SEO Training for Beginners: Core Fundamentals Course

In the second lecture, let's talk about the search eco system - if you want to master SEO, you definitely need to understand how Google works, how websites get ranked, and what's your primary task as an SEO specialist.

Take a quiz after you finish watching the lecture to make sure you got all the concept and terms right!

The top ranking factor in SEO is to understand the prospect and the best way to understand your prospect is by researching the SERP content. In this lecture, we'll talk about the search avatar, types of content, and search intent.

Assignment

1. Take a quiz in this module.

2. Study the SERP for your seed keyword and make notes about the content types and SERP features (is there a map pack, or videos in the results?)

• Make a list of seed keywords

• Make a list of your top competitors.

• Make a list of seed keywords.

3. Study the downloadable materials and external resources.

Keywords are the cornerstone of any SEO campaign, that's why you should be very careful when choosing the phrases you're going to target. In this module, I'm going to show the complete process of building your powerful keyword list. To follow all the steps, you'll need the software called Rank Tracker, you can download and use the free version of the tool: https://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/

Assignment

1. Take a quiz.

2. Use your seed keywords to expand your target keyword list. You can download Rank Tracker and use its keyword research module to find relevant keyword phrases.

3. Apply filters to pick the best keywords.

4. Split the keywords into relevant keyword groups and see if you already have content on your website that fits those keyword groups. Use Rank Tracker or Google spreadsheets to assign keyword groups to your site’s landing pages.

5. Download the SEO campaign worksheet and start filling in your data.

SEO competitor analysis helps you get answers to the questions like:

• Who are my SEO competitors?

• What keywords should I target?

• What topics should I cover?

• Where can I find links?

• What do I need to beat the competition?

Watch this lecture to see how you can find and analyze your top SEO competitors, as well as discover some low-hanging fruit opportunities.

Assignment

1. Take a quiz.

2. Analyze the top keywords of your competitors, mark down all the low-hanging fruit opportunities for your website.

3. Analyze the content of your competitors - can you do better?

4. Check how your competitors are building their backlinks - can you get links the same way?

5. Fill in your worksheet with the competitor information.

Understanding Google ranking factors is crucial for SEO - as these factors are the criteria applied by Google when evaluating pages to decide the best order of relevant results to return for a search query. In 2206, Google said that it was using over 200 ranking factors and this number might have doubled since that time. In this lecture, let's talk about four common pillars of Google ranking factors.

Assignment

1. Take the revision quiz.

On-page SEO is the practice where you optimize page's content for search engines and users. Common on-page SEO practices include optimizing title tags, content, internal links, etc. Watch the lecture and follow the steps shown in the demo to conduct your first on-page SEO analysis.

Assignment

1. Take the revision quiz.

2. Follow the on-page checklist to check and fix your site’s landing pages (you find it in the Downloadable materials). To check your website, you can use a tool like WebSite Auditor (there's a free version): https://www.link-assistant.com/website-auditor/

3. Study the HTML tags guide (Find the PDF in the Downloadable materials)

Learn about the major technical SEO factors and ways to optimize your website to make it accessible and search-engine-friendly.

Assignment

1. Study the technical SEO checklist (you can find it in the External Resources)

Discover the most important off-page ranking factors and see how you can optimize them to get a ranking boost.

Assignment

1. Take the revision quiz.

2. Use the backlink checker tool to check and analyze the backlink profile of your website. (You can use a free tool like https://www.link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/free-backlink-checker-tool.html).

3. Collect and analyze backlinks of your top competitors. Use the tool like SEO SpyGlass (download the free version: https://www.link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/) to find backlink intersections.

4. Write down your link building plan.

You've learnt so much by this time, congrats! In this lecture, we'll sum up the most important steps of your future SEO project and review the key skills you need to be an outstanding SEO specialist.

This is our final lecture where we'll talk about the importance of monitoring results in SEO. I'll show you the things I usually track, the tools I use, and will even teach you to create your first SEO dashboard!