- There's a lot that goes into creating
an awesome SEO campaign.
So in today's video, we're going to give you
12 different steps that you should follow to make sure
that you actually move the needle on your search results.
(upbeat music)
We're gonna break today's video down
into four different parts.
So we're gonna talk about research, On-Page SEO,
Off-Page SEO and Technical SEO.
And each of those will have
a few different sub-topics within them.
Now we're gonna start off with research.
And the reason we're gonna start with that
is because a lot of people don't do research
when it comes to SEO.
And if you don't have the research done correctly,
you're not laying the correct foundations,
so you're doomed to fail from the start.
The first part about research is your keyword research.
Now, this is extremely important because
a lot of people out there assume they know
what their ideal audience, clients, customers
will be searching for on search engines such as Google,
in order for them to appear on the listing somewhere.
Now this is not always the case.
And usually when we're talking to a client and we bring up
their website with them live over Zoom,
we'll do some actual searches with them
live on Google to see what kind of websites are appearing
for the keywords that they thought
they wanted to appear for.
Now even people who have done their keyword research,
an issue that they can actually fall into or a trap,
should I say, is that they might go after keywords that have
a lot of high search volume and they think it makes sense
to go for all of those people.
And they neglect everything that has lower search volume.
The problem with that, however,
is that the keywords that are very high volume
may not actually be exactly what you want
your target audience to see or what your website
really is about.
And to be honest, the best way to give an example of this,
is to move into the next section of the video,
which is talking about search intent.
Now search intent is basically what Google are determining
what somebody wants to see when they do a search
for a particular keyword.
Now, bear in mind that Google have years and years
of data of what people actually click on
in the search results.
So Google are able to see when someone searches something
that they want to see X rather than Y.
Now this example kind of goes hand in hand for your
keyword research and search intent.
So let's take the example that you are a dentist.
If you're a dentist,
you may think it makes a lot of sense to rank
for the term, "tooth pain."
Obviously it's a very relevant keyword to what you do,
and you're able to get rid of people's tooth pain for them.
However, if you actually search the term "tooth pain"
anywhere in the world, you'll see in the Google results,
not a single dentist appears.
Not a single dentist.
And the reason for this is because Google have determined
over the years of data, and this is the search intent,
that they think people want to see home remedies
of how to get rid of tooth pain,
how to stop tooth pain quickly,
how to prevent it from happening in the future,
and realistically going to see a dentist,
is their last result that they want to see.
This is why it's not only important to do keyword research
to see what people are actually searching,
but to actually then go and look at the search intent
of those keywords to see if they're extremely relevant
and actually worth you optimizing your website for.
The next section of your research should be to find out
if you have realistic ranking goals for the keyword
you're trying to target.
Now an extreme example of this would be that we find a lot
of smaller shops, mom and pop shops,
as they're sometimes known, wanting to rank for very large,
high volume keywords, such as Amazon.
Yes, they want to rank for the term Amazon
because they know that a lot of people are searching that.
However, if you have a look at the search intent,
if someone is searching for Amazon,
they're looking to go to Amazon,
they're not looking to find a different mom and pop,
smaller shop, whatever it may be.
They want to go to Amazon.
This is why you need to have realistic ranking goals
of the keywords that you're going to target.
Now that's an extreme example that I've just given there,
but we are using that example because a lot of businesses
are in the mindset that they want to rank for keywords
that they know people are searching, but it does not
make sense to try and rank for those keywords.
Again, if you are a smaller shop trying to rank for the term
Amazon, you have to remember that in somebody's mind,
if they're searching for Amazon, their customer journey
is already in the mindset that they want to go
to Amazon's website.
So even if you show up in the search results,
they are not going to click on your website.
Now speaking of the search results themselves,
that actually transitions us nicely into the next section,
which is your On-Page SEO.
Now the first thing I want to talk about with your
On-Page SEO, is your meta information.
Now the meta information of your page is actually
the title and the description of the page.
This is what actually shows up in a Google search result.
So when you search any keyword in the world and you see
about 10 different websites displaying,
what you're seeing is the title of that page
and the description of that page.
Now, this is an extremely basic part of SEO
about changing your meta titles and your meta descriptions.
And because it's so basic, a lot of people
actually neglect it.
But that's quite a mistake because if you think about it,
if you happen to show up in the search results
because you've optimized your page correctly for a keyword,
before someone ever even sees your website,
you have to convince that person,
within your title and description,
that they should click on your website,
as opposed to the other nine people that are displaying
in the Google search results.
Your meta title and meta description allow you
to take up real estate in the Google search results
and to increase your CTR or your Click-Through-Rate.
This is how many people actually click on your website,
as opposed to the competitors in the search results.
If no one's clicking your website in the search results,
all of the other optimizations that you've done
will not make any difference.
So even though it's an extremely basic part of SEO,
please do take the time to change and update and optimize
your meta title and meta description.
Now luckily enough, most CMS platforms today
will actually give you an extremely simple option
to change your meta title and meta description
without having any coding knowledge.
And this goes for if you're using WordPress, Magento,
OpenCart, whatever it might be.
You should have the ability within the backend
of your website to update and change your meta title
and meta description of all your website pages.
Now if you are using WordPress, which is actually used
by almost 40% of all websites throughout the world,
you can install the free Yoast SEO plugin,
and this will allow you to actually update your meta title
and meta description without any knowledge of coding
or anything scary on a website.
The next section in your On-Page SEO is your heading tags.
Now your heading tags are extremely important,
not only for when somebody is going through your page
for the structure of how it looks,
but it's also extremely important to search engines.
Now this ranges from your h1 to your h6.
With the h1 being the most important tag.
We would always recommend that your website,
on every single page, has its own unique h1 tag.
And the best way to think about your h1 tag is,
what is the context of the page within a few short words.
So if a search engine sees your h1,
or if a person even sees your h1,
without actually seeing the page,
that h1 tag, the wording in it, needs to tell them
the context of what that actually is about before they've
ever seen the page.
Now an extremely common problem that we actually see
with a lot of people's h1 tags on their homepage,
is that they have something extremely generic,
such as "Welcome to our website."
So as I just mentioned a moment ago,
your h1 tag should give context of the page
before anyone's ever seen it.
So if you have "Welcome to our website",
and you're showing that to someone who has
never seen the page before, what website?
What's your website about?
Who are you?
What do you do?
You need to have your important keywords in there.
If you want to have something such as
"Welcome to our website", don't have it as your h1,
'cause that does not give enough context
to a search engine or a person about what
the page content actually gives to them.
Now you should also try within your h2s and h3s,
to include, not the exact keyword
that you're trying to target,
'cause you may be actually over-optimizing the page,
believe it or not, but include other relevant keywords
that Google also want to see on the page.
So let's talk about the actual page content now,
and this is basically the text or the copy as it's
sometimes known, on the page itself.
Now, a rule that you should always stick to is
write for humans first, search engines second.
If you try to optimize the page and the copy on your page,
specifically for search engines,
it becomes extremely obvious.
And then you can start doing something such as
keyword stuffing, which is where you're trying
to put important keywords that you want to rank for
on the page, pretty much every second or third word.
It becomes extremely obvious to a human
and to a search engine, what you're trying to do.
The actual wording on the page should read naturally,
and you should be able to sprinkle those keywords
throughout that content copy somewhere
and in relevant places.
But at the same time that it reads organically.
Now this actually goes for every single page
on your website, whether it's actually a sales page,
whether it's a blog post, or even your about page,
whatever it might be.
You need to actually write all the content for those pages
in a way that's natural and specific to humans first
and search engines second.
Let's move on to your Off-Page SEO now.
and again this kind of comes under research,
the first point in here,
because it's having a look at the required referring
domains that you may need to actually rank for that keyword.
And what I actually mean by this is if you have a look
at the people who are appearing in the top 10 search results
for a particular keyword you're trying to rank for already,
how many backlinks do they have and how many unique websites
are linking to that specific page?
Now that's an important point that I just mentioned there.
I said "that specific page."
This is something that a lot of people got wrong
with backlinks.
So your website has a number of
different links going to it overall.
But if you're trying to rank for a particular keyword,
let's say "emergency dentist" on your dentist website,
well then you actually need to have backlinks that are
very important and relevant about emergency dental
go to your emergency dentist page, not your homepage,
not your about page, or any other page.
If you're trying to rank for the term "emergency dentist",
you need to have important and relevant backlinks
going to your emergency dentist page.
Now there is actually free ways of checking this,
believe it or not, and we actually talk about this
a fair bit in a webinar that we do every single Wednesday.
If you do want to have a look at that webinar,
I'll leave a link for it in the description below.
The next part about your Off-Page SEO
is that when you've figured out a fair number
of how many links you think you'll need
to rank in the top 10 positions, or page one of Google,
you need to then start earning and obtaining links.
But bear in mind they need to be
quality over quantity links.
Now in a previous video, we actually spoke about
what goes into making a good link and what Google
and other search engines want to see
that will actually move the needle and actually
push you higher in search results.
But the reason I wanted to put it into this video as a point
or a topic, is that one of the things that a lot of people
can actually get wrong, that can actually move their
search engine results the other way,
not up but actually down, is that they go over
more links as opposed to more quality links.
If you managed to earn a hundred spammy, nonsense links
and your competitors only have 10 links each,
you might think that logically,
that makes sense that you would rank better,
but Google and other search engines are extremely smart.
They'll know that you have 100 spammy, nonsense,
non-relevant links going to your website,
whereas your competitors only have
10% of the quantity of links,
have extremely relevant and authoritative links
going to them.
And the last point about your Off-Page SEO is to conduct
anchor text analysis.
Now what I mean by this, is when you're looking at the
backlinks that your competitors have obtained already,
the people that are already ranking
in position one through ten, page one of Google,
for the keyword you're trying to rank for,
when you actually check what their backlinks are,
you can see what exact wording someone has used
to link to them.
And this is known as your anchor text.
So we'll stick with the dentist example.
So again, you're trying to rank your emergency dentist page.
So if someone has linked to you with the term
"emergency dentist", that's fantastic.
But bear in mind they could use other words as well,
such as a "dental emergency operating service",
or you know, whatever it might be.
And where do you find out these keywords?
Well first of all, what are people already using
to link to your other competitors?
And from the keyword research that we conducted
earlier in the video, that's where you get these keywords.
Because if you're trying to rank a page
all about emergency dentists, and those spammy links
we mentioned a moment ago are linking to you saying
"$10 Amazon gift card", or whatever it might be,
it's not relevant.
That anchor text means nothing to the page.
Even though you've earned a link,
logically, that link is useless and the anchor text
is useless also.
So it's extremely important to also conduct
anchor text analysis, to see what kind of keywords
you would need to be used to link to your particular page,
all about emergency dentists.
And that brings us on to the last section of the video,
which is your Technical SEO.
And the first thing I want to talk about in regards to your
Technical SEO is internal links.
Internal links are links from your own website to another
page on your website.
As we just spoke about,
you have to have a look at your anchor text analysis.
Now because you obviously control the links
and the anchor text on your website,
you have a lot of strong opportunity to use very,
very strong and important anchor text on your website
to link to your important pages.
So again, with the dentist example,
if you have a services section on your dentist page which
talks about braces and teeth cleaning and
emergency dental work, whatever it might be,
well with that emergency dental work,
you can then link those words and it can go and link
to your emergency dentist page.
Very, very strong and relevant anchor text there.
But bear in mind, this isn't something that should
just be done from your services page.
If you have a blog post or any other page at all,
and at some stage in there you mention
emergency dentist or a relevant enough keyword,
highlight that and link it as an internal link
to your emergency dentist page.
Google and other search engines love to see internal links.
However, don't go crazy with your internal links.
You don't want to be in a situation where every
second or third word on your page is a link.
There is a balance to be had here.
So now let's talk about your external links,
and an external link is when you've linked
to somebody else's website.
Now this is something that a lot of people don't do because
they don't see the benefit in linking
to somebody else's website.
Now a lot of people assume this means that
you've to rank to a competitor website,
which does not make sense, which I agree with.
However, with the dentist example that we've
just spoken about, there is so many things
that you could link to that aren't going to be a competitor.
You need to change the mindset there immediately.
So this could be something as simple as
what particular toothpaste that dentist recommends.
And if they mention the branding of that toothpaste,
they can actually then link to the website of that
particular toothpaste company.
Now that toothpaste company, they're not a competitor,
they're completely unbiased between you
and all of the different dentists within your area,
town, city, whatever it might be.
And also Google and other search engines are smart enough
to know that the website that you're linking to
is extremely relevant to what you actually do.
Now Google don't only love internal links
on your own website.
They like to see external links when it leads
to something relevant and helps the user experience also.
So it is important to use not only internal links,
but external links on your website as well.
Now what I would always recommend,
if you are linking to external websites,
is to make sure that that link opens up in a new tab
or a new window.
That way, when someone has finished looking
at that other website and they close that tab or window,
they'll actually be brought back to your website.
You want to keep people on your website
for as long as possible.
And the last thing to talk about within your Technical SEO
is to make sure you have no broken links.
Now we recently actually released a video
all about broken links, how to find them
and how to fix them.
And the reason that we're bringing it up here
is because it is part of Technical SEO,
and it is an issue that pretty much every single website
we ever look at has an issue with.
In a nutshell what we mentioned in the other video
was that a person or a search engine
does not like to see a broken link.
If you think about it, I'm sure at some stage you've
been on the website where you've clicked something
and it leads to a 404 error, or a page not found,
broken link.
So this is bad for your user experience,
and your conversion rates, and search engines
obviously don't want to send people to a website
that they know has broken links.
Now we would recommend crawling your website at least
once a month, just to make sure there's no 404 errors.
And if they do appear, that you can fix them easily enough.
So that brings us to an end of today's video,
which was all about different things that you
should be looking at and essentially
a check mark of what you can do for an awesome SEO campaign
to make sure that you rank for the keywords
that you want to rank for.
If you do have any comments or questions,
please do leave them below.
We do our very best to reply to every single person.
And we will be talking about a lot more of this
in-depth in the future.
So make sure you're subscribed to our channel.
Specifically when we mentioned search intent,
the next video that's released on this channel
will be all about search intent.
Other than that, hope you got a bit of value from the video.
Enjoy, and we'll speak again soon.
Bye!