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SEO - Coggle Diagram
SEO
KEYWORD RESEARCH
What is a Keyword and the Intent Behind It?
Keywords = search phrases
Keyword intent (search intent) = user's purpose
Short tail VS. Long tail keywords
Short-tail: 1-2 words
E.g. yoga mats
Long-tail: more than 3
e.g. red non-slip yoga mat under $30
=>
Convert better
and less competitive
=> Especially good for beginners
Google Keyword Planner
Keywords
Websites
Use the first organic results (Use only this page)
Find Out What Keywords Your Website Already Appears For
SEMrush
Domain Analytics -> Organic Research
Sort by "Positions"
-> Select #11-20 (Page 2) -> Export -> Try to optimize better
Keyword Surfer (Google Chrome extension - shows only search volume)
Keyword Difficulty
MozBar
(Chrome extension)
PA: Page Authority
DA: Domain Authority (whole the website)
Look for keywords that have results
on Page 1 of GG with PA OR DA =< 25
Target that keyword
Find Additional Keywords for Your Website
SEMrush
Enter a short-tail keyword
"View all keywords"
-> Filter by those having >= 100 searches
Export them to a Master List then
Export them as different themes (suggested by SEMrush)
Keywords Your Competitors Rank For
Find your competitors by searching GG by the keyword and taking the first few ORGANIC results -> Copy the link -> Enter into SEMrush => Export the keywords
-> Categorize them into themes
Google Auto-complete For More Keyword Ideas
Typing slowly, letter by letter
"Searches related to yoga mat" at the bottom of the first results page
Use those keywords again to find other related keywords at the bottom of the results page
keywordtool.io
Organizing Keywords
Remove irrelevant keywords
e.g. travel yoga mat
amazon
Remove duplicate keywords
Validate Your Keywords Using Google Trends
Select the longest period of time available
TECHNICAL SEO
What Is An
XML Sitemap
&
How To Set Up One Up For Your Website
What Is Duplicate Content &
How To Check Your Website For it
https://www.siteliner.com/
Duplicate content should be =< 15%
How To Set Up
Google Analytics
What Is A 404 Page &
How To Find Them On Your Website
Google Search Console
=> Coverage (under Index)
The Two Different Google Analytics Accounts You Can Have
Universal Analytics (GA3)
Base on SESSIONS and PAGEVIEWS to track data (session-based model)
Store information like page views, events and transactions as HITS
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
(After Oct 2020)
Base on EVENTS and PARAMETERS (event-based model)
e.g. "page view" is considered as an event
What Is A 301 Redirect &
How To Set Them Up In Your Wordpress Backend
Redirect 404 pages
Combine 2 pages into 1
GG: site:yoursite.com "phrase you wrote"
Set Up
Google Search Console
Diagnose Your Website for Keyword Cannibalization
A single website unintentionally targets the same keyword across multiple pages
What Is REALLY Classified As Keyword Cannibalization?
Two pages ranked on the first page of GG search at the
same
time is not a problem.
Enter WEBSITE URL into SEMRush
-> Organic Research -> "Positions" tab
-> Location sorting -> Export and process with Excel
De-optimize one of the pages to stop it from competing
(Do the opposite to when we optimize)
301 redirect of the pages to the other
HTTP vs. HTTPS ( S = secure)
What Is Schema Mark Up & Add It To Your Website
Schema Markup is the code you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users
Facts
Schema markup uses a unique semantic vocabulary in microdata format
Schema.org was created by GG, Yahoo, Bing.
Schema tells search engines what your data means, not just what it says.
Schema markup is created for users
For: articles, local business, restaurants, TV episodes and ratings, item reviews, movies, software applications, events, products, and many, many more.
WP Plugin
Structured Data Testing Tool
Google
MEASURING YOUR PROGRESS
The 3 Biggest Culprits That Prevent Your From Ranking
Under-optimizing your anchor text (check SEMRush; see your competitors)
Keyword density too high
Over-optimizing the anchor text (balancing different types)
Find Out How Much Traffic Your Website Gets
GG Analytics
-> Acquisition -> Overview -> Change the Date Range -> See by Day rather than Month or Year
-> "Users" data
How Long Does It Take to See Results?
Be patient and consistent (4-6 months for rule of thumb)
Find Out What Country Your Traffic Is Coming From
GG Analytics
-> Audience -> Geo -> Location -> Change the Date Range -> See by Day rather than Month or Year
Track Your Rankings
SEMRush -> Projects -> Position Tracking
Enter WEB URL (NOT page)
Once a month is enough
SERP ROBOT - $5/mo after trial
Find Out What Pages Are the Most Popular on Your Website
GG Analytics
-> Behaviour -> Site Content -> All Pages -> Change the Date Range -> See by Day rather than Month or Year
Check the source of traffic
Keep Track Of All Your Backlinks
Website Management Template
Set Up Goals in Google Analytics to Measure Your Businesses Success
GG Analytics
Check the Bounce Rate
Fix those with high bounce rates
Ecommerce Tracking
OFFPAGE SEO - LINK BUILDING
Do-Follow vs No-Follow links
Dofollow links are a way to pass on authority to a website,
while a nofollow link does not pass on link juice.
Find Out What Backlinks Your Website Already Has
SEMRush
Sort by do-follow vs no-follow links
Sort by backlinks per domain
What pages should
you build backlinks to
Build links to ALL the pages you want to rank for, including those with low high intent
But they must provide some value in their content
Determine What Makes
a Good Backlink
Website Domain Authority (DA) >= 25
How many keywords the website appears for >=100
Decent amount of organic traffic >= monthly 200
Good number of referring domains >= 50
The page (not website) is NOT linking out to tons of other different websites (ideally yours and only one other)
A Theoretical Framework On Backlinks
What a link provides?
Trust (more famous, more aged)
e.g. from New York Times
Power
Relevance
(of the content where the link is placed, also from the anchor text)
Anchor text and its importance
Clickable text on a website used to link one web page to another
Anchor text should be relevant to the page you are linking to, rather than generic text
Types of anchor text
Branded
URL (naked link)
Partial match
Misc (Generic): Read more; Click here
Exact match
Should have a variation of them all but keep them natural
Avoid exact-match anchors if domain name has the keywords
Link Building Strategies
Broken Links
Find broken links on that page
Reach out (inform them of the broken links and ask them to link to yours) (Template included)
Find relevant resource pages
Niche + inurl:links
Niche + "helpful resources"
Niche + "useful resources"
Niche + "useful links"
Skyscraper Technique
Improve existing popular content and replicate the backlinks
Create sth way better
Length (old: 25 ways to ... -> new: 30 ways)
Freshness (check to find anything outdated -> new info, images, ...)
Design
Depth (Fill in the details & make it actionable)
Ask those linking to the original piece to link to your superior content instead (Template included)
Find a relevant piece of content with lots of backlinks
Use general keywords
Check SEMRush with the page (NOT website) URL
Resource Pages
(pages that link out to other contents on a given topic)
Find the Best Fit content
Reach out (Template included)
Finding those pages
GG:
Niche + inurl:links
Niche + "helpful resources"
Niche + "useful resources"
Niche + "useful links"
e.g. dog blog "useful links"
Reverse Image Search
There are probably sites using your photos (if you have any) w/o attribution -> Use GG reverse image search to find the websites using your image and ask them to link to your website
Forums
GG:
Forum + Niche
Niche + discussion board
Niche inurl:/forums
Niche "powered by vbulletin"
inurl:/forum niche
intitle:forum niche
Set up a new email for this purpose
Relevant Blog Commenting
Find relevant blogs and comment on them
GG: best + Niche + blogs
Make your comments natural (relevant to the blog posts)
Steal Your Competitors Backlinks
GG: best + Niche
e.g. best car vacuum
Pick a few top organic results
SEMRush
(Page URL, NOT website's)
Sort by "1 link per ref. domain"
and "Follow" backlinks
Check SEMRush with 5 criteria above
Social Profiles
Add a link to your website in your Bio
Fiverr: Create social media profiles backlinks
Guest posting
Most (effective)
Guestpost Opportunities
GG: Niche + "submit a guest post" (with quotation marks)
e.g. healthy eating blogs "submit a guest post"
Check SEMRush with 5 criteria above
Submit unique pieces of content to different websites
Most good blogs charge a fee for publishing your content.
You can reach out to the blog owner on social media platforms and build a relationship with them before asking for their publishing
The BEST Link Building Strategy - Results Based
Quality trumps quantity
Backlinks and their importance
A backlink is a mention of your website on an external website ("vote of confidence")
INTRODUCTION TO MANUAL SEO AUDITS
URLs - 404 Pages + Optimized URLs
Finding dead pages
301 redirects
404 pages
Optimization (only for new sites or those with no rankings)
Don't keyword stuff
Avoid repeating words
e.g. NOT yoga.com/yoga-mats
Include biggest keywords
The shorter the better
Not for existing webs with available backlinks
Page Titles
Keep it under 60 characters (including spaces)
Excess will be cut off by GG
Get your keywords towards the front of the title tag
Word Counter
Write naturally (avoid keyword stuffing)
Include single words/ variations (synonyms - e.g. expert & specialist; consultant & consulting)
Don't repeat words
Crawling Your Website - An Overview
Screaming Frog
Meta Descriptions
Keep it under 155 characters (including spaces)
Get your keywords mentioned no matter where (just help your site stand out - boldened by GG automatically)
Try to grab ppl's attention (ASK questions)
e.g. Are u a biz owner looking for an SEO consultant in London?
Write naturally (avoid keyword stuffing)
Tools For an SEO Audit
SEO Spider Tool - Screaming Frog
Alternatives: Sitebulb; Deepcrawl
Heading Tags (H1 & H2s)
As many H2 tags as you want, but be sure they're relevant sub-topics
H3 same as H2
Only ONE H1 tag per page
Write naturally (avoid keyword stuffing)
Include your main keywords in the H1 (don't just copy the page title)
What Is an SEO Audit
A process of evaluating a site to see how search engine friendly the site is => Ensure your site has a strong SEO foundation
How Google Works
3 types of pages
Crawled (by GG)
Indexed
Known (by GG)
=> Done from Day 1
CREATING CONTENT
FOR YOUR WEBSITE
What to Avoid
A wall of text (no formatting, pictures, ...)
The Importance of Fresh Content
Update existing content
Adding a new sentence
Remove a sentence
Change a picture
Add a video
Al least one new blog per month
Content Ideas Generation
SEMRush
Question-related keywords
Industry-related Blogs Subscription
GG "best 100 ... blogs"
Feedspot.com
Review the Competition
GG your keyword and pick a few non-sales pages, go to the page and search within the websites by your keywords to find all the related content
How Long Should Your Content Be?
Follow Top GG organic results
1 = Work out the avg of the top 3 websites
2 = +10%
wordcounter.net
The Importance of Content
What VALUE does your content provide?
ONPAGE SEO
Onpage SEO for Non-Wordpress websites
Image ALT Tag for SEO (alternative text for images)
The 3 Kings a website has
SEO Title Tag
Often filled out by Yoast SEO
HTML: <title> Clothing \ Yoga Activewear For Men </title>
Get your keyword (with highest search volume) towards the front of the title tag
Write naturally
Include single words
Don't repeat words
Keep under 60 characters in length
e.g. Yoga Clothes For Men & Women - Tops, Vests & More | Clickslice
Page Title (H1 Tag)
Same rules as SEO title tag above but Don't make this the same as the SEO title tag (mix up words a bit)
e.g. Yoga Clothing For Men & Women - View Our Tops, Vests & More
Keep only ONE H1 Tag
URL
Find those with highest search volume. e.g. yoga clothes
-> URL should be: ... .com/yoga-clothes
NOT ... .com/yoga-clothes-tops-for-men-women-sale-cheap-uk
Do not repeat words in the URL
E.g. yoga.com/clothes
NOT yoga.com/yoga-clothes
If your pages already have decent rankings AND has links pointing to the page, avoid changing the URL
-> Go to the other 02 kings
OR
alternative solution: 301 redirect
Others: Sub-headings, H2, H3 and Content
SEO META in 1 click
Internal linking and how to add them
An internal link is a link from one of your pages that links to another one of your pages.
It can help transfer the authority of one page to another.
Must maintain relevancy (content) and consistency
GG: site:onlinegoldsecrets.com "make money" => find all the pages containing the phrase "make money" on your website
What is it?
Any change you make ON your website to improve its visibility, e.g. update the title tag on a page; change the <h1> tag on a page; edit the meta description of a page
SPEEDING UP YOUR WORDPRESS WEBSITE
Website Speed Optimisation for Cloudways Users
Breeze Plugin
can replace all latter 3 plugins for Cloudways users
Speed Up Your Wordpress Website
Reduce image sizes
Smush
Optimole
EWWW Image Optimizer
Reduce HTTP requests
Minify JS and CSS files
Reducing the no. of CSS and JS calls their size
Autoptimize Plugin
Use a cache plugin
WP Rocket (premium)
WP Super Cache (free)
Check in Incognito to see if the site is broken
Web Hosting And Servers
Siteground: 2nd package (Growbig)
Seekahost
Cloudways
: 1st package is enough
Test Your Websites Page Speed
GTmetrix
Sign up to change the location of server
Correlation Between Site Speed and Rankings
Rule of thumb: Loading time should be =< 3s
GOOGLE ALGORITHMS TO BE AWARE OF
Google Penguin
Apr 24, 2012
Link schemes & Keyword stuffing
One page can affect the entire site
Google Hummingbird
Aug 20, 2013
Semantic search
Focus on user intent and how the subject of a search relates to other information in a wider sense, or its contextual relevance (what a user really means rather than a string of keywords, and then serving relevant results)
Use topic-appropriate language
Implement schema microdata
Diversify the length of your content
Google Panda
Feb 23, 2011
Content
How to spot
A sudden drop in your website organic traffic or search engine ranking correlating with a known date of an algorithm update
FUNDAMENTAL
PRINCIPLES
Typical SEO Campaign Workflow
Keyword research
Content generation
Onpage SEO
Offpage SEO (Link building)
Measure progress
and come back to the first
What is SEO?
Practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website using organic search engine results
Debunking SEO Myths?
Content is all you need.
Page speed isn't that important. (Users experience)
Links are dead.
High keyword density helps you rank.
Buying GG ads helps with organic traffic.
More pages help my site rank better. (Quantity doesn't matter)
NEGATIVE SEO
The Most Common Negative SEO Tactics
Building low-quality/ spammy backlinks
Types
Volume approach
1000s of bad backlinks
How to spot
SEMRush -> Backlinks (under Domain Analytics)
A SUDEN SURGE in a number of referring DOMAINS if no investments in backlinks were carried out (for an agency, by a viral post, ...)
Anchor-text approach
Low-quality/ Irrelevant
How to spot
SEMRush -> Backlinks (under Domain Analytics) -> "Anchors" tab
Over-optimized
Pointing lots of exact match anchor text links at a ranking page and screwing up its anchor text ratio (of different types)
Protect Your Website From A Negative SEO Attack
Disavow
BACKLINKS and ANCHOR TEXTwith SEMRush and GG
If not sure which backlinks one to disavow, check the Domain Authority (DA >= 25)
What Is Negative SEO And How To Identify It
To demote a competing site, or sometimes have it completely removed from the search
e.g. building 1000s of spam links; sending fake link removal requests, creating fake reviews, etc.
ONLY sophisticated campaigns can work (very small %).
Manual penalty notification (from GG)
(NOT Algorithmic)
Usual Drop in individual keyword rankings
Drop in traffic
LEVELLING UP YOUR SEO KNOWLEDGE
Tiered Link Building
Tier 2 backlinks
Those that link to your backlinks
Penguin calculate the power of individual pages that were linking to your site (NOT power of domains)
Tier 2 links are BEST built to
pages that have a low Page Authority but a high Domain Authority (>= 25)
Types of Tier 2 links should be the same as tier 1 links: guest posts, niche edits (relax a little but not much abt the quality)
Tier 2 links to each backlink page: 1-3 per page
Your tier 2 anchor text (in your backlink pages) does NOT MATTER
Googles Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Focus of GG is always on USERS -> You should focus on user intent (rather than keywords themselves)
Relevance / Quality / Value of content
Topical Relevancy
Prove to GG that your SITE is related a topic rather than just specific keywords
Problem arises when, for instance, all our site is about one topic and we want to rank for an additional new keyword -> Have to write other supporting articles related to that keywords
Pick the right topics for supporting articles
GG the keyword and scroll down to the bottom of Page 1 to find "Related searches" or SEMRush
Be careful with what pages you link to
To ensure relevance
Review your competition to check how many supporting articles needed
Write enough to cover the whole topic
Free Tools and Resources
Keyword research
GG keyword planner
Ubersuggest
Backlinks checker
Monitor Backlinks
Plugins used
USER EXPERIENCE
What Is User Experience (UX) &
How To Improve Your Websites UX
Responsive web design
Simple navigation
Rule of thumb: Navigate to ANY page within 3 clicks
Answer searches query ASAP
Include rich media (images & videos)
Fast loading
Match up with search intent
User Metrics That Can Affect Your Rankings
Dwell time
The time a user spends on a resulted page
Digestible content: short sentences, paragraphs, chunking techniques, make it skimmable
Content worthy of sticking around: understanding your audience and make it relevant to their interests (keyword research)
Content that encourages ppl to read on from the beginning
Use internal linking to keep ppl on your site
Bounce rate
% of visitors that leave a page w/o taking any action (clicking on a link, filling out a form, make a purchase, etc.) - no relation to dwell time
Rule of thumb: Avg.Bouce Rate: 41-50%
Make your content super easy to read
Satisfy search intent (keyword research)
Have a fast loading website
Embed YT videos on your page
Organic CTR
Advanced Web Ranking - CTR in relation to ranking positions