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