Seo Course Textbook Preview - Equinet Academy

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)
TRAINING COURSE
How to RankYour Website on Page #1 of Google
Academy
Equinet

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training Course
Academy
Equinet
2
Topics Covered
1
2
3
4
5
Introduction
Keyword Research
On-Page SEO
Link Building
Local & International SEO
& Miscellaneous

Academy
Equinet
3
Introduction
to SEO
1
SEO Fundamentals
Why SEO is So Important?
to 80% ignore paid ads on the right
side of the SERPs70%
of links clicked on by search engine
users are organic results70%
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/
close rate for SEO leads on average
compared to 1.7% close rate for
outbound leads (print or direct mail)
14.6%
of internet users use search82.6%
illion global searches conducted
each month on average100 B

Academy
Equinet
4
Chapter1:IntroductiontoSEO
How Can SEO Benefit Your Business
Increased Brand Visibility Increased Traffic Increased Profits
If your group of friends and
you were looking for a quick
bite in the middle of the night
and a friend asked you,
“What’s a good 24-hour
fast-food restaurant to get a
quick bite?” What would be
the first restaurant that comes
into your mind?
!
Your answer would most likely
be MacDonalds.
!
Why is that so? Because you
literally see MacDonalds
everywhere.
With increased visibility in
the SERPs, you’ll draw
more clicks to your landing
pages. That’s also provided
your search snippets (title
and meta description) are
attractive and relevant to
the search terms.
!
With increased traffic, you
can work on increasing
your profits and
conversions by optimising
your landing pages and
value proposition.

Academy
Equinet
5
How Do Search Engines Work?
Algorithms
!
To calculate authority and
relevancy of a webpage to
a given search query.
Crawling
!
Search engine spiders
crawl the web through
following links
Indexing
!
Search engines store the
information it collects
into its index.
Ranking
!
A score is given to each of
webpage after taking into account
hundreds of ranking factors.
Search Results

Academy
Equinet
6
What is PageRank?
“PageRank is a link analysis algorithm
used by Google to help determine the
relative importance of a website. Every
website is given a Google PageRank score
between 0 and 10 on an exponential
scale.” - Bruceclay
!
Each link from one website to another is
interpreted by Google as a vote.
Depending on the number of outbound
links a page has, the PageRank is split
equally.
!
PageRank is not…!
the ranking position of a page in the
search results. PageRank is only one of the
many ranking factors and it does not
guarantee #1 position in the search results.
Site A
PR 8
Site B
PR 3
Site C
PR 0
PR4
PR4
Site D
PR 2
PR3
Recommended reading:
• http://searchengineland.com/what-is-google-pagerank-a-guide-for-searchers-
webmasters-11068
• http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/what-is-pagerank/

Academy
Equinet
7
White Hat Vs Black Hat SEO
Google’s search engine algorithms have evolved to combat
black hat techniques, and take a very serious note on black
hat link building.
!
Some black hat SEO techniques include:
!
•Keyword stuffing
•Duplicating internal pages on a mass scale
•Sneaky redirects
•Displaying different results to users and search engines.
•Keyword-rich anchor text on inbound links, especially on
low quality sites
Keyword Stuffing Example:!
This cake decorating tutorial will show you a cake
decorating tutorial on how to decorate a cake. The first
part of this cake decorating tutorial is on how to decorate
a cake. Here’s how to decorate a cake in this cake
decorating tutorial.

Academy
Equinet
8
Google Major
Algorithm
Changes
Google changes its search
algorithm around 500 - 600 times
each year. That’s 1 - 2 times on
average each day. Some algorithm
updates have tremendous results
on the search rankings. Below is a
list of major algorithmic updates in
recent years:
!
•Panda
•Penguin
•Hummingbird
•Pigeon Update
•Mobile Update
Panda Update (2011)
Penguin Update (2012)
Hummingbird Update (2013)
Lower the rankings of low-quality sites.
Decrease rankings of sites that engage in shady link building.
Relevancy and Knowledge graph update (Semantic Search).
Pigeon Update (2014)
Improves distance and location ranking parameters for local search results.
Mobile-Friendly Update (2015)
Impacts mobile search rankings of non-mobile-friendly pages.
Recommended reading:
• https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
• http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-algorithm-updates

Academy
Equinet
9
How to Rank Page #1 on Google
On-Page SEO Off-Page SEO
• Keywords found on content
!
• Exceptional and unique content
!
• Fast page loading time 
• Optimized for mobile 
• Proper URL structures 
• Good site architecture 
• Optimized internal links
• Acquiring inbound links from
reputable, relevant webpages
through Content Marketing,
Social Media Marketing, Email
Outreach, etc. 
• Local citations 
• Search engine submission

Academy
Equinet
10
ReportingOff-Page SEOOn-Page SEO
The 4-Step SEO Process
Step 1: Conduct keyword
research!
!
The first step of any SEO
campaign is to conduct
keyword research. Doing
SEO without knowing what
keywords your site should
rank for is like firing at a
target without first taking aim.
!
Detailed keyword research
and analysis sets your SEO
campaign up for success in
the long run.
Keyword Research
Step 2: Make your site
search engine friendly!
!
Once you have gathered a
targeted list of keywords, the
next step would be to input
those keywords into your
existing content. You can also
use your keyword list to give
you new content ideas.
!
Other on-page SEO factors
include site speed, mobile
optimisation, site architecture,
and internal linking.
Step 3: Link building and
local citation building!
!
After taking care of your on-
page SEO, here comes the
hard part.
!
Off-page SEO activities
include link building and
building local citations.
Step 4: Reporting and
analysis!
!
Your SEO campaign doesn’t
stop here. Check your
keyword ranking reports,
regularly monitor your site
health through 3rd party
tools such as Google
Webmaster Tools, check
your backlink reports, and
identify potential areas for
improvement.

Academy
Equinet
11
Keyword
Research
2
How to conduct
keyword research
like a pro
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is ﬁnding out what search terms
your potential customers are using, so that you can
optimise your site better with the data.
Your job is to know what those
keywords are and optimise your
website for them.
Your customers use keywords/
search terms to search for your
business.

Academy
Equinet
12
Chapter2:KeywordResearch
Why is Keyword Research Important?
To provide the best answer to a question, you ﬁrst need to
understand the intention of the question, also commonly referred to
as the searcher intent. Keyword research can help you to identify
buyer personas based on the questions (search terms) they ask.
By conducting keyword research, you’ll discover exactly what
questions your consumers are asking. The next step would be to
understand the searchers’ intents and create content that will
provide the best answers to each question.
Knowing what keywords your potential customers are using can
help you better optimise your content for them and for the search
engines (e.g. by including the keywords in your title tags, URL,
meta description, copy, and image alt tags.)
Discover Buyer Personas
Create Useful Content
Optimize Your Content
1
2
3

Academy
Equinet
13
Why is it important to identify
your buyer personas?
Knowing who your buyers are will give
you a broader idea of search terms to
conduct keyword research on.
!
From a keyword researcher’s perspective, different
buyer personas key in different search terms.
!
For example, a marketing director looking to hold a
conference with partnering companies would key in
“conference room rental”, whereas a business
consultant looking to hold a meeting with his client
would key in “meeting room rental”.
!
Researching your buyer personas and
understanding what keywords they are most likely to
enter is the ﬁrst step to effective keyword research.
What would you key in to Google if
you were:

Academy
Equinet
14
Identifying Buyer Personas
1
Brainstorm with your team!
Set up a meeting with your team to brainstorm and
list down all possible buyer personas.
2
3
4
Conduct market survey!
Invest in paid market research data, conduct
surveys with 3rd party and existing customers,
visit forums and attend community events where
your potential customers hang out.
Conduct keyword research!
Use keyword research tools such as Google
Keyword Planner to identify buyer personas.
Analyse existing customer enquiries & proﬁles!
Looking through your past customer enquiries and
existing customer proﬁles can help you identify
buyer personas.
Refer to buyer persona worksheet

Academy
Equinet
15
Thinking Like a Buyer
Going into the personas of your
buyers!
!
Our earlier example (“conference
room rental” & “meeting room
rental”) where different buyer
personas keying in different
keyword variations that essentially
mean the same thing shows that it
is important to go into your
customer’s minds in order to
optimise for as many possible
keyword variations.
!
If one of your buyer personas are
event planners, think about what
words they would search for in
order to ﬁnd your products and
services.
!
What content do they digest?
Where do they hang out on the
web? What sites do they frequent?
Asking these questions will help
you to discover even broader
(awareness) keywords.
!
For example if your customers
are mainly event planners
looking to rent function rooms
for their clients’ birthday parties,
they’d probably use search
terms such as “function room
rental”.
!
You can also create
“awareness” articles such as
“20 Amazing Birthday Ideas to
Celebrate Your 21st” to increase
brand awareness.
!
Conduct keyword research with
that title in mind and you will
probably discover keywords
such as “birthday party ideas.
What would you key in to Google if
you were:
• a business consultant looking to hold a
meeting with your client 
• an event planner looking run a birthday
party for a customer 
• a speaker looking to run a seminar to
showcase your products 
• a tuition teacher looking to hold a class for
your students 
• a training provider looking to hold a
corporate training workshop

Academy
Equinet
16
Some examples of keywords in various
buying stages:!
!
“Awareness” keywords:
•how to organise a seminar
•how to promote an event
!
“Interest” keywords:
•meeting rooms facilities
•seminar rooms singapore
!
“Desire” keywords:
•training room rental rates
•training room rental in bugis
!
“Action” keywords:
•rent a training room in singapore
•rent a meeting room singaporeImage Courtesy of
Hubspot
Types of Keywords You Should Target
AIDA Funnel
}
}
Informational
Content
Product-
Centered
Content

Academy
Equinet
17
Short Tail, Long Tail,
Location Based
Keywords
!
There are short tail (generic), long
tail (specific), and location based
keywords to consider when
choosing your target keywords.
!
Long tail (specific) and location
based keywords tend to perform
better than short tail (generic)
keywords.
!
The example on the left showcases
a training room rental company
based in Singapore and the
keywords gathered through
keyword research.
Short tail Long tail Location based
• room rental
• rent rooms
• rooms for rent
• training rooms
• training room rental
• long term training
room rental
• cheap training
room rental
rates
in bugis
• rent a training room
in singapore
singapore
• singapore training
rooms for rent
A consumer searching
for “room rental” could
be looking for an
apartment to stay in,
not specifically a
training room to
conduct business
activities.
The above keywords
are more targeted to a
specific audience. A
consumer searching
for “training room
rental rates” has a
high probability in
enquiring on rental
fees.
Location based
keywords are high
potential keywords
and tend to convert
very well. A consumer
searching for “training
room rental in bugis”
most likely only wants
to rent a training room
in that specific area.
Types of Keywords You Should Target
Refer to: www.alstarrental.com

Academy
Equinet
18
Types of Keywords
You Should Target
What is a good search volume?
!
Is there a minimum search volume I
should use as a guideline? - It
depends on the type of keywords
and the buyer intent.
!
Through our Google AdWords
reports, we have noticed
conversions on long tail keywords
with a local search volume as low as
40 monthly average searches.
!
Typically for long tail, actionable
keywords, and location based
keywords, you shouldn’t worry
about a minimum search volume.
Take note of the
search trends. The
average monthly
searches is 170,
however in certain
months there are
less than 170
searches.

Academy
Equinet
19
How to use Google Keyword
Planner!
!
Step 1: Sign into Google
AdWords with your Gmail
account.
Conducting Keyword Research (Google Keyword Planner)

Academy
Equinet
20
Step 2: Set up your
AdWords account if you
have signed in to AdWords
for the ﬁrst time. Once
done, navigate to
Tools => Keyword Planner.

Academy
Equinet
21
Step 3: Click on “Search
for new keywords using a
phrase, website or
category”.

Academy
Equinet
22
Step 4: Enter a seed
keyword (e.g. “training
room rental”) and click
“Get ideas”.

Academy
Equinet
23
Step 5: Explore the “Ad group ideas” and
“Keyword ideas” tab and start building your
keyword list.
Other keyword research tools!
!
Here are some other keyword research tools, both
paid and free, to consider:
!
•Google Suggest
•Ubersuggest
•Wordtracker
•semrush
!
Once you have gathered additional keywords from
the other KW research tools, plug them back into
Google Keyword Planner to estimate the average
monthly search volume of each search term.
Conducting Keyword
Research

Academy
Equinet
24
Using more than one keyword
research tool for keyword
research!
!
There are many great tools to
conduct keyword research.
However, like most other softwares
out there in the market, there is no
one size ﬁts all.
!
Using only the Google Keyword
Planner for example, you can gather
a decent keyword list. However
there will be long tail search queries
that Google Keyword Planner will
miss.
 
Using Google Suggest and other
keyword tools will help you pick up
any missed long tail keywords.
Keyword research data is rather limited using
just Google Keyword Planner
Using Google Suggest provides extended
keyword data
Conducting Keyword Research
Refer to keyword research worksheet

Academy
Equinet
25
How to Evaluate
Keyword
Competitiveness
Analysing AdWords CPC range and
keyword competition level!
!
Looking at the suggested bid and
competition at the keyword level, we can
assume that since advertisers are
bidding heavily on paid search ads, they
are likely investing on SEO as well, thus
increasing the competitiveness of a
group of keywords in the organic search
ranking results.

Academy
Equinet
26
There are many third party softwares that can
automatically analyse the keyword difficulty level
(how difficult is it to rank a keyword on Google)
such as:
• Moz keyword difficulty tool
• Spyfu keyword research tool
• SEMrush keyword difficulty tool
!
To evaluate how competitive a keyword is
without the use of tools, you need to look a
range of on-page and off-page ranking factors in
order to understand what caused a webpage to
rank on the top 5 positions of Google such as:
• Keywords in Title tags, H1 tags, URL
• How useful and relevant is the content to the
search result
• Quality and quantity of backlinks to the page
• Overall domain authority
How to Evaluate Keyword Competitiveness
Title Tags
URL

Academy
Equinet
27
Keywords found on page!
!
In the example on the right,
Regus appears to be optimised
for multiple related keywords
(conference room and meeting
rooms are used
interchangeably).
!
As a result, Regus outranks We
Are Spaces for the search term
“conference room rental” very
likely due to the fact that it has
optimised its title to include
“conference room rental”.
Search results
for term: !
meeting room
rental
Search results
for term: !
conference room
rental
How to Evaluate
Keyword
Competitiveness

Academy
Equinet
28
How to Evaluate Keyword Competitiveness
Quality and Usefulness of Content!
!
Can you beat your competitors’ content
in terms of quality and usefulness?
!
The key to achieving high rankings on
Google is to create high quality pages
that achieve their purpose.
!
As stated in Google’s ofﬁcial Search
Quality Rating Guidelines,
“High quality pages are satisfying and
achieve their purpose well. High
quality pages exist for almost any
purpose, from giving information to
making you laugh.”
What makes a High quality page? A High quality rating requires at least one of the
following high quality characteristics:
!
•A satisfying amount of high quality MC (Main Content).
•The page and website are expert, authoritative, and trustworthy for the
topic of the page.
•The website has a good reputation for the topic of the page.
!
In addition, the page and website should have most of the following:
!
•A satisfying amount of website information, for example, About Us
information, Contact or Customer Service information, etc.
•SC (Supplementary Content) which contributes to a satisfying user
experience on the page and website.
•Functional page design which allows users to easily focus on MC and use
SC as desired.
•A website which is well cared for and maintained.
Source: Search Quality Rating Guidelines

Academy
Equinet
29
1
How relevant are those links?!
!
It is also important to look at the quality of the backlinks. A camera blog
linking to another website’s article on camera tips has more link relevancy
than a general business directory linking to a camera blog.
2
Uniqueness of backlinks!
!
How many unique websites a.k.a referring domains are linking to a
particular website. According to a survey and correlation data report by
Moz, a higher number of unique IPs linking to a domain correlated to
higher rankings.
Number of back links and quality
of backlinks!
!
A study on the importance of
backlinks published by Cyrus
Shepard from Moz highlighted that
more backlinks correlated to higher
rankings.
How to Evaluate
Keyword
Competitiveness

Academy
Equinet
30
How to Evaluate
Keyword
Competitiveness
Domain Authority / Page Authority!
!
High domain authority (DA) and page
authority (PA) also correlate to higher
rankings.
!
The actual algorithms and metrics used to
calculate a site’s DA is unknown. However
there are many 3rd party tools that can
estimate the DA of a site.
!
The Mozbar browser extension is one
such tool. Once installed, go to the
webpage and the DA/PA will show up on
your browser toolbar.

Academy
Equinet
31
What insights can you get from your
search terms report?!
!
The search terms report in AdWords
shows you the exact search queries that
users searched for on Google and clicked
through your search results. It also shows
you which keywords result in a higher ROI
and which keywords do not convert as
much.
!
This data is very important in determining
which keywords you should focus more of
your SEO/SEM efforts on.
!
For example, reducing your spend on
poorly performing keywords will decrease
your costs per acquisitions (CPA),
resulting in an increase in your overall
proﬁt.
Advanced Keyword Research

Academy
Equinet
32
Drawing search term reports from
your internal search engine.!
!
Having an internal search engine
installed on your site for users to
search for what they want is a great
way to gain insight into what people
are looking for.
!
If you’re using WordPress, you can
draw your search terms reports from
your internal search engine with
Yoast’s Google Analytics for
WordPress plugin or set up site search
manually with the help of this guide.
!
Once you’re done collating your
reports, add these search terms to
your keyword list.
Advanced Keyword Research

Academy
Equinet
33
On-Page
SEO
3
How to fix internal site
issues and optimise your
pages to boost rankings.
What is On-Page SEO / Why is it Important?
1
Search engines look for cues (i.e. keywords
in the title and URL) on a webpage to
determine whether it is relevant enough to
rank for a set of search terms.
There are also other factors that search
engines take into account such as site load
time, crawlability, and click-thru-rate.
On-Page SEO is understanding these
ranking factors and fixing any issues to make
your site more friendly to the search engines.
2
3
4
Without fixing your on-page SEO issues, it
can be difficult to rank well even with good
off-page SEO.

Academy
Equinet
34
Chapter3:On-PageSEO
Url: www.webdesign.com/ecommerce-web-design/1) Keywords
in URL
<title>E-commerce Web Design Service</title>
<h1>E-commerce Web Design Service</h1>
We provide the best custom e-commerce web design services
Image
Keyword
inserted into
Title and/or
Alt Text
<h3>Why We Provide The Best Website Design Package</h3>
Designing a site requires…
Website creation process…
View our other web design packages ->
<head><meta name=“description” content=“We provide the best and most
affordable commerce web design packages in the market.”></head>
5) LSI Keywords in
Content Area
6) Quality &
Uniqueness of
Content
2) Keywords in
Meta Description
3) Keywords in
Title Tags
4) Keywords in
Subheadings
7) Keywords in Image
Title & Alt Tags
9) Interlink articles
with relevant
anchor text
(Site architecture)
8) Link out to
relevant sources
if possible
}
10) Design
& UX
11) Mobile-
friendly
12) Page
Loads Fast
13) Page is
crawlable/
indexable
14) Include
social sharing
buttons
15) Https
Secure
On-PageSEOCheatSheet
Refer to on-page SEO audit checklist

End of SEO Course Preview
WordPress Website Creation Training Course
Academy
Equinet
Thank you for previewing our SEO course.
!
Sign up for our 2-day hands-on SEO course and learn
how to rank your website on page 1 of Google:
!
www.equinetacademy.com/seo-training-course-singapore/
!
If you enjoyed reading, share this course with your friends!

Seo Course Textbook Preview - Equinet Academy

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (19)

Ähnlich wie Seo Course Textbook Preview - Equinet Academy

Ähnlich wie Seo Course Textbook Preview - Equinet Academy (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Seo Course Textbook Preview - Equinet Academy