARCH

Read the Course on Keyword Research and then create a list of 10 keywords to
target in your upcoming blog posts.

Keyword research may seem difficult at the beginning but it’s a skill that can be
mastered with practice, trial, and error and by following best practices.

STEP 4: SPEED AND SECURITY

Read Lessons on HTTPS and SSL, Website Security, Website Speed and do
anything you can to improve the security and loading speed of your website. If
this is too technical for you to handle, hire a developer to do this. A faster website
will get you better rankings and conversions and a non-secure website will give
you a big headache (sooner or later).

Migrate to https to gain from the additional ranking boost.

STEP 5. LINK BUILDING

The Off-Page SEO Lesson is perhaps one of the most important Lessons of this
Course. Read it again and again until it is clear in your mind how to approach link
building for your website.

Always remember that links are very important for your website’s success and
this is not an optional step but it’s mandatory.

STEP 6: CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION

Read the Lesson on Conversion Optimization to get ideas on how to increase your
conversion rates without necessarily increasing your traffic.

Author Information

Alex Chris

I studied Computer Science and E-commerce and after spending several years
working in the IT industry, I realized that my true passion was in blogging and
SEO and since 2002 I am working online as a Digital Marketing consultant and
professional blogger.

Over the years, I did consulting and SEO work for companies in the most
competitive niches like travel, jewelry, education, fitness, forex, software (to
name a few), and had the opportunity to experiment and learn the hard way how
the Internet works.

In my spare time, I blog about SEO and Digital marketing and my work has been
referenced by leading industry websites like Forbes,
contentmarketinginstitute.com, thenextweb.com, neilpatel.com,
socialmediatoday.com, socialmediaexaminer.com, searchenginejournal.com,
kissmetricks.com, sitepronews.com, lifehack.org, problogger.net, jeffbullas.com,
entrepreneur.com, marketingland, quicksprout.com, and others.

The best way to contact me is by email at [email protected]

Tools of The Trade

When you start reading through the content, you will notice that I occasionally
mention some tools. If you are serious about your digital marketing efforts, you
need to invest in tools to make your life easier, become more productive and more
efficient. The good news is that you don’t need a lot of them.

Over the years, I tested many SEO and Digital Marketing tools and while there
are some great tools out there, they cost a lot and the ROI is not justified. This is
not the case with the tools listed below.

These are the tools I use on a daily basis for my websites (and client websites).
They help me become more efficient and ‘wiser’ when it comes to SEO, PPC, and
strategic planning.

SEMRUSH
#1 For SEO and Digital Marketing
SEMRUSH is the only tool we use to tackle all SEO tasks including keyword
research, link building and optimizing PPC campaigns.
You can use SEMRUSH to optimize your website for all aspects of SEO
(technical SEO, on-page SEO, Off-page SEO), track your Google rankings,
find new content opportunities, spy on your competitors, monitor brand
mentions, explore new link building opportunities and many more.

SEMRUSH is suitable for freelancers, startups, in-house marketers and

digital marketing agencies.

We have partnered with SEMRUSH, and offer our students an exclusive 30-
Day FREE Subscription to SEMRUSH Pro – Value $99!

Get 30 Day Trial

Optinmonster
#1 for Conversion Optimization and email list building
Optinmonster is the tool we use on this website to increase conversions and
build our email list.
Optinmonster is by far our recommended tool when it comes to website
notifications, list building, and conversion optimization. It has many features
and an easy to use interface. With optinmonster we managed to increase our
sales by 20% and email conversion rate by 300%!

It’s the most powerful customer acquisition & lead generation software and
it works on all websites and platforms.

Try Optinmonster

WP Rocket
#1 for Website Speed Optimization
WP-Rocket is the reason our website loads fast on desktop and mobile!
We are using wp-rocket on this website and several other websites and it’s
by far the best tool to speed up a WordPress website. It has ALL the
functionality you need built-in and it is updated frequently to include new
features. No need to install several caching, minifying, image compression
plugins, wp-rocket offers all the features you need and the results are
amazing.

Installation and configuration are very easy and the improvements on site
speed are immediate.

Try WP Rocket

Studio Press Themes

#1 for SEO Optimized Themes
All our websites, including this one, are based on the Genesis Framework
and StudioPress Themes.
For all our websites and development projects, we use the Genesis
framework and Studio Press themes. They are the most SEO optimized
WordPress themes available on the market today.

The Genesis framework is a layer (also called parent theme) that is installed
on WordPress and gives you the framework to either create your own
custom-coded website or buy one of the ready-made themes available. It has
a clean code and optimized structure and this makes websites load faster and
easier to crawl by search engines.

Customizing a theme is easy and there is a lot of free documentation on the

web.

Try StudioPress
 Bluehost
#1 for Website Hosting
Bluehost is the company we use of all our WordPress and shared hosting
needs.
Bluehost is one of the best and most reliable hosting providers. We use
Bluehost for all our shared hosting needs. They’ve been in business for many
years and their processes are straightforward and simple. If you want to test
an idea you can create an account with Bluehost and use it to host multiple
domains and websites.

Setting up WordPress is super easy and automated and their prices are as
low as $5 per month.

Try Bluehost

Mailchimp
#1 for Email Marketing
Mailchimp is the only email marketing platform we use, and will ever use.
There are many tools that can help you with email marketing but mailchimp
is the market leader. It will help you execute your email marketing plan with
ease. It is also tightly integrated with WordPress and Woocommerce. Making
sign-ups forms is super easy and managing your lists and email campaigns
are done either through their website or easy to use mobile app.

Mailchimp prices are competitive and they take all measures so that your
emails will not end up in the spam folder.

Try Mailchimp

Some links contained on this page are affiliate links, meaning if you buy a product
using our link we may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional
cost to you. We only recommend products that we have personally used and
known that others will receive outstanding value from.
 Lesson 2

Introduction to SEO

How Search Engines Work

In this topic, you will learn how search engines work. Knowing how search works
will help you get a better idea of what we want to accomplish with SEO.

Video: How search engines work.

Have you ever wondered how many times per day you use Google or any other
search engine to search the web?

Is it 5 times, 10 times or even sometimes more? Did you know that Google alone
handles more than 2 trillion searches per year?

The numbers are huge. Search engines have become part of our daily life. We use
them as a learning tool, a shopping tool, for fun and leisure but also for business.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that we reached a point that we depend on search
engines for almost anything we do.

And the reason this is happening is very simple. We know that search engines and
in particular, Google has answers to all our questions and queries.

What happens though when you type a query and click search? How do search
engines work internally and how do they decide what to show in the search
results and in what order?

How Do Search Engines Work

Search engines are complex computer programs.
Before they even allow you to type a query and search the web, they have to do a
lot of preparation work so that when you click “Search”, you are presented with a
set of precise and quality results that answer your question or query.

What does ‘preparation work’ includes? Three main stages. The first stage is the
process of discovering the information, the second stage is organizing the
information, and the third stage is ranking.

This is generally known in the Internet World as Crawling, Indexing, and

Ranking.

How Search Engines Work (Overview)

Step 1: Crawling
Search engines have a number of computer programs called web crawlers (thus
the word Crawling), that are responsible for finding information that is publicly
available on the Internet.

To simplify a complicated process, it’s enough for you to know that the job of
these software crawlers (also known as search engine spiders), is to scan the
Internet and find the servers (also known as webservers) hosting websites.
They create a list of all the webservers to crawl, the number of websites hosted by
each server and then start work.

They visit each website and by using different techniques, they try to find out how
many pages they have, whether it is text content, images, videos or any other
format (CSS, HTML, javascript, etc).

When visiting a website, besides taking note of the number of pages they also
follow any links (either pointing to pages within the site or to external websites),
and thus they discover more and more pages.

They do this continuously and they also keep track of changes made to a website
so that they know when new pages are added or deleted, when links are updated,
etc.

If you take into account that there are more than 130 trillion individual pages on
the Internet today and on average thousands of new pages are published on a
daily basis, you can imagine that this is a lot of work.

Why care about the crawling process?

Your first concern when optimizing your website for search engines is to ensure
that they can access it correctly otherwise if they cannot ‘read’ your website, you
shouldn’t expect much in terms of high rankings or search engine traffic.

As explained above, crawlers have a lot of work to do and you should try and
make their job easier.

As you’ll read in this course, there are a number of things to do to make sure
that crawlers can discover and access your website in the fastest possible
way without problems.

Step 2: Indexing
Crawling alone is not enough to build a search engine.

Information identified by the crawlers needs to be organized, sorted and stored so

that it can be processed by the search engine algorithms before made available to
the end-user.

This process is called Indexing.

Search engines don’t store all the information found on a page in their index but
they keep things like: when it was created/updated, title and description of the
page, type of content, associated keywords, incoming and outgoing links and a lot
of other parameters that are needed by their algorithms.

Google likes to describe its index like the back of a book (a really big book).

Why care about the indexing process?

It’s very simple, if your website is not in their index, it will not appear for any
searches.

This also implies that the more pages you have in the search engine indexes, the
more are your chances of appearing in the search results when someone types a
query.

Notice that I mentioned the word ‘appear in the search results’, which means in
any position and not necessarily on the top positions or pages.

In order to appear in the first 5 positions of the SERPs (search engine results
pages), you have to optimize your website for search engines using a process
called Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short.

Step 3: Ranking
The third and final step in the process is for search engines to decide which pages
to show in the SERPS and in what order when someone types a query.

This is achieved through the use of search engine ranking algorithms.

In simple terms, these are pieces of software that have a number of rules that
analyze what the user is looking for and what information to return.

These rules and decisions are made based on what information is available in
their index.
How do search engine algorithms work?

Over the years search engine ranking algorithms have evolved and became really
complex.

At the beginning (think 2001) it was as simple as matching the user’s query with
the title of the page but this is no longer the case.

Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account more than 255 rules before making
a decision and nobody knows for sure what these rules are.

And this includes Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google’s founders), who created
the original algorithm.

Things have changed a lot and now machine learning and computer programs are
responsible for making decisions based on a number of parameters that are
outside the boundaries of the content found on a web page.

To make it easier to understand, here is a simplified process of how search

engines ranking factors work:

Analyze User Query

The first step is for search engines to understand what kind of information the
user is looking for.

To do that, they analyze the user’s query (search terms) by breaking it down into
a number of meaningful keywords.

A keyword is a word that has a specific meaning and purpose.

For example, when you type “How to make a chocolate cake”, search engines
know from the words how-to that you are looking for instructions on how to make
a chocolate cake and thus the returned results will contain cooking websites with
recipes.

If you search for “Buy refurbished ….”, they know from the words buy and
refurbished that you are looking to buy something and the returned results will
include eCommerce websites and online shops.

Machine learning has helped them associate related keywords together. For
example, they know that the meaning of this query “how to change a light bulb” is
the same as this “how to replace a light bulb”.

Google Query Analyzer Example

They are also clever enough to interpret spelling mistakes, understand plurals
and in general extract the meaning of a query from natural language (either
written or verbal in case of Voice search).

Finding matching pages

The second step is to look into their index and decide which pages can provide the
best answer for a given query.

This is a very important stage in the whole process for both search engines and
web owners.

Search engines need to return the best possible results in the fastest possible way
so that they keep their users happy and web owners want their websites to be
picked up so that they get traffic and visits.
This is also the stage where good SEO techniques can influence the decision
made by the algorithms.

To give you an idea of how matching works, these are the most important factors:

Title and content relevancy – how relevant is the title and content of the
page with the user query.

Type of content – if the user is asking for images, the returned results
will contain images and not text.

Quality of the content – content needs to be thorough, useful and

informative, unbiased and cover both sites of a story.

Quality of the website – The overall quality of a website matters. Google

will not show pages from websites that don’t meet their quality standards.

Date of publication – For news-related queries, Google wants to show

the latest results so the date of publication is also taken into account.

The popularity of a page – This doesn’t have to do with how much traffic
a website has but how other websites perceive the particular page. A page
that has a lot of references (backlinks), from other websites is considered
to be more popular than other pages with no links and thus has more
chances in getting picked up by the algorithms. This process is also known
as Off-Page SEO.

Language of the page – Users are served pages in their language and it’s
not always English.

Webpage Speed – Websites that load fast (think 2-3 seconds) have a
small advantage compared to websites that are slow to load.

Device Type – Users searching on mobile are served mobile-friendly

pages.

Location – Users searching for results in their area i.e. “Italian

restaurants in Ohio” will be shown results related to their location.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. As mentioned before, Google uses more than
255 factors in their algorithms to ensure that its users are happy with the results
they get.
Why care how search engine ranking algorithms work?

In order to get traffic from search engines, your website needs to appear in the
top positions on the first page of the results.

It is statistically proven that the majority of users click one of the top 5 results
(both desktop and mobile).

Appearing in the second or third page of the results will not get you any traffic at
all.

KEY LEARNINGS

One of the goals of search engine optimization is to provide Google with the
right signals so that during the ranking process, the search algorithm will
‘pick up’ your site and show it on top of the search results.

We will examine this in more detail in the subsequent lessons, what you need
to understand now is that the ordering of the search results is decided by the
ranking algorithm after taking into account a number of known and unknown
factors.

What is SEO

In this topic, you will learn what is SEO.

Video: What is SEO.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process to follow to optimize your

website for search engines.

The SEO process has a set of rules you can apply to your website to make it
easier for search engines to index your website and understand your content
 better.

Remember that crawlers and algorithms are not humans but computer programs
and they cannot ‘read or see’ a website like real users.

Crawlers read the HTML code of a webpage, extract the information they need
and add it to the index.

Then it’s the job of algorithms to decide which websites to rank higher for certain
queries.

During this continuous process, both crawlers and algorithms are looking for
clues to help them make the right decisions and websites that can do this more
efficiently, rank higher in the search results.

This is what SEO is all about.

SEO Components
As mentioned in the previous topic, the Google ranking algorithm takes into
account more than 255 ranking factors when assessing the quality of a webpage.

To make it easier to handle, the various SEO factors can be grouped into three
major processes.
SEO Main Processes

Each of these sub-processes deals with a number of rules and when applied
together the end result is a fully optimized website that can achieve high rankings
in Google.

Here is a quick summary of what each process includes. Don’t worry if something
is confusing now, we will go deeper and explain everything in more detail, in the
course lessons.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website for the crawling
and indexing phase.

With technical SEO, you can help search engines access, crawl, interpret and
index your website without any problems.

It is called “technical” because it has nothing to do with the actual content of the
website or with website promotion.

The main goal of technical SEO is to optimize the infrastructure of a website.

On-Page SEO

Your goal with on-page SEO is to speak the ‘search engine language’ and help
crawlers understand the meaning and context of your pages.

This is the part where you will start dealing with keywords and content marketing
and work on optimizing your pages for particular keywords.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO has to do with website promotion methods – techniques that go

beyond website design and content.

This is a critical part of the whole SEO process but you only have to deal with this
after the other two processes (technical and on-page SEO) are completed.

Note: When you start learning SEO, you may come across other definitions
like local SEO, mobile SEO, eCommerce SEO, and content SEO. These are
sub-sets of search engine optimization specific for certain types of websites.

For example, local SEO is more suited for businesses that have a physical
presence and want to get more customers to their doors while eCommerce SEO is
primarily for online shops.

KEY LEARNINGS

SEO will help you get more exposure in search engines. To make it easier to
manage, the whole process is broken down into 3 main sub-processes which
have to follow in the order shown above i.e. technical SEO, on-page and off-
page SEO.

The basic SEO principles are the same for all kinds of websites and then
depending on the type of your website (blog, corporate website, eCommerce
website, etc), you can apply specific rules to further improve the search
 rankings of that website.

Why SEO

In this topic, you will learn about the benefits of SEO and why it’s very important
for the success of an online business.

If you are wondering why you need to practice SEO, the answer is simple.

Rank higher in Search engines

With SEO you will rank higher in Google and this translates to more website
traffic. Traffic (visits), is the single most important element that can determine
your website’s success or not.

Without traffic, you will not have conversions, sales, subscribers or the attention
your website deserves.

Drive targeted traffic to your website

Yes, there are other sources of traffic, for example, traffic from social media
networks (think Facebook or Instagram), but no source of traffic is as targeted as
organic traffic.

Users that type a search query in Google have a very specific intent while users
on Facebook are browsing for fun or to catch up with their friends.

This makes a huge difference when it comes to conversions. When you are selling
something online, it is more likely to make a sale if you get a visit from Google
than from Facebook.

The Google visitor has a need and is looking for a solution while the Facebook
visitor may visit your website because of an ad or because of curiosity.

Note: A website conversion is when users perform an action you want them
 to perform. For example, subscribing to your newsletter, buying a product
from your store, visiting your store, submitting a contact form, etc.

‘Free’ Traffic 24×7

If your SEO is not working then to get traffic to your website, you have to pay for
it. This is not necessarily bad provided that you can run profitable campaigns
either on Google or Facebook.

The problem is that as soon as you stop paying for ads, your traffic will drop and
you are back to square one.

With SEO, this is a completely different story. Once you get high rankings in
Google and do all the necessary work to maintain your rankings, traffic will flow
in 24X7.

Imagine the benefits this can bring to your business. Users will visit your website
and you can make sales or get leads while you are sleeping.

To avoid any confusion and be completely accurate, the word ‘Free’ is a bit
misleading.

Before you can reach the point of getting high rankings for the keywords you
want, you will have to do a lot of work and this comes at a cost.

But, that does not change the fact that once you reach this stage, everything else
becomes easier and the costs gradually go down.

SEO allows you to grow your business

There are no guarantees when it comes to SEO. Google is constantly making

changes to its ranking algorithm and every time they do this some websites may
gain or lose rankings.

But, if you don’t break any rules and work consistently on your SEO and have a
clean history, you can have some sort of prediction as to the expected traffic
levels.

This means that you can plan and execute the growth of your business.
For example, if you are selling services online and you know that for the past year
you got 10 leads per month on average (from organic traffic), you can assume that
this number will be similar next year and get new personnel to handle the extra
workload, etc.

Note: Organic traffic is a term used to describe traffic coming from Google
(and other search engines), that is not paid for. This is not the same as paid
traffic where you pay per click when someone clicks on a Google or
Facebook ad and visits your website.

Top positions get the majority of search traffic

The majority of Search Engine Traffic goes to the top 5 results.

What does this mean? It’s simple. If you want to get traffic from Google and take
advantage of the benefits of SEO, you need to rank not only on the first page of
the results but on one of the top 5 positions.
Pages on the first page of Google get 73% of the clicks and pages in the top five
positions to get 67% of the clicks.

Other benefits of SEO:

Besides the above advantages, there are numerous other benefits of practicing
SEO.

Brand awareness – Websites in the top results are seen by thousands of

users every time they search for a relevant query and this improves brand
awareness.

Brand trust – Users trust Google’s results and the websites that appear on
the top.

Increase in social shares – High ranking websites get more shares and
mentions in social media networks.

More backlinks – Other webmasters are more likely to reference (link)

websites that appear in the first pages of Google.

KEY LEARNINGS

With SEO you can get more exposure in search engine result pages and this
means more organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic is targeted and
the most valuable source of traffic since it converts better than other sources
of traffic.

Although there are no guarantees, if you manage to have solid SEO results
for a period of time and you don’t intentionally or unintentionally break any
rules, you can take advantage of all the benefits of SEO and get free traffic to
your website 24 X 7.
Technical SEO Basics

In this topic, you’ll get an idea of what is technical SEO and its role in the whole
SEO process.

Before even thinking about keywords and content, you need to work on your
technical SEO.

Any problems with technical SEO can literally destroy your efforts, that’s why it is
important to get your technical SEO right before proceeding to the next steps.

In short, with technical SEO you help search engines access, crawl, interpret and
index your website without any problems.

The main stages of technical SEO are described below. Don’t worry if
something is not clear now, everything will be covered in detail in the
Technical SEO lesson. This is just an introduction to help you distinguish
between technical SEO tasks and non-technical tasks.

Domain configuration

In the SEO world, a domain with www in front is not the same as a domain with
no www in front.

Google considers these to be two different websites:

https://www.example.com (with www)

https://example.com (with no www)

Having two websites with exactly the same content is not a good thing for SEO,
and through technical SEO, you can ‘tell’ Google which domain version you prefer
to use.

Which pages to include in search engines index

By default, search engine crawlers will try to index all pages that are publicly
available on the Internet.

Sometimes this is not what you want for various reasons. For example, you may
have pages that are for your employees only or pages that you want only
Facebook visitors to see.

You can control which parts of your website you want search engines to index
through a file called robots.txt. This file resides in the root folder of your website
and provides crawlers with instructions as to which files/directories of a website
they can access.

Website structure and navigation

Site structure is very important for SEO. Websites need to have a hierarchical
structure that is simple to navigate both by crawlers and users.

If you are starting a website now, you should spend some time thinking of how
your website will be structured.

A common mistake made by many designers is to concentrate on the appearance

of a website, without thinking about structure and navigation.

When crawlers discover a website, they start the indexing process from the
homepage and then they follow all links from there.

This means that you need to make sure that any page of your website is
accessible in less than 3 clicks, by following links from the homepage.

URL structure

Besides choosing a good domain name and designing a site structure that is easy
to use, you should also optimize your URLs.

The URLs, also known as slugs or permalinks, should accurately describe what
the page is all about.

For example, consider these two URLs:

 https://www.example.com/343/bg/page.html

https://www.example.com/what-is-seo

The first is an example of a bad URL, while the second is an example of an SEO
friendly URL.

Notice how easy is to understand what the second URL is all about. Users and
search engines have a big clue as to what to expect from that page before even
looking at the actual content.

The page is not found (404 error)

Sometimes when you click a link you end up seeing an empty page or a page with
some technical terms you don’t understand. This is not a good experience for
users or for crawlers.

There are ways to control how your website will behave in such situations.
Instead of showing users an empty 404 page, you can give them options on how to
find what they are looking for.

Page speed

Google likes fast websites and decided to reward them by giving them a small
ranking boost.

Your job as an SEO is to make sure that your website loads as fast as possible.
This means you need to check your server infrastructure and a lot of other things
that are related to site speed.

Website security

Besides speed, Google (and users) like secure websites. Installing an SSL to make
your website https is no longer optional.

Mobile-friendliness

More than 60% of searches are now performed on mobile devices. This means
that your website has to be mobile-friendly and offer a great experience to users
on mobile.
Google is taking mobile very seriously and that’s why they created a mobile-first
index that is used to better serve mobile searches.

Part of your technical SEO review is to test your website on different mobile
devices and ensure that it loads fast and easy to use.

Multilingual websites

When you have a website that is available in more than one language, there is a
special SEO configuration for that.

When you have a post that is too big and is broken down into a number of pages,
there is also a way to deal with that so that Google can understand that it’s the
same post but broken down into multiple parts.

KEY LEARNINGS

The above are just some of the parameters you need to check or configure
related to technical SEO. That’s the part of SEO that you may require the
assistance of a developer if you don’t have the technical knowledge to do the
changes yourself.

What you need to understand at this stage is that technical SEO settings are
not directly related to the actual content of a website but have to do with the
website infrastructure.

On-Page SEO Basics

In this topic, you’ll get an idea of what is on-page SEO and its role in the whole
SEO process.

The main goal of on-page SEO is to help search engines understand the meaning
and context of your content.

The on-page SEO process can be broken down into two parts:
 Part 1: Optimizing page properties like the page title, page headings, etc.

Part 2: Optimizing the actual content

Part 1 – Page properties optimization

On-Page SEO Techniques

Page title

Each and every page of your website needs to have a unique title. The title of the
page was a very important SEO factor since the beginning of Google, and it is
important today.

The page title is what users see in the search results and the first element that
crawlers read.

A good title should be interesting for the users to click, descriptive of the page
content and to include keywords that users (and search engines) recognize.
Page Description (Meta Description)

The meta description is a short summary of the page and is not visible on the
page content but it is shown in the search results.

Main heading (H1)

Besides the page title, another important on-page SEO element is the main page
heading.

In the HTML language, this is the <h1> tag of a page. Good SEO practices dictate
that a page should only have one h1 tag.

Subheadings (H2, h3) – Besides the H1, a post or page needs to have multiple
sections to make it easier to read by users. The use of headings should be done
hierarchically. In other words, the main title is H1 and then subheadings can be
H2 or H3.

Optimization of images, audio, and video

Not all content is text. A website can also publish videos, audio (podcasts) and
images.

Google cannot easily understand what an image is all about or what kind of
content is presented in a video.

To make their job easier, there are some SEO rules to follow to make your images
and other multimedia elements SEO friendly.

For example, when adding an image to a page, you can make use of the ALT text
to describe the image in words. Search engines when they find the image, they
will read the ALT text and add it to the appropriate category in their index.

Before we continue, it should be noted that Google algorithms rank web

pages and not web sites. In other words, the most important factor is the
quality of the content of a particular page. Google will never rank a page if
the website is of low quality but the opposite is also true. Just because the
website is of high quality, it does not mean that all web pages will rank high.
Part 2 – Content optimization
Content optimization is all about the content and this is the stage where you
should spend most of your time.
There is a saying in SEO, ‘Content is King’ and this is tightly related to the reason
Google has become so successful.

Google has a very simple mission “to provide users with high-quality results so
that they can come back for more searches”.

This means that if your content is not great, you will not survive from the
quality checks made by the Google algorithms during the ranking process.

Even though your content is not going to be read by humans but by computer
bots, their process is so advanced that they can easily identify good content from
low-quality content.

What you need to understand at this stage is that the quality of your content is
the most important ranking factor of all. A website with great content can do well
in search with or without SEO.

What do we mean by high-quality content?

High-quality content has the following characteristics:

It is unique for the particular web site and has not to be published online
before.

It’s thorough and explains a topic in detail.

It is well-formatted.

It’s unbiased and tells both sides of a story

It’s authoritative based on experience, research studies, and data.

It’s SEO friendly.

KEY LEARNINGS
 On-page SEO is not hard. When optimizing your content, you should first
thing about the user and what they like to see in an article or page and then
start thinking about SEO.

What you have read above it’s just the tip of the iceberg of on-page SEO. If
you’re confused, don’t worry, everything will be covered in detail in the On-
Page SEO lesson.

Off-Page SEO Basics

In this topic, you’ll get an idea of what is off-page SEO and its role in the whole
SEO process.

I have mentioned before that one of the important factors used by Google
algorithms is the quality of the content. Another equally important factor is how
popular a webpage is on the web.

Popularity, in this case, refers to how many references/mentions/backlinks a

webpage has from other related pages on the web.

The process of promoting your website on the web to increase its popularity
is called off-page SEO.

Let’s take it from the beginning.

Back in the 1990s when Google was at its early stages, Larry Page and Sergey
Brin created a system to calculate how valuable a page is.

They thought that a page that has more references (links) from other pages on the
web is more important and useful to other users than pages that have fewer
references or no references at all.

They called this system PageRank.

Backlinks and PageRank

As you can see in the diagram above, backlinks make a website stronger and
more popular and this means higher rankings in the Google search results.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is a link that points from one domain to the other. For the website that
links out, it is called an “outbound link” and for the website that receives the link,
it is called an “inbound link”.

A backlink is a link that points from one website to the other.

 Backlinks act as a vote of trust and this is taken into account by the Google
algorithm during the ranking process.

Importance of backlinks in SEO

Over the years Google tried to find a way to rank websites that were less reliant
on backlinks.

Despite their efforts and a number of tests performed, they concluded that
webpages with a greater number of inbound links are indeed more useful to users
than pages with fewer links. So, backlinks are still very important for SEO.

A website with great content and good on-page SEO can get to the first page
of Google. A website with great content, good on-page SEO and backlinks
can get to the top positions.

Link Building
From the above statement, it is clear that in order to achieve high rankings in
Google, you need backlinks. The obvious question is how to get them? Are all links
equal?

This is how the term link building was born. As Google grew in popularity,
webmasters realized the importance of backlinks and they started building links
from other websites to satisfy the algorithm needs, get higher rankings and more
traffic to their websites.

It was not long that the situation went out of hand. The web was flooded with
websites that their sole purpose was to provide links to other websites without
adding real value to the web or to users.

These were known as link farms and later as article directories.

The end result was that low-quality websites started appearing at the top of
Google search results not because they provided great value to the users but
because they had a lot of backlinks.
Google’s priority was (and still is), to provide a great experience for users so they
took a number of actions to protect their search results.

Google Penalties
This is how Google penalties were born. Google added more rules to their ranking
algorithm to differentiate good links from bad links.

Websites with a lot of bad backlinks get a penalty, and as a result, their rankings
are reduced or they disappear completely from the Google index.

What is a good link?

A link added by a webmaster without monetary compensation

A link coming from a related website

A link coming from a website that is trusted by Google

A link that adds additional value to the users of that website.

Any links that don’t fall in one of the above categories are considered bad links
and should be avoided if you want to stay out of trouble.

How can you get backlinks to your website and improve

your rankings?
In a nutshell, the best way to get links from other websites is to create superb
content that other webmasters will find useful and will reference it from their
websites.

This is also called natural link building and it’s the safest way to improve your
Google rankings.

The problem is that although you may have great content on your website, not a
lot of people can find it (since it has low rankings) and this means fewer chances
of getting links.

In the Off-Page SEO lesson, we’ll see how to safely get more backlinks and
improve your rankings.
 KEY LEARNINGS

I know from experience that beginners to SEO find it difficult to understand

the concept of links and link building but this is perfectly fine.

Link building is one of the most challenging parts of SEO and it takes time
and experience to get it right. The Off Page SEO lesson explains everything
you need to know about link building and off-page SEO in general.

What you need to understand at this stage is that backlinks are important in
SEO. Google and other search engines take them into account when
calculating the position a website will appear in the results, for a given
search term.

It’s not a numbers game. In other words, it’s not how many backlinks you
have but from where these links are coming. Links from websites that
already have good Google rankings have more value than links from forums,
article directories or other low-quality websites.

When building links, you should not forget that violating any rules (i.e. by
buying links or participating in link exchange themes), will get you into
trouble. When your website is under a Google penalty, it will lose its rankings
and it’s very difficult to recover.

If you are starting out now, your priority is not off-page SEO. You should first
make sure that you create an easy to use website with high-quality content
and then worry about links.

Summary and Next Steps

SEO is a dynamic discipline. The web is growing fast and search engines are
constantly changing their algorithms to provide the best possible results to users.
On the other end, thousands of webmasters and SEOs are trying to rank their
websites high in the results and get a share of the traffic.
SEO is not about cheating search engines but making their job easier. Crawlers
have to visit millions of pages and if they cannot find the right signals to
understand what your website is all about, they will move on to the next.

Without good content, don’t expect to rank for anything; that’s how the online
world works. Websites that can produce high-quality content on a regular basis
win the race.

WHAT TO DO NEXT?

The purpose of this lesson was to give you an overview of what is SEO and
how it works.

Your next step is to start working through the lessons one by one (preferably
in the order shown in the menu) and create a list of things to check/optimize
on your website. Each lesson has a checklist and you can use that as a guide.
 Lesson 3

Technical SEO

What is Technical SEO

In this topic, you will learn what technical SEO is and how it works.

Video: Introduction to Technical SEO.

Technical SEO is a very important step in the whole SEO process. If there are
problems with your technical SEO then it is likely that your SEO efforts will not
generate the expected results.

It is thus crucial to make sure that you understand what is technical SEO and how
to get it right.

The good news is that after you do a technical SEO audit of your website and fix
any potential problems, you won’t have to deal with it again.

What is Technical SEO?

If you have read the previous topic on How Search Engines Work, you should
know that the first step taken by search engines long before answering a search
query, is the crawling and indexing process.

During this process, search engines are looking for publicly available web pages
to add to their index.

They discover, read and organize these pages into their database so that they are
later accessed by their algorithms to provide precise answers to the queries
entered by users.

Technical SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website for the crawling
 and indexing phase. With technical SEO, you assit search engines access, crawl,
interpret and index your website without any problems.

It is called “technical” because it has nothing to do with the actual content of the
website or with website promotion. The main goal of technical SEO is to optimize
the infrastructure of a website.

To get the whole picture, look at the diagram below which shows the three-main
pillar of SEO: Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and Off-page SEO.

On-Page SEO is related to content and how you can make it more relevant to what
the user is searching and off-page SEO (also known as link building), is the
process of getting mentions (links) from other websites to increase trust during
the ranking process.

Technical SEO and SEO

As you can see in the diagram above, there are no clear boundaries between
technical, on-page and off-page SEO because they all have to work together for a
fully optimized website.

KEY LEARNINGS

Technical SEO consists of a number of checks and settings you need to

optimize to help search engines crawl and index your website without
problems. In the majority of cases, once you get your technical SEO right,
you won’t have to deal with it again, other than doing periodical technical
SEO audits.

The word technical implies that you need to have some technical knowledge
to carry out some of the tasks (like page speed optimization, adding
structured data, etc.) but it’s necessary to do it otherwise your website won’t
reach its full potential.

Google Search Console

In this topic, you will learn what is Google Search Console and how to add and
verify your websites.

Video: The Google Search Console – Add and verify your sites.

One of the tools we will be using regularly throughout this course is the Google
Search Console.

Google search console is a free tool provided by Google (also referred to as

Google Webmaster Tools).

Google search console has a number of tools and reports you can use to find out
what Google knows about your website, improve your site’s performance in the
search results and troubleshoot problems.

You can use Google Search Console to:

 Optimize your website for technical SEO

Understand what Google knows about your website

View historical data about your website’s performance on Google

To receive important messages or warnings about the healthiness of your

web site (e.g. malware or hacking issues)

To find out how many pages are indexed by Google

To find out how many links are pointing to your site (that Google knows
about)

To troubleshoot crawling and indexing issues

Submit an XML sitemap to Google and view statistics on how many pages
are crawled/indexed

To see detail information on what keywords your site is associated with

and your ranking positions in Google Search Results

Can I use the Google Search Console to contact Google for a problem
I have with my website?

No, the Google Search Console does not offer direct communication with
Google. You can contact Google through their support forums and by posting
a question to one of the Google Webmaster Tools meetings.

How to get your website on Google Search Console

The first thing to do is to register with Google search console and add and verify
ownership of your website.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Create an account with Google Search Console.

Go to Google Search Console and click Start Now

If you already have a Google account, you can log in directly otherwise the first
step is to create an account and then login.

Note: If you already have a Google analytics account, you can use that to login.
It’s always a good practice to have Google search console and analytics on the
same Google account.

Step 2: Add your website

Add Property to Google Search Console

Click Add Property by clicking the Search Property dropdown.

Enter your website’s URL and click continue.

Note: Google treats http:// and https:// URLS differently as well as http://www
and http:// (without www). In the eyes of Google, these are 4 different websites.

For now, just enter one of the variations and once verified you can repeat this
process to add all four variations of your website.

Step 3: Verify ownership of your website

The next step is to verify the ownership of the website. There are 5 main ways to
do this:

HTML File verification

If you choose this method, you need to download the given HTML file and upload
it to the ROOT folder of your website. In most cases, this is in the public_html
folder.

Once uploaded, you can click the VERIFY button and continue to the next step.

Note: You should keep the file on the root folder of your website at all times.
Removing the file will also remove website ownership.

HTML Tag

Verify Ownership with HTML Tag

If you choose to use this verification method then you need to copy the meta tag
given by Google and add it to the <head> section of your website.

If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, you can add the verification code in the
Google Verification Code box by selecting:

Yoast SEO > GENERAL > WEBMASTER TOOLS

Add HTML Tag to Yoast SEO

Google Analytics

The third method is the easiest and my recommended method.

If you already have Google Analytics installed on your website and you are using
the same Google Account for both GA and GSC, then all you need to do is click the
VERIFY button.
Verify Ownership with Google Analytics

Google Tag Manager

Same as Google analytics. If you already have Google Tag Manager script install
in your website’s head section, then you can auto-verify Google Search console.

Domain name provider

If you cannot use any of the above methods, then you can verify website
ownership by editing your DNS settings. If you are a non-technical person, I
wouldn’t recommend this method since you need to know how to edit your
domain’s DNS values. In this case, it’s better to ask the assistance of your domain
provider.

Step 4: Repeat the process to add ALL website variations

Once you added and verified one of your website’s address you need to repeat
this process until you have all variations added.

If you have https installed on your website, then this means you need to add and
verify all four instances:

http://www.example.com
 http://example.com

https://www.example.com

https://example.com

KEY LEARNINGS

The Google search console is a great tool with a lot of features. You can use
it to find out what Google knows about your website, analyze your website’s
performance in Google Search, optimize your technical SEO, and improve
your Google rankings.

We’ll be using this tool throughout the course for a number of tasks. What
you need to ensure now is that you have added and verified your websites.

Preferred Domain

In this topic, you’ll learn the difference between having www in your URL and no
www and how to communicate your preference to Google.

When setting up your website or blog, you need to specify your preferred domain.
By doing so you instruct search engines as to which variation of the domain you
want to use throughout the lifetime of your website.

Let’s see why you need to do this.

A website (by default) is accessible with www and without www in front of a
domain name.

For example, if your domain is example.com, your website can be accessed by

both https://www.example.com and https://example.com (i.e. without the www).

While this is ok for users, it is confusing for search engines because they consider
these as two different websites.
 This means that you may encounter indexing issues, duplicate content
problems and loss of page rank.

To solve this problem, you need to set your preferred domain and inform search
engines about your choice.

What is the technical difference between having www in your URL and not
having www?

Let’s see a couple of examples:

URLs with www

https://www.example.com

http://www.example.com

URLs with no www

https://example.com

http://example.com

Domains with no www in front are also called naked domains. Domains with www
can also act as a hostname which can sometimes be easier to manage when it
comes to cookies, in cases where you have a number of subdomains assigned to
the www domain.

This is a really technical thing which in reality won’t affect the majority of
websites, so if you are having difficulties understanding what this means, just skip
this explanation and move on to the big question.

Should I use www or no www in front of my domain?

The answer is simple. It depends on your personal preference. There is no SEO

advantage from using one format or the other.

Three things are important:

 First, to configure your website to ‘listen’ to only one of the variations
(more on this below).

Second, to let Google and other search engines know what is your
preferred choice.

Third, to be consistent and use the chosen variation when adding internal
links to your content or when running link building campaigns.

How to set your preferred domain

Step 1: Check your CMS

Login to your CMS and look for the domain-related settings. Most CMS allows you
to specify your website URL. If you’re on WordPress you can log in to your
WordPress dashboard and then click GENERAL and then select SETTINGS from
the left menu.

In the WordPress Address (ULR) and Site Address (URL), set your preferred
domain.

How to set your preferred domain in WordPress

In the example above, I have selected my preferred domain to have the www in
front. As explained before, there is no advantage from doing so, it’s just a matter
of personal preference.

Step 2: Communicate your preference to search engines

In the past, the setting to specify your preferred domain was available in Google
Search Console but Google decided to remove this option and rely on canonical
URLs.
 A canonical URL (aka canonical domain), is a piece of HTML code that is added
in the HEAD section of a page and tells search engines which is the preferred
URL for the particular page

To check if your website sets the canonical domain correctly, open your
homepage in a new browser window and then go to VIEW SOURCE (right-click
anywhere on the page and select view source from the menu).

Search for the word ‘canonical’ and you should see a line like this:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.reliablesoft.net/” />

This indicates the canonical URL for the particular page.

Repeat the above tests for all pages of your website.

If you cannot find the CANONICAL declaration in your HTML code, it means that
your theme is not SEO Friendly or it does not support it.

Don’t worry though, if you’re using WordPress, you can install the free version of
Yoast SEO plugin and it will do this automatically for all your website posts and
pages (including the homepage and archive pages).

If you’re not on WordPress and your canonical URL is not defined or wrong, you
need to contact your CMS provider and get some help.

How to test that your preferred domain is set correctly?

To test that your website can successfully redirect from one version of your
domain to the other, perform the following test.

Open a browser window and type http://example.com.

If your preferred domain is set to https://www.example, then the page should

automatically redirect to https://www.example.com.

What if I want to change my preferred domain and add or remove the www
for an already established website?

This is highly NOT recommended. If you already have an established website then
there is no reason for changing your preferred domain.
In case you do want to do this, you will have to add 301 Redirects to redirect
traffic and links from one version of the domain to the other.

KEY LEARNINGS

Having www or no www in front of your domain name is a matter of

preference. There is no SEO advantage of choosing one version or the other.

What is important is to choose the one you like and stick with it for the
lifetime of your website.

The way to communicate your preference to Google is to ensure that a

canonical URL is available for all your website pages and that it points to the
preferred format.

Crawling and Indexing

In this topic, you’ll learn how to use the Google search console to identify and fix
indexing errors.

Finding and fixing indexing errors is very important because if there are
problems, Google will not index your website correctly and this can negatively
affect your rankings.

The Google Search Console tools to use for this task are:

The index coverage report

URL inspection tool

How to find errors with the index coverage report

The index coverage report is available in the Google Search Console and shows
you which of your pages have been successfully indexed by Google and which
pages have not been indexed because of an error.

For each of the pages, you can get more details about the error and request
Google to re-index you the particular page or the website as a whole.

The index coverage report has replaced the ‘Crawl Errors’ report previously
available in Google Webmaster Tools.

Login to Google Search Console and select your primary domain from the
dropdown list (top left corner).

Click COVERAGE under Index to view the Index Coverage Report

The Index Coverage Report

You will notice that the top part of the report has 4 tabs:
 Error

Valid with warmings

Valid

Excluded

Since our goal is to investigate any indexing errors, we will use the ERROR tab.

The troubleshooting process has two parts:

First is to identify the errors

Second to understand the errors and fix them

Make sure that only the ERROR tab is highlighted and scroll down to the
DETAILS section.

You will notice that errors are grouped into categories. The possible errors are:

Submitted URL has crawl issue

Submitted URL not found (404)

Server Error (5xx) – url is not on google

Redirect Errors

Submitted URL seems to be a soft 404

Submitted URL marked noindex

Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt

Submitted URL returns unauthorized request (401)

For each error category, you can see the Validation status, trend and the number
of affected pages.

You can click on any row to see more details about the affected pages.
Pages with Errors

How to Fix “Submitted URL has crawl issue” Errors

A crawl issue means that a page has problems and Google cannot index it. You
need to find out what exactly is the issue, fix it and resubmit the page to Google.

The first step is to click the INSPECT URL button.

Then click the VIEW CRAWLED PAGE and the MORE INFO from the right
menu
How to Fix Crawl Errors

One of the most common reasons why a page might have crawl issues is that
some of the page resources (images, CSS, JavaScript) could not be loaded when
Google tried to index the page.

Before investigating further, you should:

Open a new browser window and visit the page. If it loads ok then most
probably the errors were temporary.

Click the TEST LIVE URL button to force Google to refresh the error
report.

Review the details in MORE INFO again.

Click the REQUEST INDEXING button to re-submit the page to Google.

Request Indexing Button

Go back to the Index Coverage Report and to the page that has issues and click
the VALIDATE FIX button.

Validate Fix Button

Google will notify you via email about the results of your indexing request.

If you still get errors or resources not found after clicking the TEST LIVE URL
button, you should first fix the errors by changing your HTML Code and then
request indexing and validating the fix.

How to Fix “Submitted URL not found (404)” errors

These kinds of errors are easy to fix. What it means is that a page could be found
by the Google bot at the time of indexing.

In most cases, this can be a false alarm. So, the first thing to do is to check that
the page is correctly not found.

Click on a page from the list and then the INSPECT URL button.

While waiting to get the data from Google Index, open a new browser window and
type the URL.

If the page is found on your website and you want to add it to the Google Index
then:

Click the TEST LIVE URL button.

Click the REQUEST INDEXING.

Go Back to the report and click VALIDATE FIX.

If this is a page that indeed returns a 404 code and you don’t want Google to
index it, you have two options:

First, leave it as it is. Google will gradually remove the page from the index. This
is normal and expected to happen for pages that are no longer valid or deleted for
a valid reason.

Second, to redirect the page using a 301 redirection to a related page on your
website.

How to Fix Server Error (5xx)

Pages listed here could not be accessed by the Google bot either because the
server was down or not available at the moment.

Normally you should not have any Server Errors reported. If you have a LOT
of errors, then this means that your server has issues and you should
investigate more to find out why.

If you have a few errors, then most probably the page could not be accessed
temporarily and this means that you can request from Google to re-index the
page.

Follow this process:

Click on one of the affected pages and you will get a menu with options on the
right.
How to Fix Server Error (5xx)

First, click on INSPECT URL. Google will give you more details about the errors
from the Google Index.

Study the details and then click on the TEST LIVE URL.

Test Live URL Button

Google will re-fetch the page and give you more details. If it was a temporary
error, you can click the REQUEST INDEXING button to re-submit the page to
Google

If the page cannot be accessed then you need to either solve the problem or
remove it from your sitemap.

How to Fix Redirect Errors

When you get a ‘redirect error’, it means that the page could not be accessed by
the Google bot because it redirects to a page that doesn’t exist or not working.
The procedure for fixing redirect errors is the same as before.

Click on the INSPECT URL

Get more details about the errors

Click the TEST LIVE URL

Fix the error and REQUEST INDEXING

Go back and click VALIDATE FIX

If everything is ok and the error is fixed, you will see a PASSED message in the
validation column.

Redirect Error Passed Message

How to Fix “Submitted URL seems to be a soft 404” Errors

When you get a soft 404 error it means that the page was not found (because it
does not exist) but instead of telling search engines that it should be ignored, it
returned a valid code.

You may have pages on your website that cannot be accessed directly but only
after a user completes a specific action.

For example, let’s say that your checkout page is only shown to users AFTER they
have added an item to their shopping cart.

If you still have the page listed in your sitemap, Google will try to crawl it but it
will not find it because no items were added to the cart.

What to do for soft 404 errors?

You will need to either return a 404 code for pages that are not valid

Remove them from your sitemap so that Google will not access them

Redirect them to a valid page

 Do nothing. Sometimes soft 404 errors are normal and expected.

How to Fix “Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’” Errors

This is not actually an error. What this means is that a page was submitted for
indexing (through your sitemap) but it has the ‘noindex’ directive which instructs
search engines not to add it to their index.

What you should do is review the list of pages that have the ‘noindex’ tag and
make sure that you don’t want them in the Google index.

If a page was wrongly tagged as ‘noindex’, remove the page directive from the
header and REQUEST INDEXING.

How to Fix “Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt” Errors

A page as submitted for indexing (through your sitemap) but there is a rule in
your robots.txt file that instructs search engines not to index it.

You should follow the same procedure as above i.e. check if the pages are
supposed to be blocked from Google index.

How to Fix “Submitted URL returns unauthorized request (401)” Errors

A page is included in your sitemap but Google cannot access it because it is

password protected.

Since these pages are not publicly available, you should:

Remove them from your sitemap

Add a ‘noindex’ directive in the page’s header

Block the directory (or protected areas) in your robots.txt file

How to Use the URL Inspection Tool

The URL Inspection tool (Video by Google Webmasters)

The URL Inspection tool allows you to check the index status of any page of your
website and troubleshoot errors or request Google to re-index your website or a
particular page.

The URL inspection tool replaced two tools that were previously available in
Google Webmaster tools: The FECTH AS GOOGLE and BLOCKED RESOURCES
report.

To use the URL inspection tool just type any URL in the INSPECT ANY URL
dropdown found at the top of the page.

URL Inspection Tool

You can either enter your website domain or a specific URL.

The URL INSPECTION TOOL can be used to troubleshoot errors reported in the
INDEX COVERAGE REPORT (as explained above) or to:

Re-submit your website to Google

Re-submit a particular page to Google.

How to resubmit your website to Google

When you make a number of changes to your website and you want to speed up
the indexing process, you can request Google to re-index your website.

Type your domain in the URL INSPECTION TOOL.

Resubmit Website to Google Index

Click REQUEST INDEXING.

Indexing Requested Message

How to resubmit a web page to Google

If a page content has changed dramatically and you want to inform Google about
the changes, you can use the URL INSPECTION Tool and the REQUEST
INDEXING button to speed up the process.

The process is the same as re-submitting your website (explained above).

When to use the REQUEST INDEXING feature?

Google is very good at picking up changes made to a website or webpage so in the

majority of cases you don’t need to use the ‘Request Indexing’ feature.

Some valid uses are:

When you migrate domains

When you migrate from http to https

When you make a website redesign

When you publish time-sensitive news and you want to inform Google
about it.

KEY LEARNINGS

Don’t panic when you see errors in your Google Search Console account. In
many cases, errors are valid and expected.

Your priority is to solve any CRAW ISSUES or NOT FOUND (404) errors
since these are the errors directly related to your rankings.

Robots.txt

In this topic, you’ll learn what is a robots.txt file and how to optimize it.

Video: Robots.txt optimization

One of the things you need to check and optimize when working on your technical
SEO is the robots.txt file. A problem or misconfiguration in your robots.txt can
cause critical SEO issues that can negatively impact your rankings and traffic.

If you are on WordPress, you’ll find specific information about WordPress

virtual robots.txt file at the end of this topic.
What is robots.txt?
A robots.txt is a text file that resides in the root directory of your website and
gives search engines crawlers instructions as to which pages they can crawl and
index, during the crawling and indexing process.

If you have read the previous topic on how search engines work, you know that
during the crawling and indexing stage, search engines try to find pages available
on the public web, that they can include in their index.

When visiting a website, the first thing they do is to look for and check the
contents of the robots.txt file. Depending on the rules specified in the file, they
create a list of the URLs they can crawl and later index for the particular website.

The contents of a robots.txt are publicly available to the Internet. Unless

protected otherwise, anyone can add view your robots.txt file so this is not the
place to add content that you don’t want others to see.

What happens if you don’t have a robots.txt file? If a robots.txt file is

missing, search engine crawlers assume that all publicly available pages of the
particular website can be crawled and added to their index.

What happens if the robots.txt is not well-formatted? It depends on the

issue. If search engines cannot understand the contents of the file because it is
misconfigured, they will still access the website and ignore whatever is in
robots.txt.

What happens if I accidentally block search engines from accessing my

website? That’s a big problem. For starters, they will not crawl and index pages
from your website and gradually they will remove any pages that are already
available in their index.

Do you need a robots.txt file? Yes, you definitely need to have a robots.txt even
if you don’t want to exclude any pages or directories of your website from
appearing in search engine results.

Why use a robots.txt?

The most common use cases of robots.txt are the following:
#1 – To block search engines from accessing specific pages or directories of your
website. For example, look at the robots.txt below and notice the disallow rules.
These statements instruct search engine crawlers not to index the specific
directories. Notice that you can use an * as a wild card character.

Example of a robots.txt file

#2 – When you have a big website, crawling and indexing can be a very resource-
intensive process. Crawlers from various search engines will be trying to crawl
and index your whole site and this can create serious performance problems.

In this case, you can make use of the robots.txt to restrict access to certain parts
of your website that are not important for SEO or rankings. This way, you not only
reduce the load on your server but it makes the whole indexing process faster.

#3 – When you decide to use URL cloaking for your affiliate links. This is not the
same as cloaking your content or URLs to trick users or search engines but it’s a
valid process for making your affiliate links easier to manage.
Two Important things to know about robots.txt

The first thing is that any rules you add to the robots.txt are directives only. This
means that it’s up to search engines to obey and follow the rules.

In most cases they do but If you have content that you don’t want to be included
in their index, the best way is to password protect the particular directory or
page.

The second thing is that even if you block a page or directory in robots, it can still
appear in the search results if it has links from other pages that are already index.
In other words, adding a page to the robots.txt does not guarantee that it will be
removed or not appear on the web.

Besides password protecting the page or directory, another way is to use page
directives. There are added to the <head> of every page and they look like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

How does robots.txt work?

The robots file has a very simple structure. There are some predefined
keyword/value combinations you can use.

The most common are: User-agent, Disallow, Allow, Crawl-delay, Sitemap.

User-agent: Specifies which crawlers should take into account the directives.
You can use an * to reference all crawlers or specify the name of a crawler, see
examples below.

You can view all available names and values for the user-agent directive, here.

User-agent: * – includes all crawlers.

User-agent: Googlebot – instructions are for Google bot only.

Disallow: The directive that instructs a user-agent (specified above), not to crawl
a URL or part of a website.

The value of disallow can be a specific file, URL or directory. Look at the example
below:
Example of disallow rules in robots.txt

Allow: The directive that tells explicitly which pages or subfolders it can be
accessed. This is applicable for the Googlebot only.

You can use the allow to give access to a specific sub-folder on your website, even
though the parent directory is disallowed.

For example, you can disallow access to your Photos directory but allow access to
your BMW sub-folder which is located under Photos.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /photos
Allow: /photos/bmw/

Crawl-delay: You can specify a crawl-delay value to force search engine crawlers
to wait for a specific amount of time before crawling the next page from your
website. The value you enter is in milliseconds.

It should be noted that the crawl-delay is not taken into account by Googlebot.

You can use Google Search Console to control the crawl rate for Google (the
option is found here).

Google Crawl rate setting in Google Search Console

You can use the crawl rate in cases you have a website with thousands of pages
and you don’t want to overload your server with continuous requests.

In the majority of cases, you shouldn’t make use of the crawl-delay directive.

Sitemap: The sitemap directive is supported by the major search engines

including Google and it is used to specify the location of your XML Sitemap.

Even if you don’t specify the location of the XML sitemap in the robots, search
engines are still able to find it.

For example, you can use this:

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Important: Robots.txt is case-sensitive. This means that if you add this

directive, Disallow: /File.html, it will not block file.html.
How to create a robots.txt?
Creating a robots.txt file is easy. All you need is a text editor (like brackets or
notepad) and access to your website’s files (via FTP or control panel).

Before getting into the process of creating a robots file, the first thing to do is to
check if you already have one.

The easiest way to do this is to open a new browser window and navigate to
https://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt

If you see something similar to the one below, it means that you already have a
robots.txt file and you can edit the existing file instead of creating a new one.

User-agent: *
Allow: /

How to edit your robots.txt

Use your favorite FTP client and connect to your website’s root directory.

Robots.txt is always located in the root folder (www or public_html, depending on

your server).

Download the file to your PC and open it with a text editor.

Make the necessary changes and upload the file back to your server.

How to create a new robots.txt

If you don’t already have a robots.txt then create a new .txt file using a text
editor, add your directives, save it and upload it to the root directory of your
website.

Important: Make sure that your file name is robots.txt and not anything else.
Also, have in mind that the file name is case-sensitive so it should be all
lowercase.

Where do you put robots.txt? robots.txt should always reside in the root of
your website and not in any folder.
Example of a robots.txt
In a typical scenario, your robots.txt file should have the following contents:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

This allows all bots to access your website without any blockings. It also specifies
the sitemap location to make it easier for search engines to locate it.

How to test and validate your robots.txt?

While you can view the contents of your robots.txt by navigating to the robots.txt
URL, the best way to test and validate it is through the robots.txt tester tool and
the URL Inspection tool of Google Search Console.

You can access the robots.txt tester tool here.

Click the Test button.

If everything is ok, the Test button will turn green and the label will change to
ALLOWED. If there is a problem, the line that causes a disallow will be
highlighted.

Robots.txt Tester Tool

A few more things to know about the robots.txt tester tool:

You can use the URL Tester (bottom of the tool) to enter a URL from your website
and test if it is blocked or not.

You can make any changes to the editor and check new rules BUT in order for
these to be applied to your live robots.txt, you need to EDIT your file with a text
editor and upload the file to your website’s root folder (as explained above).

To inform Google that you have made changes to your robots.txt, click the
SUBMIT button (from the screen above) and click the SUBMIT button again from
the popup window (option 3 as shown below).

Robots.txt Submit Updates

WordPress Virtual Robots.txt File

Everything that you read so far about robots.txt is applicable for WordPress
websites as well.

The only things you need to know about robots.txt and WordPress are the
following:

In the past, it was recommended for WordPress websites to block access to wp-
admin and wp-includes folders via robots.txt.

As of 2012 this is no longer needed since WordPress provides for a

@header( 'X-Robots-Tag: noindex' ); tag, which does the same job as
adding a disallow in robots.txt.

What is a virtual robots.txt file?

WordPress by default is using a virtual robots.txt file. This means that you cannot
directly edit the file or find it in the root of your directory.

The only way to view the contents of the file, is to type

https://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser.

The default values of WordPress robots.txt are:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

When you enable the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” option
under Search Engine Visibility Settings the robots.txt becomes:

Search Engine Visibility Settings WordPress

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Which basically blocks all crawlers from accessing the website.

How do I edit robots.txt in WordPress?

Since you cannot directly edit the virtual robots.txt file provided by WordPress,
the only way to edit it is to create a new one and add it to the root directory of
your website.

When a physical file is present on the root directory, the virtual WordPress file is
not taken into account.

KEY LEARNINGS

Test your robots.txt and make sure that you are not blocking any parts of
your website that you want to appear in search engines.

Do not block CSS or JS folders. Google during the crawling and indexing
process is able to view a website like a real user and if your pages need the
JS and CSS to function properly, they should not be blocked.

If you are on WordPress, there is no need to block access to your wp-admin

and wp-include folders. WordPress does a great job using the meta robots
tag.

Don’t try to specify different rules per search engine bot, it can get confusing
and difficult to keep up-to-date. Better use user-agent:* and provide one set
of rules for all bots.

If you want to exclude pages from being indexed by search engines, better do
it using the <META name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow“/> in the
header of each page and not through the robots.txt.

SEO Friendly URLS

In this topic, you’ll learn how to make your URLs SEO friendly.

URL optimization is one of the easiest SEO tasks to configure but at the same
time, it’s a necessary step you should take to make sure that your website is SEO
friendly.
 If you are using WordPress or any other SEO friendly CMS, optimizing your
URL structure is something you will set up at the beginning and probably
never have to deal with it again.

First, let’s start with some basic terminology that will help you understand what
we want to achieve.

What is the URL?

A URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. In simple terms, a URL
specifies the web address of a page.

Each and every web page on the Internet has a unique URL (also called a
permalink).

The uniqueness is achieved by the domain name i.e. reliablesoft.net and the set of
characters that follow, also known as a SLUG.

These two parts together make up the unique URL of a page.

So, the URL of a single page has two parts, the first part is the domain which is
not configurable and the second part is the path to find the page within the
domain (this part is configurable).

No two pages within the same domain can have the same URL.

Here is an example of a permalink:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-strategy.

What is a permalink

The website domain can also include the protocol i.e. https:// or http:// and
 or www.

The page slug is what comes after the domain slash (/).

The max length of a permalink is 2083 characters but in general the

shorter, the better.

What is an SEO friendly URL?

A friendly URL accurately describes the page using keywords that are easy to
read for both search engines and users.

This is an example of an SEO friendly URL:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-friendly-blog-posts/

This is an example of a NON-SEO friendly URL:

https://www.example.com/Folder/X1356774/124

That’s the first optimization step you can take to make your URL’s friendly i.e. to
use keywords that are relevant to your site’s content, but as we will see below,
there is more than that.

Why do URLs matter for SEO?

Friendly URLs improve the user experience

SEO is about making the user experience better and easy to understand URLs
give both humans and ‘search engine spiders’ a good indication of what the page
is all about.

A user can tell by just reading this URL https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-audit/

that the destination page has information related to an SEO Audit.

The URL is also shown in the search results and well-crafted URLs are more
informative and attractive to users and this means higher Click-Through Rates
(CTR).
Example of an SEO Friendly URL in Search Results

It’s an SEO ranking factor

Although it’s a minor SEO factor, various SEO ranking studies show that the
majority of the pages in the first positions of Google have short URLs.

Links

As stated by Google, some users might link to your page using the URL of the
page as the anchor text, so if your URL contains relevant keywords, this provides
search engines with more information about the page.

How to optimize your URLs

Let’s see how to create SEO optimized URLs.

Domain Name
I mentioned above that the first part of a URL is the domain and this is not
configurable.

Once you have a domain, you have to use it as is and you cannot make any
changes to it. That’s why it’s better to choose a good domain from the beginning.

What is a good domain?

A domain that is short (2-3 words max)

Catchy

Easy to remember

Preferably a .com, .net or .org domain

For local businesses, it is an advantage to have a domain registered in

your country’s domain. For example, for a business in the UK, the domain
 can be www.example.co.uk

Important Note: It is necessary to point out that the characteristics of a

good domain name will help in establishing user trust and do not have a
direct effect on rankings. In the past, having a keyword-based domain had
some advantages but not anymore (with the exception of country-specific
domains for local SEO purposes).

Video: Advice from Google on how to choose your domain name.

Include keywords you want to rank for

Help Google and other search engines understand which keywords you want to
rank for the particular page or post, by including those keywords in the page slug.

For example, let’s say that you want to rank for the keyword “Asparagus Health
Benefits” and you wrote a post with the title “10 Amazing Health Benefits of
Asparagus You Should Know About”.

WordPress (and by default will create this slug: “10-amazing-health-benefits-of-

asparagus-you-should-know-about”.

It’s not that bad but it’s long and includes many words and that can confuse
Google and users.

What you can do to optimize it is to edit the URL and make it “asparagus-health-
benefits”.

This is shorter, easier to understand by users and gives search engines a big clue
on the content of the page and the keywords you want to rank for.

Where should the keywords be placed in a URL?

When Google is asked about this question, they officially say that it doesn’t matter
very much but what studies show is that it’s better to have keywords at the
beginning of the URL rather than in the middle or the end.

How to avoid keyword stuffing in the URL?

Keyword stuffing is a term used when you try to inject keywords in a URL (post
title or content) in an unnatural way for the sole purpose of optimizing for search
engine crawlers and not users.

To avoid keyword stuffing in your URLs, try not to repeat the same keyword more
than once.

For example, DON’T do this:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/services/seo-packages/seo-package
s.php

Instead, use keywords wisely without repetition. Here is a better version:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-packages

Consider removing stop keywords

As part of the optimization process, you should consider removing stop words
from your URLs. These are common words that don’t add any value or help in
understanding the actual content of a page.

For example, words like “a”, “the”, “on”, “and”, “is”, “of”, “you” and other similar
words.

Use dashes to separate words in a slug

This is common practice these days but as a reminder, you should separate words
in a slug using a “- “and not any other character.

Keep it short
Shorter slugs are easier to understand and faster to process than longer slugs.
This “asparagus-health-benefits” is definitely better than this “10-amazing-health-
benefits-of-asparagus-you-should-know-about”.

Another reason for keeping your slugs short and without stop keywords is the fact
that search engines during the crawling and indexing process, are trying to match
what the user has typed in the search box with page slugs.

If the find an ‘exact match’ then the particular page has an added advantage over
other pages that may use longer slugs.
For example, if the user is searching for “asparagus health benefits”, my page
that has an exact match slug, has a small advantage over other pages with slugs
that are not an exact match.

Of course, this is not the only factor taken into account during the ranking
process. This one is actually of low importance but every small bit matters for
SEO.

Finally, don’t forget that the URL of a page is shown in the search results so short
and descriptive slugs, will encourage more clicks and visits to your website.

Slug in Search Results

Use only lowercase characters

This is also common practice but worth mentioning again. Avoid having Capital
characters in your slug but use only lowercase letters.

The reason is that webservers like Apache (used by WordPress and other popular
CMS), interpret this: http://www.example.com/My-Page-Slug to be a different
URL than this: http://www.example.com/my-page-slug or this
http://www.exampe.com/My-page-slug.

HTTPS URLs
Another factor that contributes to the SEO friendliness of a URL is the security of
a website and in particular the use of an SSL.

Secure label for https websites, as shown in a browser

Having a website with an SSL installed, servers 3 major purposes:

 It makes your URLs https and this is an additional way to gain user’s trust.

It makes your website more secure (any information submitted through

your website is encrypted)

It gives you a small ranking boost.

White spaces in a URL

There are cases where your CMS will automatically create URLs from filenames,
especially for uploaded images.

When there is a space in the filename this will be translated as %20 in the URL.

For example, if you have an image with the name “SEO Friendly Websites.jpg”
and your CMS is not properly configured to use dashes ‘-‘, as separators, this will
be shown as “SEO%20Friendly%20Websites.jpg” and this is not user friendly.

Use of dates in URL

Should dates be part of a URL? Does it help Google in any way?

The answer is no. Dates should not be used as part of the URL since they don’t
offer any benefits for the users or search engine crawlers.

Google uses other mechanisms to identify when a post was published and having
the date as part of the URL adds unnecessary complexity.

Folder structure
As a general rule of thumb, it is good to keep your folder structure (that’s the
slashes used as separators in the URL) to 2 levels maximum.

Consider the following examples:

URL directly linked to the domain:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/wordpress-blogging/

URL in a folder that is 1 level down:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/ebook/wordpress-seo-guide/
URL in folders, 2 levels down:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/services/seo/seo-packages

Anything below, it’s better to be avoided. For example, this URL:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/services/seo/local-
seo/introduction

is too long and can be simplified to either:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/services/local-seo/ or even better to

https://www.reliablesoft.net/local-seo/

Should you add the category name in the URL?

In WordPress, you can add your blog posts into categories and depending on your
settings, the category name may be shown in the URL.

For example, you can have something like this:

https://www.example.com/watches/best-watches-to-buy

This is OK as long as your category names are meaningful and make sense to the
users.

How to configure URLs in WordPress

Configuring your URLs in WordPress is very easy. WordPress is an SEO friendly
platform and all you have to do is go to SETTINGS -> PERMALINK SETTINGS
and choose one of the common settings or write your custom structure.
How to configure URL Structure in WordPress

By choosing the Post name setting, your URLs will be directly linked to your
domain without anything in between.

How to change the permalink (URL of a page) without

losing SEO?
Although the idea of a permalink is to be permanent, there are valid cases where
you might want to change it.

For example, during an SEO audit, you might decide to make your URLs shorter
by removing date information.

In order not to negatively affect your SEO, you need to ‘tell’ search engines that
you are changing the URL so that they can update their index.

If you make the change without informing them, they will consider it as a new
page. This means that any backlinks pointing to the page will be lost and any
users that bookmarked the page will get a 404 error since the page has changed
address.
To avoid these issues and maintain your SEO rankings, you need to add a 301
redirection to your .htaccess file to inform search engine crawlers about the
change.

Here is a step by step example:

Let’s say that your current permalink is:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/this-is-a-long-permalink-to-be-ma
de-shorter

and you want to change it to:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/permalinks

If you are on WordPress you can change the permalink of a page by editing the
URL right below the title.

Step 1: Visit the page in EDIT mode, change the URL and click the UPDATE
button.

How to Change the Permalink of a Page

Step 2: Using an FTP program, locate the .htcaccess file found in the ROOT
folder of your website, download it to your local PC and edit it using Notepad or
other text editors.

Step 3: Add the following line and save the file.

Redirect 301 /this-is-a-long-permalink-to-be-made-shorter

https://www.reliablesoft.net/permalinks

Notice that you don’t need to include the domain name for the [source] URL but
you need to include the full permalink for the [target URL].

Step 4: Upload the file back to your webserver.

Step 5: Open a new browser window and test and everything is working as
expected. If you type the OLD URL in the browser, you should be redirected to
the new page.

Step 6: Go to Google Search Console and use the URL Inspection Tool to make
sure that search engines can access the new permalink without any problems.

Step 7: Make sure that the new permalink address is included in your XML
Sitemap.

KEY LEARNINGS

SEO friendly URLs are important.

It’s one of the SEO factors that you can configure once and forget about it.

One thing to have in mind though is that if you have an already established
website with lots of published pages, you should be careful with URL
optimizations.

Don’t go and change your URLs just for the sake of removing the ‘stop
keywords’ or making them shorter, there are always some risks with 301
redirects.

If on the other hand, you have a URL that does not make sense or has a lot of
characters that are not meaningful then it’s worth taking the risk and
optimizing your URLs.

When making changes to a URL and in order to maintain your SEO rankings,
you need to add a 301 redirection so that search engines and users can
navigate to the new address without getting a NOT FOUND (404) error
message.
XML Sitemap Optimization

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your XML sitemap for SEO.

What is an XML Sitemap and why do you need it?

In simple terms, an XML sitemap is a file that lists all important pages of your
website that search engine crawlers should know about.

Even if you don’t have a sitemap, search engines can still index your website but
having a sitemap makes their job easier and it also gives you the opportunity to
let them know about pages or parts of your website they may not discover easily.

There are different kinds of sitemaps, you can submit a sitemap for your posts,
images, and videos.

When is a sitemap really important?

For websites with many pages, a sitemap helps search engines discover
pages that are new or updated.

For websites that don’t use good internal linking practices, a sitemap is a
great way to give information to crawlers about your website pages.

For new websites that don’t have many incoming links, a sitemap will
serve as a discovery tool.

How to create an XML Sitemap?

There are many ways to create an XML sitemap. Many platforms have this
functionality built-in but even if they don’t, it’s easy to create one and take
advantage of the benefits.

To check if your website has a sitemap you can open a new browser window and
navigate to http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.

An XML sitemap is not a static file but it needs to be updated automatically

when a new page is added to your website or when changes are made to
 existing pages.

For this reason, you should look for automated ways to create a sitemap.

For non-WordPress websites, the best way to create a sitemap is to search Google
for plugins or software that are integrated into your platform and can generate
sitemaps according to Google guidelines.

For WordPress websites, there are many plugins to help you. I will show you
below step-by-step instructions on how to create and optimize your XML sitemap
using Yoast SEO.

What to include in your XML sitemap for maximum

SEO?
Before getting into the implementation details, it is important to understand what
you should include in your XML sitemap for maximum SEO.

By default, the plugins will include all your website pages, posts, tags, archives,
media, etc. but this is not what we want for SEO purposes.

The most important sitemap optimization guidelines are:

Include in your sitemap the pages (and that includes posts as well), that
are important for your website. These are the pages that have high-quality
content and are more likely to bring organic traffic to your website.

Exclude pages that have duplicate content. For WordPress websites, good
candidates are archive pages, tag pages, and author pages.

Exclude pages with ‘thin content’. When it comes to optimizing a website

for search engines, you don’t want to submit in their index pages that are
of low quality. It’s not a numbers game, meaning that it’s not a matter of
how many pages you have in the index but how many ‘good’ pages are in
the index.

Organize your sitemap into sub-sitemaps. This has the additional

advantages of making sitemaps smaller and faster to process.

Submit a separate sitemap for your videos (if applicable).

 Add your sitemap in robots.txt. (more on this below)

Include only URLs that Google can access. If you have pages that are
blocked by robots or are behind a password-protected area, do not include
those pages in the sitemap.

Make sure that your XML Sitemap includes the ‘last modification time’
field, a value that gives information to Google as to when a page was last
modified. This is useful in cases where you want Google to re-index some
pages of your website.

Last modification time in Sitemaps

Creating an XML Sitemap with Yoast SEO Plugin

One of the nice features of Yoast SEO is Sitemap functionality.

If you have the plugin installed and activated, the first thing to do is to ‘Enable
the XML Sitemap functionality’ by going to Yoast SEO – > GENERAL – >
FEATURES -> XML SITEMAPS.
Enable XML Sitemap Functionality in Yoast SEO

The next step is to configure what to include in your XML sitemap.

Click SEARCH APPEARANCE and then CONTENT TYPES.

Search Appearance Settings

For each of the content types, you need to decide if this is something you want to
include in your sitemap.

If you set “Show posts in search results?” to YES, then the particular content type
will be included in your sitemap, if you choose NO, it will not be included.

In most situations, you only need to include your posts, pages, and products (in
the case of eCommerce websites) and exclude everything else.

Next, you need to select TAXONOMIES and do the same. In other words, you
need to select which taxonomies you want to be included in your sitemap or not.

In a normal scenario, you should only include your post and product categories
and exclude anything else like post tags or pages that don’t have unique content
of their own.
Taxonomies in XML Sitemap

The next and final step is to go to ARCHIVES and disable Author and Date
Archives.
Archives in XML Sitemap

Where is my XML Sitemap?

To view your sitemap, click SEE THE XML SITEMAP from GENERAL / FEATURES
(first screenshot above), or open a new browser window and navigate to
https://yourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml
Example of XML Sitemap

As you can in the screenshot above, the plugin created one sitemap per content
type.

If you click on any of the links, you will also see that it contains info for images as
well so you don’t need to create a different sitemap to submit your images to
Google.

How to submit your XML sitemap to Google?

There are two ways to ensure that Google will pick up your sitemap. The first way
is to add it to the robots.txt and the second way is to submit your sitemap in
Google Search Console. For the best results, you can use both methods.

Add your sitemap in robots.txt

Edit your robots.txt file and add a line at the end to include your sitemap as
shown below.
Sitemap in Robots.txt

Submit your XML sitemap in Google Search Console:

Login to Google search console

Click SITEMAPS under INDEX.

Type in your sitemap filename (i.e. sitemap_index.xml) and click the

SUBMIT button.

Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console

Once you do this you will see that the sitemap is Pending. Check back in a few
days to see how many pages were submitted in your sitemap and how many pages
are actually indexed.

You can see all the details in the COVERAGE report (under Index).

Note: It is normal that Google will not index all your pages especially if you
added in the sitemap pages that are not important.

When do you need to submit an RSS Feed to Google?

Besides submitting an XML sitemap, there are cases that you can submit an RSS
feed to Google.
When you have a large website with lots of pages that change frequently (for
example a News website), you can make use of an RSS feed to let Google know of
new additions to the website.

The RSS feed will be smaller and will only include the new pages (thus it will be
processed faster) while your sitemap will include ALL your pages.

Do I have to re-submit a sitemap to Google every time I update my

website?

No. You only need to submit your sitemap once and Google will monitor the
sitemap for changes.

The only cases where you should re-submit the sitemap is when doing a website
redesign, changing domain, changing permalink structure or making a lot of
changes to the content.

Even if you don’t re-submit the sitemap, Google will pick up the changes
eventually, re-submitting will make the process faster.

KEY LEARNINGS

Having a valid XML sitemap that search engines can read is important for
SEO.

Anything you can do to make their job easier and any methods you can use to
give them more information about the structure and contents of your website
will enhance your website’s presence in their index.

Creating an XML sitemap is easy since there are many plugins that automate
the process for you.

Besides having a sitemap, if your website has a lot of content (pages, posts,
etc.) and if you have new additions on a daily basis, you can also submit your
RSS feed to Google (the same way as you do with a sitemap) and thus speed
up indexing your new content.
Schema Markup and SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn what are schemas, why they are important and how to
use them on your website.

Besides traditional SEO practices, there are modern ways to improve your SEO
and schemas (also known as structured data, rich snippets or microdata) are
among these techniques.

What is schema markup?

Schema markup is a way to ‘describe’ your content to search engines in a way
they can understand it.

This is done by adding pieces of code to your HTML that consists of pre-defined
tags (semantic vocabulary) that search engines understand.

How does the structured data look like?

Structured data tags are not visible to users but can be read by search engines
when crawling your pages.

Here is an example of how schema markup looks like:

Schema Markup Example

Why is structured data important for SEO?

Video: Introduction to Rich Snippets, by Google.
When Google or other search engines crawl a web page their primary goal is to
find out what the page is all about.

The crawlers cannot view a website like a human but they process the HTML of a
page trying to figure out different things like the meaning of the content, date
published, author and other elements they find useful during the indexing
process.

Schema Markup is supported by major search engines

In order to make their job easier and faster, major search engines have agreed to
a set of common standards, also known as schemas.

Schemas cover many content types including articles, videos, images but also
different types of entities like organizations, local businesses, people and many
more.

Although Structured data is not yet part of the Google ranking algorithm, it
is still important for SEO for many reasons.

Prepare your website for ‘future’ SEO

First, it is a feature that is gaining ground and Google officially stated that it may
be something that will go into the ranking algorithm in the near future.

So, besides taking advantage of the benefits described below, you also prepare
your website for future SEO.

Make your search snippets informative and attractive

Second, structured data enhances your website’s presence on the SERPS with
rich snippets.

This means that your entry in Google search results will be more attractive and
informative than others and this will lead to better CTR (click-through rates) and
more visits to your website.
Structured data enhances your website’s presence on the SERPs

Currently, Google supports the following schemas:

Article

Book

Breadcrumb

Carousel

Corporate Contact

Course

Critic Review

Dataset

Employer Aggregate Rating

Event

Fact Check

Job Posting

Livestream

Local Business

Logo
 Media Actions

Occupation

Product

Q&A Page

Recipe

Review Snippet

Sitelinks SearchBox

Social Profile

Speakable

Note: You can view the search gallery for more information about each
schema.

Schemas are great for Local SEO

Third, schemas are great for Local SEO. With structured data, you can give
search engines more information about your local business including the address
and contact information.

In conjunction with a well-optimized Google My Business page, it can boost your

local SEO.

Structured Data Markup is required for Google Shopping Campaigns

Fourth, it’s a requirement for running successful Shopping campaigns. When

setting up shopping campaigns on Google Ads, you need to have microdata on
your product landing pages so that Google can verify the data submitted in your
shopping feed.

Without structured data, it is very likely that your shopping campaigns will not be
optimized.

Schema is Required for AMP Pages

Accelerated mobile pages rely heavily on structured data for some of their
advanced features.

If you want your AMP pages to appear in the top stories carousel on mobile
search results, you need to have structured data implemented on your AMP
pages.

Structured data markup helps voice SEO

Currently, when you voice search something on Google, it might give you a voice
answer if there is a featured snippet for that search term.

Open your Google Assistant and say “What is Off-Page SEO”. You will most
probably hear “According to reliablesoft.net Off-page SEO…”.

Google is getting the answer from my featured snippet. Having structured data on
your page can help you rank in Google featured snippet and thus greater
exposure in voice searches.

How to add schema markup on your website

Now that you are convinced about the importance of structured data for SEO
purposes, let’s see how you can use it on your website.

Before getting into the implementation part, you need to know which structured
data types to use.

Some common use cases are:

Blog: If you have a blog, you can use the webpage schema to give Google
information about your website, logo, name, etc and also the article schema for
your articles and blog posts.

Ecommerce: For eCommerce websites, you can also use the products schema
which includes details about your product, price, name, reviews, etc.

Local Business: Local businesses can make use of localbusiness schema as well
as the website schema.

Note: You can use more than one schema on your website as long as the
 implementation is correct.

How to implement structured data on your website

There are 2 ways to add structured data on your website.

The first one is the manual way i.e. editing your HTML files and adding the
required tags and the second one is through a plugin or a combination of plugins.

Google Structured Data Markup Helper (Manual Process)

To make the manual process a bit easier, Google has a tool called Structured Data
Markup Helper.

With this tool, you can visually tag your pages and generate the required HTML
code but you still have to edit your HTML files or templates.

To get an idea of how this works:

Open the structured data helper tool,

Select the type of schema you want

Enter a URL from your website in the URL box

Click Start
Google Structured Data Markup Helper Tool

The tool will load your webpage in the left pane and in the right pane you get a
list of available tags for the selected schema type.

All you have to do now is to highlight areas of your website and assign them to
tags.
Google Structured Data Markup Helper Tool – Tagging

When you are done you can view and download the generated structured data
code.

It is recommended to use the JSON-LD Markup format. The generated output is a

script you can insert in the HEAD section of your web page.
Structured Data as JSON-LD Markup

Before adding to your website, you can check using the structured data
testing tool the validity of your code.

Adding structured data using plugins (Automated Way)

Obviously, the above method is not the easiest way to add schema information to
your website.

If you are on WordPress the easiest way is to use a plugin and fortunately, there
are a number of plugins that can help you do this.

In the majority of cases, you need to add schema information to your homepage
and to your article pages (if you are running a blog) or product page (if you have
an eCommerce website).

Adding Schema using the Yoast SEO Plugin

The free version of the Yoast SEO plugin has built-in support for a number of
schemas including:

Webpage

Organization

Person

Article
 Image

Video (Premium Version)

Local SEO (through the Local SEO Add-on)

The nice think about Yoast SEO is that it handles the schema information
automatically.

All you have to do is to go to SEARCH APPEARANCE – GENERAL and select

whether you are an Organization or Person.

Add Schema with Yoast SEO

When you add values to the required fields and click the SAVE CHANGES
button, the plugin will add the necessary JSON-LD markup script on your
homepage.

You can check using the structured data testing tool what is added and if
everything is ok.

In addition to that, you can also click SOCIAL and add the URLs to your social
media pages.

The plugin will associate your page with your social media pages using the
‘sameas’ tag.
The WEBPAGE, ARTICLE and IMAGE schema is handled automatically by the
plugin so you don’t have to do anything else.

An alternative to Yoast SEO that has support for more Schemas is the
Schema – All In One Schema Rich Snippets plugin.

How to check for structured data errors

Besides checking your pages using the Structured Data Testing Tool, there are
two more ways to troubleshoot structured data errors within Google Search
Console.

URL Inspection Tool

You can use the URL inspection tool to inspect any page from your website.

Among other things, the generated report will show you structured data-related
errors. Clicking on the error will give you more details.

Troubleshoot Schema Markup Errors with the URL Inspection Tool

Enhancement Report
View the reports under the Enhancements section of the Google Search Console
(left menu). Google will show you details about various features such as Logos,
Products, Sitelinks search box and many more.

Google Search Console Enhancement report

KEY LEARNINGS

Structured data is important for SEO and it is something you will need to
consider sooner or later if you want to stay in synch with modern SEO
practices.

The first step is to check whether your website is using markup data and the
easiest way to do this is to use the Google structured data testing tool and
test your homepage and other pages.

If you use markup data but there are errors in the testing tool, then it may be
easier to hire a developer to do the necessary fixes.

If you don’t have schema on your pages, then use the methods described
above to add it.
Breadcrumbs

In this topic, you’ll learn what are breadcrumbs and why they are important for
your website.

One of the website elements that Google loves is breadcrumbs. Google is

stressing the importance of breadcrumbs in all their SEO related documents and
guides.

The reason is simple: Breadcrumb trails have something to offer to both search
engines and users.

Search engines use them to get a better idea of how your website is structured
and they help users navigate a website easier.

What are breadcrumbs?

A breadcrumb trail is a small menu usually located at the top of a page, used
as a navigational aid. It shows the path to go from the current page back to
the homepage.

Here is an example of a breadcrumb trail menu:

Example of a Breadcrumb Trail

As you can see, the breadcrumb trail starts from the home page, then it shows the
category name and then the current page. Each step in the path is clickable.

Different types of Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs can have different forms but all types have the same goal i.e. to help
users understand the relationship between the current page with the rest of the
site.

The most common breadcrumb types are:

Hierarchy Based Breadcrumbs

The example above was a typical hierarchical (or location-based) breadcrumb

menu. It’s the typical breadcrumb you can find on blogs or websites that have a
simple hierarchical structure.

Here is another example from Amazon:

Breadcrumb Trail – Amazon

Dynamic Breadcrumbs

Dynamic or attribute based-breadcrumbs are used in cases a product has many

attributes and the breadcrumb trail reflects that to make navigation easier.

Here is an example from an eCommerce website:

Attribute-Based Breadcrumbs

Notice how the breadcrumb helps users select different product attributes
without leaving the current page.

History-Based Breadcrumbs

The breadcrumb path trail is build based on the pages a user has visited. This is
not a good SEO web design practice and it’s not used very often.
Why are Breadcrumbs Important?
Breadcrumbs are an essential element of an SEO friendly website because:

They make navigation easier – that’s the main role of breadcrumbs and
this is why users love them.

They encourage people to visit more pages of a website before they exit
and thus they reduce the bounce rate.

They are good for SEO.

There are two main reasons why breadcrumbs are good for SEO.

First, they help search engine bots during the crawling and indexing phase.
Crawlers can identify breadcrumbs and may use the breadcrumb structure to
gather more information about a web page and site.

Second, Google shows breadcrumb information in the SERPS, instead of showing

the URL of a page.

For example, the URL of the page below is

https://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-the-difference-between-seo-and-sem/ but
because I have SEO optimized breadcrumbs, they show like this in the results,
which is a better version.

SEO Optimized Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs SEO Best Practices

To SEO Optimize your breadcrumbs, you need to follow these simple rules:
Make sure that breadcrumbs are enabled and visible to the users.

This may sound obvious but many web designers tend to hide the breadcrumb
trail because they feel it does not match with the design.

This is not true. Look at the first example above and notice how useful is the
breadcrumb trail on Rolex’s website (and it looks great too).

Make sure that breadcrumbs are mobile-friendly.

If you decide to keep breadcrumbs visible on mobile devices, make sure that the
font size is big enough so that the links can be clicked easily. It’s a common
practice to either hide breadcrumbs on mobiles or make them look like buttons.

Here is an example of a mobile-friendly breadcrumb trail.

Mobile-Friendly Breadcrumb Trail

Add Breadcrumb schema

The reason that my breadcrumbs are shown in place of the URLs in Google search
results, is because I have the breadcrumb schema markup enabled on my web
site.

Here is how to add breadcrumb schema on your website:

For breadcrumbs, the relevant schema is breadcrumblist. It has the following
required properties:

Breadcrumb Schema Properties

Item – URL of the page for the specific item

Name – The title of the breadcrumb

Position – the position of this item in the breadcrumb trail.

This is how the code looks like:

Breadcrumblist Structured Data Example

If you are confused, don’t worry in the majority of cases you don’t have to write
the code manually.

There are tools that can do this for you automatically.

Yoast SEO Plugin (WordPress) – The Yoast SEO plugin has built-in support for
breadcrumbs.

Once activated on your website breadcrumbs can be configured by going to

SEARCH APPEARANCE > BREADCRUMBS.
Breadcrumb Settings in Yoast SEO

As you can see above, you can configure a number of things that have to do with
the appearance of the breadcrumbs.

The related schema information is then added automatically to your web pages.

Genesis Themes (WordPress)

Genesis based themes (like the one I’m using on my website, have built-in support
for schemas).

If you are not on WordPress or using a different theme

The best way is to first check if the breadcrumb schema is already activated on
your website.

Go to the structured data testing tool and enter the URL of one of your pages
that have breadcrumbs enabled.

If everything is ok with the structured data implementation, you will see on the
right the results with 0 Errors and 0 Warnings.

Breadcrumb Schema

This means that your implementation is correct.

If you have errors, warning or not seeing a breadcrumblist item, then it means
that breadcrumb structured data is not implemented on your website.

The best way to fix this is to hire a developer to add the necessary code to all
valid pages.

KEY LEARNINGS

Breadcrumb trails are good for the user experience, they make your search
snippets look better and Google loves them. These 3 reasons are enough to
convince you that you need to enable breadcrumbs on all your pages.
 If your designer is against this because it ‘breaks’ the visual design, show
them the examples of Rolex to convince them that there is a way to
incorporate breadcrumbs on any design.

Finally, implementing the breadcrumblist schema and having the correct

structured data is necessary for Google and other search engines to interpret
your breadcrumb implementation correctly.

Canonical URLS

In this topic, you’ll learn what are canonical URLs and why they are very
important for SEO.

What is a Canonical URL?

A canonical URL is added in the HEAD section of a page and tells search
engines which is the preferred URL for the particular page. A canonical URL
can point to itself (self-referencing) or to a different URL.

Canonical Tags are most commonly used to:

Help webmasters solve duplicate content issues

Help search engines index the most appropriate page (in case pages have
similar/identical content)

Help webmasters specify their preferred domain

It’s a way to consolidate incoming links to a specific page

It’s a way to protect your PageRank from websites that copy your content

It’s a way to avoid duplicate content issues when syndicating content

It’s a way to specify which page to index in cases where you have
 accelerated mobile pages (AMP) enabled on your site

How do I find my canonical URL?

A canonical URL is only visible to search engine crawlers and not users. It is
added to the <HEAD></HEAD> section of a page and has the following format:

<link rel="canonical" href="CANONICAL-URL"/>

To find the canonical URL of page use one of the methods below:

View the HTML Source of a page

Open a webpage in Chrome and select VIEW > DEVELOPER > VIEW SOURCE
from the top menu, to view the HTML source of a page.

Search for the word ‘Canonical’. If the canonical tag is defined, it should look like
this:

<link rel="canonical"
href="https://www.reliablesoft.net/what-is-a-canonical-url"/>

If you cannot find the word canonical in your HTML, then this means that there is
no canonical URL defined for the particular page.

Using the URL Inspection Tool

The URL inspection tool is part of Google Search Console and among other
things, it shows you what Google considers to be the canonical URL of a page.

Login to Google Search Console

Type a URL in the URL Inspection Tool and press Enter

Open the COVERAGE section of the report

Look for ‘Google-selected Canonical’

Find Canonical URL using URL Inspection Tool

If the value is ‘inspected URL’ this means that the canonical URL is the same as
the page URL. If Google selects a different canonical URL, it will show the value
in that area.

When to use Canonical URLs?

Solve duplicate content issues

A website is more likely to have duplicate content issues, even if you don’t
intentionally duplicate your content across different URLs.

Typical cases of duplicate content include:

A URL is accessible with or without www in the URL

For example:

http://reliablesoft.net/post-title and
http://www.reliablesoft.net/post-title

A URL is accessible with both Http and Https protocols

For example:

https://reliablesoft.net/post-title and
http://reliablesoft.net/post-title

Pages that have print friendly versions

For example:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/post-title/ and
https://www.reliablesoft.net/post-title/?print=true

Pages with identical content but different URLs

For example:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/courses/SEO-Course and
https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-course

Duplicate Content on eCommerce Websites

Product category pages that have the same content and using filters

For example:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes/?color=white and
https://ww.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes

Both product pages show the same shoes but in different colors. For Google, this
is considered as a duplicate content.

In all the above cases, setting the canonical URL allows you to tell search engines
which URL to include in their search results.

Do I need to use a canonical URL on pages that have original content?

Yes, and the main reason is that it’s a way to protect your content. In cases where
someone replicates your website, the canonical URL will tell search engines what
the original source is.

Content Syndication and canonical URLs

When you re-publish or syndicate your content on other platforms i.e. medium or
LinkedIn Posts, you can use the canonical URL to tell Google that this is an exact
copy of an existing URL and in this way, you ensure that Google knows the
original source of an article.

Canonical URL Examples

what is a canonical URL

To help you understand how to set your canonical tags, here is an example of how
they work.

Let’s assume that the content of this page

https://www.reliablesoft.net/courses/SEO-Course

is the same as this

https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-course

and you want Google to index the second one.

In this case, you need to set your canonical URLs as follows:

On this page https://www.reliablesoft.net/courses/SEO-Course the

canonical URL should point to the other page, i.e.
<link rel="canonical"
href="https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-course"/>

On this page, https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-course the canonical

URL will be self-referencing i.e. it will point to the page itself.

<link rel="canonical"
href="https://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-course"/>

This way you tell Google which page to add in their index and show in the search
results.

Duplicate Content in Product Category Pages

Here is another example of how canonical tags can help you solve the problem of
duplicate content for your eCommerce category pages.

Let’s assume that you have a category page that displays shoes in different colors.

Users can narrow the results by selecting the color from a dropdown filter.

This is the main page https://www.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes/

and this is one of the pages that are generated when users select the color from a
filter https://www.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes/?color=white

Both pages have exactly the same content, the only difference is the product
images that show shoes in white color only. This is a typical scenario of duplicate
content pages on eCommerce websites.

In this case, you need to set your canonical URLs as follows:

On this page
https://www.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes/?color=white the
canonical URL should point to the main category page, i.e

<link rel="canonical"
href="https://www.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes/"/>

On this page, https://www.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes/ the

canonical URL will be self-referencing i.e. it will point to the page itself.
<link rel="canonical" href="
https://www.reliablesoft.net/products/shoes/"/>

Canonical URLs Best Practices

Each page must have a canonical URL that points to the page itself or
some other URL.

There must be only one canonical URL per page.

The canonical tag is specified in the HEAD of the page.

The URL specified in the rel=”canonical” tag should be valid

The URL specified in the rel=”canonical” tag should not have the
“noindex” attribute.

Avoid pointing the canonical URL to a page that has a canonical tag that
is not self-referencing i.e. points to another page. This will create a loop
and confuse crawlers.

Use canonicalization when pages have duplicate or similar content. Do

not use the canonical tag on pages that have different content. Consider
using a redirection.

Canonical URLs should point to pages in the same language. For multi-
language websites, you can use “href lang” attribute to specify the
different versions.

The homepage needs to have a canonical URL defined that specifies the
preferred domain.

All canonical URLS should follow the same format as the homepage.

If you have Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) enabled on your site, check
that the canonical URL of every page points to the non-AMP version.

What is the main difference between canonical tags

and 301 Redirections?
When you set 301 redirection users don’t see the source page but they only see
the target. In the case of canonical tags, users can still see both pages but search
engines are told not to consider one of the two.
In both cases, backlinks are consolidated to the target page.

As a general rule, use a canonical URL when you want to keep the page on your
site, for navigation or user purposes and use a 301 when you don’t want users to
see the particular page.

Advantages of using Canonical Tags for SEO

When it comes to SEO, accurately setting your canonical URLs has the following
advantages:

Lets you define your preferred domain. Previously this was possible
through the Google Search Console but now the only way to tell search
engines what you prefer is through canonical tags.

Lets you define which version of a page you want to be included in the
search results.

Improves the PageRank of specific pages by consolidating links.

It protects your PageRank when other websites steal your content.

It’s a great way to optimize your crawl budget but avoiding crawling pages
with duplicate content.

How to set canonical URLs in WordPress?

The easiest way to specify the canonical tag in WordPress is to use Yoast SEO
plugin.

When you activate Yoast SEO it will automatically add a self-referencing

canonical URL for all pages.

To change the canonical URL of a page or post, edit the particular page and click
ADVANCED and set the canonical URL.
Set Canonical URL WordPress

How to set canonical URLs in any CMS?

For non-WordPress websites you need to add in the HEAD section of all your
pages a rel="canonical" link attribute that has the following format:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”CANONICAL-URL”/>

Replace CANONICAL-URL with the actual URL you want a page to point to. This
can be the same URL as the page or a valid URL of a page within your website or
to a different domain (cross-domain canonical).
Canonical URL Example

KEY LEARNINGS

Technical SEO best practices indicate that each and every page of your site
needs to have a canonical tag set. It should either point to itself or to a valid
URL on your site. If you’re on WordPress, install the Yoast SEO plugin to
automatically set self-referencing canonical tags and then go to individual
pages and change the canonical URL if needed.

A canonical URL behaves the same way as a 301 redirection when it comes
to consolidating links and PageRank. Use a 301 redirection when you want a
page not to be visible by users.

If you run an eCommerce shop, make sure that any dynamically generated
pages have canonical URLs pointing to static pages of your site.

If you have accelerated mobile pages (AMP) enabled on your site check that
the canonical tags of every page point to the non-amp version.
Hreflang

In this topic, you’ll learn how to SEO multilingual websites.

If your website is available in more than one language, then you need to
implement hreflang.

Hreflang will help Google serve the most appropriate page to your users (i.e. Your
German pages for people in Germany) and also protect you of possible duplicate
content issues in cases where you have the same content translated into different
languages.

There are two ways to implement it, the first one is by adding some tags on each
and every page of your website and the second way is to do it via the sitemap.

Using hreflang tags

The idea behind hreflang is that for each page on your website, you need to tell
search engines the equivalent URL in all languages that the particular page is
available.

For example, if you have a website in English and Spanish then for each page you
need to have in the header the hreflang tags that identify both the English and
Spanish versions of the page, like the example below:

<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/en/page1/"

hreflang="en" />

<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/es/page1/"

hreflang="es" />

There are other technical details that you need to take into account like country
codes, what content to show for geographically unspecified users and many
others so if you plan to do this manually, you need to watch this comprehensive
video from Google.

Video: Google Video on how to implement hrelang.

An alternative way, if you are on WordPress, is to use a plugin like wpml. All you
have to do is install it on your website, choose your language settings and the
plugin will take care of the technical details.

Implementing hrelang using a Sitemap

If you don’t want to add the hreflang tags in your website’s code, another way of
implementing it is via your sitemap.

Basically, the idea is the same as before, for each page on your sitemap you need
to add the URLs in all available language versions like the example below.

Here is an English language page targeted at English speakers worldwide, with

equivalent versions of this page targeted at German speakers worldwide and
German speakers located in Switzerland. Here are all the URLs present on your
site:

www.example.com/english/page.html, targeted at English speakers.

www.example.com/deutsch/page.html targeted at German speakers.

www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/page.html targeted at German

speakers in Switzerland.

Here is the sitemap for those three pages:

Example of a sitemap with more than once languages.

How to check your Multi-language implementation?

Once you make the necessary settings, log in to your Google search console
account and click INTERNATIONAL TARGETING under LEGACY TOOLS &
REPORTS.

In the first tab (Language), Google will give you more information about your
hreflang implementation (errors and warnings) and in the second tab (Country)
you can select your target audience.

In cases where your website is available in more than one language and in cases
where you want to target the whole World and not a particular region leave this
unchecked or select UNLISTED from the drop-down menu.

If you only have one language and you want to target people in that
geographical area, then select the country from the dropdown.

For example, if your website is in German and you target users in Germany, then
you should select Germany from the dropdown.

Best Practices (for all methods)

Each language version must list itself as well as all other language
versions.

Alternate URLs must be fully-qualified, including the transport method

(http/https)

Alternate URLs do not need to be in the same domain.

If two pages don’t both point to each other, the tags will be ignored. This
is so that someone on another site can’t arbitrarily create a tag naming
itself as an alternative version of one of your pages.

Consider adding a fallback page for unmatched languages, especially on

language/country selectors or auto-redirecting homepages. Use the x-
 default value:
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/"
hreflang="x-default" />

KEY LEARNINGS

If you have multiple versions of a page for different languages or regions, tell
Google about these different variations. Doing so will help Google Search
point users to the most appropriate version of your page by language or
region.

Note that even without taking action, Google might still find alternate
language versions of your page, but it is usually best for you to explicitly
indicate your language- or region-specific pages.

Paging

In this topic, you’ll learn how to configure pagination with SEO in mind.

The SEO techniques described below are NOT applicable to Google but they
are still applicable for other search engines like Bing.

A better way to deal with pages that have a lot of content is to use ‘pillar
pages’. The concept of ‘pillar pages’ and ‘content clusters’ are discussed in
detail in the Content Marketing course.

What do we mean by Pagination?

In the context of SEO, the term paging is used to describe a situation when you
publish a big article in several parts (pages).
For example, let’s say that you have a guide that is 10,000 words long and instead
of publishing it as a single blog post, you publish it as a series of blog posts:

http://www.example.com/myguide-part1
http://www.example.com/myguide-part2
http://www.example.com/myguide-part3
http://www.example.com/myguide-part4

Search engines are doing a great job in indexing all parts of the article but if you
want to ‘tell them’ that all pages are essentially one big article, you can use the
‘next’ and ‘prev’ tags.

The advantage of doing this is that they will always show the first part of the
article in the search results and will also consolidate its linking properties.

You can use this technique in cases where you want your users to click NEXT to
read the next part of an article. Your pages will load faster and users will spend
more time on your website.

The disadvantage is that most users don’t like to click to read the next part as
they prefer to have everything loaded on one page.

So, before taking a decision you need to consider the experience of your users.
Perform A/B testing by applying this technique on some posts and take
measurements before adopting this policy for all the content on your website.

How to implement paging

Implementation wise, all you have to do is define in the <head> of each page the
‘next’ and ‘prev’ tags.

Using the same example as before, this is the code you need to add to:

The first page

<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/myguide-part2">

Second page

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.example.com/myguide-part1">

<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/myguide-part3">

Third page

<link rel="prev" href="http://www.example.com/myguide-part2">

<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/myguide-part4">

KEY LEARNINGS

Implementing pagination using the ‘prev’ and ‘next’ tags is an optional step.
They are not taken account of by Google but other search engines still use
them.

A better way to deal with pages that have a lot of content is to use ‘pillar
pages’. The concept of ‘pillar pages’ and ‘content clusters’ are discussed in
detail in the Content Marketing course.

The 404 Page

In this topic, you’ll learn how to SEO your 404 page.

SEO is about improving the user experience and a proper 404 page contributes to
that goal.

A 404 page is shown to the users when the URL they visited does not exist
on your website.

Maybe the page was deleted, the URL was changed or they mistyped the URL in
their browsers.

Most modern WordPress themes have optimized 404 pages by default, if not you
can easily make your 404 page SEO friendlier by using a plugin or editing your
theme templates.

What is an optimized 404 page?

An optimized 404 page should:

Have the same structure and navigation menus as your website

Tell visitors in a friendly language that they page they are looking for is no
longer available

Give them alternatives (suggest other related pages)

Make it easy to go back to the previous page, your homepage or other

important pages

How to check your 404 pages?

Testing how your 404 page looks is very easy, just open a new browser window
and type a URL on your website that does not exist. What will be shown in the
browser is your 404 page.

When the 404 page is not configured, it looks like this:

Default 404 Page

This is not useful for the user and negatively impacts the user experience.

A properly configured 404 page should:

Give some info to the user of what happened rather than displaying “Not
found”

Have a design consistent with the rest of the website

Give options to the user to navigate to other pages of the site.

This is how my 404 page looks like:

Custom 404 Page

KEY LEARNINGS

Don’t spend too much time optimizing your 404 pages, just make sure that
when a page is not found it returns a custom 404 page that gives users
alternatives ways to find what they are looking for.

Site Structure

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your site structure for SEO.

A well-defined site structure makes the job of search engine crawlers easier and
this means better indexing and more chances in achieving higher rankings.

With the introduction of artificial intelligence in the Google ranking algorithm,

voice search and mobile-first index, the structure of a website has gained more
importance than ever.

It’s no longer enough to have pages thrown on a website but these have to
 be grouped properly into categories so that search engines can understand
for which topics you want to rank for.

The importance of a good site structure

The structure of a web site, blog or eCommerce store is very important both in
terms of SEO and usability. It should be user friendly, easy to navigate, fast and
serve its purpose: attract new customers, get more email subscribers, make a
sale, get revenue from advertising or just present the information in the best
possible way.

A good site structure is important for SEO for three main reasons:

It helps search engines understand your content better.

A good structure increases your chances of getting Sitelinks in Google

search

A good structure provides for great user experience and lowers bounce
rate

What is the ideal site structure?

The actual structure of a site is strongly related to the type of content a website
offers. If we are to divide website types into groups, we will end up with four
major groups:

Blogs

Corporate Websites

News Websites

eCommerce Websites (Selling either products or services online)

Ideal site structure of a blog

A good site structure for a blog looks like this:
Ideal Site Structure for a Blog

Besides the home page and the other pages like about us, contact us, etc., blog
posts should be grouped into categories according to relevancy.

For example, if you have a food blog publishing different kinds of recipes, you can
create several categories based on the type of recipes i.e. Italian recipes,
vegetarian recipes, Chinese recipes, etc.

Ideal site structure of a small business / corporate website

The main purpose of a small business / corporate website is to provide more
information about the business, it’s products, services, and departments.

A good site structure for a corporate website is as follows:

Ideal Site Structure for a Small Business Website

Notice that you have the main category for departments and the main category
for the blog with several sub-categories.

Ideal site structure of a news website

Ideal Site Structure for a News Website

A news website such as an online magazine can group content into a number of
categories based on the type of content and when it was published.

This structure can help both search engines and users find what they want either
by visiting the category of interest or navigating through the content by date.

An ideal site structure for an eCommerce website

The site structure of an eCommerce website can be a bit more complicated than
other types of websites especially when it offers a number of different products.

In a typical scenario though, a good structure can be as follows:

Ideal Site Structure for an eCommerce Website

On top of the structure we have the homepage and then the content grouped into
several categories.

There is no limitation as to the number of categories or subcategories you can

create but a rule of thumb is not to create more than 3 levels of depth in your
hierarchy.

In other words, each product should be accessed from the homepage in less than
3 clicks. This makes indexing faster and easier to understand by crawlers and it’s
also friendlier for users.

How to Optimize your Site Structure

Now that you have an idea of what is the ideal structure of a website, let’s
examine how you can practically build a good structure for your website.

Here are the steps:

Plan your site structure in advance

Use categories to group related content

Use HTML and CSS for navigation

Make use of breadcrumb menus

Pay attention to your internal link structure

Create a sitemap for users

Plan your site structure in advance

If you are starting a new website then it’s easy to plan the site structure in
advance. From experience, this step is overlooked by many web designers and
webmasters.

They tend to concentrate on the visual aspect of a website without taking into
account the structure.

The best way to approach this is to use the above ‘ideal structures’ as your guides
and adjust them according to your needs. What you need to have in mind is the
following:

Your website should have a hierarchical structure

The focal point is the homepage and then all other pages should be grouped into
categories based on their type.

For example, blog posts should be grouped into blog categories and placed under
the ‘Blog’. News articles can be grouped by published date. If you are offering
services, these can be grouped under services.
Try to think about what the best grouping from a user’s perspective is. Run some
scenarios and try to replicate the steps taken by users to find a product or article
on your website. If you can make this process easy enough for them, then it will
be for search engines too.

Your hierarchy should be no more than 2 or 3 levels deep

Don’t overcomplicate your site hierarchy but keep it simple. All pages of your
website have to accessible from the homepage in less than 3 clicks.

Website hierarchy should be no more than 3 levels

For example, if you are running an online shop then a user should be able to visit
a specific product page in less than 3 clicks. This translates to:

Homepage (1 Click)

Product Category (2 clicks)

Product Subcategory (3 clicks)

Product page

Use categories to group related content

There are some rules to follow when creating categories, either for the products
and services you are offering or for your blog.

The first rule is that you NEED to have categories

Try to keep your categories the same size

Add your categories in the menu of your website and homepage

Use categories to create content relevancy

Use HTML or CSS for navigation

Avoid using Javascript or Ajax when creating your navigation. The best approach
to make the life of search crawlers easier to use plain HTML tags combined with
CSS for formatting.

Also, don’t use images to create your navigation links but use text. This means
that if you want to link to a category page from your homepage don’t just add an
image and link to it but have a text link as well.

Make use of breadcrumb menus

Breadcrumb menus are important for SEO. When activating breadcrumb menus
on your website, make sure that the breadcrumb menu displays your site
structure accurately

For example, when you activate a breadcrumb menu on a product page, it should
have the following elements:

Homepage > Product Category > Sub Category > Product page

In other words, the menu should display all levels until you go back to the
homepage.

Pay attention to your internal link structure

When creating internal links, have these rules in mind:

Create internal links pointing to your category pages

Identify your most valuable pages and link to them from other related
pages of your website. At any point in time, these should be the pages on
your website that have a greater number of internal links.
 From your category pages make sure that you link to the most valuable
pages of that category

You can use optimized anchor text for your internal links

Make sure that ALL pages of your website can be reached through internal
links

Provide users with a sitemap

This is different than the XML Sitemap you need to create and submit to search
engines. In your website’s footer, you can include an HTML sitemap that shows
the website hierarchy to users.

Here is a nice example from HP

User Sitemap Example

KEY LEARNINGS

With the introduction of machine learning, mobile-first index and voice

 search, it’s important to give search engines more clues about the topics
(and not just keywords) you want to rank for. And the best way to do this is
by having a well-defined and solid site structure.

A website site structure should be hierarchical and easy to use. The starting
point is the homepage and all other pages should be grouped into related
categories.

Users should be able to reach any page of the site by following links from the
homepage.

Technical SEO Checklist

This your technical SEO checklist.

Add and verify all your website variations with Google Search Console

Set your preferred domain in your CMS and check your canonical domain

Check that search engines can crawl your website without any errors

Check your robots.txt settings

Check and optimize your URLs

Create and optimize an XML Sitemap

Add structured data markup data to your homepage (website + organization, person or local business)

Add relevant structured data markup to your pages (articles, products, etc)

Test your markup implementation using the Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Make sure that you have a breadcrumb menu on all pages

Check that your breadcrumb schema is correct

Check that all your pages have a canonical URL defined

Implement hreflang if your website is available in more than one language

Check and optimize your 404 page

Review your site structure

 Lesson 4

On-Page SEO

What is On-Page SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn what is on-page SEO and why it’s important.

On-page SEO (sometimes referred to as on-site SEO), is the process of optimizing

the structure and content of a webpage.

The ultimate goal of on-page SEO is to speak the ‘search engines’ language’
and help search engine crawlers understand the meaning and context of
your content.

Why is on-page SEO important?

On-page SEO is important because it provides search engines with a number of

signals to help them understand what your content is about.

During the indexing and ranking processes, search engines try to associate
webpages with keywords and search terms users type in the search box.

It’s through on-page SEO elements that you can guide them as to which keywords
you want your pages to rank.

In addition, it is called ‘on-page’ because any optimization changes made to a

webpage contribute to a better user experience.

On-Page SEO Techniques

On-Page SEO Techniques

Here is a summary of all on-page SEO techniques that will be covered in this
lesson:

Page Title Optimization

Meta Description Optimization

H1 Tag Optimization

Sitelinks

Content SEO

Internal Linking

Image SEO

Video SEO

Google Featured Snippets

 KEY LEARNINGS

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing each and every web page of your
site in order to rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). On-
Page SEO has to do with both the structure and the content of a page.

The more signals you can give to search engines, the greater are your
chances of achieving higher rankings.

Page Title Optimization

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your page titles.

Once you get started with on-page SEO, the first task in your list is title tag
optimization. Title tags are very important for SEO for two main reasons.

The title tag is shown in the search results so this is what users see even
before visiting your website and it gives a big hint to search engines on what
the page is all about.

This combination makes optimizing the title tags, a crucial step in the whole SEO
process.

What is the title tag?

Each page or post published on the Internet has an HTML title tag <title></title>
defined in the <head></head> of the page.

If you are using any modern CMS like WordPress, the title tag is created
automatically based on what is written in the title of a page or post.

So, in essence, the HTML title tag is the “official” title of a page.
This is what will be shown in the SERPs (search engine results pages) but it is not
necessary the same as what users will see when visiting your page (that’s the
heading of the page – we’ll cover this in the next topic).

The page title is shown in the Google Search Results.

The title tag is also used as the title of a page or post when shared in social
media.

For example, when you paste a link on Facebook, the snippet will show the title of
the page, among other things.

The page title is shown in Social Media Posts.

How to find out what is the title of a page?

Open a new browser window and navigate to the page URL. Right-click with your
mouse anywhere on the page and select VIEW SOURCE. Search for <title>.
Whatever is enclosed in <title></title> is the page title.

The page title is defined in the HTML header and is shown as the tab name in a browser.

Another way to view the page title is to move your mouse over the browser
tab window. Browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox will show you the
page title.

How to create Search Engine Friendly Title Tags?

Now that you know what is a title tag, let’s see how to craft page titles that are
SEO and user friendly.

Here is the checklist:

Each and every page of your website should have a unique title tag

A page title should accurately describe the page content

Titles should be brief and informative (typically less than 60 characters)

Titles should include your target keywords (but no keyword stuffing)

 Add keywords at the beginning of your page titles

Create titles for users and not search engines

Include numbers and power words

Use emotional words in your titles

Add brackets at the end of your titles

Add the domain name on the homepage title only

Optimize your URLs based on the title

Differentiate your titles from what is already on the first page of Google

Each and every page of your website should have a unique title tag

Each page (and that includes your homepage), should have a unique title. This
helps search engines understand how the particular page is distinct from other
pages on your website.

Remember that one of the most complicated tasks search engine crawlers have to
perform during the indexing process, is to understand the content and context of
a page, and the page title is a great way to help them in that manner.

A page title should accurately describe the page content

Think of the title as a very short summary of the page. A good title is highly
relevant to the page content. Don’t try to trick search engines by providing for a
title that is not supported by the content.

This is a bad SEO practice that can literally destroy your rankings because of
what is called pogo-sticking.

Pogo sticking is the term used to describe the process where a user is searching
something on Google, clicks on one of the top results, visits a page but doesn’t
find it interesting and goes back to the search results and clicks on the second
listing, etc.

Google can identify this user behavior and pattern and if a lot of users are doing
the same thing then it means that they are not satisfied with the Google search
results.
Google algorithms will then push the rankings of the particular pages down and
show other pages to users until pogo-sticking is reduced, which is an indication
that users are happy with the listed results.

Titles should be brief and informative (typically less than 60 characters)

The common guideline for the title length is between 50-60 characters. Most SEO
experts and tools use this guideline because this is on average the number of
characters that are shown in Google search results for the title of a snippet.

So, one of the reasons you should prefer short titles over longer ones is to ensure
that your title will be shown without breaks in the SERPS, providing a better user
experience and a higher CTR.

Titles should include your target keywords (but no keyword stuffing)

This is extremely important. A well-crafted title should include your target

keyword. This is not against any Google guidelines, on the contrary, this is a good
SEO practice.

A good title helps both search engines and users understand what the page is
about, and having your keywords in the title is a step towards that direction.

We will see below some examples of how to do this without exaggerations.

Keyword stuffing (i.e. repeating variations of the same keyword) in the title (and
your content in general), should be avoided.

Add keywords to the beginning of your page titles

When possible add your target keywords to the beginning of your page title. This
helps search engines understand right from the beginning what keywords the
page is targeting.

Create titles for users and not search engines

This is also very important. Your titles should be interesting enough to catch the
attention of the users.

Include numbers and power words

Having numbers in the title as well as power words like “Ultimate, actionable,
amazing, checklist, etc.”, make titles more interesting and this increases their
CTR (Click Through Rate).

Use emotional words in your titles

In a study by Co-schedule, they found out that posts with emotional headlines get
more shares.

This is strongly related to post titles since in the majority of cases people tend to
share a post because of the title only. The fact that they actually went on to share
it, it means that it caught their attention.

Here is a list of power words you can use in your titles.

List of Power Words to Use in Headlines

Add brackets to the end of your titles

This is another technique I’m using that is also backed by research.

Titles with brackets have a 33% higher CTR than post titles without brackets. The
study was performed by HubSpot and Outbrain after analyzing more than 3M
headlines.

Study showing the effect of brackets in title optimization

Should you add the domain to the title?

That’s another popular question. The answer is both yes and no.

Include your domain in the title:

For your homepage title

When you have a strong brand name, put your brand in the title first

If you don’t have a strong brand name you can add your domain at the end of the
title or omit it since Google will add it automatically at the end of your post title in
the search results.

In the example below my post title is “How to Successfully SEO Ecommerce

Product Pages” but in the Google search results, it appears with my domain name
appended at the end.

Domain Name in Page Title

Optimize your URLs based on the title

Although this is not directly related to title optimization, once you create the title
of a post, you can also optimize the URL.

An SEO friendly URL is short, descriptive and includes your target keyword.

For example, if your title is “10 Easy Steps to Setup a New WordPress Blog”, your
URL can be “/setup-wordpress-blog”.

Differentiate your titles from what is already on the first page of Google

Before writing your page title, it’s always a good practice to search Google for
your target keywords and analyze the top results.

If you use an exact copy of a page title that is already ranking in Google, then it
would be very difficult for you to rank in the top positions.

Google likes to present different titles in the first 10 positions so to increase your
chances of appearing in the top 10, you need to differentiate your titles.

Page Title Examples

Let’s review some examples of well-optimized title tags to understand how
keywords can blend into the title nicely creating good titles for both search
engines and users.

Example 1: Google Adsense

Example of SEO Optimized Title

Google Adsense is a known brand so they included their brand name first and
then the target keywords Make Money Online
Example 2: HubSpot

Example of SEO Optimized Title

This is a very nice example from HubSpot. Notice how keywords (VR Marketing
Examples) are used with power words (Steal)

Example 3: Reliablesoft

Example of SEO Optimized Title

This is an example from one of my posts. It includes power words (Ultimate),

keywords (DIY SEO Tutorial) and parenthesis in the title.

KEY LEARNINGS

Page titles are very important for SEO. It is perhaps one of the few SEO
elements that were crucial 20 years ago and still gaining importance.

Search engines are looking for the fastest way to understand what topics a
page is covering and the page title serves as a great hint.

On the other hand, users want to find what they want fast and having titles
that stand out will encourage them to click your snippet from the SERPS.

Spend some time thinking about your titles and don’t do them in a hurry.

What I do when writing a new blog post is to come up with an initial title,
and then once the post content is finished, I revise the title.
Meta Description Optimization

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your meta descriptions.

What is the meta description tag?

A page’s description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary
of what the page is about. A page’s title maybe a few words or a phrase, whereas
a page’s description meta tag might be a sentence or two or even a short
paragraph. Like the <title> tag, the description meta tag is placed within the
<head> element of your HTML document.

The meta description tag is hidden on the page so normal users cannot see it
while browsing a webpage but search engine crawlers can read the value and
might use it for creating the search snippets.

Here is an example of a meta description in Google search results:

Meta Description Example

Here is how it looks if you view the HTML of the page:

<meta name="description" content="The difference between SEO

and SEM is simply that Search Engine Optimization is a subset
of Search engine marketing or Search marketing as it is widely
known."/>
Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets
for your pages. Note that I say “might” because Google may choose to use a
relevant section of your page’s visible text if it does a good job of matching up
with a user’s query.

Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in
case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet.

It’s your opportunity to advertise your page and convince users to click your
link and visit your website rather than selecting one of the other links.

How can I change the meta description?

This depends on the platform you are using. If you are on WordPress, you can
install Yoast SEO and make the changes in the meta description settings.
Yoast SEO Meta Description Settings

If you are not on WordPress then look for a meta description box available in
the post or page settings.

Meta Descriptions and SEO

Meta descriptions don’t have a direct impact on rankings

The first thing that needs to be clear is that the meta descriptions don’t have a
direct impact on rankings.

What you write in the meta description is not used during the ranking process by
the algorithms. What is more important for rankings is page title optimization.

Meta descriptions have an indirect impact on SEO and rankings (so they
still matter)

Meta descriptions are still important because this is what users see in the search
results and this is related to SEO in two ways.

First, a good meta description will encourage users to click and visit your website
and this means more traffic.

Second, Google is using CTR (click-through rate) as a way to find out what users
are looking for a particular search query.

If users prefer to click on your entry in the SERPS (regardless of your ranking
position), then this is an indication to Google that your page can satisfy the user
intent better than the rest, and this will eventually lead to higher rankings.

To take advantage of this for SEO purposes, you need to make sure that the
content of your page is highly relevant to the meta description otherwise users
will go back to the search results after visiting your page and this is not good.
This is known in the SEO industry as pogo-sticking.
How to SEO optimize your meta descriptions?
Here are the most important guidelines for writing optimized meta descriptions.

Each page should have a unique meta description

Meta description length – Keep it below 220 characters

A good description accurately summarizes the page content

Avoid auto-generated descriptions

Include keywords in your descriptions

Avoid generic descriptions

Make it actionable but don’t overdo it

Add the last updated date (if applicable)

Give users reasons to visit your website (add product features and
benefits)

Each page should have a unique meta description

Each and every page or post of your website, including the homepage and
category pages, should have a unique meta description.

Meta description length – Keep it below 220 characters

Although Google officially states that “There’s no limit on how long a meta
description can be, but the search result snippets are truncated as needed,
typically to fit the device width”, try to stay within this range and avoid making
your meta descriptions too short or too long.

A good description accurately summarizes the page content

Meta descriptions should be informative and interesting. Include all relevant

information in your meta description to help users understand if the particular
page is useful and relevant to what they are looking for.

Don’t write descriptions that have no relation to the content on the page.

Avoid auto-generated descriptions

Some CMSs automatically generate the description of a page based on what is
written in the first 160 characters of the content. This is a bad practice because
you may end up with meta descriptions that look like this, which are not search
engine or user friendly.

Automated Meta Descriptions Example

Include keywords in your descriptions

I mentioned above that the descriptions don’t have a direct impact on rankings
but that does not mean that you should not use keywords in your description. On
the contrary, keywords are highlighted by search engines and make your snippet
more relevant to the search queries.

Avoid generic descriptions

Approach the description of each page in a unique way and avoid writing generic
descriptions that don’t accurately describe the page content.

Make it actionable but don’t overdo it

Your descriptions should invite users to click and visit your website but don’t
overdo it. It’s always a good practice to make a few searches and see what your
competitors have in their meta description before writing your own.

You want your descriptions to stand out and not be the same as your competitors.

Add the last updated date (if applicable)

Users are always looking for up-to-date information so where applicable add when
your page was last updated. This will make your snippet more relevant and
interesting to click.

Give users reasons to visit your website (add product features and
benefits)

If you are selling products, then besides the product features, you can also
include benefits of why users should buy from your store like free shipping,
returns, money-back guarantee, lifetime guarantee, etc.

Meta description examples

Based on the above guidelines, let’s review some Good and Bad examples of meta
descriptions:

Example 1: Dynamic Meta description with last updated date

Dynamic Meta Descriptions with Dates

Notice how the meta description gives a direct answer to the search query and
also how the last updated date is shown in the snippet.

The above is a dynamic description generated by the Google algorithms and it’s
not the same as the custom description provided on the meta description tag.

Example 2: Keywords highlighted in the description

Optimized Meta Description Example

Notice how the focus keyword (off-page SEO), is highlighted multiple times in the
description.

Example 3: Actionable descriptions

Example of a Good Meta Description

Notice how the benefits (free shipping and free returns) and embedded in the
description.

Example 4: Short meta descriptions

Short VS Long Meta Descriptions in Search Results

Compare the two results above. Which one is more interesting and useful for the
user? Which one would you click?

The first result is just a single line of text while the second one occupies more
spaces and gives you more reasons why you should click and visit their shop.

Example 5: Inaccurate/missing information

Non-Optimized Meta Description

Notice that the above description does not give any benefits or reasons why to
visit their shop.

Example 6: No custom description or useful content

Automated Meta Description

The above description is a very good example of a bad description! It doesn’t offer
any useful information to users.

Meta descriptions and social Sharing

When writing your meta descriptions, you should have in mind that they might be
used as part of your snippet when your page or post is shared in social media
networks.

By default, and unless configured otherwise, most social media plugins will use
the meta description content to create your snippet.

KEY LEARNINGS

With the rise of voice searches and the introduction of rich cards to Google
search results, it is vital that you do some work and optimize all your
descriptions.

When writing your descriptions, always think of the user and how you can
‘convince’ them to click on your snippet. This will not only increase your
organic traffic but it can positively affect your SEO.

Have in mind that Google is continuously testing new changes and the meta
description length is one of them so keep an eye for changes.

Finally, don’t forget to test how your meta descriptions look on all devices,
 including mobile and tablets, since there are some differences in how Google
renders the search result snippets on those.

H1 Tag Optimization

In this topic, you’ll learn, how to optimize your page headings (H1 tag).

What is an H1 tag?

The <H1> HTML tag is the first header tag visible on a page. It is used for
the title of a page or post. When viewed in HTML code, the H1 value is
enclosed in <h1></h1> tags.

To make the text stand out, the H1 tag is usually formatted differently than the
rest of the page tags.

Look at the example below.

The H1 tag has the value of “On-Page SEO” and when viewed in HTML is looks
like this:

<h1>On-Page SEO</h1>
H1 tag

The easier way to understand the use of the H1 tag is to imagine that you are
writing an outline of a large document.

The main title of your document will be your <H1>, your main points the <H2>
and sub-points the <H3>.

H1 Tag Vs Page Title

The title tag (<title></title>) and should not be confused with the H1 tag.

Let’s see below how these two differ and why you should care.
Page Title VS H1 tag

The main differences between the two are:

The title tag is shown in the SERPS (search engine result pages). It is used
as the main heading of the snippet in the search results.

The title tag is not shown visually on a page but it is part of the page
header <header></header> and it is also shown in the browser title.

The <H1> tag is shown to users while browsing a page.

The title tag is a strong signal to search engine crawlers on what the page
content is all about.

Why is the H1 tag important for SEO?

One of the most complicated tasks of search engines is to understand the
meaning (context) of a page.

To be able to do that in the most efficient and fastest way, they use data from
different signals.

One of those signals is the page title and another one is the H1 Tag.

When crawling the content of a page, search engine spiders read the HTML code
and they try to identify which sentences are enclosed in heading tags (h1, h2,
etc.).

They consider these as indicative of the page content.

So, by using keywords in your H1 tag, you help search engines understand what
your page is all about.

Another reason why headings are important for SEO is that they make it easier
for users to navigate through the page.

The user can see at a glance what the page is all about by looking at the H1 tag.
The rest of the headings provide a big hint to users as to what to expect in each
section.

H1 Tag SEO Best Practices

Now that the theory of h1 tags is behind us, let’s see how to write good headings
for your articles or page content in general.

The H1 tag should be the same or slightly different than the page title

Use keywords in your headings

Avoid very long headings

Make sure that your H1 tag is visible and not hidden to users

Style your H1 tag differently than the rest of the headings

Use headings in a hierarchical manner

Use only one h1 tag per page

H1 tags should match the user intent

The H1 tag should be the same or slightly different than the page
title
In the majority of cases, the page title and h1 tag are the same. This is because
CMS (like WordPress), are configured this way.

This is perfectly fine. It’s not an SEO mistake, to have the same text for the page
title and h1 heading, on the contrary, it is recommended.
As a general guideline, keep the page title and H1 tag the same or closely related.

Google recommends the following:

Page and H1 Best SEO Practices.

How to provide for a different h1 and page title?

I mentioned above that most themes and web development platforms are
configured to use the same value for the page title and h1 tag and this is usually
what you specify as the title of a page or post.

If you want to change it and have different values then you can either edit your
HTML code or if you are on WordPress to use a plugin such as Yoast SEO.

As you can see in the screenshot below, when you install Yoast SEO, there is an
extra area below each page/post where you can set the page title.
Yoast SEO Title Settings

Use keywords in your headings

It is highly recommended to use keywords in your headings. As explained before,
keywords should be included in the page title, meta description, and headings.

If you choose to have a different title and a different heading then you can use
your main keyword in the title and a related keyword in the H1.

Avoid very long headings

Don’t make your headings too long. Use short but descriptive headings. Use the
same length guidelines as the page title i.e. less than 65 characters.

If you need to provide for a longer description then you can use a short heading
and then bold text to give more information as shown in the example below from
Google AdSense.
Heading 1 with Description

Make sure that your H1 tag is visible and not hidden to users
Many WordPress themes have the h1 tag in the HTML of the page but they hide it
(using CSS) for users. This is not a good SEO practice.

Check that your theme outputs the H1 tag correctly and that is visible on the
page.

The easiest way to do this is to view the source of a page (right-click and select
VIEW SOURCE) and search for H1.

What you see enclosed in <h1></h1> should also be visible on the page.

Style your H1 differently than the rest of the headings

Make your h1 stand out. Make the letters bigger than the rest of the text and
headings.
Styling H1 Tag

Use headings in a hierarchical manner

I mentioned above that you should approach headings the same way as writing an
outline for a book or long-form document.

What is important for SEO is to have your tags in a hierarchical manner otherwise
you can confuse both search engines and users.

In other words, your <h1> should be on top of the HTML Code and the rest (h2,
h3, etc) to follow in that order.
Headings Hierarchy

Notice in the example above how the font size changes as you move down the
hierarchy.

Use only one H1 tag per page

Best SEO practices indicate that there should be only ONE h1 tag per page. This
is because it makes more sense and this is what you should aim for.

In cases though that you end up having multiple h1 tags on a page, this is not the
end of the world. If you can correct the situation then do it, otherwise, leave it as
it is.

Here is a video from Google about the use of multiple h1 tags per page.

Video: Google’s advice on the use of H1 tag

H1 tags should match the user intent

Don’t forget about the user intent when writing your h1. If this does not match
with the user expectations then they may leave your website without even reading
the content.

If this happens you are not only losing customers or potential readers, it’s also
bad for your SEO. Make sure that your h1 gives users what they expect to see on
the page.

Examples of H1 tags
Let’s review some nice examples from websites that are having optimized H1
tags, to help you understand how the above principles can be applied to practice.

Example 1

The heading h1 tag is optimized for users, while the page title is shorter and SEO
friendly.

H1 tag is different than Page title.

Example 2
For known brands, the heading 1 (for the home page) can match the brand name
while the page title can include keywords.

SEO Optimized Homepage H1 Tag Example

What about h2, h3, and h4 tags?

To avoid any confusion, let me clear something out. All the principles explained
above are applicable for all header tags and not just the H1.

In addition, please note the following:

Don’t use heading tags when other tags such as bold or italic are more
appropriate.

Don’t overdo it with the use of headings. Use headings when it matters for
structure, navigation purposes and to make the page content easier to
read.

You don’t have to use all heading types on a page. You can have the h1 and
only h2s, depending on the length and type of your content.

Having a balance between the use of headings and other formatting

elements is always the best approach.

KEY LEARNINGS

Your SEO efforts don’t start and end with H1 tag optimization. Optimizing
 the headings, it’s one of the things you need to do but certainly, it’s not the
end of it.

It’s not the end of the world if you have multiple H1 tags on a page but for
maximum SEO optimization, it’s better to have only one.

Spend some time and perform an H1 audit of your website and identify the
H1s that need to be optimized.

Tools like SEMRUSH can make your job much easier since they can pinpoint
which pages have no h1 tags defined, which pages have duplicate h1 tags
and also give you recommendations on how to optimize them.

Content SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your content for search engines and
users using best practices.

One important element of on-page SEO is content SEO.

Content SEO is about creating and optimizing your content so that can it
potentially rank high in search engines and attract more traffic.

What types of content are there?

Before we get into the details on how to optimize your content, let’s see what we
mean by content.

Content can have different forms. It can be text, images, videos, audio,
infographics or a combination of these.

In general, the different types of content are:

 Blog Posts: The most widely used format. It can be in the form of articles,
lists, how-to guides, press releases or general information.

Static Pages: Content found on static pages of your website like the ‘About
us’ page.

Product pages: Pages promoting specific products or services.

Landing pages: Pages designed specifically to be used in PPC campaigns

or as the first page users see when they visit your website.

How to optimize your content for SEO

Regardless of the content format, follow these guidelines every time you publish
content on your website.

Content optimization starts with keyword research

Use your main keyword above the fold

Use long tail related keywords for subheadings

Use LSI keywords in your content

Always use text to accompany your non-text content

Satisfy the user intent and make it clear from the beginning

Write long-form content

Use a table of contents

Add internal links to other related content on your website

Add external links to other high-quality websites

Make it easy to read

Optimize non-text elements

Always provide users with a CTA or exit point

Content optimization starts with keyword research

Before you get your hands dirty and start thinking about your introduction, you
need to do your homework first and in this context, we mean to perform keyword
research.
 Important: The Keyword Research Course explains how to do keyword
research and create a list of keywords to use for content optimization. If you
haven’t done this already, it’s better to go through the keyword research
lessons and re-visit this topic.

Knowing what keywords are typed by users in the search box can serve two main
purposes:

You will know what type of content to create to make users happy

You will know how to optimize your content and increase your chances of
getting noticed by search engines. In the long run, this means higher
rankings and traffic.

The outcome of your keyword research should be three things:

A decision of what is the main keyword you are targeting

A set of long-tail keywords related to your main keyword

A set of LSI related keywords related to your main keyword (more on this
below)

You will use these as part of the content SEO process. To be more specific:

Your target keyword should be included in your URL, page title and h1
heading.

Long-tail keywords can be included in your subheadings

Other related keywords (LSI) can be included in your subheadings and

body of the content.

Use your main keyword above the fold

You should know by now that your main keyword should appear in your title and
h1 heading but what is equally important is to mention your keyword once or
twice in the first couple of paragraphs.
There is a rule of thumb stating that the important content of a page is the one
found on the top part of the page (above the fold), so make sure that within that
content you give search engine spiders more clues on what the rest of your
content is all about.

Add keywords high in your opening paragraph.

Use long tail related keywords for subheadings

When you are targeting a specific keyword, you don’t just repeat that over and
over again but you use variations of that keyword in your content.

A great way to do this is to find out long-tail keywords that are related to your
main keyword and use those in your sub-headings (H2, H3).

Use LSI keywords in your content

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Index and in simple terms, these are word phrases
that have the same meaning as your main keyword.

Why are LSI keywords important? With the introduction of Rank Brain
(Google’s machine learning technology used as part of the ranking
algorithm), Google is trying to understand the broader meaning of keywords
and this is taken into account in rankings.
Always use text to accompany your non-text content
Search engines can understand text content more than any other type of content
so make their life easier by having text content on your page, even if you are
promoting other types of content.

For example, let’s say you created a nice infographic about a topic and you want
to publish it on your blog. Don’t just add the infographic and hit publish but try to
have text content on the page explaining what the infographic is all about.

You can follow the same concept when publishing images, videos or audio.

For example, if you are running a podcast you can have the description of the
podcast and even a text transcript so that both users and search engines can get a
better understanding of what the audio is all about.

Satisfy the user intent and make it clear from the beginning
Before publishing any type of content on your website you need to understand the
user intent. In other words, what type of content users want to see for a given
search query.

The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of Google because they (Google)
have already done a great job in understanding what users like for different
searches.

Here are the steps to follow:

Let’s say that you are writing an article about ‘what is off-page SEO’. The first
step is to search google for this term and look for the featured snippet and the
meta descriptions of the first 10 results.
Google Featured Snippet

If you take a closer look at the above screenshot, you will notice that Google is
trying to give a direct answer to the question “What is off-page SEO” in both the
featured snippet and in the description of each snippet.

This pattern tells us that if you want to rank high for this term, you need to give a
direct answer to that question.

In other words, the intent of the user for the particular query is to read a
definition of what we mean by ‘off-page SEO’.

What can we learn from this?

For search queries that are related to questions, how-tos or lists, try to give the
answer on the top part of your page and then you can give more details within the
post and not the other way around.

In the past, we used to write long introductions and layout a lot of content so that
readers can spend more time reading it before getting to an answer but this is no
longer the case.

Give the answer first, satisfy the initial user intent and then expand your article to
give more information.

Write long-form content

There are a number of studies showing that long-form content performs better in
search and social media networks.

Study: Content-Length and Rankings

While this is true, it does not mean that you should write thousands of words for
the sake of getting to a word limit.

The quality of the content is always more important than quantity. If what you
write is good and attracts shares and links, it can rank high in Google even if
there are other posts that are longer in length.

Use a table of contents

A nice tip for optimizing long-form articles is to use a table of contents at the top
of the post to help users navigate through the content.

Besides making navigation easier you also increase your chances of getting
sitelinks to appear with your snippet in the Google search results.
Add internal links to other related content on your website
Another element of content SEO is internal linking. Within your content, link to
other pages of your website to help users find out more about a certain topic and
search crawlers one more reason to index more pages from your website.

Internal links create what is called ‘content relevancy’ something that helps
Google understand the meaning of the content better.

When adding internal links use meaningful anchor text so that crawlers can get a
good idea on what the linked page is all about.

Add external links to other high-quality websites

Besides linking to your own articles, it’s a good practice to link out to other high-
quality websites or sources provided that:

They will help users read more about a topic

You trust the website you will link to

You do it with getting a compensation (that’s selling links and it’s not
allowed)

Don’t overdo it with external links but don’t be afraid to link out when it makes
sense.

Make it easy to read

Make your content easy to read. Don’t just throw text on a page but apply
formatting styles to make reading easier, especially for users who like to skim-
read.

Use short paragraphs

Use bold and italics to highlight parts of the content that matter

Use lists to outline steps

Use short sentences

Use a font that is easy to read (and large enough) on all devices

Add enough white spacing between your paragraphs

Optimize non-text elements
As I have mentioned above, content can have many forms and is not necessarily
text. When adding other non-text elements in your content, make sure that it is
optimized.

Read the topics on Image and Video SEO to learn how to optimize your non-
text elements.

Always provide users with a CTA or exit point

I have mentioned above that the main goal with content SEO is to satisfy the user
intent but equally important is to satisfy your goals as a publisher.

Every piece of content published on your website should have a purpose. By

purpose, we mean “what do you want users to do once they read your content?”

Do you want to get more email subscribers? Then make sure that below
your posts you have a sign-up box.

Do you want people to buy your products and services? Then make sure
that within your content you add CTA (call to action) to direct traffic to
your sales pages.

Do you want to get clicks on your ads? Then make sure that ads are visible
while users are reading the content.

Do you want users to engage and stay on your website for longer? Add a
related articles section below the post.

Whatever your purpose, it should be clear to users what’s the next step in
continuing their journey.

KEY LEARNINGS

Content SEO is a very important component of the on-page SEO process.

Your overall goal is to give both users and search engines the content they
are looking for. As stated by Google, know what your readers want and give
 it to them.

The process starts by finding out what users are looking for and creating
content that satisfies their intent.

Before hitting the publish button, you should make sure that your main
keywords are included in the top part of the page and related keywords
(including LSI) in your subheadings and body.

Beautify your content, make it easy to read and navigate and then promote it
to get in front of the eyes of as many people as possible.

Internal Linking

In this topic, you’ll learn what is internal linking and the best practices to follow.

Internal linking is very important not only for SEO but for enhanced user
experience.

Best practices for internal linking dictate that any links pointing to pages
within the website should provide value to users and also assist search
engines to discover more pages from that website.

What is internal linking?

A webpage can have 2 types of links.

The first type is what we call external links and these are links pointing to pages
outside the boundaries of the web site.

The second type is internal links that come into 2 variations:

Links pointing within the same page.

 Links pointing to other web pages but in the same domain.

The formal definition of internal links is the following: Internal links are links
that point to pages on the same domain.

Here is an example of how an internal link looks in HTML code:

<a title="This is an internal link"

href="http://mydomain.com/somepage.html">Internal Link</a>

Internal links can be used to:

Make website navigation easier

Associate pages of the same site together

Distribute the page rank (link juice) of a page around the website

Help search engines discover the important pages of a website

Here is an example of good and poor internal linking practices.

Good and Bad Internal linking Practices

Why does internal linking matter?

As you can see in the diagram above (Good Internal Linking), the homepage links
to the most important pages of the website and then each page links to other
pages creating a small web.

The way search engines work is that during the crawling and indexing process
they start crawling a website from the homepage and then follow any links to
discover and index more pages from the same website.
Internal links help them a lot during this process by pin-pointing to crawlers
which pages are important for the site.

If you look at the poor internal linking part of the diagram (on the right), once
search engines reach the homepage, they will access Page A, and then leave.

Your job as an SEO is to create a friendly site structure and use internal
links to guide both search engines and users to the most valuable pages of
your website.

Internal linking distributes link juice to internal pages

Another reason why internal linking is important is the distribution of page rank
and link juice from one page to another.

As you can see in the diagram below, link juice is distributed from the homepage
to the internal pages of the site.

This improves the page rank of the internal pages and makes them more
discoverable to search engines.
Internal Link Juice Distribution

Internal links and SEO

It is important to understand four key concepts that are related to internal linking
and SEO.

First, is that not all internal links are equal. In order for an internal link to have
real value, it should be in the body of the page or post.

Internal links in the sidebar, footer or outside the body of the page do not provide
much value.

Yes, you can still use them to aid user navigation but in terms of link
juice distribution, they are not very important.

Second, it is common practice to link from new pages to old pages but for best
results, you should also do the opposite.

In other words, from time to time you should review your internal linking and add
links from old pages to point to newer published pages.

Third, use internal links to pass page rank from your strong pages to other pages
on your website.

For example, if a page on your website has a lot of backlinks, then edit that page
and add internal links to other pages on your website.

Of course, links have to point to related pages and inserted naturally in the
content.

Don’t add the links for the sake of adding the links, add them only if it makes
sense to both users and search engines.

Fourth, you can safely use keywords in the anchor text for internal links. As we
will see below, this is a common practice and it’s not against any guidelines.
Google Recommendations on Internal Links
Let’s see what are the Google guidelines for internal linking.

Matt Cutts (former head of the Google Quality team) in a video confirmed that
internal links are treated differently from external links and provided that you are
not doing any exaggerations (for example having more than 100 links per page),
you don’t have to worry that you are violating Google webmaster guidelines.

Video: Google Guidelines on Internal Linking

Wikipedia

The perfect example of internal link usage is Wikipedia. If you view any page on
Wikipedia you will immediately notice that they are using tens of internal links
(with keywords as the anchor text).

Internal linking practices by Wikipedia

Internal Linking Best Practices (Checklist)

Here is your internal linking best practices checklist:

Add internal links when it is useful for the user experience

You can add keywords in the anchor text without any problems but it is
always best practice to avoid exaggerations. In other words, although it is
not forbidden, that does not mean that you should not use non-keyword
 anchor text for internal links as well. Variation in both internal and
external links is always recommended.

Try not to use more than 15-20 internal links per page (within the body
text). This is not a rule or a guideline but it’s just my own
recommendation.

Make sure that you don’t have any broken internal links as this is bad for
SEO.

Link related pages together, not pages that have no related content for the
sake of internal linking

As a general SEO guideline, make sure that the pages you want to rank
higher in search engines have a greater number of internal links.

You can use the ‘Internal links’ report under the section ‘LINKS’ in Google
search console tools to find out the status of your internal link building
(which pages have the most links, anchor text used and many more info).

Use text content for your internal links. Adding internal links to images is
not useful for search engines or users.

Make sure that the total number of links per page (internal and external)
is no more than a 100

KEY LEARNINGS

Internal linking is important for SEO but still, this is one area that many
webmasters get wrong. They either don’t use any internal links or they treat
them the same way as external links which is a wrong approach.

If you follow the best practices outlined above, internal links can only benefit
a website and make the user experience better and more enjoyable.

Happy users will stay on the page for longer (and thus reducing bounce rate)
and they will also visit more pages within the same site before they leave.

Consider internal links as a way to build your own web and don’t forget that
you can always go back and update an existing page of your site to add a
couple of internal links if this will help the users find more related content
 from your website.

SEO for Images: A Complete Guide (With

Checklist)

Images are important for SEO. A recent study that analyzed in detail 1 million
Google search results concluded that web pages with at least one image had
better rankings than content with no images.

In this Image SEO Guide, you will learn how to SEO your images for greater
visibility in Search Engines.

Besides their SEO value, images and other media elements (videos, audio) are
vital to your content’s success for a number of other reasons.

SEO Benefits from using images in your content

They make your content more interesting and this means visitors are
more likely to actually read your article. It is not a surprise that content
with relevant images gets 94% more views than content with out.

Your readers are more likely to share a page with image(s) in social media
and the shared post has more changes of getting more social media
attention than plain text posts. According to a recent study by Buffer,
posts with images get 150% more retweets.

They make it easier for you (the writer), to explain a concept or make a
point stronger.

It’s another easy way to enforce your SEO by giving search engines the
right signals on what your content is about through images.

Your images can rank higher in Google Image Search and get more traffic
to your website.
How to Optimize Your Images for Search Engines
There are several elements to SEO optimize when using images in your content.
Let’s see below how to best optimize your images.

1. Optimize the Image Filename

The name of the image is the first thing to check, before even uploading to your
website.

Image Filenames should be informative and accurately describe the image.

When you purchase an image, or take a photo using your phone, they usually have
names like DC0001IMG.jpg (or similar) that do not make any sense.

Instead, you should rename your image to a more meaningful name i.e. “nexus-6p-
rear-view.jpg” or “link-building-guidelines.png”.

In other words, the filename should describe the image in the least number of
words possible.

2. Optimize the Image file size

As a general rule of thumb the smaller the image size is (in bytes) the better.

Large images take longer to load and this can negatively impact the user
experience especially for mobile users.

A good practice is to use image optimization tools that can reduce the file size of
an image without losing quality.

For all the images I use in my posts, I first open them in Pixelmator (similar to
Photoshop), resize them and then export them in png or jpg.

Before uploading to my website, I optimize their file size with imageoptim. This
reduces the file size without affecting the quality.

Besides imageoptim another great tool to use is image compressor (available

online).
3. Use Responsive images
Since version 4.4, there is native support for responsive images in WordPress.

This means that when you upload an image to your pages or posts, WordPress will
create a number of smaller images in different sizes and will automatically fetch
those to users depending on the device they are using.

If you are not on WordPress, you can implement responsive images using CSS.
This guide can help you get started.

Here is an example of how responsive images work:

You upload a big image (1000×600) to your post. The file size of the image is
100KB. When users on mobile view your page, they won’t have to download this
image and waste their bandwidth but WordPress will automatically show users an
image that is 320×200 in size and only 15KB.

The result is less bandwidth and faster loading speeds.

4. Optimize the Image Alt Text

Alt text is the most important element for image SEO.

Search engine crawlers are not so good in understanding what an image is about
and although they are getting better year by year on image recognition, they still
need the help of the ALT Text.

Why is ALT Text important?

Alt text is used to describe the contents of an image to bots and also as a guide
for people that are visually impaired and cannot actually see the image.

When writing ALT text of your images have the following in mind:

Don’t use dashes in your alt text. Write normally and try to describe in a
few words what the image is about.

Use keywords that are relevant to the content of the page but don’t overdo
it.

Keep your alt text short and to the point

 Some people (including me) tend to use the post title as the alt text of the
featured image and although this is not the most efficient way, it is
acceptable and a common practice.

See below what Google an example given by Google about the use of ALT
TEXT.

Image SEO Alt Text Example

5. Optimize the Image Caption and Title

Besides the ALT text, search engines can use the image title and caption to better
understand the subject matter of your image, so it is necessary to provide them
with these values.

6. Optimize Image Placement

You can position your images anywhere you want in the page but if you want a
particular image to be taken into account by search engines as an important
image of your content (may it’s a custom image you did that is unique, original
and useful), then you need to add it closer to the top with the relevant alt text,
image title and caption.

7. Don’t add Important Text Inside an Image

Avoid having text in an image that is important for users to read. Embed text is
hard to read by both search engines and users. To describe an image to users use
the caption and to search engines use the ALT Text.

8. Add Structured Data (Image Schema)

Schemas help search engines understand the content of a page better. In case of
images, you can implement the image schema by adding the relevant structured
data markup on your pages.

Google can then display your images as rich results and drive more traffic to your
website.

Further Reading: What is Schema Markup in SEO

9. Add Open graph meta tags

Open graph is a protocol introduced by Facebook. The concept is similar to
schema markup where you use tags to help crawlers identify the important parts
of your content and their meaning.

Open graph tags allow you to specify which image Facebook (and other social
networks) will use when users click the SHARE or LIKE buttons from your
website.

When you have a page with more than one images, you can use the og:image tags
to tell FB which image to use.

The best way to add open graph protocol support to your WordPress website is to
install the Yoast SEO Plugin.

10. Use an Image Sitemap

I have explained the importance of having an optimized XML sitemap in a
previous post, for Image SEO purposes you can further enrich your sitemap to
provide information about your images or use a dedicated image sitemap.

If you choose to include images in your existing sitemap, you can use the example
below as guide:
Image Sitemap Example

If you use Yoast SEO to generate the XML sitemap, images are already included
so you don’t need a separate sitemap for images.

11. Avoid having images and no text

Don’t forget that search engines cannot read the text if it is embedded in an
image so for maximum SEO avoid having pages full of images and no text.

Image SEO Checklist

Here is your image SEO checklist:

Optimize the image Filename

Optimize the image file size

Use responsive images

Optimize the image alt text

Optimize the image caption and title

Optimize Image Placement

Don’t add important text inside an image

Add structured data (Image Schema)

 Add Open graph meta tags

Use an image sitemap

Avoid having images and no text

Conclusion
Images are important from an SEO perceptive and are also vital for making your
content more interesting and readable.

From my experience, many people don’t do any SEO optimization when using
images in their content and this an SEO mistake that has to be avoided..

Image SEO Best Practices

As you have read above, image SEO is a straightforward task. You reduce the file
size as much as possible, give it a meaningful file name, provide for an ALT text,
write a title and caption and add it to your sitemap.

It’s not a time consuming task and the benefits are much more than the extra
time it takes to do it.

Video SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your videos for SEO.

People like to watch videos instead of reading text and it’s no wonder that
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the World.

Similar to images, Videos have their own schema markup and sitemap format.

Both are essential in helping Google understand what your video is about so
that it is indexed properly and a candidate for higher rankings.

Video Schema Markup

Video schema markup is not visible to users but it is used by search engines when
indexing your videos.

The example below shows how schema for videos looks like.

Example of Video Schema

Video Sitemaps
A dedicated Video sitemap looks like the example below:

Example of a Video Sitemap

How to add video schema on your website

There are 2 ways to add video schemas and create the video sitemap to your
website.

The first way is to hire a developer to make the necessary configurations to your
template and provide you with shortcodes you can use to wrap your videos with
structured data.

The second way is to use a plugin (if you’re using WordPress).

The most reliable plugin for creating the schema and also the video sitemap is the
Video SEO plugin by Yoast. It’s not a free plugin but it’s one of the best plugins
that can do both tasks efficiently and easily.
Since both these tasks (adding schema data and creating a video sitemap) require
programming knowledge, I suggest that you make use of the suggested plugins,
this will save you a lot of time in trying to make these changes in your code.

Video SEO Best Practices

You use meaningful titles and descriptions in the video related tags. Don’t
forget that these are the tags that search engines will use to understand
what your video is about. Titles and descriptions have to be unique for
each and every video you add on your website.

Specify a location for the video thumbnail, making sure that the size is at
least 160×90. The thumbnail may be used in the search results together
with the other information about your video.

Create a dedicated page for each of your videos. The page should have the
proper schema markup.

Check your robots.txt and make sure that Google can access the videos.

Check the video expiry date and make sure that this is not in the past.

Once you submit your video sitemap, login to your Google Search Console
and check if there are any problems with the indexing of videos.

KEY LEARNINGS

Video SEO is a complicated task. As a first step, you need to make sure that
any videos you embed in your content are added using the relevant schema.

Next, create a video sitemap and submit to Google (in addition to your XML
sitemap).

For more in-depth information, you can read this guide from Google.
Homepage SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn how to SEO your homepage.

The homepage is one of the most important pages of your website. You need to
SEO your homepage even if it is not one of the pages you expect to get high
rankings.

Why you should SEO optimize your homepage?

There are many reasons why you should pay attention to your website’s home
page.

In many cases, it is the first page users see (especially for corporate
websites) and it is one of the pages’ users will visit, even if they land on
any other pages of your website. They will visit your homepage to find out
more about your blog or business.

SEO wise it is very important since it is a perfect opportunity to give

Google a big hint (through your title, description, and content), on what
the website is all about.

Google will use homepage information to create your website’s entry in

the SERPs when people search for your domain name.

In some cases, the homepage is also a candidate to rank in the top positions for
highly competitive keywords because it ‘absorbs’ all the power and page rank
from the rest of the pages.

Consider the following examples:

Contentmarketinginstitute.com – their homepage ranks for ‘content

marketing’ because the website has a plethora of articles related to
content marketing.

socialmediatoday.com – their homepage ranks for ‘social media’ since it

has a lot of content related to social media marketing.
How to properly SEO your homepage

The process of optimizing your homepage combines a number of techniques

we’ve learned so far in the technical SEO and On-Page SEO lessons.

Here is a summary:

Optimize the homepage title

Optimize the homepage meta description

Optimize the H1 tag

Homepage image SEO

Optimize your logo

Add relevant structured data markup

Optimize the homepage loading speed

Check mobile-friendliness

Add an SSL

Optimize your homepage for site links

Add a clear call to action (CTA)

Establish user trust

Optimize the homepage title

Don’t just use your business or website name as the homepage title but try to be
more creative by giving users and search engines more information about your
website’s main focus.

Utilize all 60 characters you have at your disposal to blend keywords and business
information in one sentence.

Let’s look at a couple of SEO optimized homepage title examples:

The first one is coming directly from Google and in particular the Google Ads
homepage.

Notice how they use their target keywords PPC Online Advertising in the page
title.

Example of Optimized Homepage Title

Here is another example from MOZ.

One of their main keywords, SEO Software is placed right after their business
name.

Example of Optimized Homepage Title

Homepage title SEO rules:

Keep the title up to 60 characters.

Don’t just use your brand name but include keywords that represent your
business or website.

Don’t confuse Google by adding too many keywords in the title. Add the
keywords that you want to be known for.

Add your domain or business name as part of the title.

Optimize the homepage meta description

The homepage description is also very important.
As noted before, the description is what users will see in the SERPS, so you may
want to give it a bit of thought.

Look at the example below from Google AdSense to get some nice ideas.

Example of Optimized Homepage Meta Description

Have in mind that Google may choose not to show your description but use its
own. This may happen if your description is too short (i.e. less than 130
characters) or too long i.e. (more than 154 characters), or if it includes a lot of
keywords.

Optimize the H1 tag

The next element to optimize is the H1 tag.

Example of Optimized Homepage H1 Tag

Your homepage needs to have one (and only one) H1 tag.

The H1 tag is normally at the top of the page and most themes are configured to
display the page title enclosed in h1 tags.

If you have a choice for setting the H1 tag for the homepage make sure that you
also include some related keywords.
Homepage image SEO
A good homepage needs to have images. They make a page less boring and the
message that you want to pass to your readers more obvious.

When using images for your homepage make sure that:

You set an ALT text that describes the image

Include in your ALT text keywords in a natural way

When an image includes text, try to separate the image part from the text.
Search engines cannot read text that is embedded in a jpg or png.

For maximum SEO, keep the image without the text and add the text using
CSS and HTML.

Optimize your logo

Every website needs to have a unique logo. What you can do to optimize your logo
is 2 easy things:

Make sure that the image filename has the name of your website. For
example, my logo has this filename: ‘reliablesoftnet-logo.png’.

The ALT text also includes your website name i.e. ‘Reliablesoft.Net Logo’.

Bonus Tip: If you are trying to optimize your homepage for local SEO, you can
also include your location (City) in the logo filename and ALT text.

Add relevant structured data markup

When it comes to structured data for the homepage, you need to ensure that you
define the following schemas:

Organization (if you are an online business)

Local Business (if you have a physical presence i.e. a shop)

Person (if you are running a personal blog).

Optimize the homepage loading speed
It is a fact that 40% of users will leave a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to
load.

This means that even if you have the perfect homepage if it is too slow to load,
you will lose visits and customers.

The Website Speed lesson explains in detail how to improve your page
loading speed.

Check mobile-friendliness
More than 50% of searches on Google are now from mobile and it is more than
necessary to have a mobile-friendly homepage.

With the introduction of the mobile-first index, Google is using a slightly different
ranking algorithm for mobile websites but the basic SEO configurations (titles,
descriptions, h1, etc.) are the same for both desktop and mobile.

When it comes to the homepage SEO, you should run the mobile-friendly test
and fix any errors.

Also, you need to make sure that your mobile homepage has the same content as
your desktop homepage. You don’t want to confuse Google by giving them mixed
signals.

The Mobile SEO lesson explains in detail how to optimize your website for
mobile.

Add an SSL
A homepage (and website as a whole), needs to be https.

If you have an eCommerce store or collect user information this is a must but
even in cases where you have a normal blog, it is recommended to have SSL
enabled.
Google mentioned many times that for now having an SSL website gives you a
small comparative advantage but this is something that will certainly gain more
importance in the coming months or years.

The HTTPS and SSL lesson explains how to make your website secure by
adding SSL.

Optimize your home page for site links

A well-structured homepage can get you sitelinks in Google Search. Sitelinks are
typically shown for domain name searches.

For example, if you search Google for reliablesoft.net, you will see the following
snippet with sitelinks.

Sitelinks in Google Search Results

The only way to influence what appears as a site link is through your site
structure and navigation.

Think about what you want users to see when they search for your business name
and adjust your homepage sections accordingly.

The Advanced SEO lesson has a dedicated topic on how to get Google
sitelinks.

Add a clear call to action (CTA)

For any type of website, the homepage needs to have a clear purpose.

If you are selling products, then the main purpose will be to redirect users to your
products page, if you are selling services to your services page and in cases of a
blog to your articles.

Have a look at my homepage and notice that the ‘call to action’ is one of the
elements the users see when they land on the page.

CTA examples on Reliablesoft Homepage

Establish user trust

When a user visits your homepage, you have 3 seconds to grab their attention and
gain their trust.

Things like social proof, customer testimonials, achievements or partnerships,

success case studies are all elements that can help in this direction.
Don’t assume that users will navigate your website in detail to find out more
about you but make sure that you give them everything they need to know on the
homepage.

KEY LEARNINGS

Homepage SEO is important for all kinds of websites. The homepage is the
‘front door’ of your business (or blog) and should have a clear structure, load
fast and give users options and details about your website’s purpose.

Posts and Pages SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn the difference between a post and a page and how to
SEO optimize both using industry best practices.

What is the difference between a post and a page?

Most website platforms (including WordPress) offer two different content types:
posts, and pages. Both do the same thing i.e. they allow you to add a title and
content but they also have certain differences.

In a nutshell:

Pages are mostly used for the static content of a website and are not part
of a blog’s content. In other words, if you add a new page on your website
it will not appear on your main blog page or in your latest posts widget.

Pages by default do not have the option to add them to categories.

Pages are mostly used for the ‘about us’, ‘contact us’, landing pages and
any other pages of the website that are not ‘posts’.

Pages can be based on different templates (meaning they can have a

different design), while posts are all based on the same template so they
have the same design and structure.
What about SEO?

SEO wise there is no difference. A page or post can rank high in the SERPS if it
has the right content and is optimized properly.

Some people argue that pages have an advantage but taking a closer look at the
top results in Google search (for any keyword you want), proves otherwise.

What is the best practice, should you use posts or pages?

The simpler approach is always better. Use posts for your blog (articles, news,
announcements, product reviews, etc.) and pages for all your other content.

How to SEO your posts and pages

The process of optimizing your posts and pages combines a number of

techniques we’ve learned so far in the technical SEO and On-Page SEO
lessons. You can use this topic as a reminder and a checklist.

Here is your checklist. Use the numbers in the screenshots below to guide you.

URL Optimization

Page Title and H1 tag Optimization

Media Elements SEO

Page introduction Optimization

Optimize Your Subheadings (H2, H3)

Content formatting

Internal linking
On-Page Post SEO Example Part 1
On-Page SEO Example Part 2

KEY LEARNINGS

When optimizing your posts or pages make sure that you optimize all
necessary components. This includes your title, description, URL structure,
content and media elements.

SEO wise there is no difference. A page or post can rank high in the SERPS if
it has the right content and is optimized properly.

Categories and Tag Pages SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn the difference between a category page and a tag page
and how to SEO both.
What is a category page?
A category page allows you to group different posts together. It’s like your main
blog page but it only displays posts from a particular category.

When you create a post you have the option to add it in one or more categories.
Pages by default don’t have this option.

A properly optimized theme will show the category of a post in the breadcrumb,
like the example below.

The category is shown in the breadcrumb menu

Category pages may share the same template as your posts and the same sidebar
or widgets. This depends on the theme you are using but in the majority of cases,
a post page and a category page have a similar layout.

Usually, a category page (also known as Archive page), will show the title, image
and introduction of a post and will have paging at the bottom to help users
navigate through the archives.

When thinking about your blog structure and navigation, it is a common practice
to group your posts into categories and show these on your main menu.

A typical website has the following structure:

Typical Website Structure

Category Page SEO

From an SEO perspective, category pages have several issues, duplicate content
is one of them.

A category page that shows the excerpts of a number of posts doesn’t have any
unique content since all the content is already available in the individual post
pages.

This is also true for eCommerce websites where a category page will show a list
of products that make up the category without having unique content on its own.

Category pages are difficult to rank high in the search results

Because of the above problem, Google is more likely to rank a page (or post) from
your website instead of a category page.

Search for any keyword on Google and you will see that category pages are rarely
shown in the SERPS.

The only case that Google may show a category page is when a website has a lot
of related pages and the SEO structure of a website is such that it helps Google
choose the category page over a post page.

When are category pages useful for SEO?

In blogs or corporate websites, category pages are mostly used to help users
navigate a website and find what they are looking for faster and easier.

SEO wise, they don’t serve any purpose.

In cases though that you have an eCommerce website, services website or even a
travel website, category pages can serve as landing pages and are also important
for SEO.

Let me explain this with an example:

Assume that you have a travel website showcasing villas for rent in different parts
of Italy.

You have category pages for your main locations i.e. ‘Villas in Sicily’, ‘Villas in
Sardinia’ etc. and individual pages for each villa i.e. ‘Villa Talia – Large Villa for
Rent in Sicily’, etc.

When users search Google for ‘Villas in Sicily’, you want them to land to your
category page so that they view all available villas in that particular location and
not a single property.

If you have experience with such scenarios, you know that Google might choose
not to show the category page because they find the individual pages to have
more valuable and unique content.

How do you solve this problem?

There are a number of things you can do to help Google rank the category page in
their results.

Your category pages must have unique titles and descriptions.

When you EDIT a CATEGORY on WordPress you can configure the titles and
descriptions.
Category Title Optimization

When choosing your title and description, the same rules apply as in the case of
posts or pages.

Your category pages need to have unique content

Next, to solve the problem of not having unique content on the category pages,
you need to add a few paragraphs of text to the ‘Description’ field.

This is normally shown at the top of the page. I say normally since the actual
position depends on how your theme is configured to show the category
descriptions.

If everything is configured correctly, your category pages will have a unique title,
a unique H1 heading, and a useful description.

Example of an Optimized Category Page

Set Canonical URLs for multipage categories

Before proceeding to the next step, if you have paging enabled for your category
pages (or if it shows options like ‘next post’ or ‘previous post’ at the bottom of the
page), make sure that all subsequent pages have canonical URLs pointing to the
first page.

Note: Read the topic on canonical URLs for examples on how to set up your
canonical tags.

As far as on-page SEO is concerned, these are all the settings you need to make to
your category pages.

Advanced SEO for Category pages

The problem explained above with Google picking a single page instead of a
category page still remains, even after you optimized your category titles and
descriptions.

So, you need to go one step further and perform the following checks/changes:

Make sure that you have breadcrumbs enabled on your website and that the links
in the breadcrumb menu are clickable and have the proper schema.

In our example above the breadcrumb when viewing a villa page should look like
this:

Home > Villas in Sicily > Villa Talia

‘Villas in Sicily’ should be a link pointing to the category page.

Next, you need to add internal links in the individual pages that will point to the
category page using the proper anchor text.

For example, you can edit the description in Villa Talia and add a link to help
users navigate back to ‘Villas in Sicily’.

These internal links will help Google understand that your category pages are
important and also it will help users navigate your website better.
Lastly, check that you don’t confuse Google by having the title of the category
pages included in the titles of the individual pages.

For example, don’t have this as a title for a villa: ‘Villas in Sicily – Villa Talia for
Rent’.

In the titles of the individual pages, you should give details about their unique
characteristics, and page content and not about their category.

The above concepts can be applied to any eCommerce website or even to blogs. It
is an advanced SEO technique for optimizing your category and archive pages
better.

What are tag pages?

When you add a tag in the tags section of a post, WordPress creates a page for
each tag. The URL of a tag page is https://www.yourdomain.com/tag/tag-name.

A tag page is similar to a category page since it allows you to group posts
together.

Tag pages usually share the same template as archive pages (categories).

Tag pages are not shown in the menu unless you specifically add them

Tag pages have the same problems (lack of unique content) as category
pages.

When you go to the TAGS page on WordPress and EDIT a page, you can do the
same SEO fixes as explained in categories to make your tag pages unique and
interesting.

In the majority of cases, tag pages are only used to aid user navigation and serve
no other purpose.

Tag pages may have the same titles as category pages or even posts and this is
not good for your SEO.

I have seen a lot of cases on client’s websites where tag pages are shown in the
SERPS (instead of the main pages) and this is not a good user experience or for
the presentation of a company in the search results.
Best SEO practices for tag pages
The best practice is to ‘noindex’ and ‘nofollow’ tag pages. By doing so Google, will
not take into account these pages while indexing your website. This will save you
a lot of time and also make your website more optimized.

Besides adding the no-index and no-follow directives in tag pages, you should also
exclude them from your XML sitemap.

If you don’t want to stop Google from indexing your tag pages because they are
important for your website, then you should use them in your pages carefully and
avoid having too many tags as links on each and every page.

How to noindex and nofollow tag pages

This depends on what theme/plugins you are using.

If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, you should go to SEARCH APPEARANCE
and then TAXONOMIES.

Locate the tags section and make sure that show tags in search results are set to
NO.
Tag SEO Settings in Yoast SEO

Watch this 3-minute video from Google where Matt Cutts is discussing the role of
tag clouds in SEO.

Video: Tag Clouds and SEO

KEY LEARNINGS

Category and tag pages are available by default on all kinds of websites.
Many people ignore them but as explained above, this can negatively affect
your SEO efforts.

Before making any changes to your category pages, think of your website
structure and navigation. If the sole purpose of the category pages is to aid
navigation but they are not pages you expect (or want) to see in the SERPS,
then consider removing them from your sitemap and also ‘noindex’ them.
 If category pages are important for your SEO, as the example of a travel
website, then optimize them and make sure that you send the right signals to
Google from the rest of the pages as well.

As far as tag pages are concerned, keep them in the index only when you
really need them. It’s very unlikely that Google will rank a tag page high in
their results so the best practice is to de-index them.

On-Page SEO Checklist

This is your On-Page SEO Checklist.

Optimize homepage title

Optimize homepage description

Optimize homepage H1 tag

Optimize homepage content

Optimize site logo

Check homepage structured data

Optimize page titles for all pages

Optimize meta descriptions for all pages

Optimize the H1 tag for all pages

SEO optimize content for ALL important pages

Add structured data on applicable pages

Optimize ALL images (images file size and ALT text)

Create a dedicated image sitemap and submit to Google

Check mobile-friendliness

Activate and configure SSL

Check and optimize the site loading speed

Check content formatting

Revise your internal link structure

Optimize titles/descriptions for category pages

Review tag usage and noindex them If not needed

Add open graph tags on your website

Add Video Schema (if applicable)

Create a dedicated video sitemap and submit to Google

Optimize your video titles and descriptions

 Lesson 5

Off-Page SEO

What is Off-Page SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn what is off-page SEO and why it’s a very important SEO
process.

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-Page SEO has to do with promotion techniques – beyond website design

and content –for the purpose of ranking a website higher in the search
results.
Off-Page SEO

Unlike on-page SEO, Off-page SEO refers to activities you can perform outside
the boundaries of your website. The most important are:

Link Building

Social Media Marketing

Brand Mentions

Why is Off-Page SEO important?

Search engines have been trying for decades to find a way to return the best
results to the searcher.

To achieve this, they take into account the on-site SEO factors, some other quality
factors, and off-page SEO factors.

A web site that is high quality and useful is more likely to have references
(backlinks) from other websites.

It is more likely to have brand mentions on social media (Facebook likes, tweets,
Pins, etc.) and it is more likely to be bookmarked and shared among communities
of like-minded users.

Off-page SEO gives search engines a very good indication of how the world
(other websites and users) perceive the particular website.

What are the benefits of off-page SEO?

A successful off-site SEO strategy will generate the following benefits to website
owners:

Increase in rankings

The website will rank higher in the SERPs and this also means more traffic.

Increase in PageRank

Page rank is a number between 0 and 10 which indicates the importance of a

website in the eyes of Google.

It is the system invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders) and
one of the reasons that Google was so successful in showing the most relevant
results to the searcher. Page rank today is only one out of the 250 ranking factors
that Google is using to rank websites.

Greater exposure

Higher rankings also mean greater exposure because when a website ranks in the
top positions: it gets more links, more visits, and more social media mentions. It’s
like a never-ending sequence of events where one thing leads to another and then
to another etc.

It’s a way to establish trustworthiness

In addition to the above, Google has recently introduced the concept of Expertise,
Authority and Trustworthiness (E-A-T), which plays an important role in rankings
and is directly related to off-site SEO.

In simple terms, Google wants to rank websites that demonstrate expertise and
authority on a subject and one of the ways to ensure that the websites picked up
by the algorithms can be trusted, is through the number the type of incoming
links.

For example, if you want to be perceived as an expert on a subject, it’s not

enough for you to say it but other related websites should agree and this is
expressed through links pointing to your website.

Off-Page SEO Techniques

Link Building
Link building is the most popular and effective off-Page SEO technique. Basically,
by building links to your website, you are trying to gather as many ‘votes’ as you
can, so that you can bypass your competitors and rank higher.

For example, if someone likes an article and references it from his/her website or
blog, then this is like telling search engines that the page has good information.

Over the years webmasters have been trying to build links to their websites to get
higher rankings and they ‘invented’ a number of ways to increase link count.

The most popular ways were:

Blog directories – something like yellow pages but each entry had a link
pointing to a website.

Forum signatures – Many people were commenting on forums for the sole
purpose of getting a link back to their website (they included the links in their
signature).

Comment link – The same concept as forum signatures where you would
comment on some other website or blog in order to get a link back. Even worse,
instead of using your real name, you could use keywords so instead of writing
‘comment by Alex Chris’, you wrote ‘comment by SEO Rules’.

Article directories – By publishing your articles in article directories you could

get a link (or 2) back to your website.

Some article directories accepted only unique content while other directories
accepted anything from spin articles to already published articles.
Shared content directories – Websites like ‘hub pages’ allowed you to publish
content and in return, you could add a couple of links pointing to your websites.

Link exchange schemes – Instead of trying to publish content you could get in
touch with other webmasters and exchange links. In other words, I could link your
website from mine and you could do the same.

In some cases you could even do more complicated exchanges by doing a 3-way
link: I link to your website from my website but you link to my website from a
different website.

Notice that I’ve used the past tense to describe all the above methods
because not only they do not work today, you should not even try them.

If you try to ‘trick’ search engines building artificial links, you are more
likely to get a penalty rather than an increase in rankings (especially
when it comes to Google).

Google has become very intelligent in recognizing black hat techniques and with
the release of several algorithmic updates, they managed to control the problem
and protect their search results from spammers.

The most important are:

Panda – Initially released in February 2011, targeting low-quality websites

and content farms

Penguin – Introduced in 2012, targeting link farms, low-quality links, and

over-optimized anchor text

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is part of ‘off-site SEO’ and if you think about it, it’s also a
form of link building. It should be noted that almost all of the links you get from
social media sites are “nofollow”, but this does not mean that they do not have
any value.

Social Media mentions are gaining ground as ranking factors and proper
configuration of social media profiles can also boost SEO.

Brand Mentions
Google loves brands and prefers to rank branded websites on top of the results.
The reason is the same as explained above about Expertise, Authority, and
Trustworthiness. Brands are more reliable and likely to be trusted by users and
this translates to better user experience and happier Google users.

The difference between brand mentions, link building, and social media
marketing is that brand mentions do not necessarily have a link pointing to your
website. It can be mentions of your brand in forums, articles, reviews or social
media networks.

Google crawlers can ‘pick up’ these signals and evaluate them accordingly to
create a more accurate picture of how your brand is perceived by other people.

As part of your off-page SEO strategy, you should pursue any positive mentions of
your website, products or authors and make sure that you respond to negative or
misleading comments.

KEY LEARNINGS

Off-page SEO is as important as on-page SEO. If you want your SEO

campaigns to be successful you have to do both. When thinking about link
building don’t take the easy way, but try to get links from hard-to-get places.
The more difficult is to get a link, the more value it has.

In the past, you could easily get thousands of links and rank higher but
nowadays you have to do more than that. My advice is to put all your efforts
into making a great website, promote it correctly and everything else will
follow.
Nofollow Links

In this topic, you’ll learn what is the difference between follow and nofollow links.

Links are very important for SEO but not all link types are equal. ‘No follow’ links
do not have a direct impact on your SEO.

What is a no follow link?

Let’s start with a definition of what is a no follow link. A ‘nofollow link’ is a link
that points from one website to another but with having the rel=”nofollow”
attribute. This special HTML tag, instructs search engines to ignore that link.

When we say ignore the link, it means that no link juice (or PageRank) will be
passed from one website to the other. Since ‘no follow’ links do not pass
PageRank they also don’t affect search engine rankings.

NoFollow Links (HTML View)

A normal user will not understand that the link is a nofollow link. Links still
work but during the crawling and indexing process, search engines will NOT
follow the web page pointed by the link.

How to check if a link is dofollow or nofollow?

The easiest way to check if a link is a nofollow link is to view the HTML code of a
web page and look for the “<a href” HTML tag. If you can find the attribute
“rel=”nofollow” between the opening <a> and the closing </a>, then it means
that the link is no follow.

Here is an example of a nofollow link:

<a href="https://www.example.com">rel="nofollow">This is a
nofollow link </a>

If you cannot find it, then the link is a dofollow link. Here is an example:

<a href="https://www.example.com"> This is a follow link </a>

Important: You need to understand that there is no attribute for do follow

links. All links are ‘do follow’ unless they have the nofollow attribute
attached to the link properties.

Here are the steps to check any link using Google Chrome.

Open the webpage with the links

Right click anywhere on the page and select INSPECT or select VIEW >
DEVEOPER > INSPECT ELEMENTS from the top menu.

Click the SELECT ELEMENT icon and highlight a link to view the HTML
Code.

How to Check if a link is nofollow

How do you make a link nofollow?
You can make a link nofollow by adding the attribute rel=”nofollow” in between
the opening and closing tag of the <a href> element.

If you are writing a blog post you can view the HTML code of a page, find the link
and add the attribute as shown below.

How to make a link nofollow

To make site-wide changes i.e. to add the nofollow attribute to all links found in
the comments, you will need the help of a developer.

Tip: On WordPress all links in the comments section are nofollow by default.

What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow

links?
As already explained above, dofollow and nofollow links have 3 major differences:

DoFollow Links do NOT carry the rel=nofollow attribute

Nofollow links are ignored by search engine crawlers

Nofollow links do not pass any link juice and cannot affect the rankings of
a website.
What is the role of nofollow links in SEO?
So far, you’ve learned what are nofollow links, how to find them and how to make
them. You might be wondering, why should a webmaster care about nofollow
links?

The answer is simple: Nofollow links do not pass any link juice or PageRank and
thus they don’t help a website rank higher in the search engine results.

What is link juice? Link juice or link equity is the value and authority passed
from one page to another. Nofollow links do not pass any link juice.

Are nofollow links useless for SEO?

So, if nofollow links don’t pass any PageRank, does this mean they are useless?

Google says that “we generally don’t follow nofollow links”, which leaves a door
open to assume that sometimes they do follow them.

Nevertheless, even if nofollow links do not act as votes of trust, they are still
useful for SEO.

For example, if you get an article published on Forbes, Entrepreneur or Inc, the
links will be nofollow but it’s still an important link to have.

Not only it can potentially drive traffic to your website but it’s also good for
branding.

“Brand Mentions” and people talking about a brand is a factor that Google takes
into account, so nofollow links from trusted sources, do have a value.

When you should nofollow a link?

As a webmaster or SEO Professional, you are responsible for your site’s overall
SEO health.

This means that you should make sure that it does not violate any Google
guidelines and the way you deal with either incoming or outgoing links is part of
it.

You are not allowed to sell links or participate in link exchanges or accept paid
posts that include ‘dofollow’ links.

Also, having a lot of outgoing links on a webpage is not normal and Google might
penalize you for doing so.

In general, you should link out to only websites that you trust. If you have to link
to a website and you are not 100% sure about its quality and authority then to be
on the safe site nofollow the link.

Here are two examples to understand this better:

Example 1: You are writing an article on SEO and you want to link to a related
study. The link can be dofollow since you know that it’s from a trusted source.

Example 2: You are writing an article on SEO and you add a link to a download
site (for your users to download an app or Chrome extension). Since you don’t
trust the site 100% (download sites cannot easily be trusted), to be safe, you can
nofollow the link.

Finally as mentioned above, any links in comments or other user-generated areas

should also be nofollow.

KEY LEARNINGS

The nofollow attribute was created so that webmasters can tell search
engines not to follow specific links. Thus, links that are nofollow do not pass
any link juice or PageRank to the target website.

Nevertheless, that does not make any incoming nofollow links useless for
SEO. Links from high authority websites can indirectly help with SEO.

As a webmaster, you should not only care for incoming links but you need to
ensure that any outgoing links to websites you don’t trust have the nofollow
attribute.
Link Building Techniques

In this topic, you’ll learn how to approach link building for a new website and how
it is different from building links to an already established web property.

In addition, I will give you some tips and examples on how to get featured on
premium websites and get strong links that can make a difference in your SEO
and rankings.

Importance of Links
Let’s start with the basics, why are links important? In simple words, links are
important because they are part of the search engine ranking algorithms and can
influence your rankings.

Websites with good quality incoming links are more likely to rank higher in
the SERPS than websites with zero or fewer links.

What is a good link?

Many beginners to SEO have a difficult time understanding the difference
between a bad link and a good link. Not all links are equal.

A link from a non-trusted website or a paid link is more likely to get your website
into trouble. It is a violation of the Google webmaster guidelines and it will most
probably give you a Google penalty, which makes things worse and even more
difficult.

A good link has the following characteristics:

It’s coming from a related website.

It was not paid or part of a link exchange scheme.

It is usually hard to get.

It’s coming from a high authority website trusted by Google.

It appears in the main body of a page (not sidebar or footer).

 It does not have the nofollow tag.

Any link that does not fall into these categories (one or more), is considered a bad
link.

If you have a lot of bad links pointing to your website, this will most probably
raise a flag in the algorithm and a manual action or algorithmic action may be
imposed – resulting in losing your rankings and Google trust.

Video: Google manual actions on web spam

What is natural link building?

Natural link building is when a website owner or blogger, adds a link to their
website that points to your website because they believe it will enhance their user
experience. In other words, they add the link because it adds value to their
content.

For example, Neil Patel (a famous Internet Marketer), recently linked to one of
my articles because it added extra information to support his own article.

I did the same in one of my blogs because it was useful for my readers to get to
know Neil and his work. Here is a sample screenshot of the link:
Natural Link Building Example

I did not ask for that link; neither did I pay for it but it was the result of someone
else linking naturally to my website because they thought it was good for their
users.

What is black hat link building?

Links that are paid for or are a result of link exchanges (you link to my website
and I link to yours) or links added to websites for the sole purpose of passing link
juice from one website to another are the result of ‘black hat link building’.

Does this mean that asking for links is considered black hat?

No, not at all. It is acceptable to approach other people and ask them to link to
your website BUT they should do it without a return and only when they believe
that a link will add value to their content.

A thin line separates white-hat and black-hat link building in that manner but as
you will read below, there are ways to stay on the white-hat part without worrying
about crossing the line.
How to approach link building?
Now that all the terminology has been sorted out, let’s see how you can approach
the link building process for a brand-new website and for an already established
site.

For the purpose of this topic:

A brand-new website is less than 12 months old (the domain age) and has less
than 20 pages of content in the Google index.

An established website has been online for more than a year and has more
content in the index.

Link building for a new website

The link building process for a new website is the same as an established website
(as you will read below) but with these differences:

Search engine algorithms are ‘trained’ to look for patterns when accessing the
quality of a link or website. In a normal scenario, a website that is new with not
much content is less likely to be worthy of links from other websites.

That, of course, excludes cases of websites that go viral and become popular very
quickly. But in the majority of cases, new websites do not get noticed until they
have enough content and ‘grow older’ in age.

This means that if your new website gets a lot of links in the early stages,
this is against the ‘expected pattern’ and it may raise some flags.

So, if you have a new website, don’t start emailing people asking for links or
trying to over-promote your work. Concentrate first on building a great website
with good quality content that is worth linking to.

What you can do to get some links is the following:

Use LinkedIn long-form posts: Write an article related to your topic and
publish it on LinkedIn. In the article add a link to your website. Although
 this is a ‘nofollow’ link, it’s a good starting point.

Join related LinkedIn groups and share your insights and experiences
about the discussed topics. Add a link to your website only when it’s
relevant and helpful to the readers.

Create an account with crunchbase and register your company. This is

how my entry looks like.

Create a Facebook business page, Twitter account, Pinterest, Instagram

and link back to your website. Make sure that your profiles on those pages
are correctly optimized.

Publish an article on Medium.com

In general, at this stage try to concentrate on creating links that help in

establishing your website’s identity online and start building your reputation as
someone (website or person), that is willing to help other people by answering
their questions or providing suggestions on how to solve their problems.

Link building for an established website

As your website grows in age and in content and provided that you have gone
through the ‘basic link building’ as described above, you can now move to more
aggressive tactics to enforce your natural link building process.

These tactics have to do with positioning your content in front of the people that
are more likely to naturally link to it.

There are three effective ways to do this, the first one is through paid social
media campaigns, the second one through email outreach and the third one
through guest posting.

Social media campaigns for link building

Before explaining the details, it is important to understand that your goal with the
social media campaigns at this stage, is NOT to attract customers or make sales
but to get the attention of people that are likely to link to your website.

This is different than a normal social media campaign where your goal is to
increase your followers and get more visits to your website and make sales.
So, before deciding which platform to use (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) it
is necessary to do some homework and identify the group of people you want to
target with your ads, that are more likely to find your content interesting and link
to it.

For example, let’s say that you have a website selling engagement rings and other
jewelry online. You need to think about what kind of people/websites would be
interested in your products not for buying them but for referencing it in their
websites.

The answer, in this case, is photography bloggers, wedding websites, wedding

organizers, wedding photographers, etc. These people are writing about
‘engagement’ related topics and can easily link to a ring or product if they find it
interesting.

The next step is to translate the above findings into paid ad campaigns on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other networks that offer paid advertising
opportunities.

Facebook is obviously the first choice and a platform that works really well for
this kind of campaign because it allows you to narrow down your audience based
on their interests, location and other demographic characteristics.

What to include in your ads?

While I will not go through the process of setting up the campaigns, you can
follow these instructions, it is necessary to bring your attention to another
important aspect, the ad copy.

Normally when you run a campaign your ad includes things like price, offers,
advantages but in this case, you need to pass a different message to grab the
attention of other webmasters.

In our example above, the ad copy for the engagement rings social media
campaign for links can include the characteristics of a product and other
information that would be useful for other publishers.

To find out exactly what to include you can do some further research and analyze
published posts and see how they are linking to a product and what information
they are using.
It’s not a straightforward task, it needs some preparation work but it’s a good way
to get your content in front of the people that can influence your rankings.

Retargeting

Retargeting allows you to reach people through advertising that have already
visited your website. This is also a good method since your campaign audience is
people that already know about your website and retargeting is a good
opportunity to remind them about your content.

Facebook has many options related to retargeting and also does Twitter and
Adroll. For retargeting to work you need to add some scripts to your website so
that these networks can track visits but it’s easy to set up if you follow their
instructions.

Last but not least, you should also enable retargeting in Google analytics so that
you can use the created audiences to launch retargeting campaigns on Google
search and Google display network through Google Adwords.

Email outreach
Link building works best if you are able to make connections with other bloggers
and email is one of the most efficient ways to do that.

Obviously, before you start sending emails, you need to know who to email and
this needs a bit of work.

You need to create a list of people that you want to contact and then try to find
their email address or a way to contact them. I found that Twitter is the easiest
way to do this.

Everybody has a twitter account and this can be your starting point. Retweeting /
mentioning them in your tweets is a good way to get their attention and this
increases your chances of reading your email.

A few important pointers to consider when using email for link building purposes.

Don’t send massive emails – I get tens of canned emails per day and I just
delete them. Make your emails personal and try to build a conversation with the
other person without asking for anything.
Don’t overdo it – Email them only when you have something really great to share
and not every time you publish a new post.

Give them the benefits – In your emails, explain to them why your blog, article
or product is a good fit for their audience but try to keep your email short and to
the point.

Give before you ask – If you want to build connections with a blogger, don’t do it
because you will get a benefit but also show that you are willing to help them too.

For example, if you find an article published by someone else that is worth linking
to, add a link to your website and then let them know by email that you did that.

Here is an example of an email I have sent to a fellow blogger.

Blogger Outreach Email

Guest posting
Another powerful way to promote your website and build more links is through
guest posting. Many websites accept ‘guest posts’ from other authors and in
return they allow the guest authors to enter their contact details at the bottom of
the article (including a couple of links to their websites).

While this is a perfectly acceptable method to promote your work, in the recent
years a lot of people tried to use guest posting the wrong way and so Google
became stricter on the way they value links in guest posts.

To avoid any troubles, make sure that you follow the simple guidelines below:
 Guest post only on related websites. A link from a related website is good
while a link from a website that has nothing to do with your website is of
no value.

Guest post on high-quality websites. There are many websites that accept
guest posts and have no original content of their own. These are not good
candidates since they are considered low value and sometimes spam.

Guest post on websites that have strict publishing policies. The harder is
to get accepted to a website the better. This means that they have
guidelines and policies to keep spammers away.

Don’t add links with optimized anchor text. In the past, it was important to
have keywords in links but since Panda and Penguin, this is penalized by
Google. When adding a link to your website either in the body of an article
or author bio, don’t over-optimize it (This is the opposite with internal
links).

How to get strong links from premium websites

The above methods are great ways to approach link building but another more
efficient way to get those good links described above is to get published on
premium websites. This will not only give you strong links that can make a
difference in your rankings but it can also help in being recognized as an expert
in your niche.

What are premium websites? Premium websites have huge amounts of traffic,
are loaded with useful and quality content and are recognized as leaders in the
niche.

For example, in the SEO industry websites like searchengineland, moz,

contentmarketinginstitute, etc. fall into the above category.

Your first step is to create a list of these websites. Search Google, Facebook,
Twitter and find out the websites that are considered the best in your industry.

Carefully examine their content and take note of the authors. If they have a lot of
authors, then most probably they accept guest posts so search to find their guest
posting guidelines and read them carefully.
If not, you can either skip that website or try to contact them anyway explaining
what you can offer them.

Follow their instructions precisely and get in touch with them by taking into
account the following:

Big websites get a lot of requests on a daily basis and it may take them a couple
of months to even reply to your request.

Keep your email short and give them the information they need. If they ask
for proposed topics, give them suggestions, if they want to see the final result in
Word format, give them that.

Don’t be afraid of rejection. Depending on the niche, competition, your

experience, and expertise, some websites may reject your application but that’s
normal to happen. Don’t give up but try with the next one.

Start low aim high. When you create your list, order the websites in such a way
so that really big websites are on the top of the list. Start with the bottom of the
list and build your way up. Getting published on some websites at first will make
it easier to get on the most difficult ones. You will gain the experience of the
process and you will have more references (published articles) to share as you
climb the list.

Don’t be greedy. The only reason that premium websites may accept your
content is that you have something interesting to share with their audience and
not for link building purposes.

In the majority of cases, you get a link in the author bio at the bottom of the
article. Some websites allow you to add a link in the content of the page if it is
highly relevant and valuable but don’t be too greedy as if you make them believe
that you are doing this for link building your article will not be published.

Here is an example of one of my articles published on

contentmarketinginstiute.com, one of the leading websites in the areas of content
marketing.
Guest article on authority websites

KEY LEARNINGS

I know from my experience that website owners face a big dilemma as to

where to spend their time, on growing their website’s content or on link
building activities.

Both tasks are important but if you have to allocate your limited time wisely
then devote more time to building your website and less time on link
building.

Having a great website with lots of high-quality content will make it easier to
get natural links in the future without having to spend any time pursuing
 links.

How to Clean Your Link Profile

In this topic, you’ll learn how to clean your link profile by removing bad backlinks
pointing to your website.

There are cases you might want to remove bad backlinks from Google.

Maybe because you purchased links from some untrustworthy SEO company or
participated in link exchange schemes or because you made the mistake of
building low-quality unnatural links to your website.

Regardless of the reason, Google will punish you because link building is a
violation of Google webmaster guidelines.

How does Google punish a website?

Any attempt to manipulate PageRank is against Google guidelines.

Google has sophisticated systems that can differentiate between natural backlinks
and backlinks that are artificially created for the sole purpose of increasing the
PageRank of a website.

A few examples are:

Buying links from various websites link directories or blogs.

Selling links.

Participating in link exchange schemes (I link to your website and you link
to mine).

Guest posting with keyword-rich anchor text links.

Massive link building (using automated programs to create links – usually

in website comments).
Google in an attempt to protect the quality of its search results, introduced in
April 2012 the Penguin Update.

The penguin update is a set of rules for evaluating the quality of backlinks.

When the algorithm finds that a website has a lot of backlinks that are of low
quality (such as the ones described above), then it removes the particular website
from the Google index or devalues its rankings (for the website as a whole or for
specific pages only).

In other words, the website loses all its rankings and Google trust.

In the past, Google used to run the penguin algorithm once every few months
but since September 2016, it is integrated as part of the core ranking
algorithm.

This means that the checks related to bad link building practices are real-time.

A website may be imposed a penalty at any given time and it can also be released
from a penalty (provided that corrective actions were taken), without having to
wait for the Penguin update to run.

How to find bad backlinks

There are two ways to find toxic links pointing to your website.

The first one is to manually analyze your backlinks and identify bad links and the
second one (fastest and more reliable), is to make use of a tool.

How to find bad backlinks (the manual way)

The first step is to log in to your Google Search Console. Among other useful
metrics, you will be able to get a list of links pointing to your website, that Google
knows about.

The list includes all types of links (good and bad, follow and no-follow).

Google will not tell you which links are good or bad, you will have to export
the links in an Excel spreadsheet and manually review each link to decide
 whether it is a good link or a potentially toxic link.

Toxic links will be added to a disavow file and submitted to Google (more on this
below).

Here are the steps to manually analyze your link profile:

Step 1: Log in to Google Search Console.

Step 2: Click Links from the left menu.

Step 3: Click more under ‘Top Linking Sites’.

Top Linking Sites Report

What you see now is a list of all the domains that have links pointing to your
website.

You can click on any domain to see to which pages on your site it links to.
Optional: You can click Export Data to export the details as a CSV file (Excel
sheet) or Google Docs.

Export Backlinks from Google Search Console

That was the easy part.

What you need to do now is to analyze each link and make a decision as to
whether you want to keep it or drop it.

A few tips to help you with your decision:

1 – You can safely ignore links from social media networks. Most of the links are
“nofollow” anyway and those that are not, cannot hurt your domain’s reputation.

2 – You can safely ignore links coming from domains that no longer exist. It is
very common to click on a domain to see the incoming links and find out that it
has expired or is no longer available. It’s a matter of time for Google search
console to update the data and remove the links.

3 – Don’t remove links just because they look weird. It is normal for every website
to have some weird links pointing to it.

Google is not after odd-looking links but links that can actually influence their
ranking algorithm and this is where you should concentrate.

4 – For each link ask yourself these questions:

Is the sole purpose of the link to pass PageRank from one page to the
other?

Does this link add real value to the article or website that is posted on?
 Would you be concerned if a Google employee was reviewing the quality of
this link?

Is the website that is posted on a quality website with traffic or is it just a

repository of articles with outgoing links?

Is the link in a comment field that does not add any value to the
conversion?

Is the link in a website targeting people in a specific country that has

nothing to do with your target audience?

It’s not always easy to answer these questions, especially for beginners to SEO.

The experienced SEO’s can spot bad backlinks easily but fortunately, there are
tools (as we will see below), to assist you in this process.

So, before proceeding to the next step (i.e. to actually remove bad backlinks from
Google), you need to go through all your links and prepare a list of all the links
that you want to remove from your link profile.

How to find bad backlinks using SEMRush

Another faster and more efficient way to make sure that your link profile is always
clean is to use a link auditing tool.

A tool has a number of advantages:

It can automatically check the backlinks and propose which ones are
possibly toxic.

It can create the disavow file for you.

It can run the process every month and update you when it is needed to
take action.

You can connect the tool with your Google Search Console to retrieve the
links automatically so you won’t have to do any manual work.

You can take advantage of other SEO related features offered by the tool
to improve your Google rankings.
The tool I’m using for all my SEO activities is SEMRUSH.

It’s not a free tool, it comes with a monthly price but you can use it for a number
of things, including keyword research, featured snippet optimization, competitor
analysis, keyword position tracking, and many other essential SEO tasks.

Here are the steps to find bad backlinks using SEMRUSH.

1 – Login to SEMRUSH

2 – Go to Projects from the left menu and click Add New Project

3 – Give your project a name, type your domain and click Next.

4 – From the Dashboard click SET UP under the Backlink Audit option.

Backlink Audit Report in Semrush

5 – Select Root Domain as the campaign scope and click Brand Settings
Backlink Audit Settings

6 – Specify your brand name. Semrush will automatically detect your brand name
from your domain name but if you use any other names for your brand (or in
different languages), add them and click Domain Categories.
Exclude brand-related links from backlink audit

7 – Select all the categories your domain is associated with and click Target
Countries.

It is important to select the right categories because this will help SEMRUSH
identify risky links (coming from categories unrelated to yours) and give you more
accurate results.
Choose website categories
Select Countries

8 – As a final step, type the country associated with your target audience and
click the Start Backlink Audit button.

SEMRush will start analyzing the links that they know about.

In order to get more accurate results, you need to connect SEMRUSH with your
Google Search Console so that they can import the links reported by Google.

Click connect next to Google Search Console.

Connect Semrush with Google Search Console

You will be prompted with a screen that looks like this:

Connect Semrush with Google Search Console

Basically, all you have to do now is to give access to your Google Search Console
to the specified email so that SEMRUSH can access your link data.

If you don’t know how to do this, click the show more details button to get step by
step instructions.

Once this is done, you will get a screen similar to this:

Semrush backlinks audit report

You can see at a glance the total number of links and the percentage of links that
are considered by the tool toxic or potentially toxic.

Analyze toxic links

Click on the toxic links to get a list of all the links that are considered by semrush
as toxic.

Make sure that you click the Follow filter so as to exclude links that are nofollow.

Filtering nofollow links in Semrush

A few things to note:

Semrush identifies toxic links based on a number of factors.

Among other things, it checks the authority of the domain and page, the number
of outbound links, the anchor text used for the links and the relevancy of the
website.

What you need to do now is review those links and decide whether to keep them
or add them to the disavow file. You can use the same criteria as the manual
process (explained in Step 4 above).

To keep a link, you can click the Keep button and whitelist the domain.

Whitelist links in Semrush

To add the link to the disavow file, click Delete and then To Disavow.
Add links to disavow file semrush

#3 – Analyze potentially toxic links

Repeat the process above but for the ‘potentially toxic links’.

How to Remove Bad Backlinks From Google

Once you identify which bad backlinks to remove, either using the manual or
automatic method, the next step is to submit a request to Google to remove them.

What do we mean by “remove backlinks”?

The term ‘remove backlinks’ can be a bit confusing because the links will not be
actually removed from Google or from the web.

When we say “remove backlinks”, we mean to give instructions to Google not

to take into account those links when it comes to passing PageRank from one
website to the other.
The links will still show on your Google search console but they will not be taken
into account by the algorithm.

Step 1: The first step you need to take is to try and contact the webmasters and
ask them to either remove the links or add the nofollow tag so that no PageRank
is passed.

In the majority of cases, this is very difficult but it’s a necessary step you need to
take before proceeding to the next step.

Step 2: Get rid of pages that have bad backlinks pointing to them. This is not a
good solution but it’s an extra step you can take (with Step 3 below).

The easiest way to ‘get rid’ of a page is to change the URL or un-publish it so that
Google will get a 404 error (not found) when trying to access that page.

Step 3: When everything else fails, use the Google disavow tool.

What is the Google disavow tool?

The Google disavow tool is an advanced feature and you should use it with
caution.

Google Disavow Tool warning

As stated by Google, if used incorrectly, it can do more harm to your website than
good.

Basically, the Google disavow tool is a feature that allows you to upload a file
to Google with a list of links you don’t want Google to take into account.

How to prepare the disavow file (Manual way)?

Take the list of links identified from the steps above and add them to a .txt file
using the following format:

Use # in front of a line to add any comments.

When you want to disavow a particular URL, add the full link i.e
http://example.com/link1.html

When you want to disavow ALL links from a particular domain, using this format:
domain:example.com.

Here is an example of a well-formatted disavow file:

Format of a Disavow file

How to prepare the disavow file (using SEMRUSH)?

When you click DELETE and then TO DISAVOW, SEMRUSH will create the
disavow file for you in the correct format.

You can see which links are included in the disavow file by clicking the DISAVOW
tab from the menu.

Create a Google Disavow file using Semrush

How to submit the disavow file to Google (Manual way)?

When your file is ready to save it as .txt and then go to the Google Disavow tool.

Select your domain from the list and click DISAVOW LINKS
Google Disavow Links Options

Click DISAVOW LINKS again to confirm that you want to use this advanced
feature of the Google search console.

Click CHOOSE FILE to select the disavow file and then click SUBMIT.

Upload disavow file to Google

Once submitted correctly, Google will give you a summary of the number of links
processed in the file and options to upload a new file or download your existing
file.

That’s it, you have now requested from Google not to take into account bad
backlinks pointing to your website.

How to submit the disavow file to Google (using SEMRUSH)?

With SEMRUSH, you have to options.

You can either export the disavow file and submit it to Google using the manual
way or you can click the UPLOAD DISAVOW FILE option.

Upload Disavow file to Google using Semrush

If you choose to do it manually, you need to confirm to SEMRUSH that you have
submitted the file to Google so that it won’t show you the links in the list of toxic
(or potentially toxic).

What happens next?

You need to be patient and wait for Google to process your file. Monitor your
rankings for any changes and keep monitoring your backlinks for new domains (or
links) that need to be added to the file.

Important notes regarding the Google Disavow file:

Submit the file to all website variations i.e. to your http:// and http://www
versions.

Whenever you want to add a new domain or link to the file, make sure that
you keep the existing one.

When you want to remove a link from the disavow file, re-submit the file
again without those links.

Instead of using single URLs, use the domain (domain:example.com), to

 ensure that all links from that domain are not taken into account.

Even if Google decides not to take into account some links because they
are included in the disavow file, they will still be shown in the Google
search console.

Google will never tell you or give you an indication as to which links are
good or bad and which links are taken into account when accessing the
quality of your website.

I have submitted a disavow file but my rankings did not improve,

why?
That’s a very popular question and one that doesn’t have a precise answer. There
are many reasons why your website may not rank high in Google.

When you lose your Google trust then everything else becomes more difficult.
That’s why it is important not to engage in actions that can put your website into
Google’s radar.

If you have lost your rankings and have a lot of bad backlinks pointing to
your website then it may be better to start from scratch with a new domain
rather than trying to fix a situation that is not reversible.

KEY LEARNINGS

When you follow Google webmaster’s guidelines and concentrate on creating

a website that provides value to the users, then you don’t have to worry
about removing bad backlinks from Google.

Google’s algorithms are clever enough to differentiate between links that are
spammy and links that were built for the sole purpose of tricking their
system.

There are cases though that a company you hired did something wrong or
you did something wrong without knowing it.

In such cases, performing regular audits of your backlink profile is not a bad
 idea.

It can help you pin-point links that are hurting your domain and it would be
better if these links were submitted for removal using the Google disavow
tool.

The process is straightforward:

Identify links that are potentially toxic.

Add those links in a .txt file (formatted according to Google’s guidelines).
Submit the file to Google using the disavow tool.

As a final word, when it comes to Google penalties, prevention is always the

better cure.

Off-Page SEO Checklist

This is your Off-Page SEO Checklist.

Understand what we want to achieve with Off-Page SEO

Understand the difference between a good link and a bad link

Understand the difference between a follow and nofollow link

Learn how to start link building for a new website

Create a list of websites you can potentially get a link

Understand how to use social media for link building purposes

Read more about retargeting and how to use this for link building

Understand how to email other bloggers asking for links

Try to get mentions of your brand from reputable websites

Try to get links from premium websites

Regularly review your link profile to identify bad links

Use the Google disavow tool (when necessary) to get rid of bad links from your link profile
 Lesson 6

Local SEO

Optimize for Local SEO

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your website for local SEO.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it appears in the first
positions of Google, Bing, and Yahoo for searches that are related to your
area/city/country.

Let me give you a couple of examples to understand this better.

Example 1: “lawyers in Nevada”

When a user types the location in the search query, then the user-intent is clear
and Google will try to satisfy the user by showing in the top results businesses (in
this case law firms) that are registered to operate in the state of Nevada.

How does Google know where a company is operating? This is something we will
see in a while…

Example 2: “florists in London”

When you search google.co.uk for the term florists in London you will get a list of
flower shops that have a physical business in the general area of London.

Example 3: “Italian restaurants in New York City”

Local SEO Examples

On your next trip to New York, open Google and type Italian restaurants in New
York City.

I’m sure that the returned results will help you choose a nice restaurant to enjoy a
memorable pasta or pizza.

Why? Because as we will see below, businesses (in this case Italian restaurants),
have to prove that they deserve one of the top positions in the search results.

Google is very careful as to which websites to showcase in the local search results
box since the local companies that get a top listing will receive higher CTRs
(click-through rates) and traffic.

The list could go on and on but the general idea about local SEO is that:

The user wants to find a business (address or a telephone number), in the

particular area defined by the query, so as to take a visit or call to satisfy a
requirement. Google, on the other hand, wants to keep users happy by giving
them details for companies that satisfy the user-intent.

Who needs local SEO?

From the examples above, it is clear that every business that has an address and
operates in a certain area needs local SEO.

Do you own a restaurant, a barbershop, a law firm? Are you a doctor, mechanic or
a retailer?

You need to have a website that is optimized for local SEO.

People use the Internet to search for a business before they actually visit and if
they don’t find yours, it’s obvious that you are losing customers and opportunities
and someone else will take advantage of them.

What are the benefits of local SEO for small business?

Increase your chances of appearing higher in the SERPS

As you can see from the examples above, businesses that are chosen to appear in
Google’s local results (including Google Maps) are more likely to receive more
visits than websites that don’t appear in the recommendations.

More conversions

The conversion rate is higher since visitors coming to the website from local
searches are highly targeted.

Brand visibility and awareness

People searching for businesses in your area will know about your existence and
this will make your brand more recognizable and also raise awareness’s about
your business.
Higher return on investment

An optimized website for local search can generate more value to a ‘brick and
mortar’ business since all they want is to get customers searching the web for
businesses in their area.

This generates a higher return on the investment made and potentially faster
growth than companies who don’t take advantage of this.

How is local SEO different than general SEO?

Local SEO optimization is for targeting searches in a specific geographic location
while SEO general practices are applicable for global wide searches.

It should be noted though that all SEO advice about on-page or off-page SEO is
also applicable for local SEO as well.

The big difference is that for local SEO optimization, you also need to provide
location awareness signals to Google.

Mobile searches are by ‘default’ local

If you are searching from a mobile or if you have allowed Google to track your
location when searching from Desktop, you don’t have to type a location in your
search query because Google already knows your location.

In other words, if you are physically located in San Francisco and type in Indian
restaurants on Google search from your mobile, Google will return the same
results as if you typed Indian restaurants in San Francisco.

The same is true if you search for Indian restaurants near me.

Should all businesses practice Local SEO?

No, and the reason is that if you try to target users in a particular area, it will be
more difficult to rank for keywords that are related to a global search.

Take for example my business, reliablesoft.net.

We have clients from all over the World and since we want to rank for more
general terms, we do not provide any local signals to search engines, other than
those we need to give to our users for business clarity and trust.

Local SEO Techniques

Follow these guidelines to optimize your website for Local SEO.

Optimize your logo for local SEO

Make your titles, descriptions and URLs Local SEO Friendly

Add NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on the home page using the
proper format

Add NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on the rest of the pages (in the
footer)

Make sure that NAP information is consistent across all channels

Add a Google map in the contact information page

Register your company with Google My Business

Register with Yahoo Small Business

Use Schema (structured data markup) to give more information about your
local business to Google

Register your website with Bing Places for Business

Register Your Business with Local directories

Create a Local business page on Facebook

Register your business with Yelp for Business Owners

Register with Foursquare for Business

Encourage and reply to every single review on every platform

Pursue brand mentions and links from the local press

Run a link building campaign to get more links

Optimize your website for mobile

Start a blog and use internal linking with Local SEO friendly anchor text

Create Business pages on Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and other social

networks
1. Optimize your logo for Local SEO
One of the first things that search engines encounter when crawling your website
is the logo and this is a good place to start your local SEO optimization.

Make sure that the image filename is descriptive

Instead of using logo.png better use a more meaningful filename like ‘Mayers-
dental-surgeons-logo.png’

ALT text is important for all images but it’s more important for the logo.

You can use the ALT text to give more details about the image and in this case the
location of your business.

For example, you can use ‘Mayers Dental Surgeons, Florida’ as the ALT text.

<img
src=”http://example.com/images/mayers-dental-surgeons-logo.png
” alt="Mayers Dental Surgeons, Tampa, FL">

Add the location in the title tag of the link.

For example:

<a href="http://example.com/" title=" Mayers Dental Surgeons,

Florida">

<img src="
http://example.com/images/mayers-dental-surgeons-logo.png"
alt="Mayers Dental Surgeons, Tampa, FL"></a>

Try to use the same logo across all channels.

In all places that your logo is shown i.e. website, FB, Google Business page,
Twitter, etc, try to use the same logo and ALT text.

2. Make your titles, descriptions and URLs Local SEO Friendly

Titles and Descriptions are very important for local SEO.

An optimized title should be between 50-60 characters and if you are targeting
local customers then the location (and if possible your area phone) should be part
of your title and description.

A couple of real examples from the web:

Local SEO: Title and Description Optimization Examples

As far as the URLs are concerned, you need to make sure that you have an SEO
friendly URL structure that includes an indication of the location (where
applicable).

For example, if you have a business selling ‘second-hand cars in Wisconsin’ and
you have a page for the ‘Saloon’ cars, then your local SEO optimized URL could
be: https://www.example.com/saloon-cars-wisconsin

3. Add NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on the home page

using the proper format
On your home page, make sure that your full address details (street number,
postcode, state, country, telephone number, fax number, email) are visible as text
(not image) in a prominent position.

See below a few examples of good and bad NAP formats.

Examples of Good and Bad NAP formats for Local SEO

Important: When displaying your phone number, make sure that you use
your local number (which includes the area code) and not your toll-free
number.

Any signals you can give to Google related to your locality are useful for Local
SEO.

4. Add NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on the rest of the

pages (in the footer)
For the rest of the pages, you can have the contact information in the footer.

I have separated the home page from the rest of the pages to stress the
importance of the contact information to be visible on the homepage.

5. Make sure that NAP information is consistent across all

channels
One of the biggest mistakes many people make, when it comes to Local SEO
optimization, is the inconsistency of NAP information.
Local SEO Mistakes

It is vital that your contact information is consistent in all channels.

This means that the address and the telephone number you show on the website
should be the same as the address you have on Facebook, Google My Business
page and any other places your company is listed.

6. Add a Google map in the contact information page

It’s very easy to add a Google map of your business in the contact us page and
this is another strong signal of your business location for search engines.

The best way to add a map is to go to Google Maps, type in your address and
then choose the “Share or Embed Map” from the top left menu.

On the popup window, click the Embed Map tab and copy-paste the code to your
WordPress website.
Google Maps for Local SEO

7. Register your company with Google My Business

Having a Google My Business page is one of the most important SEO factors for
Local SEO.

When you create an account with Google Business, Google will verify your
address and ownership of the business.

This will be done by either sending you a mail with a code or through the phone
(depending on your country).

Once your address is verified, your business will show on the map and also will be
a candidate to show in the local results box in the SERPS.

To improve your local ranking on Google, you need to make sure that:

The data provided for your business (name, address, category) is correct,
complete and accurate.

The opening hours of your business are correctly set and up-to-date.

You respond to each and every review customers leave about your
business (even the not so good ones).

You have added photos of your business (both inside and outside, if
applicable) to your Google My Business page.

8. Register with Yahoo Small Business

Yahoo has a service for local listings and while it is not free, the subscription
fee (between $10 – $30 per month), is not a big amount to hold you back.

Once you do it, make sure that you link to your Yahoo profile from your Google
My Business page.

In fact, make the Google My Business page the hub to link to all your other local
profiles.

9. Use Schema (structured data markup) to give more information

about your local business to Google
Schemas or structured data markup is a way to ‘describe’ your data so that
search engine crawlers can understand the context better.

Schemas are very important for Local SEO and this is something you definitely
need to implement if you want to improve your local rankings.

Depending on the type of local business, you should use the appropriate schema.

Here is an example of how the schema looks for a local restaurant. This piece of
JSON-LD code should be added to the homepage.
Local Business: Structured Data Markup Example

10. Register your website with Bing Places for Business

Bing Places for Business is free, easy to complete and another way to verify
your business information online.

Do not forget to link to your Bing profile from your Google My Business page (and
vice versa).
11. Register Your Business With Local directories
Register your local businesses with any trusted local directories and remember to
be consistent in the address details you are using.

You don’t have to overdo it but only submit your businesses in quality local
directories with value.

12. Create a Local business page on Facebook

Facebook has a special type of category for local businesses.

When you create a Facebook Business Page and choose the category ‘local
business’, Facebook will verify your address and business details.

Facebook Local Business Pages

When this is done successfully, they will add a grey checkmark next to your logo,
indicating that your contact details are verified.

You can then add your business hours, map and other information about your
business.
13. Register your business with Yelp for Business Owners
It’s free, easy to setup up and trusted by Google.

All you have to do is go to yelp for business and claim your listing.

14. Register with Foursquare for Business

Foursquare for business is another directory to use to enforce your local SEO
efforts.

With more than 60 million registered users and the growing use of mobile, it is
worth taking the time and effort to maintain your business listing with them.

15. Encourage and reply to every single review on every platform

Besides registering on the above platforms, it is important to encourage users to
review your business and it is equally important to reply to all reviews (either
good or bad) on ALL platforms.

You can ask your customers to leave a review on their favorite platform either by
giving them incentives i.e. 5% on their next purchase or by sending them
reminders by SMS or email.

16. Pursue brand mentions and links from the local press
Any mentions (backlinks) you can get from trusted websites in the same city as
your business, is a strong signal for your Local SEO.

For example, you can get a link from a local (online) newspaper or a magazine
related to your niche.

17. Run a link building campaign to get more links

Local SEO is a subset of ‘normal SEO’ and this means that to get better rankings
for local, you need to follow good SEO practices in general.

Link building is a tactic that can have a huge impact on your SEO efforts and you
should not forget that when optimizing for local search.

Providing content that is link-worthy, pursuing natural links, promoting your

website to get the attention of others and optimizing your content for the Google
featured snippet, are practices that will positively affect your local rankings.
18. Optimize your website for mobile
Do not forget about mobile, especially when it comes to finding customers locally.

Many people use their mobile while on the go and having a non-mobile friendly
website will keep them away.

19. Start a blog and use internal linking with Local SEO friendly
anchor text
How can a blog help local SEO?

You can post high-quality content on a regular basis and do location-aware

internal linking.

For example, from a blog post, you can link to your services pages using the
anchor ‘financial services in Texas’.

This alone will not do much but it is another small step in your overall
optimization process.

Also, you can use the blog to target ‘local keywords’ in the title and content of the
blog posts

20. Create Business pages on Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and

other social networks
I haven’t mentioned twitter, Pinterest, youTube or any other social networks
separately, but for best results, you also need to maintain an accurate profile on
those as well.

These networks are great to get some people in your area to follow you since all
social channels have the facility to suggest followers based on the
location/address information of your business.

KEY LEARNINGS

Local SEO is a valuable tool for every business that has a physical address
and wants to use the Internet to get more customers from people searching
for businesses/services/goods in their area.The techniques to use for local
SEO are over and above traditional SEO techniques meaning that you should
 first do your SEO as you would without caring about local and then optimize
for local SEO using the methods outlined above.

In a nutshell, the most important aspects of local SEO are:

Display the full contact information on your website.

Optimize your URLs, titles, and descriptions for Local SEO.

Add schema for local businesses on your homepage.

Use the same address (NAP) consistently throughout all places,

networks

Create and verify your business pages with Google My Business and
Facebook Local Business.

Try to get people to review your business on trusted services and

make sure that you reply back.

Local SEO Checklist

This is your Local SEO Checklist.

Optimize your logo for local SEO

Make your titles, descriptions and URLs Local SEO Friendly

Add NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on the home page using the proper format

Add NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on the rest of the pages (in the footer)

Make sure that NAP information is consistent across all channels

Add a Google map in the contact information page

Register your company with Google My Business

Register with Yahoo Small Business

Use Schema (structured data markup) to give more information about your local business to Google

Register your website with Bing Places for Business

Register Your Business with Local directories

Create a Local business page on Facebook

Register your business with Yelp for Business Owners

Register with Foursquare for Business

Encourage and reply to every single review on every platform

Pursue brand mentions and links from the local press

Run a link building campaign to get more links

Optimize your website for mobile

Start a blog and use internal linking with Local SEO friendly anchor text

Create Business pages on Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and other social networks
 Lesson 7

Mobile SEO

SEO for Mobile Websites

In this topic, you’ll learn what is mobile SEO and why it’s important.

Having a mobile-friendly website is an absolute must for the last couple of years.
Google introduced mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal in April 2015 and since
then everything on the Web is about mobile.

Have a look at the screenshot below which shows the percentage of mobile traffic
in one of my websites for the last months.
Desktop VS Mobile Traffic

I am sure that if you check your mobile analytics reports, the trend will be similar.

Websites that are not mobile-friendly cannot achieve this kind of results since the
Google ranking algorithm is clever enough to understand if a website is mobile-
friendly or not.

How is mobile SEO different from ‘normal’ SEO?

When calculating the ranking of a webpage for mobile search, Google besides
taking into account the most common ranking factors (content, titles,
descriptions, links) it also takes into account a number of other things:

The layout of the page – Google checks that the page can render properly on
mobile without having left and right scrollbars.

Accessibility – buttons, text, and images should be large enough and be

accessible with ease without the user having to zoom in or out.
Speed – is a ranking factor for desktop and a very important usability factor for
mobile. Google is very serious about page loading times on mobile and that’s why
they have introduced and pushed for the implementation of accelerated mobile
pages (more on this in the next topic).

Location – When searching on mobile, there is a huge difference with desktop:

Google knows your location and the results you get are customized according to
your physical location. This is important to know if your aim is to get people to
your physical store.

Ads placement: People don’t like to see a page full of ads while on mobile and
neither does Google. If you are using AdSense on mobile or other advertising
platforms, make sure that you don’t violate any of the Google guidelines for ad
placement.

How to Optimize your Website for Mobile

The first thing you need to check is whether your website passes the mobile-
friendly test or not.

Google has a nice tool for testing if your website has a mobile-friendly design. All
you have to do is enter your URL and click the ANALYZE button. The tool will give
you a list of things to improve in case the page did not pass the test.

If you passed the test, this is great! You can now concentrate on improving the
overall user experience on mobile by avoiding the mistakes we will discuss below.
If not, then you need to consider one of the options below.

Option 1: Fix the problems.

Usually, problems related to mobile-friendliness can be fixed by changing your

theme’s HTML and CSS. This is not something that can be done by everyone so
you may need to consider hiring a developer to make the necessary changes until
your website passes the mobile-friendly test.

Option 2: Change your theme.

Sometimes trying to make a non-mobile friendly theme compatible with mobile

devices is more difficult than switching to a theme that is already mobile-friendly.
There is a lot of work involved in changing your theme but in this case, the
benefits gained from mobile traffic are much more and certainly worth the money
and time spent.

Option 3: Adopt a responsive design.

This is not actually a third option but is more like a strategic decision related to
the approach you will take on mobile. A responsive website uses the same pages
for both desktop and mobile. Depending on the device of the user, the design
adapts to fit perfectly on the screen without having scroll bars and without having
to zoom in or out to view the content.

This is the approach recommended by Google and used by the majority of the
websites on the web. It has a lot of advantages, one of them being that you won’t
have to maintain a different set of pages for desktop and mobile. This also implies
that any SEO work you do for your desktop version is also applicable to mobile
SEO.

So basically, if your website is not mobile-friendly then you either fix it (if the
changes are not a lot) or change to a mobile responsive theme.

Don’t forget that besides the mobile-friendly test, another way to test your
website on various mobile devices is to use the ‘mobile device emulator’ that is
built-in in Google Chrome.

Open a new chrome window and navigate to the website to test. Right-click
anywhere on the page and select INSPECT from the dropdown menu. Click the
mobile icon (bottom left – as shown below) and select the device from the
dropdown list located on the top of the page.
Device Emulator in Google Chrome

Common mistakes with mobile-friendly websites

We have helped many clients migrate their websites to responsive (or switch to a
responsive theme) the last couple of years and we have identified some common
mistakes people make when thinking about mobile.

Blocking resources required by Google bot

Google is able to see a website like a normal user so you shouldn’t block any
resources (JavaScript or CSS files) from being accessed by Google. This is also
true for desktop but more important for mobile since the responsiveness of a
website is achieved through JavaScript and CSS.

Make sure that Google can access all the required resources. You can use the
URL INSPECTION TOOL in Google search console and adjust your robots.txt file
accordingly.

Responsive design is good but it may still need some work

While adopting a responsive design is the way to go, this does not mean that you
are done when you apply a responsive theme.

You need to test your website thoroughly on mobile and try to improve the user
experience. One of the things you can consider is hiding certain parts of the
website from mobile users.

For example, the sidebar in the majority of responsive themes appears below the
main content on mobile. What you need to think is whether users ‘have to see’ the
sidebar contents or maybe this is too much vertical scrolling for them and it only
adds more items on the page without any real value.

Lack of conversion optimization

Passing the mobile-friendly test and having a fast loading responsive website is a
great first step but this does not ensure that you will also get conversions from
mobile. Similar to my comment above, you need to review your mobile pages and
analyze your ‘call-to-action’ areas.

If your design pushes your buttons, product offerings, or other important areas of
your website down the page, then you need to make changes so that these are
closer to the top and visible to the user without having to scroll too much.

You also need to make it easier for users to perform an action.

For example, if you are selling products, then provide them with one-page
checkout, if you are getting their details, make it easy to input data (large text
boxes, pre-loaded with values dropdowns, etc.).
In general, try to eliminate extra screens if you can provide the information is
fewer screens and clicks. Look at this nice case study and see how they managed
to improve conversion rates by simplifying their mobile pages.

Mobile Optimization Example

Forgetting ‘Click to call’

Users on mobile have a phone in their hands, don’t forget that. Whenever you
have a mobile number on your mobile website, this should be clickable. Many
people forget about this while it’s a very easy tweak to do.

Use of Popups

Popups are good for the desktop when they are not disturbing the user
experience. I like to use ‘exit popups’ on my websites since they are very effective
and they are only shown when a user is trying to exit a website. For mobile
though, pop-ups are not good and should be avoided.

KEY LEARNINGS

Mobile SEO is very important. The number of users navigating the Web from
mobile is more than desktop.

Your first concern is to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly by taking

the Google mobile-friendly test.

Next, is to check that your mobile pages support your conversion goals and if
not to make changes to the design so that mobile does not only bring you
traffic but also conversions.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

In this topic, you’ll learn what is Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

What is Accelerated Mobile Pages?

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a term used to describe a new way of building
mobile-friendly pages that load faster compared to traditional mobile pages.

At the core of AMP is AMP HTML which is a cut down version of normal HTML,
that allows for better performance when pages are served in the browser.

Together with AMP HTML, we also have AMP JS which is the javascript library
responsible for the rendering and execution of AMP powered pages.

If the above technical terms are too complicated for you, the only thing you need
to understand about AMP is that it’s a new way of building mobile-friendly pages
that load faster than existing pages.

On an AMP page, you can have most (but not all) of the functionality of a normal
mobile-friendly page. For example, an AMP page cannot have embedded scripts
that are not asynchronous and this automatically strips out plugins or functions
that need to have scripts loaded synchronously.

AMP (FAQ)
To give you a better understanding of what is AMP and help you decide whether
this is something to implement on your website, have a look at the below FAQ.

How does an AMP Page look like?

See the screenshot below of how Google shows AMP pages in the search results.
AMP Pages in Google Search Results

Who is currently supporting AMP?

Google is the biggest platform that supports AMP in their search results. Besides
Google other platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium can also
consume AMP content.
Is Facebook part of the AMP initiative?

No. Facebook has created its own version of AMP which is called Facebook
Instant Articles. It is based on the same concepts as AMP (but different
technology).

Is AMP an SEO Ranking Factor?

Not directly. AMP is all about speed and this is a soon-to-be ranking factor for the
Mobile-First Google Index.

Will AMP Pages create Duplicate Content Issues?

No, every AMP page has a canonical URL pointing to the desktop version so that
the different consumers (including Google bots) know that this is the AMP version
of a normal page.

Can I use AdSense on AMP Pages?

Yes, AdSense is one of the advertising platforms that supports AMP. You can read
below a case study on how AdSense earnings were affected after migrating to
AMP.

Can I add email subscription boxes on AMP Pages?

As noted above AMP HTML and JS have limitations compared to normal HTML so
some things are not possible on AMP Pages.

This, however, does not mean that you cannot add buttons or Call to Action Areas
in your AMP Pages and redirect users to your responsive website to get the email
signups or make sales. As you will see below, it’s a method that works very well.

Can I use AMP for my eCommerce store?

Yes, you can although it will need a lot of programming work to get things
working as they should. It’s easy to add AMP support for blogs or simple websites
(without needing any help from developers) but for e-commerce websites, you will
definitely need custom programming.

eBay, for example, has already adopted AMP.

Is it difficult to add AMP to my WordPress Website?

No, as we will see below, it’s very easy to add AMP support to your WordPress
Website or Blog.

Should I add AMP on my website?

My recommendation is to implement AMP pages if you have:

A news website

A website that publishes content that is suitable for Google rich snippets,
for example, a recipe website.

How to Setup AMP on WordPress

Hopefully, by now you should have a better idea of what is AMP and it’s now time
to get your hands dirty and add AMP support on your WordPress Website.

Note: You don’t have to make your whole site AMP. In the majority of cases, you
only need to make your posts AMP friendly and maybe some of your pages.

The procedure described below will make your WordPress posts AMP Friendly but
not the pages or homepage.

Step 1: Install the AMP Plugin

Automattic (that’s the company behind WordPress) has released a plugin for
adding AMP support to WordPress websites. Although it is still in its early stages,
it can successfully and easily add AMP support to your WordPress posts.

Install and Activate the AMP plugin by following this link.

Step 2: Configure the header color

The plugin does have a very limited set of options, so there is nothing much you
can do visually other than configuring the background and foreground color of the
header and choosing between a ‘light’ and ‘dark’ predefined color scheme.

Click APPEARANCE from the left menu and then AMP.

AMP Plugin Design Settings

Choose the colors you want for the header background and text and click the
SAVE Button.

Step 3: Add support for Analytics

The analytics code that is already present on your desktop and mobile pages will
not track visits to your AMP pages, in order to make this data available, you need
to add the analytics code within your AMP code.

There are 2 ways to do this:

1st -> If you are already using Yoast SEO on your website, you can install and
activate a plugin, Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP and use the ANALYTICS section to
add your Google Analytics ID.

2 n d -> If you are not using Yoast SEO, then you need to EDIT your
FUNCTIONS.PHP file and add the following code:

add_filter( 'amp_post_template_analytics',
 'xyz_amp_add_custom_analytics' );
function xyz_amp_add_custom_analytics( $analytics ) {
if ( ! is_array( $analytics ) ) {
$analytics = array();
}
$analytics['xyz-googleanalytics'] = array(
'type' => 'googleanalytics',
'attributes' => array(
// 'data-credentials' => 'include',
),
'config_data' => array(
'vars' => array('account' => "XX-XXXXXXX-XX"
),
'triggers' => array(
'trackPageview' => array(
'on' => 'visible',
'request' => 'pageview',
),
),
),
);
return $analytics;
}

Important: You need to add your own Google Analytics Id to replace the XX-
XXXXXXXX-XX shown in the above code segment.

For better tracking of your AMP pages it is highly recommended that you create a
separate property to measure your AMP performance. This means that you need
to go to Google Analytics and then ADMIN, open the PROPERTIES drop down and
select ADD NEW PROPERTY.
Tracking AMP with Google Analytics

Google Analytics will give you a new property-id and you can use that in your
AMP Code or Yoast AMP Plugin.

Step 4: Check your AMP implementation

There are a number of checks to make to ensure that your AMP pages look good
but also comply with AMP guidelines. This is important because if there are
errors in your implementation, Google will not take them into account.

1St Check -> Open a new browser window and navigate to one of your posts. Edit
the URL and append /AMP at the end. For example, if this is your normal URL:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/diy-seo-tutorial-for-beginners/

It will become:

https://www.reliablesoft.net/diy-seo-tutorial-for-beginners/
amp

This is how your AMP pages look like, of course, don’t forget that AMP pages are
for MOBILE ONLY so to get an accurate picture of how they look, you need to
repeat the same test on MOBILE.
2nd Check – > Install the AMP Validator Chrome Extension and then navigate to a
page that has AMP support. Click the small AMP icon to see if you have any

errors. If everything is ok, you will notice that the icon will become green.

3 rd Check – > A very important element for the success of AMP pages is
structured data. As noted in the Google AMP guidelines, AMP pages with valid
structured data may appear at the top of the results in featured snippets (that’s
position 0 in the rankings).

Structure Data and AMP

To test your structured data, go to the Google structured data testing tool,
and enter the URL of both your AMP and non-AMP pages. It is always a good idea
to have structured data on both pages.

This is how my AMP tests look like:

AMP Structured Data Testing Tool

Note: Depending on how you have implemented structured data for the desktop,
you may have to make some changes so that your AMP pages don’t have duplicate
structured data definitions.

By default, the AMP plugin will try to add structured data for ‘BlogPosting’ but
you may want to change this to ‘Article’ or ‘NewsArticle’ to match your content
better.

How to make your AMP Pages more interactive by adding Call to

Action buttons
One of the believed disadvantages of AMP pages is that they are not a good option
for websites that aim in capturing leads. While this is partially true because of the
restrictions in javascript, there are still ways to use AMP pages to get newsletter
signups or make sales.

It’s actually a pretty simple way: you can add ‘call-to-action’ buttons within your
AMP pages that will redirect users to your ‘normal’ mobile friendly page to
complete the action.

How to change the style your AMP Pages

The official AMP plugin has a very limited number of options when it comes to
styling your AMP pages. For normal blogs, the default style should be ok but in
case you need to do any styling changes, you need to add a separate in-line CSS
within your AMP code.

Simply copy this function and add it to your functions.php and use this to add CSS
classes specific for your AMP Pages.

add_action( 'amp_post_template_css',
'xyz_amp_my_additional_css_styles' );
function xyz_amp_my_additional_css_styles( $amp_template ) {
// only CSS here please...
?>
.amp-wp-meta {
display:none;
}
<?php
}

In the above example, I have chosen not to show the post metadata on the
individual AMP posts pages so I simply hide it.

KEY LEARNINGS

I have tested AMP pages on a number of websites the last few years and my
recommendation is NOT to implement AMP pages on your website but to try
and improve the appearance and speed of your mobile-friendly website.

When you start with AMP, you will need the help of a developer and unless
 you have the time and resources for that, it’s simpler to skip AMP. Your
rankings and traffic will not be affected because you don’t serve AMP pages.

Exceptions are websites that appear frequently in the Google carousel, like
News websites and Recipe blogs.

Mobile SEO Checklist

This is your Mobile SEO Checklist.

Make sure that your website passes the mobile-friendly test

Test your mobile website on different resolutions using the Chrome Device Emulator

Check the URL Inspection tool and ensure that Google can access your mobile pages without any
problems

Avoid using popups on mobile

Check that your CTA on mobile are visible and easy to access

Learn more about AMP

Implement AMP if applicable to your website

 Lesson 8

Advanced SEO

How to Perform a Content Audit

In this topic, you’ll learn what is a content audit and how to successfully run a
content audit for your website.

This is an advanced topic. It is highly recommended to go through the

Technical SEO, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO lessons of this course, as
well as, the Keyword Research Course, before reading this topic.

What is a content audit?

It’s the process of reviewing your website’s content to find pages that don’t
perform well in search and either improve them, redirect them to other pages or
remove them from your website.

These pages are known in SEO as low-quality pages.

In general, there are two types of ‘low-quality pages’: Thin content pages and
pages that don’t satisfy the user intent i.e. Pages not useful for search engines.

Why are low-quality pages bad for SEO?

Why all the fuzz about low-quality content? Aren’t search engines clever enough
to identify it and just discard it? It’s not as simple as that.

1. Reduce the overall quality of a website

For starters, when Google is evaluating the quality of a single webpage, one of the
things they consider is how many good quality pages are included in their index
from the same website.

So, having a website with lots of low content pages reduces your page rank and
Google trust.

2. Content is still king, with or without SEO

Second, in order to rank high in Google, you need to have great content that
satisfies the searcher intent.

Anything less than that will not get you anywhere close to the first page of
Google, no matter what tricks you try to deceive their algorithms.

3. Users don’t like low-quality pages

Third, even if you manage to get high rankings with low-quality content, it won’t
be of any use. Users will not trust or stay on a website that doesn’t give them
what they want and a few lines of duplicate content on a page is not what they
want.

In other words, if you intentionally publish low-quality content for the sole
purpose of improving your rankings, you are just wasting your time.

It will not work. Even if it works now, it’s only temporary. In one of the hundred
algorithmic changes that Google is doing on a yearly basis, you will get caught,
lose your rankings, imposed a penalty and possibly banned from Google.

4. Your risk in getting a Google Penalty

The changes to the Google algorithm related to identifying and devaluing low-
quality pages are now part of the on-going Google algorithm.

This means that as part of the normal process, the algorithm will check and
identify low-quality pages and remove them from the index.

Websites that have many low-quality pages may be imposed either a manual or
algorithmic penalty.
What are thin content pages?
What is really thin content? Does it have to do with word count or is it more than
that?

Thin content is content published for the sole purpose of manipulating a

page ranking and adds no real value to the user. It is short and not authentic
and no special care was taken to make it meaningful and easy to read.

Typical examples of thin content pages are auto-generated pages, doorway pages,
scraped content, keyword-stuffed pages or pages that have lines of text thrown on
a page without meaning or purpose.

What are ‘pages not useful for search engines’?

I have mentioned above that if you intentionally create thin content, you shouldn’t
have any expectations in terms of rankings.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

You may have low-quality pages published on your website not because you
wanted to, but because Google believes that they are low-quality pages.

How does Google identify low-quality pages?

Google algorithms use a number of rules to determine how valuable a page is.
Some of the things they check are:

Content originality – is the content original or an exact copy (duplicate)

found in other pages on your website or across the web?

Content formatting – does the page has a valid structure with proper
headings?

Number and type of incoming links?

The number of ads and popups – is the page full of ads or annoying
popups?

Speed – slow pages don’t provide a good experience for the users.
 Topic relevancy – how well the page content relate to the rest of the site?

Does the content tells both sides of a story or is biased?

Is the content thorough and comprehensive?

Does the content demonstrate EAT (Expertise, Authority,

Trustworthiness)?

If your pages pass the above tests successfully then Google checks how well the
page can satisfy the user intent.

This is perhaps one of the most important steps because even if you have
a page with great content but this is not what users want, then this page
is not good for Google and for you this means it’s a page that needs to be
improved.

If this sounds weird, don’t worry, it happens to all websites, especially as they
grow in content.

What can you do in those cases to protect or recover your Google rankings and
traffic?

The answer is simple (perform a content audit): You need to identify which pages
are considered by Google as ‘low-quality pages’ and fix them by either making
their content better, removing them or redirecting them to other pages on your
website.

How to Perform a Content Audit

It is recommended to perform a content audit every 6 months, even if you

don’t have any issues with low-quality pages.

Doing a content audit is easy for small websites but when you have a lot of pages,
it will take some time and effort.

Step 1: Analyze and gather data for ALL your pages

The first step is to go through your website pages one by one and try to find out:
 Pages that have little or no text content (that excludes typical pages like
the ‘Contact us’, ‘Sitemap’ etc.)

Pages that have auto-generated content

Pages that were published months ago (at least 6 months) but have no
rankings or traffic

Pages that have no backlinks or social media shares

Pages that have duplicate content (including the category and tag pages)

Landing pages with duplicate content (including pages used for PPC or
other campaigns not related to SEO)

Pages with a high bounce rate

If you have a small website, you can get the data manually by reviewing the pages
and combining data from Google Search Console and Google analytics.

If you have a lot of pages published, you need an automated way to gather the
data and for this purpose, you need a tool.

I’m using SEMRUSH for this task and in particular the Content Analyzer feature.
It’s the most complete tool available for performing a content audit fast.

The content analyzer tool gives you several details for each page including the
number of words, date content was updated, the number of visits, keywords a
page is ranking and number of backlinks.

If you don’t have a SEMRUSH account, you can gather the data using other tools
and still follow the steps below to perform your audit.

For SEMRUSH USERS:

Login to SEMRUSH and go to CONTENT ANALYZER. Go through the steps to

connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts with
SEMRUSH and run a content analysis.

Once it’s completed, it should look like this:

SEMRUSH Content Analyzer

Click the MANAGE COLUMNS button and select the following columns:

Content Update On

Words

Backlinks

Google Analytics

Google Search Console

Click the EXPORT XLSX to export the data in Excel.

For NON-SEMRUSH USERS:

You need to create a spreadsheet that will have the following columns:

Page URL, Last Update Date, Number of Words, Number of Backlinks, Number of
Sessions, Number of Search Queries.

Now that you have your data ready, the next step is to analyze and create lists of
pages that need your attention.
Step 2: Find Pages that have little or no original content
Sort your spreadsheet by word count and exclude pages like the contact us, about
us, sitemap, privacy policy, cart, checkout, my account, log in and any other
pages you have that are expected to have little or no original content.

For the remaining pages, you need to decide whether to either remove them, de-
index them but keep them on your website or improve their content.

Let’s see some examples and possible solutions:

Example 1: Product pages with no original content

If you are running an eCommerce website selling products from other vendors, it
is likely that your product descriptions are an exact copy from the manufacturer’s
website.

This is a problem. Google can easily recognize the pattern and de-value your
pages since they have nothing valuable or new to offer to the Google index or
users.

What can you do? Obviously, you can not completely remove those pages since
they are essential for your website.

What you can do instead is to try and improve the pages by adding original
content. It’s not easy to do but there is a way to do it.

Read the topic How to SEO your Product Pages for ideas.

Example 2: Pages used for navigation purposes only

There are cases where you have pages that have little content because they are
only used for navigation purposes. In this case, just de-index them by adding the
‘noindex’ header tag and remove them from your sitemap.

Example 3: Old pages with little text content

If your website is old with many pages/posts, it is normal to have some of the
pages that have content that is no longer applicable and you forgot about them.
For example, an announcement you made years ago for a product release or a
new website feature.

What can you do? You can safely remove (delete) those pages from your website
and also remove them from your sitemap. If these pages have any incoming links
or information that you believe users may still be looking for, then you can do a
‘301 Redirection’ and redirect them to the most relevant and valid page on your
website.

Example 4: Pages that have duplicate content (for example Category

pages)

Another group of pages that are most likely to have duplicate content on your
website is your category pages.

Category pages ‘get their content’ from the posts that belong to a category and
this has nothing new to offer to Google or users.

What can you do? You should NOT delete or de-index them. Category pages can
be very useful for SEO purposes so the only path to follow is to improve their
content by:

optimizing their title and meta description

Adding unique and relevant content at the top of the page

Read the following topics on how to optimize your category pages:

Category Page SEO (for blogs)

Shop Category SEO (for eCommerce Websites)

Step 3: Review your Landing Pages

Landing pages or pages that their sole purpose is to be used
for marketing campaigns and have nothing new to offer to users, can be de-
indexed and removed from your sitemap.

A word of caution: If your landing pages have original content, do not de-index
them. I’m referring to landing pages that have pieces of content copied from parts
of your website or other websites on the Internet and have nothing ‘new’ to add to
your website’s content.

Step 4: Analyze Pages that were published 6 months ago (with or

without rankings and traffic)
Sort your spreadsheet by traffic and date content was updated. We are looking for
pages that were published at least 6 months ago but have no traffic or rankings.

This is a tricky one. If you are familiar with how search engines work, you should
know that not all of your published pages will have a ranking in the search
engines index.

Search engines have to index, process and crawl billions of pages and it is normal
that the majority of your published pages will have low rankings or no rankings at
all.

Before deciding as to which pages to fix, you should consider the following fact: It
takes 6 to 8 months for a page to rank high on Google.

This means that you should exclude from your content audit, pages that were
published in less than 6 months because their true ranking position is not
confirmed yet.

For the rest of the pages, you should decide whether to:

Leave them as is

Update the content

Redirect them to another page

Delete them

Here is an overview of this process:

Overview of the Content Audit Process from Ahrefs

Case 1: Pages more than 6 months old with organic traffic.

You can manually review these pages and examine the possibility of further
improving their content.

Take the page URL and use the Performance Report in Google Search console to
find out for which keywords the particular page is ranking and at what position.

If you see that the page is ranking for keywords that are not currently part of the
content, you can naturally include them by adjusting the content.

Case 2: Pages more than 6 months old with NO organic traffic (but have
rankings)

If a page doesn’t have any first page rankings, most probably it won’t have any
traffic either. But, if it has rankings on the second or third page of Google, for any
keywords, then it has the potential of ranking.

For these pages, you need to edit your content and optimize the page for those
keywords.

This means you may have to change your title, optimize your headings and add
more content to a page that includes those keywords.

Process overview

Login to Google Search Console

Click Search Results under Performance to view the Performance Report

Select ‘Last 6 Months’ using the date filter

Click the ‘+NEW’ button to add a new page filter

Click the ‘Average Position’ button

Examine the search queries a page was shown and the average position. Change
your content to include those keywords.
Analyze for which keywords a page is ranking using Google Search Console

Case 3: Pages more than 6 months old with NO organic traffic OR

Rankings

If a page has no rankings at all then:

Either add a 301 Redirection and redirect the page to some other related
page on your website

Or take the content of that page, use it to make the content of another
page better, remove it from your site (and sitemap) and add a 301
redirection to point to the newly updated page.

Case 4: Pages more than 6 months old with NO organic traffic But with
Backlinks

If you have pages that have no traffic or rankings but they have good quality
backlinks from other websites then you can:

Either update their content using the Google Search Console performance report
(as explained above) or redirect them using a 301 to other closely related pages
on your website.

The backlinks are valuable for your domains, so you don’t want to lose them.

Case 5: Pages more than 12 months old with NO organic traffic, Rankings
OR Backlinks

If you have pages that are at least 12 months old but they don’t rank for anything
and have no backlinks, you can safely remove them.

I’ve added here 12 months and not 6 months to make sure that Google will not
change their minds and rank those pages (Unlikely to happen but you better be
sure).

Step 5: Find pages with a high bounce rate (Proactive measure)

This is a special category of pages and although they are not currently considered
as ‘low-quality pages’, it’s good to be proactive and fix the issue before Google
decides to lower their rankings.

Go to your Google Analytics account and view the Landing Pages report and then
sort the pages by bounce rate and find the ones with a high bounce rate.

Bounce Rate in Google Analytics Reports

Low bounce rate is good, high bounce rate is bad

When a page has a high bounce rate it means that users did not find what they
are looking for or did not like the page content and they left without visiting a
second page from your website.

If they went back to the search results, this is bad because Google can recognize
this and if a lot of users are having the same behavior, it will gradually lead to
lower rankings.

This is known as ‘pogo sticking’ in the SEO World.

In this case, the only solution is to try and improve the page content and make
sure that it matches the user intent. Give users exactly what promised in the title
and description of the page.

KEY LEARNINGS

The content audit process is time-consuming (especially for websites with

lots of pages), but necessary for the overall SEO healthiness of a website.

Start by identifying which pages need to be handled and for each page
decide what is the best course of action: to improve them, remove them or
redirect them to other related pages.

Here are some simple guidelines:

Pages with traffic and rankings – consider improving their content to

keep it fresh and relevant

Pages with no traffic and 2nd or 3rd-page rankings – improve their

content and monitor their progress

Pages with no traffic and no rankings at all (more than 12 months old)
– you can safely remove them

Thin content pages – you can safely remove them or de-index them

Keep track of your changes and always have in mind that it’s better to have a
website with 100 top quality pages than a website with 1000 low-quality
 pages.

Finally, don’t forget that prevention is always better than cure.

In this context, it means two things:

First, to improve any of your pages that are likely to be considered as low-
quality pages and be a step ahead of Google.

Second, to be more careful in the future and only publish high-quality

evergreen content on your website so that you don’t have to go through the
time-consuming process or reviewing and improving low content pages.

How to Create an SEO Strategy

In this topic, you’ll learn how to create an SEO strategy. It includes an action plan
you can replicate and get results in the fastest possible way.

This is an advanced topic. It is highly recommended to go through the

Technical SEO, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO lessons of this course, as
well as, the Keyword Research Course, before reading this topic.

What is SEO strategy?

An SEO strategy is a high-level plan of action to achieve higher rankings in search
engines for the keywords that matter for your website.

From the above definition you should note two things:

A strategy MUST include an action plan

Your ultimate goal is not just to rank for any keywords BUT for the
keywords that are important for your website.
Why is an SEO Strategy important?

If you don’t have a specific blueprint to follow, you will end up ranking for the
wrong keywords or with no rankings at all. Either way, this is not what you want.

I always tell my students and clients that doing SEO without a solid plan, is like
driving with your eyes closed. You still move forward but it’s a matter of time to
hit a wall or engage in an accident.

So, your action plan should focus on how to get higher rankings and traffic for the
keywords you want and not for any keywords, and we will see below how to
achieve this.

Step 1: Get to know your niche and competitors

Step 2: Get to know your website

Step 3: Start an SEO Log file

Step 4: Perform a Technical SEO Audit of your website

Step 5: Identity for which Keywords to create pillar content

Step 6: Build Topic Relevancy (supporting articles)

Step 7: Master On-Page SEO Optimization

Step 8: Perform a Content audit

Step 9: Promote your brand online

Step 10: Create a link-building plan

Step 11: Measure SEO results Correctly

Step 1: Get to know your niche and competitors

For many people, this can be a surprising first step but I will explain below why
this should be your first course of action.

It is more than certain that hundreds of websites are competing for the same
keywords as you.

Some of these websites may have more pages indexed, more content and a
stronger link profile.
 Can you compete with them?

Does it worth spending time, money and effort to outrank them?

What is the potential benefit (in terms of traffic), if you get top positions
for the keywords you are targeting?

Getting the right answers to the above questions, will help you adjust your SEO
strategy accordingly.

For example, after analyzing your competitor’s rankings, you may find out that
the traffic for one of your target keywords is less than what keyword research
tools are showing.

From my experience, this is a very common scenario. Keyword tools tend to get
the numbers (search volume) for a keyword wrong, especially for low volume
keywords.

What is the problem with that?

You will end up targeting keywords that won’t get you the expected levels of
traffic and you might be ignoring keywords that can generate targeted traffic.

A better way to get a more accurate picture of which keywords to target, is to

analyze the traffic of the webpage that ranks in the first position of Google for a
particular keyword.

You can use SEMRUSH (or other similar tools) to find out the rankings and
traffic of any website for any keyword.

Analyze your competitors’ rankings and find out their top ranking keywords and pages.
A correct analysis will give you a better indication if this is a keyword worth
targeting.

This finding alone can help you change your strategy and go after other more
popular keywords (that you might don’t know before).

Here is your action plan for this step.

Action Plan

Use SEMRUSH or your favorite competitor analysis tool and find out
which websites rank in the top 5 positions of Google for the keywords you
are targeting.

For each website find out their top-ranking pages.

For each of their top-ranking pages find out how much traffic they get per
keyword.

Analyze each ranking-page and take note of the title of the page,
description, type, and length of the content.

Add this information into a spreadsheet (we will use it later in Step 5).

Step 2: Get to know your website

Once you have a clear idea of who you have to compete with, the next step is to
create a detailed report about your website.

Why?

Knowing where you stand in comparison to your competitors, will help you set up
realistic SEO goals.

At this stage what you are looking for is answers to the following questions:

How much SEO traffic you get per day

Your most popular landing pages (organic)

Which keywords drive traffic to your website

 Your ranking position for the keywords you would like to improve

Add this information into a spreadsheet and try to compare your performance
with your closest competitors.

If you have a SEMRUSH subscription, you can use the Keyword Gap report to
get this information in a table format that is easy to analyze.

Keyword Gap Analysis Report

At the end of this step, you should have a list of keywords that includes:

Keywords that you are already ranking high and get traffic

Keywords that you would like to rank high

Keywords that your competitors get traffic but you don’t.

Action Plan

Login to Google search console and using the performance report to find
out for which keywords you are ranking in Google.

Use Google Analytics to find your top organic landing pages

Add this information into the spreadsheet created in Step 1.

Use the Keyword Gap report of SEMRUSH (or any other tool you are
using), to compare your rankings with close competitors.
Step 3: Start an SEO Log File
Now that you are past the phase of analyzing your competitors and your website,
the next step before start making any changes to your website is to start an SEO
Log.

What is an SEO Log? It’s a simple spreadsheet to take note of all SEO related
changes you will be made to your website.

Why is this important? SEO takes time to work and the only way to keep track of
your changes and their impact on your SEO is to know what you have changed
and when.

Example of an SEO Log File

I use Google sheets for this and my log has a very simple structure (date, SEO
change made, comments).

Action Plan

Create a new spreadsheet (or text file) to record all the changes you make
to your website.

Step 4: Perform a Technical SEO Audit of your website

The next step is to get your hands dirty and start evaluating the technical SEO
performance of your website by performing a technical SEO audit.

What is a technical SEO audit? Is the process to follow to check that the
technical SEO infrastructure of your website has no issues.
Through a technical SEO audit, you will ensure that search engines can index
your content without any problems.

The most important things to check are:

Crawl errors

Robots.txt optimization

XML Sitemap optimization

Website Speed

Use of Canonical URLs

Mobile-friendliness

Correct use of HTTPS

Correct use of structured data markup (very popular these days)

Action Plan

Revisit the Technical SEO lesson and go through the checklist to

perform a technical SEO audit of your website.

Create a list of items that need to be fixed/optimized.

Step 5: Identity for which Keywords to create pillar

content
Keyword research is a very important component of your SEO strategy. This is the
part to combine the information gathered in Step 1 and Step 2 with a
comprehensive keyword research analysis.

Let me explain how this works.

In Step 1 you have identified which keywords bring traffic to your competitors
and in step 2 you have identified which keywords bring traffic to your website.

Now, it’s time to use this information and create your master keyword list. The
list should include:
 The keywords that you already knew and are important for your business

Keywords that you didn’t know about but your competitors are getting
traffic

Keywords you are already ranking (and are important for your business)

In other words, your master list has ALL the IMPORTANT keywords you want to
rank for.

The next step is to sort the list by volume of traffic. The top 10 Keywords of the
list are the most valuable keywords for your business and these are the keywords
to use to create pillar content.

The Content Marketing Course explains the concept of pillar pages and
content clusters in detail.

What is Pillar content?

It’s content that targets a particular keyword (or phrase) and has the following
characteristics:

The content is unique and thorough

It is linked to from your homepage

It has internal links from other related articles on your website

It has incoming links from other websites

It’s the content you want to rank as high as possible in search engines

It is well-formatted

It’s content you are really proud of.

It’s better content that what is already ranking on Google

Why use the concept of having pillar content and not treat all content
equally?
The first reason is that you cannot rank for everything you want. The competition
is so big for any keyword that it is impossible for one website to rank for all the
important keywords of a niche.

So, instead of targeting all possible keywords and hope for the best results, you
can follow this strategy and increase your chances of ranking for the keywords
you really want.

When evaluating a website, search engines are looking for the best available
content on a particular website. These are the pages that usually have better
rankings than the rest of the website pages.

By giving more attention to specific articles or pages, it’s like giving search
engines clues about the keywords you want to be known for.

If this is backed up with social shares, comments, and incoming links, you will
eventually be able to rank higher for the keywords that are important for your
business.

Action Plan

Create your MASTER keyword list.

Identify keywords to target with Pillar Content.

Create a plan to create pillar content articles.

Create a plan on how to promote your pillar content articles (after

publication).

Step 6: Build Topic Relevancy – Identify Long Tail

keywords (supporting articles)
In Step 5 you identified the top 10 keywords from your master list and created
top-notch content (pillar content) to target each and every keyword in the list.

The next step is to re-analyze those keywords one by one and find long-tail
keywords you can target.

By doing so, you will be able to:

 Make your pillar content stronger (by adding more internal links)

Get more search engine traffic since long-tail keywords have less
competition and are easier to target.

In addition, it gives you the opportunity to build topic relevancy – something very
important if you are targeting high volume competitive keywords.

If you search for any high-volume keyword on Google and take a few minutes to
analyze the top results you will find out that Google tends to rank websites that
have a lot of good content about a specific topic (and not just keyword).

For example, if you search for content marketing you will notice that
contentmarketinginstitute.com dominates the results.

Achieve SERP Domination with Topical Relevancy

One of the reasons is that over time, they managed to build topic relevancy
around content marketing and this helps them rank high for that term and a lot of
other related keywords.
 The Keyword Research Course explains the keyword research process in
detail.

Here is the process to follow to find long-tail keywords:

Method 1

Search Google using your target keyword and scroll down to the “People also ask”
section and to the “Related Searches”.

For example, if you enter “search engine marketing” into Google you get the
following the ‘People also ask section’.

Longtail keyword Opportunities

And this in the ‘Related Searches’ section:

Longtail keyword Opportunities

The highlighted search phrases are perfect candidates for creating articles
targeting long-tail keywords.

Assuming that you already have a pillar article on search engine marketing, you
can add internal links from the supporting articles to make your pillar content
stronger.

Method 2

Use the TOPIC RESEARCH function of SEMRUSH.

SEMRUSH is a great tool for keyword research. One of the functions they have is
called TOPIC RESEARCH. Basically, you enter a keyword and the tool will give
you a lot of ideas of long-tail keywords you can target related to your main
keyword.
Topic Research with SEMRUSH

What you should do with the long tail keywords?

Create articles targeting the different keywords

In your articles, make sure you add an internal link to your pillar article
with a relevant anchor text.

Promote your articles as usual.

Here is a recap of steps 5 and 6 to make it easier to understand.

For each of the high traffic keywords that are important for your business,
you create a pillar article.

For each keyword, you also identify long-tail keywords.

You create articles targeting long-tail keywords (supporting articles).

Within the supporting articles, you link back to the pillar article.

Action Plan

Do your keyword research and for each of your top 10 keywords, find 3-4
long-tail keywords you can target.

Create a plan to publish articles targeting long-tail keywords.

 Create a plan to promote your articles.

Step 7: Master On-Page SEO Optimization

While creating content for your pillar and supporting articles, you need to ensure
that your on-page SEO is optimized to the fullest.

The primary goal of on-page SEO is to help search engines understand your
content and its meaning.

With on-page SEO you deal with things like:

Optimizing your titles

Optimizing your meta descriptions

Optimizing your H1 tag and headings

Proper usage of keywords within the content of a page

Image SEO and Video Optimization

Efficient use of internal links

Action Plan

Revisit the On-Page SEO Lesson and optimize your website for on-page
SEO.

Review all your website pages and optimize your on-page SEO

Step 8: Perform a Content audit

Besides creating new content, one of the tasks you need to perform to make sure
that your existing content is in sync with your SEO goals is a content audit.

A content audit is a process to follow to analyze each and every page of your
website and decide whether:

To remove content
 Improve content

Re-publish content

Merge content together

The overall goal of a content audit is to make a website stronger by eliminating

pages that have no rankings, traffic, or links.

Action Plan

View the content audit topic and perform a content audit.

Step 9: Promote your brand online

If you have reached this point and you are ready to work on Step 9 it means that:

Your website is optimized for technical SEO

You have reviewed your on-page SEO

You have a plan in place for creating pillar content

You have a plan in place for creating supporting content

You have performed a content audit and removed all low-quality pages
from your website.

To get noticed by Google, you need backlinks and brand mentions.

Let’s start with brand mentions first and deal with link building in step 10.

Why are brand mentions important for modern SEO?

If you ask any SEO expert he will tell you that links are still important for
achieving high rankings in Google.

While this is true, there is also a new form of earning the trust of search engine
algorithms and this is through brand mentions.

How is brand mentions different from SEO links?

 A brand mention doesn’t necessarily include a link back to your website

It can happen in any online medium like Facebook and other social
networks

The link (if any), can be nofollow.

How can link-less mentions help rankings?

Search engines can identify brand mentions which translates to stronger site
authority. It’s not as powerful as high-quality links but it’s a factor considered by
all major search engines, including Google.

Gary Illyes (Google Webmaster Trends Analyst) mentioned the effectiveness of the
brand mentions several times. Here is a quote from his keynote at Brighton SEO:

Importance of Brand Mentions in Rankings

What does this mean for your SEO Strategy?

Three things:

You need to track all kinds of brand mentions and try to increase them

You need to expand your strategy and go after brand mentions and not
just links. Social Media networks and guest posting on high authority
websites are a great place to start.

You need to try and convert some of those mentions to links.

Action Plan

Use a tool to track mentions of your brand across the web (SEMRUSH is a
good choice).

Make sure that your brand reputation is high on all networks. Reply to any
comments and follow up on any complaints.
 Use an outreach campaign to convert brand mentions to links

Start guest posting on high authority websites, even if they nofollow the
links.

Step 10: Create a link-building plan

While working on your brand promotion, you should also start thinking about
links.

I know from experience that link building is one of the most complicated and
difficult areas of SEO.

The thing is, you need to get links if you want to get TOP rankings for your target
keywords.

This is how it works:

Great content can get you to the FIRST page of Google BUT great content
with good incoming links from other websites can get you to the TOP
positions of Google.

Do you see the difference?

You don’t necessarily need backlinks to have a presence on the first page of
Google but you definitely need links to get to the top and get a bigger share of
SEO traffic.

How can you get those precious links?

Think about it this way, why should someone recommend your website to their
audience by adding a link in their content? The answer is simple:

The webmaster should be aware of your website’s existence in the first

place.

It has to offer something great to their audience

What does this mean in simple words?

For someone to link to you, they need to know about you. If you don’t have high
rankings in Google for topics they search for and if you don’t actively promote
your website in the various social networks they hang out, how can they know
that you exist?

This also means that they don’t only need to know about you, but be impressed
with your content so that they will naturally recommend it to their audience.

In the SEO World, the recommendation is expressed through a link.

How can you solve these problems?

By publishing link-worthy content – Re-visit the pillar content criteria as

explained in Step 5.

By reaching out to other webmasters, either by email or making

connections with them in social networks.

Action Plan

Revisit the Off-Page SEO Lesson and create a link building plan which
includes (blogger outreach campaigns, social media campaigns)

Step 11: Measure SEO results Correctly

When implementing any strategy, it is important to have a reliable progress
tracking system in place.

When it comes to measuring the results of an SEO strategy, you need to ensure
that:

You have an accurate picture of your rankings and traffic before starting
the implementation of your plan.

You have an SEO Log (Step 3 above), to track ALL changes made to your
website
 You are measuring the right KPIs.

It is essential that you keep track of the dates Google is deploying changes to
their ranking algorithm and analyze the impact by comparing your SEO statistics
before and after the changes.

Action Plan

Familiarize yourself with key Google Analytics reports

Don’t forget to update your SEO log with all changes made to your website

Keep track of Google algorithmic changes

Analyze your rankings and traffic before and after any change

SEO ACTION PLAN

Use SEMRUSH or your favorite competitor analysis tool and find out
which websites rank in the top 5 positions of Google for the keywords
you are targeting.

For each website find out their top-ranking pages.

For each of their top-ranking pages find out how much traffic they get
per keyword.

Analyze each ranking-page and take note of the title of the page,
description, type, and length of the content.

Login to Google search console and using the performance report to

find out for which keywords you are ranking in Google.

Use Google Analytics to find your top organic landing pages

Use the Keyword Gap report of SEMRUSH (or any other tool you are
using), to compare your rankings with close competitors.

Create a new spreadsheet (or text file) to record all the changes you
make to your website.

Revisit the Technical SEO lesson and go through the checklist to

perform a technical SEO audit of your website.

Create a list of items that need to be fixed/optimized.

Create your MASTER keyword list.

Identify keywords to target with Pillar Content.

Create a plan to create pillar content articles.

Create a plan on how to promote your pillar content articles (after

publication).

Do your keyword research and for each of your top 10 keywords, find
3-4 long-tail keywords you can target.

Create a plan to publish articles targeting long-tail keywords.

Create a plan to promote your articles.

Revisit the On-Page SEO Lesson and optimize your website for on-
page SEO.

Perform a content audit and remove or improve low-quality pages

from your website.

Use a tool to track mentions of your brand across the web.

Make sure that your brand reputation is high on all networks. Reply
to any comments and follow up on any complaints.

Use an outreach campaign to convert brand mentions to links

Start guest posting on high authority websites, even if they nofollow

the links.

Revisit the Off-Page SEO Lesson and create a link building plan which
includes (blogger outreach campaigns, social media campaigns)
How to Create Linkable Content

In this topic, you’ll learn how to create linkable content.

The best way to get more backlinks, mentions, and shares is to write content
that deserves to be mentioned, linked back to and shared!

Let’s look more in-depth at how content earns links, and how you can engineer
your own content to do the link building all on its own.

Get your own data

Unsourced data won’t fly in the blogging world anymore. We’re obsessed with
authority and solid research, and that means that if you write content with
valuable data, anyone who wants to talk about it has to link it.

In Moz and Buzzsumo’s report on the correlation between links and shares, they
found “people prefer to link to content that is evidence or data-backed and in
particular research content that provides new insights”.

The content with the highest links: shares ratio was content that provided unique
research.

Often, you’ll find that when a company releases an important study, it will get
covered by a lot of journalists and therefore earn links from a ton of high
authority sites.

Check this out, for example.

Research studies get mentions from media.

I found a study from Nielsen linked in TechCrunch and went to check out the
backlink profile. Not only has this data been covered in TechCrunch and
referenced over 500 times across the internet, but it also has links back from
some of the most prestigious sites in the world:

Link analysis in ahrefs.

Since original research has the potential to be shared heavily, that also means
more exposure and, in turn, more links. Part of the secret of writing content that
gets links is writing content that gets shares.

Write a kick-ass headline

Advertising legend David Ogilvy famously quipped that ‘when you have written
your headline, you have spent 80 cents of your dollar’. I’m unsure how he could
have made such an accurate statement 40 years before the advent of Google
Analytics, but it turns out to be completely true in that on average, for every 100
people that see your headline, only 20 will read more.

Putting on your conversion optimization hat, it’s easy to see that all you need to
do to get more exposure and introduce your content to people that are likely to
link it is to up the conversion rate of the headline.

Easier said than done, but it’s actually a well tested and highly formulaic practice
with lots of data around to back up the facts.

Let’s go back to the golden age with an example set of maxims from John Caples’
1932 bible for marketers Tested Advertising Methods. In it, he lays down a few
laws he’s learned in his time, including:

What you say is more important than how you say it

The headline is the most important element in most advertisements

The most effective headlines appeal to the reader’s self-interest or give

news

Long headlines that say something are more effective than short headlines
that say nothing

Specifics are more believable than generalities

By drafting and redrafting your headline and including words that elicit emotion
from your reader, you’ll learn how to write great headlines.

“If you have time to write as many as 25 headlines, you increase still further
your chances of writing a good one. Put the headlines away and read them over
the next day. Try to take the point of view of the bored customer. Try to decide
which headline would be most likely to stop you if you were turning the pages
of a magazine or a newspaper and you were not interested in the advertising at
 all” — John Caples

Make it interesting, unique, and actionable

If I can’t make an article interesting, unique and actionable, I’m not going to write
it. What would be the point? Something boring, tired, and theoretical will be a
waste of keystrokes. These three elements are the base components of content
that rise above everything else out there.

Over 75% of content gets zero links, and that’s why you never see it. The
laws of the marketing universe obey the Pareto principle as always, stating
that 20% of the content will get 80% of the links.

Why does it happen like that? Well, it’s because the majority of the content is
terrible. If you’ve ever searched for resources on anything but the most
sensationalized topics, you’re going to find a whole heap of unreadable dross from
sites last updated in 2005.

They get away with it because they’re the best of a bad bunch. But if you’re going
after links, and targeting a wide audience with your content, your writing can’t be
anything other than interesting, unique, and actionable.

Interesting

To make an article interesting, it’s mostly about the tone and subject matter. Do
you have an opinion, a story, or a fresh take on a topic that has proven itself
popular? I hope so because you’re going to need it to not risk being a bore.

Unique

To make an article unique, it will need to have a personal side to it or preferably

some original data. Have you analyzed email copy from hundreds of sources, or
perhaps surveyed all of the farmers in your area to find which brand of pesticide
they use? Or maybe you have a success story to share?

Actionable
To make an article actionable, you need to tell the reader what to do with the
information you’re giving them. A theoretical article is all well and good, but if the
reader feels as they’re able to take away the techniques you’ve given them and
make positive change, you’re going to get more shares, attention, and links.

Make it authoritative and well-sourced

A big part of providing content that deserves links is providing authoritative
sources for your information.

There are very few people in the world that are qualified to write articles telling
people what to do without a basis for the information. They’re mostly PhDs and
published experts. I’m not one, and I doubt you are either, so you need to collate
existing knowledge and display it in a readable and useful way, with an
interesting and original twist.

Plus, outbound links do wonders for your SEO so you’d be hurting yourself in
more than one way if you didn’t. If you link back to other bloggers and companies,
they’re going to be inclined to return the favor.

For example, you should notify the mentions that they’ve been linked in your post
using email or Twitter. This will put your content on their radar and they might
consider promoting it further.

Write over 2,000 words

You can’t adequately cover a topic worth writing about in less than 2,000 words.
If you don’t believe me, believe Google instead. Google gives ranking priority to
articles around 2,400 words in length.

When you’re writing long-form content, you’re also able to take advantage of tons
of extra benefits, including increased time on page and high shareability.

And not only are you helping your on-page SEO, but you’re also providing more
detail, viewpoints and value on one page, which in turn will help you get links
back.

There’s a reason why long-form content ranks on the first page, and that’s
because it gets links! Even if you feel the topic you’ve covered is too narrow to
write 2,000 words on, there will always be another point of view you can consider
and add to your overall argument. And for list posts, it’s easy: just add more items
to the list.

Use original design (infographics, charts)

First impressions count for a hell of a lot when you’re trying to grab the attention
of internet readers. In fact, Xerox found that colored illustrations can lead to more
people reading a post by 80%.

Not only this but when you create original visuals, you’re upping your
chance to get links. Just like original data, this is material unavailable
elsewhere on the web, so if a blogger wants to reference the image, they’re
going to have to source and link you.

Examples of original visuals you could create include:

Infographics

Quote visuals

Charts

Presentation slides

Screenshots

While you might not get a link for originality in the article itself, you could just get
a link back for the image. This means that every single article you write, data-
driven or not, is an opportunity for a link.

You can increase brand awareness further by adding a logo to the image or leave
it plain to increase the chances that another site will use it without it feeling off-
brand for them.

Make it evergreen
Evergreen content is the opposite of news. While today’s news is tomorrow’s fish
and chips wrapping paper, evergreen content lives on forever.

And because it’s able to stay relevant to subjects people are talking about for a
long time, it’s going to be a more linkable resource than this week’s hot news
story.

Even though a New York Times article gets over 3,000 shares on average, it only
gets 7 links. Seven links seem pretty poor for an article from such a big outlet, but
when you think about it, what kind of evergreen article would any of these stories
be linked in?

Unless you’re a Donald Trump blogger, you’re not going to really find much here
you could source, especially when the data will have come from a separate
primary source anyway.

LINKABLE CONTENT CHECKLIST

To summarize, when you write your next piece of content make sure that it
ticks the majority of these boxes:

Includes original data

Interesting

Useful

Actionable

Evergreen

Includes original visuals

All sources backed up

How to Get Google Sitelinks

In this topic, you’ll learn what are sitelinks, why they are important and how to
get Google sitelinks for your website.

Sitelinks can improve the appearance of your snippet in Google search results and
this means higher Click-Through Rates (CTR) and more traffic.

Although you cannot directly specify sitelinks (they are automated by the
Google algorithm), there are a number of ways to help Google pick the right
sitelinks for your website.

What are sitelinks?

Sitelinks are links shown below the description of your snippet in Google Search
Results that point to other pages on your website.

Sitelinks are automated by the Google algorithms and are only shown when they
are useful to the user.

Here is an example of sitelinks:

Sitelinks in Google Search Results

When you search for our company name in Google [reliablesoft], below the site
title and description you will see links pointing to what Google believes are the
most useful pages of our website.

Sitelinks are typically shown when you search for a brand name on Google but
they are also shown for individual posts.

Here is another example:

Post sitelinks in Google Search Results

As you can see in the example above, besides the post title and description,
Google also shows several links that point to sections within the same post.

Anatomy of Google Search Snippets

To help you understand how sitelinks work, let us quickly examine the different
parts that make a results snippet.

A Google search snippet consists of the following parts:

Title

URL

Description

Sitelinks

For the first three parts, there are ways to control their appearance.

As part of your on-page SEO, you can optimize your titles, make your URLs
 SEO Friendly and provide for better descriptions.

For the last part, you cannot directly select what is shown as a sitelink. It’s up to
Google to decide whether to show or not sitelinks for the particular search query.

In other words, Google may show sitelinks for a website for certain queries only,
if their algorithm believes that it will be useful to the users.

Why are sitelinks important?

When Google decides to show sitelinks along with your search snippet, there are
a number of advantages.

Increase in Click-Through Rates (CTR)

Sitelinks increase the amount of space your entry occupies in the search results
and this means more visibility and higher CTRs.

The concept is similar to sitelinks you can add through ad extensions in Google
AdWords when running PPC Campaigns.

By adding sitelinks and other extensions, you increase the space of your ads and
the possibilities of being seen by users.

Get visits to internal pages and not just the homepage

When sitelinks are shown for your brand name, users can directly go to your inner
pages without having to visit your homepage.

This provides users with a better experience and you get traffic to the pages that
are more important for your business/website.

Users don’t have to enter your website and find their way to your product or sales
pages, they can click and go directly from the search results.

It’s a signal of Google trust

Google does not show sitelinks for all websites. The fact that it may decide to
show sitelinks when users search for your domain name or for particular queries,
it’s a signal of trust.
This is good for your SEO and also your business’s reputation on the Internet.

Sitelinks improve brand awareness

When users search for your brand name in Google and see a list of sitelinks, then
immediately they can learn more about your business, products, and services
without having to search for this info on your website.

For example, when you search for our brand name, you can see at a glance that
besides Digital Marketing Services, we are also offering an SEO Course.

Example of Sitelinks to product pages

This is information that most people wouldn’t know otherwise unless they visited
one of the inner pages of our website.

How to create Google sitelinks for your Website?

I have mentioned several times above that you cannot directly specify which
pages Google should use as sitelinks. They are chosen automatically by the
Google algorithm based on the user query.

Nevertheless, there are a number of things you can do to help Google understand
your site structure and content and this, in turn, increases your chances of
getting sitelinks in the search results.
 Make sure that you can rank for your brand name

Create a simple and easy to understand site structure

Link important pages from your homepage

Define proper titles and descriptions for sitelink candidate pages

Use internal linking to help Google identify your important pages

Add sitelink candidate pages in your sidebar

Add a table of contents for long-form posts with in-page links

Optimize your website for technical and on-page SEO

Make sure that you can rank for your brand name
In the majority of cases, this is easy to do. When you search Google for your brand
name, you should normally appear on top of the results.

Here is an example when you search for caloriesecrets, which is one of our fitness
blogs.

Sitelinks for Brand Terms

If this is not happening then you need to:

Check your robots.txt and make sure that Google can access and index
your website without any problems.

Make sure that your brand name is included in your homepage title.

Make sure that your brand name is visible as text on your homepage and
it’s wrapped with the HTML h1 tag.

Make sure that your homepage has enough text content with information
about your brand.

Create a simple and easy to understand site structure

The site structure is perhaps the most important factor when it comes to sitelinks.
You need to provide Google and your users with a simple and easy to follow site
structure.

In many cases, Google will create the sitelinks from items in your menu so you
need to make sure that:

Your website has a hierarchical site structure with no more than 3 levels.

The menu of your website replicates the site structure. Don’t provide users
with a different menu than your structure. These two have to be in-synch
for the best results.

The most important pages of your website (and pages you want to show as
sitelinks) are included in your main menu.

Here is a part of the Google guidelines on sitelinks:

Sitelink Guidelines by Google

Link important pages from your homepage
Besides adding sitelink candidate pages in your menu, you should also add text
links pointing to them from your homepage.

For example, if you visit our homepage, you will notice that we have links pointing
to all our services page.

Links should not be wrapped in images but they should be in text, otherwise,
Google will not understand them.

Also, make sure that you use proper anchor text for the links.

For example, if you want to link to your Services page from your homepage, use
the word “Services” or “Digital Marketing Services” and not something else.

Define proper titles and descriptions for sitelink candidate pages

Besides using the proper anchor text when linking to key pages, it’s also
important to use the correct page titles and meta descriptions on those pages.

For example, if you want your ABOUT US page to appear as a sitelink in Google,
make sure that the title of the page is ABOUT US and not anything else and that it
has a good meta description.

Use internal linking to help Google identify your important pages

One of the most powerful ways to help Google pick pages from your website and
use them as sitelinks is through internal linking.

Internal linking is great for SEO as it enhances the user experience and this, in
turn, creates a number of added advantages.

The rules are simple:

Use text to create your internal links

Use proper anchor text

Build more internal links to the pages you want to appear as sitelinks. In
other words, the pages that have many internal links pointing to them, are
likely to appear as sitelinks.
You can check the internal links report in Google Search Console to see the
number of internal links per page.

Internal Links Report

Add sitelink candidate pages in your sidebar

Most websites have sidebars for their internal pages and one of the best uses of a
sidebar is to use it to redirect both users and Google to visit the pages you want.

Look at my sidebar for example. One of the elements is the “Popular Guides”
widget which includes a list of posts that appear high in the Google search results
and are also the most popular (in terms of shares, comments) amongst my
readers.

The fact that this widget appears on all my posts, sends the signal to Google that
these are some of the most important pages of the site and no wonder that they
also appear as sitelinks (depending on the user query).

Add a table of contents for long-form posts with in-page links

I have mentioned above that sitelinks can appear for individual posts and not just
for the homepage or brand-related terms.

One way to increase your chances of getting a sitelink for your posts is to add a
table of contents at the top of the post with links pointing to sections on the same
page.
Table of Contents helps in getting sitelinks

The same rules apply as in the case of internal linking i.e. use proper anchor text
for the links and use text links and not images.

Optimize your website for technical and on-page SEO

It goes without saying that in order for Google to trust your website and give you
more space in the search results, your website has to be of high quality.

This means that you need to work on your technical SEO and on-page SEO and
make sure that everything is optimized as it should be.

Google will not show sitelinks for websites that have low-quality content or
participate in any sort of spam behavior.

Sitelinks FAQ
What you should know about sitelinks on mobile?

With the introduction of the mobile-first index, Google will treat mobile pages in a
slightly different way than desktop.

If you have a responsive website then you have nothing to worry about, if not then
you need to make sure that the content and structure of your mobile website are
the same (or very similar) as the desktop.

Any links you have on the desktop homepage should be on your mobile homepage
as well, otherwise, Google may not show the same sitelinks for mobile users.
Can I remove sitelinks from Google Search?

As of October 2016, this is not possible. In the past, you could remove sitelinks
using the “Demote Sitelinks” settings in Google Search Console but this option is
no longer available.

According to Google, if you want to remove a page from appearing in sitelinks,

you should remove it completely from Google search by adding a “noindex” meta
tag.

How can I get sitelinks searchbox to appear with my snippet?

One of the features that can enhance the appearance of your sitelinks is the
search box.

Look at the example below:

Sitelinks Search Box

Google is showing the search box as part of a site’s sitelinks.

In order to get a search box in the search result pages, you need to have a
working search engine installed on your website and add the right structured
data markup.
 KEY LEARNINGS

Sitelinks can dramatically improve the appearance of your snippet in Google

search results. This translates to more clicks and traffic to your website.

Although you cannot specify which pages you want to appear as sitelinks,
there are a number of techniques you can follow to help Google make the
correct choices.

If you follow solid SEO practices, then it is almost guaranteed that Google
will show sitelinks for searches related to your brand name.

And if you get your SEO correct for your posts and pages, you may get
sitelinks for individual posts as well.

How to Get a Google Featured Snippet

Wouldn’t be nice if you could rank at position zero in Google? Is this even
possible? The answer is yes and that’s through ‘Google Featured Snippets’.

In this post you will learn what is a featured snippet, how to optimize your content
so that it’s eligible to show in Google’s featured snippet box and how to check if
your website already has a featured snippet entry.

What is a Google featured snippet?

A ‘featured snippet box’ is a relatively new feature introduced by Google to help
the searcher find answers faster without having to visit any website. Or at least to
get an idea of a possible answer and then visit the website for more information.

Featured Snippets are used in many cases, especially when there is one direct
answer for a question or a set of steps to follow.

For example, open Google and search for “How to become an SEO Expert” and
you will see a set of instructions and an image.

Example of a Google Featured Snippet

Featured snippets are also available on mobile and they come in different formats
and styles.

It is obvious from the above screenshot that websites appearing in the featured
snippet box have a big advantage over the other websites present in the first page
of the SERPS, in terms of CTR (Click Through Rate).

A large percentage of users will click the featured snippet and not scroll down to
the rest of the results.

What is more interesting though is that Google may show a website in a featured
snippet box, even if it is less ‘powerful’ than other websites.

To understand what I mean, search Google for “off page SEO”.

You will see that the featured snippet is occupied by reliablesoft.net although it is
not as strong and big as moz.com or neilpatel.com
How to find out if your website ranks for featured
snippets?
The first thing to do before start thinking how you can take advantage of featured
snippets is to check if your website has any rankings at position 0.

There are 2 ways to do this, the first is the ‘manual way’, by checking your Google
Search Console reports and the second way is through a tool (SEM Rush).

Google Search Console (Search Results Report)

Although this method is manual and a bit time consuming since it requires
digging into your search results report, it can still help you discover any featured
snippet rankings.

Login to your Google Search Console and find ‘Search Results Report’
located under Performance.

Make sure you check ‘clicks’, ‘CTR’ and ‘Position’ from the top menu and
view the data for a 90-day period.

Sort by ‘Position’ and study the clicks and CTR.

Search terms that are candidates for featured snippets are those that rank
in positions 1-5 in Google and have a high CTR.

Open a new browser window, go to Google and search for those queries
and see if it shows a featured snippet for your pages.

As mentioned above, if you find this method time consuming, then go with the
second option.

Tracking featured snippets through SEM Rush

SEM Rush recently added a feature for showing how a domain ranks for various
SERP Features, one of them being Google Featured snippets.

Login to SEM Rush and type your domain in the Search bar and click SEARCH.

Under ‘Organic Research’, click POSITIONS.

Use the ADVANCED FILTERS to show only FEATURED SNIPPET in the results.
Tracking Featured Snippets with SEMRUSH

To confirm that the results are valid, open a new browser window, navigate to
Google and search for the particular keyword(s).

Note: You can also use this function to check a competitor’s domain and not just
your own.

How to rank in Google’s Featured Snippet

Before getting into how you can optimize your content for Google’s featured
snippet box, it should be made clear from the beginning that even if you follow
the guidelines below, it’s not 100% certain that you will get a featured snippet
entry.

As in other things in SEO, by optimizing your content for particular features, you
increase your chances but that’s not a guarantee.

Nevertheless, the benefits of ranking at position zero are a lot, so this is definitely
something worth a try.

1. Summarize the answer of a question (or query) in

one paragraph
After analyzing the examples from my website, I concluded that Google picks a
paragraph of text (or parts of it) from the page content, that summarizes the
answer.

It doesn’t have to be the first paragraph of text but it should be high enough in
the page.

Don’t forget that Google always considers that the important parts of a page are
positioned higher in the content, towards the top.

I also studied examples of featured snippets from other websites and it looks like
Google follows this pattern i.e. ‘picking’ a paragraph of text that provides a
direct answer to a question or definition.

Check for example the following by searching Google for: ‘on-page seo’, ‘link
building’, ‘content marketing’.

If you compare the results, you will notice that it’s like answering a quiz
(remember your high school great times) by providing an answer to a question in
a couple of lines.

2. Achieve a first page ranking

In order to be eligible to show in a featured snippet you need to rank on the first
positions of the SERPS but not necessarily at the top position.

This also implies that in order to get high rankings you need to have a solid
backlink profile but it doesn’t have to be the strongest compared to the rest of
the pages (or domains) that rank in the first 5 positions.

If you try different queries you will see that Google may show a featured snippet
from a page that ranks on position 3 or 4 and not always from the page that
shows in position 1.

Also, it looks like Google can reward a single page with a featured snippet
regardless of the domain authority.

In the example of ‘off page SEO’ shown above, moz.com, neilpatel.com are much
stronger domains than mine but still Google considers my page as more suitable
for a featured snippet.

3. Optimize your Page Structure and headings

Having a clear page structure does matter.

Best on-page SEO practices like having one H1 tag for the title of the page and
then H2 and H3 for the subheadings together with <p> for the text is important.

Google has to understand a page correctly before extracting text to use for
featured snippets so making the crawler’s job easier, helps in that direction.

4. Include Images with a relevant ALT TEXT

This may not be the biggest factor of all but it’s good to have at least one image
on the page with a relevant ALT text.

In all tested cases Google shows an image next to the text but as you can see
below for the query ‘content marketing’, the image comes from a different
domain.

Maybe the particular image was originally part of the content marketing institute
page or Google shows that image to the featured snippet because it currently
ranks on position 1 when you search ‘content marketing’ on Google images.

In any case and to be on the safe side, make sure that you always have a relevant
image with a descriptive ALT text in your content.

5. Structured Data Markup helps (but may not be

necessary)
The purpose of structured data is to help search engines understand the
content of a page better so it makes sense to assume that structured data can also
increase your chances of getting a Google featured snippet.

This was suggested by Google’s John Mueller back in November 2015 but a few
days later Google’s Garry Illyes said that Google doesn’t take into account
schema for featured snippets.

Nevertheless, it’s always a good SEO practice to activate structured data on your
pages even if now Google states that it’s not a director factor for featured
snippets.

6. Answer questions that ‘People also ask’

One of the ways to increase your chances of getting a featured snippet is by
providing direct answers to questions people ask on Google.

To be more precise, when you type a query in Google, and you scroll down the
page you will see a section called ‘People Also Ask’.
Google People Also Ask Box

These queries / questions are perfect candidates for getting a featured snippet.

7. Don’t forget that Google is A/B testing featured

snippets
As a final note, don’t forget that Google is always testing different scenarios for
the purpose of improving their search results and user satisfaction.

Part of their tests is changing the featured snippet entries so it’s possible to gain
or lose a ranking over time because of this.

Key Points
Featured snippets can drive more organic traffic to a website since the
CTR is much higher than ranking at a lower position than 0.

If you already have a good ranking for a keyword (positions 1 – 5), your
website may be eligible to show in the featured snippet box.

To increase your chances, provide a direct answer to a question or

definition by summarizing it in a couple of lines but within a single
paragraph (<p>) tag. The higher you place this paragraph in your content,
the better.

Having an image with a relevant ALT text also helps.

The easiest and fastest way to check if your website has any featured
 snippet rankings is through SEMRush.

You can opt out of featured snippets by adding a meta tag to the head of
your page.

Anything missing from the above post? What is your experience with the Google
featured snippet box?
 Lesson 9

Conversion Optimization

Landing Page Optimization

In this topic, you’ll learn how to optimize your landing pages for conversions.

Conversion optimization is as important as SEO and knowing how to

optimize your landing pages for conversions can make a huge difference
when evaluating your website’s success.

The ultimate purpose of any website is to generate conversions. A conversion can

be the sale of a product or service, the generation of a lead, the click on an ad or
simply the registration to an email list.

While the actual design of a landing page can vary (depending on the business
goals), there are some best practices to follow to make sure that your landing
pages convert.

What is a landing page?

What are landing pages and how they differ from the other pages of your website?

Landing pages serve a specific purpose, they are designed and structured in such
a way to lead users to execute a specific action.

Although they are called ‘landing pages’, they are not necessarily the first page’s
users will see when they visit a website.

Usually, when people visit a website organically (i.e. searching something on

Google and clicking on a link from the SERPs), they land on a blog page or the
home page but when they visit by clicking an ad they usually land on a specific
landing page that matches the ad copy.

When to use dedicated landing pages?

When the sole purpose of your website or blog is to get people to register to your
newsletter then you don’t need a dedicated landing page; a newsletter sign-up
box or an exit popup can do the job very well.

In cases, that you want uses to carry out a more ‘complicated’ action like buying a
product or service then you need a dedicated landing page.

With that being said, your goal in all the other pages of your website should
be to funnel users to your landing page(s).

So, your blog posts or home page is the medium to get more visits and your
landing page the place to make more conversions.

Anatomy of a perfect landing page

A good landing page has the following characteristics:

It promotes a single product or service

The information on a landing page should be very specific to the product or

service it represents. You should not confuse users by giving them more
information than they need in order to make a decision as to whether they should
convert or not.

Has all the important information above the fold

All important messages, call-to-action-buttons, and other ‘decision-making’

information should be visible without the user having to scroll down the page.

It loads super fast

If there is a page on your website that you want to optimize for speed, this is your
landing page. There is a direct correlation between loading speed and
conversions and since this is something you can control; you need to make sure
that the page loads as fast as possible.

Use a strong call to action message

A converting landing page has a clear ‘call-to-action’ message. Users need to

know exactly what to do next to complete the process. Do not confuse them with a
lot of options or buttons that are not related to conversion.

Clear ‘call-to-action’ buttons

If you want users to buy a product make sure that you have buttons with the
words ‘Buy Now’. If you want them to register for a service, then use the words
‘Register here’. Make it specific and not generic.

Branding

Don’t forget to remind users about your brand and why they visited your landing
page. This is not the page for surprises or for confusing them as to what you do or
what you sell.

Headlines and sub-headings

Headlines and subheadings have a very important role to play in a landing page.
Through headings and subheadings, you have the opportunity to tell users why
they should buy your product or enroll in your service.

Features and benefits

This is the section to describe in a bullet form the main features and benefits of
your product. Keep it short and to the point.

Remove the clutter

A landing page is not the place to give users more information that they really
need to make a decision. Try to think like a user and keep on the page the
information that matters by removing the clutter and other elements that can
distract the user’s attention.

Minimize exit points

You don’t want users to leave your landing page before converting. If you have to
give them more information about a feature or benefit, you can either use
accordions, information boxes (on mouseover) or open the external links in a new
tab so that the landing page will still be available in the background.

Use of images and Videos

Images and videos can add value to a landing page. They can help you pass a
message in fewer words (don’t forget the saying ‘an image is worth a thousand
words’) and make the whole page more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

On the other hand, if you use too many images this will increase the loading
time of the page and this is not what you want. Use images wisely and
optimize their file size as much as possible.

When it comes to the use of videos, make your videos short and to the point (less
than 90 seconds) and let the user choose when to view the video (don’t autoplay
the video when the page loads). Place your ‘call-to-action’ buttons below the
videos for easy access.

Use of popups

Although I am not against the use of pop-ups, they are not the best companion for
a landing page. Pop-ups can make users angry or confuse them so better to avoid
them.

Make data entry easy

If users have to fill in a form to proceed to the next step, then make sure that you
make data entry easy by giving them options to select the data or using the auto-
fill functions of browsers.

You should minimize data entry as much as possible by asking only for the
information that you really need and not the information that is nice to have.

One-page checkout

A good landing page makes it easy for users to complete the conversion process.
Although the primary concern is to convince users to start the conversion process,
it is equally important that they can finish it with the least number of steps.

One-page checkout is a good approach to minimize the clicks and pages users
have to visit before they complete the process. (take a look again at the checkout
page you have used to purchase this course).

Make users feel secured

Various studies have shown that in the case of landing pages that sell products,
‘trust badges’ can increase conversion rates. The purpose of a ‘trust badge’ is to
make users feel safe about the process and confident that the website is secured
and trusted.

Gain User Trust with ‘Trust Seals’.

Reviews and Social Proof

Two more useful elements on any landing page are reviews (or customer
testimonials) and social proof.

There are many ways to get reviews from customers, the easiest being emailing
them after purchase and asking them for their feedback or using a third-party
review system.

Original and honest reviews can help people browsing a landing page to actually
convert and proceed to the next step.

Social Proof

People can be positively influenced in their decisions if they see that other people
‘like’ a brand or product. If you have a large following on FB or any other social
network that is worth displaying, then add these icons with follower counts on
your landing page. If your numbers are still small, you better skip this step.

Contact information and Policies

Make sure that your contact information (phone, address, email) can be seen by
the visitors. They may not contact you but it builds more trust if they know that in
case of a problem they have a means of getting in touch with you.

Also, every legit landing page should have links pointing to a privacy policy and
terms and conditions pages.

Remarketing scripts

Although this is not a visual component, in a landing page you should install your
remarketing scripts so that you can re-target users that visited your landing page
but did not convert with remarketing campaigns.

Examples of good landing pages

The landing pages below are just a few examples of pages that have the
characteristics described above.
MOZ Landing Page

Buffer Homepage
How to optimize your landing pages
So far, we have discussed what elements should be present on a good landing
page but this is not the end of the story. In order to get more conversions from a
landing page, you have to optimize it.

In this context, optimization refers to the process of testing different things

(layout, colors, messages) and measuring the results with the purpose of getting
more conversions.

Some tips to help you optimize your landing pages:

Test one thing at a time

Don’t make a lot of changes at once because you won’t know which change
worked for the better or worse.

For example, if you want to change your ‘call to action message’ and color of the
buttons, don’t do both changes at the same time. Do the first one and after some
time do the other one.

Know what to measure

When doing A/B tests, you essentially want to compare the performance of a page
again to some metrics.

In general, for a landing page these are:

Time on page: How much time users spend on the page

Button CTR: How many people click on the call-to-action buttons

Conversion rate: The percentage of people that actually converted.

Before doing any changes make sure that you have a way to calculate the above
metrics so that you can compare them during the tests.

Percentages are more important than actual numbers

The conversion rate percentage is more important than the actual number of
conversions.
If you can manage to increase your conversion rate, then you can send more
traffic to the page and make more conversions.

When doing your tests don’t just count conversions but concentrate more on
improving your percentages.

Testing period

When making a change you have to wait for a number of days before making any
decisions unless you have enough traffic to reach into conclusions earlier.

If your traffic levels are low, then you really need to wait until your page is viewed
by 150-200 people before evaluating the results of your tests.

KEY LEARNINGS

Landing pages can help you achieve more conversions. The main difference
between a landing page and a normal page or post is that they have a clear
and specific purpose.

Once you get users on your landing pages, eliminate all destructions and
make it super easy for them to proceed to the next step.

The first step when designing your landing pages is to make sure that you
have incorporated into your design the core elements as explained above.

The second step is to make sure that you can correctly measure the
effectiveness of your current page and the third step to start making A/B
tests with the goal of improving your conversion rates.

Depending on your traffic levels, the landing page optimization process can
take a number of days or weeks.

Don’t rush into conclusions too quickly, give it some time and work through
your tests until you achieve the greatest conversion rate possible.
A/B Testing

In this topic, you’ll learn what is A/B Testing and how to perform successfully A/B
Tests.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing is comparing two or more versions of a website against each

other to find out which variation performs better.

Running one A/B test will help you improve your chosen metric a certain amount,
but the more you run and the more knowledge you gain, the better your business
will perform.

There are tons of things you can A/B test, including:

Homepage headlines

Call to action (CTA) copy

Social sharing buttons

Items offered in a contest

Signup forms

Why is A/B testing important?

Think of A/B testing as tuning up a machine. There are certain parts of the
machine that are more important than others.

If only 50% of people can manage to open the door of a car you built, that’s a
much bigger issue than if 5% complain of a strange humming noise.

That’s why A/B testing is something you do at every stage of the funnel.

Let’s look at the funnel for an example software company:

Examples of top of the funnel A/B testing

Let’s say that the way a ‘potential leads’ finds out about your software company is
mostly through PPC ads. You want as many qualified leads to click your PPC ad as
is possible, so you set up an A/B test to see which ad performs the best.

You might change the copy, the URL and the keyword targeted, making
incremental changes until your ad gets a higher click-through rate (CTR) and
lower cost-per-lead.

After clicking on your ad, visitors will be taken to a landing page. You could test
the headline, CTA copy, or design of the page to see if you can bring more leads
into the top of the funnel and move them through the process.

Examples of Middle of the funnel A/B testing

It’s no good bringing in leads if you’re going to lose them before they get a
chance to be sold on the benefits of your software.

After coming in at the top of the funnel, leads need to be educated about
what your product can do for them.

That means getting them on your email list, on a free-trial, and sending them
educational material that helps them decide that your product is their best option.

Here you’d A/B test your welcome email, subscriber email sequence, the kinds of
content that get clicked and whether a certain test group is converting higher
than the rest.

Examples of Bottom of the funnel A/B testing

In this vital stage, the customer is close to making a decision about buying your
software. You’d test the messaging of your sales outreach emails, sales scripts,
demo tactics, and discount amounts.

Putting all of this together, you will end up with a finely tuned sales machine that
brings in the right leads, nurtures them with the right education, and then can
effectively close the deal.

But here’s the thing about A/B testing…

I’m not saying that every test will be groundbreaking. A lot of the time, tests can
do absolutely nothing. And the big wins that you read about are likely the result of
many tests and no way as simple as people make it out to be.

The important thing about running as many tests as you can is that you at least
have evidence for why you wouldn’t want to bother moving in that direction.

Examples of A/B testing

You never know how an A/B test will turn out until you run it…

Maybe you will actually strike gold, like these examples below:

Making menu items more obvious increased engagement of 650%

Most of the time, visitors aren’t willing to interact with something if it isn’t
blindingly obvious. That was the case for Luke Wroblesky, who tested a nested
menu in his app and found a huge drop of 650% in engagement.

The lessons you can learn from this?

If you want a visitor to click a link, you need to put it right out in the open. That
might mean breaking down an element like a hamburger menu into its individual
items or moving a call to action to a more prominent place.

A/B Testing
The proof behind this comes from eye-tracking heat maps.

We know that readers’ eyes move in an F-shape along with a page or screen, like
this:

Eye Tracking Head Maps

So with that in mind, design your pages so they highlight the most important
elements to get more clicks and higher engagement rates.

Reassuring visitors increased Highrise’s signups by 30%

Often, testing your landing page’s headline can be the single best way to improve
overall business performance. A simple test like the one Highrise carried out can
give you a massive boost in leads.

Control:

A/B Testing: Control

Winner (+30% signup rate):

A/B Testing: Winner

By emphasizing the 30-day free trial prominently in the main headline, visitors
felt reassured and like they had nothing to lose by signing up and giving it a go.

The strong call to action of ‘Pick a plan to get started!’ could have also had an
effect, especially since it tells the visitor the exact next step they need to do,
instead of a vague instruction.

Performable increased clicks by 21% by changing the button color

Colors can have a profound effect on your reader’s response to your site. Think
about it in the extreme and imagine a site that was made up of the world’s least
favorite colors.

Below is a simple but legendary A/B test carried out by Performable. By just
tweaking the color of their main call to action button from green to red, they
increased clicks by 21%.

A/B Testing: Color Button

HubSpot’s analysis of the test is that the color didn’t matter as much as the
contrast. The green in Performable’s logo meant the call to action button was
dampened and got blended into the background.

Changing it to red — green’s perfect contrast — made it stand out and make
visitors want to click.

Changing one word increased clicks by 161.66%

Never underestimate the power of one word A/B tests. Sometimes they can have
insane results.

Software firm Veeam tested the wording the call to action that would put visitors
in touch with the sales team. Here are the two versions:

Control:

A/B Testing: Word Changes

Winner (+161.66% clicks):

A/B Testing: Word Changes

‘Request a quote’ sounds like it will be slow, take time, and instantly connect you
with a sales rep whose life will now be devoted to hounding you.

‘Request pricing’ sounds better because it implies the pricing is fixed, and all you
have to do is request and learn more. Obviously, that’s how Veeam’s visitors felt,
too.

Tracking and analyzing your A/B tests

Assuming you’re using different platforms to test different parts of your product
and marketing, you need a central place to store it all.

What’s the answer?

Well, as it is in 90% of cases: a spreadsheet.

Love ’em or hate ’em, they are simply the best places to store, filter, and analyze
structured data.

If you’re running A/B tests in another app, too, you can just make sure the
headers match up and then merge them together.

If you opt to make your own from scratch, you can use the following template:

Start and end date

Hypothesis

Success metrics

Confidence level

Key takeaways

An example:
 KEY LEARNINGS

When performing A/B tests you can find that one headline did better than the
other. But why? Without answering the ‘why’, you won’t make better choices
in the future or learn anything from your tests. That’s why it’s best to first
set up tests that lend themselves well to statistical significance.

For example, let’s say you’re making changes to a landing page and find that
it boosted conversion by 43%. Nice!

The problem comes when you find that the changes you made were changes
to the copy, the button, and the headline. Then what? How do you know what
made the impact?

If there’s one solid best practice to be learned before you start A/B testing,
it’s that you need to test one element at a time or you’re going to pollute the
data.

Regardless of whether a polluted test ‘wins’ or ‘loses’, you’re losing out on

the knowledge and not going to be able to make informed choices in the
future.

Conversion Optimization Checklist

This is your Conversion Optimization Checklist.

Understand the difference between a landing page and a normal page

Decide when to use dedicated landing pages over normal pages

Understand the anatomy of a perfect landing page

Use the same language and tone as your audience

Cut your copy down to the bare minimum word count

Add a phone number

Offer a money-back guarantee

Include a photo of a human

Show that other companies trust you

Use imperative language in your CTA copy (buy, join, get, start, download)

Make it stand out from the rest of the page

Add a sense of instant gratification

Continue the conversation going on in your reader’s head

Cut navigation links off the page

Remove anything not directly related to your offer

Disable pop-ups on the landing page

Take out any superfluous form fields

Break forms into steps if they have to be long

Perform A/B tests to optimize your landing pages

 Lesson 10

HTTPS and SSL

How to Migrate to HTTPS and SSL

In this topic, you’ll learn how to migrate your website from http to https without
losing your rankings or damaging your SEO.

To go through the process successfully you will need an SSL certificate and
FTP access to your website.

Before we get into the technical details, let us first examine what do we mean by
‘migrate your website to https’, why it is important to do so and what is the
relationship between https and Google rankings.

What is https and SSL Certificate?

SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It is a security protocol that enforces
encrypted communication between the web browser and the webserver.

This means that any information that is transmitted between your website and a
web server like usernames and passwords, credit card information and any other
data submitted by users, is secure and encrypted.

If an SSL is not present, the information is submitted in plain text.

What is the problem with that? If a hacker manages to intercept the connection
between your website and server, he can get access to the information.

What is https?
Websites that have an SSL certificate installed and configured can be accessed
using https://www.example.com instead of the traditional non-secure way of
http://www.example.com.

Modern browsers, label https websites with the word secure as shown below.

Secure Shown in Browser for SSL Websites

When a website is using an extended validation SSL (EV-SSL), their company

name is shown in the browser green bar as in the example below.

To get an EV-SSL, the certificate issuing company needs to verify your

organization details (like company address, registration id) to ensure that
the particular website is the official representative of that company.

Extended SSL Shown in Browser

Is https a ranking signal?

Https is not something new, it’s been around for years but it was until 2014 that
Google decided to start an initiative to make the web more secure and introduced
the slogan “https everywhere”.

They started by making all Google searches https and also announced that https
websites would gain a very small ranking boost.

You can read below the related paragraph from their 2014 announcement in
Google webmaster central blog.
Https as a ranking signal

When Google says a lightweight signal, it means that other things being equal, a
webpage that is https will rank above a webpage that is non-https.

Https is a page ranking factor and not a website ranking factor. This means
pages that are https will take advantage of this benefit even if the website as
a whole is not https.

Should you migrate your website to https?

Yes, this is definitely something you need to do now.

Https is something that increases a user’s trust and it is a must and not
something optional.

How to move a website from http to https

Here are the steps on how to move your website from https to https.

Step 1: Install an SSL Certificate to your server

The first step is to purchase and install an SSL certificate on your web server.
Google states that you can use any modern SSL certificate as long as it supports
2048-bit key encryption.

The cost of a normal certificate is approx. $50 per year and can be issued
instantly by the provider.

The best way to get past this step is to contact your web hosting provider and ask
them to install an SSL certificate on your server.
Most web hosting providers have options in their account dashboards (or Cpanel),
where you can purchase an SSL.

Once they install the SSL, you can check that it’s working ok by navigating to
your website using https.

Step 2: Change your website’s default URL

The second step is to log in to your website’s dashboard and change the default
URL.

If you’re on WordPress, locate the GENERAL option, which is located under the
SETTINGS menu.

Make sure that both your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL)
starts with https.

Default WordPress URL

Once you click the SAVE CHANGES button (located at the bottom of the screen),
you will be locked out of WordPress and you will have to login again.

Step 3: Add 301 redirects to redirect http requests to https

So far, you have installed an SSL certificate on the server and changed the
default website URL to be https.

This is not the end of the process. In order to gain the SEO advantage from https,
your website needs to be configured to redirect http requests to https requests.

In other words, the default URL for all your posts should start with https and not
http.

The easiest way to do this is to add the code below to your .htaccess file (you will
need to access and edit the file using FTP).
What this code does is to redirect (using permanent redirect – 301), all http
requests made to your webserver to the equivalent https page. This way you don’t
have to create a page by page mapping.

# HTTPS redirect
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedValidator [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

Notice in the above code that FeedBurner is excluded from https. This is needed if
you are using FeedBurner to generate your RSS. If you are not using FeedBurner
you can exclude those 2 lines (Feedburner and FeedValidator).

Most modern CMS have a .htaccess file, if not check with your hosting
provider on how to redirect all http traffic to https.

Once you save your .htaccess file, open a browser window and perform a few
tests.

First, try to access any http URL and make sure that it successfully redirects to
the equivalent https URL.

Second, try different combinations i.e. http://www.sampleurl.com and

http://sampleurl.com and make sure that both redirect to the correct https URL.

Step 4: Use Search and Replace

The next step is to correct any internal links that you have in your content to
point to the https version.

For example, if you have internal links in your content that start with http, you
will have to change them to point to https, otherwise, this will create mixed
content warnings and the browser will not show your website as secure.
The best way to do this is to use a plugin. Install and activate the search and
replace plugin (it’s free).

Then go to TOOLS and select SEARCH & REPLACE.

Note: Before running a search and replace on your website, it is highly

recommended to take a backup of your Database.

Search & Replace

Click the SEARCH & REPLACE tab and adjust your settings as shown above (use
your own domain in the SEARCH FOR and REPLACE WITH input boxes.

When you click the DO SEARCH AND REPLACE button, the plugin will change all
URLs it can find in the database from http to https.

If you are not on WordPress, you might need the help of a developer to
change all your current URLs and internal links to https.

Step 5: Check for non-https links

The next step is to check for any external links you have in the content and make
sure that they start with https and not http.

You can do this by navigating to your website’s pages. If the browser bar shows
that the page is not secure (like the example below), find the link that is not
secure and change it to https.

Problems with https

There are 2 ways to find these links.

First, is to use Chrome’s developer tools. Right-click anywhere on the page and
select INSPECT. This will open the developer tools.

Click the CONSOLE tab to find the URL that is causing the issue. Edit your
content and change the URL to https.
Mixed Content Warnings

Second, check your website using this free service. It will crawl your pages and
give you a report on the links that need to be changed.

Step 6: Check for broken links

If you followed the above steps successfully, then most probably your website
should be fully https with no mixed content warnings and you won’t have to do
anything else.

As an extra measure, you can check and ensure that you don’t have any broken
links (either http or https).

You can use this free tool by Xenu to get a report of the links that need to be
fixed.

Step 7: Add your https website to Google Search Console

To maintain your current Google rankings and to officially inform Google that
your website is now https, you need to add the https variations to your Google
search console.

So, at the end of the process, you will have 4 website variations registered in the
Google Search Console.

Note: It is necessary to keep both the http and https versions in your Google
search Console since Google considers these to be 4 ‘different’ websites.
Step 8: Re-generate your XML sitemap and submit to Google
While managing your websites in Google search console, it’s also recommended
to re-generate your XML sitemap and make sure that all links are now https and
re-submit it to Google.

Step 9: Check Robots.txt

Another check to make is to ensure that your ROBOTS.TXT file is not accidentally
blocking search engines from accessing your https website.

Step 10: Submit your https website to Google

The next and final step is to submit your new website to Google.

Login to Google Search Console and click on the URL INSPECTION TOOL option
from the left menu

Force Google to recrawl website using URL Inspection Tool.

Type your full domain name in the specified area and click ENTER

Click on the REQUEST INDEXING option.

Request Indexing – Google Search Console

Step 11: Change incoming links from http to https
The process is now complete. Your website is configured to redirect any http
requests to the equivalent HTTPS, you have fixed any mixed content warnings,
your sitemap is updated and the website is submitted to Google.

If you want to help Google update their index faster, you can go and edit all
external links (that you can access) pointing to your website to https.

For example, you can go to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social
networks that you added your website’s link and change it to https.

Don’t worry about the links you cannot change, the 301 redirections we
added in the .htaccess file is responsible to inform search engine’s spiders
that the links have changed to https.

Step 12: Monitor your rankings and traffic

The above procedure is straight forward and under normal conditions, your
rankings will not be affected negatively.

Nevertheless, it’s always wise to monitor your traffic in Google Analytics and
ranking positions (using your favorite keyword research tool), to pinpoint any
issues and try to resolve them as fast as possible.

Will my rankings increase after migrating to https?

For all websites we migrated to https we saw a slight increase in rankings and
traffic.

Remember that https is a low-ranking factor (at least for now), so don’t expect
huge differences.

Don’t forget that you are adding the secure certificate not only to benefit from the
ranking boost but also to increase user’s trust, which can prove more beneficial in
the long run.

KEY LEARNINGS
 Migrating your website from http to https is not difficult. The steps described
above are all you need to do and for most websites the migration process
takes only a couple of hours.

There is a cost involved since you will have to renew the SSL certificate
every year, but for an online business who wants to stay in synch with the
latest SEO developments and cares about data security, this is not an excuse
for not migrating to https.

Https Checklist

This is your HTTP to HTTPs Checklist.

Install SSL certificate on your server

Change website default URL to https

Add 301 redirects to redirect http requests to https

Change all internal links from http to https

Check for broken links

Check that https redirections work ok

Find and fix mix-content errors

Add your https website variations to Google Search Console

Re-generate your XML sitemap and submit to Google

Submit your https website to Google

Change incoming links from http to https

Monitor your rankings and traffic

 Lesson 11

Website Security

WordPress Security

In this topic, you will learn how to secure your WordPress website.

IMPORTANT: This lesson is currently being reviewed and a new version

will be released soon.

The growing popularity of WordPress has also created more interest among
hackers. Statistics show that out of the 80 million websites powered by
WordPress, a large portion of them (70%+) are vulnerable to attacks.

If you think that your website is not part of the 70%, you are wrong. If you also
think that nobody cares about your small business website or blog, you are again
wrong.

Attacks can happen because your site is vulnerable to attacks and not because a
hacker decided to ‘break-into’ your business.

When your website is hacked, a lot of bad things can happen besides damaging
your website’s reputation. You can lose customers, traffic, money, confidential
information and not to mention the time, stress and effort that it will take to clean
your website and get it back to a normal state.

Those that experienced this at least once, know exactly what I mean. It’s those
times that you wished you have taken preventive measures instead of trying later
to recover from the damage, especially when your income and business depends
on your website.
To tell you the truth, I didn’t bother about security, I was thinking like most
people that this would never happened to my websites. But it did. And it was a
terrible experience.

A few of my clients had faced similar issues and they lost money and business but
at least we all now learned our lesson. When it comes to security issues,
“Prevention is the best cure”.

If you have a WordPress website but did not take any measures to improve
security, it’s now the right time to take action. Don’t delay it any longer but set
this as your first priority above SEO or anything else you might be doing.

It won’t take you a lot of time but it can save you a lot of time, money and
frustration in the future.

How to Secure your WordPress Website

#1 – Install Sucuri – I know that this may sound overly promotional for some but
take my word for it, I wouldn’t recommend something (especially if it’s a third
party service), unless it is very important and useful and sucuri is one of them.

In a few words, sucuri is a company that offers security services to websites (not
only WordPress). They help you ‘clean’ and recover your website in case it is
affected by malware but at the same time they offer a number of tools for
securing and hardening your website so as not to get into trouble in the first
place.

I have used sucuri a number of times for both my website’s and also my clients.
One of the things I really like is that in case your website is compromised and
affected by malware, all you have to do is register an account with them, submit a
malware request and they take care of the rest in a reasonable amount of time.

Instead of spending time wondering what happened and searching the Internet to
find ways to clean your website and recover your business, leave this to sucuri
and spend your time following the prevention measures explained below to avoid
having to deal with the same situation again.

Which package to use? They have 3 packages but for most of the cases you only
need to register for the BASIC plan which is less than $17 per month.
This will give you access to their malware removal service in case you need it and
also their website antivirus prevention tools.

Follow the simple steps below to activate sucuri on your WordPress website:

The first step is to register for the basic plan and then ‘Add your website’ to the
dashboard.

Sucuri Security

Next, you need to configure the ‘Server Side’ Scanner by giving them access via
FTP to your website files and directories. The server side scanner is what will
monitor your website (several times per day), identify affected files and also
perform cleanup actions if needed.

Sucuri server side settings

You can either enter your FTP credentials in the ‘Enable Via FTP’ option or use
the ‘Enable Manually’ by downloading the file provided and uploading it to your
root folder.
The file method is better in case you decide to change your FTP credentials; you
won’t break the functionality.

Install and configure their WordPress Plugin. Install the sucuri plugin from here
(like you do with a normal WordPress plugin) and then go to dashboard and
connect it with your sucuri account.

Sucuri WordPress Plugin

Once you perform the above steps successfully, sucuri is actively protecting your
website.

What you can do now is click the SETTINGS (under Sucuri Security) and
configure your settings as shown in the screenshot below.
Sucuri WordPress Settings

This will ensure that you will get notified by email for any changes to your
website files or any failed login attempts. In addition, it will also activate the web
firewall feature that automatically blocks suspicious IP addresses from attempting
to login to WordPress.

Go to Dashboard (under Sucuri Security) and you will be amazed how many bots
try to gain access to your website.

There are many other settings you can review (under Sucuri Security) but the
above in combination with the steps described below will dramatically improve
the security of your WordPress Website.

#2 – Use strong passwords – One of the things you definitely need to check right
now is your WordPress passwords and especially the password you use for the
administrator.

Don’t use simple, letter only passwords, but create strong passwords that include
letters, numbers and symbols.

Here are a few examples of simple and strong passwords:

Simple Strong
SimplePassword $1mpLePas$$w0rd!
WordPress123 W0rD!!Pr3$$123
Janiebrown JAN1E$Br0wN
You can change the password of any users by selecting USERS / ALL USERS from
the left menu. From the list of users, select EDIT and scroll down to the password
field.

#3 – Change the default admin user names – The first thing hackers will try and
do is find out the administrator username so usernames like admin, administrator
and host are too obvious and you need to change them to something more difficult
to identify.

Also, review your user roles and make sure that there is only one administrator to
the site. Other users (guest authors, writers) can be set as ‘Contributor’. Delete
any other users that are not valid or set their role to ‘None’.

#4 – Protect your wp-login, wp-config, .htaccess and wp-admin folder – This is

perhaps the most important step of all measures you can take to secure your
WordPress website.

By protecting and restricting access to your wp-config, .htaccess, wp-login and

wp-admin folder, you already made a huge step towards the right direction.

It does not require any technical knowledge, you only need access to FTP and to
follow the steps below:

Step 1: Login to your website with FTP and locate the .htaccess file on the root
folder (usually public_html or www). If you have installed WordPress on a
directory, then you will find the .htaccess file there.

Step 2: Download the file on your computer

Step 3: Use any text editor (notepad, brackets etc.) to open the file

Step 4: Add the following lines at the top of the file:

Restrict access to WordPress htaccess

Important: You should add your Public IP in the orange shaded area above
otherwise you will not be able to login to your own website!

Step 5: Save your changes

Step 6: Upload the file back to your server and replace the existing one.

The role of the above lines is to restrict access to ALL IPs trying to either access
your .htaccess file, wp-config.php or your login page. In case your Public IP
changes frequently you need to edit this file and type the correct IP in the orange
shaded area above.

If you type a wrong IP there, you will not be able to login to your WordPress
dashboard. You can add more than one IPs (one per line, preceding by the words
‘allow from’).

I know that for some this is too much BUT it’s the best and most efficient way to
keep everyone (besides allowed IPs) from getting access to your website. This
does not affect the functionality of your website or SEO but it re-enforces
security.
The next step is to protect unauthorized access to your wp-admin folder. You can
do this by following the steps below:

Step 1: Login to your website with FTP and locate the .htaccess file inside
the wp-admin folder. If there is no .htaccess file then create one (using any text
editor), add the lines shown below and update it to your wp-admin folder.

Step 2: Download the file on your computer

Step 3: Use any text editor (notepad, brackets etc) to open the file

Step 4: Add the following lines at the top of the file:

Protect access to WordPress Wp-admin

Important: You should add your Public IP in the orange shaded area above
otherwise you will not be able to login to your own website!

Step 5: Save your changes

Step 6: Upload the file back to your server and replace the existing one.

The same rules apply as explained above i.e. To be able to login to your website
you need to add your public IP in the orange shaded area.

#5 – Protect xmlrpc.php (optional but recommended) – Besides protecting the

above files, a common way to hack into WordPress websites is through xmlrpc.
Xmlrpc.php is a file used for communicating remotely with WordPress.

Hackers can make use of xmlrpc (which is enabled by default from WordPress
3.8) to execute DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service Attacks), that can cause
server problems and bring a website down.

You need to keep XMLRPC enabled if you are using services like JetPack, the
official mobile WordPress app, pingbacks & trackbacks.
To make sure that no programs can access and execute the file, add this to your
.htaccess (like you did in point 4 above)

Block XML RPC WordPress

#6 – Update WordPress and Plugins to the latest versions – Most of the times
hackers can gain unauthorized access to your website through plugins. Free and
paid plugins have vulnerabilities and it’s always a best practice to upgrade them
to their latest versions.

Software companies (especially for paid plugins) have started to look into security
matters more seriously and they try to close any security holes in order to protect
their customers and of course their reputation.

Besides upgrading, review the list of installed plugins and if you find that some
have not been updated for several months then consider deactivating them,
replacing them with other plugins that are updated more frequently or deleting
them.

#7 – Check your ‘comments’ and forms settings – When you have comments open
on your posts check your ‘Discussion’ settings and make sure that all comments
are manually approved. This may add more administration work from your part
but it’s the best way to ensure that no spam comments are entered.

Also check that you have akismet activated and that you use a Captcha on all your
contact forms.

#8- Check your server settings – Besides your WordPress installation another way
that hackers can break into your system is through your web server.

What you can easily do is to use a strong password for the administrator account
and FTP, and also enable email notifications to get notified every time someone is
logged-in to the server. You may need to check with your hosting provider on how
to do this since it is different for each type of hosting server.
#9 – Move to a reliable VPS host – Any serious blogger or business should be
using a VPS for their website. If you are still on shared hosting, then it’s time to
reconsider and move to your own VPS. The cost is not that much per month but
the benefits, especially when it comes to security, are priceless.

There are many hosting companies offering VPS for WordPress, take some time
and find a VPS host that is reliable with good and fast support. When you get into
security troubles, you will need the support of your hosting company and they
need to respond to your requests fast but also in an effective way.

#10 – Take Full Backups of your Website – While this may not be a security
measure as such, the first thing that you will need after an attack is a clean
backup of your website to use it to recover to the previous good state.

To eliminate any unpleasant surprises:

Make sure that you take a backup of both your WordPress files and Database (at
least once per week)

That you keep the backup files in a safe location (other than your website’s
server)

That you know how to use the backup to restore your website. This is a critical
step and you need to allocate some time to make a test and document the
procedure so that you know exactly what you need to have to do when in need
and under a lot of stress.

I use the BackupWordpress Plugin which comes free and has the options to
schedule backups for both the files and database.

Website Security Checklist

This is your website security checklist.

Consider using Sucuri

Use strong passwords

Rename default Administrator account

Protect wp-login, wp-config, wp-admin, .htaccess

Protect xmlrpc.php

Update WordPress and plugins to latest versions

Check your comments settings

Install Akismet

Install captcha plugin

Move your website to VPS

Take regular website backups

 Lesson 12

Website Speed

Website Speed

In this topic you will learn how to improve the loading speed of your website.

IMPORTANT: This lesson is currently being reviewed and a new version

will be released soon.

Webpage loading speed is a critical element for your website’s success. Besides
being one of the known ranking factors, it’s also as an important usability metric.
Nobody (people or bots) want to spend their time waiting for your website to load,
especially when there is a dozen of other websites on the same topic that load
faster.

The good news is that there are ways to speed up your website by following some
best practices for managing your WordPress installation and taking into account a
few guidelines during the publication process.

Why Is page speed important?

Back in April 2010, Google officially announced that page speed is part of the
Google ranking algorithm. The main reasons that forced them to add speed as a
ranking factor were:

It makes users happy and they spend more time on a website.

It reduces operating costs.

It increases sales (and transactions in general).

Fast forward to 2017, speed is now more important than ever. Statistics show that
slow loading websites are losing customers since a large majority of users are not
willing to wait for more than 3 seconds for a website to load.

Website Speed Stats

In addition, in a recent study analyzing 1 million Google search results, the

correlation between Google rankings and page speed was strong with the
majority of websites occupying the first places on Google SERPS to load in less
than 2 seconds.

Speed is a page ranking factor meaning that it affects each page individually and
not the website as a whole.
Average Load Speed and Google Position

How to Speed UP a WordPress Website

WordPress is a great content management system and out of the box loads fast
without any issues. The problems start to appear when you add custom themes,
plugins and different types of heavy content (images, videos) that negatively
impact the loading of the website.

What do you do in such cases, how can you improve the loading speed of your
website?

There are a number of things you can do but let’s review them one by one.

#1 – Deactivate unnecessary plugins

It’s a common practice to install WordPress plugins for testing purposes and then
forget them. As a first step, review all your active plugins and deactivate the ones
that are not used. Even if you don’t actively use a plugin, the plugin code/CSS is
still loaded and this affects your website speed.

As a second step, go through the plugins you actually use and see if there are
ways to do what the plugin does but without having the plugin.

For example, you may use a plugin to add adsense ads to your web pages but with
a few lines of code into your functions.php, you can have the same outcome
without having to load the extra coding and logic added by a plugin.

Simple changes like that, although they may seem not important, they can help
you gain a few seconds in loading time.

#2 – Optimize your images and videos

In many cases a webpage is slow because of the images. Good quality images and
other visual elements are important for SEO and usability so removing them
completely is not an option.

What you should do instead is try to minimize their file size without sacrificing
their quality. There are 6 ways to do this:
Use an image optimizer before uploading the images to WordPress.

Use a plugin to perform certain file size optimizations when images are already
loaded to WordPress.

Upgrade WordPress to the latest version so that you can take advantage of
responsive images.

Use a content delivery network (CDN) to deliver the images to users over their
network. This decreases the size of the page and the number of requests needed
to complete a page load from your server.

Add the following code:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpg A2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000

to your .htaccess so that browsers will store the images in their cache for a
certain period of time. This will speed up the loading of your website for users
that view more than one page of your website and who visit your website
regularly.

Lazy load of images. This is a technique where the browsers load the images in a
page or post when they are needed i.e. as users scroll down the page and not all
images at once (this is the default behavior). There are a number of plugins that
can help you do this without having to do any changes to your website.

As far as Videos are concerned, the best way to minimize their impact on loading
speed is to uploaded them to a streaming service i.e. YouTube and then embed
them on your website.

By doing it this way, your server is not responsible for streaming the video
content but this comes directly from the provider. Also, make sure that you don’t
auto play the videos as this is not a good user experience but have the videos
started by the user on request.
Note: On some websites, you sometimes see Video as a background. While this
looks nice if it slows down your web site, it is not worth it.

#3 – Use a caching plugin

Caching is a mechanism that helps a lot with page speed and is a must for all
WordPress websites.

In simple words, when you use caching, WordPress creates static HTML versions
of your webpages and shows that to users instead of generating the pages from
the beginning every time there is a request for a page.

This makes the process faster, less server resources are required and the user
gets a better experience. Of course, the whole system is clever enough to
understand when there is a change to a page or when not to cache a page so the
overall website experience is the same.

There are a number of caching plugins available, you can test them and find the
one that works better for you. I use wp super cache, which is free, easy to
configure and owned by Automattic (that’s the company behind WordPress).

Configuring the plugin is not difficult but you do have to read their installation
guide to make sure that you don’t miss any important configuration.

WP Super Cache Settings

#4 – Optimize your WordPress DB
WordPress behind the scenes is based on a MySQL Database. While you don’t
need to know any other technical details, what you need to understand is that by
adding/deleting content/posts to your website, the database gets bigger and at
some point, it’s good to do some maintenance work.

Fortunately, you can do so without having to login to the DB and run SQL queries.
Wp-optimize is the most popular plugin that can help you optimize your
WordPress Database by:

Deleting unnecessary post revisions (every time you click ‘Save Draft’, a
version of the post or page is kept to the DB).

Deleting spam comments.

Re-indexing the database tables (don’t worry if you don’t know what this
is).

If you don’t want to have this plugin active all the time, you can activate it once
per month and run it or you can keep it on and use the schedule feature to run DB
maintenance automatically every couple of weeks.

WP Optimize Settings
#5 – Avoid loading resources directly from other websites in your
website header.
Besides having Google analytics code in your website’s header, try not to add any
other external resources (unless really necessary) that have to be loaded when
the page is loaded.

I see a lot of people adding scripts or code from other websites and this can slow
your website down without realizing it. When a page is loaded, your WordPress
installation will try to load the resources defined in the header and if the other
server fails to respond quickly this will delay the loading of your web site.

If necessary to have other scripts or code, add them to the footer or use
asynchronous scripts that don’t impact the initial loading of a page.

To give you an example, a couple of months ago I added a script on one of my

websites that was responsible to show the ‘cookie policy warning’ message. The
script made everything easy for me so I added it without thinking too much.

After a couple of weeks, I noticed that my website became slow and after
investigation I realized that the cause was the loading of the resources from the
scripts website. The solution was to remove the loading of the script from the
header and to do a custom implementation using resources loaded from my
server.

#6 – Consider changing hosts

If after you do the above changes, you still notice that your website is slow then
it’s time to consider changing hosts.

Where you host your WordPress website can play a big role in speed and to your
SEO. Serious bloggers or businesses should use VPS to host their websites and
not shared hosting.

The main difference between the two is that shared hosting is cheaper but your
website is hosted on the same server with dozens of other websites sharing the
same resources. When you rent your own Virtual Private Server (VPS), your
website is hosted on its own IP, on a virtual server that has dedicated resources.

This means that your installation is more secure and any potential problems or
flaws in other websites do not negatively impact your website’s performance. It’s
more expensive that shared hosting but it certainly worth’s it.

#7 – Use Google Page Speed Module

If you are on a VPS, then an alternative to using a caching plugin is to use Google
Page Speed Module. This is a price of software developed by Google that is
installed on your webserver and takes care of caching and optimizing your HTML
and CSS without having to do any changes to your website.

I have tested this on a number of websites and it works well but the downside of
this is that you need the help of your hosting provider to install the module of
your web server and some technical knowledge to configure it correctly.

If you want to play with it and test it, you can read all about it here.

How to measure you page speed?

While so far we have talked about ways to improve your loading speed, the only
way to know if your changes are working positively or not is to use a couple of
page speed tools and take different measurements.

Measuring your website before and after the changes, will help you identify
exactly where the problem is.

The first tool to use is page speed insights, by Google.

Enter your website URL and click ANALYZE.

Google Page Speed Insights

What you see is the speed performance of your website for both Mobile and
Desktop as well as a number of suggestions from Google on how to improve your
performance.

Your goal is to get the highest possible score and achieve a green check mark.
While working with page speed insights, read in detail the recommendations by
clicking the “Show how to fix” option below each comment.

A second tool that is useful is pingdom website speed test. What is nice about this
tool is that you can take speed measurements and see how your website is
performing in different geographical locations. This is useful when you are
located in a different country than your target audience.
Pingdom Website Speed Test

In addition, pingdom gives you a thorough analysis of all the requests performed
until a page is fully loaded and this is useful when trying to find out what is
causing the delay.

Website Speed Checklist

This is your website speed checklist.

Review your activated plugins and deactivate the ones not used

Optimize your images (file size)

Install a caching plugin

Optimize your WordPress DB

Check the loading of resources from other websites

Check your host performance and consider moving to a VPS

Read more about Google Page Speed Module

Measure your page speed using Google Page Speed Test

 Lesson 13

SEO Success Story

From 0 to 500K Visits Per Month

In this topic, you’ll learn how I increased the traffic of a new website to 500K
unique visitors per month by following the guidelines explained in this course.

From what you have read so far in this course, I know that you may be wondering
what kind of results you can get If you follow my advice.

I also know that beginners to SEO need the inspiration to keep them going and
find the willpower to work hard until they fulfill their goals.

One of the best ways to get inspired in our profession is to read success stories of
people like YOU that managed to achieve good results in a relatively short period
of time.

I will try to explain the process step-by-step so that you can relate how everything
you have read in this course, can be applied in practice.

Finding success online It’s like a puzzle and the only way to accomplish it, is
by knowing how to put the different pieces together.

During the process, I have learned a lot of things and I hope that this topic will
help you understand how to do the same and grow your website’s traffic to these
numbers.
From 0 to 500K users per month
Let’s take it from the beginning, the website is Calorie Secrets. It is a weight
loss/fitness/nutrition blog in an industry that is considered to be a ‘million-dollar
industry’.

Thousands of people per day are searching the web for advice on how to maintain
their diet, lose weight or switch to a healthier lifestyle.

The fact that ‘dieting’ is a popular subject automatically means that the
competition is huge and this makes it even more difficult to create a website to
compete with the rest.

If you also take into account that dieting is a topic that is covered in detail by
online newspapers and magazines this makes things even more difficult.

How it all started

Before launching Calorie Secrets in 2012, I had more than 5 years of working
experience in the weight loss field as a blogger. I created a number of websites,
wrote hundreds of articles, knew who were the main players in the field and had a
good knowledge of the industry from an SEO perspective.

I was monitoring rankings for several keywords on a daily basis and I could see
websites come to the surface or disappear every time Google was making a
change to their ranking algorithms (and this was even before Panda and Penguin).

All this information and knowledge helped me a lot in creating a solid plan for
Calorie Secrets which turned out to be a successful one that got the traffic of the
website to over 500K visits per month, three years later.

The numbers you want to see

Before explaining how I created the website, what things I considered important
and how the traffic grew to these levels, let me show you some data that will
make this topic more interesting.
500K Organic Traffic.

The screenshot above shows the total organic traffic for the site for one month. As
you can see the organic search was 528,537 thousand visits and the rest comes
from direct visits, email, social and referrals.

The Calorie Secrets Story

Picking up a domain name

When starting a new website, the first thing that you need to do is pick up a
domain name. Back in 2012, it was debatable whether keyword-rich domains had
a ranking advantage or not (today it is clear that they don’t).

Nevertheless, my aim was to get a domain that was a maximum of 2 words, easy
to remember and descriptive about the content of the website.

I was not willing to pay extra to get a premium .com domain so I went for the .net
version. I did have experience with .net domains before so I knew in advance that
this wouldn’t have any negative effect on my efforts to rank this website in
Google.

Choosing a blogging platform

This was an easy decision; the best blogging platform is WordPress and never
thought of choosing something else. When it comes to theming I wanted
something simple and flexible and at that time Thesis was among the most
popular themes so I spend $50 (if I remember correctly) purchasing it. This was
the first money I had to spend on the website.

Note: Upgraded the website to the Genesis Framework later.

Creating the blog

I didn’t spend a lot of time creating the website. The theme had a lot of
configuration options and I also had programming experience to make some
customizations I needed and everything was good to go in a couple of days.

My idea was to keep the blog structure simple with 4 basic categories and with
the rest of the pages that are essential like the about us, contact us, sitemap and
privacy policy.

I did some changes to the homepage though to showcase 5 ‘sticky’ posts together
with a list of the latest articles. It’s a good practice to keep your most important
content on your homepage or sidebar because it helps in a number of ways.

Creating a content plan

So far that was the easy part of the process. Once you register a domain name,
pick up a nice theme and set up your blog, things get tougher because it’s the
time to think about the content.

Empirically this is the point that many bloggers quit because it’s easier to
say ‘I will create a blog and write content on it’ than actually doing it.

There are a lot of challenges to overcome and a lot of questions to answer.

What should I write about, how to write it, how to make the content interesting,
how long to make my posts, how often to publish new content; questions that are
important for the success of your blog in the long term.

What should I write about? The weight loss/dieting in an endless topic. There are
so many things to write about which are related to the field and this can make
your life difficult in the beginning.

As I mentioned above, I had experienced in the niche so pretty much I knew what
my focus would be, that’s why I have chosen the categories ‘weight loss tips’, ‘diet
tips’, ‘fitness advice’ and ‘how-to’.

People searching to lose weight or become fit, in their majority, they have
questions and they need answers, tips, and step by step instructions on how to
achieve their goals.

Two important decisions I took at that time, which are still relevant today
were:

First to provide for evergreen content and second to target low competition, long-
tail keywords.

Evergreen content is simply content that is relevant for a long period of time.
People looking to lose weight in 2012 had the same questions as people in 2020
and probably this will be the same for many years to come.

So, my intention was to find topics that would be relevant for many years and not
topics that were news or trending for a limited period.

When I did my keyword research to come up with the actual titles, my aim was to
find search phrases that were long-tail keywords (i.e. more than 2 words) and low
competition.

Luckily enough, the nature of the weight loss industry allows you to find a lot of
search queries that meet the above guidelines.

People tend to use more words when looking for information about dieting
because most probably they already did the typical searches i.e ‘weight loss’,
‘diet’, ‘fitness’ and they did not find a specific answer to their question so they use
more words to come up with a more precise search.

For example, you will find phrases like “how to lose 5 pounds in a week’ or
‘weight loss tips for women over 40’ that are perfect to be used as exact match
post titles.

Content Writing

If you have good knowledge about a topic and can devote the time needed you can
write the content, if not then you need to find other ways. In my case, I wrote
hundreds of articles about related topics in the past so at the beginning, I decided
to write the posts myself.

The problem is that besides being interested in a fitness & healthy lifestyle I was
not a real expert, meaning I did not have the qualifications or the academic
background to back up my articles with real data.

I didn’t like the idea of building a diet blog based on my enthusiasm about the
topics, but I wanted to raise the bar and only publish content written by real
experts who could prove their expertise.

It was also that time that Google started taking into account the ‘authority of
content’ and introduced Google+ authorship (which is no longer used) as a way to
make the web less anonymous.

So, I took the risk of hiring professionals to write the content for the blog. Each
and every blog post published since then, it is written by certified professionals
and it is also backed up by research studies and real data.

In my opinion, this contributed a lot to the success of the blog because it is

important to know that when you read something that has to do with health
advice is not just written by someone who is a fanatic about the topic but by
professionals who have studied about it and can guarantee that the information
provided is accurate and scientifically proven.

I know that some people may disagree about this approach but this is how I
decided to differentiate my blog’s content from the majority of the fitness sites
you will find on the web.

The risk taken related to content was to find good writers and pay them, waiting
that at some point the blog will generate enough traffic and money to get your
money back and start making a profit.

How long should the blog posts be?

For Calorie Secrets, I decided that the minimum word length of any post
published on the site would be 800 words. There was no maximum limit, and all
my posts adhere to this rule.

How often to publish new content?

Publishing new content on a frequent basis has many advantages especially for
topics related to healthy lifestyle and dieting so I have set the publishing
frequency to be 3 times per week (Mon, Wed, Friday), a schedule that I use until
today.

Increasing blog traffic

Once you sort out the content part, the next step is to start thinking of ways to
increase your blog traffic and preferably your organic traffic which is the most
valuable type of traffic.

Before the ‘Go Live’

Before start publishing content on a new blog, I always prefer to have 4-5 posts
ready in advance in draft mode and then publish one per day to get the ball
rolling.

There is no real SEO advantage or benefit from doing this, it’s just my way to
start a new website. It’s good to give an indication to the search engine bots from
the beginning that the site will be updated frequently but other than that there is
not much to it.

Keeping a schedule

What is important after you go live is to keep a constant publishing schedule. I

made sure that once the blog was live, it was updated 3 times per week with good
quality and unique content.

Webmaster tools, Analytics, and Rankings

As soon as I published the first posts, I have registered the site with Google
webmaster tools, submitted the sitemap and added analytics. This helped me a lot
in monitoring the performance of the blog, improvement in rankings and an
increase in traffic.

I also registered with SEMRUSH, the tool I use to keep track of the ranking
position of different keywords in Google and Bing. This is very helpful and
necessary because it helps you see how your ranking positions are improving over
time.

As you will read below, you won’t get to the first page of Google immediately so
it’s good to know your progress.

After I registered with SEMRUSH, I have created a list of keywords from both my
keyword research and also from Google Webmaster tools (search analytics report
under search traffic).

First organic visitor

It took a couple of months do get the first organic visit from Google. At that time,
the blog had already 10+ published posts and I was glad to see that I started
gaining rankings in the 3rd and 4th pages of Google. While that didn’t bring any
real traffic yet, it was a very encouraging signal.

Free tools and repeating visitors

If you read the ‘About’ page you will see that the philosophy of the blog from the
very beginning was to provide useful information but also free tools people can
use to achieve their fitness goals.

I always believed that besides the content, you need to give more reasons for
people to come back and for that purpose I have developed a free calorie counter,
different calculators and diet plans you can download or use for free.

This method worked pretty well as I started noticing in analytics an increase in

the number of repeat visits.

Android, Chrome, and Amazon

In parallel to publishing new content on a weekly basis, I also created an android

app and published it to the Google play store (downloaded more than 280,000
times until today), a Chrome app and published it to the Chrome store (has more
than 25,000 active users) and an amazon app for the Amazon app store.

It did cost me some money to develop those apps but they really helped a lot in
spreading the word and they also contributed to the increase of direct and
repeating visits.

Newsletter

In addition to the above, I also started a newsletter that has more than 200,000
members that generates a good amount of repeating traffic every time I send out
a newsletter.

Social Promotion
As soon as the blog had a decent number of posts, I started social media
campaigns on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

In Google+ (which is no longer available), I already had a good presence so the

posts started gaining a decent number of +1s and shares and on Facebook, I used
Facebook ads to increase the page likes.

A tactic that I am still using today and that’s why the blog fan page has more than
100,000 followers.

For Pinterest, I created a business page and update it every time I publish a post
and for twitter, although I do have an account, I am not actively using it.

Pinterest does create a few thousands of visits per month but for sure it is a
channel that I am not using to its full potential.

I also created an Instagram account but only used it for a couple of weeks.

Despite the fact that social traffic today is much less than organic traffic, it
contributed a lot (and it still does) in getting more natural links from other
websites and blogs.

Adwords

In the beginning and once the blog was 4 months old (and before adding any ads
on it), I also used AdWords to get direct visits from Google.

It cost me to run the campaigns but it was another opportunity to promote the
content, get more subscribers, get more users for the tools and increase the
number of repeating visitors.

Blog Commenting

When the traffic gradually increased to a few thousand per month I started
receiving comments. I decided to have a very strict comment policy (I still do)
because I wanted to avoid spam or comments that added no value to the content.

I didn’t approve any comments that included links or that were made for the
purpose of getting a link or added no real value to the page.

This may have helped in the long run because I never had to delete content from a
page because it was spam or not related to the post.

Advertising and monetization

My initial goal when starting Calorie Secrets was not monetization. I first wanted
to get a decent amount of traffic and then add ads to it. Most fitness blogs were
full of ads (at that time) and I did not want to create another ‘made for AdSense’
website.

I believed that if you showed respect to the users by not making a site full of ads
they would come back again and again. I also decided not to use any affiliate
programs and get into the mode of trying to convince people to buy a particular
product or diet plan, my idea was to give them the facts and stay unbiased.

I added AdSense when the blog was 8 or 9 months old but my ad positions were
not aggressive or in any way violating AdSense guidelines or the user experience.

Mobile friendly

Long before Google decided to promote mobile-friendly websites, I noticed that

mobile searches were increasing more than the desktop thus contributing to a
large part of traffic and income.

Although my website theme was not responsive, I created a responsive version

and that contributed to a further increase in the organic traffic coming from
mobile.

Link Building or lack of it

I deliberately did not discuss link building yet because this is not a practice I
followed for Calorie Secrets. It may sound strange but that’s the case.

I started the blog right after the release of Panda 3.5 and Penguin and the last
thing I wanted was to get a Google penalty.

That’s why I decided to concentrate more on the content, tools, and apps (as
described above) and less or almost nothing on building links. I did do a couple of
guest posts on high-quality websites but that’s about it.

The blog has a decent amount of incoming links which is the result of natural
links created by other bloggers and websites in the niche and this is something
that definitely played a big role in the traffic increase (especially the organic
traffic).

Social promotion was a great way to put the content in front of other bloggers and
as the rankings became better more natural links were created because of the
quality of content.

Health on the web

Health on the net foundation is a non-profit organization that verifies the trust
and validity of health websites. If you see on the sidebar of Calorie Secrets there
is a badge you can verify the HON certificate.

Being certified for HON is important for health-related websites since it is an

indication to the reader that what they read is reliable and trustworthy.

There is a process to get certified that takes a lot of time but I consider this to be
very important if you want to create an authority website or blog.

Organic traffic grows to 100K, 200K, 300K, 400K, 500K

visits per month
A lot of people ask me how long it took for the traffic to grow and since this is
interesting and helpful information to know, I will outline some numbers below.

Organic traffic (mainly US traffic from Google), reached the 100,000 thousand
visits per month as soon as the website was 12 months old. At that time, I had
184 published posts.

Four months later (the blog was 1.5 years old) organic traffic doubled to 200,000
with 237 published posts.

It reached the 300,000 milestones after 2 years with 333 published posts and it
passed the 500,000 thousand visits (organic, direct and referral) after 3 years
with close to 500 posts.

LESSONS LEARNED

From what you have read above, it is obvious that the success was not due to
extraordinary SEO tricks or excessive link building but to the other factors
that helped the site kick-off fast and grow steadily.

If I had to summarize the lessons learned from working on this website,

these are the main points:

1 – Don’t start a website in a niche you don’t know well – before even
starting, get to know as much as you can about the niche. Find out the
leaders, do your keyword research, take note of what kind of content they
publish, how often, etc.

2 – Make sure that you can provide good content for the topics you choose –
if you are not an expert, either become one or hire people that are experts.

3 – Be prepared to spend some money on the site – Maybe you have to hire
writers, do some Google Ads or Facebook, buy a theme or plugins; consider
this as the initial investment that will pay off later.

4 – Respect your users and give them incentives – Don’t create a website full
of ads or affiliate links. You not only risk getting penalized by Google but you
also drive repeating visitors away. Try to find some free tools or books to
give them and keep them coming back.

5 – Don’t forget the newsletter – Email marketing still works and one of your
main objectives is to grow your email list.

6 – Look for other promotion methods besides SEO – SEO is a must but other
methods work good and they indirectly help SEO.

7 – Go Social early – Social media promotion is the best way these days to get
more visits and attention until organic traffic flows in. Use it wisely avoiding
spam techniques and practices.

8 – Never violate or think of violating any Google Guidelines – You may read
promising posts from people making tests on how to get top positions or stuff
like that – stay away from anything that may be considered as a rule
violation. Stick to the guidelines and aim for long term success than a short
term burst and then failure.

9 – Mobile is a must – Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly from

day one and that if you use ads on the mobile-friendly version these are not
 violating any guidelines.

10 – Go slow on building links– It may be ok to build a couple of links in the

beginning but do it only from trusted websites and only if the links matter.
Avoid creating links from low-quality websites. It’s not a matter of quantity
any more but quality.

11 – Be patient – It takes time for SEO to work, don’t get disappointed if you
don’t get any results in the first months, keep doing your work and results
will come.

12 – Be consistent – Try to keep to a publishing schedule. This is good for

SEO but also for direct visits.

13 – Engage with your readers – Reply to comments but don’t publish

comments that don’t make sense or look spam.

14 – Don’t spend too much time on the design – Do create a nice, simple, fast
and functional website but no need to spend hundreds of dollars in design or
theme.

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