Complete SEO Course for Beginners: Learn to Rank #1 in Google
Ahrefs2021-05-19
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💫 Short Summary
The video covers the fundamentals of SEO, emphasizing execution and the importance of keyword research, search intent, and backlinks. It discusses on-page SEO, link building, and optimizing images for SEO. The importance of matching search intent, creating valuable content, and building relationships for effective link building is highlighted. Tips for using Haro, guest blogging, and outreach strategies are provided. Technical SEO, robots.txt files, and page speed optimization are also discussed. Overall, the video emphasizes the significance of SEO in driving organic search traffic and improving website visibility.
✨ Highlights
📊 Transcript
✦
Overview of SEO fundamentals and the importance of execution.
00:00Four modules of the course: SEO basics, keyword research, on-page SEO, and link building.
Explanation of search intent, backlinks, and content depth in SEO.
Benefits of organic search traffic and reaching massive audiences through SEO.
Insights into how Google works, including crawling, indexation, and the ranking algorithm.
✦
Importance of Keyword Research in SEO.
08:01Search volume and traffic potential are key metrics to consider when conducting keyword research.
Traffic potential reflects the total traffic a website could receive by ranking for a particular keyword.
Business potential assesses the value a keyword holds for a specific business, especially in terms of recommending products to visitors.
While metrics are important, it is also crucial to consider relevance and user intent when choosing keywords for SEO.
✦
Importance of matching searcher intent for SEO.
15:42Search intent is the reason behind a searcher's query, and analyzing top ranking pages for a keyword helps understand search intent.
Introduces the three C's of search intent: content type, content format, and content angle.
Examples provided for different keyword queries such as 'how to swing a golf club', 'golf clubs', and 'golf bags'.
Understanding and matching search intent is crucial for high search result rankings and driving relevant traffic to a website.
✦
Importance of Keyword Research for Website Optimization.
21:54Keyword research tools are essential for identifying high-value keywords with search volume and SEO metrics.
Keywords should be filtered based on search demand, traffic potential, business potential, and search intent.
Using modifiers can help refine keyword lists for better targeting.
Example of keyword research for a golf blog shows how to prioritize keywords with business potential and alignment with search intent.
✦
Using modifiers and seed keywords for generating high potential business keywords.
26:52Modifiers like 'how', 'what', 'who', 'where', 'why', 'guide', and 'tutorial' help identify informational topics.
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer can assist in analyzing search traffic and identifying potential keywords.
Understanding competitors, search intent, and ranking difficulty is crucial before targeting keywords.
Building a solid list of topics for keyword research is emphasized in the segment.
✦
Importance of Backlinks and Website Authority in SEO.
34:05Analyzing the number of quality backlinks, website authority, and topical authority is crucial for SEO success.
Matching search intent and creating topically authoritative content are key factors in ranking higher.
The more 'yeses' you can check off in your analysis, the better your chances of ranking higher.
SEO is nuanced and requires considering various factors for optimal results.
✦
Importance of On-Page SEO for Higher Search Engine Rankings.
40:51On-page SEO focuses on optimizing web pages through HTML tags like titles and meta descriptions to satisfy search intent.
Keyword stuffing and minimum word count are not necessary for on-page SEO success.
Success in on-page SEO comes from addressing search intent, optimizing content, and prioritizing user satisfaction.
Backlinks play a crucial role in driving search traffic, along with creating valuable content and understanding search intent for on-page SEO success in 2021 and beyond.
✦
Key highlights for researching competitors for content ideas.
47:10Focus on top-ranking pages that align with search intent.
Analyze common keywords among top pages using tools like Ahrefs.
Consider audience preferences and language when crafting content.
Include target keyword in title and use descriptive URL slug for better SEO.
✦
Optimizing images for SEO involves naming image files appropriately, using descriptive alt text, and compressing images for faster load times.
55:34Writing in short sentences and paragraphs, using descriptive subheadings, and maintaining readability are important for engaging content.
On-page optimizations like adding open graph meta tags and schema markup can enhance search engine understanding of your content.
Satisfying searcher intent remains the most crucial aspect of content creation.
✦
Importance of Relationships in Link Building
01:00:21Email outreach is highlighted as the most effective method for building relationships and obtaining quality backlinks.
Backlinks are crucial for ranking on search engines as they are used to assess page value.
Strategies for obtaining backlinks include manual creation, buying (risky and costly), or earning through relationship-building.
Understanding the difference between strategies and tactics is key in developing successful link building campaigns.
✦
Ways to earn backlinks include email outreach, becoming a source for online publications, and earning them organically.
01:06:43Building a reputation for consistent backlinks is crucial, and relying solely on organic links is discouraged.
Good backlinks are characterized by relevance and authoritativeness.
High authority pages can positively impact rankings, and metrics like domain rating and URL rating are introduced.
The anatomy of a hyperlink and its significance in SEO are broken down in the conclusion of the video.
✦
Importance of link building in SEO.
01:13:13Anchor texts, rel attribute values, and link placement are crucial for SEO success.
Followed links are essential for passing authority and improving rankings.
Link building process includes prospecting, vetting, and email outreach stages.
Utilizing tactics like HARO for free PR and building relationships with site owners are key for successful link building.
✦
Tips for using Haro to respond to journalist queries and improve your hit rate.
01:19:59Create a Gmail filter to manage relevant emails efficiently.
Respond quickly to queries as journalists often have tight deadlines.
Prioritize topics where you are an expert to increase your chances of being sourced.
Follow all directions in the query to maximize your chances of getting featured.
✦
Finding websites that accept guest authors for backlink opportunities.
01:26:31Sorting results by the number of authors to gauge acceptance likelihood.
Vetting sites to ensure relevance and non-spammy appearance is important.
Checking a domain's organic traffic and avoiding penalized sites is recommended.
Using email outreach strategies, such as personalizing pitches based on site content and audience relevance.
✦
Importance of writing high-quality emails to stand out from spam and unsolicited emails.
01:34:31Contrasting the shotgun approach of sending mass emails with the sniper approach of targeting specific individuals.
Emphasizing the need for personalized emails to avoid burning bridges.
Detailed process of finding email addresses, contacting the right people, and crafting effective outreach emails.
Highlighting the importance of qualification and justification in outreach emails to show value to recipients.
✦
Importance of Technical SEO in Website Optimization.
01:44:03Basic aspects such as the no index meta tag and robots.txt file are crucial for optimizing websites for search engines.
Mistakes like leaving no index tags on pages can result in removal from Google's index.
Using high-quality content for email pitches can increase the chances of gaining backlinks.
Initiating conversations and building relationships before asking for links can be more effective in collaboration and link-building efforts.
✦
Importance of robots.txt files for search engine crawlers.
01:45:55Discusses the use of multiple robots files for different subdomains.
Covers directives like user agent and disallow for defining crawler rules.
Touches on sitemaps, redirects, and canonical tags for SEO best practices.
Emphasizes the logical hierarchy of site structure and the significance of internal links for efficient crawling.
✦
Importance of Google speed update for user experience.
01:52:47Caching website content and compressing images are recommended to improve loading times.
Regular website audits using tools like Ahrefs can help identify and correct SEO errors.
Detailed process of setting up audits, identifying issues, and taking corrective actions explained.
SEO course for beginners highlighted with access to full course playlist for free.
00:00hey everyone my name is sam oh and
00:01welcome to the seo fundamentals course
00:03by ahrefs in this course i'll be
00:05teaching you the fundamentals of seo
00:07with a heavy focus on execution and
00:10while it's a beginner's seo course i
00:12don't want you to be fooled by the word
00:14beginner even for an eight-figure
00:16business like ours we don't do anything
00:18crazy technical or complicated right
00:21from the start we've stuck with the
00:23fundamentals of seo that led to
00:25compounded growth and today our site
00:27gets over a million monthly visits from
00:29google search alone making seo one of
00:32our most effective strategies to get
00:34traffic to our site so the course is
00:36broken down into four modules plus this
00:39video which is more of an introduction
00:40to the course as well as in seo 101 in
00:43this video we'll go over the basics of
00:46seo and cover things like what it is why
00:49it's important and how it works you'll
00:51then move on to module one which is on
00:53keyword research throughout these
00:54lessons i'll show you how to find
00:56keywords to target that can benefit your
00:58business it'll also set the foundation
01:00for the next module which is on-page seo
01:03in this module we'll talk about
01:05optimizing your pages to rank for those
01:07keywords the next module will be on link
01:10building this is one of google's most
01:12prominent ranking signals which has
01:14proven to contribute to higher rankings
01:16in search
01:17finally we'll finish off the course with
01:18the basics of technical seo which will
01:21mostly be about best practices and
01:23website maintenance
01:25all right let's kick things off with the
01:26seo basics we'll talk about what search
01:28engine optimization is
01:30why it's important and how google works
01:33seo stands for search engine
01:35optimization and it's the process of
01:37optimizing content to be discovered
01:39through a search engine's organic search
01:41results now let's talk a bit about how
01:43they work if you're completely new to
01:45seo then it's easiest to think of search
01:47engines as libraries but instead of
01:49storing books they store copies of
01:52websites and web pages
01:54so when you search for a query the
01:56search engine will then look through all
01:57pages in its index and try to return the
02:00most relevant results and seo helps
02:03demonstrate to search engines that your
02:05page is that result
02:07now you might be thinking
02:08why should i focus on seo when there are
02:10so many other marketing mediums well
02:13there are three major things that
02:15attract marketers to search engine
02:16optimization and in my opinion these
02:19three things make seo the best traffic
02:21source number one unlike paying for ads
02:24search traffic is free number two
02:27organic traffic is typically consistent
02:29once you're ranking high whereas other
02:32mediums like social media and email
02:34marketing often result in traffic spikes
02:36that usually end up fading to nothing
02:39and it makes sense because social media
02:40networks are designed to surface fresh
02:42content emails often get marked as read
02:45forgotten or land in the spam box
02:47whereas search traffic is a result of
02:49users actively searching for information
02:52and the number of searches for a given
02:54topic is typically consistent month to
02:56month and number three you have the
02:58opportunity to reach massive audiences
03:01you wouldn't have access to otherwise in
03:03fact as of october 2019 there were
03:06nearly 4.39 billion internet users
03:09around the world and almost 4 billion of
03:11those people are google users
03:13this is why search engine optimization
03:15is an 80 billion dollar industry and why
03:18marketers from all walks of life are
03:20adopting and pursuing it today everyone
03:23wants their business to get discovered
03:25and seo is the perfect way to do that
03:28now let's briefly talk about how google
03:29works and there are two parts to this
03:32the first is crawling and indexation and
03:34these two things are what actually
03:36allows google to discover web pages and
03:39create their search index so to actually
03:41attain information google uses crawlers
03:44also known as spiders which gather
03:46publicly available information from all
03:49over the web the spiders will start
03:51crawling from a list of known urls
03:53called seeds
03:54then they follow the hyperlinks on those
03:56pages and crawl those newly discovered
03:59pages and this process goes on and on
04:02allowing them to collect a ton of
04:04information they then take all of this
04:06data back to google servers to be added
04:08to their search index and that's what
04:11people like you and i are searching
04:13through when we key in a query in google
04:15now if you were to search for something
04:17and google returned every result that
04:19mentioned your words on the page then
04:20you'd end up with really bad results
04:23this brings us to the second part which
04:25is google's ranking algorithm
04:27google has hundreds of ranking signals
04:29and they make tweaks to their algorithm
04:31500 to 600 times per year so to be frank
04:35no one knows exactly how their algorithm
04:37works
04:38but they've given us clues and some
04:40guidelines to better
04:55are just speculation at best but i do
04:57want to cover a few of the most
04:59important factors that you'll need to
05:00understand from a fundamental standpoint
05:03first are backlinks backlinks are links
05:06from a page on one website to another
05:08and google has said on their house
05:10search works page that if other
05:12prominent websites link to a page that's
05:15proved to be a good sign that
05:16information is well trusted
05:19the easiest way to understand the value
05:20of a backlink is to think of them as
05:22votes when a page receives a backlink
05:25it's essentially another website
05:26vouching for the content on the page and
05:29the more votes you get from credible
05:31sources the higher the trust and we also
05:34studied the effect of backlinks on
05:36search traffic and found a clear
05:38positive correlation between backlinks
05:40from unique websites and a page's
05:42organic traffic
05:44second is search intent which represents
05:46the reason behind a searches query and
05:48if you think of google's goal for search
05:50their job is to return the most relevant
05:52results for any given query so with that
05:55said you can discover search intent
05:57simply by looking at the top ranking
05:59pages for the query you want to rank for
06:02for example if you search for slow
06:04cooker recipes you'll see that the
06:06search results are mostly blog posts
06:08with a list of slow cooker recipes so if
06:11you try and rank a product page where
06:13you're selling a slow cooker you won't
06:15be matching search intent and therefore
06:17you won't rank
06:18now if we change the query to just slow
06:20cooker you'll see that the dominant
06:22types of pages are ecommerce category
06:24pages so if you try and rank your blog
06:27post of slow cooker recipes then you
06:29probably won't rank because you're not
06:31matching search intent this is a
06:33critical concept to understand and i'll
06:35share a simple three-point checklist you
06:37can use to determine search intent for
06:39any query in the next module and third
06:42is content depth search engines are made
06:44up of computer programs so they can't
06:47actually read and understand text like
06:49you and i would nevertheless google has
06:52poured billions of dollars into creating
06:54sophisticated technology that
06:56understands content to a certain degree
06:59but it's your job as a content creator
07:01to provide context about the subject for
07:04example if you look at the top ranking
07:06pages for the quarry how to drive a car
07:08you'll find that they talk about things
07:10like fastening your seatbelt
07:12familiarizing yourself with the gas and
07:14brake pedals adjusting your seat and
07:16mirrors and other things that a first
07:18time driver may not know
07:20basically you want to be able to answer
07:22the search's quarry the best that you
07:24possibly can and naturally it should
07:27lead to content that has depth
07:29now it's important to note that depth
07:31doesn't always translate to length for
07:33example a topic like how to turn off
07:36iphone 12 doesn't need to and shouldn't
07:39be long in fact the top ranking page is
07:41only 185 words but the content itself
07:45solves the user's query from start to
07:47finish alright so the basics are in the
07:49book and it's time to move on to the
07:51keyword research module
07:53hey it's amo and welcome to the first
07:55module which is on keyword research in
07:57this first lesson we're going to talk
07:59about what keywords are and how to
08:01choose them using a simple four point
08:03checklist let's get started so what are
08:06keywords in the context of seo they're
08:08simply just words and phrases that
08:10people type into search engines to find
08:12what they're looking for
08:14for example if you are shopping for
08:16running shoes you might search for
08:17keywords like men's running shoes or
08:19simply just running shoes
08:21now keywords are actually super
08:23important in seo because it sets the
08:25entire foundation for search engine
08:27optimization the basic goal of seo is to
08:30rank your pages for keywords that your
08:32target audience or customers are
08:34searching for and if you're not ranking
08:36for keywords that actually get searched
08:39then your seo efforts are kind of
08:41meaningless
08:42for example we rank number one for the
08:44query seo checklist and this keyword is
08:46responsible for driving around 1500
08:49monthly visitors from google and that's
08:51just in the us
08:53so keyword research is the process of
08:55finding keywords that people are
08:57inputting into search engines and we'll
08:59get into this process in the upcoming
09:01lessons
09:02so how do you actually choose keywords
09:04that are worth targeting let's run
09:06through a checklist that should help you
09:07choose keywords effectively
09:09the first thing to check is if your
09:11keyword has search demand search demand
09:13represents the volume of monthly
09:15searches made for a keyword and this is
09:17measurable with a keyword metric that we
09:19call search volume
09:21you can find the search volume for a
09:22keyword by using a keyword research tool
09:25like ahrefs keywords explorer for
09:27example the query kilometers to miles
09:30gets searched around 478
09:32000 times per month in the us alone but
09:35as you can see here in hfs keywords
09:37explorer 80 of searches go without a
09:40click to a page and that's because
09:42google has a handy calculator right here
09:45that'll solve the searcher's problem so
09:47search volume alone can actually be a
09:49bit misleading which is why it's worth
09:51looking at the second checkpoint which
09:53is to check the traffic potential of the
09:55topic
09:56traffic potential represents the total
09:58search traffic you could get if you were
10:00to rank at the top of google for your
10:02keyword
10:03let's look at the stats for our seo
10:04checklist page in hf site explorer
10:07so again we rank number one for the
10:09query seo checklist and it sends us
10:12approximately 1500 monthly search visits
10:15from the us
10:16but if we look at the total global
10:18organic traffic to the page you'll see
10:20that we get approximately 3 000 monthly
10:22visits from google
10:24every single month and that's because
10:26this page ranks for over 200 keywords
10:29and this page isn't an outlier in our
10:31study of three million keywords we found
10:33that on average the top ranking page
10:36ranks for nearly a thousand other
10:38keywords in the top ten
10:40so while you may be optimizing your
10:42pages for a main keyword your page will
10:44likely rank for hundreds or even
10:46thousands of other relevant keywords and
10:49because of that the monthly search
10:51traffic potential of the topic seo
10:53checklist is actually higher than its
10:55monthly search volume
10:57this is what makes traffic potential a
10:59much more reliable metric than search
11:01volume and the way you determine traffic
11:03potential is by looking at how much
11:05traffic the top ranking pages are
11:07getting
11:08for example if we go to ahrefs keywords
11:10explorer and search for submit website
11:12to search engines you'll see that it has
11:14a search volume of 1100 monthly searches
11:17in the us
11:19now if i scroll to the bottom of the
11:20page you'll see a serp overview which
11:23shows you the top 10 ranking pages for
11:25that keyword
11:26and serp just stands for search engine
11:28results page
11:30and as you can see our page gets an
11:32estimated 5 300 monthly search visits
11:35from the us alone and we rank for over
11:381300 keywords making traffic potential
11:41of this keyword higher than its search
11:43volume
11:44now it doesn't always work out this way
11:47for example the query keyword
11:49cannibalization has a search volume of
11:51150 monthly searches but the traffic
11:54potential is well under 100 so it
11:57becomes more of a business decision
11:58whether you want to tackle the topic or
12:00not now choosing keywords based on
12:03metrics alone is not a good idea which
12:06is why the rest of the checkpoints are
12:07meant to ground you
12:09the next point on our checklist is to
12:11assess the business potential of the
12:12keyword or topic
12:14business potential simply represents the
12:16value a keyword has to your business and
12:19value really comes down to your niche as
12:21well as your business model so an easy
12:24way to do this is by assigning scores
12:26between one to three to keywords you're
12:28researching the higher the number the
12:30more important the topic is to your
12:32business
12:33so let's say you have a site about golf
12:35and the way you make money is by selling
12:37used golf clubs
12:39bringing this back to business potential
12:41that means topics where you can
12:42organically recommend products to
12:44visitors would hold the highest business
12:47value for example people searching for
12:49something like buy used golf clubs are
12:52likely ready to make a purchase here and
12:54now
12:55so in my books this would have a
12:57business value of three
12:59now a keyword like best golf clubs would
13:01also be relevant to your site people are
13:04likely ready to make a purchase soon
13:06but just don't know which clubs to buy
13:08but it's actually quite easy to plug
13:10your products because for the golf clubs
13:12you recommend you can easily link back
13:14to your product pages leading visitors
13:17closer to making a purchase so i'd give
13:19this a business value of two now a
13:21keyword like what is a handicap in golf
13:24would be really tough to organically
13:26recommend your products but nevertheless
13:28it's a way to attract relevant traffic
13:30to your site so i'd give this a business
13:33value of one so these would hold the
13:35lowest priority and anything that has a
13:37score of zero is probably worth ignoring
13:40because it's not going to impact your
13:41bottom line so something like happy
13:44gilmore review would have a business
13:46value of zero because it has nothing to
13:48do with your business other than the
13:50fact that it's a fantastic movie about
13:52golf alright the next point on this
13:54checklist is to see if you can match
13:56searcher intent this is a concept that
13:58we covered in the first lesson of this
14:00course but it's something that i'm going
14:02to keep talking about because it's super
14:04important so again search intent
14:06represents the reason behind a
14:08searcher's query and the way we
14:10determine that is by looking at the top
14:12ranking pages for the keyword we want to
14:14rank for for example let's say you have
14:16a recipes blog and you want to rank for
14:19toaster oven
14:20looking at the top ranking pages you'll
14:22see that almost all of the pages are
14:24ecommerce category pages
14:27this tells us that the intent of the
14:28searcher is likely to buy or at least to
14:31shop around for different toaster ovens
14:34so unless you can actually satisfy the
14:36intent of the searcher it's unlikely
14:38that you'll be able to rank high for
14:40this query and we'll dig deeper into
14:42search intent in the next lesson the
14:44final point on this checklist is to
14:45determine whether you can rank for your
14:47keyword search volume traffic potential
14:50and business potential mean absolutely
14:52nothing if you can't rank for your
14:54keyword in the not so distant future and
14:57understanding the level of difficulty to
14:59rank for a given keyword takes a bit of
15:01analysis and practice
15:03this is why i've created an entire
15:05lesson on assessing ranking difficulty
15:07because mastering this process will help
15:09you get predictable results in seo so
15:12i'll save that for a later lesson
15:14now actually choosing keywords comes
15:16down to finding a balance in this
15:17checklist you have to ask yourself does
15:20the topic drive enough traffic and have
15:22business value to make it worth the
15:24effort and this is the question you
15:26should ask yourself before you create
15:28pages with the intent to rank in search
15:31and these five points in the checklist
15:33are exactly what we're going to dive
15:35deeper into throughout the rest of this
15:37module
15:39hey it's sam oh and welcome to the
15:40second lesson which is on search intent
15:42and i touched on this in the first
15:44lesson on seo basics but i really want
15:46to take some time to unpack what it is
15:49and how to use it in keyword research
15:51reason being if you can't match searcher
15:54intent then you probably aren't going to
15:56rank for your target keywords
15:58so again search intent represents the
16:00reason behind a searcher's query and
16:03matching search intent is one of those
16:04must do things to show search engines
16:07that your page will fulfill their goal
16:09to deliver the most relevant results for
16:12any given query and while it might sound
16:15like you're trying to satisfy google
16:17what you're actually doing is learning
16:19what you need to do to satisfy the
16:22searcher's intent
16:23identifying search intent is usually
16:25quite easy all you have to do is search
16:28for the keyword you want to rank for and
16:30then analyze the top ranking results and
16:33the top ranking results are a great
16:35proxy to understand search intent
16:37because google understands what
16:39searchers want probably more than anyone
16:41else
16:42now analyzing is kind of a jargony word
16:45but i have a simple three prong formula
16:47you can use it's called the three c's of
16:50search intent
16:51the first c is content type
16:53content type can usually be categorized
16:56into blog posts videos product category
16:59and landing pages
17:01for example the dominant type of pages
17:03for the quarry best golf shoes are blog
17:06posts
17:08the second c is content format and this
17:10applies more to blog posts and landing
17:12pages a few common blog formats you'll
17:15see are how to's step-by-step tutorials
17:19list posts and opinion editorials
17:21for a landing page that might be
17:23something like a tool or calculator
17:26again for the quarry best golf shoes
17:28you'll see that all of the top results
17:30are listicles which makes sense because
17:32the word best implies that a comparison
17:35needs to be made
17:36and the third c is content angle which
17:39often depicts the benefit it's basically
17:41your hook as to why someone should click
17:44and visit your page for best golf shoes
17:47you'll see that every post has gone with
17:48a freshness angle which is evident based
17:51on the current year being in the titles
17:53in my opinion this is the least
17:55important and often least consistent
17:57among top ranking pages
17:59now this is just one example of search
18:01intent for a keyword let's go through a
18:03few more examples to really drill in
18:05this concept
18:07the first example is for the query how
18:09to swing a golf club the dominant
18:11content type is clearly blog posts but
18:13you'll also notice that a youtube video
18:15is ranking ahead of the blog post so
18:18this tells us that it may be worth
18:19creating both a blog post and video to
18:22potentially get two different spots in
18:24the search results
18:26as for content format they're clearly
18:28all how to's and seeing as the nature of
18:31the topic would require a step-by-step
18:33procedure that's probably the route
18:35you'd want to go to and you can confirm
18:37this by actually visiting some of the
18:39top ranking pages
18:41now with content angle it appears as
18:43though for beginners or basic seems to
18:46be the right way to approach the topic
18:49the second example is for the query golf
18:51clubs looking at the serp you'll see
18:53that they're all ecommerce category
18:55pages which tells us that when people
18:57search for this query they're likely in
18:59shopping mode
19:00now seeing as content format applies
19:02mostly to blog posts and landing pages
19:05it wouldn't be applicable here since
19:06we're looking at ecommerce category
19:08pages as for content angle it seems to
19:12be mostly about deals so saving money on
19:15golf clubs
19:16alright the final example is for
19:18something like golf bags
19:20looking at the serp you'll see something
19:21a bit different we have a mixed serp
19:24content type for the top ranking page is
19:26an ecommerce category page then we have
19:29a couple of blog posts on the best golf
19:31bags and we also have an outlier on how
19:34to buy golf bags
19:35and towards the bottom half of the
19:37results we have more ecommerce category
19:40pages
19:41so what do you do
19:43well in order to make an educated
19:44decision we still need to lay some
19:46foundation work so we'll revisit this
19:48example in a later lesson
19:51hey it's ammo and welcome to the third
19:53lesson in our keyword research module in
19:55this lesson i'm going to show you how to
19:57find keywords for your website based on
19:59the things you learn in lesson one and
20:01two of this module let's get started
20:04so keyword research is the process of
20:06finding keywords that people are
20:08searching for in search engines and the
20:10general process can be divided into two
20:12macro steps step one is to generate
20:15keyword ideas and step two is to
20:17validate whether those keywords are
20:19worth going after
20:21now this lesson is mostly about step one
20:23generating keyword ideas for your
20:25website and in order to do that you need
20:28a keyword research tool
20:30keyword research tools show you
20:31information on keywords like their
20:33search volume keyword difficulty scores
20:36and other seo metrics plus they should
20:38help you discover potential topics worth
20:40going after there are a lot of tools out
20:42there and you're free to use whichever
20:44ones you want but for this course i'll
20:46be using ahrefs keywords explorer
20:48now i also understand that some people
20:50may not be in a place to purchase seo
20:52software right now if that's you then we
20:55also have a free tool called ahrefs
20:57keyword generator which is a good place
20:59to start i'll leave links to both tools
21:01in the description
21:03all right so we're going to be doing
21:04some keyword research for the rest of
21:05this lesson so let's say that the
21:07website we're doing keyword research for
21:09is a golf blog and the way this blog
21:11generates revenue is through affiliate
21:13commissions meaning they promote other
21:16people's products and when someone
21:17clicks on one of the links and makes a
21:19purchase you're compensated with a
21:21commission
21:22so the first step is to come up with a
21:24list of seed keywords and a seed keyword
21:27is just a broad keyword related to your
21:29niche so i'll go to hfs keywords
21:31explorer and add a few seeds for our
21:34golf site so that might be golf balls
21:37golf clubs and golf hats to name a few
21:40next i'll go to the phrase match report
21:42which will show us keywords that include
21:44any of these phrases
21:46and just like that we have around 125
21:49000 keyword ideas with search volumes
21:52and a ton of other helpful metrics some
21:54of which we'll touch on later now 125
21:57000 keywords is just way too much to
21:59filter through so before we continue
22:02let's take a second and revisit the five
22:04point checklist from the first lesson in
22:06this module
22:07again the five things we're looking for
22:09when it comes to choosing keywords are
22:11one we want keywords that have search
22:13demand
22:14two
22:15keywords with traffic potential
22:18three
22:18keywords with business potential
22:21four we need to be able to match search
22:23intent and five we want to know how hard
22:26it will be to rank at the top of google
22:28for that keyword
22:30so when we're generating keyword ideas
22:32we'll be able to check off the first
22:34four points as for the fifth we'll
22:36tackle that in the next lesson
22:38alright let's look back at our list of
22:40keyword ideas and start checking off
22:42some of these boxes
22:43so first we need to find keywords that
22:45have search demand to do that you can
22:48set a search volume filter to show
22:49keywords with a minimum volume of at
22:52least 300 monthly searches
22:55and now that list has just shrunk to 351
22:58keyword ideas which will be easy to
23:00manually filter through
23:02the next point on this checklist is to
23:04see if they have traffic potential again
23:07traffic potential is a more reliable
23:09metric than search volume because not
23:11all searches result in clicks and at the
23:14end of the day we want traffic not
23:16searches
23:17to check the traffic potential of a
23:18topic you need to look at the top
23:20ranking pages and see how much traffic
23:23they're getting to do that you can click
23:25on the surf button beside any of these
23:27keywords
23:28so if we do that for the quarry golf
23:30clubs you'll see that the top page gets
23:32around 16 000 monthly search visits from
23:35the us
23:36now if you don't have an ahrefs account
23:38you can get a free version of the serp
23:40using hf serp checker tool
23:43next up is business potential again
23:45business potential is simply the value a
23:47keyword has to your business and while
23:4916 000 monthly search visits seems great
23:52you need to consider the fourth point on
23:54the checklist which is to ask yourself
23:56if you can match search intent
23:58as you can see almost all of the top
24:01ranking pages are ecommerce category
24:03pages
24:04so searchers are probably in shopping
24:06mode but we have a golf affiliate blog
24:09so the site probably isn't selling golf
24:11clubs meaning we can't create an
24:13ecommerce category page and therefore we
24:16won't be able to match search intent so
24:19seeing as this query doesn't fulfill the
24:21points on our checklist we wouldn't go
24:23after this keyword
24:25now looking further down the list you'll
24:26see the quarry best golf balls it has a
24:29high search volume and if i click on the
24:32search button you'll see that the
24:33traffic potential is around 5000 monthly
24:36visits from the us
24:38pretty good
24:39now in terms of business potential this
24:41keyword would have a value of 3 because
24:43our site makes money by reviewing and
24:46recommending products so it would be
24:48super easy to organically recommend
24:50products in a best of post which i
24:53assume would lead to a fair amount of
24:54affiliate commissions
24:56as for search intent these are blog
24:58posts in the listicle format with the
25:00freshness content angle as you can see
25:02from the titles of the top ranking pages
25:05so this query checks all boxes and
25:07passed our initial sniff test so i'll
25:10click on the check box and add it to my
25:12golf keyword list
25:15now checking the serp for all of these
25:17keywords would be pretty time consuming
25:19so there's a quick technique you can use
25:21to find relevant keywords and that's to
25:24use keyword modifiers
25:26a modifier is an add-on to a base
25:28keyword for example if our base keyword
25:30is golf hats we can modify this keyword
25:33by adding best
25:35top or the current year
25:37and modifiers tell us a lot about search
25:39intent a word like best again tells us
25:42that a comparison needs to be made so
25:44searchers are probably looking for
25:46listicle blog posts with various
25:48different product recommendations
25:51now if a word like how or what is in the
25:53keyword then it tells us that the top
25:55pages will likely be blog posts or
25:57videos with step-by-step tutorials or
26:00some other informational content
26:02so with this knowledge we can actually
26:04filter this keyword list down to a
26:07keywords that likely have business
26:09potential
26:10and b
26:11keywords where we can match searcher
26:13intent
26:14for example since we're doing keyword
26:16research for an affiliate site modifiers
26:18like best top
26:20versus and review would likely bring up
26:23topics where we can organically
26:25recommend products
26:27so if we go back to the keyword list we
26:29can click on the include filter and
26:31paste this list there
26:33next i'll hit the any word tab since we
26:35want to find keywords that include any
26:37of these modifiers as well as one of our
26:40seed keywords
26:41hit apply and we now have a list of
26:44around 30 keywords that are most likely
26:46going to have high business potential
26:49plus we know that 99 of the time the
26:52results for any best type keyword will
26:54be listicle blog posts and we know that
26:57we can match searcher intent with our
26:58affiliate blog
27:00now if we switch the modifiers in the
27:02include filter to words like how
27:04what
27:05who
27:06where
27:07why
27:08guide and tutorial
27:10then we can apply the list to find
27:12informational topics that we could write
27:14about on our blog
27:16and pretty much all of these keywords
27:18will be fair game for our hypothetical
27:19golf blog
27:21now if you plan to use a list of
27:22modifiers then it's worth noting that
27:24you should probably do it with much
27:26broader seats
27:28for example you'll see that we only have
27:3010 keywords when using the search volume
27:32filter paired with our list of
27:34informational modifiers
27:36now if i change the c to just golf set
27:39the volume filter to a minimum of 300
27:41monthly searches
27:43and then paste in my list of
27:44informational modifiers
27:46hit the any tab and click apply
27:49then you'll see we have a lot more
27:50topics that we could potentially create
27:52content around so if this is a method
27:55you want to try then take a screenshot
27:57of this list of modifiers and feel free
27:59to use them in your keyword research now
28:02after doing keyword research for exactly
28:0433 minutes and 14 seconds i was able to
28:07compile a list of over 190 keyword ideas
28:11in my golf keyword list
28:13now one downside to using keyword
28:15research tools is that the list of
28:17keyword ideas will usually be limited to
28:19words and phrases that include your
28:21seats but there are other great keywords
28:23that won't necessarily include your
28:25seeds
28:26so how do you find them
28:28well the best way to find these keywords
28:30is to look at pages that drive the most
28:32search traffic to your competitor sites
28:35because if your competitors are ranking
28:36for keywords that are sending them a ton
28:39of search traffic then i'm sure you'd
28:41want to get in on the action right
28:43now by competitor i'm not necessarily
28:45talking about your direct business
28:47competitors i'm referring to your
28:49organic search competitors which are
28:51websites that rank for keywords that
28:53you'd want to rank for
28:55so to find these competitors i'll go
28:57back to ahrefs keywords explorer but
28:59this time i'll click on my golf keyword
29:01list
29:02next i'll go to the traffic share by
29:04domains report which will show you the
29:06websites that get the most search
29:08traffic based on your keyword input in
29:10this case our golf keyword list
29:13so as you can see sites like golf digest
29:16golf.com and golf wrx are getting the
29:19most search traffic from the keywords
29:22that i want to hypothetically rank for
29:24but we already know these keywords since
29:26we created the list so what you can do
29:29is click on the caret beside a domain
29:31you want to research further and then
29:33click top pages which will show you the
29:35pages that send the most search traffic
29:37to a website
29:39and check this out golf digest page on
29:41game improvement irons gets around 5 400
29:44monthly search visits from the us
29:47this page that ranks for what degree is
29:49a sand wedge gets around 4 700 monthly
29:52search visits and we wouldn't have seen
29:54these in the keyword ideas report
29:56because they don't contain our seeds
29:59so you can just skim through this list
30:01look for potential topics then go
30:03through those four points in the
30:04checklist for keywords that are
30:06interesting to you add them to your
30:08keyword list and once you've exhausted a
30:10website's top pages
30:12rinse and repeat for the other organic
30:14search competitors until you're
30:16satisfied with your list and if you're
30:18still unhappy with your list you can try
30:20and find other seeds within this report
30:23the two that stand out to me right away
30:25are sand wedge and fairway woods
30:28so i'll go back to keywords explorer and
30:30type those into the search box
30:32and seeing as both of these are
30:33different types of golf clubs you can
30:36add pitching wedge putter putting and so
30:39on and so forth
30:41bottom line there should be no shortage
30:43of keyword ideas and you should be able
30:45to use these two methods to build a
30:47solid list of topics to keep you busy
30:50for years
30:51but here's the thing even if you've
30:53checked off these four boxes on the
30:55checklist there's still one left and it
30:57won't matter if you don't rank for your
30:59keywords
31:01hey it's ammo and welcome to the fourth
31:03lesson in our keyword research module
31:05today i'm going to show you how to
31:07determine ranking difficulty for a
31:08keyword this will help you understand
31:10how hard it'll be to rank high in google
31:13for your target keywords let's get
31:15started
31:16so when it comes to ranking in google
31:18you need to understand who you'll be up
31:20against before you target a keyword
31:22otherwise you could be entering a battle
31:24you won't be able to win
31:26from an seo perspective competitors are
31:29pages and websites that rank at the top
31:31of google for your target keywords so
31:33that means your competitors can be
31:35different for every single keyword you
31:37target
31:38so there are three main things you'll
31:39want to consider before you decide to
31:41pick a fight and those are search intent
31:44metrics of the top ranking pages and
31:46websites and topical authority of the
31:49top ranking websites
31:51now as we go through these points we're
31:53going to create a list of self-check
31:55questions which should help you make
31:56informed decisions in your keyboard
31:58targeting also in order to see things
32:01like metrics of top ranking pages you
32:03need an seo tool since google won't show
32:05you data on other pages so i'll be using
32:08ahrefs keywords explorer throughout this
32:10lesson
32:11now if you don't have an ahrefs account
32:13you can use our free serp checker tool
32:15which will give you data on the top
32:17three pages
32:18all right let's start with search intent
32:20the first thing you need to do is look
32:21at the serp and ask yourself do some of
32:24the top ranking pages fail to closely
32:26match search intent
32:28to find this out you can go through the
32:30three c's of search intent as we
32:32discussed in lesson two of this module
32:34and by the looks of it they're all
32:36listicle blog posts using the freshness
32:38angle so they do match it
32:41also pay close attention to the titles
32:43and urls of the ranking pages
32:46in general if the top pages include the
32:48primary keyword or a variation of it in
32:51the title and or url they're likely
32:54targeting that keyword for example all
32:57of the top ranking pages for the quarry
32:59how to save money are exactly about that
33:03whereas a quarry like best convertible
33:05car seats for small cars is a bit mixed
33:09as you can see some pages have gone
33:11specifically with the angle
33:13for small cars
33:14as a result it's probably matching
33:17searcher intent better than the more
33:19broad posts about the best convertible
33:21car seats for any car
33:23this is a sign of weakness in the serp
33:25because it means there's probably a lack
33:27of rank-worthy content out there about
33:30the best convertible car seats for small
33:32cars
33:34now i don't want you to take this as
33:35advice that you must include the exact
33:38keyword phrase in your titles and or
33:40urls with this example finding
33:43convertible car seats for small cars is
33:46actually a very specific need for a
33:49specific person
33:50all right let's talk about the metrics
33:52the first metric to look at is the
33:54number of websites that are linking to
33:56the page at ahrefs we call this
33:58referring domains
34:00as i mentioned in module 1 backlinks are
34:03one of google's most prominent ranking
34:05signals so if a page has a lot of
34:08quality links pointing at it then it'll
34:10be more competitive to rank
34:12so before choosing a keyword you need to
34:14ask yourself
34:16can i get more quality backlinks than
34:18the top ranking pages
34:20the second metric is website authority
34:23at ahrefs we call this domain rating
34:25which represents the overall strength of
34:27a website's backlink profile
34:29very generally speaking you should be
34:31going after keywords where your
34:33website's dr is in a similar ballpark
34:35range as the top ranking pages or at the
34:38very least one of the top ranking pages
34:41should be in the same range as your
34:42website
34:43for example if all of the websites that
34:46rank in the top 10 have high dr's and
34:49you have a dr of let's say 10 then you
34:51may want to consider competing when
34:53you're at a similar level so let's add
34:56that question to our checklist
34:58is my website in a similar dr range or
35:01higher than the top ranking websites
35:04again this is a very general
35:06recommendation but still a decent one to
35:08follow if you're a beginner to seo
35:11to see the domain rating of your own
35:13site you can enter your domain in site
35:15explorer and see it here on the overview
35:17page
35:18or you can enter your domain in our free
35:20website authority checker i'll be
35:22leaving links to all of these tools in
35:24the description
35:25alright let's move on to the third part
35:27which is topical authority of the top
35:29ranking websites
35:31google wants to rank pages from
35:33authoritative sources and this goes
35:35beyond backlinks
35:36for example if we look at the serp 4 how
35:39to unclog a toilet you'll see that this
35:42dr42 site is outranking much more
35:45powerful websites with significantly
35:48more referring domains
35:50well this page comes from a website
35:52that's just about plumbing so it's
35:54likely more authoritative on the topic
35:57so the question you need to ask yourself
35:58is
35:59is my website equally or more topically
36:02authoritative than the top ranking
36:04websites
36:05if the answer is yes then that's a
36:07positive thing for you
36:09the easiest and quickest way to find out
36:11is to just look at the domain names and
36:13use some common sense for example
36:16looking at the serp 4 best convertible
36:18car seat for small cars you'll see sites
36:21like experienced mommy baby center
36:24parenting pod baby list and other
36:27relevant sites that talk about products
36:29for children
36:30and for domains that aren't as easily
36:32distinguishable like 800 buckleup.org
36:36you can just visit the site hit the
36:38about page and get a general idea of
36:40what the site is about in this case
36:43you'll see that they talk about car seat
36:44recalls and review car seat brands so
36:48yes it is topically authoritative on car
36:50seats
36:52all right let's look at our full list of
36:53yes or no questions
36:55as a very general rule of thumb the more
36:58yeses you can check off the better your
37:00chances of ranking again
37:02very general because seo is quite
37:04nuanced with that said let's go through
37:07a couple of hypothetical examples for
37:09our golf site to set the scene let's say
37:11you have a website that's about golf
37:13instruction and you also review golf
37:15equipment and your website's domain
37:17rating is low at around 15.
37:20all right so the first example is for
37:21the quarry best golf grips let's start
37:24with the first question
37:26do some of the top ranking pages fail to
37:28closely match search intent
37:31from the looks of it they all look
37:32decent so i'll check the no box
37:35next up
37:36can i get more quality backlinks than
37:38the top ranking pages
37:40again we haven't covered anything about
37:42quality backlinks yet so for now let's
37:45just look at quantity
37:46most of the sites have very few
37:48referring domains so i'd say this is a
37:50yes
37:52next question is my website in a similar
37:55dr range or higher than the top ranking
37:57websites
37:59based on the serp there are a few sites
38:01with similar website authority so let's
38:03give this a yes as well
38:05and finally is my website equally or
38:08more topically authoritative than the
38:10top ranking websites
38:12well all of the top pages are from golf
38:14sites and so is mine so let's give this
38:16a yes as well so based on our analysis
38:20it looks like this would be a topic
38:21worth going after
38:23all right the next analysis is for the
38:25keyword best putters
38:27looking at search intent overall it
38:29looks like the majority of pages are
38:31good so i'll check the no box but i do
38:34want to touch on this page on the best
38:37blade putters
38:39this is more of a focused post and
38:40they're likely ranking high for this
38:42because of all of the other factors like
38:44high website authority lots of referring
38:46domains and topical authority so i would
38:50actually exclude them from the rest of
38:51this analysis
38:53alright next up can i get more quality
38:56backlinks than the top ranking pages
38:59again just looking at the quantity of
39:01links to these pages the answer would
39:03likely be a yes seeing as we're still
39:05looking at about a dozen referring
39:07domains but it's important to realize
39:10that getting more links than the number
39:12one page probably won't happen in the
39:14near future meaning getting the top
39:17ranking spot will be tough
39:19next is my website in a similar dr range
39:23or higher than the top ranking websites
39:25the answer is no
39:27and finally my website is topically
39:30authoritative so i'll give this a yes
39:33now it looks like we're at a tie between
39:35yeses and notes and this is exactly why
39:38i said
39:39as a very general rule of thumb the more
39:42yeses you can check off the better your
39:44chances of ranking
39:46again seo is nuanced plus you need to
39:49weigh out some of the other principles
39:51we discussed like traffic potential and
39:53business value
39:54and the best way to make sound judgment
39:57calls is through experience
39:59so it will take time to hone your skills
40:02and gain a better grasp of keyword
40:04analysis
40:05so as you can see understanding how hard
40:08it will be to rank in google will be a
40:10key skill to your success in search
40:13why
40:14because it's the first step to getting
40:15predictable results
40:17after all if you know what it'll take to
40:20rank ahead of your competition then it
40:22all comes down to execution
40:24and that's what the next two modules are
40:26all about
40:28hey it's ammo and welcome to the second
40:30module which is about on-page seo if you
40:33haven't seen the introduction to seo
40:34video and the module on keyword research
40:37then i highly recommend watching those
40:39first they'll help you get the
40:40foundational knowledge you'll need to
40:42get the most out of this module i'll
40:44leave links in the description
40:46all right so what is on-page seo it's
40:49simply the practice of optimizing web
40:51pages to rank higher in search engines
40:53and it revolves heavily around
40:55optimizing pages for search intent but
40:58on-page optimizations also involve
41:00creating and optimizing html tags like
41:04titles and meta descriptions
41:06now if you've been exposed to the
41:08practice of on-page seo then it's quite
41:10likely that you've heard conflicting
41:12advice and for that reason we're going
41:14to discuss both what on-page seo is and
41:18what it is not
41:19let's talk about common advice you might
41:21see on on-page seo best practices which
41:24just aren't true today and while there
41:27are many old school tactics that are
41:28still being recommended i want to focus
41:31on just three points to help you
41:33navigate the noise
41:35number one on-page seo is not about
41:38stuffing exact match keywords
41:41it used to be common practice to include
41:43the exact keyword you wanted to rank for
41:45in your title url and content
41:48for example if you wanted to rank for
41:50car dealer san diego you would stuff
41:53that keyword throughout your page
41:54despite the fact it doesn't make sense
41:57grammatically speaking
41:59google is smart enough to understand
42:00things like connecting words synonyms
42:03and closely related words and phrases
42:06in fact for all of these queries the top
42:0910 pages are nearly identical
42:12unfortunately stuffing exact match
42:14keywords is still being practiced today
42:17which can lead to poor user experience
42:19and poor readability all things that
42:21on-page seo should not do
42:25the second thing is that on-page seo is
42:27not about using your keyword a specific
42:30number of times on the page
42:32in our study of three million search
42:33queries we found that on average the top
42:36ranking page ranks for around a thousand
42:38other relevant keywords in the top ten
42:42now can you imagine what it would be
42:43like if a top ranking page had to
42:45mention all 1000 of those keywords at
42:48least three times
42:50it makes no sense the content would be
42:52unnecessarily lengthy and create an
42:55awful user experience for visitors
42:57here's an example look at the syrup for
42:59the quarry diet plan you'll see that
43:02health lines article on how to lose
43:04weight ranks number one and there's no
43:06mention of a diet plan in their title or
43:08url
43:09in fact there's only one fleeting
43:11mention of it on the page not even a
43:13subheading here's another example gq
43:16ranks in the top spot for classiest
43:18watch
43:19but if we look at the page you'll see
43:21that the word classiest isn't there and
43:24neither is the word classy
43:27the third point is that on-page seo
43:29isn't about meeting a minimum word count
43:32some studies have shown that the average
43:34content length of the top 10 results is
43:36over 2 000 words as a result many seos
43:40have recommended that you create pages
43:42that are at least that length
43:44but that isn't exactly sound advice for
43:47example our backlink checker is 628
43:50words yet we rank number one for our
43:52target keyword and the page generates
43:55around 130 000 monthly visits from
43:58google search alone
44:00here's another example this page only
44:02has 76 words on it the majority of
44:04content are images according to hf site
44:07explorer the page gets over 170 000
44:10monthly search visits
44:13now let's talk about what on-page seo is
44:15today in 2021 and beyond looking at the
44:18definition again on-page seo is the
44:20practice of optimizing web pages to rank
44:23higher in search engines and as i
44:25mentioned this revolves heavily around
44:28optimizing pages for search intent the
44:30key word here is search intent
44:33translation the goal of your pages
44:35should be to satisfy the searcher's
44:37intent
44:38how
44:39well we talked about the three c's of
44:41search intent which should help you get
44:42the basic stuff down like the content
44:45type format and angle in addition to
44:48this your content needs to address the
44:50things people expect to see
44:52you'll also want to nail the more
44:53tangible items like titles subheadings
44:57internal linking readability and of
44:59course the actual content itself
45:02these are the things we'll be answering
45:04in part two of our on-page seo module
45:06where we'll get more tactical and talk
45:08about how you can create content that's
45:11optimized for search
45:13hey it's ammo and welcome to the second
45:15lesson in the on-page seo module today
45:18i'm going to show you how to create a
45:19page that's optimized for search let's
45:22get started so as i showed you in the
45:24last lesson on average the top ranking
45:26page ranks for nearly a thousand
45:28keywords for example healthline's page
45:31is clearly targeting the query how to
45:33lose weight fast and sure enough they're
45:36ranking in the top spot
45:38now the traffic to this page doesn't
45:39come from just their target keyword it
45:42comes from the combined effect of
45:44ranking for thousands of queries and
45:46when we sum up the traffic from all
45:48keywords it makes up well over a hundred
45:51thousand monthly search visits just from
45:53the us
45:54in fact if we look at the page's keyword
45:56rankings you'll see that the target
45:58query how to lose weight fast only sends
46:01them a small percentage of the total
46:03monthly search traffic
46:05now in order to rank for a ton of
46:07keywords and get a ton of search traffic
46:09you need two things the first is a page
46:12that's optimized to rank and the second
46:14are backlinks in this lesson we'll cover
46:17how to create an optimized page and
46:19we'll tackle links in the next module
46:21okay so with on-page seo there are two
46:23main things we need to cover the first
46:25is arguably the most important and
46:27that's to ensure your page satisfies
46:30searcher intent we've already covered
46:32the three css search intent which again
46:34will give you very basic guidance on the
46:36type of content to create the format to
46:39use and the angle to go with but the
46:41actual content itself is what will leave
46:44your visitors satisfied or dissatisfied
46:48so you might be wondering what exactly
46:50do i write about in order to satisfy
46:52searchers the short answer is to learn
46:55from your competitors
46:56the top ranking pages are ranking at the
46:58top for a reason google and other search
47:01engines deem them as the best candidates
47:03to satisfy a search's query so they're
47:06clearly doing something right at least
47:08from the perspective of a search engine
47:10now while the content will vary from
47:12topic to topic the way you research a
47:14competitor's content will be more or
47:16less the same let's go through an
47:18example so let's say that we want to
47:20create content that targets the quarry
47:22best golf club sets
47:24to start i'll go to ahrefs keywords
47:26explorer and search for the quarry
47:28then i'll scroll down to the serp
47:30overview to see the top ranking pages
47:33now if you don't have an ahrefs account
47:35you can use our free serp checker tool
47:36to do everything i'm about to do all
47:39right so looking at the serp we want to
47:41pick out the top three or so relevant
47:43ranking results
47:45and by relevant i'm talking about pages
47:47that match the dominant search intent
47:49based on the three cs we've discussed so
47:52many times now so in this case the
47:54majority of pages are blog posts in the
47:57listicle format with freshness as the
47:59content angle so that means we wouldn't
48:01look at pages from amazon or golf galaxy
48:04because these pages are clearly
48:05ecommerce category pages and are
48:08therefore outliers to the dominant
48:10search intent we'll also exclude the
48:12pages from golf digest and business
48:14insider since it doesn't look like
48:16they're intentionally targeting our
48:18query so i'll open up these three pages
48:20in new tabs
48:22and what we're going to look for are
48:23similarities in their content
48:25specifically in the subtopics and we'll
48:28also look to deepen our understanding of
48:30content format and content angle
48:33looking at the first page you'll see
48:34that they've created a list of
48:35categories for the best golf club sets
48:39so there's best selling best game
48:41improving irons and so on
48:44looking further down they have a
48:45subheading which is the make and model
48:47of the golf club set followed by a brief
48:49review of the clubs
48:51the next page also has a summary based
48:53on more broad categories like best value
48:57premium pick and best choice
48:59and based on the table of contents
49:01you'll see that they followed a similar
49:03structure where the make and model of
49:05the clubs are used as subheadings they
49:07also add a brief description of the
49:09clubs as well as some skimmable bullet
49:11points
49:12and the final page does pretty much the
49:14same thing they use subheadings as the
49:16make and model followed by a short
49:18review
49:19now unless you're a golfer you may not
49:21have caught this minor but perhaps
49:23important detail
49:25all the pages talk about sets that would
49:27appeal more to beginners for example
49:30they all talk about callaway strata set
49:33and they all include sets from wilson's
49:35staff
49:36in my opinion these wouldn't appeal to
49:38an intermediate or advanced level golfer
49:42alright so at this point we know that we
49:44should create a holistical blog post
49:45with freshness as the angle we also know
49:48that the content should likely be
49:49targeted at beginners a couple common
49:52sets that were mentioned in all posts
49:54were the callaway stratas as well as a
49:56set from wilson's staff now it's
49:58important to note that you don't have to
50:00include these in your post but it's
50:02simply an observation i had made we also
50:05saw that the top two out of three pages
50:07had top picks for categories like best
50:10game improvement clubs as well as best
50:12clubs for the money
50:14finally we know that the subheading
50:16should be the name of the club set
50:18another thing i recommend before you
50:20start writing is to do a content gap
50:22analysis at the page level a content gap
50:25analysis at the page level will show you
50:27common keywords that the top pages are
50:29ranking for where your page isn't but
50:32since we don't have a page we can still
50:35find common keyword rankings amongst a
50:37few top ranking pages using ahrefs
50:40content gaap tool
50:41to get started go to hr site explorer
50:44and paste in any one of the urls
50:47next head on over to the content gap
50:49tool
50:50now i'm going to take the three urls we
50:52analyzed and put them all in the top
50:55section of this tool
50:57so what this is saying is show us
50:59keywords that any of these targets rank
51:02for where at least one of them ranks in
51:04the top 10.
51:06now if i run the search you'll be able
51:08to see the keywords that these pages
51:09rank for in the position that they're
51:11ranking it
51:12as a general rule of thumb the more urls
51:15that rank high for the keywords the more
51:17relevant it'll be to your content
51:20so to narrow our search down a bit i'll
51:22click on the intersections drop down and
51:24select both two and three intersections
51:27meaning only show me keywords where at
51:29least two of our targets are ranking in
51:31google and at least one of those targets
51:34is ranking in the top 10.
51:37from here just skim through the list and
51:39look for interesting subtopics that
51:41might be worth adding to your post
51:43in addition you may be able to learn
51:45some interesting things about the
51:47audience as well as the language they
51:49use so as you can see people who search
51:52for this quarry are mostly looking for
51:53men's clubs people want to know the best
51:56clubs for the money they want to see
51:58cheaper options and others are looking
52:00specifically for a set of irons
52:03these are all things you should consider
52:05as you craft your content
52:07all right so armed with this information
52:09you should be able to create a great
52:11post with a searcher in mind and while
52:13the content is the most important part
52:16there are also a few more technical
52:18on-page optimizations you should do
52:20let's go through a few of the most
52:22important ones
52:23first is to include your target keyword
52:25in your title when it makes sense
52:28adding your target keyword to your title
52:30should come naturally for example our
52:32title for this post is 45 best free seo
52:36tools tried and tested and free seo
52:40tools is our target keyword
52:42now there will be times when it makes
52:44more sense to use a close variant of
52:46your target keyword for example this
52:49post is targeting the query how to get
52:51youtube subscribers but our title is
52:549 ways to get more youtube subscribers
52:57because we went for the listicle angle
52:59the next thing you can do is to use a
53:01short and descriptive url slug
53:04short and descriptive urls help people
53:06immediately understand what the page is
53:09about before even visiting them just
53:11look at these two urls they're on the
53:14exact same topic but one is much more
53:17descriptive than the other
53:19this part of the url is called the slug
53:21and the easiest way to choose your slug
53:23is to use your target keyword where
53:25spaces will be replaced with hyphens
53:28again you should only do this when it
53:29makes sense so you don't need to worry
53:31about forcing it now if you're wondering
53:34if you should use subfolders to describe
53:36categories that's entirely up to you
53:39alright next is the meta description the
53:41meta description is html code that's
53:44meant to briefly summarize your page and
53:46search engines often use this text right
53:48within the serp to my best knowledge
53:51meta descriptions aren't used as a
53:53ranking signal but they can influence
53:55click-through rates and for that reason
53:58i think it's important to add to your
53:59pages
54:01now it's important to note that
54:02according to our study of 192 000 pages
54:05we found that google rewrote meta
54:07descriptions nearly 63 percent of the
54:10time so i wouldn't spend a ton of time
54:12on them but you should still include
54:14them
54:15alright next up is to add internal links
54:17to and from your pages
54:20internal links are links from one page
54:22on the same domain to another
54:24and they're super powerful because they
54:26can pass link authority to other
54:28relevant pages and they also help search
54:31engines better understand a page's
54:33contents
54:34for example if i had a site in the
54:36careers niche and i was writing a post
54:38about how to write a cover letter then i
54:41definitely want to add internal links
54:43from other relevant pages like one on
54:45how to write a resume
54:47more importantly visitors who want to
54:49learn how to write a resume would
54:51probably want to know how to write a
54:53cover letter and vice versa
54:56to find opportunities you can go to
54:58google and search for
54:59sitecolon yourdomain.com
55:02and then add the topic you're writing
55:04about
55:05then visit relevant pages and see if
55:07there's an opportunity to add an
55:09internal link to your new post
55:11alternatively you can use ahrefs site
55:13audit tool completely free just sign up
55:16for an ahrefs webmaster tools account
55:18verify your site and then run a crawl
55:21then you can head over to link explorer
55:24to find internal linking opportunities
55:26we have a short but helpful video on how
55:28to do this on ahrefs product updates
55:30youtube channel so i'll link that video
55:32up in the description
55:34all right next up is to optimize your
55:36images
55:37in the last 28 days we've had over 4 000
55:40visits to our blog from google image
55:42search
55:43while that pales in comparison to our
55:45500 000 monthly organic blog visits it's
55:49still four thousand visits
55:51now optimizing your images for seo is
55:53three-fold number one name your image
55:56files appropriately
55:58for example this is a picture of a puppy
56:01if you took the photo yourself then
56:03chances are your smartphone or camera
56:05named it something like img underscore
56:08and then a million numbers
56:10instead change the file name to
56:12something like puppy
56:14not exactly rocket science but according
56:17to google file names can give google
56:19clues about the subject matter of the
56:21image
56:22number two use descriptive alt text
56:26alt text short for alternative text is
56:29an html attribute that goes in your
56:31image tag
56:32so the syntax would look something like
56:34this where the alt value should describe
56:36the image
56:37alt text helps improve accessibility for
56:40those who are using screen readers or if
56:42the image fails to load visitors will be
56:44shown the alt text instead
56:46now google recommends creating useful
56:49information rich content that uses
56:51keywords appropriately and is in context
56:54of the content of the page
56:56yes google explicitly says to use
56:58keywords but they also say to avoid
57:01stuffing keywords as it results in a
57:03negative user experience and may cause
57:06your site to be seen as spam meaning
57:08don't do something like this
57:10now looking back at the syntax our alt
57:12text isn't exactly descriptive so let's
57:15change that to something like puppy
57:17sitting on a couch
57:19if you use wordpress just add your alt
57:21text here when inserting your images and
57:23the cms should do the rest alright the
57:26third thing you'll want to do is
57:27compress your images compressing images
57:30makes your image file sizes smaller
57:32leading to faster load times and page
57:34speed is a google ranking signal
57:37there's a free tool for compressing
57:38images called short pixel which has both
57:41a web interface as well as a wordpress
57:43plugin
57:44and the last thing i highly recommend is
57:46to optimize for readability here are
57:48five simple but effective tips you can
57:50use to improve readability number one
57:53write in short sentences and short
57:56paragraphs because no one wants to land
57:58on a page with a huge wall of text
58:01two
58:02use descriptive subheadings so people
58:03who are skimming the article can easily
58:06find the things that are important to
58:08them
58:083. use a large enough font that's easily
58:11readable on both desktop and mobile
58:144. avoid using big words it's more
58:17important that people understand your
58:19content and 5. write as you speak your
58:22content will be more conversational and
58:25entertaining to read
58:26a free tool i recommend using is called
58:28hemingway app it'll give you some
58:30writing tips as well as a readability
58:33grade i'd recommend trying to keep
58:34things at or below a sixth grade level
58:38now there are other on-page
58:39optimizations you can do like adding
58:41open graph meta tags or og tags for
58:43short these will allow you to customize
58:46the titles descriptions images and other
58:48information when your pages are shared
58:51on social media networks
58:53there's also schema markup which is code
58:54that helps search engines understand
58:56your content and better represent it in
58:58the search results for example these
59:01pages use the recipe schema type so
59:03google is able to show things like the
59:05recipe's rating the number of votes the
59:08total time to make the food as well as
59:10nutritional information
59:12if you have a wordpress site then you
59:14can add og tags in schema with plugins
59:16like rank math or yoast
59:18now again the most important part of
59:20your content is that you're striving to
59:22satisfy searcher intent
59:24yes the technical things are important
59:26too but they're more like the icing on
59:28the cake so here's a full on-page seo
59:31checklist take a screenshot and let's
59:33move on to the next module which is on
59:35an seo strategy called link building
59:39hey it's ammo and welcome to the third
59:40module in our seo course for beginners
59:43throughout the next five lessons we'll
59:44be talking about arguably the most
59:47important and most challenging seo
59:50strategy it's called link building and
59:52to kick things off we're going to talk
59:54about what it is why it's important and
59:56the mindset you'll need to have to be
59:58successful at it let's get started so
01:00:00what is link building by definition link
01:00:03building is the process of getting other
01:00:05websites to link to a page on your
01:00:07website and these hyperlinks are called
01:00:09backlinks now while the end result might
01:00:12make sense conceptually and seem simple
01:00:14the part that most people don't
01:00:16understand and can't seem to get right
01:00:19is this
01:00:20the process
01:00:21and this ultimately boils down to
01:00:23emailing complete strangers and asking
01:00:26them to link to you now let's take a
01:00:28quick second to talk about how strange
01:00:31and kind of awkward this might sound so
01:00:33let's go through a few scenarios and
01:00:35then we'll revisit this definition of
01:00:36link building
01:00:38let's say that you have a marketing blog
01:00:39and you write about seo and digital
01:00:41marketing now if some random person
01:00:44let's call her sally sent you an email
01:00:46and said hey can you link to my post on
01:00:48facebook ads it's really good would you
01:00:52link to her
01:00:53probably not in fact you probably
01:00:56wouldn't even reply or click the link in
01:00:58her email to actually check and see if
01:01:01her content is as good as she claims
01:01:03now let's flip the script a bit let's
01:01:05say that you've been following ahrefs
01:01:07youtube channel and blog for some time
01:01:09you've implemented some of the
01:01:10strategies we've shared and gotten some
01:01:12great results for your site on top of
01:01:15that you've been using our seo tools for
01:01:17three years
01:01:18now an email pops up in your inbox from
01:01:21me samo a name and face you might
01:01:24recognize because you've been following
01:01:26our channel and in that email i've asked
01:01:28you to link to our free backlink checker
01:01:31from your page that lists the 15 best
01:01:33free seo tools would you link to me
01:01:36maybe
01:01:37now the final scenario let's say your
01:01:39mentor who helped you get started in
01:01:41digital marketing sends you an email and
01:01:43she asked you to link to a page on her
01:01:45site from a relevant page on yours would
01:01:48you link to her
01:01:49definitely she helped you get started in
01:01:51digital marketing you obviously trust
01:01:54and respect her and you'd be willing to
01:01:56bend over backwards for her the point of
01:01:58these scenarios is to show you that the
01:02:00process of link building is actually
01:02:02very relational and can sometimes take
01:02:04more time than you might like
01:02:06with sally you don't know her you don't
01:02:08owe her anything you don't trust her
01:02:11she's blindly coming in almost invading
01:02:14your inbox and asking you for a favor
01:02:17without offering any kind of value in
01:02:19return
01:02:20in the second scenario when i
01:02:21hypothetically emailed you you knew who
01:02:23i was i had indirectly helped you and
01:02:26you were a user of a product for years
01:02:29so while we may not have a real-life
01:02:30relationship we're still connected in
01:02:32some way so the chances of linking to me
01:02:35are probably higher than linking to
01:02:37sally
01:02:38now when your mentor asked you for a
01:02:40link there's a real relationship there
01:02:42there's a sense of trust respect and
01:02:45gratitude so of course you would link to
01:02:47her now while you can't and shouldn't
01:02:49try to become friends with everyone just
01:02:52to get links you'll find that your best
01:02:54links will usually come from
01:02:55relationships that are sparked from
01:02:57email outreach so let's redefine link
01:03:00building and set the tone for the rest
01:03:01of this module link building is the
01:03:03process of building relationships with
01:03:05other relevant site owners who want and
01:03:08will link to your content because it
01:03:10enhances theirs
01:03:12so this definition isn't just about you
01:03:14getting something it includes
01:03:15relationships relevance and a value
01:03:18exchange all things we'll touch on later
01:03:20in this module now since effective link
01:03:22building is tough you need to understand
01:03:25why it's worth the effort in short
01:03:27backlinks are used by search engines
01:03:29like google to help rank web pages and
01:03:31it's been this way since 1998 when
01:03:33google created page rank page rank is a
01:03:36mathematical formula that judges the
01:03:38value of a page by looking at the
01:03:40quantity and quality of other pages that
01:03:42link to it and google confirms the
01:03:45importance of backlinks on their house
01:03:46search works page under their ranking
01:03:49useful pages heading they state if other
01:03:51prominent websites on the subject link
01:03:54to the page that's a good sign that the
01:03:56information is of high quality
01:03:59we also found a clear correlation
01:04:00between organic traffic and backlinks
01:04:03from unique websites in our study of
01:04:05over 1 billion web pages
01:04:07so while getting backlinks may be harder
01:04:09than let's say creating a blog post
01:04:11they're absolutely critical if you want
01:04:14to rank for competitive phrases and
01:04:16competitive phrases are usually the ones
01:04:18that will drive the most traffic and
01:04:20revenue for your business
01:04:22now we briefly touched on the main way
01:04:24of getting backlinks but not all links
01:04:26can or will be obtained through outreach
01:04:29so in the next lesson we'll talk about
01:04:31three methods to get backlinks as well
01:04:33as the level of difficulty and
01:04:35effectiveness
01:04:37hey it's ammo and welcome to the second
01:04:39lesson in our link building module in
01:04:41this lesson we'll talk about three link
01:04:43building strategies to get backlinks now
01:04:45before we get started it's important to
01:04:48set the expectations right for this
01:04:49lesson and talk about the difference
01:04:51between a strategy and a tactic to me
01:04:54strategies are higher level in the sense
01:04:56that it outlines the scope of the plans
01:04:59whereas tactics are more micro and often
01:05:02focused around smaller steps
01:05:04so the strategy sets you in the right
01:05:06direction and the tactics kind of define
01:05:08how you get there and we'll get into a
01:05:10few link building tactics later on in
01:05:12this module alright so when it comes to
01:05:14link building there are three main
01:05:16strategies to get backlinks you can
01:05:18create them
01:05:19buy them or earn them let's talk about
01:05:22what each method looks like their level
01:05:23of difficulty and effectiveness the
01:05:26first method is to create backlinks
01:05:28creating backlinks means to manually add
01:05:31links on one domain back to yours this
01:05:34can be done by adding your website to
01:05:35directories leaving comments on blog
01:05:37posts or adding your website's url to
01:05:40your social media profile
01:05:42anyone can do this with minimal effort
01:05:44so like almost all easy things in life
01:05:46they're generally not that effective
01:05:48from an seo and ranking perspective
01:05:51now buying backlinks is exactly as it
01:05:53sounds you pay webmasters or authors a
01:05:56fee and in return they'll link back to a
01:05:58page on your site now this is against
01:06:01google's webmaster guidelines and can
01:06:03potentially result in a penalty that
01:06:05might be anything from losing ranking
01:06:07positions or even worse getting your
01:06:09pages removed from google search index
01:06:12also buying links isn't exactly cheap we
01:06:15contacted 250 websites to ask if they
01:06:17sell links and we found that the average
01:06:20cost of buying one was nearly
01:06:22353 dollars and of course we didn't buy
01:06:25any
01:06:26in terms of level of ease if you have
01:06:28the money it's super easy to do because
01:06:30it's just the transaction
01:06:32now in terms of the effectiveness i
01:06:34would think that they're highly
01:06:35effective unless or until you get caught
01:06:39and in my opinion the risk isn't worth
01:06:41the reward especially if you want to
01:06:43build a business that'll stand the test
01:06:45of time the final way to get backlinks
01:06:47is to earn them and there are three
01:06:49common ways you can do this the first
01:06:51and most common are links that are
01:06:53earned through email outreach this is
01:06:55when you email other website owners and
01:06:57editors and ask them to link to you
01:07:00another way to earn backlinks is by
01:07:02becoming a source for an online
01:07:03publication or media outlet
01:07:06for example if a journalist references
01:07:08you in an article they'll often link to
01:07:10you and or your social media profiles
01:07:13and the final way is to earn backlinks
01:07:15organically for example if someone
01:07:18visits your page from a link on social
01:07:19media organic search word of mouth or
01:07:22wherever and decides to link to you then
01:07:24that's an earned link
01:07:26now even though 100 organic links may
01:07:29sound like the best way to get them i
01:07:31don't want you to bank on that these
01:07:33kinds of links are typically less
01:07:34consistent unless you're an extremely
01:07:36well-known brand with extremely
01:07:38well-crafted content and you're already
01:07:41getting significant exposure it takes
01:07:43time to build a reputation that's well
01:07:45trusted and for those organic links to
01:07:47come in on a regular basis and if you're
01:07:50just hoping and waiting you'll likely
01:07:52fall behind because your competitors
01:07:54will actually be busy building links by
01:07:56reaching out to other website owners
01:07:59generally speaking the harder it is to
01:08:01obtain a link the more valuable it'll be
01:08:03and for that reason we'll be focusing on
01:08:06streamlined tactics so that you can
01:08:07build a steady stream of backlinks to
01:08:09your page and get more traffic from seo
01:08:12now not all links are created equal some
01:08:15will propel your pages to the top of
01:08:16google while others can actually hurt
01:08:19your site so what makes the link
01:08:21actually good
01:08:22that's what we'll be talking about in
01:08:23the next lesson
01:08:25hey it's samo and welcome to the third
01:08:27lesson in the link building module today
01:08:30we're going to talk about the attributes
01:08:31that make a backlink good or high
01:08:33quality as i said in the last lesson not
01:08:36all backlinks are created equal for
01:08:39example if you spammed forms with links
01:08:41to your site those wouldn't and
01:08:43shouldn't hold more weight than let's
01:08:45say a link from the new york times
01:08:47otherwise backlinks would just be a game
01:08:50of quantity and google search results
01:08:51would reward the biggest spammers
01:08:54fortunately ranking on google doesn't
01:08:56work that way and quality backlinks are
01:08:58still a prominent ranking signal so with
01:09:01that said let's talk about the five
01:09:02attributes that make a backlink good the
01:09:05first attribute is relevance imagine
01:09:08this for a second you're going to visit
01:09:09greece for the first time next month and
01:09:12you need recommendations for places
01:09:14worth going to
01:09:15now you have a friend that lived in
01:09:16greece for their entire life and
01:09:19obviously knows every nook and cranny
01:09:21you also have a friend in the u.s who
01:09:23hates traveling and has never been
01:09:25outside of the states whose opinion
01:09:27would you hold higher
01:09:29obviously your greek friend in the same
01:09:31way links from a website about travel or
01:09:34greece would hold more weight than links
01:09:36from sites about technology or marketing
01:09:39because they're more topically relevant
01:09:41and authoritative for example you'll see
01:09:43that this page is ranking number one for
01:09:45the query how to devein shrimp if we
01:09:48look at their backlinks and also filter
01:09:50by one link per domain we can see their
01:09:52backlinks from different websites now if
01:09:55you don't have an ahrefs account then
01:09:57you can still see backlinks pointing at
01:09:58pages using our free backlink checker
01:10:01tool which i'll leave a link to in the
01:10:02description
01:10:03going back to the backlinks report
01:10:05you'll see this page from wikihow which
01:10:07is called three ways to peel and devein
01:10:10shrimp so the link is on a very relevant
01:10:12page
01:10:13scrolling down a bit you'll see this
01:10:15link from a page called shrimp with
01:10:17garlic sauce which again is relevant at
01:10:19the page level but you can also see that
01:10:22it's relevant at the domain level too
01:10:24just by looking at the domain name
01:10:26slimpalette.com
01:10:28both of these links are great from a
01:10:30relevant standpoint whereas a link like
01:10:32this one isn't very relevant at all the
01:10:35page is about firefox 3.5 which is a web
01:10:38browser it comes from a site about video
01:10:40games and computer hardware so an ideal
01:10:42link would be contextually placed within
01:10:45the body of the content where someone is
01:10:47quite literally recommending or
01:10:49referencing you
01:10:50alright the next quality of good quality
01:10:52links is authoritativeness
01:10:55if you're unfamiliar with authority in
01:10:56the context of backlinks it basically
01:10:58represents the so-called link power a
01:11:01web page has and this relates to how
01:11:03google page rank works
01:11:05as we discussed before both the quantity
01:11:08and quality of links matter so the more
01:11:11quality links a page gets the more page
01:11:13rank it earns and the more page rank it
01:11:16has the more authority it can pass to
01:11:18other pages through hyperlinks
01:11:20for example let's say that page c has
01:11:23two links one from page a and one from
01:11:25page b
01:11:27page a is stronger than page b and also
01:11:29has fewer outgoing links feed this
01:11:32information into the pagerank algorithm
01:11:34and you get the page rank of page c
01:11:37now this is obviously a simplified
01:11:38version of how pagerank works but the
01:11:41key point here is that getting links
01:11:43from high authority pages will likely
01:11:45have the greatest impact on your
01:11:46rankings
01:11:48now while google doesn't provide page
01:11:50rank or website authority scores we have
01:11:52two metrics at ahrefs that try to
01:11:54quantify it domain rating is our website
01:11:56authority metric and it represents the
01:11:58overall strength of a website's backlink
01:12:00profile an url rating is our page level
01:12:03authority metric which represents the
01:12:05overall strength of a page's backlink
01:12:07profile
01:12:08and you'll find both of these metrics
01:12:09throughout most of our tools giving you
01:12:12insights on referring pages
01:12:14now we've covered two very important
01:12:16parts of good quality backlinks but what
01:12:18we haven't talked about yet is the
01:12:20actual link itself
01:12:22so let's break down the anatomy of a
01:12:24hyperlink and talk about how the
01:12:26different parts relate to seo
01:12:28here's what a link looks like to your
01:12:29website visitors and if we look at the
01:12:32html code then it would look like this
01:12:35now there are three basic parts to a
01:12:36link that matter in seo the destination
01:12:39url anchor text and the rel attribute or
01:12:42lack of one
01:12:44the destination url is simply the url
01:12:46the person will visit when the link is
01:12:48clicked the second part of a link is the
01:12:50anchor text the anchor text is the
01:12:53clickable word phrase or image attached
01:12:55to the link so in our example site
01:12:58explorer is the anchor text which is the
01:13:00name of our competitor analysis tool
01:13:02google uses anchor text to better
01:13:04understand what a page is about and what
01:13:06terms it should rank for but building
01:13:09lots of links with keyword rich anchors
01:13:11is an example of a link scheme and may
01:13:13result in a google penalty as it looks
01:13:16unnatural for example if you had a post
01:13:18on the best golf balls and had 100 links
01:13:21pointing to it where the anchor texts
01:13:23were all best golf balls then it would
01:13:26look and be quite unnatural
01:13:28people often use anchors such as the
01:13:30company's brand name the title of the
01:13:32page the url or phrases like click here
01:13:36and here's some proof if we look at the
01:13:38anchors of backlinks pointing to our
01:13:39data study on featured snippets you'll
01:13:41see varying anchor texts like ahrefs old
01:13:44studies hr study research and even
01:13:48specific stats like 12.3 percent of
01:13:50search queries and 99.58 percent and so
01:13:54on in fact there are only 16 websites
01:13:57that have linked to us using the anchor
01:13:59text featured snippet
01:14:01with most earned links you have very
01:14:03little or no control over the anchor
01:14:05text so over optimization isn't
01:14:08something you really need to worry about
01:14:10and the last part of the link we'll talk
01:14:11about is the rel attribute some links
01:14:14contain a rel attribute which is
01:14:16intended to tell crawlers about the
01:14:18relationship between the linking page
01:14:20and the linked page
01:14:22and the three rel values that you should
01:14:23know about when it comes to link
01:14:25building are nofollow ugc and sponsored
01:14:29historically nofollow links told google
01:14:31that the linking page would rather not
01:14:33associate themselves with the linked
01:14:35page and for that reason google didn't
01:14:38transfer authority through those links
01:14:40but then google added a couple other rel
01:14:42values ugc which stands for user
01:14:45generated content and sponsored which
01:14:47signifies an ethical paid link
01:14:50they also announced that going forward
01:14:52they would look at these link attributes
01:14:53as hints meaning they may pass value
01:14:56through them at their discretion
01:14:58now if a link doesn't have any of these
01:15:00rel values then it will be called a
01:15:02followed link meaning the link can pass
01:15:05page rank and help boost your rankings
01:15:08seeing as this is still relatively new
01:15:10i'd recommend focusing on building
01:15:12followed links although that's only
01:15:14partially within your control
01:15:16now it's important to note that nofollow
01:15:18in ugc links aren't bad it's just that
01:15:20followed links are proven to pass
01:15:22authority one final thing i want to
01:15:24touch on is link placement
01:15:27prominent links are more likely to be
01:15:28clicked and it's believed that google
01:15:30takes this into account when determining
01:15:32how much authority a link transfers
01:15:35for instance an editorial link is more
01:15:37likely to be clicked than a link in the
01:15:39footer so all else being equal the
01:15:42former will be better than the latter
01:15:44so to summarize an ideal link would come
01:15:47from a relevant and authoritative page
01:15:49where the link is followed it would have
01:15:51a descriptive anchor and be placed
01:15:53contextually within editorial content
01:15:56but the truth is
01:15:58a lot of this is out of your control
01:16:00what is in your control is how you spend
01:16:02your time building links by using these
01:16:05five attributes to help qualify
01:16:07prospects or people that are worth
01:16:09contacting you'll spend your time
01:16:11building links that will actually move
01:16:13the needle
01:16:14now the easiest way for a beginner to
01:16:16start building links is to use tried and
01:16:18tested tactics and we'll be covering a
01:16:20few of them in the next lesson
01:16:23hey it's ammo and welcome to the fourth
01:16:25lesson in the link building module today
01:16:27we're going to talk about the
01:16:28step-by-step process to build backlinks
01:16:31as well as three cookie cutter link
01:16:32building tactics that are tried tested
01:16:36and completely beginner friendly let's
01:16:38get started with the general process to
01:16:40link building there are three general
01:16:41stages in link building prospecting
01:16:44vetting and email outreach
01:16:46when prospecting you're searching for
01:16:47relevant pages and websites that might
01:16:50link to you these might be people who
01:16:52are linking to a similar page as the one
01:16:54you're going to create those who have
01:16:56influence in your industry or people who
01:16:58are passionate about the topic
01:17:00the main goal isn't to find a perfect
01:17:02list of people this stage is about
01:17:04finding as many people as possible that
01:17:07fit a specific set of criteria and this
01:17:09criteria is usually dictated by link
01:17:12authority metrics as well as relevance
01:17:14as a result you'll usually be working
01:17:16with large and very unperfect sets of
01:17:19data
01:17:20the vetting stage is where you start to
01:17:22refine your list of prospects these are
01:17:24the people that you'll be contacting so
01:17:26you'll need to visit their websites and
01:17:28validate that they are indeed people
01:17:30worth contacting
01:17:31finally is the email outreach stage this
01:17:34is when you finalize your pitches and
01:17:36start emailing your vetted prospects
01:17:39now depending on the link building
01:17:40tactic you use the way you prospect vet
01:17:43and craft your email pitches will differ
01:17:46and this is actually quite difficult
01:17:47when you're new to link building
01:17:49fortunately there are a few dead simple
01:17:51but super effective link building
01:17:53tactics that are completely newbie
01:17:55friendly but before we can get tactical
01:17:58let's revisit our definition of link
01:18:00building because there are three main
01:18:01parts in it that will help you with
01:18:03prospecting vetting and email outreach
01:18:06again link building is the process of
01:18:08building relationships with other
01:18:09relevant site owners who want and will
01:18:12link to your content because it enhances
01:18:14theirs
01:18:15now i want to highlight the three main
01:18:17parts from this definition
01:18:19relationships relevance and a value
01:18:22exchange we already talked about the
01:18:24relevance part in the last lesson now
01:18:26we're talking about mainly the value
01:18:28exchange and what that looks like in
01:18:30some common link building tactics
01:18:32so let's dig into a few easy link
01:18:34building tactics and i'll show you what
01:18:36each stage of the link building process
01:18:38looks like in detail plus i'll outline
01:18:40the value exchange for each tactic to
01:18:42give you a better idea of what i mean
01:18:44alright the first link building tactic
01:18:46is to get free pr using hero
01:18:48hero or help a reporter out is a free
01:18:51service that connects journalists with
01:18:53sources and sources with journalists
01:18:55just sign up as a source and select the
01:18:57categories where you're qualified to
01:18:59answer questions you'll then get emails
01:19:02from journalists from various media
01:19:03outlets looking for sources on specific
01:19:06topics and these aren't just your
01:19:08run-of-the-mill publications in just a
01:19:10single email you'll see publications
01:19:12like parents.com
01:19:14popsugar and the houston chronicle to
01:19:16name a few just skim through the topics
01:19:19and if you find something where you can
01:19:21add value respond to the journalist with
01:19:23your expert opinion and if they use you
01:19:26as a source they'll usually link back to
01:19:28your site and social media profiles now
01:19:31the value exchange here is simple you're
01:19:33exchanging your expert knowledge for a
01:19:35mention and usually a link from an
01:19:37authoritative site
01:19:38from my personal experience i've gotten
01:19:40links from places like reader's digest
01:19:43inc magazine forbes and the huffington
01:19:45post to name a few
01:19:47now looking at the three stages of link
01:19:49building the prospecting part is as easy
01:19:51as it gets
01:19:52you sign up for a free service and
01:19:54journalists are actually looking for
01:19:56your help not the other way around which
01:19:59makes harrow super beginner friendly as
01:20:01for vetting you can simply scan through
01:20:03the results on a daily basis but that
01:20:05can be time consuming a simple tip you
01:20:08can use is to create a gmail filter so
01:20:10only relevant emails will surface in
01:20:12your inbox just log into gmail and click
01:20:15on the caret to bring down the search
01:20:17options next set the from field to
01:20:20harrow
01:20:21helperreporter.com
01:20:23then you'll want to set the subject to
01:20:25harrow within square brackets since all
01:20:27of their emails include that in the
01:20:29subject line finally set the has the
01:20:31words field to any keywords you want to
01:20:34monitor and you can also use the or
01:20:36search operator to include multiple
01:20:39keywords or phrases
01:20:41click search to see the results your
01:20:42search filters would include and check
01:20:44out some of the emails to ensure you're
01:20:46getting relevant results
01:20:48if everything looks good click on the
01:20:50caret again and then click create filter
01:20:53you'll then have the options to apply
01:20:55labels mark it as important or forward
01:20:58it to another team member to take care
01:21:00of
01:21:00now as for the email outreach part
01:21:03harold gives you an email address which
01:21:04will then be forwarded to the journalist
01:21:07so just respond to the given email
01:21:09address and write your response
01:21:11now obviously you're not going to be the
01:21:13only person emailing the journalist so
01:21:16here are a few tips you can use to
01:21:18improve your hit rate number one keep
01:21:20your emails as short as needed
01:21:23journalists get tons of emails and if
01:21:25they see a huge wall of text they
01:21:27probably won't even give your response a
01:21:30chance
01:21:31number two go after topics where
01:21:33journalists are likely looking for
01:21:35multiple sources
01:21:37for example this query from best life is
01:21:39seeking medical experts as in the plural
01:21:42form of expert
01:21:44these kinds of requests will usually be
01:21:46your typical listicle-styled posts so
01:21:48the more responses they accept the
01:21:50higher your chances of getting mentioned
01:21:52and linked to
01:21:54number three respond as quickly as
01:21:56possible journalists on hero will often
01:21:58give a tighter deadline to give
01:22:00themselves time to actually put together
01:22:02a good story plus some journalists
01:22:05believe that people who respond faster
01:22:07are better sources don't believe me
01:22:10here's what a journalist from reader's
01:22:11digest said to me the deadline was just
01:22:14to make sure i get people to respond in
01:22:16a timely manner i actually have the rest
01:22:18of the month to put the story together
01:22:20which is nice i find the tighter the
01:22:22deadline i attach the better the
01:22:23response is because the only people who
01:22:26go to the effort are ones who really
01:22:28have something relevant to offer
01:22:30obviously this doesn't apply to every
01:22:32journalist but it kind of makes sense
01:22:35all right tip 4 is to prioritize
01:22:37questions where you are an expert and
01:22:40use it as the first line in your pitch
01:22:43there will be days where you can't
01:22:44respond to every relevant request so
01:22:47prioritize the ones where you have the
01:22:48highest probability of getting sourced
01:22:51for example popsugar is looking for
01:22:53experts who can talk about why cats
01:22:56scratch furniture and how to stop them
01:22:58from doing it if you're a vet then you
01:23:00might start your email with something
01:23:02like hi jenna my name is sam oh and i'm
01:23:04a veterinarian with 12 years experience
01:23:07and a board member of the cat alliance
01:23:10clearly i'm not a vet but you get my
01:23:12point
01:23:12when you immediately qualify yourself as
01:23:15the right person to answer the question
01:23:17you'll likely get their attention of
01:23:19course you should be 100 honest so i
01:23:22wouldn't claim to be a vet when i'm not
01:23:24and finally follow all directions in
01:23:26their query for example this one says
01:23:29please be sure to include your full name
01:23:32pronouns title and credentials and the
01:23:34website you'd like linked with your name
01:23:37all right the next link building tactic
01:23:38is guest posting or guest blogging same
01:23:41thing
01:23:42guest blogging is when you create
01:23:43content for another website and the
01:23:45reason why this strategy works is
01:23:47because there's a clear value exchange
01:23:50they get great content for free and
01:23:52almost always they allow you to link
01:23:54back to your site whether that be within
01:23:56the content or in the author bio
01:23:58now guest blogging also provides another
01:24:01great benefit
01:24:02aside from a potential backlink you get
01:24:05the opportunity to get exposure to
01:24:07someone else's audience they've already
01:24:09done the hard work in building that
01:24:11audience you just have to write
01:24:12something that'll impress their readers
01:24:15now when you're prospecting you'll need
01:24:17to get a list of websites and there are
01:24:19a few ways you can do that the first way
01:24:21is to use google search operators just
01:24:23go to google and search for something
01:24:25like
01:24:26in title colon write for us wrapped in
01:24:28quotes and then a keyword that's related
01:24:31to your niche
01:24:32in this case this search query will show
01:24:34us pages that include the phrase write
01:24:36for us in the title and have the word
01:24:38golf balls somewhere on the page and
01:24:40this is a common footprint that websites
01:24:42use to attract guest writers now because
01:24:45you'll want to write for sites with some
01:24:47kind of link authority you can use
01:24:49ahrefs seo toolbar to see link authority
01:24:51metrics right within google search
01:24:53results and if you don't have an ahrefs
01:24:55account you can use our free website
01:24:57authority checker to see the domain
01:24:59ratings for these sites
01:25:01another way to find a list of sites fast
01:25:03is to use ahrefs content explorer
01:25:06content explorer is a searchable
01:25:07database where you can find pages on any
01:25:10topic along with both social
01:25:12and seo metrics to get started just
01:25:15enter a topic that's related to your
01:25:17niche and run the search
01:25:19next you'll want to set some filters to
01:25:21ensure that a you're getting relevant
01:25:23results and b that you're reaching out
01:25:25to websites that have some kind of link
01:25:28authority
01:25:29so first i'll set the language filter to
01:25:31english since that's the only language
01:25:33i'll be able to write in
01:25:35then i'll set a domain rating filter and
01:25:36set it to a range like 30 to 60.
01:25:40now if this is your first time guest
01:25:42blogging then you may want to set a
01:25:43lower range like 10 to 30 to get
01:25:46practice before pitching more
01:25:47authoritative sites or if you're a
01:25:50seasoned guest blogger then you can try
01:25:52something like 40 to 70.
01:25:54alright so next i'll enable this filter
01:25:57one page per domain which will narrow
01:25:59our results to one page per website and
01:26:01this is almost a must do kind of thing
01:26:04because there's no point in pitching the
01:26:06same website numerous times
01:26:08now with around two hundred thousand
01:26:10domains you might be wondering which
01:26:12ones allow guest posts the truth is you
01:26:15won't know until you ask but there's a
01:26:18way to improve your hit rate and that's
01:26:20to look at websites that have previously
01:26:22accepted guest authors
01:26:24to find those sites just click on the
01:26:26websites tab and make sure that your
01:26:28results are sorted by the number of
01:26:29authors
01:26:31basically the more authors you see the
01:26:33more probable it is that they accept
01:26:35guest posts
01:26:36either that or they have a big staff of
01:26:38writers
01:26:40from here you can export the results and
01:26:42then move on to the vetting stage
01:26:44at this point you'll want to do a quick
01:26:46check to make sure that the websites
01:26:47don't look spammy and that they're
01:26:49actually relevant to your site
01:26:51for example golfballs.com is clearly
01:26:54going to be relevant and it's not spammy
01:26:56at all seeing as it's just a regular
01:26:58e-commerce site
01:27:00as for metricscat.com the domain doesn't
01:27:03look like it's about golf
01:27:05and if you visit the site you'll see
01:27:06that it looks like a software company so
01:27:08we'd exclude this domain from our
01:27:10outreach list
01:27:11now another thing worth checking is the
01:27:13domain's site-wide organic traffic
01:27:16to do that go to site explorer and
01:27:18search for the domain
01:27:19next click on the organic search tab
01:27:22if the site is getting consistent search
01:27:24traffic like this then it's a good sign
01:27:26that the domain is in good standing with
01:27:28google domains that have an organic
01:27:30traffic like this is probably something
01:27:33you'd want to exclude when vetting sites
01:27:35reason being this huge decline in search
01:27:38traffic is telling us that google may
01:27:40have penalized the website so you
01:27:42probably wouldn't want to associate your
01:27:44domain with theirs now when you're
01:27:46vetting you'll likely want to find
01:27:48around 10 times the number of posts you
01:27:50can write in a week for example if you
01:27:53can write two posts per week then try
01:27:55and find 20 vetted sites reason being
01:27:58most people won't accept your post let
01:28:01alone respond to you alright let's move
01:28:03on to the next stage which is email
01:28:04outreach
01:28:06now when you're pitching websites for a
01:28:07guest post ideally you want to come up
01:28:09with a good reason as to why they should
01:28:11accept your post
01:28:13free content is great null but it's not
01:28:15necessarily so convincing that everyone
01:28:18will accept it so take some time to do
01:28:21your research on the site see how your
01:28:22expertise can be helpful for their
01:28:24audience or business
01:28:26for example if we look at the blog for
01:28:28golfballs.com you'll see that they have
01:28:31content on the best golf balls for kids
01:28:34and after searching through their site i
01:28:36found that they have another guide on
01:28:37the best golf balls for the longest
01:28:39distance now they're missing out on a
01:28:41lot of these best golf balls for blank
01:28:44and seeing as they're in the business of
01:28:46selling golf balls i could easily pitch
01:28:48them topics on something like best golf
01:28:51balls for high handicappers which
01:28:53according to ahrefs keywords explorer
01:28:55gets searched around 800 times per month
01:28:58globally so i might send them an email
01:29:00and say something like hey whatever the
01:29:02editor's name is i was digging through
01:29:04your site and saw that you have a couple
01:29:05of posts on the best golf balls for kids
01:29:08and for a distance but i was pretty
01:29:10surprised to see that you don't have one
01:29:12for other types of players i.e seniors
01:29:15being a high handicapper myself i spent
01:29:17hundreds of dollars on balls and
01:29:19countless hours on launch monitors to
01:29:21find the best ball for me if you're open
01:29:24i'd love to write a post for you about
01:29:26how to find the best golf balls for
01:29:28hacky golfers like myself i'm happy to
01:29:30share all the data and stats which i
01:29:32think will help people make an informed
01:29:34decision as they shop through your store
01:29:36is that something you'd be open to
01:29:38cheers sam
01:29:40now with this outreach email i'm showing
01:29:42them that i've done my research on their
01:29:43site i'm a golfer myself i have some
01:29:46unique data which i spent time and money
01:29:48to get and i'm also showing them how my
01:29:51posts could help them get more sales
01:29:53we'll talk quite a bit about outreach in
01:29:55the next lesson so let's move on to the
01:29:57final tactic which is the skyscraper
01:29:59technique the skyscraper technique is a
01:30:01link building tactic where you find
01:30:03content that has a lot of links create
01:30:05your own version on the topic but
01:30:07improve on it and then reach out to
01:30:09those linking to the popular post and
01:30:12ask them to link to yours
01:30:14now if we were to go through the
01:30:15prospecting vetting and outreach stages
01:30:18this lesson would be extended another
01:30:20seven to eight minutes so instead i'll
01:30:22link up a video which will take you
01:30:24through the entire process step by step
01:30:27in fact we have an entire playlist
01:30:29dedicated to link building tactics
01:30:31strategies and processes so i highly
01:30:34recommend watching that too
01:30:35now prospecting and vetting are pretty
01:30:37straightforward but the hardest part of
01:30:40link building and the part that makes
01:30:41link building challenging is outreach so
01:30:44the next lesson is dedicated to crafting
01:30:47highly effective outreach emails
01:30:50hey it's ammo and welcome to the final
01:30:52lesson in our link building module today
01:30:54we're going to cover how to do blogger
01:30:56outreach that leads to backlinks and
01:30:58this may very well be the most important
01:31:01lesson in this entire module because
01:31:04nearly all link building tactics require
01:31:06some sort of email exchange so today
01:31:09we'll cover the primary objectives of
01:31:10blogger outreach two common approaches
01:31:13and i'll break down the anatomy of a
01:31:15good quality outreach email let's get
01:31:17started so the primary objective of
01:31:19blogger outreach is to convince those
01:31:21with large targeted audiences to talk
01:31:24about you and from the perspective of an
01:31:26seo you want them to link to your
01:31:28website now outreach doesn't mean
01:31:30broadcasting meaning you shouldn't be
01:31:32sending every single person the exact
01:31:34same email like you would through email
01:31:36marketing for example this outreach
01:31:39email that i got is what typical blogger
01:31:41outreach looks like today
01:31:43first of all i can see that they didn't
01:31:44even take a second to check what my name
01:31:46is when literally two-thirds of all
01:31:49pages on my personal site have my full
01:31:51name on them instead they stuck with the
01:31:54generic there used it in the mass
01:31:56mailing software and broadcasted it out
01:31:59to hundreds maybe even thousands of
01:32:01people but the name thing isn't that big
01:32:03of a deal
01:32:04second this is clearly a generic
01:32:06templated email with zero consideration
01:32:09for the recipients the person says i'm
01:32:12writing because i saw your post here
01:32:14then they didn't even take a second to
01:32:16proofread the email and their
01:32:18justification for me to link to them is
01:32:20because it fits well in my post
01:32:23on top of that the person followed up
01:32:25with me three more times with nearly the
01:32:28exact same email all sent within the
01:32:31same 30 minute period
01:32:33this ladies and gentlemen is called spam
01:32:36and the results of these kinds of emails
01:32:38lead to nothing the page the person
01:32:40wanted me to link to got a total of two
01:32:43backlinks and both of them are
01:32:45irrelevant and look like they've been
01:32:47paid for and those backlinks aren't
01:32:49moving the needle since the page gets
01:32:51zero organic search visits these kinds
01:32:54of emails along with hundreds of others
01:32:55in my inbox are prime examples of why
01:32:58you need to write good quality emails
01:33:01otherwise you'll just blend in with the
01:33:03rest of the spam people get on a daily
01:33:05basis
01:33:06after all these are unsolicited emails
01:33:09now to be clear it doesn't mean that you
01:33:12can't use some sort of template to send
01:33:14a lot of emails efficiently for example
01:33:16i literally just got this email in my
01:33:18inbox and it says hey sam i just
01:33:21published a roundup post about the best
01:33:23personal blogs to read and i featured
01:33:25you in it and that's a link to his post
01:33:27then he explicitly says but i'm not
01:33:30looking for a share or anything like
01:33:32that i just wanted to say thank you for
01:33:34all the inspiration you've brought to
01:33:35the blogosphere and digital marketing
01:33:37world best of luck in your endeavors and
01:33:40keep up the good work on ahrefs youtube
01:33:42channel
01:33:43this email didn't come to my ahrefs
01:33:45email account it came to the one on my
01:33:47personal site so he clearly did a bit of
01:33:49digging before sending the email and i'm
01:33:51sure he sent a similar message to all
01:33:54117 people he featured so you might be
01:33:57thinking what's the point of this email
01:33:59if he's not asking for anything we'll
01:34:01get to that later in this lesson
01:34:03now the first email that i just showed
01:34:05you is one of the common approaches to
01:34:07blogger outreach it's called the shotgun
01:34:09approach where you build a broad list of
01:34:11targets load them up into an outreach
01:34:14tool and then blast out emails to anyone
01:34:17and everyone the opposite approach to
01:34:19this is the sniper method this is when
01:34:21you choose targets carefully based on a
01:34:23tight set of criteria and then send
01:34:26personalized emails
01:34:28of the two methods we recommend going
01:34:30with a sniper approach because
01:34:31shotgunning emails to anyone and
01:34:33everyone is a surefire way to burn
01:34:36bridgets plus no one likes spam and for
01:34:39that reason the rest of this lesson will
01:34:41be centered around the sniper approach
01:34:44so before we get into actually crafting
01:34:46your outreach emails let's quickly talk
01:34:48about who you should be contacting and
01:34:50how to find their email addresses
01:34:52in general you'll want to contact the
01:34:54author of the post if they work for the
01:34:56website for example this is a post
01:34:59written by joshua hardwick on the ahrefs
01:35:01blog
01:35:02seeing as his profile states head of
01:35:04content at ahrefs you know he works
01:35:06there and controls what gets published
01:35:08on the ahrefs blog
01:35:10now for this post by josh there wouldn't
01:35:13be any use in contacting him because he
01:35:15doesn't work for sitepoint in this case
01:35:17you'd want to contact the editor of the
01:35:19blog to find who that person is you can
01:35:21check places like the websites about our
01:35:24team page their write for us page if
01:35:26they have one or their company's
01:35:28linkedin profile
01:35:30now to actually find the person's email
01:35:32address the easiest way is to check
01:35:34contact in about pages this works best
01:35:37for websites with one author for
01:35:39websites that have multiple people
01:35:41involved like sitepoint or ahrefs you
01:35:43usually won't find individuals email
01:35:45addresses on their site so to find these
01:35:48emails you can use a tool like hunter.io
01:35:51go to their email finder tool and just
01:35:53search for their first and last name as
01:35:56well as the domain hunter will then give
01:35:58you their best guess in this case
01:36:00they're wrong but the success rate is
01:36:02generally quite high
01:36:04alright so if you've done the work for
01:36:05the lessons in this module to this point
01:36:07then you should have chosen one of the
01:36:08three tactics i outlined created a list
01:36:11of prospects
01:36:12vetted your list and found some email
01:36:14addresses so it's time to actually write
01:36:16the pitch
01:36:18now while there isn't exactly a
01:36:19streamlined formula for every outreach
01:36:22email you send i want to talk about the
01:36:24anatomy of a simple outreach email that
01:36:26has been effective for me for many years
01:36:28now and there are five main parts to a
01:36:30typical outreach email first is the
01:36:33subject line the goal of the subject
01:36:35line is simply to get them to open the
01:36:37email otherwise there's no chance at
01:36:40getting a response but you don't want to
01:36:42click bait them because that'll only
01:36:44leave a bad impression so when you're
01:36:46writing a subject line you want to
01:36:48briefly and accurately describe why
01:36:50you're emailing them and ideally evoke
01:36:53curiosity
01:36:54if we look back at my guest blogging
01:36:56outreach email from the previous lesson
01:36:58i showed you a hypothetical pitch where
01:37:00i asked if i could write a post for a
01:37:02golf site and share data i have on the
01:37:04best golf balls for high handicappers so
01:37:07i might use a subject line like new data
01:37:10best balls for high handicappers
01:37:12in my opinion the new data part evokes
01:37:15curiosity and the rest of the subject
01:37:17line explains the topic of the email the
01:37:20next part is the introduction and while
01:37:22there are numerous ways to write an
01:37:24intro i think it's best to start by
01:37:26telling them why you're emailing them
01:37:28and the goal of this part is to get them
01:37:30to read the next part of the email
01:37:32for example with our guest posting
01:37:34sample email i said i was digging
01:37:36through your site and saw that you have
01:37:38a couple of posts on the best golf balls
01:37:40for kids and for distance but i was
01:37:43pretty surprised to see that you don't
01:37:44have one for other types of players i.e
01:37:47seniors
01:37:48now i will admit that the first sentence
01:37:50could definitely be stronger but i'm
01:37:52basically saying that you've done this
01:37:54and this but looks like you're missing
01:37:56out on an opportunity here
01:37:58the next part of the email is
01:37:59qualification and justification
01:38:02simply asking someone for a favor and
01:38:04expecting them to see a mutual benefit
01:38:07is naive you need to show them why
01:38:09you're qualified and justify the pitch
01:38:12that we'll get to in a second
01:38:13for example if you're contacting someone
01:38:15to guest post then explain why they
01:38:18should accept your post over potentially
01:38:20hundreds of other submissions
01:38:22if you're asking them to add your link
01:38:23to a page on their site give them an
01:38:25actual good reason why they should
01:38:28so in our guest posting sample you'll
01:38:30see that i said being a high handicapper
01:38:32myself i spent hundreds of dollars on
01:38:34balls and countless hours on launch
01:38:36monitors to find the best ball for me
01:38:39so the fact that a i mentioned i'm a
01:38:41high handicapper and b i've tested
01:38:44numerous balls and gotten factual data
01:38:47from launch monitors qualifies and
01:38:49justifies what i'm about to pitch which
01:38:52again is a guest post about the best
01:38:54golf balls for high handicappers
01:38:57now to really drill in on the concept of
01:38:59qualification and justification let's
01:39:01look at an example email for the
01:39:03skyscraper technique
01:39:04a little while back we did some outreach
01:39:06to get links to our blog post on seo
01:39:09statistics so we email people with an
01:39:11email that looks something like this
01:39:14hi name i saw you mentioned how 93 of
01:39:17online experiences begin with a search
01:39:19engine on your page about how to do
01:39:21keyword research that's our reason for
01:39:23contact we then went on to say that stat
01:39:26is actually 14 years old more recent
01:39:29research suggests that this number has
01:39:31gone down to 68
01:39:33i think it's lower because social and
01:39:35other sources now account for around one
01:39:37third of traffic
01:39:39that's our qualification and
01:39:40justification for what we're about to
01:39:42pitch and obviously the next part of the
01:39:45email is the pitch
01:39:47the pitch essentially includes your ask
01:39:49as well as your value proposition and
01:39:51generally speaking the stronger your
01:39:53value proposition the higher the chance
01:39:55of getting a link so for a guest posting
01:39:58example i said if you're open i'd love
01:40:00to write a post for you about how to
01:40:02find the best golf balls for hacky
01:40:04golfers like myself and here's my value
01:40:07proposition i'm happy to share all of
01:40:09the data and stats which i think will
01:40:11help people make an informed decision as
01:40:14they shop through your store so not only
01:40:16are they getting data for free but i'm
01:40:18showing them how that can bring value to
01:40:20their bottom line now it's not always
01:40:23easy to think of a solid value
01:40:24proposition for example in our seo stats
01:40:27email our pitch was we publish this and
01:40:30a few other fresh seo stats here not
01:40:33sure if you're actively editing posts
01:40:35but might be worth an update if you are
01:40:37no pressure so what exactly is the value
01:40:40proposition we're helping bloggers keep
01:40:42their content up to date in fact we
01:40:44didn't even directly ask for a link yet
01:40:47we were still able to pick up 27
01:40:49backlinks we actually have a full
01:40:50three-part video series on this exact
01:40:53case study so i'll link that up in the
01:40:55description and i highly recommend
01:40:56checking it out
01:40:58alright the last part of the email is a
01:41:00simple one-liner to keep the
01:41:01conversation rolling
01:41:03simply put
01:41:04you don't want to end your email with a
01:41:06cold hard pitch the purpose of your
01:41:08first email should be to start a
01:41:10conversation so you might say something
01:41:12like is that something you'd be open to
01:41:14is there anything i missed what do you
01:41:16think do you agree with our conclusion
01:41:18or whatever
01:41:20now this is just a basic template you
01:41:21can use as you start blogger outreach
01:41:24but i don't want you to limit yourself
01:41:25within this box all you're really doing
01:41:28is talking to people and starting to
01:41:30build some kind of relationship just
01:41:33think about it like an in-person
01:41:34encounter you wouldn't go to a party and
01:41:37ask a complete stranger to buy you a
01:41:38drink you might strike up a conversation
01:41:41connect with them on a common interest
01:41:43and maybe buy the first round of drinks
01:41:45expecting nothing in return and as a
01:41:47result they might want to reciprocate by
01:41:49returning an act of kindness
01:41:51again the goal of the very first email
01:41:54you send is simple start a conversation
01:41:57and this brings us back to this outreach
01:41:59email that i got
01:42:00the person who mentioned me on their
01:42:02site specifically told me that he's not
01:42:04looking for a share or anything like
01:42:06that and he literally just wants to say
01:42:09thank you so what did that accomplish
01:42:11number one i actually read his email
01:42:14number two i responded to him and said
01:42:16thanks for the mention and number three
01:42:18should he email me again i'll probably
01:42:21open it because i'll recognize his name
01:42:23so while there will be times where it
01:42:25makes sense to ask for the link or guest
01:42:27posting opportunity right away there are
01:42:30a lot of times when it makes more sense
01:42:32to just start that conversation and see
01:42:35where it leads
01:42:36the final tip i want to leave you with
01:42:38is to only use your best work when
01:42:41sending email pitches
01:42:43you don't want to email anyone and
01:42:45everyone for every single piece of
01:42:47content you create
01:42:48for example if you had a golf site and
01:42:50you created a post on a topic like what
01:42:53is a handicap there's nothing
01:42:55interesting or unique about it yet it's
01:42:57still a topic you would probably want to
01:42:59cover
01:43:00coming up with a good reason for them to
01:43:02link to you on this topic will be tough
01:43:04plus time is finite so it's worth doing
01:43:07outreach for your best content because
01:43:09there's a higher probability that it'll
01:43:11result in backlinks
01:43:13all right so with everything you've
01:43:15learned up to this point you should be
01:43:16able to create content for your website
01:43:18that'll get traffic from search engines
01:43:20but there's still one piece to the
01:43:22fundamentals of seo that we haven't
01:43:24covered and that's technical seo
01:43:27hey it's ammo and welcome to the final
01:43:29module in ahrefs seo course for
01:43:32beginners throughout the next two
01:43:33lessons we're going to be talking about
01:43:35technical seo and technical seo is the
01:43:38process of optimizing your website to
01:43:40help search engines find
01:43:42understand and index your pages
01:43:45now for beginners technical seo doesn't
01:43:48need to be all that technical and for
01:43:50that reason this module will be focused
01:43:52on the basics so you can perform regular
01:43:54maintenance on your site and ensure that
01:43:56your pages can be discovered and indexed
01:43:59by search engines let's get started all
01:44:02right so let's talk about why technical
01:44:03seo is important at the core basically
01:44:07if search engines can't properly access
01:44:09read understand or index your pages then
01:44:12you won't rank or even be found for that
01:44:15matter so to avoid innocent mistakes
01:44:17like removing yourself from google's
01:44:19index or diluting a page's backlinks i
01:44:22want to discuss four things that should
01:44:23help you avoid that
01:44:25first is the no index meta tag by adding
01:44:28this piece of code to your page it's
01:44:30telling search engines not to add it to
01:44:32their index and you probably don't want
01:44:34to do that and this actually happens
01:44:36more often than you might think
01:44:38for example let's say you hire design
01:44:41inc to create or redesign a website for
01:44:43you during the development phase they
01:44:46may create it on a sub-domain on their
01:44:47own site so it actually makes sense for
01:44:50them to know index the site they're
01:44:51working on but what often happens is
01:44:54after you've approved the design they'll
01:44:55migrate it over to your domain but they
01:44:58often forget to remove them at a no
01:45:00index tag and as a result your pages end
01:45:04up getting removed from google search
01:45:05index or never making it in
01:45:08now there are times when it actually
01:45:09makes sense to no index certain pages
01:45:12for example our authors pages are no
01:45:14indexed because from an seo perspective
01:45:17these pages provide very little value to
01:45:19search engines but from a user
01:45:22experience standpoint it can be argued
01:45:24that it makes sense to be there some
01:45:26people may have their favorite authors
01:45:27on a blog and want to read just their
01:45:30content
01:45:31generally speaking for small sites you
01:45:33won't need to worry about no indexing
01:45:35specific pages just keep your eye out
01:45:37for no index tags on your pages
01:45:39especially if after a redesign the
01:45:42second point of discussion is robots.txt
01:45:45robots.txt is a file that usually lives
01:45:48on your root domain and you should be
01:45:50able to access it at yourdomain.com
01:45:53robots.txt
01:45:55now the file itself includes a set of
01:45:57rules for search engine crawlers and
01:45:59tells them where they can and cannot go
01:46:01on your site and it's important to note
01:46:04that a website can have multiple robots
01:46:06files if you're using sub domains for
01:46:08example if you have a blog on domain.com
01:46:11then you'd have a robots.txt file for
01:46:14just the root domain but you might also
01:46:16have an ecommerce store that lives on
01:46:18store.domain.com
01:46:20so you could have a separate robots file
01:46:22for your online store
01:46:24that means that crawlers could be given
01:46:26two different sets of rules depending on
01:46:28the domain they're trying to crawl
01:46:30now the rules are created using
01:46:31something called directives and while
01:46:33you probably don't need to know what all
01:46:35of them are or what they do there are
01:46:38two that you should know about from an
01:46:40indexing standpoint
01:46:41the first is user agent which defines
01:46:44the crawler that the rules apply to and
01:46:46the value for this directive will be the
01:46:48name of the crawler for example google's
01:46:51user agent is named googlebot and the
01:46:53second directive is disallow this is a
01:46:56page or directory on your domain that
01:46:58you don't want the user agent to crawl
01:47:01for example if you set the user agent to
01:47:03googlebot in the disallow value to a
01:47:05slash you're telling google not to crawl
01:47:08any pages on your site
01:47:10not good
01:47:11now if you were to set the user agent to
01:47:13an asterisk that means your rules should
01:47:15apply to all crawlers so if your robot's
01:47:18file looks something like this then it's
01:47:21telling all crawlers please don't crawl
01:47:24any pages on my site while this might
01:47:26sound like something you would never use
01:47:28there are times when it makes sense to
01:47:30block certain parts of your site or to
01:47:32block certain crawlers
01:47:34for example if you have a wordpress
01:47:36website and you don't want your wp-admin
01:47:39folder to be crawled then you can simply
01:47:41set the user agent to all crawlers and
01:47:43set the disallow value to slash wp admin
01:47:47now if you're a beginner i wouldn't
01:47:49worry too much about your robots file
01:47:51but if you run into any indexing issues
01:47:53that need to be troubleshooted
01:47:55robots.txt is one of the first places i
01:47:58check
01:47:59alright the next thing to discuss are
01:48:00sitemaps sitemaps are usually xml files
01:48:03and they list the important urls on your
01:48:05website so these can be pages images
01:48:09videos and other files insight maps help
01:48:12search engines like google to more
01:48:13intelligently crawl your site now
01:48:16creating an xml file can be complicated
01:48:18if you don't know how to code and it's
01:48:20almost impossible to maintain manually
01:48:23but if you're using a cms like wordpress
01:48:26there are plugins like yoast and rank
01:48:28math which will automatically generate
01:48:30sitemaps for you to help search engines
01:48:32find your sitemaps you can use the
01:48:34sitemap directive in your robots file
01:48:36and also submit it in google search
01:48:38console
01:48:40next up are redirects a redirect takes
01:48:42visitors and bots from one url to
01:48:45another and their purpose is to
01:48:47consolidate signals for example let's
01:48:49say you have two pages on your website
01:48:51on the best golf balls an old one at
01:48:54domain.com bestgolfballs2018
01:48:57and another at domain.com
01:49:00best golf balls
01:49:02seeing as these are highly relevant to
01:49:03one another it would make sense to
01:49:05redirect the 2018 version to the current
01:49:08version and by consolidating these pages
01:49:11you're telling search engines to pass
01:49:12the signals from the redirected url to
01:49:15the destination url
01:49:17and the last point i want to talk about
01:49:18is the canonical tag a canonical tag is
01:49:21a snippet of html code that looks like
01:49:24this
01:49:25its purpose is to tell search engines
01:49:27what the preferred url is for a page and
01:49:30this helps to solve duplicate content
01:49:32issues
01:49:33for example let's say your website is
01:49:35accessible at both http colon double
01:49:38slash yourdomain.com
01:49:40and
01:49:41https colon double slash
01:49:44yourdomain.com and for whatever reason
01:49:47you weren't able to use a redirect these
01:49:49would be exact duplicates but by setting
01:49:52a canonical url you're telling search
01:49:54engines that there's a preferred version
01:49:56of the page
01:49:57as a result they'll pass signals such as
01:50:00links to the canonical url so they're
01:50:02not diluted across two different pages
01:50:05now it's important to note that google
01:50:07may choose to ignore your canonical tag
01:50:09looking back at the previous example if
01:50:11we set the canonical tag to the unsecure
01:50:14http page
01:50:16google would probably choose the secure
01:50:18https version instead
01:50:21now if you're running a simple wordpress
01:50:23site you shouldn't have to worry about
01:50:24this too much cmss are pretty good out
01:50:27of the box and will handle a lot of
01:50:29these basic technical issues for you
01:50:31so these are some of the foundational
01:50:33things that are good to know when it
01:50:34comes to indexing which is arguably the
01:50:37most important part in seo because again
01:50:40if your pages aren't getting indexed
01:50:42nothing else really matters now we won't
01:50:45really dig deeper into this because
01:50:47you'll probably only have to worry about
01:50:48indexing issues if and when you run into
01:50:51problems instead we'll be focusing on
01:50:53technical seo best practices to keep
01:50:56your website in good health
01:50:59hey it's ammo and welcome to the final
01:51:01lesson in this module and actually it's
01:51:03the last lesson in ahrefs seo course for
01:51:06beginners in this lesson we're going to
01:51:08go through some technical seo best
01:51:10practices so you can keep your site in
01:51:12good health let's get started so the
01:51:15first thing you should do is ensure that
01:51:16your site structure follows a logical
01:51:18hierarchy site structure is simply the
01:51:21way you organize content on your website
01:51:23you can think of it like a mind map
01:51:25at the top you'd have your home page
01:51:28then you'd probably have main topics
01:51:29that branch out from your home page like
01:51:32your services page your blog and about
01:51:34page then from these main topics you'd
01:51:37probably have even more branches to
01:51:39other pages
01:51:40these branches represent internal links
01:51:42which are just links from one page on
01:51:44your site to another and they help
01:51:46search engines understand the
01:51:48relationship between these pages
01:51:50site structure also helps search engines
01:51:52to crawl your pages more efficiently
01:51:55which is why having a logical hierarchy
01:51:57is important
01:51:58now what we've talked about is pretty
01:52:00basic stuff and you may already be doing
01:52:03this but it can get more complex as you
01:52:05add more pages to your site like blog
01:52:08posts category pages or product pages we
01:52:11have a full video on how to use internal
01:52:13links to rank higher on google so i'll
01:52:15link that up for you in the description
01:52:17alright the second thing is to ensure
01:52:19your pages don't load slow
01:52:21as you may know pagespeed has been a
01:52:23confirmed ranking factor for desktop
01:52:25search since 2010 and in 2018 google
01:52:29announced that they'd be using page
01:52:31speed in mobile search rankings
01:52:33now you don't need to obsess over every
01:52:35millisecond it takes for your page to
01:52:37load google says the speed update as
01:52:40we're calling it will only affect pages
01:52:42that deliver the slowest experience to
01:52:45users and will only affect a small
01:52:47percentage of quarries
01:52:49so bottom line you don't want your pages
01:52:51to load slow
01:52:53and there are two very basic things that
01:52:55i think every website should do
01:52:57the first is to cache your website's
01:52:59content
01:53:00caching is basically a way to
01:53:02temporarily store copies of files so it
01:53:04can be delivered to visitors in a more
01:53:06efficient way and most web hosting
01:53:08companies that i've come across have
01:53:10caching features
01:53:12and the second thing you can do is
01:53:14compress your images
01:53:16compressing images makes your file sizes
01:53:18smaller and smaller files load faster
01:53:21you can use a tool like short pixel
01:53:23which has both a web interface and a
01:53:25wordpress plugin now if you want to take
01:53:27page speed a step further then it can
01:53:29get quite technical and complex
01:53:32so we actually created a full tutorial
01:53:34on how to speed up a wordpress website
01:53:36using cloudflare and a wordpress plugin
01:53:39so i'll leave a link to that in the
01:53:40description
01:53:41and the final thing i want to talk about
01:53:43is to do your best to stay on top of
01:53:45around 50 potential seo errors
01:53:49trust me it's not as bad as it sounds
01:53:51there are potentially hundreds of
01:53:53technical seo issues that can and some
01:53:56will definitely happen to your site some
01:53:58of these things include pages becoming
01:54:01broken that still have internal links
01:54:03pointing at them
01:54:04orphan pages which are pages on your
01:54:06site that have no incoming internal
01:54:08links
01:54:09and these are great because it can make
01:54:11it tough for search engines to actually
01:54:13discover them
01:54:14duplicate content issues and redirect
01:54:16chains to name a few
01:54:18now there's no point in me going through
01:54:2050 different potential issues because
01:54:22it'll only matter to you if you run into
01:54:25them so what i recommend you do is run
01:54:27scheduled website audits on your site
01:54:30and a website audit will give you a full
01:54:32analysis of potential issues that could
01:54:34be harming your website's seo
01:54:36performance
01:54:37if you're an ahrefs user you can do that
01:54:39using our site audit tool and even if
01:54:41you don't have an ahrefs paid plan you
01:54:44can sign up for a free ahrefs webmaster
01:54:46tools account which will let you crawl
01:54:48up to ten 000 pages on each website you
01:54:51own
01:54:51to get started go to ahrefs.com awt and
01:54:55sign up for your free webmaster tools
01:54:57account
01:54:58then you'll need to verify your website
01:55:00meaning prove that you actually own it
01:55:03you can do that using google search
01:55:04console which is the easiest method or
01:55:06if you don't have a search console
01:55:08account you can do it manually just
01:55:10enter your domain and click continue
01:55:13then verify your website using one of
01:55:15these three methods and i'll actually
01:55:17just go back and use the google search
01:55:19console method
01:55:20next you'll need to import your sites
01:55:23and i'll choose to run the first audit
01:55:24now schedule weekly audits and i'll also
01:55:27enable the crawl external links option
01:55:30to ensure that we catch any broken or
01:55:32redirected outgoing links
01:55:34hit import and the crawl should start
01:55:37running
01:55:38now after the crawl has completed go to
01:55:40the overview report in your site audit
01:55:42project and you'll immediately see
01:55:44things like your health score which is a
01:55:46percentage of urls on your site that
01:55:49don't have errors you'll also see the
01:55:51top issues we found on your site as well
01:55:53as the number of urls that had the issue
01:55:56so when you run into an issue you can
01:55:58click on the caret to see a description
01:56:00of what it means and also a short
01:56:02snippet of how to fix it and once you
01:56:05have an idea of what the issue is and
01:56:07how to fix it just click on the number
01:56:09under the crawled column to see the
01:56:11affected
01:56:12urls then it's just a matter of fixing
01:56:15them one by one or hiring someone to
01:56:17help and since you set up weekly
01:56:19scheduled audits you can revisit the
01:56:22overview report to see if there's any
01:56:24seo maintenance you can do
01:56:26and that wraps up ahrefs seo course for
01:56:28beginners everything you've learned in
01:56:30this course should be enough to get you
01:56:32indexed ranking and to keep your site in
01:56:35good technical health and i've linked up
01:56:37a playlist in the description to the
01:56:39entire course with all 14 videos which
01:56:42will be free forever thank you for
01:56:44joining me and i hope you were able to
01:56:46get a ton of value from the course and
01:56:48make sure to like share and subscribe
01:56:50for more actionable seo and marketing
01:56:52tutorials feel free to browse around our
01:56:54channel and if you have any questions
01:56:56leave them in the comments and we'll do
01:56:58our best to get to each one i'll see you
01:57:00in the next tutorial
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