local seo yoast

local seo yoast

hey guys,in this training series i’m going to be teaching you the basics of seo. seo is a huge topic and because i want tohelp you get started right away without overwhelming you with information, i am only going to becovering the important things that you must know to do any seo. if you find these videos helpful then pleaseclick on the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. if i see that a lot of people are benefitingfrom these videos, i will take the time to create an advance seo training series.

alright, let’s get started! before we get started with this training,i want to clarify the difference between seo and sem. this is very important because a lot of peopledo not know what sem is and often confuse for seo. when i first started getting acknowledgedfor my skill to be able to rank websites on the first page of google, i was often askedby small businesses to go over their seo contracts that they have made with marketing companies. now, 95% of the time the small business ownerswere paying sem but they thought they were

paying for seo. i'm telling you this because if you are thinkingof hiring someone to do seo, then make sure you are paying someone to do real seo work. at the end of this training series, i willbe talking a little bit more about what you need to be careful of when hiring others todo your seo work for you. i'm now going to go through and quickly explainthe difference between seo and sem. now, seo is all of the activities involvedin getting your website to rank high on google. with seo people come to your website naturallyby searching on google and clicking on one of the top results.

this is called organic traffic. now, sem is paid advertising. you pay google to have your website listedon the first page. this is also called pay-per-click or ppc becauseyou pay a fee each time your ad is clicked. here is an image i made as an example, thelistings and red are sem and the ones in green are seo. we are going to start the training with someseo jargon that you need to know and understand in order to gain a good understanding of searchengine optimization. this image here, is a great illustration tohelp you imagine what a crawler actually looks

like. a crawler is also known as a bot or spider. it is a program the follows links from onewebsite to another in order to discover new content. once new content is found, a new blog postfor example, the crawler will index it allowing it to appear in search engines such as google. external links - these links are also knownas backlinks. these are hyperlinks from another websiteto your website. internal links - these too are also knownas backlinks.

these links are a hyperlink from one pageon your website to another page on your website. pagerank also known as pr. pagerank is a score from 0 to 10 that googleassigns to websites based on its relative importance. the higher the pagerank, the more importantit is to google. page authority also known as pa. page authority is a score out of 100 developedby moz that predicts how well a specific page will rank in search engines. domain authority also known as da.

domain authority is also a score out of 100developed by moz that predicts how well an entire website will rank in search engines. major google seo updates. as an seo expert you should be able to explainthe major google seo updates up until today. not only so you can call yourself an seo expert,but so you have an understanding of how google works and how you can avoid getting penalized. the first thing you need to understand isthat the goal of google is to be able to deliver the best possible results to its users. they want their users to search google andfind exactly what they're looking for without

having to look anywhere else. the first major update was called panda. panda first ran in 2011 and now runs a fewtimes a year. its purpose is to stop low quality contentfrom appearing in search results. low quality content is content that is poorlywritten. it is usually generated using a software. it’s content that is very short and toobrief to be valuable. content that is copied from another page makingit duplicate content. low quality content can also be content thatadds no real value.

the next major update was penguin. penguin first ran into 2012 with the purposeof detecting unnatural backlinks, also known as blackhat seo. so how does penguin detect unnatural backlinks? it looks at the link quality, the link velocityand the link diversity. let's go into these in more detail. link quality. sites that have obtained their backlinks naturallywill have both, low and high quality links. on the other hand, sites that have not obtainedtheir backlinks naturally will often have

a lot of low quality links or only high qualitylinks. link velocity. natural backlinks are created over time andthe number of back links that are created slowly increase as the site grows. when sites have unnatural backlinks they oftenget a lot of links in a short period of time which is then followed by a sudden decrease. link diversity. natural sites obtain links from various places. for example, articles, blog commenting, forumsand so on.

unnatural sites often obtain a large numberof links from a single place, blog commenting for example. links should also have varied anchor text. too many links with the same anchor text cantrigger a penguin penalty. mobilegeddon. mobilegeddon first ran in with the purposeof ensuring that websites are mobile friendly. this is to accommodate for the massive growthin mobile users. before we start doing any seo, we need tounderstand what exactly makes a website rank high in search results.

there are several ranking factors that contributeto seo, these include the domain name, the url address, broken links, internal links,external links, website loading time, xml sitemap, html sitemap, on the web content. let's take a look at these in more detail. domain name. using keywords in your domain name is an advantagebut you need to find a balance between keywords and creating a brand friendly domain. so there are two main benefits of using keywordsin your domain name. one of these is, if the domain name containskeywords then the domain name itself is a

ranking factor in search engine algorithms. secondly having relevant keywords in a domainname is beneficial because the domain name is the text that others will use as an anchortext when linking to your website. so what exactly is anchor text? anchor text are visible words that a hyperlinksdisplay when linking. here is an example, i did a google searchfor cheap flights, as you can see the first website comes up is www.cheapflights.comthe keyword for this website is used inside the domain name. the second website that comes up is expedia.com,as you can see the keyword flights is in the

url address. the third website that comes up is cheaptickets.com/cheapflightssee how this website has included the keyword inside the domain name as well as the urladdress? now skyscanner.net does not have neither ofthe keywords in the domain name or the url address. so how it is it ranking fourth? it’s ranking fourth because it utilizesother seo ranking factors very well. so like i said, find a balance between a brandfriendly domain and keywords because even though there is an advantage in using keywordsin the domain, there are many other ways you

can rank a website. here's an example of anchor text. the top is the html code that sits in thebackend. the bottom bit is how it's displayed on thewebsite. now, can you see at the bottom how i’vemarked “click here for cheap flight” in green? this is because i want to show you that itis much more user-friendly and much better for seo because the keyword is also includedin the anchor text which is the writing that contains the hyperlink.

take note that it is generally not a goodidea to move an existing establish website to a new url just so it includes keywordsbecause as i said before there are many other factors that contribute to seo. domain age. the domain age itself is not an actual rankingfactor however usually the older the domain, the more seo link-juice has been accumulatedover time. create search engine friendly urls that humanscan read and understand, and include your keywords in them. for example, this is the default url structurethat wordpress uses.

now, this url is not search engine friendly,however, this url is. can you see the difference? take note that by default wordpress uses thepost id number to create a url address. this results in webpages having web addressesthat look like this and are not human and search engine friendly. to learn how to change wordpress to use searchengine friendly urls, go to this website. this website is also included in the resourcesexcel document that you received. website loading speed. a fast loading website is better for googleand the users.

google has stated that page speed is actuallya ranking factor. you can test the speed of your website byusing pingdom, pingdom is also included in the resources document. xml sitemap. an xml sitemap makes sure that search enginesare aware of all the content on your website. wordpress users can easily create an xml sitemapby using the plugin seo by yoast. once the xml sitemap has been created, youwill need to submit it to google by using google webmaster tools. we will go through how to do both of theselater in this training series.

html sitemap. linking a html sitemap in the footer has becomea standard on-site seo practice. this makes it easy for google and your visitorsto navigate around your website and to find all your website pages. wordpress uses can easily create a html sitemapby using the plugin wp sitemap page. a benefit of using a html sitemap is thatit allows for additional internal linking. a html sitemap is basically a page that linksto your main pages to keep that link-juice flowing. to see an example of my html sitemap, youcan visit this url.

content quality. it is important to write effectively for humansbut also including keywords and correct html tags for crawlers. you should always avoid duplicate content! identical content found on two or more pageson your website is known as duplicate content. google tries to show pages with unique informationin its search results and for this reason it frowns upon websites that contain pageswith basically the same content. you can scan your website to find how muchcontent was found on other pages by using siteliner.com

broken links. a broken is a link that doesn't work and oftenresults in a page error. this happens when a link points to a webpagethat has been deleted or moved. this here is what a typical broken link pagelooks like. broken links will absolutely harm your searchengine ranking. here are some free tools that i recommendyou use to check for broken links. i've given you a few options to choose fromso you might be wondering which one do i use? i personally use the wordpress 404 redirectionplugin that permanently redirects all broken link page errors to my main blog url.

i also use the free version of screaming frogto look at other people’s websites. internal linkinginternal linking improves the ranking of your pages by sharing the pagerank, also knownas link-juice between them. you can use internal linking to emphasizeyour important pages with more links pointed towards them. for example, including a list of your productcategories in your website's sidebar or footer. here's a tip, internal linking can also beused to direct a customer to specific location. for example, a blog post about beauty linkingto a beauty product on your website. external links.

external links are the most important factorin seo. they are where most of the ranking power comesfrom. external links are created when an externalwebsite links to you. here is an example to help you understandhow external links work... you can think of it as each link representsa vote for your website, the more trusted votes your website has, the more respect itgains from google and the higher you rank. trust is represented by the level of pageranka webpage has. here is an example of trusted votes. external website 1 has a pagerank of 9 andis voting for your website.

external website 2 has a pagerank of 8 andis also voting for your website. this will make your website be more respectedby google which means your search engine ranking will increase. this is the same example but i have providednames for the websites that are providing the external links. external website 1 is a spammer and is linkingtowards your website. this is a very harmful vote and will decreaseyour search engine ranking. now, external website 2 does not have anypagerank at all so an external link pointing towards your website will not give you a vote.

now that you understand the vote analogy,let's take a look at link-juice. the higher the pagerank the more link-juicethe page has to share. however the more links the page has the lesslink-juice there is to share. here is a link-juice example. external website 1 has a pagerank of 6 andis sharing it with your website and 2 others. now, if these two websites were not therethen all of the link-juice will be flowing into your website. there are two types of links, no-follow anddo-follow. this applies to internal links as well asexternal links.

no-follow links tell search engines not tofollow them which means no link-juice is being transferred, on the other hand, do-followlinks do allow search engines to follow them. here is an example of what happens when thewebsite links to you with a no-follow link. as you can see you are not getting any link-juice. seo don't’s. do not use programs or paid services thatspam your link everywhere, by doing so will get your website kicked out of the googlesearch results and fixing the damage takes a long time and is definitely not easy. if you are going to hire someone to do seofor you, make sure that they know what they're

doing. you need to ensure that you filter out thespammers and the liars. spammers will only damage your seo and liarswill only waste your time and money, especially those who promise that you will rank for everykeyword that you provided. no one can guarantee that you will rank numberone in google and if that's what they're promising then they are lying. do not spam forums and blogs, this will onlydamage your reputation and decrease the amount of potential traffic. being helpful can go a long way online!

do not continuously use the same anchor text,if you do google may treat you as spam and decrease your ranking. remember… quality over quantity! it is not certain whether or not header tagsstill help with seo. some argue they do and some argue they don't,however, i'm going to teach you about header tags because i believe it's better to usethem then not to use them. if something gives even the slightest competitiveadvantage then why not do it right? header tags are used to separate the headingsof a page from the rest of the content. there are six different header tags, h1 toh6.

h1 is the most important and h6 is the least. in wordpress, themes that are properly coded,the h1 tag will be tied to the title of the post. header tags also use a hierarchy structure. here is an example of how to use header tags.h1 is the main heading, h2 could be the secondary heading, h3 the sub-section of the secondaryheading and so on. here's another example that shows that inwordpress, the h1 tag is tied to the title you can see the h2 tag in the content below. this is one of my real posts so if you wouldlike to see it live go to this website.

here is another example of how headers areshown in wordpress and how you can create them. to create headers simply highlight the textthat you would like to tag as a header and click on the drop-down box and select thetype of header you would like. i will also be showing you this live in thenext video. here is another example of the same post inwordpress but in html mode. as you can see, using the drop-down box andselecting heading to will simply tag the selected text is the h2 tag. here’s some tips that you can use when creatingheader tags.

the h1 tag should only be used once per page. since proper coded wordpress themes automaticallyadd the h1 tag, you should never use h1 tag in the post content. begin with the h2 tag. header tags also enhance user experience byclearly showing what the page content is about. do not stuff your headers with keywords, justkeep it natural. lastly, do not use header tags is hidden text. any hidden text can result in penalties foryour site, especially if the hidden part is something that affects seo.

seo by yoast is in my opinion the best seoplugin for wordpress. it's 100% free and offers everything you needto completely optimize your website. to save you time as well is any confusion,i have exported my settings for you to use so you can quickly and easily configure theplugin. download my seo settings and then proceedto the next video were i will going to show you how to install the plug-in and how toimport my settings here are the settings that you should havedownloaded in the previous video. open up your browser and go to the admin panelof your wordpress website. go to plugins and click on add new.

in the search box type seo by yoast and pressenter. find the plugin and click on install. once the plugin has been installed, go aheadand activated it. you should now have an seo menu on the left-handside. go to it and click on tools. then click on import and export. click on browse and locate the settings filesyou previously downloaded. click on it and press open. then press import settings.

if it all went well you should have a messageup here telling you that the settings have been successfully imported. now to make sure that the plugin is workingto its full potential we need to make two little changes. click on general then click on the your infotab at the top. now under the company or person bit, you needto select whether you are a company or a person. if you are a company, select company and fillin the company name and upload the company logo. if you are a person, simply fill in your nameand press the save changes button.

now go back to the left-hand side and clickon social. here you need to provide a link to all ofthe social media platforms that you use. i'm going to pause the video and quickly fillthis in. once you’re done click on the save changesbutton. you have now set up seo by yoast using thebest service possible. in the next video i'm going to show you howto use this plugin to ensure that all your posts and pages are seo friendly. inside the published box you will now seeyour sco status as you can see mine is green which means everything is good keep in mindthat this is just a guide so even if you end

up with the yellow then that's okay to it'snot the end of the world but of course you should aim for green if you are serious tattersis any other colour then i recommend you review your content and make the required changesto at least get a toy yellow keep in mind that you need to write your content for peopleso in the end in its makes sense and be easy to read this means that sometimes you needto sacrifice a green circle for a yellow one if you scroll down to the bottom of the pageyou will see that you now have a wordpress sco by joost box i just want to quickly pausethe video to go through two different versions of the plug-in to prepare you for the futurea few days after i finish recording this video an update to the plug-in was released whichgave it a slightly different look now i'm

not sure how the plug-in will look like bythe time you see this training video so i want to explain the similarities between thesetwo versions to prepare you for any future updates in the first screenshot you will noticethat there is a sco title and meta description box in the second screenshot you will noticethat these boxes have been removed the way that the sco title and meta description ismodified in the second screenshot is by clicking directly onto the tax here another thing thatis slightly different and that we will be discussing later in this video is the pageanalysis in the first screenshot there is a page analysis tab at the top however onthe second screenshot the page analysis is now called content analysis and is shown onthe main screen instead of in a tab as you

can see the slight differences are fairlyeasy to understand and the way the plug-in works will always be the same now that wegot this out of the way let's go back to where we left off this stupid preview shows you how your page or post will show up in google this heading writing is obtained from the sco title box down here in the running belowit is obtained from the meta description box the focus keyword is what you want to rankfor in this example i want page to show up when people search for anything that containsmultiple firefox browsers this little section down here shows where my focus keyword wasfound and how many times it was found it is important that you put your keyword in allof the locations listed here if your keyword

is not found in one of these locations thenthe writing will be read instead of green i am now going to show you exactly where youneed to place your focus keyword so that your page or post receives a good sco status inthe sco title in the meta description in the page or post title in the url and address and multiple times within the content one to 3 all 56 take note that this is a header to tag this is shown up here where it saysheader to and seven all up i mention my keyword seventimes within the content now missing in all tag since i don't have an image within thecontent i'm going for my focus keyword inside

the featured image just so i can show youhow to do this i'm going to remove this image and re-added and here is my focus keyword again under theold text now scroll back down to the wordpress scoby joost box and near the top of the box you will see page analysis now if you click onit you are showing all the things you have done well and all the things you can improveon again yellows and also bad and even though i have a few jealousy i managed to get anoverall score of green this was shown at the start of this video if you have any reds orany oranges you definitely need to make some changes but if you have read and nicely structuredcontent and place your focus keyword in the

same places that i place mine then you shouldn'thave a problem as i have an overall green sco status i'm going to leave this post asit is and not bother with those for yellow circles again this is just a guide and justbecause you have a green overall sco status on every single page it doesn't mean thatyou will rank on the first page of google the guide the plug-in provides will help youcreate a see a friendly content so it is possible for you to rank on the first page of googleif you combine it with the other sco ranking factors google webmaster tools is a free service offeredby google to help to monitor and maintain your site's presence in google search results.

to get to this page you will need to go towww.google.com/webmasters/tools or you can simply go to google.com and search for webmastertools. click on the first result that comes up. to use google webmaster tools you will needa google account so if you do not have an account you will need to make one by clickingon create an account. now, what you are seeing here is a list ofwebsites that i have already added to my webmaster tools account. i'm shortly going to teach you how you toocan add websites to your webmaster tools but first i want to show you a little sample ofwhat google webmaster tools can do for you.

keep in mind that so that i don't overwhelmyou with information, i'm only going to be showing you what i believe are the most importantfeatures of google webmaster tools. here is a website created a few days ago,as you can see there are two variants of it. one is sharinganeyecontacts.com and the otheris www.sharinganeyecontacts.com i will be explaining the reason for this inthe next video. i'm going to click into the variant with thewww. in front of it. the first page that comes up is the dashboard. crawl errors shows you any issues that thecrawlers may have had when trying to crawling your website.

my website currently has no cruel errors. search analytics shows you some of your webstatistics. site maps shows you how many urls have beensubmitted to google and how many have been index and any issues google may have withyour website. i am now going click on search traffic andthen click on search analytics. along with clicks, i'm going to turn on impressions,ctr and position. clicks is how many people have clicked froma google search. impressions is the number of times pages fromyour website have appeared in google search results.

ctr stands for click-through-rate rate. this is the percentage of people that haveclicked on to your website from a google search. position is the average position of your websitein google when that specific keyword is searched. now, if i scroll down, you will be able tosee some information based on queries which is the keywords been searched. you will also have the option to change queriesto pages which will show you information about specific pages. if you select countries then you will getinformation based on location. and devices, you basically get informationon what type of devices are being used to

access your website. let's move onto linked to your site. this shows how many links you have pointingtowards your website and where they are coming from. seeing as my site is only a few days old,it only has one link pointing towards it. the website that is linking to my websiteis to tutoranswer.com and is linking to my faq page. this down here shows what anchor text is beingused for the link. now, please note that at this point in timegoogle shows both internal and external in

this section. if i wanted to see some more information relatedto tutoranswers.com, i can simply click on the link which will show me the total numberof links they have pointing towards my website, the amount of pages they are linking to andwhich pages exactly they are linking to. we are now going to take a look at the indexstatus of the website by going to google index and clicking on index status. this shows how many pages google has indexedand when they were indexed. if you click on advance, you can also seehow many times google's crawlers have been blocked from accessing specific content onyour website.

now, let's take a look at content keywords. this shows what google thinks your websiteis about. even if you have a website about food, googlemay see it differently and therefore rank it differently. for example, my website is about sharingancontacts but here google is showing me that the most significant keyword is episode, followedby april. however in my mind, the most significant keywordis sharingan and contacts. i will now need to tweak my website to ensurethat google knows which keywords are the most important.

if you scroll down to the bottom of this page,you will see that you have the option to see even more keywords. now, if you click on one of the keywords,you will be able to see some information including, how many times google has found the word onyour website and the exact pages the word was found on. you can also see a percentage of keyword significanceby moving your mouse on top of the blue bar. let's go take a look at the crawl section. we have previously discussed crawl errorsbut you can access the same information by clicking here.

lastly let's take a look at sitemaps. here you can submit and test your sitemap. you can also see how many pages were submittedto google and how many of them were indexed. you can also see when the sitemap was processedand if google had any issues with the sitemap. if google did have issues with your sitemap,you can see exactly what the issues are by clicking on the errors link. i am now going to show you how you can addyour website to google webmaster tools which is also known as the search console, so youcan get access to important data about your website.

click on the red add a property button. in the box that pops up, enter your websiteurl address and click on the continue button. you will now need to verify that you own thewebsite by following the instructions on the screen. first you need to download this html file. i am going to click on the link and save thefile to my desktop. if i minimize my internet browser, you cansee that the html file i just downloaded is here. we now need to upload this file to our mainwebsite directory.

you can do this using the cpanel or an ftpclient. if you are unsure how to use the cpanel oran ftp client then i suggest that you take a look at the links below this video as itshows you step-by-step how to use them. i am going to use the ftp client filezillato upload this file. here i'm just going to press the connect buttonto connect to my web server and there we go. all we need to do now is drag and drop thefile we just downloaded from google to our ftp client. we can now see that the file is in our mainwebsite directory. let's go back to our internet browser.

step 3 is optional. we can click on the link to confirm that thegoogle file has been successfully uploaded. if you get a message like this, it means theupload has been successful. if you get a message saying, file not founda means that there is something wrong. all we need to do now is click on the verifybutton at the bottom. if everything is okay, you will get a messageconfirming that you have verified the ownership of your website. click on continue. now that you have successfully added yourwebsite, you will be able to see a lot of

important information. just so you know if you have multiple websitesin your google search console, you can see which site you are looking at by looking uphere. now that we have added our website, we needto submit a sitemap to google so they are aware of all of the pages on our website. for more information on why you need to submita sitemap click on this link here. to submit a sitemap click on crawl then onsitemaps and then on the red add/test sitemap button. now, if you are using wordpress and have theplugin seo by yoast installed, a sitemap will

be generated automatically. however if your website is using another platform,you will need to do a quick google search on how to create a sitemap for your platform. as i am using wordpress with the plugin seoby yoast, i already know that by default the sitemap is called sitemap_index.xmlso how do i know this? let me show you. open a new tab and go to the admin area ofyour wordpress website. find the seo by yoast plugin. put your mouse over it and click on xml sitemaps.

near the top there will be a button that saysxml sitemap. click on it and a new window will open. this is your xml sitemap. if you take a look at the url and addressyou can see that the address is www.peterstavrou.com/sitemap_index.xml which is exactly what i entered into the googlesearch console. once you've entered your sitemap click onthe submit sitemap button. after your sitemap has been submitted. click on the link that says refresh the page. you will then see that your sitemap has beensubmitted and that it is pending to be processed.

it usually takes a few days for google toprocess your sitemap. if there are any issues with your sitemap,you will have an error message here and you will need to click on the link to find outexactly what is wrong and how to fix it. the reason why i have an error with my sitemapis because i have purposely taken my website offline to generate an error for this trainingvideo. now, there is one last thing we need to do. we need to tell google whether or not we prefera www. version of our website. for example, whether you go to www.peterstavrou.comor just peterstavrou.com, it will take you to the same website.

google likes to know which web address youprefer. to set this we need to go back and add a differentversion of our website. you can go back by clicking on the googlewriting in the top left-hand corner. click on the add a property button and typein the second version of your url address. since i added www.peterstavrou.com earlierin this video, i am now going the version peterstavrou.com click on continue and youwill again see this screen. seeing as we have already verified that weown the website, we can simply click on the verify button. to set our preferred url address we need togo to the top-right of the screen and click

on this button here. we then need to click on site settings. once we have clicked on site settings, wecan select which url address we prefer. i'm going to select the www. version. it doesn't matter which url address you preferas long as you set a preference. google automatically sets this setting asdon't set a preferred domain, however, they recommend that you set a preference. once you've set your preference click on saveand that's it you're done keyword planner.

keyword planner is a tool provided by googlethat shows you the estimated number of searches for a specific keyword, the level of competitionfor that keyword and also allows you to find new keywords. here is an example that shows how many peoplesearch for the keyword web host compared to hosting company. the keyword planner is 100% free but to useit a google account is required. the url to the keyword planner can be foundin the resources spreadsheet> let's take a look at the keyword planner inreal time. go to the keyword planner website and clickon the sign in to adwords button.

type in your email and click next. type in your password and click sign in. we can now find the information we just talkedabout under the heading, find new keywords and guess search volume data. let's focus on the search volume data first. once you click on it, the box will expand. before i type in any keywords, i want to explainhow i usually use this information. what i use the keyword planner for the mostis picking my keyword for every blog post i create.

the aim is to use keywords that have a highsearch volume but low competition. i also use it if i can't decide between keywords. for example, i created a blog post with theheading “what is the best web host?”, however, the initial heading for the postwas “what is the best hosting company”. i couldn't decide which heading to use. i decided to use the keyword planner toolto see which keyword would be more beneficial. i'm now going to show you exactly how i mademy decision. in the keywords box i enter web host, hostingcompany, the comma basically separates multiple keywords.

i'm going to leave the targeting options asdefault and click on the get search volume as you can see the keyword “web host”has an average 9900 searches a month and the keyword “hosting company” has only 1600. both of the competition is high but if i hadto pick between the two keywords the obvious winner would be web host as it has a muchhigher monthly search volume. just for your information suggested bid relatesto google ads but in this video we are doing research for seo purposes so we do not needto worry about this section. now, let’s go back and take a look at howwe can use the keyword planner to find new above get search volume data and trend, youwill find search for new keywords using a

phrase website or category. click on it to expand the box. you can find new keywords using phrases, websitesor categories. i'm going to use just the phrases option. in the box i'm going to type web host andthen scroll to the bottom and click on get ideas. see where it says keyword by relevance? this is all the different keywords that havebeen generated including their average monthly searches and competition.

let’s scroll down and take a look at allof the different keyword ideas. i'm going quickly pause here just to you canget an idea of the type of keywords that have been generated. if a scroll down to the bottom you can seethat the keyword planner has generated 800 keyword ideas. now, let’s say you wanted to sort all ofthese keywords by the highest average monthly searches. to do this you can simply click on averagemonthly searches and it will sort them for you from highest to lowest.

let's take a look at two very handy seo addonsfor firefox. if you are using google chrome then i'm surethere is something very similar to these available online and can be found very easily with aquick google search. pagerank addon pagerank addon is a fast, light and simpleaddon that allows you to see the pagerank of pages you visit. nodofollow addon. when active this addon highlights do-followlinks in purple and no-follow links in red. the url links to both of these firefox addonscan be found in the resources spreadsheet.

let's start by installing the pagerank addon. to do this simply go to the firefox addonwebsite and click on the blue continue to download button. then click on the green add to firefox button. you will then be prompted with this installationbox. click on install now. to finish the installation you will need torestart firefox. click on the restart now button. once firefox starts back up, you will havethis really cool little feature which shows

you the pagerank of every page you visit. let's go to facebook.com for an example. and there you go, as you can see facebookhas a pagerank of 9. now let’s go ahead and install the nodofollowaddon by following the same steps. once firefox is restarted you will have anew feature under the tools menu called nodofollow. to enable the addon simply click here. see how the links are now highlighted purple? let's go back to facebook as an example. the links highlighted in purple are do-followlinks and the ones highlighted in red are

no follow links mozbar is an addon that allows you to seethe page and domain authority of a website. as we previously discussed in this trainingseries, page authority is a score out of 100 developed by moz that predicts how well aspecific page will rank in search engines. domain authority is a score out of 100 thatpredicts how well an entire website will rank in search engines. in march 2016, google removed pagerank fromthe public. this means that you will now need to use pageand domain authority to calculate the quality of a certain website or link.

mozbar is a very powerful addon and at thetime this video it is only available for google chrome. to install mozbar, go to google.com and searchfor mozbar. the first result that comes up should be thechrome web store. click on it. then click on the, add to chrome button. then click on add extension. once mozbar has been added you will see anew blue m icon on your browser. i’m going to go ahead close this and thengo to facebook.com

you will notice a new bar at the top of yourbrowser. to be able to use mozbar you will need tosign-up for a moz account which is 100% free. to create an account, click on the yellowcreate an account button. since i already have an account, i’m justgoing to click on log in. and there we go, i am now logged in. so now i can see,how many likes, shares and comments this page on google+how many likes, shares and comments this page on facebookthe domain authority and the page authority.

let’s take a minute to talk about the mozscore. for da,30-40 is average, anything over 40 is good and anything over50 is excellent. for pa,45-55 is average, anything over 50 is good and anything over60 is excellent. for your convenience, i have included thesescores in the resources spreadsheet. let’s continue on. page optimization, this is a premium featureso i’m going to skip it. it basically allows you to enter a keywordso you check how optimized the page is for

that specific keyword. highlight links,this allows you to highlight certain links on the page. followed – by clicking this you are ableto see all of the links that are do-follow links. no-followed – this allows you to see allof the links that are no-follow. external – this allows you to see all ofthe links that are linking to an external internal – this allows you to see all ofthe links that are linking internally. and lastly, you can use this text box to highlighta specific word on the page.

i’m going to enter facebook as an example. page analysis allows you to see specific dataabout the page you are on. i’m going to skip it, but i recommend youclick on it so you can get an idea of the type of information that you can get. on the right-hand side there is a tools & settingsoption. i’m going to click on it and enable everythingin there. this will allow you to see more information. i’m also going to change the theme fromlight to dark. this of course is a personal preference.

as you can see, the tool bar is now a darkcolor. you can also now see the number of backlinksa specific page has. there is one more feature about mozbar thati would like to show you. if you head over to google.com and do a search. i’m going to search for wordpress,you are now able to see the page authority, the number of backlinks and the domain authorityof a website directly from google search results. autohotkey autohotkey is a free automation tool for windowsand allows you to create a set of instructions that are executed using a single key on yourkeyboard.

it's a fantastic tool to increase efficiencyby automating a repetitive process. so how do we use autohotkey for seo? autohotkey can be used for creating backlinks. you will often need to fill in the form toobtain a quality link to your website. to create account you will need to fill indetails such as your first name, your surname, your website, description and so on. this can get very tiring so let’s automatedusing autohotkey but first you will need to download the software by going to autohotkey.com secondly you will need to download my autohotkeyscript using the url found in the resources

document. these are the default keyboard shortcuts formy script. i'm also going to show you later how to changeand add your own keyboard shortcuts. once you have downloaded my autohotkey scriptright-click on it and click on edit script. if by chance it asks you what program youwould like to open it with, select a text editor such as notepad. here you can see the script. i've made a note for you to change the informationto suit your needs. i also tell you that the ! in the script refersto the alt key on your keyboard.

so in the below line means that if you pressalt and u together, your computer will start typing whatever is next to send. in this case it's peter which is the usernamei would like to use. by pressing alt together with the n key thescript to automatically type peter stavrou. if the alt and e key are pressed together,the script will type peter@youremail.com and so on and so on. now the reason why i have added two differenttypes of website shortcuts is because some websites require you to use html code to createa link. that is what this line down here is doing.

to run the script you simply have to double-clickit after you have installed the autohotkey program. you can tell when it's running because youwill have a little green h icon in your system tray. if you right-click on it, you will be ableto see a few options. just for your information, if you want thescript to start up automatically every time your computer starts then you should put thescript in your windows start-up folder. if you need help with this, feel free to contactme. i am now going to open up a blank text documentso you can see the script in action.

okay, i am now going to start pressing thehotkeys. keep in mind that i'm not actually typinganything, i'm just simply pressing the alt key together with the other keys. alt and ualt and n alt and ealt and p alt and aalt and w alt and l can you see how easily and quickly you cannow complete repetitive tasks? autohotkey can be used in many different waysso don't only limit it to create backlinks

for example i have used for every single jobi've had to write repetitive emails. stealing your competitors link-juice the process involves finding where you competitorsseo juice is coming from and replicating the flow onto your website. this means that you will be creating backlinksthat point to your website. you can use backlink checkers to find thesource of your competitors seo juice. here is a list of the most popular backlinkcheckers. backlink watch. this checker is 100% free and we will be lookingat this in more detail shortly

ahrefs is one of the best backlink checkers,however, it is a premium checker but it allows for a detailed limited free check. moz is another very popular backlink checker,however, this checker is also premium but also allows for a detailed limited free check. both of these premium backlink checkers havea monthly fee, so if you are looking to purchase something that is easy to use and visuallypleasing then i recommend that you take at seo spyglass. i will put a link to the free version in thedescription below. let's take a look at the disadvantages ofbacklink watch.

backlink watch has a lot of annoying ad. also not all backlinks are listed and it'snot 100% accurate but it's 100% free and a great way to find new backlinks. okay, let's go and take a look at backlinkwatch go to www.backlinkwatch.com and you should see a website similar to this. seeing as backlink watch is a free service,they have chosen to display a lot of ads on this page. ignore everything besides this area here. go down to this area and type in a competitor'surl address to get a list of their backlinks.

you might get and an ad pop up. just click on the writing that says "closethis thing". i'm going to use one of my old sites as anexample www.bestofnetworkmarketing.net once you've entered the url, click on checkbacklinks. on the next page click on the writing thatsays "close this thing". the website should now be gathering a listof backlinks from your competitors website. it may take some time depending on how manybacklinks it finds. i'm going to pause video and come back oncethis is done. before we go down to take a look at the backlinks,let's take a look at the symbols so you can

get a better understanding of the report backlinkwatch provides. pr this is supposed to show the pagerank ofa given url but unfortunately at this point in time it doesn't work very well so i'm goingto ignore it. obl this stands for outbound links and isthe total number of external links found on the website that is given the backlink. all these pages here other websites that areproviding the backlink to your competitor. flag. if flag is blank then it means that it isa do-follow backlink. if it is not blank it will say no-follow whichmeans it is a no-follow backlink.

this bit here is a little confusing but itis referring to the anchor text section down if this section is blank then no anchor textis found. lastly we have the total number of backlinksthat was found by backlink watch. now, let's go down here and take a closerlook at one of these backlinks. i'm going to click on this link here whichshould have a backlink back to bestofnetworkmarketing.net. an easy way to find this link is to searchfor the anchor text which is shown here. so this is the page with the backlink. if i scroll down i should be able to definethe anchor text that was displayed on backlink watch.

there we go, here is the backlink. now, let's just check whether or not it isa do-follow backlink by using our firefox add-on. it's highlighted purple which means it isa do-follow backlink. now, the problem here is that even thoughwe found a do-follow link, the page the link is on has no pagerank. see how it's 0? let's take a look at the main domain to seeif it has a better pagerank. the main domain is mlm.com

we can see that the main domain has a pagerankof 4 which is pretty good, so it's likely that some link-juice will be passed on. it would be ideal if the backlink was on thispage instead since it has a pagerank of 4. as you can see here, backlink watch has founda large number of backlinks. 190 to be precise, so by spending some timeand analyzing your competitors backlinks you can steal some of their seo and boost yourrankings, keep in mind that with backlinks, it is veryimportant to go for quality over quantity. it is better to have 1 backlink with a pagerankof 6 then to have 80 backlinks with no pagerank at all.

firefox autofill. firefox autofill is a free add-on for firefox. it allows you to fill in forms with a singleclick. it is a really great add-on to use to speedup your account creating process. let's take a look at the add-on in real time. first you need to install the add-on, youcan find a link to this page in the resources spreadsheet. once you are on this page, click on add tofirefox. once the box pops up, click on the nstallbutton.

once the add-on has been installed, it willtell you that you need to restart your browser. click on the restart now button. when your browser starts back up, you willnotice that this little pencil icon has been added. i'm going to visit a website so i can showyou how the add-on works. now, in order to create an account on thispage you will usually need to type in your first name, your last name and email manually. however, with the autofill add-on you cando this with a single click. first we need to set up the add-on by clickingon the down arrow and then on settings.

a window will pop up with many different fieldsthat you can fill in. the information you put in these fields willbe copied across to any form that you use the add-on on. i'm going to keep it simple and only fillin a few of the fields. in username i'm going to enter peter. in email i'm going to enter peter@myemail.com. in first name i'm entering peter and in lastname i'm entering stavrou. i'm going to scroll down just so you can seeall of the fields that you can use. now, to fill in a form all you need to dois press the pencil icon.

ka-pow! the form has been filled in with a singleclick. this is a massive time saver if the form youneed to fill in is much larger. keep in mind that for security reasons theadd-on does not fill in password fields, however, you can simply use autohotkey to do this effortlessly. if you hover your mouse over the pencil icon,you will see a list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use. there’s one more thing worth mentioningwhich is you are able to set up multiple profiles which allows you to enter different informationwith the click of a button.

to do this, click on the arrow and then onsettings. at the top of the screen click on profiles. the default profile is the one we just createdwhich fills in the form using peter as the name. let's add another profile by clicking on theadd button. name the profile so you can remember whatit's for. i'm going to name this profile theo and thenpress apply. at the top of the screen, click on simpleto go back. as you can see here, we are now entering informationfor the profile theo.

if i click on the arrow you can see the defaultprofile which is peter. i'm going to leave the profile on theo andchange the information here to say theo instead of peter. once i’m done, i'm going to click on theok button at the bottom. if i go to the add-on nowand put my mouse over profile switcher, you can see that there are two profiles there. one named default on the other theo. if i leave it on theo and click on the pencilicon, the form will now be filled using the name theo.

if i go back and change the profile to defaultand click on the pencil icon, it will fill in the form with the name peter. how you use multiple profiles is really upto you, i personally use them to create backlinks for different urls. also just for your information, i always usethis add-on together with autohotkey because even though it is faster to fill in formsthere are just some things that this add-on cannot fill and instead of typing in the informationmanually all the time i simply use autohotkey. just so you can get a better understandingon how backlinks work, i'm going to go ahead and create one.

at this point in time it is very easy to geta pagerank 7 do-follow backlink from the adobe website but i believe in future they willchange the link to a no-follow or stop the link-juice from flowing to that page. this is because they will probably realizethat people are creating fake accounts just to get a high pr backlink. now, keep in mind that this video is justan example, to maximize your seo it is important that you create backlinks from websites thatare relevant to yours. for example, if you have a website about cookingit is important that you obtain backlinks from other cooking websites.

why? because google is getting smarter every singleday and they know that it doesn't make sense for a website about games to be linking toa website about cooking. a few links is fine but if you have thousandsof these random backlinks, google will detect that they have been created in an unnaturalway and may investigate into it. on the screen right now you can see the accounti have created to get a do-follow backlink with the pagerank of 7. and here is the actual backlink. i am now going to show you how i did thisstep-by-step.

i went to the adobe education exchange websiteand clicked on join now to create an account. to fill in the form i used the form to filladd-on. as we previously mentioned the add-on doesnot store passwords so i simply click here and then use autohotkey to quickly fill inthis form. also noted here that the email i am usingis peterbl@peterstavrou.com this is a new email i created just to createbacklinks. i always recommend that you create a new emailfor backlinks because as you sign up two different accounts you will begin to get a huge amountof emails that you are not interested in. i now tick the box to say i have agreed totheir terms and click on the sign up button.

i am now told that i need to verify my email. i'm quickly going to pause the video, loginto my email and grab the link i need to verify. once i visit the link, i get a message sayingmy email has been verified. i am now going click on continue. i'm now prompted with a message requestingme to complete my profile. when you create an account to obtain a backlink,most of the time the backlink will be created within your profile. this is the area where you fill in informationabout your profile. i recommend that you take a few minutes andfill in as much information as you can and

even add a picture just to make your profilelooked a bit more real. a lot of websites have administrators whomonitor their sites and if they see accounts that look fake they will delete them. so to avoid this from happening i spend anextra few minutes just to make it look real so the backlinks i create stick for a verylong time. i'm now going to upload a photo and clickon the bio box. to fill this in quickly i'm going to use autohotkey. i am now going to pause the video and fillin some information and then scroll to the bottom.

this field here is where you create your backlink. i'm going to go ahead and enter my url addressand then click on update settings. if you ever get a message like this is becauseyou need to add the http:// to your url address. here is my profile. here is the backlink i just created. if i hover my mouse over it, you can see downhere that it links to my website. if i turn on the no-do follow add-on, youcan see that it turns purple which means it is a do-follow backlink. if i click on the icon here, it takes me tomy website.

and lastly, if i turn on the pagerank add-onyou can see that this page has a pagerank of 7, keep in mind that there are other waysto obtain backlinks other than creating accounts, posting on forums and commenting on blogsand i will be teaching some of these in a more advanced seo training series but justtry to think outside the box and come up with different ways to obtain quality links toyour website. local seo local seo focuses on ranking businesses thatare in the specific location, a bicycle shop in doncaster for example. with local seo you need to relay less on buildinglinks and focus more on local nap citations

and local reviews. local nap citations nap stands for name, address and phone number. you need to ensure that your nap is consistentthroughout your whole website. this means that you need to have the exactsame details in the exact same format. when creating nap citations, your nap hasto use the exact same details and format as the nap on your website. the resources spreadsheet included with thistraining series includes a list of websites that you can use to create some nap citationsto get you started.

before we move on, let me clarify what i meanwhen i say your nap has to be consistent and exactly the same in all places you list it. i am going to use precious cleaning servicesas an example. this is the nap that is listed on their website. here is a nap citation that was created onthe website through truelocal.com.au which is an australian business directory. here is the nap that is listed on their googleplus business page. notice how the name, address and phone numberis exactly the same on all websites? keep in mind that google plus does not displaythe full address anymore.

see how the phone number and address has theexact same format and by format i mean the exact same spacing and spelling? this is what i mean by the nap having to beconsistent> google plus business page if you haven't already, it is very importantthat you register a google plus business page for your business. you need to ensure that you fill in as muchinformation on your google plus page as possible and upload some photos. ensure that your nap details and format areexactly the same as they are on your website

and in your citation listings. don't forget to add a link to your websiteon your google plus business page. you can create this link by going to yourgoogle plus business page and clicking on about and scrolling down to links. local reviews local reviews impact local search rankings. it is important that you encourage your customersto leave positive google reviews, not only to improve seo but to also obtain more customersthat are searching in google. depending on your business, it is importantto gather positive reviews in other places

as well. for example if you were a restaurant, youwould want to get positive reviews on is zomato.com, however, google reviews should be your firstpriority! things to know if your website is new it can take up to atleast three months to get noticed by google and it will take at least six months to seesome results. google crawls websites that are updated morefrequently which means their new pages will be indexed much quicker. this is why having a blog is a very good idea.

having a blog will also allow you to targetmany different keywords in your niche. i recommend that every website has a blog. it is a good idea to go for long tail keywordsrather than single keywords. single keywords are much more competitive. let's take a look at this in more detail. instead of trying to rank single keywordslike seo, you should be aiming to rank long tail keywords such as how to improve seo. let's go through some more examples. instead of trying to rank the keyword money,you may want to try and rank how to make money

blogging. instead of trying to rank travel, you maywant to aim for travel deals for hawaii. instead of food, you may want to try rankhealthy food recipes. you basically want to try be as specific aspossible when choosing keywords to rank. think about what your ideal customers willbe typing into search engines. ranking and location. search results displayed by google vary dependingon your location. for example, if you are located in australiaand visit google, you will automatically be redirected to google.com.au.

google.com.au will bring up different searchresults compared to google.com. if you visit google from japan, you will beredirected to google.co.jp and again the same search will bring up different results. ranking and domain. the extension of your domain name will alsoimpact the way you rank. for example, if you search google for thebest food in america, the majority of sites that will appear in the search results willhave a .com extension. if you search google for the best food inaustralia, the majority of sites that appear in the results will have a .com.au extension.

checking google accurately. google personalizes results according to yourbrowsing behavior. for example, if you continuously click onyour website from a google search then google will deem it important to you and thereforeshow it in your top results. to see a realistic view of google search results,you will need to clear your internet browser’s cache, cookies and sign out of your googleaccount. no-follow links debatesome argue that even though no-follow links do not pass any pagerank, they still passalong some link-juice and contribute to search engine rankings.

however, others argue that no-follow linksdo not pass any link-juice. one thing that’s for certain is that youneed a combination of both no-follower and do-follower links so you do not look suspiciousin the eyes of google. user experience. you need to ensure that your website offersa great user experience. this is not only good for seo but for business. make your website easy to use and providevalue. google uses the below metrics to determinehow valuable a website is to its users. bounce-rate: how quickly a user leaves yoursite from a google search.

if people are clicking onto your website froma google search and then quickly clicking back, it means that they did not find whatthey were looking for. the aim of google is to provide its usersthe best possible result in the least time possible. if people are quick to navigate away fromyour website then it simply means your website is not valuable and therefore should not bein google’s top results. time spent on site: how long a user spendson your site from a google search. if people are clicking onto your website froma google search and spend a lot of time on it, it means that it is valuable and thereforeshould be in google’s top results.

you can use google analytics to analyse website’straffic. the most important thing in seo is to be consistentand patient. continue to post valuable content and buildquality backlinks. and over time you will see your traffic andgoogle rankings skyrocket.

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