SEO Tutorial: Complete (Step-by-Step) Guide
– In this video, I'm gonna show you how to get your website to the first page of Google and get free organic traffic. And the training in this video is gonna be extremely beginner friendly. So, even if you have
no idea what a SEO is, you'll walk away with
enough actionable advice to get started today. My name is Matt Diggity, and I've been getting
websites to the top of Google since 2009 through my
businesses Diggity Marketing, LeadSpring and the Search Initiative. I also teach this stuff to nearly 3000 people through
my course, The Affiliate Lab. Let's take a trip back to 2009 when I created my first website. (video clip twinkling)
Back in the day, I was an electrical engineer, working 60 hour weeks in a cubicle, pretty much just hating life. I read the "4-Hour Workweek" and I was sold on the idea
of making money online. So, I created a Gratitude
Journey, iPhone app. Built a website for it, (cricket chirping)
and then was like, "Now, what? "How do I get people to
actually come to this website?" So, I started applying
the generic SEO advice I was reading on the internet.
Advice like, "Create quality content," and "Write for the reader." What does this stuff even mean? It was no surprise that I
wasn't getting any results. But at that point, I had an epiphany.
(bell dings) Wait a second, I have an engineering background. Let's approach this scientifically. So, I started running
controlled experiments and then Google's algorithm
started revealing itself to me. Since then, my results have been
consistently on the up and up. But let's back up for a bit. What actually is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's the act of optimizing a website with the goal of
increasing its performance on search engines such as Google. But what is Google even looking for? Let's think about that for a minute. Google wants its users to be happy. If you were to Google,
"How to cook meatloaf," what would make you happy? Well, that's easy. You'd want the first listing you click on to give you a kick ass meatloaf recipe. That requires Google to be able to sift through
millions of webpages on the internet to be able to figure out which article is the most relevant to what you're looking for.
But what if there's 30
million meatloaf recipes all over the internet? Actually, there are. How is Google supposed to figure
out which one is the best? That's when Google's algorithm
looks at other factors. Such as whose website is the fastest, whose author is more credible, and how many other websites
linked to this recipe. In this video, I'm gonna lay out these
Google ranking factors so you can start getting results today. Even if you plan on hiring
someone to do SEO for you, it's still important
that you know the basics. Otherwise, how would you know if they're
doing a good job or not? Now, before we get started, I'd like to ask if you would do a good job in smashing that like button
for the YouTube algorithm. Smashing the like button
helps out a channel a ton but it also helps the algorithm know what kind of content
you wanna see more of. SEO is broken down
(video clip whooshes) into three main focus areas. First, we have content. The content you write on your
site is the foundation to SEO.
You're not gonna get on page one of Google for "How to cook meatloaf" without posting a meatloaf recipe. Next, we have links. When one website links to another website, Google considers this
a vote of confidence. And lastly, we have technical SEO. This includes standards like having a fast website that looks good on mobile devices. I'm gonna explain these SEO focus areas as we go through this video training. Starting with content.
(logo whooshes) The first vocabulary you need
to understand on your path to becoming an SEO expert
is the concept of keywords. Keywords are the words that someone types into Google when they're
searching for something. When you're writing content, each article you write should
target specific keywords. The key, no pun intended, is to find keywords that are
gonna help grow your business but aren't too difficult. – Show me the money. (video glitches) – For example, ranking for a keyword like tennis would probably be life changing for your supporting good store.
But the competition
level is just too high. A keyword like, best
tennis racket for beginners is much more reasonable, but will still drive sales. Best tennis racket for beginners is what we call a long tail keyword. Long tail keywords are longer, more specific and have less competition. Let's say you have a website
in the smart home niche and you're looking to write some content on smart home gift ideas to buy others. Head on over to the free tool, answerthepublic.com and
type smart home gifts here. This is gonna give you a big list of topic ideas to choose from, and the great thing about AnswerThePublic is that all these keywords are long tail, more specific, and less competition.
This one looks interesting. For the rest of this training, we'll use best smart home
candles as a walkthrough example. The first thing we need to do is figure out what type of
article Google expects to see for the keyword best smart home candles. We do that by googling
it and taking a look. Let's open this first article
by Smart Home Pursuits.
Well, the first thing you notice is that this article was written in 2021 so it's outdated and
should be easy to beat. Let's analyze its format. As you scroll down, you'll see
it has a brief introduction then a section on what
actually are smart candles, a recommendation on their best one, and then we get into a listical format showing their rankings as
smart candles one by one.
Google has already shown us that it likes this listical format so we should follow suit. It's time to write
(video clip whooshes) the title of your article. Create your title with
the following rules. Keep the main keyword towards the front. Use related keywords to
make the algorithm happy. Use interesting words, dates and numbers to encourage clicks and keep the link to about 60 characters. For our article, I suggest using "Best smart
home candles of current year," "Top five flameless lights." It's all these requirements straight on. Now, where do you write this title? In two places. The first place will be at
the top of your article. This can be done in your WordPress editor by filling out the field here for title.
The second place will be your title tag. This requires you to install an SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math. Both are free. Go ahead and drop your title
right here in this spot. Your title tag is what ends up being shown in the Google
search result here. That's why it's so
important to optimize it not only for keywords, but for clicks. You want your listing to stand out. While you're at it, you want to fill out
the description field. Here's the rules
(video clip whooshes) for creating a description. Put keywords such as best,
smart, home and candle in there.
Google will highlight them
as I'll show you in a sec. Use Clever Copy to encourage them to click and limit to 160 characters. An example description for this article would be light up your home with the best smart candles of 2022. Find out which has the best… Here's what the description looks like in the search results. Notice the bold keywords
that draw the eye. Also, notice what I've done with the cliff hanger at the end. Find out which one has the best what.
"Oh my God, I need to click to find out." – (chuckles) Very nice. (video glitches) – Next is time to do a bit of research before you start writing your article. Remember back in high school
when you would make an outline before writing an essay? We're gonna do the same thing here. But to make search engines happy, they like to see a certain format. We have our H1 title up here at the top, which you've already learned how to create and add to your post. Underneath that, you have your subtopics marked as H2, and those subtopics
are broken down further into sub subtopics
called H3s and so forth. Seems logical and organized, but where do we get these subtopics from? (logo whooshes)
Straight from Google itself. The answer to doing well on Google is always found on page one of Google. Open back up that article in first place for best smart home candles. See this What is a Smart Candle heading? That's an H2. So is this PLAYBULB Smart
LED Bluetooth candle, and this other candle
here and this one too.
Then we have this section down here talking about "Why Do
You Need a Smart Candle," and "Smart Candle Ideas," broken down into H3s too. Google obviously loves that article because they put it at
the top of their results so we can assume that this
outline is pretty damn good. But here's how you make yours even better. You're going to open up even more articles for inspiration and create a super set outline based on what's already working in Google. Open up a Google Doc and create your
well-researched master outline based on what Google already loves. Now, is time to start writing. Starting with the introduction paragraph which goes right here after the title. The introduction paragraph is the most important piece
of content in your article. Its job is to get people to stay and read. If people go to your article, read it for only a second, then bounce back to the search result. That's a signal to Google
that your content sucks. Here's a rule for writing a
killer introduction paragraph. The job of the intro
is to hook the reader.
Do whatever you can to make sure they read
the rest of your article. Don't have any fluff. Think about what they search for in order to land on your page. This person searched for
"Best smart home candle." They already know what
smart home candles are. You don't need to start explaining them. Just get straight to the point. Which one is the best? Build trust. Why would someone trust you to tell them which smart candles are the bomb? I'd left a link in the description to a full video and intros. So make sure to check it
out after you finish here. Now, that you've written
your introduction paragraph, it's time to start filling out the rest of the content gaps
between the H2 subtopics. But what to write and how to write it? You want your content to read naturally. Sure, adding keywords in
your content is important to tell Google that you're
relevant to the topic of smart home candles. But when you overdo it, that's called keyword stuffing
and Google hates that.
If you were to write a sentence like, "The Simply Collected 3D Smart Candles. The best smart home candle that
you can find for your home" This looks like (beep) to both readers and Google's algorithm. Use keywords but keep it looking natural. You also wanna add related
keywords to your content. You can find related keywords by going to the bottom of the
search result for your keyword and seeing what Google has on display.
Words like Google, Alexa, app and electric are super important to
sprinkle into your content. Now, that you've started on your article, how long does it need to be? How many words are ideal? Well, as you already know, the answer to Google
is already on page one. Open up the top ranking article and see how long they wrote their piece.
You can use the free
Google Chrome plugin detail to find this out in a single click. Now, it's time to upload
your finished article onto your website. As you already learned when users stay and read your content, that's a huge ranking signal to Google. This has a lot to do with how your content looks to the reader. Make sure to use bite size paragraphs that are easy on the eyes
and friendly to read. Use interesting images and videos to entertain people as they scroll. Lists are good for breaking up the text and use call outs to bring attention to important points in your content. Next, what should your view URL be? Insert keywords into the URL which is a major ranking factor. Separate words with hyphens
and keep it short and sweet.
Here's what I'd use for our
Smart Home Candle article. As you know, the process
doesn't stop there. When you continue to write
more content on a given topic such as smart home doorbells,
thermostats, and lighting. Google will eventually start
to think you're an authority on the topic of smart homes. And when that happens, you're gonna start seeing
a huge traffic improvement on your website. As you write more content, interlink those articles together. A link or back link is when one article links to
another article in its content and when users click that link, they end up at the destination. When two relevant articles link up. That helps Google
(video clip twinkles) understand what these articles are about. A link can be created
in your WordPress editor by highlighting the text that
you want to use for the link.
Clicking this link button here, then entering the destination URL here. Speaking of links that takes us to our next
pillar of SEO foundations, and that's link building. We just talked about internal links when one page of your own website links to another page on your website. You also need external
links from other websites to link to your content. According to this study by ahrefs, the more links you have to your content, the more traffic you can expect to see.
External back links are one
of the biggest ranking factors in Google's algorithm and
should not be ignored. Why? Because it's like a vote. When one website links to another, it's like saying, "I like this other website so much I'm willing to send my visitors there." Here's how to build back links. First, you need to identify
(video clip whooshes) where you want a link from. Ideally, you're looking for other websites that are relevant to your own website.
Getting a back link from
a site about scuba diving to your site about smart
homes isn't gonna be helpful. You also want links from
sites that are trustworthy. And the easiest way to judge that is if the sites get
Google traffic themselves. Once you've identified
who you wanna link from, it's time to outreach
to them with an email. First, find the contact information for a website on their
contact or about page. Then you wanna send
them an email like this. "Hey, Reid, I love your website and I've been a longtime reader. I just wrote an article
on Smart Home Candles that would be a great supplement to your content on budget
friendly, smart home devices.
If you wouldn't mind linking to my article that would make my day." – That was awesome, well done. (video clip glitches) – It's time to move on to the third pillar of foundational SEO and
that's technical SEO. Don't let the name intimidate you. This is the easiest part. Think of SEO like a race between websites to get to the top of Google. You've already created
content that Google loves. This is your car. You've built links to it. This is your fuel. Technical SEO is where
you tune up your car to make sure it goes fast. Luckily, SEO tools make this super easy and the free version of Screamingfrog is more than enough to get the job done. Here's what
(video clip whooshes) you're looking for.
Slow pages. Pages that look bad on mobile devices. Pages with no internal links. Pages that Google can't find. Any broken links, and to subscribe button for
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