complete seo course for beginners learn to rank 1 with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:00] hey everyone my name is sam oh and
[0:01] welcome to the seo fundamentals course
[0:03] by ahrefs in this course i'll be
[0:05] teaching you the fundamentals of seo
[0:07] with a heavy focus on execution and
[0:10] while it's a beginner's seo course i
[0:12] don't want you to be fooled by the word
[0:14] beginner even for an eight-figure
[0:16] business like ours we don't do anything
[0:18] crazy technical or complicated right
[0:21] from the start we've stuck with the
[0:23] fundamentals of seo that led to
[0:25] compounded growth and today our site
[0:27] gets over a million monthly visits from
[0:29] google search alone making seo one of
[0:32] our most effective strategies to get
[0:34] traffic to our site so the course is
[0:36] broken down into four modules plus this
[0:39] video which is more of an introduction
[0:40] to the course as well as in seo 101 in
[0:43] this video we'll go over the basics of
[0:46] seo and cover things like what it is why
[0:49] it's important and how it works you'll
[0:51] then move on to module one which is on
[0:53] keyword research throughout these
[0:54] lessons i'll show you how to find
[0:56] keywords to target that can benefit your
[0:58] business it'll also set the foundation
[1:00] for the next module which is on-page seo
[1:03] in this module we'll talk about
[1:05] optimizing your pages to rank for those
[1:07] keywords the next module will be on link
[1:10] building this is one of google's most
[1:12] prominent ranking signals which has
[1:14] proven to contribute to higher rankings
[1:16] in search
[1:17] finally we'll finish off the course with
[1:18] the basics of technical seo which will
[1:21] mostly be about best practices and
[1:23] website maintenance
[1:25] all right let's kick things off with the
[1:26] seo basics we'll talk about what search
[1:28] engine optimization is
[1:30] why it's important and how google works
[1:33] seo stands for search engine
[1:35] optimization and it's the process of
[1:37] optimizing content to be discovered
[1:39] through a search engine's organic search
[1:41] results now let's talk a bit about how
[1:43] they work if you're completely new to
[1:45] seo then it's easiest to think of search
[1:47] engines as libraries but instead of
[1:49] storing books they store copies of
[1:52] websites and web pages
[1:54] so when you search for a query the
[1:56] search engine will then look through all
[1:57] pages in its index and try to return the
[2:00] most relevant results and seo helps
[2:03] demonstrate to search engines that your
[2:05] page is that result
[2:07] now you might be thinking
[2:08] why should i focus on seo when there are
[2:10] so many other marketing mediums well
[2:13] there are three major things that
[2:15] attract marketers to search engine
[2:16] optimization and in my opinion these
[2:19] three things make seo the best traffic
[2:21] source number one unlike paying for ads
[2:24] search traffic is free number two
[2:27] organic traffic is typically consistent
[2:29] once you're ranking high whereas other
[2:32] mediums like social media and email
[2:34] marketing often result in traffic spikes
[2:36] that usually end up fading to nothing
[2:39] and it makes sense because social media
[2:40] networks are designed to surface fresh
[2:42] content emails often get marked as read
[2:45] forgotten or land in the spam box
[2:47] whereas search traffic is a result of
[2:49] users actively searching for information
[2:52] and the number of searches for a given
[2:54] topic is typically consistent month to
[2:56] month and number three you have the
[2:58] opportunity to reach massive audiences
[3:01] you wouldn't have access to otherwise in
[3:03] fact as of october 2019 there were
[3:06] nearly 4.39 billion internet users
[3:09] around the world and almost 4 billion of
[3:11] those people are google users
[3:13] this is why search engine optimization
[3:15] is an 80 billion dollar industry and why
[3:18] marketers from all walks of life are
[3:20] adopting and pursuing it today everyone
[3:23] wants their business to get discovered
[3:25] and seo is the perfect way to do that
[3:28] now let's briefly talk about how google
[3:29] works and there are two parts to this
[3:32] the first is crawling and indexation and
[3:34] these two things are what actually
[3:36] allows google to discover web pages and
[3:39] create their search index so to actually
[3:41] attain information google uses crawlers
[3:44] also known as spiders which gather
[3:46] publicly available information from all
[3:49] over the web the spiders will start
[3:51] crawling from a list of known urls
[3:53] called seeds
[3:54] then they follow the hyperlinks on those
[3:56] pages and crawl those newly discovered
[3:59] pages and this process goes on and on
[4:02] allowing them to collect a ton of
[4:04] information they then take all of this
[4:06] data back to google servers to be added
[4:08] to their search index and that's what
[4:11] people like you and i are searching
[4:13] through when we key in a query in google
[4:15] now if you were to search for something
[4:17] and google returned every result that
[4:19] mentioned your words on the page then
[4:20] you'd end up with really bad results
[4:23] this brings us to the second part which
[4:25] is google's ranking algorithm
[4:27] google has hundreds of ranking signals
[4:29] and they make tweaks to their algorithm
[4:31] 500 to 600 times per year so to be frank
[4:35] no one knows exactly how their algorithm
[4:37] works
[4:38] but they've given us clues and some
[4:40] guidelines to better
[4:55] are just speculation at best but i do
[4:57] want to cover a few of the most
[4:59] important factors that you'll need to
[5:00] understand from a fundamental standpoint
[5:03] first are backlinks backlinks are links
[5:06] from a page on one website to another
[5:08] and google has said on their house
[5:10] search works page that if other
[5:12] prominent websites link to a page that's
[5:15] proved to be a good sign that
[5:16] information is well trusted
[5:19] the easiest way to understand the value
[5:20] of a backlink is to think of them as
[5:22] votes when a page receives a backlink
[5:25] it's essentially another website
[5:26] vouching for the content on the page and
[5:29] the more votes you get from credible
[5:31] sources the higher the trust and we also
[5:34] studied the effect of backlinks on
[5:36] search traffic and found a clear
[5:38] positive correlation between backlinks
[5:40] from unique websites and a page's
[5:42] organic traffic
[5:44] second is search intent which represents
[5:46] the reason behind a searches query and
[5:48] if you think of google's goal for search
[5:50] their job is to return the most relevant
[5:52] results for any given query so with that
[5:55] said you can discover search intent
[5:57] simply by looking at the top ranking
[5:59] pages for the query you want to rank for
[6:02] for example if you search for slow
[6:04] cooker recipes you'll see that the
[6:06] search results are mostly blog posts
[6:08] with a list of slow cooker recipes so if
[6:11] you try and rank a product page where
[6:13] you're selling a slow cooker you won't
[6:15] be matching search intent and therefore
[6:17] you won't rank
[6:18] now if we change the query to just slow
[6:20] cooker you'll see that the dominant
[6:22] types of pages are ecommerce category
[6:24] pages so if you try and rank your blog
[6:27] post of slow cooker recipes then you
[6:29] probably won't rank because you're not
[6:31] matching search intent this is a
[6:33] critical concept to understand and i'll
[6:35] share a simple three-point checklist you
[6:37] can use to determine search intent for
[6:39] any query in the next module and third
[6:42] is content depth search engines are made
[6:44] up of computer programs so they can't
[6:47] actually read and understand text like
[6:49] you and i would nevertheless google has
[6:52] poured billions of dollars into creating
[6:54] sophisticated technology that
[6:56] understands content to a certain degree
[6:59] but it's your job as a content creator
[7:01] to provide context about the subject for
[7:04] example if you look at the top ranking
[7:06] pages for the quarry how to drive a car
[7:08] you'll find that they talk about things
[7:10] like fastening your seatbelt
[7:12] familiarizing yourself with the gas and
[7:14] brake pedals adjusting your seat and
[7:16] mirrors and other things that a first
[7:18] time driver may not know
[7:20] basically you want to be able to answer
[7:22] the search's quarry the best that you
[7:24] possibly can and naturally it should
[7:27] lead to content that has depth
[7:29] now it's important to note that depth
[7:31] doesn't always translate to length for
[7:33] example a topic like how to turn off
[7:36] iphone 12 doesn't need to and shouldn't
[7:39] be long in fact the top ranking page is
[7:41] only 185 words but the content itself
[7:45] solves the user's query from start to
[7:47] finish alright so the basics are in the
[7:49] book and it's time to move on to the
[7:51] keyword research module
[7:53] hey it's amo and welcome to the first
[7:55] module which is on keyword research in
[7:57] this first lesson we're going to talk
[7:59] about what keywords are and how to
[8:01] choose them using a simple four point
[8:03] checklist let's get started so what are
[8:06] keywords in the context of seo they're
[8:08] simply just words and phrases that
[8:10] people type into search engines to find
[8:12] what they're looking for
[8:14] for example if you are shopping for
[8:16] running shoes you might search for
[8:17] keywords like men's running shoes or
[8:19] simply just running shoes
[8:21] now keywords are actually super
[8:23] important in seo because it sets the
[8:25] entire foundation for search engine
[8:27] optimization the basic goal of seo is to
[8:30] rank your pages for keywords that your
[8:32] target audience or customers are
[8:34] searching for and if you're not ranking
[8:36] for keywords that actually get searched
[8:39] then your seo efforts are kind of
[8:41] meaningless
[8:42] for example we rank number one for the
[8:44] query seo checklist and this keyword is
[8:46] responsible for driving around 1500
[8:49] monthly visitors from google and that's
[8:51] just in the us
[8:53] so keyword research is the process of
[8:55] finding keywords that people are
[8:57] inputting into search engines and we'll
[8:59] get into this process in the upcoming
[9:01] lessons
[9:02] so how do you actually choose keywords
[9:04] that are worth targeting let's run
[9:06] through a checklist that should help you
[9:07] choose keywords effectively
[9:09] the first thing to check is if your
[9:11] keyword has search demand search demand
[9:13] represents the volume of monthly
[9:15] searches made for a keyword and this is
[9:17] measurable with a keyword metric that we
[9:19] call search volume
[9:21] you can find the search volume for a
[9:22] keyword by using a keyword research tool
[9:25] like ahrefs keywords explorer for
[9:27] example the query kilometers to miles
[9:30] gets searched around 478
[9:32] 000 times per month in the us alone but
[9:35] as you can see here in hfs keywords
[9:37] explorer 80 of searches go without a
[9:40] click to a page and that's because
[9:42] google has a handy calculator right here
[9:45] that'll solve the searcher's problem so
[9:47] search volume alone can actually be a
[9:49] bit misleading which is why it's worth
[9:51] looking at the second checkpoint which
[9:53] is to check the traffic potential of the
[9:55] topic
[9:56] traffic potential represents the total
[9:58] search traffic you could get if you were
[10:00] to rank at the top of google for your
[10:02] keyword
[10:03] let's look at the stats for our seo
[10:04] checklist page in hf site explorer
[10:07] so again we rank number one for the
[10:09] query seo checklist and it sends us
[10:12] approximately 1500 monthly search visits
[10:15] from the us
[10:16] but if we look at the total global
[10:18] organic traffic to the page you'll see
[10:20] that we get approximately 3 000 monthly
[10:22] visits from google
[10:24] every single month and that's because
[10:26] this page ranks for over 200 keywords
[10:29] and this page isn't an outlier in our
[10:31] study of three million keywords we found
[10:33] that on average the top ranking page
[10:36] ranks for nearly a thousand other
[10:38] keywords in the top ten
[10:40] so while you may be optimizing your
[10:42] pages for a main keyword your page will
[10:44] likely rank for hundreds or even
[10:46] thousands of other relevant keywords and
[10:49] because of that the monthly search
[10:51] traffic potential of the topic seo
[10:53] checklist is actually higher than its
[10:55] monthly search volume
[10:57] this is what makes traffic potential a
[10:59] much more reliable metric than search
[11:01] volume and the way you determine traffic
[11:03] potential is by looking at how much
[11:05] traffic the top ranking pages are
[11:07] getting
[11:08] for example if we go to ahrefs keywords
[11:10] explorer and search for submit website
[11:12] to search engines you'll see that it has
[11:14] a search volume of 1100 monthly searches
[11:17] in the us
[11:19] now if i scroll to the bottom of the
[11:20] page you'll see a serp overview which
[11:23] shows you the top 10 ranking pages for
[11:25] that keyword
[11:26] and serp just stands for search engine
[11:28] results page
[11:30] and as you can see our page gets an
[11:32] estimated 5 300 monthly search visits
[11:35] from the us alone and we rank for over
[11:38] 1300 keywords making traffic potential
[11:41] of this keyword higher than its search
[11:43] volume
[11:44] now it doesn't always work out this way
[11:47] for example the query keyword
[11:49] cannibalization has a search volume of
[11:51] 150 monthly searches but the traffic
[11:54] potential is well under 100 so it
[11:57] becomes more of a business decision
[11:58] whether you want to tackle the topic or
[12:00] not now choosing keywords based on
[12:03] metrics alone is not a good idea which
[12:06] is why the rest of the checkpoints are
[12:07] meant to ground you
[12:09] the next point on our checklist is to
[12:11] assess the business potential of the
[12:12] keyword or topic
[12:14] business potential simply represents the
[12:16] value a keyword has to your business and
[12:19] value really comes down to your niche as
[12:21] well as your business model so an easy
[12:24] way to do this is by assigning scores
[12:26] between one to three to keywords you're
[12:28] researching the higher the number the
[12:30] more important the topic is to your
[12:32] business
[12:33] so let's say you have a site about golf
[12:35] and the way you make money is by selling
[12:37] used golf clubs
[12:39] bringing this back to business potential
[12:41] that means topics where you can
[12:42] organically recommend products to
[12:44] visitors would hold the highest business
[12:47] value for example people searching for
[12:49] something like buy used golf clubs are
[12:52] likely ready to make a purchase here and
[12:54] now
[12:55] so in my books this would have a
[12:57] business value of three
[12:59] now a keyword like best golf clubs would
[13:01] also be relevant to your site people are
[13:04] likely ready to make a purchase soon
[13:06] but just don't know which clubs to buy
[13:08] but it's actually quite easy to plug
[13:10] your products because for the golf clubs
[13:12] you recommend you can easily link back
[13:14] to your product pages leading visitors
[13:17] closer to making a purchase so i'd give
[13:19] this a business value of two now a
[13:21] keyword like what is a handicap in golf
[13:24] would be really tough to organically
[13:26] recommend your products but nevertheless
[13:28] it's a way to attract relevant traffic
[13:30] to your site so i'd give this a business
[13:33] value of one so these would hold the
[13:35] lowest priority and anything that has a
[13:37] score of zero is probably worth ignoring
[13:40] because it's not going to impact your
[13:41] bottom line so something like happy
[13:44] gilmore review would have a business
[13:46] value of zero because it has nothing to
[13:48] do with your business other than the
[13:50] fact that it's a fantastic movie about
[13:52] golf alright the next point on this
[13:54] checklist is to see if you can match
[13:56] searcher intent this is a concept that
[13:58] we covered in the first lesson of this
[14:00] course but it's something that i'm going
[14:02] to keep talking about because it's super
[14:04] important so again search intent
[14:06] represents the reason behind a
[14:08] searcher's query and the way we
[14:10] determine that is by looking at the top
[14:12] ranking pages for the keyword we want to
[14:14] rank for for example let's say you have
[14:16] a recipes blog and you want to rank for
[14:19] toaster oven
[14:20] looking at the top ranking pages you'll
[14:22] see that almost all of the pages are
[14:24] ecommerce category pages
[14:27] this tells us that the intent of the
[14:28] searcher is likely to buy or at least to
[14:31] shop around for different toaster ovens
[14:34] so unless you can actually satisfy the
[14:36] intent of the searcher it's unlikely
[14:38] that you'll be able to rank high for
[14:40] this query and we'll dig deeper into
[14:42] search intent in the next lesson the
[14:44] final point on this checklist is to
[14:45] determine whether you can rank for your
[14:47] keyword search volume traffic potential
[14:50] and business potential mean absolutely
[14:52] nothing if you can't rank for your
[14:54] keyword in the not so distant future and
[14:57] understanding the level of difficulty to
[14:59] rank for a given keyword takes a bit of
[15:01] analysis and practice
[15:03] this is why i've created an entire
[15:05] lesson on assessing ranking difficulty
[15:07] because mastering this process will help
[15:09] you get predictable results in seo so
[15:12] i'll save that for a later lesson
[15:14] now actually choosing keywords comes
[15:16] down to finding a balance in this
[15:17] checklist you have to ask yourself does
[15:20] the topic drive enough traffic and have
[15:22] business value to make it worth the
[15:24] effort and this is the question you
[15:26] should ask yourself before you create
[15:28] pages with the intent to rank in search
[15:31] and these five points in the checklist
[15:33] are exactly what we're going to dive
[15:35] deeper into throughout the rest of this
[15:37] module
[15:39] hey it's sam oh and welcome to the
[15:40] second lesson which is on search intent
[15:42] and i touched on this in the first
[15:44] lesson on seo basics but i really want
[15:46] to take some time to unpack what it is
[15:49] and how to use it in keyword research
[15:51] reason being if you can't match searcher
[15:54] intent then you probably aren't going to
[15:56] rank for your target keywords
[15:58] so again search intent represents the
[16:00] reason behind a searcher's query and
[16:03] matching search intent is one of those
[16:04] must do things to show search engines
[16:07] that your page will fulfill their goal
[16:09] to deliver the most relevant results for
[16:12] any given query and while it might sound
[16:15] like you're trying to satisfy google
[16:17] what you're actually doing is learning
[16:19] what you need to do to satisfy the
[16:22] searcher's intent
[16:23] identifying search intent is usually
[16:25] quite easy all you have to do is search
[16:28] for the keyword you want to rank for and
[16:30] then analyze the top ranking results and
[16:33] the top ranking results are a great
[16:35] proxy to understand search intent
[16:37] because google understands what
[16:39] searchers want probably more than anyone
[16:41] else
[16:42] now analyzing is kind of a jargony word
[16:45] but i have a simple three prong formula
[16:47] you can use it's called the three c's of
[16:50] search intent
[16:51] the first c is content type
[16:53] content type can usually be categorized
[16:56] into blog posts videos product category
[16:59] and landing pages
[17:01] for example the dominant type of pages
[17:03] for the quarry best golf shoes are blog
[17:06] posts
[17:08] the second c is content format and this
[17:10] applies more to blog posts and landing
[17:12] pages a few common blog formats you'll
[17:15] see are how to's step-by-step tutorials
[17:19] list posts and opinion editorials
[17:21] for a landing page that might be
[17:23] something like a tool or calculator
[17:26] again for the quarry best golf shoes
[17:28] you'll see that all of the top results
[17:30] are listicles which makes sense because
[17:32] the word best implies that a comparison
[17:35] needs to be made
[17:36] and the third c is content angle which
[17:39] often depicts the benefit it's basically
[17:41] your hook as to why someone should click
[17:44] and visit your page for best golf shoes
[17:47] you'll see that every post has gone with
[17:48] a freshness angle which is evident based
[17:51] on the current year being in the titles
[17:53] in my opinion this is the least
[17:55] important and often least consistent
[17:57] among top ranking pages
[17:59] now this is just one example of search
[18:01] intent for a keyword let's go through a
[18:03] few more examples to really drill in
[18:05] this concept
[18:07] the first example is for the query how
[18:09] to swing a golf club the dominant
[18:11] content type is clearly blog posts but
[18:13] you'll also notice that a youtube video
[18:15] is ranking ahead of the blog post so
[18:18] this tells us that it may be worth
[18:19] creating both a blog post and video to
[18:22] potentially get two different spots in
[18:24] the search results
[18:26] as for content format they're clearly
[18:28] all how to's and seeing as the nature of
[18:31] the topic would require a step-by-step
[18:33] procedure that's probably the route
[18:35] you'd want to go to and you can confirm
[18:37] this by actually visiting some of the
[18:39] top ranking pages
[18:41] now with content angle it appears as
[18:43] though for beginners or basic seems to
[18:46] be the right way to approach the topic
[18:49] the second example is for the query golf
[18:51] clubs looking at the serp you'll see
[18:53] that they're all ecommerce category
[18:55] pages which tells us that when people
[18:57] search for this query they're likely in
[18:59] shopping mode
[19:00] now seeing as content format applies
[19:02] mostly to blog posts and landing pages
[19:05] it wouldn't be applicable here since
[19:06] we're looking at ecommerce category
[19:08] pages as for content angle it seems to
[19:12] be mostly about deals so saving money on
[19:15] golf clubs
[19:16] alright the final example is for
[19:18] something like golf bags
[19:20] looking at the serp you'll see something
[19:21] a bit different we have a mixed serp
[19:24] content type for the top ranking page is
[19:26] an ecommerce category page then we have
[19:29] a couple of blog posts on the best golf
[19:31] bags and we also have an outlier on how
[19:34] to buy golf bags
[19:35] and towards the bottom half of the
[19:37] results we have more ecommerce category
[19:40] pages
[19:41] so what do you do
[19:43] well in order to make an educated
[19:44] decision we still need to lay some
[19:46] foundation work so we'll revisit this
[19:48] example in a later lesson
[19:51] hey it's ammo and welcome to the third
[19:53] lesson in our keyword research module in
[19:55] this lesson i'm going to show you how to
[19:57] find keywords for your website based on
[19:59] the things you learn in lesson one and
[20:01] two of this module let's get started
[20:04] so keyword research is the process of
[20:06] finding keywords that people are
[20:08] searching for in search engines and the
[20:10] general process can be divided into two
[20:12] macro steps step one is to generate
[20:15] keyword ideas and step two is to
[20:17] validate whether those keywords are
[20:19] worth going after
[20:21] now this lesson is mostly about step one
[20:23] generating keyword ideas for your
[20:25] website and in order to do that you need
[20:28] a keyword research tool
[20:30] keyword research tools show you
[20:31] information on keywords like their
[20:33] search volume keyword difficulty scores
[20:36] and other seo metrics plus they should
[20:38] help you discover potential topics worth
[20:40] going after there are a lot of tools out
[20:42] there and you're free to use whichever
[20:44] ones you want but for this course i'll
[20:46] be using ahrefs keywords explorer
[20:48] now i also understand that some people
[20:50] may not be in a place to purchase seo
[20:52] software right now if that's you then we
[20:55] also have a free tool called ahrefs
[20:57] keyword generator which is a good place
[20:59] to start i'll leave links to both tools
[21:01] in the description
[21:03] all right so we're going to be doing
[21:04] some keyword research for the rest of
[21:05] this lesson so let's say that the
[21:07] website we're doing keyword research for
[21:09] is a golf blog and the way this blog
[21:11] generates revenue is through affiliate
[21:13] commissions meaning they promote other
[21:16] people's products and when someone
[21:17] clicks on one of the links and makes a
[21:19] purchase you're compensated with a
[21:21] commission
[21:22] so the first step is to come up with a
[21:24] list of seed keywords and a seed keyword
[21:27] is just a broad keyword related to your
[21:29] niche so i'll go to hfs keywords
[21:31] explorer and add a few seeds for our
[21:34] golf site so that might be golf balls
[21:37] golf clubs and golf hats to name a few
[21:40] next i'll go to the phrase match report
[21:42] which will show us keywords that include
[21:44] any of these phrases
[21:46] and just like that we have around 125
[21:49] 000 keyword ideas with search volumes
[21:52] and a ton of other helpful metrics some
[21:54] of which we'll touch on later now 125
[21:57] 000 keywords is just way too much to
[21:59] filter through so before we continue
[22:02] let's take a second and revisit the five
[22:04] point checklist from the first lesson in
[22:06] this module
[22:07] again the five things we're looking for
[22:09] when it comes to choosing keywords are
[22:11] one we want keywords that have search
[22:13] demand
[22:14] two
[22:15] keywords with traffic potential
[22:18] three
[22:18] keywords with business potential
[22:21] four we need to be able to match search
[22:23] intent and five we want to know how hard
[22:26] it will be to rank at the top of google
[22:28] for that keyword
[22:30] so when we're generating keyword ideas
[22:32] we'll be able to check off the first
[22:34] four points as for the fifth we'll
[22:36] tackle that in the next lesson
[22:38] alright let's look back at our list of
[22:40] keyword ideas and start checking off
[22:42] some of these boxes
[22:43] so first we need to find keywords that
[22:45] have search demand to do that you can
[22:48] set a search volume filter to show
[22:49] keywords with a minimum volume of at
[22:52] least 300 monthly searches
[22:55] and now that list has just shrunk to 351
[22:58] keyword ideas which will be easy to
[23:00] manually filter through
[23:02] the next point on this checklist is to
[23:04] see if they have traffic potential again
[23:07] traffic potential is a more reliable
[23:09] metric than search volume because not
[23:11] all searches result in clicks and at the
[23:14] end of the day we want traffic not
[23:16] searches
[23:17] to check the traffic potential of a
[23:18] topic you need to look at the top
[23:20] ranking pages and see how much traffic
[23:23] they're getting to do that you can click
[23:25] on the surf button beside any of these
[23:27] keywords
[23:28] so if we do that for the quarry golf
[23:30] clubs you'll see that the top page gets
[23:32] around 16 000 monthly search visits from
[23:35] the us
[23:36] now if you don't have an ahrefs account
[23:38] you can get a free version of the serp
[23:40] using hf serp checker tool
[23:43] next up is business potential again
[23:45] business potential is simply the value a
[23:47] keyword has to your business and while
[23:49] 16 000 monthly search visits seems great
[23:52] you need to consider the fourth point on
[23:54] the checklist which is to ask yourself
[23:56] if you can match search intent
[23:58] as you can see almost all of the top
[24:01] ranking pages are ecommerce category
[24:03] pages
[24:04] so searchers are probably in shopping
[24:06] mode but we have a golf affiliate blog
[24:09] so the site probably isn't selling golf
[24:11] clubs meaning we can't create an
[24:13] ecommerce category page and therefore we
[24:16] won't be able to match search intent so
[24:19] seeing as this query doesn't fulfill the
[24:21] points on our checklist we wouldn't go
[24:23] after this keyword
[24:25] now looking further down the list you'll
[24:26] see the quarry best golf balls it has a
[24:29] high search volume and if i click on the
[24:32] search button you'll see that the
[24:33] traffic potential is around 5000 monthly
[24:36] visits from the us
[24:38] pretty good
[24:39] now in terms of business potential this
[24:41] keyword would have a value of 3 because
[24:43] our site makes money by reviewing and
[24:46] recommending products so it would be
[24:48] super easy to organically recommend
[24:50] products in a best of post which i
[24:53] assume would lead to a fair amount of
[24:54] affiliate commissions
[24:56] as for search intent these are blog
[24:58] posts in the listicle format with the
[25:00] freshness content angle as you can see
[25:02] from the titles of the top ranking pages
[25:05] so this query checks all boxes and
[25:07] passed our initial sniff test so i'll
[25:10] click on the check box and add it to my
[25:12] golf keyword list
[25:15] now checking the serp for all of these
[25:17] keywords would be pretty time consuming
[25:19] so there's a quick technique you can use
[25:21] to find relevant keywords and that's to
[25:24] use keyword modifiers
[25:26] a modifier is an add-on to a base
[25:28] keyword for example if our base keyword
[25:30] is golf hats we can modify this keyword
[25:33] by adding best
[25:35] top or the current year
[25:37] and modifiers tell us a lot about search
[25:39] intent a word like best again tells us
[25:42] that a comparison needs to be made so
[25:44] searchers are probably looking for
[25:46] listicle blog posts with various
[25:48] different product recommendations
[25:51] now if a word like how or what is in the
[25:53] keyword then it tells us that the top
[25:55] pages will likely be blog posts or
[25:57] videos with step-by-step tutorials or
[26:00] some other informational content
[26:02] so with this knowledge we can actually
[26:04] filter this keyword list down to a
[26:07] keywords that likely have business
[26:09] potential
[26:10] and b
[26:11] keywords where we can match searcher
[26:13] intent
[26:14] for example since we're doing keyword
[26:16] research for an affiliate site modifiers
[26:18] like best top
[26:20] versus and review would likely bring up
[26:23] topics where we can organically
[26:25] recommend products
[26:27] so if we go back to the keyword list we
[26:29] can click on the include filter and
[26:31] paste this list there
[26:33] next i'll hit the any word tab since we
[26:35] want to find keywords that include any
[26:37] of these modifiers as well as one of our
[26:40] seed keywords
[26:41] hit apply and we now have a list of
[26:44] around 30 keywords that are most likely
[26:46] going to have high business potential
[26:49] plus we know that 99 of the time the
[26:52] results for any best type keyword will
[26:54] be listicle blog posts and we know that
[26:57] we can match searcher intent with our
[26:58] affiliate blog
[27:00] now if we switch the modifiers in the
[27:02] include filter to words like how
[27:04] what
[27:05] who
[27:06] where
[27:07] why
[27:08] guide and tutorial
[27:10] then we can apply the list to find
[27:12] informational topics that we could write
[27:14] about on our blog
[27:16] and pretty much all of these keywords
[27:18] will be fair game for our hypothetical
[27:19] golf blog
[27:21] now if you plan to use a list of
[27:22] modifiers then it's worth noting that
[27:24] you should probably do it with much
[27:26] broader seats
[27:28] for example you'll see that we only have
[27:30] 10 keywords when using the search volume
[27:32] filter paired with our list of
[27:34] informational modifiers
[27:36] now if i change the c to just golf set
[27:39] the volume filter to a minimum of 300
[27:41] monthly searches
[27:43] and then paste in my list of
[27:44] informational modifiers
[27:46] hit the any tab and click apply
[27:49] then you'll see we have a lot more
[27:50] topics that we could potentially create
[27:52] content around so if this is a method
[27:55] you want to try then take a screenshot
[27:57] of this list of modifiers and feel free
[27:59] to use them in your keyword research now
[28:02] after doing keyword research for exactly
[28:04] 33 minutes and 14 seconds i was able to
[28:07] compile a list of over 190 keyword ideas
[28:11] in my golf keyword list
[28:13] now one downside to using keyword
[28:15] research tools is that the list of
[28:17] keyword ideas will usually be limited to
[28:19] words and phrases that include your
[28:21] seats but there are other great keywords
[28:23] that won't necessarily include your
[28:25] seeds
[28:26] so how do you find them
[28:28] well the best way to find these keywords
[28:30] is to look at pages that drive the most
[28:32] search traffic to your competitor sites
[28:35] because if your competitors are ranking
[28:36] for keywords that are sending them a ton
[28:39] of search traffic then i'm sure you'd
[28:41] want to get in on the action right
[28:43] now by competitor i'm not necessarily
[28:45] talking about your direct business
[28:47] competitors i'm referring to your
[28:49] organic search competitors which are
[28:51] websites that rank for keywords that
[28:53] you'd want to rank for
[28:55] so to find these competitors i'll go
[28:57] back to ahrefs keywords explorer but
[28:59] this time i'll click on my golf keyword
[29:01] list
[29:02] next i'll go to the traffic share by
[29:04] domains report which will show you the
[29:06] websites that get the most search
[29:08] traffic based on your keyword input in
[29:10] this case our golf keyword list
[29:13] so as you can see sites like golf digest
[29:16] golf.com and golf wrx are getting the
[29:19] most search traffic from the keywords
[29:22] that i want to hypothetically rank for
[29:24] but we already know these keywords since
[29:26] we created the list so what you can do
[29:29] is click on the caret beside a domain
[29:31] you want to research further and then
[29:33] click top pages which will show you the
[29:35] pages that send the most search traffic
[29:37] to a website
[29:39] and check this out golf digest page on
[29:41] game improvement irons gets around 5 400
[29:44] monthly search visits from the us
[29:47] this page that ranks for what degree is
[29:49] a sand wedge gets around 4 700 monthly
[29:52] search visits and we wouldn't have seen
[29:54] these in the keyword ideas report
[29:56] because they don't contain our seeds
[29:59] so you can just skim through this list
[30:01] look for potential topics then go
[30:03] through those four points in the
[30:04] checklist for keywords that are
[30:06] interesting to you add them to your
[30:08] keyword list and once you've exhausted a
[30:10] website's top pages
[30:12] rinse and repeat for the other organic
[30:14] search competitors until you're
[30:16] satisfied with your list and if you're
[30:18] still unhappy with your list you can try
[30:20] and find other seeds within this report
[30:23] the two that stand out to me right away
[30:25] are sand wedge and fairway woods
[30:28] so i'll go back to keywords explorer and
[30:30] type those into the search box
[30:32] and seeing as both of these are
[30:33] different types of golf clubs you can
[30:36] add pitching wedge putter putting and so
[30:39] on and so forth
[30:41] bottom line there should be no shortage
[30:43] of keyword ideas and you should be able
[30:45] to use these two methods to build a
[30:47] solid list of topics to keep you busy
[30:50] for years
[30:51] but here's the thing even if you've
[30:53] checked off these four boxes on the
[30:55] checklist there's still one left and it
[30:57] won't matter if you don't rank for your
[30:59] keywords
[31:01] hey it's ammo and welcome to the fourth
[31:03] lesson in our keyword research module
[31:05] today i'm going to show you how to
[31:07] determine ranking difficulty for a
[31:08] keyword this will help you understand
[31:10] how hard it'll be to rank high in google
[31:13] for your target keywords let's get
[31:15] started
[31:16] so when it comes to ranking in google
[31:18] you need to understand who you'll be up
[31:20] against before you target a keyword
[31:22] otherwise you could be entering a battle
[31:24] you won't be able to win
[31:26] from an seo perspective competitors are
[31:29] pages and websites that rank at the top
[31:31] of google for your target keywords so
[31:33] that means your competitors can be
[31:35] different for every single keyword you
[31:37] target
[31:38] so there are three main things you'll
[31:39] want to consider before you decide to
[31:41] pick a fight and those are search intent
[31:44] metrics of the top ranking pages and
[31:46] websites and topical authority of the
[31:49] top ranking websites
[31:51] now as we go through these points we're
[31:53] going to create a list of self-check
[31:55] questions which should help you make
[31:56] informed decisions in your keyboard
[31:58] targeting also in order to see things
[32:01] like metrics of top ranking pages you
[32:03] need an seo tool since google won't show
[32:05] you data on other pages so i'll be using
[32:08] ahrefs keywords explorer throughout this
[32:10] lesson
[32:11] now if you don't have an ahrefs account
[32:13] you can use our free serp checker tool
[32:15] which will give you data on the top
[32:17] three pages
[32:18] all right let's start with search intent
[32:20] the first thing you need to do is look
[32:21] at the serp and ask yourself do some of
[32:24] the top ranking pages fail to closely
[32:26] match search intent
[32:28] to find this out you can go through the
[32:30] three c's of search intent as we
[32:32] discussed in lesson two of this module
[32:34] and by the looks of it they're all
[32:36] listicle blog posts using the freshness
[32:38] angle so they do match it
[32:41] also pay close attention to the titles
[32:43] and urls of the ranking pages
[32:46] in general if the top pages include the
[32:48] primary keyword or a variation of it in
[32:51] the title and or url they're likely
[32:54] targeting that keyword for example all
[32:57] of the top ranking pages for the quarry
[32:59] how to save money are exactly about that
[33:03] whereas a quarry like best convertible
[33:05] car seats for small cars is a bit mixed
[33:09] as you can see some pages have gone
[33:11] specifically with the angle
[33:13] for small cars
[33:14] as a result it's probably matching
[33:17] searcher intent better than the more
[33:19] broad posts about the best convertible
[33:21] car seats for any car
[33:23] this is a sign of weakness in the serp
[33:25] because it means there's probably a lack
[33:27] of rank-worthy content out there about
[33:30] the best convertible car seats for small
[33:32] cars
[33:34] now i don't want you to take this as
[33:35] advice that you must include the exact
[33:38] keyword phrase in your titles and or
[33:40] urls with this example finding
[33:43] convertible car seats for small cars is
[33:46] actually a very specific need for a
[33:49] specific person
[33:50] all right let's talk about the metrics
[33:52] the first metric to look at is the
[33:54] number of websites that are linking to
[33:56] the page at ahrefs we call this
[33:58] referring domains
[34:00] as i mentioned in module 1 backlinks are
[34:03] one of google's most prominent ranking
[34:05] signals so if a page has a lot of
[34:08] quality links pointing at it then it'll
[34:10] be more competitive to rank
[34:12] so before choosing a keyword you need to
[34:14] ask yourself
[34:16] can i get more quality backlinks than
[34:18] the top ranking pages
[34:20] the second metric is website authority
[34:23] at ahrefs we call this domain rating
[34:25] which represents the overall strength of
[34:27] a website's backlink profile
[34:29] very generally speaking you should be
[34:31] going after keywords where your
[34:33] website's dr is in a similar ballpark
[34:35] range as the top ranking pages or at the
[34:38] very least one of the top ranking pages
[34:41] should be in the same range as your
[34:42] website
[34:43] for example if all of the websites that
[34:46] rank in the top 10 have high dr's and
[34:49] you have a dr of let's say 10 then you
[34:51] may want to consider competing when
[34:53] you're at a similar level so let's add
[34:56] that question to our checklist
[34:58] is my website in a similar dr range or
[35:01] higher than the top ranking websites
[35:04] again this is a very general
[35:06] recommendation but still a decent one to
[35:08] follow if you're a beginner to seo
[35:11] to see the domain rating of your own
[35:13] site you can enter your domain in site
[35:15] explorer and see it here on the overview
[35:17] page
[35:18] or you can enter your domain in our free
[35:20] website authority checker i'll be
[35:22] leaving links to all of these tools in
[35:24] the description
[35:25] alright let's move on to the third part
[35:27] which is topical authority of the top
[35:29] ranking websites
[35:31] google wants to rank pages from
[35:33] authoritative sources and this goes
[35:35] beyond backlinks
[35:36] for example if we look at the serp 4 how
[35:39] to unclog a toilet you'll see that this
[35:42] dr42 site is outranking much more
[35:45] powerful websites with significantly
[35:48] more referring domains
[35:50] well this page comes from a website
[35:52] that's just about plumbing so it's
[35:54] likely more authoritative on the topic
[35:57] so the question you need to ask yourself
[35:58] is
[35:59] is my website equally or more topically
[36:02] authoritative than the top ranking
[36:04] websites
[36:05] if the answer is yes then that's a
[36:07] positive thing for you
[36:09] the easiest and quickest way to find out
[36:11] is to just look at the domain names and
[36:13] use some common sense for example
[36:16] looking at the serp 4 best convertible
[36:18] car seat for small cars you'll see sites
[36:21] like experienced mommy baby center
[36:24] parenting pod baby list and other
[36:27] relevant sites that talk about products
[36:29] for children
[36:30] and for domains that aren't as easily
[36:32] distinguishable like 800 buckleup.org
[36:36] you can just visit the site hit the
[36:38] about page and get a general idea of
[36:40] what the site is about in this case
[36:43] you'll see that they talk about car seat
[36:44] recalls and review car seat brands so
[36:48] yes it is topically authoritative on car
[36:50] seats
[36:52] all right let's look at our full list of
[36:53] yes or no questions
[36:55] as a very general rule of thumb the more
[36:58] yeses you can check off the better your
[37:00] chances of ranking again
[37:02] very general because seo is quite
[37:04] nuanced with that said let's go through
[37:07] a couple of hypothetical examples for
[37:09] our golf site to set the scene let's say
[37:11] you have a website that's about golf
[37:13] instruction and you also review golf
[37:15] equipment and your website's domain
[37:17] rating is low at around 15.
[37:20] all right so the first example is for
[37:21] the quarry best golf grips let's start
[37:24] with the first question
[37:26] do some of the top ranking pages fail to
[37:28] closely match search intent
[37:31] from the looks of it they all look
[37:32] decent so i'll check the no box
[37:35] next up
[37:36] can i get more quality backlinks than
[37:38] the top ranking pages
[37:40] again we haven't covered anything about
[37:42] quality backlinks yet so for now let's
[37:45] just look at quantity
[37:46] most of the sites have very few
[37:48] referring domains so i'd say this is a
[37:50] yes
[37:52] next question is my website in a similar
[37:55] dr range or higher than the top ranking
[37:57] websites
[37:59] based on the serp there are a few sites
[38:01] with similar website authority so let's
[38:03] give this a yes as well
[38:05] and finally is my website equally or
[38:08] more topically authoritative than the
[38:10] top ranking websites
[38:12] well all of the top pages are from golf
[38:14] sites and so is mine so let's give this
[38:16] a yes as well so based on our analysis
[38:20] it looks like this would be a topic
[38:21] worth going after
[38:23] all right the next analysis is for the
[38:25] keyword best putters
[38:27] looking at search intent overall it
[38:29] looks like the majority of pages are
[38:31] good so i'll check the no box but i do
[38:34] want to touch on this page on the best
[38:37] blade putters
[38:39] this is more of a focused post and
[38:40] they're likely ranking high for this
[38:42] because of all of the other factors like
[38:44] high website authority lots of referring
[38:46] domains and topical authority so i would
[38:50] actually exclude them from the rest of
[38:51] this analysis
[38:53] alright next up can i get more quality
[38:56] backlinks than the top ranking pages
[38:59] again just looking at the quantity of
[39:01] links to these pages the answer would
[39:03] likely be a yes seeing as we're still
[39:05] looking at about a dozen referring
[39:07] domains but it's important to realize
[39:10] that getting more links than the number
[39:12] one page probably won't happen in the
[39:14] near future meaning getting the top
[39:17] ranking spot will be tough
[39:19] next is my website in a similar dr range
[39:23] or higher than the top ranking websites
[39:25] the answer is no
[39:27] and finally my website is topically
[39:30] authoritative so i'll give this a yes
[39:33] now it looks like we're at a tie between
[39:35] yeses and notes and this is exactly why
[39:38] i said
[39:39] as a very general rule of thumb the more
[39:42] yeses you can check off the better your
[39:44] chances of ranking
[39:46] again seo is nuanced plus you need to
[39:49] weigh out some of the other principles
[39:51] we discussed like traffic potential and
[39:53] business value
[39:54] and the best way to make sound judgment
[39:57] calls is through experience
[39:59] so it will take time to hone your skills
[40:02] and gain a better grasp of keyword
[40:04] analysis
[40:05] so as you can see understanding how hard
[40:08] it will be to rank in google will be a
[40:10] key skill to your success in search
[40:13] why
[40:14] because it's the first step to getting
[40:15] predictable results
[40:17] after all if you know what it'll take to
[40:20] rank ahead of your competition then it
[40:22] all comes down to execution
[40:24] and that's what the next two modules are
[40:26] all about
[40:28] hey it's ammo and welcome to the second
[40:30] module which is about on-page seo if you
[40:33] haven't seen the introduction to seo
[40:34] video and the module on keyword research
[40:37] then i highly recommend watching those
[40:39] first they'll help you get the
[40:40] foundational knowledge you'll need to
[40:42] get the most out of this module i'll
[40:44] leave links in the description
[40:46] all right so what is on-page seo it's
[40:49] simply the practice of optimizing web
[40:51] pages to rank higher in search engines
[40:53] and it revolves heavily around
[40:55] optimizing pages for search intent but
[40:58] on-page optimizations also involve
[41:00] creating and optimizing html tags like
[41:04] titles and meta descriptions
[41:06] now if you've been exposed to the
[41:08] practice of on-page seo then it's quite
[41:10] likely that you've heard conflicting
[41:12] advice and for that reason we're going
[41:14] to discuss both what on-page seo is and
[41:18] what it is not
[41:19] let's talk about common advice you might
[41:21] see on on-page seo best practices which
[41:24] just aren't true today and while there
[41:27] are many old school tactics that are
[41:28] still being recommended i want to focus
[41:31] on just three points to help you
[41:33] navigate the noise
[41:35] number one on-page seo is not about
[41:38] stuffing exact match keywords
[41:41] it used to be common practice to include
[41:43] the exact keyword you wanted to rank for
[41:45] in your title url and content
[41:48] for example if you wanted to rank for
[41:50] car dealer san diego you would stuff
[41:53] that keyword throughout your page
[41:54] despite the fact it doesn't make sense
[41:57] grammatically speaking
[41:59] google is smart enough to understand
[42:00] things like connecting words synonyms
[42:03] and closely related words and phrases
[42:06] in fact for all of these queries the top
[42:09] 10 pages are nearly identical
[42:12] unfortunately stuffing exact match
[42:14] keywords is still being practiced today
[42:17] which can lead to poor user experience
[42:19] and poor readability all things that
[42:21] on-page seo should not do
[42:25] the second thing is that on-page seo is
[42:27] not about using your keyword a specific
[42:30] number of times on the page
[42:32] in our study of three million search
[42:33] queries we found that on average the top
[42:36] ranking page ranks for around a thousand
[42:38] other relevant keywords in the top ten
[42:42] now can you imagine what it would be
[42:43] like if a top ranking page had to
[42:45] mention all 1000 of those keywords at
[42:48] least three times
[42:50] it makes no sense the content would be
[42:52] unnecessarily lengthy and create an
[42:55] awful user experience for visitors
[42:57] here's an example look at the syrup for
[42:59] the quarry diet plan you'll see that
[43:02] health lines article on how to lose
[43:04] weight ranks number one and there's no
[43:06] mention of a diet plan in their title or
[43:08] url
[43:09] in fact there's only one fleeting
[43:11] mention of it on the page not even a
[43:13] subheading here's another example gq
[43:16] ranks in the top spot for classiest
[43:18] watch
[43:19] but if we look at the page you'll see
[43:21] that the word classiest isn't there and
[43:24] neither is the word classy
[43:27] the third point is that on-page seo
[43:29] isn't about meeting a minimum word count
[43:32] some studies have shown that the average
[43:34] content length of the top 10 results is
[43:36] over 2 000 words as a result many seos
[43:40] have recommended that you create pages
[43:42] that are at least that length
[43:44] but that isn't exactly sound advice for
[43:47] example our backlink checker is 628
[43:50] words yet we rank number one for our
[43:52] target keyword and the page generates
[43:55] around 130 000 monthly visits from
[43:58] google search alone
[44:00] here's another example this page only
[44:02] has 76 words on it the majority of
[44:04] content are images according to hf site
[44:07] explorer the page gets over 170 000
[44:10] monthly search visits
[44:13] now let's talk about what on-page seo is
[44:15] today in 2021 and beyond looking at the
[44:18] definition again on-page seo is the
[44:20] practice of optimizing web pages to rank
[44:23] higher in search engines and as i
[44:25] mentioned this revolves heavily around
[44:28] optimizing pages for search intent the
[44:30] key word here is search intent
[44:33] translation the goal of your pages
[44:35] should be to satisfy the searcher's
[44:37] intent
[44:38] how
[44:39] well we talked about the three c's of
[44:41] search intent which should help you get
[44:42] the basic stuff down like the content
[44:45] type format and angle in addition to
[44:48] this your content needs to address the
[44:50] things people expect to see
[44:52] you'll also want to nail the more
[44:53] tangible items like titles subheadings
[44:57] internal linking readability and of
[44:59] course the actual content itself
[45:02] these are the things we'll be answering
[45:04] in part two of our on-page seo module
[45:06] where we'll get more tactical and talk
[45:08] about how you can create content that's
[45:11] optimized for search
[45:13] hey it's ammo and welcome to the second
[45:15] lesson in the on-page seo module today
[45:18] i'm going to show you how to create a
[45:19] page that's optimized for search let's
[45:22] get started so as i showed you in the
[45:24] last lesson on average the top ranking
[45:26] page ranks for nearly a thousand
[45:28] keywords for example healthline's page
[45:31] is clearly targeting the query how to
[45:33] lose weight fast and sure enough they're
[45:36] ranking in the top spot
[45:38] now the traffic to this page doesn't
[45:39] come from just their target keyword it
[45:42] comes from the combined effect of
[45:44] ranking for thousands of queries and
[45:46] when we sum up the traffic from all
[45:48] keywords it makes up well over a hundred
[45:51] thousand monthly search visits just from
[45:53] the us
[45:54] in fact if we look at the page's keyword
[45:56] rankings you'll see that the target
[45:58] query how to lose weight fast only sends
[46:01] them a small percentage of the total
[46:03] monthly search traffic
[46:05] now in order to rank for a ton of
[46:07] keywords and get a ton of search traffic
[46:09] you need two things the first is a page
[46:12] that's optimized to rank and the second
[46:14] are backlinks in this lesson we'll cover
[46:17] how to create an optimized page and
[46:19] we'll tackle links in the next module
[46:21] okay so with on-page seo there are two
[46:23] main things we need to cover the first
[46:25] is arguably the most important and
[46:27] that's to ensure your page satisfies
[46:30] searcher intent we've already covered
[46:32] the three css search intent which again
[46:34] will give you very basic guidance on the
[46:36] type of content to create the format to
[46:39] use and the angle to go with but the
[46:41] actual content itself is what will leave
[46:44] your visitors satisfied or dissatisfied
[46:48] so you might be wondering what exactly
[46:50] do i write about in order to satisfy
[46:52] searchers the short answer is to learn
[46:55] from your competitors
[46:56] the top ranking pages are ranking at the
[46:58] top for a reason google and other search
[47:01] engines deem them as the best candidates
[47:03] to satisfy a search's query so they're
[47:06] clearly doing something right at least
[47:08] from the perspective of a search engine
[47:10] now while the content will vary from
[47:12] topic to topic the way you research a
[47:14] competitor's content will be more or
[47:16] less the same let's go through an
[47:18] example so let's say that we want to
[47:20] create content that targets the quarry
[47:22] best golf club sets
[47:24] to start i'll go to ahrefs keywords
[47:26] explorer and search for the quarry
[47:28] then i'll scroll down to the serp
[47:30] overview to see the top ranking pages
[47:33] now if you don't have an ahrefs account
[47:35] you can use our free serp checker tool
[47:36] to do everything i'm about to do all
[47:39] right so looking at the serp we want to
[47:41] pick out the top three or so relevant
[47:43] ranking results
[47:45] and by relevant i'm talking about pages
[47:47] that match the dominant search intent
[47:49] based on the three cs we've discussed so
[47:52] many times now so in this case the
[47:54] majority of pages are blog posts in the
[47:57] listicle format with freshness as the
[47:59] content angle so that means we wouldn't
[48:01] look at pages from amazon or golf galaxy
[48:04] because these pages are clearly
[48:05] ecommerce category pages and are
[48:08] therefore outliers to the dominant
[48:10] search intent we'll also exclude the
[48:12] pages from golf digest and business
[48:14] insider since it doesn't look like
[48:16] they're intentionally targeting our
[48:18] query so i'll open up these three pages
[48:20] in new tabs
[48:22] and what we're going to look for are
[48:23] similarities in their content
[48:25] specifically in the subtopics and we'll
[48:28] also look to deepen our understanding of
[48:30] content format and content angle
[48:33] looking at the first page you'll see
[48:34] that they've created a list of
[48:35] categories for the best golf club sets
[48:39] so there's best selling best game
[48:41] improving irons and so on
[48:44] looking further down they have a
[48:45] subheading which is the make and model
[48:47] of the golf club set followed by a brief
[48:49] review of the clubs
[48:51] the next page also has a summary based
[48:53] on more broad categories like best value
[48:57] premium pick and best choice
[48:59] and based on the table of contents
[49:01] you'll see that they followed a similar
[49:03] structure where the make and model of
[49:05] the clubs are used as subheadings they
[49:07] also add a brief description of the
[49:09] clubs as well as some skimmable bullet
[49:11] points
[49:12] and the final page does pretty much the
[49:14] same thing they use subheadings as the
[49:16] make and model followed by a short
[49:18] review
[49:19] now unless you're a golfer you may not
[49:21] have caught this minor but perhaps
[49:23] important detail
[49:25] all the pages talk about sets that would
[49:27] appeal more to beginners for example
[49:30] they all talk about callaway strata set
[49:33] and they all include sets from wilson's
[49:35] staff
[49:36] in my opinion these wouldn't appeal to
[49:38] an intermediate or advanced level golfer
[49:42] alright so at this point we know that we
[49:44] should create a holistical blog post
[49:45] with freshness as the angle we also know
[49:48] that the content should likely be
[49:49] targeted at beginners a couple common
[49:52] sets that were mentioned in all posts
[49:54] were the callaway stratas as well as a
[49:56] set from wilson's staff now it's
[49:58] important to note that you don't have to
[50:00] include these in your post but it's
[50:02] simply an observation i had made we also
[50:05] saw that the top two out of three pages
[50:07] had top picks for categories like best
[50:10] game improvement clubs as well as best
[50:12] clubs for the money
[50:14] finally we know that the subheading
[50:16] should be the name of the club set
[50:18] another thing i recommend before you
[50:20] start writing is to do a content gap
[50:22] analysis at the page level a content gap
[50:25] analysis at the page level will show you
[50:27] common keywords that the top pages are
[50:29] ranking for where your page isn't but
[50:32] since we don't have a page we can still
[50:35] find common keyword rankings amongst a
[50:37] few top ranking pages using ahrefs
[50:40] content gaap tool
[50:41] to get started go to hr site explorer
[50:44] and paste in any one of the urls
[50:47] next head on over to the content gap
[50:49] tool
[50:50] now i'm going to take the three urls we
[50:52] analyzed and put them all in the top
[50:55] section of this tool
[50:57] so what this is saying is show us
[50:59] keywords that any of these targets rank
[51:02] for where at least one of them ranks in
[51:04] the top 10.
[51:06] now if i run the search you'll be able
[51:08] to see the keywords that these pages
[51:09] rank for in the position that they're
[51:11] ranking it
[51:12] as a general rule of thumb the more urls
[51:15] that rank high for the keywords the more
[51:17] relevant it'll be to your content
[51:20] so to narrow our search down a bit i'll
[51:22] click on the intersections drop down and
[51:24] select both two and three intersections
[51:27] meaning only show me keywords where at
[51:29] least two of our targets are ranking in
[51:31] google and at least one of those targets
[51:34] is ranking in the top 10.
[51:37] from here just skim through the list and
[51:39] look for interesting subtopics that
[51:41] might be worth adding to your post
[51:43] in addition you may be able to learn
[51:45] some interesting things about the
[51:47] audience as well as the language they
[51:49] use so as you can see people who search
[51:52] for this quarry are mostly looking for
[51:53] men's clubs people want to know the best
[51:56] clubs for the money they want to see
[51:58] cheaper options and others are looking
[52:00] specifically for a set of irons
[52:03] these are all things you should consider
[52:05] as you craft your content
[52:07] all right so armed with this information
[52:09] you should be able to create a great
[52:11] post with a searcher in mind and while
[52:13] the content is the most important part
[52:16] there are also a few more technical
[52:18] on-page optimizations you should do
[52:20] let's go through a few of the most
[52:22] important ones
[52:23] first is to include your target keyword
[52:25] in your title when it makes sense
[52:28] adding your target keyword to your title
[52:30] should come naturally for example our
[52:32] title for this post is 45 best free seo
[52:36] tools tried and tested and free seo
[52:40] tools is our target keyword
[52:42] now there will be times when it makes
[52:44] more sense to use a close variant of
[52:46] your target keyword for example this
[52:49] post is targeting the query how to get
[52:51] youtube subscribers but our title is
[52:54] 9 ways to get more youtube subscribers
[52:57] because we went for the listicle angle
[52:59] the next thing you can do is to use a
[53:01] short and descriptive url slug
[53:04] short and descriptive urls help people
[53:06] immediately understand what the page is
[53:09] about before even visiting them just
[53:11] look at these two urls they're on the
[53:14] exact same topic but one is much more
[53:17] descriptive than the other
[53:19] this part of the url is called the slug
[53:21] and the easiest way to choose your slug
[53:23] is to use your target keyword where
[53:25] spaces will be replaced with hyphens
[53:28] again you should only do this when it
[53:29] makes sense so you don't need to worry
[53:31] about forcing it now if you're wondering
[53:34] if you should use subfolders to describe
[53:36] categories that's entirely up to you
[53:39] alright next is the meta description the
[53:41] meta description is html code that's
[53:44] meant to briefly summarize your page and
[53:46] search engines often use this text right
[53:48] within the serp to my best knowledge
[53:51] meta descriptions aren't used as a
[53:53] ranking signal but they can influence
[53:55] click-through rates and for that reason
[53:58] i think it's important to add to your
[53:59] pages
[54:01] now it's important to note that
[54:02] according to our study of 192 000 pages
[54:05] we found that google rewrote meta
[54:07] descriptions nearly 63 percent of the
[54:10] time so i wouldn't spend a ton of time
[54:12] on them but you should still include
[54:14] them
[54:15] alright next up is to add internal links
[54:17] to and from your pages
[54:20] internal links are links from one page
[54:22] on the same domain to another
[54:24] and they're super powerful because they
[54:26] can pass link authority to other
[54:28] relevant pages and they also help search
[54:31] engines better understand a page's
[54:33] contents
[54:34] for example if i had a site in the
[54:36] careers niche and i was writing a post
[54:38] about how to write a cover letter then i
[54:41] definitely want to add internal links
[54:43] from other relevant pages like one on
[54:45] how to write a resume
[54:47] more importantly visitors who want to
[54:49] learn how to write a resume would
[54:51] probably want to know how to write a
[54:53] cover letter and vice versa
[54:56] to find opportunities you can go to
[54:58] google and search for
[54:59] sitecolon yourdomain.com
[55:02] and then add the topic you're writing
[55:04] about
[55:05] then visit relevant pages and see if
[55:07] there's an opportunity to add an
[55:09] internal link to your new post
[55:11] alternatively you can use ahrefs site
[55:13] audit tool completely free just sign up
[55:16] for an ahrefs webmaster tools account
[55:18] verify your site and then run a crawl
[55:21] then you can head over to link explorer
[55:24] to find internal linking opportunities
[55:26] we have a short but helpful video on how
[55:28] to do this on ahrefs product updates
[55:30] youtube channel so i'll link that video
[55:32] up in the description
[55:34] all right next up is to optimize your
[55:36] images
[55:37] in the last 28 days we've had over 4 000
[55:40] visits to our blog from google image
[55:42] search
[55:43] while that pales in comparison to our
[55:45] 500 000 monthly organic blog visits it's
[55:49] still four thousand visits
[55:51] now optimizing your images for seo is
[55:53] three-fold number one name your image
[55:56] files appropriately
[55:58] for example this is a picture of a puppy
[56:01] if you took the photo yourself then
[56:03] chances are your smartphone or camera
[56:05] named it something like img underscore
[56:08] and then a million numbers
[56:10] instead change the file name to
[56:12] something like puppy
[56:14] not exactly rocket science but according
[56:17] to google file names can give google
[56:19] clues about the subject matter of the
[56:21] image
[56:22] number two use descriptive alt text
[56:26] alt text short for alternative text is
[56:29] an html attribute that goes in your
[56:31] image tag
[56:32] so the syntax would look something like
[56:34] this where the alt value should describe
[56:36] the image
[56:37] alt text helps improve accessibility for
[56:40] those who are using screen readers or if
[56:42] the image fails to load visitors will be
[56:44] shown the alt text instead
[56:46] now google recommends creating useful
[56:49] information rich content that uses
[56:51] keywords appropriately and is in context
[56:54] of the content of the page
[56:56] yes google explicitly says to use
[56:58] keywords but they also say to avoid
[57:01] stuffing keywords as it results in a
[57:03] negative user experience and may cause
[57:06] your site to be seen as spam meaning
[57:08] don't do something like this
[57:10] now looking back at the syntax our alt
[57:12] text isn't exactly descriptive so let's
[57:15] change that to something like puppy
[57:17] sitting on a couch
[57:19] if you use wordpress just add your alt
[57:21] text here when inserting your images and
[57:23] the cms should do the rest alright the
[57:26] third thing you'll want to do is
[57:27] compress your images compressing images
[57:30] makes your image file sizes smaller
[57:32] leading to faster load times and page
[57:34] speed is a google ranking signal
[57:37] there's a free tool for compressing
[57:38] images called short pixel which has both
[57:41] a web interface as well as a wordpress
[57:43] plugin
[57:44] and the last thing i highly recommend is
[57:46] to optimize for readability here are
[57:48] five simple but effective tips you can
[57:50] use to improve readability number one
[57:53] write in short sentences and short
[57:56] paragraphs because no one wants to land
[57:58] on a page with a huge wall of text
[58:01] two
[58:02] use descriptive subheadings so people
[58:03] who are skimming the article can easily
[58:06] find the things that are important to
[58:08] them
[58:08] 3. use a large enough font that's easily
[58:11] readable on both desktop and mobile
[58:14] 4. avoid using big words it's more
[58:17] important that people understand your
[58:19] content and 5. write as you speak your
[58:22] content will be more conversational and
[58:25] entertaining to read
[58:26] a free tool i recommend using is called
[58:28] hemingway app it'll give you some
[58:30] writing tips as well as a readability
[58:33] grade i'd recommend trying to keep
[58:34] things at or below a sixth grade level
[58:38] now there are other on-page
[58:39] optimizations you can do like adding
[58:41] open graph meta tags or og tags for
[58:43] short these will allow you to customize
[58:46] the titles descriptions images and other
[58:48] information when your pages are shared
[58:51] on social media networks
[58:53] there's also schema markup which is code
[58:54] that helps search engines understand
[58:56] your content and better represent it in
[58:58] the search results for example these
[59:01] pages use the recipe schema type so
[59:03] google is able to show things like the
[59:05] recipe's rating the number of votes the
[59:08] total time to make the food as well as
[59:10] nutritional information
[59:12] if you have a wordpress site then you
[59:14] can add og tags in schema with plugins
[59:16] like rank math or yoast
[59:18] now again the most important part of
[59:20] your content is that you're striving to
[59:22] satisfy searcher intent
[59:24] yes the technical things are important
[59:26] too but they're more like the icing on
[59:28] the cake so here's a full on-page seo
[59:31] checklist take a screenshot and let's
[59:33] move on to the next module which is on
[59:35] an seo strategy called link building
[59:39] hey it's ammo and welcome to the third
[59:40] module in our seo course for beginners
[59:43] throughout the next five lessons we'll
[59:44] be talking about arguably the most
[59:47] important and most challenging seo
[59:50] strategy it's called link building and
[59:52] to kick things off we're going to talk
[59:54] about what it is why it's important and
[59:56] the mindset you'll need to have to be
[59:58] successful at it let's get started so
[60:00] what is link building by definition link
[60:03] building is the process of getting other
[60:05] websites to link to a page on your
[60:07] website and these hyperlinks are called
[60:09] backlinks now while the end result might
[60:12] make sense conceptually and seem simple
[60:14] the part that most people don't
[60:16] understand and can't seem to get right
[60:19] is this
[60:20] the process
[60:21] and this ultimately boils down to
[60:23] emailing complete strangers and asking
[60:26] them to link to you now let's take a
[60:28] quick second to talk about how strange
[60:31] and kind of awkward this might sound so
[60:33] let's go through a few scenarios and
[60:35] then we'll revisit this definition of
[60:36] link building
[60:38] let's say that you have a marketing blog
[60:39] and you write about seo and digital
[60:41] marketing now if some random person
[60:44] let's call her sally sent you an email
[60:46] and said hey can you link to my post on
[60:48] facebook ads it's really good would you
[60:52] link to her
[60:53] probably not in fact you probably
[60:56] wouldn't even reply or click the link in
[60:58] her email to actually check and see if
[61:01] her content is as good as she claims
[61:03] now let's flip the script a bit let's
[61:05] say that you've been following ahrefs
[61:07] youtube channel and blog for some time
[61:09] you've implemented some of the
[61:10] strategies we've shared and gotten some
[61:12] great results for your site on top of
[61:15] that you've been using our seo tools for
[61:17] three years
[61:18] now an email pops up in your inbox from
[61:21] me samo a name and face you might
[61:24] recognize because you've been following
[61:26] our channel and in that email i've asked
[61:28] you to link to our free backlink checker
[61:31] from your page that lists the 15 best
[61:33] free seo tools would you link to me
[61:36] maybe
[61:37] now the final scenario let's say your
[61:39] mentor who helped you get started in
[61:41] digital marketing sends you an email and
[61:43] she asked you to link to a page on her
[61:45] site from a relevant page on yours would
[61:48] you link to her
[61:49] definitely she helped you get started in
[61:51] digital marketing you obviously trust
[61:54] and respect her and you'd be willing to
[61:56] bend over backwards for her the point of
[61:58] these scenarios is to show you that the
[62:00] process of link building is actually
[62:02] very relational and can sometimes take
[62:04] more time than you might like
[62:06] with sally you don't know her you don't
[62:08] owe her anything you don't trust her
[62:11] she's blindly coming in almost invading
[62:14] your inbox and asking you for a favor
[62:17] without offering any kind of value in
[62:19] return
[62:20] in the second scenario when i
[62:21] hypothetically emailed you you knew who
[62:23] i was i had indirectly helped you and
[62:26] you were a user of a product for years
[62:29] so while we may not have a real-life
[62:30] relationship we're still connected in
[62:32] some way so the chances of linking to me
[62:35] are probably higher than linking to
[62:37] sally
[62:38] now when your mentor asked you for a
[62:40] link there's a real relationship there
[62:42] there's a sense of trust respect and
[62:45] gratitude so of course you would link to
[62:47] her now while you can't and shouldn't
[62:49] try to become friends with everyone just
[62:52] to get links you'll find that your best
[62:54] links will usually come from
[62:55] relationships that are sparked from
[62:57] email outreach so let's redefine link
[63:00] building and set the tone for the rest
[63:01] of this module link building is the
[63:03] process of building relationships with
[63:05] other relevant site owners who want and
[63:08] will link to your content because it
[63:10] enhances theirs
[63:12] so this definition isn't just about you
[63:14] getting something it includes
[63:15] relationships relevance and a value
[63:18] exchange all things we'll touch on later
[63:20] in this module now since effective link
[63:22] building is tough you need to understand
[63:25] why it's worth the effort in short
[63:27] backlinks are used by search engines
[63:29] like google to help rank web pages and
[63:31] it's been this way since 1998 when
[63:33] google created page rank page rank is a
[63:36] mathematical formula that judges the
[63:38] value of a page by looking at the
[63:40] quantity and quality of other pages that
[63:42] link to it and google confirms the
[63:45] importance of backlinks on their house
[63:46] search works page under their ranking
[63:49] useful pages heading they state if other
[63:51] prominent websites on the subject link
[63:54] to the page that's a good sign that the
[63:56] information is of high quality
[63:59] we also found a clear correlation
[64:00] between organic traffic and backlinks
[64:03] from unique websites in our study of
[64:05] over 1 billion web pages
[64:07] so while getting backlinks may be harder
[64:09] than let's say creating a blog post
[64:11] they're absolutely critical if you want
[64:14] to rank for competitive phrases and
[64:16] competitive phrases are usually the ones
[64:18] that will drive the most traffic and
[64:20] revenue for your business
[64:22] now we briefly touched on the main way
[64:24] of getting backlinks but not all links
[64:26] can or will be obtained through outreach
[64:29] so in the next lesson we'll talk about
[64:31] three methods to get backlinks as well
[64:33] as the level of difficulty and
[64:35] effectiveness
[64:37] hey it's ammo and welcome to the second
[64:39] lesson in our link building module in
[64:41] this lesson we'll talk about three link
[64:43] building strategies to get backlinks now
[64:45] before we get started it's important to
[64:48] set the expectations right for this
[64:49] lesson and talk about the difference
[64:51] between a strategy and a tactic to me
[64:54] strategies are higher level in the sense
[64:56] that it outlines the scope of the plans
[64:59] whereas tactics are more micro and often
[65:02] focused around smaller steps
[65:04] so the strategy sets you in the right
[65:06] direction and the tactics kind of define
[65:08] how you get there and we'll get into a
[65:10] few link building tactics later on in
[65:12] this module alright so when it comes to
[65:14] link building there are three main
[65:16] strategies to get backlinks you can
[65:18] create them
[65:19] buy them or earn them let's talk about
[65:22] what each method looks like their level
[65:23] of difficulty and effectiveness the
[65:26] first method is to create backlinks
[65:28] creating backlinks means to manually add
[65:31] links on one domain back to yours this
[65:34] can be done by adding your website to
[65:35] directories leaving comments on blog
[65:37] posts or adding your website's url to
[65:40] your social media profile
[65:42] anyone can do this with minimal effort
[65:44] so like almost all easy things in life
[65:46] they're generally not that effective
[65:48] from an seo and ranking perspective
[65:51] now buying backlinks is exactly as it
[65:53] sounds you pay webmasters or authors a
[65:56] fee and in return they'll link back to a
[65:58] page on your site now this is against
[66:01] google's webmaster guidelines and can
[66:03] potentially result in a penalty that
[66:05] might be anything from losing ranking
[66:07] positions or even worse getting your
[66:09] pages removed from google search index
[66:12] also buying links isn't exactly cheap we
[66:15] contacted 250 websites to ask if they
[66:17] sell links and we found that the average
[66:20] cost of buying one was nearly
[66:22] 353 dollars and of course we didn't buy
[66:25] any
[66:26] in terms of level of ease if you have
[66:28] the money it's super easy to do because
[66:30] it's just the transaction
[66:32] now in terms of the effectiveness i
[66:34] would think that they're highly
[66:35] effective unless or until you get caught
[66:39] and in my opinion the risk isn't worth
[66:41] the reward especially if you want to
[66:43] build a business that'll stand the test
[66:45] of time the final way to get backlinks
[66:47] is to earn them and there are three
[66:49] common ways you can do this the first
[66:51] and most common are links that are
[66:53] earned through email outreach this is
[66:55] when you email other website owners and
[66:57] editors and ask them to link to you
[67:00] another way to earn backlinks is by
[67:02] becoming a source for an online
[67:03] publication or media outlet
[67:06] for example if a journalist references
[67:08] you in an article they'll often link to
[67:10] you and or your social media profiles
[67:13] and the final way is to earn backlinks
[67:15] organically for example if someone
[67:18] visits your page from a link on social
[67:19] media organic search word of mouth or
[67:22] wherever and decides to link to you then
[67:24] that's an earned link
[67:26] now even though 100 organic links may
[67:29] sound like the best way to get them i
[67:31] don't want you to bank on that these
[67:33] kinds of links are typically less
[67:34] consistent unless you're an extremely
[67:36] well-known brand with extremely
[67:38] well-crafted content and you're already
[67:41] getting significant exposure it takes
[67:43] time to build a reputation that's well
[67:45] trusted and for those organic links to
[67:47] come in on a regular basis and if you're
[67:50] just hoping and waiting you'll likely
[67:52] fall behind because your competitors
[67:54] will actually be busy building links by
[67:56] reaching out to other website owners
[67:59] generally speaking the harder it is to
[68:01] obtain a link the more valuable it'll be
[68:03] and for that reason we'll be focusing on
[68:06] streamlined tactics so that you can
[68:07] build a steady stream of backlinks to
[68:09] your page and get more traffic from seo
[68:12] now not all links are created equal some
[68:15] will propel your pages to the top of
[68:16] google while others can actually hurt
[68:19] your site so what makes the link
[68:21] actually good
[68:22] that's what we'll be talking about in
[68:23] the next lesson
[68:25] hey it's samo and welcome to the third
[68:27] lesson in the link building module today
[68:30] we're going to talk about the attributes
[68:31] that make a backlink good or high
[68:33] quality as i said in the last lesson not
[68:36] all backlinks are created equal for
[68:39] example if you spammed forms with links
[68:41] to your site those wouldn't and
[68:43] shouldn't hold more weight than let's
[68:45] say a link from the new york times
[68:47] otherwise backlinks would just be a game
[68:50] of quantity and google search results
[68:51] would reward the biggest spammers
[68:54] fortunately ranking on google doesn't
[68:56] work that way and quality backlinks are
[68:58] still a prominent ranking signal so with
[69:01] that said let's talk about the five
[69:02] attributes that make a backlink good the
[69:05] first attribute is relevance imagine
[69:08] this for a second you're going to visit
[69:09] greece for the first time next month and
[69:12] you need recommendations for places
[69:14] worth going to
[69:15] now you have a friend that lived in
[69:16] greece for their entire life and
[69:19] obviously knows every nook and cranny
[69:21] you also have a friend in the u.s who
[69:23] hates traveling and has never been
[69:25] outside of the states whose opinion
[69:27] would you hold higher
[69:29] obviously your greek friend in the same
[69:31] way links from a website about travel or
[69:34] greece would hold more weight than links
[69:36] from sites about technology or marketing
[69:39] because they're more topically relevant
[69:41] and authoritative for example you'll see
[69:43] that this page is ranking number one for
[69:45] the query how to devein shrimp if we
[69:48] look at their backlinks and also filter
[69:50] by one link per domain we can see their
[69:52] backlinks from different websites now if
[69:55] you don't have an ahrefs account then
[69:57] you can still see backlinks pointing at
[69:58] pages using our free backlink checker
[70:01] tool which i'll leave a link to in the
[70:02] description
[70:03] going back to the backlinks report
[70:05] you'll see this page from wikihow which
[70:07] is called three ways to peel and devein
[70:10] shrimp so the link is on a very relevant
[70:12] page
[70:13] scrolling down a bit you'll see this
[70:15] link from a page called shrimp with
[70:17] garlic sauce which again is relevant at
[70:19] the page level but you can also see that
[70:22] it's relevant at the domain level too
[70:24] just by looking at the domain name
[70:26] slimpalette.com
[70:28] both of these links are great from a
[70:30] relevant standpoint whereas a link like
[70:32] this one isn't very relevant at all the
[70:35] page is about firefox 3.5 which is a web
[70:38] browser it comes from a site about video
[70:40] games and computer hardware so an ideal
[70:42] link would be contextually placed within
[70:45] the body of the content where someone is
[70:47] quite literally recommending or
[70:49] referencing you
[70:50] alright the next quality of good quality
[70:52] links is authoritativeness
[70:55] if you're unfamiliar with authority in
[70:56] the context of backlinks it basically
[70:58] represents the so-called link power a
[71:01] web page has and this relates to how
[71:03] google page rank works
[71:05] as we discussed before both the quantity
[71:08] and quality of links matter so the more
[71:11] quality links a page gets the more page
[71:13] rank it earns and the more page rank it
[71:16] has the more authority it can pass to
[71:18] other pages through hyperlinks
[71:20] for example let's say that page c has
[71:23] two links one from page a and one from
[71:25] page b
[71:27] page a is stronger than page b and also
[71:29] has fewer outgoing links feed this
[71:32] information into the pagerank algorithm
[71:34] and you get the page rank of page c
[71:37] now this is obviously a simplified
[71:38] version of how pagerank works but the
[71:41] key point here is that getting links
[71:43] from high authority pages will likely
[71:45] have the greatest impact on your
[71:46] rankings
[71:48] now while google doesn't provide page
[71:50] rank or website authority scores we have
[71:52] two metrics at ahrefs that try to
[71:54] quantify it domain rating is our website
[71:56] authority metric and it represents the
[71:58] overall strength of a website's backlink
[72:00] profile an url rating is our page level
[72:03] authority metric which represents the
[72:05] overall strength of a page's backlink
[72:07] profile
[72:08] and you'll find both of these metrics
[72:09] throughout most of our tools giving you
[72:12] insights on referring pages
[72:14] now we've covered two very important
[72:16] parts of good quality backlinks but what
[72:18] we haven't talked about yet is the
[72:20] actual link itself
[72:22] so let's break down the anatomy of a
[72:24] hyperlink and talk about how the
[72:26] different parts relate to seo
[72:28] here's what a link looks like to your
[72:29] website visitors and if we look at the
[72:32] html code then it would look like this
[72:35] now there are three basic parts to a
[72:36] link that matter in seo the destination
[72:39] url anchor text and the rel attribute or
[72:42] lack of one
[72:44] the destination url is simply the url
[72:46] the person will visit when the link is
[72:48] clicked the second part of a link is the
[72:50] anchor text the anchor text is the
[72:53] clickable word phrase or image attached
[72:55] to the link so in our example site
[72:58] explorer is the anchor text which is the
[73:00] name of our competitor analysis tool
[73:02] google uses anchor text to better
[73:04] understand what a page is about and what
[73:06] terms it should rank for but building
[73:09] lots of links with keyword rich anchors
[73:11] is an example of a link scheme and may
[73:13] result in a google penalty as it looks
[73:16] unnatural for example if you had a post
[73:18] on the best golf balls and had 100 links
[73:21] pointing to it where the anchor texts
[73:23] were all best golf balls then it would
[73:26] look and be quite unnatural
[73:28] people often use anchors such as the
[73:30] company's brand name the title of the
[73:32] page the url or phrases like click here
[73:36] and here's some proof if we look at the
[73:38] anchors of backlinks pointing to our
[73:39] data study on featured snippets you'll
[73:41] see varying anchor texts like ahrefs old
[73:44] studies hr study research and even
[73:48] specific stats like 12.3 percent of
[73:50] search queries and 99.58 percent and so
[73:54] on in fact there are only 16 websites
[73:57] that have linked to us using the anchor
[73:59] text featured snippet
[74:01] with most earned links you have very
[74:03] little or no control over the anchor
[74:05] text so over optimization isn't
[74:08] something you really need to worry about
[74:10] and the last part of the link we'll talk
[74:11] about is the rel attribute some links
[74:14] contain a rel attribute which is
[74:16] intended to tell crawlers about the
[74:18] relationship between the linking page
[74:20] and the linked page
[74:22] and the three rel values that you should
[74:23] know about when it comes to link
[74:25] building are nofollow ugc and sponsored
[74:29] historically nofollow links told google
[74:31] that the linking page would rather not
[74:33] associate themselves with the linked
[74:35] page and for that reason google didn't
[74:38] transfer authority through those links
[74:40] but then google added a couple other rel
[74:42] values ugc which stands for user
[74:45] generated content and sponsored which
[74:47] signifies an ethical paid link
[74:50] they also announced that going forward
[74:52] they would look at these link attributes
[74:53] as hints meaning they may pass value
[74:56] through them at their discretion
[74:58] now if a link doesn't have any of these
[75:00] rel values then it will be called a
[75:02] followed link meaning the link can pass
[75:05] page rank and help boost your rankings
[75:08] seeing as this is still relatively new
[75:10] i'd recommend focusing on building
[75:12] followed links although that's only
[75:14] partially within your control
[75:16] now it's important to note that nofollow
[75:18] in ugc links aren't bad it's just that
[75:20] followed links are proven to pass
[75:22] authority one final thing i want to
[75:24] touch on is link placement
[75:27] prominent links are more likely to be
[75:28] clicked and it's believed that google
[75:30] takes this into account when determining
[75:32] how much authority a link transfers
[75:35] for instance an editorial link is more
[75:37] likely to be clicked than a link in the
[75:39] footer so all else being equal the
[75:42] former will be better than the latter
[75:44] so to summarize an ideal link would come
[75:47] from a relevant and authoritative page
[75:49] where the link is followed it would have
[75:51] a descriptive anchor and be placed
[75:53] contextually within editorial content
[75:56] but the truth is
[75:58] a lot of this is out of your control
[76:00] what is in your control is how you spend
[76:02] your time building links by using these
[76:05] five attributes to help qualify
[76:07] prospects or people that are worth
[76:09] contacting you'll spend your time
[76:11] building links that will actually move
[76:13] the needle
[76:14] now the easiest way for a beginner to
[76:16] start building links is to use tried and
[76:18] tested tactics and we'll be covering a
[76:20] few of them in the next lesson
[76:23] hey it's ammo and welcome to the fourth
[76:25] lesson in the link building module today
[76:27] we're going to talk about the
[76:28] step-by-step process to build backlinks
[76:31] as well as three cookie cutter link
[76:32] building tactics that are tried tested
[76:36] and completely beginner friendly let's
[76:38] get started with the general process to
[76:40] link building there are three general
[76:41] stages in link building prospecting
[76:44] vetting and email outreach
[76:46] when prospecting you're searching for
[76:47] relevant pages and websites that might
[76:50] link to you these might be people who
[76:52] are linking to a similar page as the one
[76:54] you're going to create those who have
[76:56] influence in your industry or people who
[76:58] are passionate about the topic
[77:00] the main goal isn't to find a perfect
[77:02] list of people this stage is about
[77:04] finding as many people as possible that
[77:07] fit a specific set of criteria and this
[77:09] criteria is usually dictated by link
[77:12] authority metrics as well as relevance
[77:14] as a result you'll usually be working
[77:16] with large and very unperfect sets of
[77:19] data
[77:20] the vetting stage is where you start to
[77:22] refine your list of prospects these are
[77:24] the people that you'll be contacting so
[77:26] you'll need to visit their websites and
[77:28] validate that they are indeed people
[77:30] worth contacting
[77:31] finally is the email outreach stage this
[77:34] is when you finalize your pitches and
[77:36] start emailing your vetted prospects
[77:39] now depending on the link building
[77:40] tactic you use the way you prospect vet
[77:43] and craft your email pitches will differ
[77:46] and this is actually quite difficult
[77:47] when you're new to link building
[77:49] fortunately there are a few dead simple
[77:51] but super effective link building
[77:53] tactics that are completely newbie
[77:55] friendly but before we can get tactical
[77:58] let's revisit our definition of link
[78:00] building because there are three main
[78:01] parts in it that will help you with
[78:03] prospecting vetting and email outreach
[78:06] again link building is the process of
[78:08] building relationships with other
[78:09] relevant site owners who want and will
[78:12] link to your content because it enhances
[78:14] theirs
[78:15] now i want to highlight the three main
[78:17] parts from this definition
[78:19] relationships relevance and a value
[78:22] exchange we already talked about the
[78:24] relevance part in the last lesson now
[78:26] we're talking about mainly the value
[78:28] exchange and what that looks like in
[78:30] some common link building tactics
[78:32] so let's dig into a few easy link
[78:34] building tactics and i'll show you what
[78:36] each stage of the link building process
[78:38] looks like in detail plus i'll outline
[78:40] the value exchange for each tactic to
[78:42] give you a better idea of what i mean
[78:44] alright the first link building tactic
[78:46] is to get free pr using hero
[78:48] hero or help a reporter out is a free
[78:51] service that connects journalists with
[78:53] sources and sources with journalists
[78:55] just sign up as a source and select the
[78:57] categories where you're qualified to
[78:59] answer questions you'll then get emails
[79:02] from journalists from various media
[79:03] outlets looking for sources on specific
[79:06] topics and these aren't just your
[79:08] run-of-the-mill publications in just a
[79:10] single email you'll see publications
[79:12] like parents.com
[79:14] popsugar and the houston chronicle to
[79:16] name a few just skim through the topics
[79:19] and if you find something where you can
[79:21] add value respond to the journalist with
[79:23] your expert opinion and if they use you
[79:26] as a source they'll usually link back to
[79:28] your site and social media profiles now
[79:31] the value exchange here is simple you're
[79:33] exchanging your expert knowledge for a
[79:35] mention and usually a link from an
[79:37] authoritative site
[79:38] from my personal experience i've gotten
[79:40] links from places like reader's digest
[79:43] inc magazine forbes and the huffington
[79:45] post to name a few
[79:47] now looking at the three stages of link
[79:49] building the prospecting part is as easy
[79:51] as it gets
[79:52] you sign up for a free service and
[79:54] journalists are actually looking for
[79:56] your help not the other way around which
[79:59] makes harrow super beginner friendly as
[80:01] for vetting you can simply scan through
[80:03] the results on a daily basis but that
[80:05] can be time consuming a simple tip you
[80:08] can use is to create a gmail filter so
[80:10] only relevant emails will surface in
[80:12] your inbox just log into gmail and click
[80:15] on the caret to bring down the search
[80:17] options next set the from field to
[80:20] harrow
[80:21] helperreporter.com
[80:23] then you'll want to set the subject to
[80:25] harrow within square brackets since all
[80:27] of their emails include that in the
[80:29] subject line finally set the has the
[80:31] words field to any keywords you want to
[80:34] monitor and you can also use the or
[80:36] search operator to include multiple
[80:39] keywords or phrases
[80:41] click search to see the results your
[80:42] search filters would include and check
[80:44] out some of the emails to ensure you're
[80:46] getting relevant results
[80:48] if everything looks good click on the
[80:50] caret again and then click create filter
[80:53] you'll then have the options to apply
[80:55] labels mark it as important or forward
[80:58] it to another team member to take care
[81:00] of
[81:00] now as for the email outreach part
[81:03] harold gives you an email address which
[81:04] will then be forwarded to the journalist
[81:07] so just respond to the given email
[81:09] address and write your response
[81:11] now obviously you're not going to be the
[81:13] only person emailing the journalist so
[81:16] here are a few tips you can use to
[81:18] improve your hit rate number one keep
[81:20] your emails as short as needed
[81:23] journalists get tons of emails and if
[81:25] they see a huge wall of text they
[81:27] probably won't even give your response a
[81:30] chance
[81:31] number two go after topics where
[81:33] journalists are likely looking for
[81:35] multiple sources
[81:37] for example this query from best life is
[81:39] seeking medical experts as in the plural
[81:42] form of expert
[81:44] these kinds of requests will usually be
[81:46] your typical listicle-styled posts so
[81:48] the more responses they accept the
[81:50] higher your chances of getting mentioned
[81:52] and linked to
[81:54] number three respond as quickly as
[81:56] possible journalists on hero will often
[81:58] give a tighter deadline to give
[82:00] themselves time to actually put together
[82:02] a good story plus some journalists
[82:05] believe that people who respond faster
[82:07] are better sources don't believe me
[82:10] here's what a journalist from reader's
[82:11] digest said to me the deadline was just
[82:14] to make sure i get people to respond in
[82:16] a timely manner i actually have the rest
[82:18] of the month to put the story together
[82:20] which is nice i find the tighter the
[82:22] deadline i attach the better the
[82:23] response is because the only people who
[82:26] go to the effort are ones who really
[82:28] have something relevant to offer
[82:30] obviously this doesn't apply to every
[82:32] journalist but it kind of makes sense
[82:35] all right tip 4 is to prioritize
[82:37] questions where you are an expert and
[82:40] use it as the first line in your pitch
[82:43] there will be days where you can't
[82:44] respond to every relevant request so
[82:47] prioritize the ones where you have the
[82:48] highest probability of getting sourced
[82:51] for example popsugar is looking for
[82:53] experts who can talk about why cats
[82:56] scratch furniture and how to stop them
[82:58] from doing it if you're a vet then you
[83:00] might start your email with something
[83:02] like hi jenna my name is sam oh and i'm
[83:04] a veterinarian with 12 years experience
[83:07] and a board member of the cat alliance
[83:10] clearly i'm not a vet but you get my
[83:12] point
[83:12] when you immediately qualify yourself as
[83:15] the right person to answer the question
[83:17] you'll likely get their attention of
[83:19] course you should be 100 honest so i
[83:22] wouldn't claim to be a vet when i'm not
[83:24] and finally follow all directions in
[83:26] their query for example this one says
[83:29] please be sure to include your full name
[83:32] pronouns title and credentials and the
[83:34] website you'd like linked with your name
[83:37] all right the next link building tactic
[83:38] is guest posting or guest blogging same
[83:41] thing
[83:42] guest blogging is when you create
[83:43] content for another website and the
[83:45] reason why this strategy works is
[83:47] because there's a clear value exchange
[83:50] they get great content for free and
[83:52] almost always they allow you to link
[83:54] back to your site whether that be within
[83:56] the content or in the author bio
[83:58] now guest blogging also provides another
[84:01] great benefit
[84:02] aside from a potential backlink you get
[84:05] the opportunity to get exposure to
[84:07] someone else's audience they've already
[84:09] done the hard work in building that
[84:11] audience you just have to write
[84:12] something that'll impress their readers
[84:15] now when you're prospecting you'll need
[84:17] to get a list of websites and there are
[84:19] a few ways you can do that the first way
[84:21] is to use google search operators just
[84:23] go to google and search for something
[84:25] like
[84:26] in title colon write for us wrapped in
[84:28] quotes and then a keyword that's related
[84:31] to your niche
[84:32] in this case this search query will show
[84:34] us pages that include the phrase write
[84:36] for us in the title and have the word
[84:38] golf balls somewhere on the page and
[84:40] this is a common footprint that websites
[84:42] use to attract guest writers now because
[84:45] you'll want to write for sites with some
[84:47] kind of link authority you can use
[84:49] ahrefs seo toolbar to see link authority
[84:51] metrics right within google search
[84:53] results and if you don't have an ahrefs
[84:55] account you can use our free website
[84:57] authority checker to see the domain
[84:59] ratings for these sites
[85:01] another way to find a list of sites fast
[85:03] is to use ahrefs content explorer
[85:06] content explorer is a searchable
[85:07] database where you can find pages on any
[85:10] topic along with both social
[85:12] and seo metrics to get started just
[85:15] enter a topic that's related to your
[85:17] niche and run the search
[85:19] next you'll want to set some filters to
[85:21] ensure that a you're getting relevant
[85:23] results and b that you're reaching out
[85:25] to websites that have some kind of link
[85:28] authority
[85:29] so first i'll set the language filter to
[85:31] english since that's the only language
[85:33] i'll be able to write in
[85:35] then i'll set a domain rating filter and
[85:36] set it to a range like 30 to 60.
[85:40] now if this is your first time guest
[85:42] blogging then you may want to set a
[85:43] lower range like 10 to 30 to get
[85:46] practice before pitching more
[85:47] authoritative sites or if you're a
[85:50] seasoned guest blogger then you can try
[85:52] something like 40 to 70.
[85:54] alright so next i'll enable this filter
[85:57] one page per domain which will narrow
[85:59] our results to one page per website and
[86:01] this is almost a must do kind of thing
[86:04] because there's no point in pitching the
[86:06] same website numerous times
[86:08] now with around two hundred thousand
[86:10] domains you might be wondering which
[86:12] ones allow guest posts the truth is you
[86:15] won't know until you ask but there's a
[86:18] way to improve your hit rate and that's
[86:20] to look at websites that have previously
[86:22] accepted guest authors
[86:24] to find those sites just click on the
[86:26] websites tab and make sure that your
[86:28] results are sorted by the number of
[86:29] authors
[86:31] basically the more authors you see the
[86:33] more probable it is that they accept
[86:35] guest posts
[86:36] either that or they have a big staff of
[86:38] writers
[86:40] from here you can export the results and
[86:42] then move on to the vetting stage
[86:44] at this point you'll want to do a quick
[86:46] check to make sure that the websites
[86:47] don't look spammy and that they're
[86:49] actually relevant to your site
[86:51] for example golfballs.com is clearly
[86:54] going to be relevant and it's not spammy
[86:56] at all seeing as it's just a regular
[86:58] e-commerce site
[87:00] as for metricscat.com the domain doesn't
[87:03] look like it's about golf
[87:05] and if you visit the site you'll see
[87:06] that it looks like a software company so
[87:08] we'd exclude this domain from our
[87:10] outreach list
[87:11] now another thing worth checking is the
[87:13] domain's site-wide organic traffic
[87:16] to do that go to site explorer and
[87:18] search for the domain
[87:19] next click on the organic search tab
[87:22] if the site is getting consistent search
[87:24] traffic like this then it's a good sign
[87:26] that the domain is in good standing with
[87:28] google domains that have an organic
[87:30] traffic like this is probably something
[87:33] you'd want to exclude when vetting sites
[87:35] reason being this huge decline in search
[87:38] traffic is telling us that google may
[87:40] have penalized the website so you
[87:42] probably wouldn't want to associate your
[87:44] domain with theirs now when you're
[87:46] vetting you'll likely want to find
[87:48] around 10 times the number of posts you
[87:50] can write in a week for example if you
[87:53] can write two posts per week then try
[87:55] and find 20 vetted sites reason being
[87:58] most people won't accept your post let
[88:01] alone respond to you alright let's move
[88:03] on to the next stage which is email
[88:04] outreach
[88:06] now when you're pitching websites for a
[88:07] guest post ideally you want to come up
[88:09] with a good reason as to why they should
[88:11] accept your post
[88:13] free content is great null but it's not
[88:15] necessarily so convincing that everyone
[88:18] will accept it so take some time to do
[88:21] your research on the site see how your
[88:22] expertise can be helpful for their
[88:24] audience or business
[88:26] for example if we look at the blog for
[88:28] golfballs.com you'll see that they have
[88:31] content on the best golf balls for kids
[88:34] and after searching through their site i
[88:36] found that they have another guide on
[88:37] the best golf balls for the longest
[88:39] distance now they're missing out on a
[88:41] lot of these best golf balls for blank
[88:44] and seeing as they're in the business of
[88:46] selling golf balls i could easily pitch
[88:48] them topics on something like best golf
[88:51] balls for high handicappers which
[88:53] according to ahrefs keywords explorer
[88:55] gets searched around 800 times per month
[88:58] globally so i might send them an email
[89:00] and say something like hey whatever the
[89:02] editor's name is i was digging through
[89:04] your site and saw that you have a couple
[89:05] of posts on the best golf balls for kids
[89:08] and for a distance but i was pretty
[89:10] surprised to see that you don't have one
[89:12] for other types of players i.e seniors
[89:15] being a high handicapper myself i spent
[89:17] hundreds of dollars on balls and
[89:19] countless hours on launch monitors to
[89:21] find the best ball for me if you're open
[89:24] i'd love to write a post for you about
[89:26] how to find the best golf balls for
[89:28] hacky golfers like myself i'm happy to
[89:30] share all the data and stats which i
[89:32] think will help people make an informed
[89:34] decision as they shop through your store
[89:36] is that something you'd be open to
[89:38] cheers sam
[89:40] now with this outreach email i'm showing
[89:42] them that i've done my research on their
[89:43] site i'm a golfer myself i have some
[89:46] unique data which i spent time and money
[89:48] to get and i'm also showing them how my
[89:51] posts could help them get more sales
[89:53] we'll talk quite a bit about outreach in
[89:55] the next lesson so let's move on to the
[89:57] final tactic which is the skyscraper
[89:59] technique the skyscraper technique is a
[90:01] link building tactic where you find
[90:03] content that has a lot of links create
[90:05] your own version on the topic but
[90:07] improve on it and then reach out to
[90:09] those linking to the popular post and
[90:12] ask them to link to yours
[90:14] now if we were to go through the
[90:15] prospecting vetting and outreach stages
[90:18] this lesson would be extended another
[90:20] seven to eight minutes so instead i'll
[90:22] link up a video which will take you
[90:24] through the entire process step by step
[90:27] in fact we have an entire playlist
[90:29] dedicated to link building tactics
[90:31] strategies and processes so i highly
[90:34] recommend watching that too
[90:35] now prospecting and vetting are pretty
[90:37] straightforward but the hardest part of
[90:40] link building and the part that makes
[90:41] link building challenging is outreach so
[90:44] the next lesson is dedicated to crafting
[90:47] highly effective outreach emails
[90:50] hey it's ammo and welcome to the final
[90:52] lesson in our link building module today
[90:54] we're going to cover how to do blogger
[90:56] outreach that leads to backlinks and
[90:58] this may very well be the most important
[91:01] lesson in this entire module because
[91:04] nearly all link building tactics require
[91:06] some sort of email exchange so today
[91:09] we'll cover the primary objectives of
[91:10] blogger outreach two common approaches
[91:13] and i'll break down the anatomy of a
[91:15] good quality outreach email let's get
[91:17] started so the primary objective of
[91:19] blogger outreach is to convince those
[91:21] with large targeted audiences to talk
[91:24] about you and from the perspective of an
[91:26] seo you want them to link to your
[91:28] website now outreach doesn't mean
[91:30] broadcasting meaning you shouldn't be
[91:32] sending every single person the exact
[91:34] same email like you would through email
[91:36] marketing for example this outreach
[91:39] email that i got is what typical blogger
[91:41] outreach looks like today
[91:43] first of all i can see that they didn't
[91:44] even take a second to check what my name
[91:46] is when literally two-thirds of all
[91:49] pages on my personal site have my full
[91:51] name on them instead they stuck with the
[91:54] generic there used it in the mass
[91:56] mailing software and broadcasted it out
[91:59] to hundreds maybe even thousands of
[92:01] people but the name thing isn't that big
[92:03] of a deal
[92:04] second this is clearly a generic
[92:06] templated email with zero consideration
[92:09] for the recipients the person says i'm
[92:12] writing because i saw your post here
[92:14] then they didn't even take a second to
[92:16] proofread the email and their
[92:18] justification for me to link to them is
[92:20] because it fits well in my post
[92:23] on top of that the person followed up
[92:25] with me three more times with nearly the
[92:28] exact same email all sent within the
[92:31] same 30 minute period
[92:33] this ladies and gentlemen is called spam
[92:36] and the results of these kinds of emails
[92:38] lead to nothing the page the person
[92:40] wanted me to link to got a total of two
[92:43] backlinks and both of them are
[92:45] irrelevant and look like they've been
[92:47] paid for and those backlinks aren't
[92:49] moving the needle since the page gets
[92:51] zero organic search visits these kinds
[92:54] of emails along with hundreds of others
[92:55] in my inbox are prime examples of why
[92:58] you need to write good quality emails
[93:01] otherwise you'll just blend in with the
[93:03] rest of the spam people get on a daily
[93:05] basis
[93:06] after all these are unsolicited emails
[93:09] now to be clear it doesn't mean that you
[93:12] can't use some sort of template to send
[93:14] a lot of emails efficiently for example
[93:16] i literally just got this email in my
[93:18] inbox and it says hey sam i just
[93:21] published a roundup post about the best
[93:23] personal blogs to read and i featured
[93:25] you in it and that's a link to his post
[93:27] then he explicitly says but i'm not
[93:30] looking for a share or anything like
[93:32] that i just wanted to say thank you for
[93:34] all the inspiration you've brought to
[93:35] the blogosphere and digital marketing
[93:37] world best of luck in your endeavors and
[93:40] keep up the good work on ahrefs youtube
[93:42] channel
[93:43] this email didn't come to my ahrefs
[93:45] email account it came to the one on my
[93:47] personal site so he clearly did a bit of
[93:49] digging before sending the email and i'm
[93:51] sure he sent a similar message to all
[93:54] 117 people he featured so you might be
[93:57] thinking what's the point of this email
[93:59] if he's not asking for anything we'll
[94:01] get to that later in this lesson
[94:03] now the first email that i just showed
[94:05] you is one of the common approaches to
[94:07] blogger outreach it's called the shotgun
[94:09] approach where you build a broad list of
[94:11] targets load them up into an outreach
[94:14] tool and then blast out emails to anyone
[94:17] and everyone the opposite approach to
[94:19] this is the sniper method this is when
[94:21] you choose targets carefully based on a
[94:23] tight set of criteria and then send
[94:26] personalized emails
[94:28] of the two methods we recommend going
[94:30] with a sniper approach because
[94:31] shotgunning emails to anyone and
[94:33] everyone is a surefire way to burn
[94:36] bridgets plus no one likes spam and for
[94:39] that reason the rest of this lesson will
[94:41] be centered around the sniper approach
[94:44] so before we get into actually crafting
[94:46] your outreach emails let's quickly talk
[94:48] about who you should be contacting and
[94:50] how to find their email addresses
[94:52] in general you'll want to contact the
[94:54] author of the post if they work for the
[94:56] website for example this is a post
[94:59] written by joshua hardwick on the ahrefs
[95:01] blog
[95:02] seeing as his profile states head of
[95:04] content at ahrefs you know he works
[95:06] there and controls what gets published
[95:08] on the ahrefs blog
[95:10] now for this post by josh there wouldn't
[95:13] be any use in contacting him because he
[95:15] doesn't work for sitepoint in this case
[95:17] you'd want to contact the editor of the
[95:19] blog to find who that person is you can
[95:21] check places like the websites about our
[95:24] team page their write for us page if
[95:26] they have one or their company's
[95:28] linkedin profile
[95:30] now to actually find the person's email
[95:32] address the easiest way is to check
[95:34] contact in about pages this works best
[95:37] for websites with one author for
[95:39] websites that have multiple people
[95:41] involved like sitepoint or ahrefs you
[95:43] usually won't find individuals email
[95:45] addresses on their site so to find these
[95:48] emails you can use a tool like hunter.io
[95:51] go to their email finder tool and just
[95:53] search for their first and last name as
[95:56] well as the domain hunter will then give
[95:58] you their best guess in this case
[96:00] they're wrong but the success rate is
[96:02] generally quite high
[96:04] alright so if you've done the work for
[96:05] the lessons in this module to this point
[96:07] then you should have chosen one of the
[96:08] three tactics i outlined created a list
[96:11] of prospects
[96:12] vetted your list and found some email
[96:14] addresses so it's time to actually write
[96:16] the pitch
[96:18] now while there isn't exactly a
[96:19] streamlined formula for every outreach
[96:22] email you send i want to talk about the
[96:24] anatomy of a simple outreach email that
[96:26] has been effective for me for many years
[96:28] now and there are five main parts to a
[96:30] typical outreach email first is the
[96:33] subject line the goal of the subject
[96:35] line is simply to get them to open the
[96:37] email otherwise there's no chance at
[96:40] getting a response but you don't want to
[96:42] click bait them because that'll only
[96:44] leave a bad impression so when you're
[96:46] writing a subject line you want to
[96:48] briefly and accurately describe why
[96:50] you're emailing them and ideally evoke
[96:53] curiosity
[96:54] if we look back at my guest blogging
[96:56] outreach email from the previous lesson
[96:58] i showed you a hypothetical pitch where
[97:00] i asked if i could write a post for a
[97:02] golf site and share data i have on the
[97:04] best golf balls for high handicappers so
[97:07] i might use a subject line like new data
[97:10] best balls for high handicappers
[97:12] in my opinion the new data part evokes
[97:15] curiosity and the rest of the subject
[97:17] line explains the topic of the email the
[97:20] next part is the introduction and while
[97:22] there are numerous ways to write an
[97:24] intro i think it's best to start by
[97:26] telling them why you're emailing them
[97:28] and the goal of this part is to get them
[97:30] to read the next part of the email
[97:32] for example with our guest posting
[97:34] sample email i said i was digging
[97:36] through your site and saw that you have
[97:38] a couple of posts on the best golf balls
[97:40] for kids and for distance but i was
[97:43] pretty surprised to see that you don't
[97:44] have one for other types of players i.e
[97:47] seniors
[97:48] now i will admit that the first sentence
[97:50] could definitely be stronger but i'm
[97:52] basically saying that you've done this
[97:54] and this but looks like you're missing
[97:56] out on an opportunity here
[97:58] the next part of the email is
[97:59] qualification and justification
[98:02] simply asking someone for a favor and
[98:04] expecting them to see a mutual benefit
[98:07] is naive you need to show them why
[98:09] you're qualified and justify the pitch
[98:12] that we'll get to in a second
[98:13] for example if you're contacting someone
[98:15] to guest post then explain why they
[98:18] should accept your post over potentially
[98:20] hundreds of other submissions
[98:22] if you're asking them to add your link
[98:23] to a page on their site give them an
[98:25] actual good reason why they should
[98:28] so in our guest posting sample you'll
[98:30] see that i said being a high handicapper
[98:32] myself i spent hundreds of dollars on
[98:34] balls and countless hours on launch
[98:36] monitors to find the best ball for me
[98:39] so the fact that a i mentioned i'm a
[98:41] high handicapper and b i've tested
[98:44] numerous balls and gotten factual data
[98:47] from launch monitors qualifies and
[98:49] justifies what i'm about to pitch which
[98:52] again is a guest post about the best
[98:54] golf balls for high handicappers
[98:57] now to really drill in on the concept of
[98:59] qualification and justification let's
[99:01] look at an example email for the
[99:03] skyscraper technique
[99:04] a little while back we did some outreach
[99:06] to get links to our blog post on seo
[99:09] statistics so we email people with an
[99:11] email that looks something like this
[99:14] hi name i saw you mentioned how 93 of
[99:17] online experiences begin with a search
[99:19] engine on your page about how to do
[99:21] keyword research that's our reason for
[99:23] contact we then went on to say that stat
[99:26] is actually 14 years old more recent
[99:29] research suggests that this number has
[99:31] gone down to 68
[99:33] i think it's lower because social and
[99:35] other sources now account for around one
[99:37] third of traffic
[99:39] that's our qualification and
[99:40] justification for what we're about to
[99:42] pitch and obviously the next part of the
[99:45] email is the pitch
[99:47] the pitch essentially includes your ask
[99:49] as well as your value proposition and
[99:51] generally speaking the stronger your
[99:53] value proposition the higher the chance
[99:55] of getting a link so for a guest posting
[99:58] example i said if you're open i'd love
[100:00] to write a post for you about how to
[100:02] find the best golf balls for hacky
[100:04] golfers like myself and here's my value
[100:07] proposition i'm happy to share all of
[100:09] the data and stats which i think will
[100:11] help people make an informed decision as
[100:14] they shop through your store so not only
[100:16] are they getting data for free but i'm
[100:18] showing them how that can bring value to
[100:20] their bottom line now it's not always
[100:23] easy to think of a solid value
[100:24] proposition for example in our seo stats
[100:27] email our pitch was we publish this and
[100:30] a few other fresh seo stats here not
[100:33] sure if you're actively editing posts
[100:35] but might be worth an update if you are
[100:37] no pressure so what exactly is the value
[100:40] proposition we're helping bloggers keep
[100:42] their content up to date in fact we
[100:44] didn't even directly ask for a link yet
[100:47] we were still able to pick up 27
[100:49] backlinks we actually have a full
[100:50] three-part video series on this exact
[100:53] case study so i'll link that up in the
[100:55] description and i highly recommend
[100:56] checking it out
[100:58] alright the last part of the email is a
[101:00] simple one-liner to keep the
[101:01] conversation rolling
[101:03] simply put
[101:04] you don't want to end your email with a
[101:06] cold hard pitch the purpose of your
[101:08] first email should be to start a
[101:10] conversation so you might say something
[101:12] like is that something you'd be open to
[101:14] is there anything i missed what do you
[101:16] think do you agree with our conclusion
[101:18] or whatever
[101:20] now this is just a basic template you
[101:21] can use as you start blogger outreach
[101:24] but i don't want you to limit yourself
[101:25] within this box all you're really doing
[101:28] is talking to people and starting to
[101:30] build some kind of relationship just
[101:33] think about it like an in-person
[101:34] encounter you wouldn't go to a party and
[101:37] ask a complete stranger to buy you a
[101:38] drink you might strike up a conversation
[101:41] connect with them on a common interest
[101:43] and maybe buy the first round of drinks
[101:45] expecting nothing in return and as a
[101:47] result they might want to reciprocate by
[101:49] returning an act of kindness
[101:51] again the goal of the very first email
[101:54] you send is simple start a conversation
[101:57] and this brings us back to this outreach
[101:59] email that i got
[102:00] the person who mentioned me on their
[102:02] site specifically told me that he's not
[102:04] looking for a share or anything like
[102:06] that and he literally just wants to say
[102:09] thank you so what did that accomplish
[102:11] number one i actually read his email
[102:14] number two i responded to him and said
[102:16] thanks for the mention and number three
[102:18] should he email me again i'll probably
[102:21] open it because i'll recognize his name
[102:23] so while there will be times where it
[102:25] makes sense to ask for the link or guest
[102:27] posting opportunity right away there are
[102:30] a lot of times when it makes more sense
[102:32] to just start that conversation and see
[102:35] where it leads
[102:36] the final tip i want to leave you with
[102:38] is to only use your best work when
[102:41] sending email pitches
[102:43] you don't want to email anyone and
[102:45] everyone for every single piece of
[102:47] content you create
[102:48] for example if you had a golf site and
[102:50] you created a post on a topic like what
[102:53] is a handicap there's nothing
[102:55] interesting or unique about it yet it's
[102:57] still a topic you would probably want to
[102:59] cover
[103:00] coming up with a good reason for them to
[103:02] link to you on this topic will be tough
[103:04] plus time is finite so it's worth doing
[103:07] outreach for your best content because
[103:09] there's a higher probability that it'll
[103:11] result in backlinks
[103:13] all right so with everything you've
[103:15] learned up to this point you should be
[103:16] able to create content for your website
[103:18] that'll get traffic from search engines
[103:20] but there's still one piece to the
[103:22] fundamentals of seo that we haven't
[103:24] covered and that's technical seo
[103:27] hey it's ammo and welcome to the final
[103:29] module in ahrefs seo course for
[103:32] beginners throughout the next two
[103:33] lessons we're going to be talking about
[103:35] technical seo and technical seo is the
[103:38] process of optimizing your website to
[103:40] help search engines find
[103:42] understand and index your pages
[103:45] now for beginners technical seo doesn't
[103:48] need to be all that technical and for
[103:50] that reason this module will be focused
[103:52] on the basics so you can perform regular
[103:54] maintenance on your site and ensure that
[103:56] your pages can be discovered and indexed
[103:59] by search engines let's get started all
[104:02] right so let's talk about why technical
[104:03] seo is important at the core basically
[104:07] if search engines can't properly access
[104:09] read understand or index your pages then
[104:12] you won't rank or even be found for that
[104:15] matter so to avoid innocent mistakes
[104:17] like removing yourself from google's
[104:19] index or diluting a page's backlinks i
[104:22] want to discuss four things that should
[104:23] help you avoid that
[104:25] first is the no index meta tag by adding
[104:28] this piece of code to your page it's
[104:30] telling search engines not to add it to
[104:32] their index and you probably don't want
[104:34] to do that and this actually happens
[104:36] more often than you might think
[104:38] for example let's say you hire design
[104:41] inc to create or redesign a website for
[104:43] you during the development phase they
[104:46] may create it on a sub-domain on their
[104:47] own site so it actually makes sense for
[104:50] them to know index the site they're
[104:51] working on but what often happens is
[104:54] after you've approved the design they'll
[104:55] migrate it over to your domain but they
[104:58] often forget to remove them at a no
[105:00] index tag and as a result your pages end
[105:04] up getting removed from google search
[105:05] index or never making it in
[105:08] now there are times when it actually
[105:09] makes sense to no index certain pages
[105:12] for example our authors pages are no
[105:14] indexed because from an seo perspective
[105:17] these pages provide very little value to
[105:19] search engines but from a user
[105:22] experience standpoint it can be argued
[105:24] that it makes sense to be there some
[105:26] people may have their favorite authors
[105:27] on a blog and want to read just their
[105:30] content
[105:31] generally speaking for small sites you
[105:33] won't need to worry about no indexing
[105:35] specific pages just keep your eye out
[105:37] for no index tags on your pages
[105:39] especially if after a redesign the
[105:42] second point of discussion is robots.txt
[105:45] robots.txt is a file that usually lives
[105:48] on your root domain and you should be
[105:50] able to access it at yourdomain.com
[105:53] robots.txt
[105:55] now the file itself includes a set of
[105:57] rules for search engine crawlers and
[105:59] tells them where they can and cannot go
[106:01] on your site and it's important to note
[106:04] that a website can have multiple robots
[106:06] files if you're using sub domains for
[106:08] example if you have a blog on domain.com
[106:11] then you'd have a robots.txt file for
[106:14] just the root domain but you might also
[106:16] have an ecommerce store that lives on
[106:18] store.domain.com
[106:20] so you could have a separate robots file
[106:22] for your online store
[106:24] that means that crawlers could be given
[106:26] two different sets of rules depending on
[106:28] the domain they're trying to crawl
[106:30] now the rules are created using
[106:31] something called directives and while
[106:33] you probably don't need to know what all
[106:35] of them are or what they do there are
[106:38] two that you should know about from an
[106:40] indexing standpoint
[106:41] the first is user agent which defines
[106:44] the crawler that the rules apply to and
[106:46] the value for this directive will be the
[106:48] name of the crawler for example google's
[106:51] user agent is named googlebot and the
[106:53] second directive is disallow this is a
[106:56] page or directory on your domain that
[106:58] you don't want the user agent to crawl
[107:01] for example if you set the user agent to
[107:03] googlebot in the disallow value to a
[107:05] slash you're telling google not to crawl
[107:08] any pages on your site
[107:10] not good
[107:11] now if you were to set the user agent to
[107:13] an asterisk that means your rules should
[107:15] apply to all crawlers so if your robot's
[107:18] file looks something like this then it's
[107:21] telling all crawlers please don't crawl
[107:24] any pages on my site while this might
[107:26] sound like something you would never use
[107:28] there are times when it makes sense to
[107:30] block certain parts of your site or to
[107:32] block certain crawlers
[107:34] for example if you have a wordpress
[107:36] website and you don't want your wp-admin
[107:39] folder to be crawled then you can simply
[107:41] set the user agent to all crawlers and
[107:43] set the disallow value to slash wp admin
[107:47] now if you're a beginner i wouldn't
[107:49] worry too much about your robots file
[107:51] but if you run into any indexing issues
[107:53] that need to be troubleshooted
[107:55] robots.txt is one of the first places i
[107:58] check
[107:59] alright the next thing to discuss are
[108:00] sitemaps sitemaps are usually xml files
[108:03] and they list the important urls on your
[108:05] website so these can be pages images
[108:09] videos and other files insight maps help
[108:12] search engines like google to more
[108:13] intelligently crawl your site now
[108:16] creating an xml file can be complicated
[108:18] if you don't know how to code and it's
[108:20] almost impossible to maintain manually
[108:23] but if you're using a cms like wordpress
[108:26] there are plugins like yoast and rank
[108:28] math which will automatically generate
[108:30] sitemaps for you to help search engines
[108:32] find your sitemaps you can use the
[108:34] sitemap directive in your robots file
[108:36] and also submit it in google search
[108:38] console
[108:40] next up are redirects a redirect takes
[108:42] visitors and bots from one url to
[108:45] another and their purpose is to
[108:47] consolidate signals for example let's
[108:49] say you have two pages on your website
[108:51] on the best golf balls an old one at
[108:54] domain.com bestgolfballs2018
[108:57] and another at domain.com
[109:00] best golf balls
[109:02] seeing as these are highly relevant to
[109:03] one another it would make sense to
[109:05] redirect the 2018 version to the current
[109:08] version and by consolidating these pages
[109:11] you're telling search engines to pass
[109:12] the signals from the redirected url to
[109:15] the destination url
[109:17] and the last point i want to talk about
[109:18] is the canonical tag a canonical tag is
[109:21] a snippet of html code that looks like
[109:24] this
[109:25] its purpose is to tell search engines
[109:27] what the preferred url is for a page and
[109:30] this helps to solve duplicate content
[109:32] issues
[109:33] for example let's say your website is
[109:35] accessible at both http colon double
[109:38] slash yourdomain.com
[109:40] and
[109:41] https colon double slash
[109:44] yourdomain.com and for whatever reason
[109:47] you weren't able to use a redirect these
[109:49] would be exact duplicates but by setting
[109:52] a canonical url you're telling search
[109:54] engines that there's a preferred version
[109:56] of the page
[109:57] as a result they'll pass signals such as
[110:00] links to the canonical url so they're
[110:02] not diluted across two different pages
[110:05] now it's important to note that google
[110:07] may choose to ignore your canonical tag
[110:09] looking back at the previous example if
[110:11] we set the canonical tag to the unsecure
[110:14] http page
[110:16] google would probably choose the secure
[110:18] https version instead
[110:21] now if you're running a simple wordpress
[110:23] site you shouldn't have to worry about
[110:24] this too much cmss are pretty good out
[110:27] of the box and will handle a lot of
[110:29] these basic technical issues for you
[110:31] so these are some of the foundational
[110:33] things that are good to know when it
[110:34] comes to indexing which is arguably the
[110:37] most important part in seo because again
[110:40] if your pages aren't getting indexed
[110:42] nothing else really matters now we won't
[110:45] really dig deeper into this because
[110:47] you'll probably only have to worry about
[110:48] indexing issues if and when you run into
[110:51] problems instead we'll be focusing on
[110:53] technical seo best practices to keep
[110:56] your website in good health
[110:59] hey it's ammo and welcome to the final
[111:01] lesson in this module and actually it's
[111:03] the last lesson in ahrefs seo course for
[111:06] beginners in this lesson we're going to
[111:08] go through some technical seo best
[111:10] practices so you can keep your site in
[111:12] good health let's get started so the
[111:15] first thing you should do is ensure that
[111:16] your site structure follows a logical
[111:18] hierarchy site structure is simply the
[111:21] way you organize content on your website
[111:23] you can think of it like a mind map
[111:25] at the top you'd have your home page
[111:28] then you'd probably have main topics
[111:29] that branch out from your home page like
[111:32] your services page your blog and about
[111:34] page then from these main topics you'd
[111:37] probably have even more branches to
[111:39] other pages
[111:40] these branches represent internal links
[111:42] which are just links from one page on
[111:44] your site to another and they help
[111:46] search engines understand the
[111:48] relationship between these pages
[111:50] site structure also helps search engines
[111:52] to crawl your pages more efficiently
[111:55] which is why having a logical hierarchy
[111:57] is important
[111:58] now what we've talked about is pretty
[112:00] basic stuff and you may already be doing
[112:03] this but it can get more complex as you
[112:05] add more pages to your site like blog
[112:08] posts category pages or product pages we
[112:11] have a full video on how to use internal
[112:13] links to rank higher on google so i'll
[112:15] link that up for you in the description
[112:17] alright the second thing is to ensure
[112:19] your pages don't load slow
[112:21] as you may know pagespeed has been a
[112:23] confirmed ranking factor for desktop
[112:25] search since 2010 and in 2018 google
[112:29] announced that they'd be using page
[112:31] speed in mobile search rankings
[112:33] now you don't need to obsess over every
[112:35] millisecond it takes for your page to
[112:37] load google says the speed update as
[112:40] we're calling it will only affect pages
[112:42] that deliver the slowest experience to
[112:45] users and will only affect a small
[112:47] percentage of quarries
[112:49] so bottom line you don't want your pages
[112:51] to load slow
[112:53] and there are two very basic things that
[112:55] i think every website should do
[112:57] the first is to cache your website's
[112:59] content
[113:00] caching is basically a way to
[113:02] temporarily store copies of files so it
[113:04] can be delivered to visitors in a more
[113:06] efficient way and most web hosting
[113:08] companies that i've come across have
[113:10] caching features
[113:12] and the second thing you can do is
[113:14] compress your images
[113:16] compressing images makes your file sizes
[113:18] smaller and smaller files load faster
[113:21] you can use a tool like short pixel
[113:23] which has both a web interface and a
[113:25] wordpress plugin now if you want to take
[113:27] page speed a step further then it can
[113:29] get quite technical and complex
[113:32] so we actually created a full tutorial
[113:34] on how to speed up a wordpress website
[113:36] using cloudflare and a wordpress plugin
[113:39] so i'll leave a link to that in the
[113:40] description
[113:41] and the final thing i want to talk about
[113:43] is to do your best to stay on top of
[113:45] around 50 potential seo errors
[113:49] trust me it's not as bad as it sounds
[113:51] there are potentially hundreds of
[113:53] technical seo issues that can and some
[113:56] will definitely happen to your site some
[113:58] of these things include pages becoming
[114:01] broken that still have internal links
[114:03] pointing at them
[114:04] orphan pages which are pages on your
[114:06] site that have no incoming internal
[114:08] links
[114:09] and these are great because it can make
[114:11] it tough for search engines to actually
[114:13] discover them
[114:14] duplicate content issues and redirect
[114:16] chains to name a few
[114:18] now there's no point in me going through
[114:20] 50 different potential issues because
[114:22] it'll only matter to you if you run into
[114:25] them so what i recommend you do is run
[114:27] scheduled website audits on your site
[114:30] and a website audit will give you a full
[114:32] analysis of potential issues that could
[114:34] be harming your website's seo
[114:36] performance
[114:37] if you're an ahrefs user you can do that
[114:39] using our site audit tool and even if
[114:41] you don't have an ahrefs paid plan you
[114:44] can sign up for a free ahrefs webmaster
[114:46] tools account which will let you crawl
[114:48] up to ten 000 pages on each website you
[114:51] own
[114:51] to get started go to ahrefs.com awt and
[114:55] sign up for your free webmaster tools
[114:57] account
[114:58] then you'll need to verify your website
[115:00] meaning prove that you actually own it
[115:03] you can do that using google search
[115:04] console which is the easiest method or
[115:06] if you don't have a search console
[115:08] account you can do it manually just
[115:10] enter your domain and click continue
[115:13] then verify your website using one of
[115:15] these three methods and i'll actually
[115:17] just go back and use the google search
[115:19] console method
[115:20] next you'll need to import your sites
[115:23] and i'll choose to run the first audit
[115:24] now schedule weekly audits and i'll also
[115:27] enable the crawl external links option
[115:30] to ensure that we catch any broken or
[115:32] redirected outgoing links
[115:34] hit import and the crawl should start
[115:37] running
[115:38] now after the crawl has completed go to
[115:40] the overview report in your site audit
[115:42] project and you'll immediately see
[115:44] things like your health score which is a
[115:46] percentage of urls on your site that
[115:49] don't have errors you'll also see the
[115:51] top issues we found on your site as well
[115:53] as the number of urls that had the issue
[115:56] so when you run into an issue you can
[115:58] click on the caret to see a description
[116:00] of what it means and also a short
[116:02] snippet of how to fix it and once you
[116:05] have an idea of what the issue is and
[116:07] how to fix it just click on the number
[116:09] under the crawled column to see the
[116:11] affected
[116:12] urls then it's just a matter of fixing
[116:15] them one by one or hiring someone to
[116:17] help and since you set up weekly
[116:19] scheduled audits you can revisit the
[116:22] overview report to see if there's any
[116:24] seo maintenance you can do
[116:26] and that wraps up ahrefs seo course for
[116:28] beginners everything you've learned in
[116:30] this course should be enough to get you
[116:32] indexed ranking and to keep your site in
[116:35] good technical health and i've linked up
[116:37] a playlist in the description to the
[116:39] entire course with all 14 videos which
[116:42] will be free forever thank you for
[116:44] joining me and i hope you were able to
[116:46] get a ton of value from the course and
[116:48] make sure to like share and subscribe
[116:50] for more actionable seo and marketing
[116:52] tutorials feel free to browse around our
[116:54] channel and if you have any questions
[116:56] leave them in the comments and we'll do
[116:58] our best to get to each one i'll see you
[117:00] in the next tutorial

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