Modern SEO - Safe, Effective Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO, and why is it necessary? The introduction to the course identifies exactly what we'll be looking at in this course.

Before we look at SEO today, it is important to see where we have come from.

Google has battled against webmasters over the years to prevent them from manipulating the search results with loopholes and tricks.  This lecture looks at this, and why Google needed to step up.

We've covered a lot of ground already.  This lecture summarizes what we know about SEO today

This lecture looks at the main ranking factors that you need to focus on for better SEO, higher rankings and more traffic.

Let's look at the 4 main areas of SEO.

Is Quality Content really necessary for long-term rankings?

Believe it or not, Google actually help webmasters by telling us exactly what they want. Only an idiot would ignore that advice.

We've seen what Google wants, so let's look at what Google doesn't want.

3 Rules that govern the way you create content for your website.

Let me show you some examples of poor quality content.  Believe it or not, this is what pages ranking in Google used to look like.

How do you get ideas for content that your visitors actually want to see?  This lecture looks at the methods I use to get unlimited content ideas.

How do you go about ranking for a keyword phrase that you have identified?

This lecture looks at two distinct types of keyword research that you need to master. 

This lecture will show you how to create a Keyword Planner account without needing to enter a credit card or setup an advertising campaign.

This lecture shows the basics of using Keyword Planner for keyword research.

Get more keyword data by using this free plugin for Chrome or Firefox.

Learn how to find the right theme words and phrases to use when you create a piece of content.

This lecture introduces the main on-page SEO factors to get write as you add content.  We will then explore these factors in more detail in the subsequent lectures.

The Page Title is very important, and there are a few rules to follow.

The filename is often an afterthought, especially for Wordpress users. However, it is a ranking factor.

It's not as important as the title, but it's still worth taking the time to craft an enticing, keyword rich description.

Meta Keywords are no longer used to positively help your page rank, but it may still be used by Google to penalize your site.

Headlines are important for your visitors and the search engines.

This lecture looks at image optimization and why it is important for your web pages.

Spelling and grammar will certainly matter to your visitors, but what about the search engines?

Links create the World Wide Web, but you do need to be careful who you link to.  This lecture looks at potential issues and how to solve the problem.

Your content should be fluff-free. Let's see what that means.

There is a type of content that you can add to your pages that is ONLY for the search engines.  It's called structured data, or schema, and it can give the search engines more information about your content so they can create rich snippets for your search engine listings.

This lecture shows you how you can implement structured data in your web pages.

Google gives us a great tool for testing the structured data on our pages.

This lecture shows you the plugin I use on my WordPress sites for implementing structured data.  I'll also tell you why I use a plugin.

This lecture briefly discusses voice search and how it is different from traditionally typed searches.  Do you need to optimize differently for voice search?

It is important to get the site structure right as it is important for your visitors and the search engines.

A clear content hierarchy will help the search engines as well as the visitor and should be well-thought out during the planning stages of your website.

You shouldn't have the same sidebar on all pages of your website as it turns links into SiteWide links, which are bad.  Context-sensitive sidebars are the answer.

Internal linking helps your visitor navigate the site, keeps them there for longer, and will also boost your SERP rankings.

Content Management systems like WordPress offer users another way of categorizing pages.  They are called tags.  This lecture explains how to use them, and how not to..

Google tell us to keep pages static wherever possible, but what does that mean and what if we can't?

A robots.txt file helps to set a few rules about your site, telling spiders and other crawlers what they can and cannot visit. Do we need one?

Its a good idea to check how your site looks in the most popular browsers.  There are services you can use to check this.

Site authority is a vital part of ranking in Google today. Google reward sites with authority.

Inbound links hold the key to ranking high in Google, but there is a problem...

Anchor text is a small bit of text used in a link. It can be a powerful component of any link, in both positive and negative ways.

Negative SEO is where one webmaster creates spammy links to another site in an attempt to get that site penalized.

To help webmasters fight back against negative SEO, or just irreversible, poor link building tactics that were previously undertaken, Google released the Disavow Tool.

There is a special type of backlink that will catapult your site into the top 10 of Google. It's the Holy Grail of backlinks, some say mythical. Let me describe it to you.

Some content works better as link bait than others.  This lecture looks at what makes good link bait.

Email Outreach, combined with link bait, is the most effective way to get high quality, white hat backlinks that can skyrocket your traffic.

Broken link building is an effective way to build high quality links.

Guest posting is not as effective as it used to be.  In fact, it may not help your rankings at all.  However, there are other reasons why it is a good idea - perceived authority.

While backlinks are the answer to good rankings for competitive terms, they are also the reason so many sites get penalized.  Learn about the types of backlinks to avoid.

Brand mentions are an increasingly important ranking factor that may be easier to get than backlinks.

Backlinks can help rankings, but they can also help bring referral traffic to your site.

What is visitor experience and why is it important?

Do people hang around your site, reading the content, or do they leave as quickly as they came? Let's use Google Analytics to find out.

When someone clicks on your link in the SERPs, you don't wan them hanging around while the page loads. Check your load speeds and try to remove bloat that is slowing down your page load times.

Modern Wordpress themes are responsive, that is, they adjust to the screen they are displayed on. This makes responsive themes great for viewing on desktops or mobile devices, and you definitely should be using a responsive theme.

What do visitors see above the fold on your website?

Modern SEO is about building trust with the visitor and the search engine. Let's consider ways we can do that.

CTR is the clickthrough rate of a page from the SERPs.  Is it a ranking factor?  Maybe, maybe not.

This lecture looks at ways you can try to improve CTR, which in return will bring you more traffic.

This lecture introduces this section of the SEO course.

Your domain name can affect your ability to rank, but not always in a positive way.

Your page needs to use it's real estate carefully, especially above the fold.  This check looks at what you are putting on your web pages.

You know what the structure should be like, so let's check.

Comments can be a possible cause for concern, so this lecture makes sure you have your bases covered.

This check will make sure your visitors can share your content with their social media followers, but also make sure they can find your social media channels.

Trust is huge, so this check makes sure your web pages contain trust signals.

Visitors can funnel information about your pages back to Google because of Bounce rates and time on site.  Let's check these factors on your site.

Legal pages are really important, so make sure you have the ones you need.

Can you evaluate the quality of your own content in a constructive way?  You need to.

Check the links pointing at your own pages, and make sure they don't scream "link scheme" at Google.

This lecture shows you a few real cases where SEO was done badly.  Can you spot why SEO is so bad in these examples?

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is the most complete all in one SEO tool that I know of, and there is a free version which will work on smaller sites.

For Screaming Frog Pro users, it's a good idea to connect Google Analytics and Search Console to the spider.  There are also other APIs that you can connect to get even more data about your web site.

Let's get the technical audit started by crawling our website.

Response codes tell us if pages on the site have problems that need to be fixed.  This check will go through the response codes and highlight the important ones you need to check for your own site.

Are the pages you want indexed by Google available to Google?  Are those pages you want Google to ignore setup to be ignored?

Not to be confused with page load times, server response times are the first part of that equation, and the Screaming Frog spider can tell you yours.

Outbound links are those that point at other websites.  Make sure that all of your outbound links still point where you think they do.

Page titles are one of the most important tags on a web page, so carry out these checks to make sure they are optimal.

Let's check those meta descriptions for common errors and mistakes.

Meta Keywords are something to avoid in my opinion, but if you do use them, or your clients use them, then make sure they are being used responsibly with this check.

H1 headers should be used for the main headline on the page, but are often misused by theme designers.  This check will look at yours.

H2 headers can be checked using the spider, though the checks are slightly different to H1 headers.  H3 headers cannot be checked with the spider, but should follow the same guidelines as the H2 headers.

Images should be optimized, so let's use the spider to check the important factors.

The most important pages on your site should have the most inbound links from other pages on your site.  Do they?

Word Count might be useful to help identify thin content, but it's not something I generally look at.  I'll explain why.