Tracking and Analytics

Tracking and analytics are great tools to have when it comes to dealing with SEO. Some reasons why people may want to use these techniques are to learn how people are finding their site, how they navigate the site, and how they become customers. Google Analytics is an awesome tool to use and I highly recommend it, because I have used it in one of my other courses and found it extremely useful. Also, on the plus side it is FREE to use, which is a bonus. In addition to Google Analytics, there are some common metrics that you can track in order to better understand search engine optimization. The common metrics include:

• Visitors - People who visit your site in (typically) a 24 hour period.
• Unique Visitors - How many different people have visited the site in a set time period.
• Page Views - Each time a visitor loads a page.
• Bounce Rate - The percentage of visitors that exit your site without visiting any other page on the site.
• Time on Site - The average time a person spends on the site. 
• New Visitors - Percentage of visitors that have never been on the site before. 
• Referring Sites - Where the visitors found a link to the site. 
• Goals - To track when a visitor has completed a specific objective.
• Conversion Rate - The percentage of visits that resulted in a conversion for at least one goal. 

Search Results

In today's world, search engines use a variety of sources and web pages in order to generate a search result. Many refer to this type of search as the "Universal Search", because any given search query can generate results from a lot of different sources. For example, depending of the specific search query, it can vary anywhere from Videos, News, Images, to Google Posts as well.

These types of search results all depend on:

1. the query

2. time

3. location

Google Universal Search is a way that Google "blends" results from multiple searches that appear within the main Google web search results, instead of appearing as a separate box at the top of the search results page. The reason why this universal search is so important is because it is able to search across all its content sources and be able to compare and rank all the information in real time. Therefore, users are able to find exactly what they are searching for all in one place. 

Negative Ranking Factors

SEO is extremely beneficial to people who write content in hopes to gain more traffic on their sites. When done the right way, content optimization can help increase traffic, build lasting relationships, and be ranked higher on the Google results page. On the other hand, there are situations that may occur that prohibits SEO to be as successful as it could be. The term used for this type of situation is referred to as, Negative Ranking Factors. The most common Negative Ranking Factors include:

• Hidden text and/or links
• Keyword Stuffing
• Getting links from bad sites
• Low quality content 
• Redirecting the user with the intent to mislead
• Server down or connection problems with web site
• Linking to low quality or bad sites

Therefore, your first goal in SEO should be to avoid making these mistakes because these could
make or break your site. By avoiding these mistakes listed above, this could help your site not to get banned or penalized. Next, try to get your on-site elements optimized so more traffic will come to your site. Also, make sure to focus on continuously keeping your off-site strategies updated. The last thing you want to do is get Google mad by making the easily avoidable mistakes, because no matter what happens if you make these mistakes then the rest of your SEO efforts has truly been a waste of time.

Writing SEO Content

Google tends to be constantly changing the rules for content optimization. Therefore, it is important to stay up to date with the changes and new rules Google tries to enforce. Although there is no such thing as writing the "perfect" content for Google, it is still important to write content people are willing to look at. In order to write good content, the goal is to write clear and engaging content that will make viewers value what is being said and want to read more. The way to do this is by following the 5 simple steps that are listed below.

1. Do you have enough information about your target reader?

•    Before writing anything, picture your target audience in mind. Who are you trying to target? What do they like to read? How can you attract them to your site? All these questions will help you further engage with your audience and help create a lasting relationship with them.

2. Does the topic relate to your readers?

• Having content unrelated to your readers will make them not interested in what is being said, which is the last thing you want to happen. Therefore, make sure you are writing must-read content that will interest readers. For some ideas you can look at Google Treads or LinkedIn. 

3. Did you conduct keyphrase research?

• Keyphrase research will help optimize your page because it helps Google see your page and move it higher on the results page. Therefore, for having certain keyphrases that Google will pick up on will overall be beneficial for your site.     

4. Is your content too long?

• Sometimes it is easy to write a novel when writing something you are passionate about. However, by having too much content can actually hurt you in the long run because most people like reading stuff that is short, sweet, and to the point. Therefore, before posting anything step back and look at the content from another person's perspective, if it is too long or something they would not want to read, then do not post it. 

5. Does your content stand out?

• Lastly, SEO is important and everyone wants the top position on Google, but in order for that to occur your content needs to stand out from the rest. Your competitors all want the same thing for Google to place their content as the #1 content on the results page. Therefore, make sure you have a site that contains must-read content and will make readers want to come to the site and read what you have to offer.  

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service that lets individuals learn a lot of information about their website and the people who visit it. The service can be used to find out a lot of great things, such as, how many people are visiting your site or even how they found out about it. Also, the service can help figure out which pages are the most popular on the site. Another great part about this service is that it can help you find and fix any website errors you may have, so it can appeal to more users. Before even starting with Google Search Console, you will have to first add and verify your site(s). By adding and verifying a site, this tells Google that you are the site's owner, webmaster, or other authorized user. Having someone verify he/she is the owner of a site is extremely important, because Google does not want to just hand over valuable information to anyone.

The main steps taken in order to successfully add a site to Search Console and understanding how it works is very simple. The following steps are displayed below:

1. Adding and verifying a site in Google Search Console
2. Adding an HTML tag
3. Uploading an HTML file
4. Verifying via domain name provider
5. Adding Google Analytics code
6. Using Google Tag Manager
7. Linking Google Analytics with Google Search Console
8. Adding a sitemap
9. Checking a robots.txt file
10. Fetch as Google and submit to index
11. Site errors in Google Search Console

SEO Certification

After learning about SEO and what it entails, it is highly recommended to take the Hubspot Certification test and/or the Search Engine News Certification test. I personally have taken the Hubspot Certification test and passed it. I thought that the material presented was very helpful

and relevant to learning about SEO. The content provided by Hubspot was easy to understand and follow along with. The first thing I did before even getting to learn the material was I printed out the study guide because I knew that it would be a great resource to have when it came to taking the timed test. The test was broken up into different sections and consisted of multiple choice answers.

Hubspot is a really good foundation for SEO because it places SEO in context, and the emphasis is on content. Hubspot has a lot of different certifications that people can get, but the one that is extremely beneficial is the Inbound certification. The videos that are shown are an excellent visual tool for individuals who need to see things. I found the information and examples important in order for me to master the skills and knowledge for when it came to the test. In addition to passing the Hubspot Certification test, I will also be taking the Search Engine News Certification test soon for class and I believe the material will be helpful in learning more about SEO, which I cannot wait to see what that test entails.

Keeping Up With Changes

Although SEO is extremely useful to know for any business or organization, parts of SEO may change and it is best to keep up with those changes. The one key component that will never change though is to make sure to have quality content. Quality content is what everyone looks for and without it there will not be that much traffic on one's site. Google is known for evolving and changing its ways over the years; therefore, it is important to stay informed and updated with new content that may be presented. Reading blogs is an excellent example of staying in tune with what is going on and changing, but make sure when viewing blogs to always check the date because some blogs can be outdated, which is not a good reference to use. In addition to blogs, there are also other industry resources that can be helpful when keeping up with changes. Such as, Search Engine News is a great resource and it is worth paying for. Overall, keeping track of new changes can benefit a company and/or website. 

Explore Indexing and Webmaster Tools

A major thing to pay attention to is how Google is crawling and indexing the Internet. This means how does Google know that your website is there? The answer to that question depends on the platform the website is on. Sometimes there are technical errors with web sites that makes the site not speak to Google as well as it could, which has a negative impact on the site. The best way to avoid this problem is to monitor the site as part of an SEO audit. One easy and simple way to check out how Google sees your website is to just go to Google and type in: site:yourdomain.com. Google will then list all the pages it sees from your site. Therefore, it is extremely important that the number of pages your website has and the number of pages Google can see matches up, because otherwise you will need to figure out why Google does not see all the pages presented on the website and fix it so they end up matching. This will end up helping a company's web site in the long run because more visitors will be able to see the intended pages on a website that is presented on Google.

 

How to Analyze SEO

After taking some time to practice SEO and getting used to how things work, it is now time to analyze SEO. The best way to analyze and measure the performance of SEO is to look at the rank of a particular website for certain keywords. The website I decided to focus on for this specific example, was the Benedictine University website. The keyword rank checker website I used to check the rank of keywords for the Benedictine website was, https://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html. Once you are on this page you can plug in the keyword you want to use, in this case I used "Benedictine University Marketing Transfer Checklist". Then under the domain website I typed in www.ben.edu. An example is shown below.

Afterwards, the results will appear and if a website ranks in the top 100 for a given keyword, it will show the rank, which the higher the rank the better it is. In this case the keyword ranked number 1 on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, which is great news for Benedictine. The University website needs to continue providing quality content and maintain the rank online for its keywords because there is a lot of competition and it is likely it will continue to grow. Therefore, maintaining existing rank is a good goal to have for any website. If a keyword is not ranked as high is it should be, the best way to increase the rank is to write quality content based on what customers are actually interested in. Analyzing SEO can be fun and rewarding for any company and help the company grow overall. 

SEO Practice

The best way to practice SEO is to have a blogger account and include content that you think is relevant to users who will view the blog. Practicing SEO on blogger will help you get used to how it works and will be helpful to understand how to get more traffic to your site. As you learn more about SEO, you will be able to start to think of ideas you can do when you work on a site for the first time, such as:

1. Check and see if it is configured for search

2. Adjust the meta description for the site

3. Adjust the meta description for individual pages/posts 

Additional things you could try include: 

4. Integrate keywords into blog post title

5. Integrate keywords into blog post text

6. Integrate keyword(s) into alt text for image

The additional things to try out go beyond the "natural" content writing and makes you think about how to "insert" things. The keywords that are included in the blog titles will help attract traffic to the site and hopefully get the site higher ranked on search engines. Overall, practicing SEO will be a benefit in the long-run when trying to optimize your website.   

Keyword Research

The first step in SEO is keyword research. Keywords are words or phrases that are in one's web content that helps make it possible for people to find one's site via search engines. The best way to get ranked higher on search engines is to have keywords that people tend to search for. Therefore, the best way to understand how keywords work is to try them out. The keywords that people are typing in represent an opportunity and that is a great way to understand keywords. As one works through the overall process of SEO, he/she will become familiar with the keywords and it will help to develop a keyword "mindset".

When doing basic keyword research an excellent website to consider trying out is: https://app.wordtracker.com/. There is a free trial option and then at some point one will have to pay for using the site. This website is helpful because it shows an estimate amount of traffic and competition to sites. However, this tool will also give some suggestions of other keywords that one might like to consider. Some suggestions may be more specific and these types of keywords are considered "long-tail keywords", which is a great opportunity to pick up more traffic. Wordtracker is an overall excellent site to identify keywords, get suggestions, as well as, the site has some great learning material available.  

SEO Basics

Search Engine Optimization is also referred to as SEO. When it comes to SEO a person should follow the 90/10 rule, which means 90% of the time should be devoted to creating quality content. Whereas, the other 10% should be dedicated for the technical aspects. Content is extremely important to focus on because the more content a website has will eventually lead to more visitors, which Google will notice and will rank one's website higher and ultimately increase the value of the site. Some people have said that most individuals who visit websites, only 2% are actually ready to buy or take some kind of action. Others may just be doing research and/or exploring possibilities which could ultimately help make up their minds to eventually purchase items. Therefore, having content that is relevant for individuals can help draw them to the site and may make it easier for them to make purchase decisions.

In addition to quality content, SEO is ultimately based on keywords. Keywords are words or phrases that people may type into a search bar to hopefully lead them to your site. Keywords help distinguish sites from one another and the more individuals who like the keywords or search for them, the higher the site will rank. The best way to make quality keywords is to have the words relate to the content that one provides on their website. Overall, SEO is the process of trying to get one's search as high as possible, in an ideal word the website would appear on the top of the first page based off the keywords that one uses.

True Foundation of Search Engine Optimization

The true foundation of Search Engine Optimization begins with content. Content is important because that is what grabs individuals' attentions. The three different types of areas dealing with content include curation, creation, and collaboration. When a person curates content that individual actually goes out of their way to find information and then share it while either reviewing or commenting on it. The second type of content is actually creating the content, this is the best form of content if one is trying to stand out from the rest. Creating content can be hard because it has to be original; however, if a person has a blog that he/she creates the content on, then this is an excellent way to target viewers because the content can be tailored for the audience. The interests of the audience can help generate traffic to one's blog and give more ideas on what to write about. Lastly, the third type of content is collaborating with other people on different topics to write about and this is a good learning experience if one is just starting out on learning to write content.

Blogging is a great way to learn how to write content and by including images and/or videos in one's blog is another form of content that can help those viewers who are more visual learners. Search Engine Optimization would not exist if content was not developed. Therefore, content itself is important to get one's views across and the best part about it, is one does not need to be an expert. Find a passion and just write about it, this is all it takes to be a good writer.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by making sure the content appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. Most of the time individuals who pay more for his/her advertisements end up higher on the results list because that individual is paying for it. However, the most important thing to have when it comes to search engine optimization is to have quality content.

By writing quality content related to specific topics will allow Google to find the information, and more importantly, people will find the articles as well. That is why it is crucial to have relevant and meaningful information that is helpful, which will make people want to share the information with other people. If the information is shared, then the articles will become more likely to grow higher on the results list which is the ultimate goal. When developing quality content, 90% of an individual's time should be devoted to it because this will set the bar for the rest of the minor details included in the articles and/or advertisements. Information is key and in order to have people come to one's website the information has to be of quality for a person to be willing to trust the site. Therefore, focusing on quality content should be high on ones list in order to help understand search engine optimization.