In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice. The 2013 Google Hummingbird update featured an algorithm change designed to improve Google’s natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages. This Specialization will teach you to optimize website content for the best possible search engine ranking. Each course is intended to build on the skills from the previous course, thus we recommend you take the courses in the order they are listed. The Specialization culminates in a hands-on Capstone Project, in which you will apply your skills to a comprehensive SEO consulting task.
Assess Competitors’ On-Page SEO
This product offers all of the same features as Ahrefs or Moz, plus like Ahrefs can help you with content marketing. The term cost per click or CPC is involved in paid advertising but it can give you some additional insight into whether a keyword is lucrative. In simple terms, it’s the amount an advertiser pays each time a Google user clicks on an ad. You can measure your domain authority, as well as your page authority.
A comprehensive keyword research can be conducted using Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer. This means that the more effort you put into optimizing your site, the more traffic you can potentially receive. In contrast, paid traffic will immediately cease once you stop paying for ads.
YouTube is a Google-owned platform that has snowballed in recent years, moving up to take the second spot in the Top 100 Most Visited Websites by Search Traffic. This means that adding video versions of your content will help you target new visitors across a new channel. Facebook and Google use OG tags to pull in information, while Twitter uses its own meta information, known as Twitter Cards.
Build Quality Backlinks
According to Google, mobile websites should have fast loading times, be easy to navigate on a mobile screen and be easy to take an action like making a purchase or completing an online form. Mobile searches now make up half of all Google searches and that amount is likely to increase into the future. Visitors are also five times more likely to leave your site if it’s not set up for mobile. This has to do with how long it takes for your pages to load for a visitor. Page speed is important because it is one of Google’s ranking factors. It also can drive customers away who get frustrated at how long it takes for items to load.
Analyze Keyword Metrics
I’ve been using it for so many years that I can’t even remember when I started. When I clearly see which pages are losing traffic, I know exactly where to focus my efforts. And I can see each cluster’s average rank in the SERP, along with how it has changed (whether it’s improving or declining). Let’s say you’re in the travel industry and want to analyze Sandals.com. These are the tools my team and I use to drive over 867K+ sessions every month. Many of the other good SEO practices in this guide are good for UX, too.
- It will multiply your chances of getting into Google’s SERPs and driving traffic to your content.
- The difference between SEO and paid advertising is that SEO involves organic ranking, which has to do with Google’s algorithm and how websites naturally appear to users.
- Through results readily available on Google’s front page, making them perfectly readable on any device, such as a PC, tablet, or smartphone.
The second involves more of a natural branding strategy for online businesses. Like adding internal links, you should also link to pages on other websites to provide your visitors with extra context around the topics you cover. For example, you might link to a detailed guide about a specific topic that you don’t cover on your site. Doing only keyword-targeted content usually does not result in a good user BHS Links experience.