SEO Training - Master The Art Of Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the cornerstone of any successful online business. The nature of your business is irrelevant in so much as you need traffic (visitors) to visit your website/s if they are going to buy your products and services online.

There are many ways to generate traffic, but SEO (search engine optimization) is the best long term strategy for delivering targeted traffic.

In this first lecture, we look at the basics of SEO and understand exactly what it is, where it started from and how it has changed over the last 15 years.

To understand how to be successful with SEO, we need to first understand how the search engines 'think'. Given that Google has pretty much a monopoly on search traffic (with a few notable exceptions), we take a closer look.

Learn what we know about the workings of Google and how they rank websites on their search engine. To see the full diagram mentioned in the video, visit: http://onvizi.co.nz/resources/understanding-google/

If you are unfamiliar with SEO, or even just starting out, there are some common terms that are used within the industry and also throughout this course.

This lecture takes a look at these terms and explains the meanings behind them. The list is not exhaustive of course but covers the most important terminology.

Since 2011, Google has been pushing out a series of major algorithm updates with names such as Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird. The purpose behind these updates is an attempt by Google to eradicate web spam and penalise websites that were achieving 'high rankings' by using 'spammy' or 'black hat' SEO practices.

In fact, the Google Hummingbird update of late 2013 was more than a simple update, it was a completely new search engine algorithm. Of course, there were many things that worked well from the old algorithm, so they were integrated into Hummingbird.

Many millions of websites have been affected by the algorithm updates and some businesses have been actually put out of business from loosing their rankings (and therefore traffic) overnight.

This lecture looks at these updates in detail and explains what they were and how they have affected the SEO landscape.

How important is a domain for SEO? Does the name you choose have any impact?

This lecture takes a look at domains in more detail and provides useful insights into ensuring you choose the correct domain name.

Once you have purchased a domain, it then needs to be hosted so that visitors can see your website when they visit your domain.

Essentially a hosting account is simply where you store your website files but it is a vital part of owning a website. In this lecture we look at some hosting accounts and point you in the direction of some affordable solutions.

Once you have acquired hosting, the next important step is to change the nameservers so that your domain name knows where to look for your website files when someone types in your domain url into their browser. This is a simple step to accomplish and this lecture shows the process step by step

Introduction to SEO

You have possibly heard that SEO revolves around keywords and making sure you choose the right ones to be found for that are relevant to your business, products and services.

But did you know there are different ways of looking at keywords? These are known as keyword match types and understanding the difference between a broad match, phrase match and exact match search can be the difference between selecting a 'golden keyword' and a completely useless one.

In this lecture, we look at Match types in more detail and explain how they differ and how to ensure you have accurate data when undertaking keyword research

In 2013, Google changed their primary keyword research tool to the Keyword Planner. In this lecture we look at how to use it to find optimum keywords for our seo campaign.

There are some advantages and disadvantages of the keyword planner over the old keyword tool and we will look at these during the course of the video.

Keyword research is one of the most important parts of any SEO campaign and there are a number of tools that can assist with the process. One of the best available is Market Samurai which has been a mainstay product for the last 5 years.

In this lecture, we look at how to use Market Samurai for keyword research and some of the features that the software offers

There are two types of keywords to identify when doing keyword research. Short tail keywords (1 or 2 words only) and long tail keywords (3 words or more). Short tail keywords are typically VERY competitive and can often be over generic when looking for targeted traffic. Long tail keywords are often a much better option, although typically the search numbers are lower.

In addition to looking at long tail keywords in this lecture, we also look at Stealth Keyword Digger software which has been specifically designed for identifying long tail keywords.

LSI keywords play a very important part in SEO post Panda algorithm updates. Essentially they are keywords that are related to your main keywords in the eyes of Google. LSI stands for Latent Symantec Indexing and they should be used to support your seo efforts when undertaking keyword research.

In this lecture we look at LSI keywords in more detail and how to find them.

Understanding competition is one of the most misunderstood parts of SEO. But it's also one of the most important to get right. After all, if you pick a keyword with unacceptable levels of competition you are not going to be able to rank well for it, costing you time and effort.

In this lecture we look at competition research and discover what to look out for using SEO Quake which is a free extension available to the Chrome and Firefox browser.

Another method of analysing competition is to use Market Samurai, which has an excellent competition module and colour codes the results for easy reference.

In this lecture we learn how to use Market Samurai to analyse our competition and explain how to decode the results it gives us.

In the final video of the keyword and competition research section, we look at the sister product to the Stealth Keyword Digger, the Stealth Competition Analyser and learn how identifying perfect keywords is made simple.

Now the keywords have been identified and the competition analysed, the next step is to think about the structure of your website.

The structure of the site is crucial both to the search engines and your visitors as you want to make sure the information is easily accessible for both to find with ease. If your visitors cannopt find the information they are looking for within 1 or 2 clicks from landing on your site, the chances are they will give up and go elsewhere.

The same applies for the search engines. We want to ensure that their spiders can easily navigate through our site in order to index the content contained.

One of the main differenced between a successful website in 2014 and beyond and those of only a few years ago is interaction and lead generation. Whereas websites used to be a simple extension of an online brochure, searchers today are looking to buy online and make enquiries.

It is key to plan Calls to Action in visible locations and support them with clear navigation and the ability to share the content across social networks.

Whilst the principles of this course will work for any website, CMS (content management system) or platform, we are going to concentrate on using Wordpress.

There are many reasons why, namely that Wordpress is very simple to install and use. It also happens to be very search engine friendly.

In this lecture, we learn how to install Wordpress using a script available in most hosting C-panel installations

Now we have Wordpress installed, the next step is to make some basic setting changes, which will enhance both the user experience and your SEO efforts.

Learn how to set the timezone and define the permalink (URL) structure of your site so that it is search friendly

One of the great things about Wordpress are the huge number of themes and plugins that are available for the platform both freely available from the Wordpress directory and premium (paid).

In this lecture we are going to learn about plugins and themes, what they are and what they can offer. We are also going to review some 'must have' plugins that can really assist with the SEO process

Wordpress SEO by Joost De Valk (Yoast) is currently one of the best and most powerful SEO plugins available for Wordpress. It's also free to use.

A heavyweight plugin that can do an awful lot, we are going to learn how to configure it for optimum performance.

The settings.zip file referred to in the video can be found in the supplementary materials.

Now we have our 'shell' site installed and configured, you will want to start building it out according to the structure defined in the previous section.

The first step of this process is to create your pages and name them correctly. In this lecture, we look at creating pages using the Wordpress platform

In previous lectures, we have learned how important navigation is both for the human visitors and also for the search engines.

In this video we learn how to customise the navigation settings (menu's) in Wordpress to ensure that your content is easily accessible and not buried to deep within your website.

Even pre Panda/Hummingbird, there was a saying "content is king" because it's a well known fact that content is what the search engines feed from.

Since the updates, this statement has become increasingly more important as Google looks to reward natural content based websites.

In this lecture we will look at content in some detail and discuss best practices for SEO purposes

Once we have added content to our page, the next step is to optimize it for the search engines.

Fortunately, Wordpress makes this very simple, especially if you have the Wordpress SEO plugin installed.

Learn how to optimize your pages for optimum search engine visibility in this lecture.

Does your website have a blog? if so, do you ever update it?

if not, you really should as blogging has been proven time and time again to deliver traffic and build relationships with potential customers.

In this lecture we look at the reasons behind a successful blog and why having an active blog as part of you online marketing efforts is essential

There are several different sitemaps that you could add to your website. An XML sitemap is the preferred choice of Google, whilst an HTML sitemap may be advantageous for your visitors if you have a large site with many pages. You could also consider a KML sitemap if location is important to you (such as a local business).

In this lecture, we look at sitemaps in more detail and explain the differences between them.

In the first lecture of this section, we learn exactly what offsite optimization is and explain the role it plays in SEO.

You have most probably heard of backlinks or linkbuilding, but are you aware that are links are not equal? In fact, there are some types of links that you want to avoid as they may actually do your rankings more harm than good.

We will investigate links in this video and also explain how they can have very different values.

Much has changes in the world of SEO since panda. That has been further reinforced with Hummingbird. In this lecture we look at how those changes have changed the way we carry out SEO and look at the types of links that Google does want to see and those it doesnt.

Using anchor text in your linkbuilding is a very powerful strategy, but it should not be over used as it can cause penalties within Google.

In this lecture, we look at anchor text, what it is and how to create anchor text links. We will then learn what is a good percentage of anchor text to use in a linkbuilding campaign.

Before Panda & Penguin, it was possible to achieve high rankings from a link building profile that consisted of mainly 'spammy' links such as blog networks and social bookmarks.

Whilst these sites can still be used for a link profile, they should no longer be used as the primary source of links.

In this lecture we will look at the types of links that have declined in value in Google's eyes and those that you should definitely avoid.

In the SEO world of 2013 and beyond, Google is looking to reward sites that have a link profile that consists of high value links. In other words, these are links that tend to be earned rather than built.

Earning high value links involved forming relationships and is time consuming, but there are methods of getting quick high value links with minimal effort.

In this lecture we will look at high value links and discuss methods to acquire them.

Social Signals have become a major part of the ranking algorithm over the last 18 months, so much so that we have dedicated a whole section to them.

In this video we introduce social signals and explain the reasoning behind their strength and importance.

As with anything, there are some activities that you definitely want to avoid with your SEO and linkbuilding. In this lecture, we look at some things to avoid at all costs as they will almost certainly get you penalised in the search engine rankings.

Have you got a website that has already been penalised by Google? Have your rankings slipped and your traffic all but stopped? if so, you need to find out what has caused this and how to rectify it.

In this lecture we look at how to resolve the issues that have incurred the wrath of Google using backlink checkers and the disavow tool

In this section we are going to learn more about social signals. This video introduces the concept and gives a brief overview, explaining what they are, how to use them and why they have become strategically important in SEO.

Google Plus (Google+) is the latest of the major social platforms having been introduced by Google in 2011. Google Plus has gone on to become hugely powerful as Google has openly admitted that users posts and comments can be included (and given priority) in its own search engine.

In this lecture we learn how linking your Google Plus account with your website content (Google Plus authorship) can supercharge your SEO efforts and how to go about doing it.

Nobody quite expected Facebook to become the powerhouse that it now is with over 1 billion active users. The days of using Facebook for friendly communication with friends and family are long gone, it can now be a powerful marketing tool.

In this video we will look at how to use Facebook as part of your SEO efforts in getting social signals.

Some people love Twitter, many simply can't get their head around it. Regardless of your personal feeling, Twitter is a fantastic tool for attracting social signals and supporting your SEO efforts

However, did you know that you can expand your profile every time you tweet using Twitter Cards? In this lecture we will look at Twitter cards and learn how to create yours.

Of course there are many more Social Platforms available than the 'big 3'. In this lectuare we take a brief look at some of the other platforms available, including LinkedIn, Pinterest and Social Bookmarking sites such as Reddit and StumbleUpon.

Are you a local business and only interested in attracting customers from a local catchment area? Then you need to learn how local SEO is different and how to make it work for your business.

In this lecture, we will look at how local seo differs and also introduce Google's local search engine, Google Places

Google Places is a local platform provided by Google and available to every business worldwide who operate out of a physical location.

You have probably seen the Google Places results in the search results? They are the ones that appear at the top (A-G) and have their location shown on the map at the side.

Google Places listings can also be optimized for high rankings and in this lecture we cover the basics of what is required.

If you are wanting to optimize for local search terms, you will need to know how they differ from standard SEO terms and why. In this lecture we will look at how the searches differ and explain the reasoning behind it.