SEO Full Course 2026 | SEO Tutorial for Beginners | SEO Training | SEO Explained | Simplilearn

Welcome to Simply Learn's complete SEO full course. SEO or search engine optimization is the secret to getting your businesses noticed online. It helps your website rank higher on Google so that when people search for what you offer, your site appears at the top. The better your ranking, the more visitors you get and the more your business grows. By 2025, SEO experts will be in high demand. In India, beginners can earn between three lakhs to six lakhs per year, while experienced professionals can make up to 15 lakh to 25 lakh per year. In this course, you will learn how to pick the best keywords, improve your website content, and use smart strategies to beat your competitors. We will also cover the best SEO tools and how to track your progress and by the end you'll have everything you need to shine in the fast growing SEO world. So let's get started. Before we commence, if you are interested to start your career in digital marketing, then check out Simple Learn's postgraduate program in digital marketing in partnership with Podu University. This course provides a robust and industry relevant curriculum to help you become a certified digital marketing expert. This program covers essential digital marketing components like website creation, SEO, SEM, social media marketing, mobile marketing, content strategies and advanced topics like leveraging charge GPD and other generative AI tools as well. So hurry up and enroll online. Find the course link in the description box below and in the pin comments. Ever wondered how websites appear at the top of the search results when you type a query into Google? Well, that's the magic of SEO. SEO stand for search engine optimization and it's the process of fine-tuning your website to rank higher in organic that is unpaid search results. In simple terms, SEO is all about making your websites more visible to people who are searching for the things online. When someone types a question or a topic into search engine like Google, SEO helps your website appear higher up in the list of search results. This means more people are likely to click on your website. Just like how you are more likely to visit the shops on the main street than those tucked away in an LA. Study shows that organic search drives are whooping 53% of all website traffic. In fact, a recent survey by MOS revealed that 61% of marketers consider SEO to be the most effective digital marketing strategy. So in this video, we will cover what is SEO, types of SEO, how does SEO work, things to keep in mind while doing SEO. All right. So let's start with the first topic which is what is SEO. Imagine you have a fantastic store but it's hidden down a dark alley. SEO is like putting a bright lights and clear signs so people can easily find you online. That's what SEO stands for. That is search engine optimization. It's about making your website more visible in search engines like Google. When people search for something, search engines use complex algorithms to rank websites. SEO helps your website tick the right boxes for these algorithms. Good SEO means your website appears higher in search results which can lead to more visitors and potential customers. It's like putting up the big sign outside your shop so more people know you are there. When your website ranks higher in search results, it's like having a prime real estate in the digital world. Studies shows that most people don't click past the first page of search results. So being at the top can make a big difference in how much traffic your site gets. SEO isn't just about getting more visitors, though. It's also about attracting the right kind of visitors, people who are interested in what you offer and are more likely to become customers or engage with your content. By understanding what people are searching for and optimizing your website to match those queries, you can connect with your target audience more effectively. So this was about SEO. Now let's understand about the three types of SEO. All right, there are three main types of SEO you need to know about. First one is technical optimization. So this is like the backstage work of SEO. It involves doing things on your websites that improve its performance in search engines, but people don't see them. For example, submitting your website's sitemap to Google helps search engines understand and index your site better. The next one is onpage optimization. This is about making sure that your content on your website is top-notch and relevant to what people are searching for. You do this by using the right keywords in your content and providing a great user experience. It's like making sure your website is likable and helpful to visitors. The next is off-page optimization. So, this type of SEO happens outside of your website. It's all about building your website's reputation and authority on the internet. One big way to do this is by getting other reputable websites to link to yours. These links, called back links, tell search engines that your website is trustworthy and valuable. By understanding and working on these three types of SEO, you can boost your website's visibility and attract more visitors, helping your business thrive online. So, this was about the types of SEO. Now, let's understand how does SEO work. So, basically, there are some steps to how does SEO works. First, search engine crawling. Search engines like Google use automated programs called crawlers or spiders to browse the web. So these crawlers follow links from one web page to another collecting information about each page they visit. They gather data on the content structure and other elements of the web pages which is then stored in the search engines database. Now next one is search engine indexing. Once the crawlers collect information about web pages, the data is organized and stored in a massive database called an index. The indexing process involves analyzing the content keywords, meta tags, and other factors to understand what each web page is about. This index information allows search engines to quickly retrieve relevant results when someone performs a search query. All right. Now, the third one, which is search engine ranking. When a user enters a search query, the search engines algorithms shift through the index pages to determine which ones are most relevant to the query. The algorithm considers various factors like keyword relevance, content quality, website authority, user experience, and more to rank the pages. The pages that best matches the search query and meet the algorithms criteria appear higher in the search engine results pages. Websites with strong SEO practices, including optimized content quality, back links, and user-friendly design, are more likely to rank higher in search results. So, in summary, SEO, that is search engine optimization, boost a website's visibility online. We discussed three types. On page focuses on content, off- page builds site authority and technical ensures smooth site operation. SEO involves understanding how search engines find, organize and rank websites. To succeed, maintain quality content, use relevant keywords, and earn trustworthy backlinks. Regularly track performance to refine strategies. Remember, SEO is an ongoing effort requiring adaptation to industry changes for sustained online success. Imagine you wake up early in the morning, grab your coffee, and start scrolling through your phone. Your voice assistant suggests a new app to help you manage your day. And an AI powered ad pops up recommending a product you didn't even know you needed. But now you can't resist. The best part is you can try it virtually before buying right from your phone. This isn't the future. This is now. AI and cuttingedge technologies are redefining how brands connect with you, me, and the world. So, in today's video, we are diving into the six biggest digital marketing trends shaping 2025 and how they are transforming everything we thought we knew about reaching customers. From AI to VR, voice search to personalization, these trends are your guide to staying ahead of the game. And if you are a marketer, business owner, or just curious about the future, you will want to stick around. So, let's break it down. Let's kick things off with AI and machine learning because let's face it, AI isn't just a trend anymore. It's the backbone of digital marketing in 2025. Think about it. AI tools like Chat GPT or Jasper are doing more than just automating task. They are creating hyperpersonalized ad campaigns, analyzing customer sentiment, and even generating full-blown marketing strategies. Here's an example. Imagine running a bakery. With AI, you can send personalized messages to your customers, like reminding Sara it's her anniversary next week and suggesting a special cake. And for larger brands, tools like Sephora's chatbot don't just answer question. They recommend makeup shades based on your skin tone and preferences. How cool is that? The takeaway is AI doesn't just save time, it builds stronger connections with your audience. So start small, use AI powered tools for email marketing or customer segmentation and watch your campaigns go from good to gamechanging. Now while AI is changing how we create content, voice search is transforming how customers find it. Let's talk about the next big trend. Voice search and voice commerce. Let's suppose you ask, "Hey Alexa, find me the best running shoes under $100." Voice search isn't just a convenience anymore. It's how a huge chunk of consumers interact with brands. In fact, over 35% of US households now own a smart speaker. But here's the catch. Voice search optimization isn't the same as traditional SEO. Let's take an example. Suppose you're in a coffee shop. Ranking for best coffee in Seattle isn't enough anymore. Voice queries are conversational like what's the best coffee near me that's open now. This means you need to focus on longtail conversational keywords and make sure your website is optimized for local search. Voice search is all about meeting consumers where they are literally. While voice search is reshaping how consumers find products, AR and VR are also transforming how they experience them. Let's dig into it. The next exciting trend which is augmented reality and virtual reality. Augmented and virtual reality have stepped out of this gaming world and into marketing and they are here to stay. Picture this. You are buying furniture online and instead of guessing how it look, you use IKEA's AR app to place the couch in your living room. Or imagine trying to make up virtually like Sephoras lets you do to find the perfect shade before you buy. But it's not just the retail. Real estate agencies are offering virtual tours of homes and even car dealerships are letting customers experience test drives through VR. These aren't just flashy gimmicks. They are the game changers in customer experience. So if you are into any industry that involves visual products or spaces, AR and VR can set you apart. So start exploring platforms that align with your business and wow your audience. Speaking of engagement, let's talk about the king of content formats and videos. And yes, it's still dominating in 2025. Also, just a quick information. If you are interested to start a career digital marketing, then check out SimplyLearn's post-graduate program in digital marketing in partnership with PU University. This course provides a robust and industry relevant curriculum to help you become a certified digital marketing expert and the program covers essential digital marketing components like website creation, SEO, SEM, social media marketing and many more. A year of experience is preferred. So hurry up and enroll now and find the course link in the description box below and in the pin comments. So let's talk about the trend four which is the continual dominance of video content. We all know that video is everywhere. Tik Tok, YouTube shots, Instagram res, but it's not just about short form anymore. Long- form content is making a comeback, especially for tutorials and storytelling. Take live streaming as an example. A small business owner can use it to showcase products, answer customer questions in real time or even give behindthe-scenes tours. And it's not just for big brands. Tools like Canva and in short are creating professional looking videos easier than ever. The key is here balance. Use short videos to grab attention and longer ones to build trust. And don't stress about fancy edits. What matters most is delivering value. So now we have covered how to create content. Let's talk about how to make it feel personal at scale. We talking about the trend number five which is personalization at scale. Have you ever open Netflix and it feels like it really knows you? That's personalization at work. By 2025, consumers expect this level of relevance from every brand they interact with. Let's say you have an online clothing store. With tools like HubSpot or Marketto, you can create dynamic emails that recommend outfits based on past purchases, browsing history, or even local weather. It's about making every customer feel seen and understood. Remember, personalization isn't just a buzzword. It's the key to build loyalty in a crowded market. And finally, let's explore how social media and e-commerce are merging to create seamless shopping experience. We're talking about trend number six, which is social commerce and shoppable content. Scrolling through your Instagram, seeing a dress you love, and buying it without ever leaving the app. That's social commerce, and it's taking over. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and even Tik Tok are integrating shopping features that make the buyer's journey frictionless. Here's an example. Beauty brands are using Instagram shoppable tags to showcase products. Customers can see your lipstick in a post, click on it, and purchase all within seconds. And for smaller businesses, partnering with influencers can amplify your reach while building trust. And the secret is here. Create visually appealing interactive posts that don't just sell, but also engage your audience. So, there you have it. All the six digital marketing trends shaping 2025. AI, voice search, AR, video, personalization, and social commerce. These aren't just trends. They are the tools to transform your marketing strategy. Basically, Google follows three basic steps to rank a website. They need to crawl your website. They need to take what they crawl back to their servers. And when they take it back to their servers, your your web pages, they need to you have them available for indexing. So when somebody actually types in a keyword into Google.com, it'll be available to be found on organic search. So that's what indexing is all about. And then Google's job when somebody does type in a search query is to basically rank th those pages that they've indexed from number one to infinity depending on how many pages are relevant to that search query. So really it's about crawling, indexing, and ranking. So crawling is simply a process done by which Google has bots. And what these bots do is they go to your web server and they're going to crawl every page that they can find. And how do they find these pages? Well, they basically follow links. You might have heard the term spidering, but that's what they call search engine spidering. So basically what Google's doing is they're building a web, so to speak, all the links that they're following. And so when they can follow all these links on your website, they're going to be able to crawl them. And when they crawl them, basically they're going to take that content and store it on their servers. So it's available in their index. So based on this method, Google finds out which websites have relevant content and which ones don't based on certain keywords that are typed into Google. Because if they can't crawl your website, you're not going to be found. And if you can't be found, then you're not going to show up for relevant keywords. So, we need to make sure your site's available to be crawled. And we'll talk about that a little bit later, okay? But let's show you an example. So, let's just go to Google search. And if I type in the keyword simply learn, okay, I could see I have 1 million 10,000 results. Okay? And that's how many results are showing up for Simply Learn. Okay? Now, they may not all be SimplyLearn pages, but nonetheless, Simply Learned is ranked number one here organically. And there are 1,10,000 pages related to the keyword simply learn. Now when it comes to organic search, uh we don't want to get it confused with paid search. So anytime you see paid search, you're going to see something that says ad next to it. Okay? So we could see that there are paid ads here, but when it comes to organic search, those are generally below paid ads. And so that's where Google counts the 1 million 10,000 results. And so that's the whole idea behind crawling and indexing. Google's able to crawl SimplyLearn's website and based on all the pages that they gather, they're going to make those pages available in organic search. So if you type in a keyword and your web page is not available for indexing, then you're never going to show up for that keyword. So that's why it's important to make sure your website is available for crawling and indexing. And so when a user types a query on search Google search, the most relevant websites that are in Google's index are going to appear in the search results. So in the example I gave uh with simply learn, well simply learn is the brand name of the company SimplyLearn. So there's a lot of relevancy there. So that's why you see SimplyLearn show up here organically. Number one, like we mentioned about what is SEO and why SEO, we talked about that user experience. So there's a lot of factors that go into ranking. Relevancy being one of them. So in the SimplyLearn example, SimplyLearn is relevant to a lot of the SimplyLearn pages because that's who they are, SimplyLearn. However, SimplyLearn also needs to make sure that you know for their pages, the page load time is fast, meaning these pages load very fast for the end user. And Google also takes into account other factors like how long someone is staying on a website or are they bouncing meaning are they going to one page that they land on and then leaving the website. Okay. And so the user experience is very very important. There are other factors also like language and location. And so for example location if you do a search say in India the results are going to be a little bit different than say the results in the United States. Why? because Google is indexing as many web pages as they can find. So if somebody's doing a search in India, their results may be a little bit different than the results show up in the US because Google has different bots and these bots are crawling different pages at different times. And so Google's index is updating continuously, but it's not real time syncing. So if you do a search in India, you may not see exactly the same thing because both search engines, the Google in India and the Google in the US are may not be exactly synced up. So an example would be you know if you're looking for cafe. So if you search a cafe in say San Francisco, you're going to see different results. Now if you do a search for cafes in Mumbai, you're going to see different results. There's going to be local search here at the top. There may be some paid search but again you may see different results because one location but two Google search engines in India and United States google.com aren't exactly synced up exactly at the same exact time you do that search. So location is important, language is important and relevancy is important along with user experience. So all those are important factors in how Google ranks websites. Okay. So we're going to talk about the types of SEO. Now imagine you started a small business but it feels like no one knows it's there. That's tough right? But today we are going to help you change that. In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to use Mailchimp, a tool that helps you connect with customers through email. So what is Mailchimp? It's a popular platform that helps you send emails to your customers. make simple web pages and even set up automatic replies all without needing any tech skills. Mailchimp is used by many businesses around the world because it's easy to use and help you reach more customers. Today, I'll take you step by step through how to use Mailchimp, how to get customer contacts, create an email campaign, and set up automatic emails to keep your customers interested. And by the end of this video, you'll know how to use Mailchimp to grow your business and make sure your customers always remember you. So, let's dive in. You'll find the link to get started with Mailchimp in the description below. So, let's get started with our Mailchimp tutorial. First, just go to the Google and type mailshim.com login and just simply click on login from here. If you have an account, uh it's good. If you don't, then you have to sign up. Since I already have an account, I just need to log in here. Enter your username and password as well and just click on login from here. So as you can see we are directed to our uh Mailchimp's dashboard here. So this is our dashboard and we have opted for the free plan. So I'm using the free plan here. So this is the navigation bar as you can see. So, so after we have logged into this website, we'll go to the audience section here and just select sign up forms from here and we'll start this uh tutorial first by creating a signup form. So, you can also uh change the audience settings from here. So, this is our audience dashboard here. So, you can import the contact. So we'll start this first by looking at the audience section here where you can manage all your contacts. You can import them, manually add them or integrate them from another service as well. So if someone emails you to update their profile like suppose changing a birthday or promotions, you can also do that here. So if you want to add your contact here, you can just simply click on add your contacts and you can set up your audience just by adding your contacts here. So this is how you can add your contact loan from you can do it from your SMS also or you can import contacts using a CSV this txt file. So just skip this option for now. You can do it if you want to. So the next step is uh creating a signup form. So we'll just simply click on signup forms here and then we will select this option create new form. So we want a landing page here to be created. So we'll just simply you have all these option here. You can use form builder embedded forms on your website and share them on social media. So I'll walk you through setting up a simple signup form collecting essential information like email, birthday, business etc. So we just simply go to this create signup landing page name and here you can just page name is like tasty bakes is my planting page name. Okay and I'll just select begin here. From here you can select a template also. So I'll just simply click on the new generation template. So this is my template here and from here you can alter the style and the blocks also. So as you can see if you want buttons, product, promo code, you can also add them. So if you want to add logo just simply click on edit block. You can replace it with some file if you have just select upload here. And since I want a bakery store, I'll just insert this logo. So this is my logo here. And if you want an image to be added at the back of your form, just select image from here. And then you can just simply go on to this upload option. So as you can see, I have uploaded uh this image here at the back of my page. And I just want to make it small. So I'll just select again image display size. Just make it a bit small. Yeah, I want to just keep it like this. All right. And now if you want to just uh edit this content here, stay connected with our customers. You can just add whatever you want to be displayed here. Subscribe button is also there. And you see this is the about us uh option. So here you can just simply click on this thing. So from here you can just simply write something like sign up today with and indulge in the world of delightful tasty pigs. And this is my heading here. Okay. Just want to edit this style. So you can just simply click on style here and select color as well. This color is not visible. So the text style also you can change it accordingly and so I've just edited the text here as you can see sign up today for tasty delightful cakes and this is my content here and this is the form page so if you click this here you have the sign up form and from here whatever fields you want the audience to enter like suppose I want the email address the first name and the last name as well. You can just simply uh select from here. If you want birthday, company, phone number, address, you can select that also. But I just want to keep it uh minimal. So I'll just select all these options. And then I'll add the button text is here. Subscribe. You can also write something like sign up now or something. Send it to confirmation message. And this is the font side. And this will be displayed here. Success, you have been added to the audience. If you want to modify it, you can modify also, but I want to keep it like this and just select save and close here. So, as you can see, the page is being created. Now, I'll just select save and close. So, as you can see that the landing page is now ready. So, if you want to publish it, you can also publish. And this is the page title and the site icon. And if you want to edit the social share preview, you can edit here also. And this is the URL for our uh page and the audience and the tag also. If you want to edit the audience, you can uh keep it the audience bakery store or if you want whatever audience. These are the tags. Contacts who sign up will be tagged automatically. And this is the content of our website and the settings and tracking. So I think it's good to go. So I'll just click on publish here. So as you can see that our uh landing page is now ready. So we'll just simply we can share our page also. We can just simply click here to our page and we will be redirected to our page. So as you can see this is the page we have created. You have to enter your email address, first name and the last name and just click on subscribe. So this is the page we have created here. Like let's suppose you are entering your email address name and just you click on subscribe. So this thing will be shown here. Success, you have been added to the audience. And now we'll just go back to our page again here. So as you can see this is this is the recent form which we created the bakery store. So now that we have a landing page ready to capture customer details. Let's send them some deals. Go back to the main Mailchimp page and then click create. So we'll just go back to the main Mailchimp page which is this and we just select on create. And now we will create a regular email here. And we'll just select on this email. Create regular email. You can enter your internal email name. Suppose I want it to be tasty bakes. And we'll just select on begin here. So now you can edit the name also. This is the internal mail we have. So as you can see to you to whom are you sending this mail? You can add. So this is as you can see uh to whom are you sending this mail? You can add recipients here also from suppose I just now I subscribe to my form using this email id which is shown here and subject is also there since now we don't do not have much audience here so it's like this you can also uh send the time and the subject and write the content as well so you can add recipients what whomever you want to or suppose a group of people or contacts you can just import it from here and you can add subject also the subject name if you want to be good. Suppose the subject name I want it to be good cake uh deals for today and the preview text should be something like hungry exclamation grab a donut and just select save here. So this is how our uh subject would look like. You can also send time. You can edit the time here. You can schedule it actually whenever you want your email to be with your audience. So you can select the time here. So actually uh to schedule it, you need to upgrade your plan. But for now, I'm just showing you if you want to if you already have an upgraded plan, you can do it. You can just select on upgrade now. And the plans are not that expensive for standard. It's just around 500 contacts for 575 rupees annually. I mean you just have to pay 1150 per month. So if you want it you can just upgrade the plans and premium you need to pay 11,500 which is for 12 months and five standard plan is 575 and these are the benefits of offered here. So let's close this and yeah if you want to send them now you just select on send now and click save here. Next you have this content option. You can uh design your email. So we'll just click on design email here. And then you can select the template. Your email purpose style and the industry. The industry type is food and travel and style whatever style you want. Basic, minimalistic, designed, colorful. I wanted colorful. So I'll just select this email purpose newsletter. Whatever you sell products, thank you, welcome. You can do it accordingly. Suppose you want a welcome template, you can click on this welcome also. So, let's just we'll just go with the newsletter one. And here you can see that this is a free template here. And we'll just select apply. Wait for a few seconds. And this is our newsletter template. You can actually uh customize this. Set a logo. We'll just set the same logo here. Just select on the logo cake. And from here you can add images. Upload image. And then just select on this donuts. I want this donut to be displayed as an image. So this is the donuts which I have displayed here. And you can type the content design if you want to. Tasty Donuts. Subscribe and check out the dis check. Check out for more discounts. And you just select uh colors also. You can select here whatever you color you want it to be. Suppose I want to keep it minimalistic. So I'll just go with this. And then I think our uh newsletter email is ready now. So from here you can just click on save and exit. So this is how we have designed our first uh email here. And if you want to send this mail a regular mail newsletter you can do it. This is our email link here. You can also click and edit your custom URL. And if you want to add a social post, you can also add connect to Facebook or your Twitter and Instagram as well. And you can just send this uh email to the audiences you want to. And this is our newsletter email here. And we'll just click on send. So this is how we do it. So as you can see we have learned on we have learned about how do we set up our audience and then creating a land page and also setting up a regular mail how to create mail. So let's now see what other options are there. Now let's move on to the automations here. So you can also choose automations uh just simply you can email tagged customer. These are the pre-built journeys as you can see. If you want to build from scratch, you can also do that. So, we'll just uh click on build from scratch and you can just provide a name, the internal name, good donuts and just click on start building. So, we are creating a map of our contacts journey. So, this is how we will automate it. We can just choose a starting point here. So as you can see these are the starting points which are popular with other MM customers. The tag added send to mail, sign up for emails, birthday. So if you want to send a special discount, offer a gift, just say happy birthday, we can do that also. We just select on this and as you can see number of days before the date is reached. Suppose I want it to be 30 days and the field is birthday. You can save the starting point from how you want to automate your uh page and you can add a journey point here. You can uh send a mail and you can also send an SMS here and survey also. These are the option unsubscribe update contact. So we'll just select on send mail here. So the this is our journey and yeah if we want we can just do for test send test emails for now. Now if you want to upgrade your uh plan you can do it and then you can send this mails. So this is how we use tags to segment our audience and let's see let's go back to our homepage. We have learned on how to start a campaign automate a page learn how to uh set you know create a mail and send it to your audience. Also we have learned how to create a landing page. Now this is the audience dashboard. You can see we have also created a signup form as well. And uh this is the analytics. Let's move on to the analytics option and check what is there. So this is the analytics option here. And this is the date range. This is the marketing dashboard basically. So you can see the performance and you can also compare the message performance here. This is the performance all over the time. How your web page is performing and the conversions as well. the delivery total number of deliveries. So it's pretty good. But if you want to access this dashboard, you need to upgrade to standard plans. Let's move on and see how we can create reports also. So just select on report here. So see this is the report here and the bakery store one total contact one email subscriber. Since we do not have much number of subscribers and contacts here, it's just showing this much and view by status ongoing completed types. These are the types. Ads, postcards, surveys. You can check it by emails. You haven't sent an email. We haven't sent an email yet. So, this is how it's showing. So, so this is our landing page. As you can see, we can check and view the report also of our page. So, as you can see, this is the page. This is the URL. It was published on this much. The audience and the tags here. So, one visit, one click, one subscribe. Since we just made this uh website now we won't be getting much audience here. So let's go back again. Can also send emails here. Let's say we haven't sh we can create an email tasty bakes and just click on begin here. So uh we had already learned about this. Let's go back to the main page. How do we send an email? I think I already told you before. I think that's it for this uh we have this audience. We have already gone through this audience section here analytics as well. Let's check on the website. What do we have in website? So you can also create your website or you can connect existing Vex website as well. So if you want to create your website, you can set up your site here. You can also start selling products and offering services. But for this you need to connect it to your store. So let's see what do we have. If we want to set up a site, just simply click on this option. So this is the name I would like to use for my website here and just click on edit my site. As you can see this is a logo for our website and you can just simply edit from here. You can add pages also. So let's look at number of pages here. If you want to add page you can also add link as well. Website address and the name. So as you can see we have added a link over here. This is a website page. You can manage your site and you can also uh talk up to your brand. You can edit this accordingly. If you want to edit, you can also edit this. We have the styles also. So paragraph text the button and everything. If you want to change the button like this or you want to make your uh website heading something like this you can also do it accordingly and I want to keep it like this only. So I'll just select this font from here and the colors as well. The colors I'll just I like this one more but you can keep it like this. I think white looks better. So let's keep it white as only. Then we'll just click on preview here. And now you can edit your page. This is the tasty bakes and this is the logo. If you want to keep your uh discount option for your food, then you can just simply write here something like [Music] 70% discount for first time users. Grab a donut. Delicious cakes. So, whatever you wanted your content to be displayed, you can just uh write here. I think the spelling is wrong. And you can just edit this also. If you want it to be like this color, you can. If you want to apply a link, you can also apply a link here. If you want to add a link here, you can also do that. So, this is how we uh can make a website using uh Mailchimp as well. Like I think it's really amazing. You can do a lot of stuffs using this tool. And now we'll just click on done and we'll just select publish here. Accept the terms and condition. So as you can see we have our website ready. You can edit your site whenever you want to. And this is our website address, web address. And this is the traffic highlights you get. So we have learned everything now. How to create a page, write an email, organize campaigns, automations, audience, surveys, analytics, website as well. Let's check out what is there in content assistant. So from here custom designs in just a few click. You can just enter your website URL and if you want to import a brand you can just do it or if you want to set up your own brand you can also do that. For this you have to just simply click on set it up. And let's see what we have got. You can upload your logos. Just simply click on add logo. And now you can just select on continue. Can add your colors. Just click on next. You can choose your fonts also. Just click next here. Your brand kit is complete. This is how we can also create a brand kit. Uh these are the email templates here. And then we also have the integrations at last. So you can connect your apps and integrate it. So you can create a I've already learned how to create a website here. Also you can do a lot of stuffs using this and you can also import your site by uh using the Shopify store. If you want to sync Shopify customers products to Mailchimp and create highly targeted campaigns, you can also do this. You can connect your store with uh Mailchimp as well. Just simply you have to click on get started and if you want to do it, you can just do it accordingly. So yeah, so we have covered a lot today from setting up email campaigns, creating automation, building a website and also appointments, but for that you need to have an upgraded. If you are looking to boost your website's traffic or dominate search engine rankings, then today's video is just for you. We are diving deep into keyword research, a crucial part of any successful SEO strategy. By the end of this tutorial, you'll know exactly how to find the right keywords to help your content reach its full potential. So, let's get started. To kick off things first, let's understand what keyword research is. Now, keyword research is all about discovering the exact phrases and terms your potential audience is typing into search engines. Now, by identifying these keywords, you can create content that directly addresses what people want to know, buy, or learn about. This not only drives more visitors to your site, but also helps you connect with those who are most likely to engage with your content. In essence, keyword research is the backbone of a strong SEO strategy, guiding you in crafting content that resonates with your audience. Now that we know what keyword research is, let's dive into why it's so important. Picture this. You're hosting a party. Would you invite random people who might not even be interested? or would you carefully choose guests who are excited to attend? So, keyword research helps you do the latter by attracting the right guests to your website. When you know the exact keywords your audience is searching for, you can tailor your content to meet their needs. This increases your chances of not only driving more traffic, but also engaging visitors who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. The better you understand your audience search behavior, the more effective your content will be. Remember, it's not just about quantity. Getting the right kind of traffic is key to conversions and overall success. Moving on, let's talk about the different types of keywords you'll encounter in your research. This is important because not all keywords are created equal and understanding the distinctions can greatly impact your strategy. So, short tail keywords are broad and usually consist of one or two words like SEO or marketing. Now, these keywords have high search volumes, which means lots of people are searching for them. However, they're also highly competitive, making it tough to rank for them unless you have a very authorative website. Next comes longtail keywords. Now, longtail keywords on the other hand are more specific phrases like how to do keyword research for SEO. Now, while they have lower search volumes, they tend to be less competitive and more targeted. Attracting visitors who are further along in their buyers journey. For instance, someone searches for best budget laptops for students is likely closer to make a purchase than someone just searching for laptops. Now, next type of keyword is LSI, which is Latin semantic indexing keywords. Now, these are related terms that search engines consider relevant to your main keyword. Now for example, if your main keyword is digital marketing, then LSI keywords could be online marketing, SEO strategies or social media advertising. Now even in this example, if you have given best leather shoes, the LSIs would be official and casual wear, best footwear brand, urgent leather shoes etc. So using LSI keywords helps you create more contextually relevant content with search engines favor. Now, by balancing these types of keywords, you can create content that appeals to both broad and niche audiences, giving your website a better chance to rank well across different searches. So, all right, now that we have covered the types of keywords, let's explore some of the tools that can help you find them. So, keyword research tools are like treasure maps. They guide you to the keywords that can drive the most traffic to your website. Number one is Google keyword planner. So, Google keyword planner is a fantastic starting point, especially for beginners. It's free and provides a wealth of information including search volumes and competition levels for various keywords. You can also discover new keyword ideas based on what people are already searching for. Next is ahrefs. Ahres is a more advanced paid tool that offers in-depth analysis. It doesn't just give you keyword data. It also provides insights into how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword as well as clickthrough rates, CTR and related keyword ideas. So, ASF is particularly useful for competitor analysis, helping you see which keywords for your competitors are ranking for and identifying gaps in their content that you can exploit. Now, next comes SEM Rush. Now, SEM Rush is another powerful tool that goes beyond keyword research. It offers comprehensive data on keywords, including trends over time, and allows you to conduct competitive analysis, track keyword performance, and more. SEM Rush is a go-to for many SEO professionals because of its all-in-one capabilities. So, these tools simplify the process of keyword research, allowing you to focus on creating content that will resonate with your audience and perform well in search engine results. So, with so many tools at your disposal, the next step is figuring out how to actually find the best keywords for your content. So, here's a step-by-step approach. Number one, start with a brainstorming session. So you can list down potential keywords related to your topic. Think about what your audience might search for and consider different variations of those phrases. So use the keyword research tools we just discussed to analyze these keywords. Pay close attention to search volume, competition, and user intent. The goal is to find keywords that have a good search volume but aren't too competitive. And next, consider user intent. This is crucial. Ask yourself, what is a searcher hoping to find? If someone is searching for best travel laptops in 2024, they're probably looking for product reviews or recommendations. Tailor your content to meet that specific intent and you'll have a much better chance of converting those visitors into customers. So, by following these steps, you can pinpoint the keywords that will not only drive traffic, but also ensure that the traffic is relevant and likely to convert. Now, one of the most effective ways to find highquality keywords is by analyzing your competitors. This might sound like a spy mission, but it's completely above board and incredibly valuable. So, tools like SEM Rush allow you to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for. So, this gives you insight into what's working for them and more importantly, it highlights gaps in their strategy that you can exploit. For instance, if you notice that a competitor is ranking well for a keyword like affordable SEO tools, but their content is outdated or lacking in detail, you can create a more comprehensive and up-to-date piece to outrank them. So by leveraging competitor insights, you can stay ahead in the SEO game, ensuring that your content is always relevant and competitive. Now, finding the right keywords is only half the battle. The next challenge is using them effectively in your content. So here's how you can do that. Number one, place your primary keywords in strategic locations such as title, meta description, headers, and throughout the content. This signals to search engines that your content is about, helping you rank for that keyword. Number two, avoid keyword stuffing. This old school tactic doesn't work anymore and can actually hurt your rankings. Instead, focus on naturally integrating keywords and using variations. For example, if your primary keyword is digital marketing strategy, you could also use online marketing strategy or effective digital marketing tactics to make your content more readable and engaging. Now, the third one is using LSI keywords to add depth and context to your content. This not only improves readability but also helps search engines understand the broader topic of your content which can positively impact your rankings. Remember the goal is to create content that's both optimized for search engines and enjoyable for your readers. Lastly, keyword research is not a set it and forget it process. It requires regular monitoring and adjustment. SEO is a constantly evolving field and what works today might not work tomorrow. So, make it a habit to regularly check how your keywords are performing. Use tools like Google Analytics to track your rankings and see which keywords are driving the most traffic. If you notice that certain keywords are underperforming, consider tweaking your content or trying out new keywords. So, by staying on top of your keyword strategy, you can ensure that your content continues to perform well and adapt to changes in search trends. And there you have it, a comprehensive guide to keyword research. I hope you found this tutorial helpful and that you are now ready to start finding the best keywords for your content. Remember, keyword research is all about understanding your audience and creating content that meets their needs. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel and ring the notification bell so you never miss an update. Google Tag Manager. Thanks for joining and let's get started with this Simply Learn webinar. So, let's start out with YTM. So let's just say you're Sam and you have your own ecommerce website and you want to understand how people are interacting with your website. Well Sam, today's world of websites contain a lot of interactivity. Everything from videos to PDF downloads to commenting to form submissions uh to all sorts of chat functionality interactivity going on throughout the website. So there's just a lot that you need to track outside of just page views. And so really what GTM does is they help you track all these things I just mentioned. Everything from somebody clicking on the play button of a PDF to somebody clicking on the submit button of a form to somebody entering in something on a chat function. So that's what GTM is. So why GTM? Because it helps us track all that interactivity. So all GTM is is really allows you to really place a piece of Java code which is just script and this script that's added to a web page to collect information. So that's really what a tag is. It's just some script that gets put on a web page in order for you to collect information like page views, clicks, etc. And they send it to third-party tools. Okay, so that's what GTM does. it it basically allows you to take all these tags that collect information and you can use them in GTM. So if you want to for example collect how many people you know enter a chat functionality and start chatting well you're going to take that script and you're going to put it in GTM and GTM will then allow you to start tracking that information. So that's really what GTM is. is it just allows you to put tags into a container or think of it as a toy box. You have all these toys and you want to track. Well, you can put all those those toys or tags in a toy box or container. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that. But before we get into GTM, let's just say, you know, you're communicating with your developer and there's a new user request on your web page and you want to update the tag. Well, your developer considering it's probably a small update to your website, is probably going to not um hesitate and is going to go ahead and turn around and do it normally. And so, normally what happens is the developer is going to go to the website and update the tag. Well, what if you have a few things that you want to track? All those things I mentioned before from downloads to clicks to, you know, somebody checking out to watching a video. Well, your web master, your web developer is going to go, "Well, hold on a second." Now, all these requests are going to take time. I need to put them into the work queue, so to speak. Well, what happens is when they go into work, usually it's going to take some time. And in some cases, you as a marketer need to launch a campaign, and you want to get that tracking uh added to the website in time for the campaign launch. So, you want to go ahead and quickly turn around the tracking for that particular campaign. Let's just say you're launching a campaign and you're sending people to a landing page that has a form submission and you want to be able to track how many people click on the submit button of that form submission. Well, if you need to turn that around, your developer is like, "Well, I need to put that in a work queue." The timing isn't going to always work out between you and your developer is my point. And so, that's where GTM comes in because there is a solution. update your tags faster. And that's Google Tag Manager. So when we say GTM, that's what GTM stands for, Google Tag Manager. It's a place for you to add tags quickly and easily. So tags, remember, are just snippets of code that allow you to track things on your website interactivity interactivity. And basically, when you have GTM, you can bypass the web master and do it quickly and easily. So that's what GTM is all about. So why GTM? Because we just identified two benefits. One, you could track all the interactivity on your website and two, you can bypass your web developer or web master. And so that's the benefit of GTM. So the benefit, you get those tags updated very quickly via Google Tag Manager. Okay. So that's what tag manager is. So, what we're going to talk about today is specifically what Tag Manager is and what it does. We're going to list some of the benefits of Tag Manager. We're going to show you how it works and then we're going to show you how to get started with Tag Manager. Tag Manager, if you're not familiar with working with web masters and dealing with JavaScript and tags and all this jargon is just new to you today, okay, well, don't fret. Sit back. We're going to take it slow. This is an introduction into Google Tag Manager. Again, let's start out with what is Tag Manager. So, we've already introduced it to some degree because we already introduced this as a tool where you can put all your tags into a toolbox, toy box or container, so to speak, right? And we already mentioned that, hey, you can bypass your web master. So, you're probably thinking, well, if I'm if you're not familiar with Tag Manager, how can I bypass my web master? Well, first of all, it's a free tool and it's a Google tool, hence the name Google Tag Manager. And it helps you really, that's the main point is deploy and track tags on your website bypassing your web master. So that's Tag Manager. And so examples of tags that can be deployed via Google Tag Manager are numerous. These are just some examples like Google Analytics, Facebook's pixel tracking, or Google Ads. There's no limit into the number of tags you can track in tag manager. There is no limit. You can add any number of tracking tags in tag manager. Okay. So, some of the benefits. Well, again, I we just listed two. You can put any tag into tag manager and track that onto your website. And we know you can bypass your web developer or web master. And what it also does is it also allows you to test and deploy your JavaScript codes quicker. So remember these JavaScript codes or snippets of codes are just there to track certain things on your website whether that be a page view or somebody clicking on a play button or tracking somebody who converts or even just goes to your website. So the biggest benefit is you can take that snippet of code. Let's just say Facebook. Let's just say you're doing Facebook marketing and you want to put that Facebook pixel on your website so that you could track people who come from Facebook and convert. Well, you don't need to put that Facebook pixel on your website. You can go right to Tag Manager and you can put that snippet of code right in Tag Manager really quickly. And the the other benefit here is all tags are managed in one place. And that's that to me is really a good benefit because when you start adding tags on your website and you have some tags in tag manager, it just gets very confusing. So ideally all the tracking code you have on your website needs to be in tag manager. Think about that. All the tracking. So if you're doing Bing or you're doing Facebook or you're doing Twitter or you're doing LinkedIn and you're doing Google, you're doing all this type of marketing on all these different platforms, you're going to have tracking code for all these different platforms. And instead of putting all that code on your website, return going to slow down the slow load time of your web page and website, you want to put them all in tag manager so they can be organized and you know exactly what you're trying to track. And the other great benefit of tag manager is there's a versioning control. So let's just say you have added tags to your website via GTM for the last 6 months. Well, and let's just say you add another tag yesterday. If you added that tag yesterday and something doesn't work, well, you can just roll back to a previous version. It's that simple. So, you have versioning and that's that's a good thing. When you have versioning, you can control what gets published. And if something doesn't work after it gets published, then you can roll back to a previous version. So, it's a a piece of mind, so to speak. Just because you've add code to your site, there's no guarantee it's going to work. And so, you can always control what version you're dealing with in Tag Manager. And we'll talk a little bit more about that. So the biggest benefit here to me with tag manager is you have event tracking. And so we talked about some of the things you could track on your website from videos from play buttons to somebody clicking on the stop on the video or pausing it all the way to somebody again chatting or let's just say somebody clicking on that purchase button on your website. Okay? And you want to track all these different things, these different interactivities and buttons. Well, event tracking is what you're going to use to track all those buttons. And to me, this is the biggest benefit of Tag Manager. And I'll show you some examples as we go along. And if we didn't mention it already, I'll mention it again. It is free. Tag Manager is free. There's no limit. So once you have Tag Manager going, you can add as many tracking codes as you want. There's no limit on the number of tracking codes you can add to Tag Manager. Okay? So it's free and you can use it to its fullest advantage. Okay? So, it's also high security, meaning that it has different levels of permissions. Okay? So, you can have uh somebody just go in and look at the different tags and tracking codes you have in GTM or you can have somebody who is very familiar with tag manager and can go in and add the tracking code to tag manager and then publish that tracking code when it gets added. So, those are all the benefits. Let's talk about how it works. Now, specifically, how does Tag Manager work? because you're like, Rob, okay, again, a lot of jargon, you know, you you got tags and JavaScript and and versioning and publishing and all this other stuff. Well, I know I'm throwing a lot at you at once, but just bear with me here, okay? So, let's start talking about how it actually works. So, you have a website, okay? Whatever that domain is, you have a website. And there's chances are on your website you have some form of interactivity, whether that be a video, whether that be a blog, whether it be a form submission, you have a website with some interactivity. And let's just say you're even thinking about getting ready to launch some type of campaign on maybe Google or Facebook and you want to drive traffic to your website. Fair enough. You're joining the millions of other websites that are out there that have interactivity that also drive traffic to the website. So, in comes Google Tag Manager. And so tag manager is important because again we know we want to track people coming from that Facebook campaign or that Google campaign interacting with our site. So if you are running Facebook and you are running Google Analytics, well guess what you want to put that tracking code in tag manager. So Google Analytics being a Google product works very nicely with tag manager. Facebook has its own tracking code and but you still want to be able to track people who come from the Facebook campaign to your website. So you're going to get that tracking code from Facebook and put it in tag manager. That's generally how it works. So here information from your website is shared with another data source through tag manager. So think about that. If I add Facebook tracking code to tag manager or let's just say I add Google Analytics tracking code to tag manager, tag manager is the one that's pushing out and doing all the heavy lifting. They're the ones that are controlling what code gets fired and what code doesn't. So if you're putting the code in Tag Manager, Tag Manager is controlling the code. Think about it that way. And let's show you an example of what that looks like. So here I am. I'm in Tag Manager. I just went to tag manager.google.com google.com. And here I could see a list of tags. So in our conversation, we're talking about tracking Facebook and we're talking about tracking Google Analytics. Well, Google Analytics is easy because it's a Google product. So here, if I look at all the different tracking code I have on my website through Tag Manager, let's just take a look at Google Analytics. So if you're going to use Tag Manager, you might as well put the Google Analytics code in here. So here I can see I have Google Analytics as a tag in tag manager. Now for Facebook, if I'm running a Facebook campaign, well I can take that pixel tracking and put it in GTM as well. And here I can see Facebook pixel. That is that code is added to GTM. I just basically took what Facebook gave me and put it into Google Tag Manager. So you could see I can add Facebook and Google Analytics. And again, I can't stress it enough. Any tracking code from any platform, I can add to Google Tag Manager in order to track the behavior from those sources. So, let's take a little bit deeper dive into how Tag Manager works. So, I just showed you an example of how you could take Facebook and Google Analytics code and put it into Tag Manager. But if you're not familiar with Tag Manager, then how do I do that? Well, let's talk about the structure and how Tag Manager works. So when you have a tag manager account, you have a container. Remember I mentioned toy box earlier. You have a bunch of toys. If they're they're code and you're tracking different bits of code from different platforms like Facebook, think of those as toys and you have a toy box. Okay? Well, that's what this code is. And that's what a container is. The code is the code and that's going to go into the toy box or container. And so the way tag manager works is you have tags, triggers, and variables. So, if I take my Facebook tracking code and put it into a container, I need to set up a tag and a trigger. Okay. So, let's take a look at what that is. So, first, if I go back to tag manager, I'm going to have an account. And if I have an account, I'm going to have a container. So, here I'm just going to click on an account with a container. And a container is nothing more than what website you're adding the tracking code to. Okay, that's all the container is. We're just letting Tag Manager know this is the website we're adding all this code to. So you have tags, triggers, and variables. That's the structure of tag manager. So tags are just what it says, tags. What are we trying to quote unquote tag? Well, if it's Google Analytics, that's easy. Here I could see I have Google Analytics added. So if I click on Google Analytics, here's my tag. And if I take a little bit of a deeper dive there, since Google Analytics is a Google product, it integrates already with tag managers. It's pretty easy. I can just choose Google Analytics. Then I'm going to check page view. And that's my tag. Now, every tag needs a trigger. Okay. So, I need to tell Tag Manager how or when to fire the Google Analytics tracking code. So in this case, I'm going to tell Tag Manager to fire on all pages. So if I get somebody a visitor to my website, Analytics is firing on all pages. So whatever page that visitor lands on, Google Analytics is going to fire. So that's really what it comes down to is I have a tag and I need to tell Tag Manager when to trigger that tag. That's really what the structure of Tag Manager is. It's tags, triggers, and variables. And variables, what we're going to talk about here in a couple minutes. But you have a piece of code. You're going to go ahead and put that into tag manager. You're going to tag it, and then you're going to fire that trigger. So, let's take a look at another example here. If I go back here, you can see Facebook. Well, here's my Facebook pixel. Okay, that's my tag. So, when is it going to fire? Well, it's going to fire on a specific domain or subdomain. That's basically what we're doing. We're trying to tell GTM when to fire that particular tag. So those are the three main components. A tag, okay, which is going to contain the JavaScript code that you get from say Facebook. The trigger. So you're going to go into tag manager and tell tag manager when to fire that code. That's the trigger. And then you have variables. And so variables are basically just additional information that tag manager may need for your tag and trigger to work. So that's what a variable is. It's there to get the tag and trigger to fire. So variables are divided into builtin and userdefined variables. So common used variables include say page path or page URL or host name or click class. Again, they're there. And these examples I just gave you are there to get your tag and trigger to work. Think about it that way. They're just that's a component. And if I go into tag manager here and here on the left side, I can see variables. So remember, I have builtin and userdefined. So builtin means that tag manager already built these for me. So in case I need to get my trigger to work with my tag, I can use a variable. So those are built in and then I have userdeed. So these are what I define. These are what I created. And again, the variables are there to get the tag and trigger to work. Okay, so that's the job of the variable. The job of the tag is to host that JavaScript code. Okay, in the case of Facebook or analytics, that's where we're putting our code. So here if I click on Adwords remarketing again it's a Google product so I don't really need to even deal with code I'm just going to select Google Adwords remarketing. Okay. So you could see GTM integrates nicely with some of the other Google products. But let's just say you have a Facebook pixel tracking code. You're going to choose custom and you're going to put the code here. So that's part of the tag. And then the trigger again is there to get the tag to fire. So you're telling GTM when to fire the tag and the variable is there to help you make sure that that trigger and that tag work together. So that's how all three kind of work together. You need the tag to put the code. You need the trigger to tell GTM when to fire the tag and code and the variables there to help you define when that tag and trigger should work or how it should work. So again, review tags are they're just small codes of JavaScript or tracking pixels on your website. And so tags are allowed to manage events like scroll tracking, remarketing, clicks, downloads, files, play buttons, you name it. Even clicks on external links. For example, let's just say you have a click uh or a Facebook uh icon on your site. And when somebody clicks on it, they go to Facebook. You want to maybe track that. You're going to create a tag. Okay, the trigger is there because you need to tell GTM when to fire that tag. So it's a certain condition whether it's, you know, fire the tag if the URL equals facebook.com or some other condition. So the tag cannot be created until the creation of the corresponding trigger. So tags and triggers go together. You can't just create a tag and not have a trigger. Otherwise, your tag will never fire. And then the variable is there again. It stores the information when defining a trigger or transferring data to tag. So a variable has a variety of data. Okay? So you pick and choose the variable you want to use with that trigger. Okay? So you're making sure that by defining a variable, you're making sure that you're telling GTM how that trigger should be fired. So let's take a look at another example here of how all three play together. If I'm in this account, I'm in this container. If I look down here, I could see Google Optimize. That's another Google product. So, what I'm doing here is I just chose Google Optimize as my tag. It's already integrated. So, what does that mean? I don't even need to deal with any code. I'm just going to select optimize. Well, we have the tag Google Optimize, but we need to tell GTM how to fire that. And so, here we're going to tell GTM to fire it on all pages. So that's basically a very simple example because we're firing it on all pages. So if I want to look at something specific again, Facebook, here's my tag. Here's my code. What's my trigger? Well, my trigger is it's going to fire on specific pages. How do I know that? Well, if I look at the trigger here, I could see the trigger is a page view, but I'm telling it to fire on this particular host name. So the tag and trigger go hand in [Music] hand. So how to get started with Tag Manager. So first things first, you have to create that account. So you're going to go to tagmanager.google.com google.com or you could do a search for Google Tag Manager and you're going to create your account. And then when you create your account, what's going to happen is you're going to set up a container. And when you set up a container, you have choices. So you could set it up for your website, for an app on iOS, or maybe Android, or you can even set it up for AMC an accelerated mobile page. So most people by default are probably going to set up Tag Manager for their website. And so when you do that, when you actually select website, what's going to happen is you're going to get some Google Tag Manager code in return. And so the whole idea here is you're going to do a swap. What you're doing is basically you're saying, "Okay, Google, I'm going to take this Google Tag Manager code and I'm going to put it on my website. I'm going to put it on every page of my website." So notice tag manager has two scripts. One goes in the head as high as possible. The other goes into the body tag as high as possible. And so what you're doing is you're making a deal. You're putting this tag manager code on your website. And in return, every code you deal with, whether that be Facebook or analytics or optimize or remarketing or whatever it is, is going to go in GTM. Okay? It's going to go into the container you created. So, you need the tag manager code on your website in order for tag manager to work. Okay? So, when you add this code to your website, then you're free to start adding all sorts of tags to your container. But if you don't have this tracking code on your website, then none of the tags you add to your container are going to work. So, that's the idea behind the container. And then one thing I wanted to mention on the account is it's a Google account. So when you create your account then make sure it's the same account you use with say Google Analytics or some other Google product. That's a good best practice is always use the same email address when you set up your account so that it integrates nicely across all the different platforms. Meaning you can go from say Google Analytics right to Google Tag Manager in one browser without having to log out or login. Okay. So when you create the account you're going to create your container. If you choose web, then you're going to be asked to place code on your website. And when you place that code on your website, then you are free to start using tag manager. And that means you're free to start adding tags. So if you want to know more information about installing Google Tag Manager, then what I would recommend is visit the quick start guide website of GTM. So again, if you're curious as to where that code is located in Google Tag Manager, well, when you create an account and you create a container, that container is going to have a specific ID. So if I click on that specific ID, here's where I can get my code. Okay, so again, when I'm logged in to Tag Manager, I'm going to click on workspace, but in the top navigation, I'm going to see my unique GTM ID. If I click on that, that's where my code is going to be located. And so again, your code needs to go in the header. And there's another script that needs to go in the body. And if you're not sure how to add the code to your website, well, you can always click on the quick start guide here. Okay? And that'll take you to a quick start guide page, a reference page related to Google Tag Manager. So let's talk about creating a tag. So once you get Tag Manager installed, I'm sure you're excited to get going and create that first tag. So let's talk about how to create a tag in Tag Manager. So when you're in Tag Manager, all you need to do is basically you're looking at all your tags. If you click on tag in the left side navigation, you'll see all your tags and there's a new button there. So you just click new. And so basically what you're going to do is you're going to create your first tag. And so what I would recommend once you get tag manager installed on your website, I would recommend setting the first tag up as Google Analytics. So that will get you going with tracking page views on your website when some when somebody visits your website. Okay. So ideally that's what you want to do. You want to get Google Analytics as your first tag and tag manager. So, what I'm going to do is because Analytics is a Google product, it's already integrated nicely with Tag Manager. So, I'm just going to click on Google Analytics. It's going to be a page view. That's what I'm tracking. And now I have to set up a variable. And so, what it's going to do, it's going to ask me to set up select a variable. And so, what you're going to do is you're going to select new variable. And what you're going to do is you're actually going to go and add your tracking ID here. That's going to be your variable. So, where do I get my tracking ID in analytics? Well, if I'm in analytics, I'm going to go to admin and then under property settings, I'm going to see my tracking ID. And all you need to do then is go to tag manager and paste. Copy. First, you got to copy over that tracking ID. Then, you're going to go to tag manager and to paste it. And then that's going to create a variable for you. And then when you create that variable, you're going to see it in the dropdown here. So, I've already created it. And basically that's your tag with a variable. Then what are you going to do? You're going to set up a trigger. So see I have some triggers already set up. You're going to see a default trigger already set up for you and that's going to be all pages. So ideally what you want to do is you want to select all pages in order for analytics to fire on all pages. So that's what we're doing. We're setting up a trigger. We're basically telling Tag Manager, hey, if I get a visitor to any page on my website, then I want you to fire Google Analytics. So, that's basically in summary how to set up your first tag. And my recommendation is your first tag should be Google Analytics. And when you set up Analytics, you're going to have to set up a variable for the tracking ID. And so, you get the tracking ID again from admin property settings. Copy and paste that tracking ID over. Save it. You have your variable. That variable is going to be included in with the tag. Then your trigger is going to be all pages. And there you go. You have your first tag. You have your first variable. You have your first trigger. So that's basically what you want to do. And once you've added that tag, once you've added that trigger, then the only thing you need to do now is basically publish the tag. And so anytime you save a tag, you're going to go ahead and submit it. so that way it gets published. So again, what you're going to do is let's take a step back here. You're going to choose new tag. You're going to choose analytics from the drop- down menu. You're going to choose page view. Then basically you're going to add your tracking ID so you could set up the variable. And then basically that's what you need to do. Okay? You're going to add that tracking ID. And then voila, that's your tag with a variable. And then once you've done that, then you're going to click submit. So when you click submit, you're basically saying, hey, I want this tag to go live now, this tag and trigger. And once you've done that, then analytics is ready to go. And anytime somebody goes to your website on any page, tag manager is going to fire Google Analytics. So the great thing here is you have something called Google Tag Assistant, and that's an extension that works with Chrome. And so when you've actually added tag manager to your site or you have analytics running in tag manager, you can confirm if those tags are firing properly. So let's take a look at how Google Tag Assistant works. Okay. So if you just do a search for Google Tag Assistant, you're going to see here that it's basically just an extension that works in Chrome. And it unfortunately it only works in Chrome browser. It doesn't work in any other browser. So go ahead and install that extension into Chrome. And when you do that, you're going to see this nice icon here in your browser. And now if you go to any website and I click on Google Tag Assistant and I click on enable. Okay. So basically I'm loading Google Tag Assistant. And now once I refresh the page, I can see that this particular site has Google Tag Manager installed. And not only does it have tag manager installed, I can see that it's also has Google Analytics running. I have also Google Optimize running and I have Google Ads remarketing tag running in tag manager. So that's what tag assistant does. It allows you to see if one tag manager is on the site and if it is great, what other tags are firing on this particular site? So tag assistant's telling me I have these particular tags firing on that site and they're firing within tag manager. So tag assistant is a great way to confirm if one tag manager is on the site and two what other tags are firing on the site. Now another way you could confirm if tag manager is firing on the site is you can go into preview mode. So even before you submit and publish your tag and trigger, you can click on the preview mode. So if I click preview in tag manager, so basically that's going to put me in preview mode. And so what does that mean? Well, that means that now I'm free to go to my website and see if those tags are firing. And so let's take a look at what that looks like. So if I go to the website and just click refresh, then what's going to happen is Tag Manager is going to load in preview mode just as you see here. Okay. So that's going to take a second, couple seconds to load up. And now what can I see in preview mode? I could see that I have GTM firing, but I also have some other tags firing on this page. Remarketing, I have Google Analytics, I have Google Optimize, I have some other tags firing as well. And so the preview mode shows me what tags are firing on any given page. And I can also see what tags did not fire. Okay, so here I have a number of tags already in GTM, but they didn't fire on this particular page. So let's just say I clicked on the donate now button. I'm still in preview mode. So I'm going to be able to see what tags fired. Now I could see I have a couple of tags that have fired on this particular page. and then I can see what tags did not fire on this page. Okay, so that's the preview mode. You can use the preview mode before you even submit a tag and trigger to see if it fires. And that's the great benefit of tag manager. So if you're not sure if something's going to fire or not, then you can always go into preview mode. Um, and if you are sure it's going to fire, then you can go ahead and submit it. So you can leave preview mode and just go ahead and submit that particular tag and trigger. So here I'm going to leave preview mode and now once I'm done and I'm sure the tag is going to fire and go ahead and submit all my changes that I've worked on in terms of setting up tags and triggers. So that's really GTM in a nutshell. So I have my tags. Okay, my tags are just snippets of code that I'm going to put in whether that be Facebook or vet tracking or any other Google product like optimize or page view. Then I have my triggers. My triggers are there to tell GTM when to fire that tag. And the variables are there to help those tags and triggers work together. So remember that particular variable we set up for Google Analytics. Okay, so here it is right here because we want to tell GTM what property to specifically fire in Google Analytics. So that's why we set up that variable. But there are all sorts of variables Google Tag Manager has built in or variables already created for you or you can specifically define a variable. So variables are there to help the tags and triggers work together. So when you set up a tag, you set up a trigger, you use a variable, you can always go into preview mode, preview it by going to the website, seeing if it fires. If it fires, then voila, you can go ahead and click submit, and that will publish the tag and trigger, and you're good to go. That's pretty much how Tag Manager works. And again, I can't stress that there's an unlimited number of tags you can add to Tag Manager. There's no limit. So you got everything from anything from Google to non- Googlele to event tracking, okay, to Facebook to anything that you want to track, you want to be able to put into Tag Manager. And again, there's versioning. That's one of the great benefits of Tag Manager. So if I want to go back to an older version, I can simply do that. So here you can see I'm on version 32. That's how Tag Manager works. And I can't stress that, you know, Tag Manager is there to help you track interactivity on the site because if you have a site that's interactive, that has a video, that has a download button, let's just say, you know, you have all sorts of newsletter signups, Facebook, YouTube buttons on your website, just like this website does, and you want to be able to track how many people click on that particular button. Well, you're going to need Tag Manager. And when you have Tag Manager, you're going to be able to track all of these button clicks and interactivity on your website. Choose from over 300 in demand skills and get access to 1,000 plus hours of video content for free. Visit Skill Up by SimplyLearn. Click on the link in the description to know more. We're going to talk about how to rank number one on Google. So, let's get started. And um let's go with the scenario that you have a friend named Sam and he has a website where he sells shoes, but Sam doesn't understand why his website's not ranking number one on Google. And so typically to rank number one on Google, there are some factors involved. And those are factors that are going to help Sam get his website ranked number one on Google so he can sell his shoes, get traffic and convert that traffic to conversions. So there are factors involved and so what are those factors? Well, it always starts with keyword research. So, in order to rank for a website where you sell shoes or you sell products, other products like clothing or food or you're an automobile website, you know, you're a mechanic, it doesn't matter whether you're selling to customers or selling to other businesses, you have to start with the keyword research. And so, we're going to go into really explicit detail on how to conduct a proper keyword research. And then the second factor involved is high quality content. So in order to rank high on Google search, you need to have high quality content. So we're going to go over what's involved with creating high quality content. Then we're going to take that content, we're going to optimize it using onpage elements and website level factors. So, we're going to take into account what's involved with your website and what's involved with specific pages on your website in order to rank number one on Google. Then, we're going to get into the offsite engagement. So, when it comes to ranking on Google, you need to optimize your website and you need to do some elements off your website. You need to be engaging off your website, meaning on other websites. And so, we're going to talk about what's involved with off-site engagement. So SEO being a major channel for most companies and websites where the opportunity to drive a lot of traffic is there but you have to earn that reward. The reward is a lot of traffic but you have to earn the reward and there's a lot of work involved. And so ideally what we want to do is follow what we call the 8020 rule when it comes to search engine optimization and ranking on Google. And what do we mean by the 8020 rule? Well, 80/20 means we're investing 20% of our effort and 80% of the results are obtained. So, we want to invest 20 and get back 80. That's basically what we mean by 8020. So, for example, if 20% of our targeted keywords bring in 80% of the traffic, then that's following the 8020 rule. Or 20% of our landing pages drive 80% of the overall traffic, that's following the 8020 rule. or 20% of our back links pass 80% of our link juice. That's the 8020 rule. Meaning these targeted keywords, these targeted landing pages, these trying to target back links using offsite engagement. We want to put in 20% of our effort on those keywords, landing pages, and back links in return for 80% of the results. So without further ado, let's get started with the keyword research. Let's talk about that keyword research for a website with shoes. And and it doesn't really matter what particular product you have. If you need to rank number one on Google, it all starts with the keywords as I mentioned before. And so in this example, if you have a website where you sell shoes for kids, you're going to want to be found for certain keywords. So the obvious keyword here would be shoes for kids. Well, every keyword that you target has search volume associated with it. So that means when we talk about search volume, we're talking about how many people on average type in that keyword or related keyword on Google.com or Google search. And there's always an average number of searches associated with every keyword. And we call that search volume. How much search volume? So obviously if we're going to target a keyword, we want to have as much volume as possible. However, there's always going to be competition for those keywords, meaning there's always going to be other websites who want to rank number one on Google for the same keywords. And we call that competition or difficulty. So for every keyword, you're going to have volume and you're going to have competition or difficulty. And the difficulty ranges as well depending on the tool you use. And we'll get into that in a minute. But search volume is how much on average people are typing in that keyword or close variance of that keyword. And the difficulty is measured in terms of for kids is highly relevant, has high volume, and low competition, then that's a keyword we want to target. So we always want to focus in on those three areas. So there's always a trade-off with keywords. So, shoes for kids might have high volume but also might have high competition or difficulty. If we look for another keyword that's just as relevant, for example, shoes for children, it may still have high search volume, but the competition or the difficulty may be lower. And if that's the case, then that may be a better keyword for us to target. Instead of something highly competitive like shoes for kids, we can focus on another relevant keyword like shoes for children with just as much volume and lower competition. And the reason why we want lower competition is because we want to be able to rank for that keyword. So the higher the competition, the harder it is for us to rank number one on Google for that keyword. And so the whole idea beyond keyword research is analyzing and choosing the best keywords. So we want to identify a list of keywords that are always relevant. We want to choose the keyword that your competitors are ranking for. And we want to use thirdparty tools to choose keywords to identify which keywords have low competition and what keywords have high search volume. So, one thing to take into consideration when you're doing keyword research is that the longer the keyword phrase or in other words longtail keywords or keywords with three keywords in the phrase or more, you're going to always have less competition. But there's always a trade-off with longtail keywords, meaning the longer the keyword phrase, there's going to be less volume, but the trade-off is less competition. And so what we want to do is we want to brainstorm some ideas and find those relevant keywords. So let's look at an example here. So if we go to Google ads, so Google ads has a tool called keyword planner. And let's just say I have a a website where I'm selling dried figs. And if I'm selling dried figs, I want people to buy these dried figs. However, in order to attract them, I want to be able to show them that, hey, we have a a bunch of recipes. And if I show you a bunch of recipes where you can use dried figs, maybe you'll buy these dried figs to using these recipes. And so we're going to look for keywords related to bread recipes because if we can optimize for our recipes page for bread, then that will attract an audience who wants to make bread and use dried figs with those bread recipes. So that's the example I'm going to give here. And so if I look at the keyword planner in Google Ads, if I just type in bread recipes, what Google is going to do is they're going to give me an average monthly search volume. So I can see the average monthly search volume here is 60,500. And so in order to do keyword volume and the competition you're getting for certain keywords. So if I go into a spreadsheet here, my theme of keywords is bread recipes. My keyword is bread recipes and my volume therefore is going to be 60,500. However, if I go back into Google's keyword planner, Google's telling me the competition is low. So that's great. I want high volume. I want low competition. But how low is low? So we want to be careful. So if we're going to put in numbers into a spreadsheet, we want to figure out what that competition really is for the keyword bread recipes. So if I go to Google and just type in bread recipes, I'm going to be able to see 771 billion results for the keyword bread recipes. Now, is 771 billion our real competition? Maybe, maybe not. What we want to do is put in a syntax. And we want to put in the syntax all in title and then colon space and then our keyword. And the reason why we do that in search is because we want to be able to identify the true competitive number or the true number of websites who are trying to rank for bread recipes. And if we put in the syntax all entitle colon and then our keyword bread recipes, we'll be able to see that there are 998,000 results. That's a lot lower than 771 billion. So that means that 998,000 sites or listings have the keyword bread recipes in the title tag. And the title tag is what shows up in the search engine results. And so if I look down and scroll down here, I can see bread recipes are in every one of these title tags. So title tag is an important element to rank number one on Google. And we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But if we understand that there are 998,000 results with bread recipes in the title tag, then this tells us that those are the websites who are trying to rank number one on Google for that keyword. And therefore, those are the websites we need to jump over in order for our website to rank number one on Google. And so therefore, I'm going to put in 998,000 in my spreadsheet as the competitive number. And so now I could see for the keyword bread recipes, I have 60,500. And if my comp competition is 998,000, then my KI or keyword effectiveness index or in other words, the ratio of volume to competition is 6%. So that's nothing more than volume divided by competition. So that tells me that my KI or my ratio between volume competition is 6%. So remember, we want more volume than we want competition. So, anytime you do a keyword research, you're going to find a number of different relevant keywords. So, if I go back into Google's keyword planner, if I typed in bread recipes, you could see that Google is going to give me a number of different keywords related to bread recipes. Let's just say I have another keyword that I want to think about optimizing for, being ranked on Google for, and that's banana bread recipe. very similar keyword as bread recipes except it's a little longer tail. Now, if I type in banana bread recipe in Google's keyword planner, now I can see the average monthly search volume is actually gone up. It's 368,000. I can also see the competition is low. So, those are good signs. So, now I can see 368,000. I'm going to go ahead and put that in my spreadsheet. Now, I'm going to go into Google. I'm going to put in my syntax all in title. I'm going to put in banana bread recipe. I'm going to hit enter. And now I can see I have 233,000 results with the keyword banana bread recipe in the title tag. So if I look at the title tags, I can see banana bread recipe, banana bread recipe, banana bread recipe on all the listings in the Google search results. So, that tells me I have 233,000 results that I have to jump over in order to rank number one on Google. So, I'm going to put 233,000 in my spreadsheet. Now, I can see my KI or my volume to competition ratio is 157 158%. And so, to me, that's a lot better number to work with. Or in other words, that's a lot better keyword because it's just as relevant and it has a higher ratio of volume to competition. So therefore, banana bread recipe is going to be a better keyword to optimize for in order to rank number one on Google. So that's the whole idea behind keyword research. You want to brainstorm ideas. There are plenty of tools out there. So the tool I recommend is Google Ads keyword planner. Google's going to give you how much search volume. They're going to tell you the competition, but then you're going to go into Google search. You're going to use the syntax all in title to get a more accurate read on the actual competitive number. And so to find out how keywords that your competitors are ranking for, you can use those keyword tools that I mentioned. Another tool that I use is Moz. So ma, if you go to ma.com, they have a tool called keyword explorer. So if we just type in the keyword, for example, bread recipes, it's going to be able to tell us how much volume and the difficulty. So you can use other tools at your disposal. Figure out the volume and the difficulty. There are plenty of tools out there, but the one thing I would just make sure is you use everything at your disposal. So you can use social media to find the most shared article for a particular topic or keyword like bread recipes. You could check other platforms that have a lot of shared content like Reddin and Kora where you can ask people about certain topics using keywords to figure out how much competition or volume there might be. You can stay up to date on industry news to get an idea of what types of keywords are trending. But when it comes to keywords and keyword research, remember for every web page, we want to be able to pick two keywords. We want a primary and secondary keyword. So when we do keyword research and we enter all our keywords into our spreadsheet, we want to be able to have a number of different keywords. In this case, we're focusing on the theme bread recipes. We want to have different keywords because we want to be able to choose a primary keyword and a secondary keyword because we want to be able to focus on multiple keywords for each page because we don't want to put necessarily all our eggs in one basket. Meaning we won't want to put all our emphasis just on one keyword to rank for. We want multiple keywords to try and rank for. So the primary keyword can define the nature of our business. The secondary keyword could be just highly relevant to our keyword. At the end of the day, we want to choose multiple keywords to try and rank on Google for that page. So, for example, we have a blog and we're using ice cream recipes and we're blogging about ice cream recipes. We can have a primary keyword that is about ice cream recipes or homemade ice cream recipes. We're going to always want to find out what the volume and the competition is. Our secondary keyword could be built around other similar keywords like low-fat ice cream recipes or fat-free ice cream recipes or low-fat homemade ice cream recipes. Those are complimentary keywords just like our bread recipes and banana bread recipe. So, one thing we want to do when we do keyword research is we want to be able to target one keyword per content when you can target many. We want to be able to target multiple keywords, not necessarily target one keyword. And so we want to be able to cluster keywords. So we don't want to target just one. We want to target multiple keywords per page. And when we talk about clustering, if we go back to our keyword research, what we're doing is we're clustering a bunch of keywords under the theme bread recipes. And so by looking at the volume, looking at the competition, looking at the KI, we can choose different keywords for our page. And that's what we mean by clustering. We want to cluster keywords into a content theme. So why target only one keyword per content when we can target many? Because we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. We don't want to target just one keyword. We want to target many. And so that means clustering your keywords into a theme and choosing multiple keywords for that particular page. And when we do that, we have a better opportunity to rank high on Google search. And the whole idea behind ranking high on Google search is we can get the volume. So, if we know we're ranked number one on Google search for bread recipes or banana bread recipe, we know we stand a chance of getting a majority of the volume associated with that keyword. And if we can get the volume and get the traffic, then we can get the conversions. So, let's move on to high quality content and talk about the impact content has on your ability to get your website ranked number one on Google. So, let's just say you have content on your website and the content is ranking on, you know, page four of Google and it's that blog with ice cream recipes. And if it's just content for the sake of content, it's not really informative, then it's not necessarily going to get good engagement. In the eyes of Google, you know, they want to rank content that's very informative, it's very fresh, it's exciting to read, it's interesting, it's going to have good engagement. So, if it's a recipe or an article about any topic, if it's the content is just not informative, then you're not going to get good engagement. And when you don't get good engagement, if people don't stay on the site to engage in the content and they just leave the website after landing on the page causing a bounce, then the content is just going to continue to fall down the rankings and we want to prevent that. We want to move up the rankings. We want to be number one on Google. We don't necessarily want to fall in the rankings for our content. So content is a key driver in being able to rank number one on Google. So if the content is on page nine, what can we do? Well, we want to be able to, you know, take that content and do something with it. We feel like we did write engaging content. So let's go ahead and share it on social media. And to me, social media is a good platform to share your content because on social media platforms like Facebook, for example, you're building a community on that platform. That community is already interested in your content. So, if you're sharing an ice cream recipe, especially in the summertime, and you're engaging with your community on that platform, then the likelihood of that community on that platform is going to increase engagement. Increased engagement will send social signals to the search engine that says, "Hey, this content is good quality." Likewise for any other platform. Most social media platforms have engagement metrics and those engagement metrics pass signals. Is it good? Is it not good? Do we like this content? Are we giving it a thumbs up? Are we going to want to follow it? Are we going to want to share it? And so, if you share content that you feel is engaging on social platforms, then it's going to be engaging and it's likely going to cause an increase in engagement. For example, a decrease in bounces. And once you share that quality content, then the likelihood of it moving up the rankings, even as far as number one on Google, is going to be greater. So you always want to start out writing good quality content. So let's talk about good quality content because Google does take content seriously. They do take into account what other people think of that content. So highquality content is an important factor. So how to create good content? That's always the question. So, let's talk about some best practices here. Remember, in the last segment, we talked about keyword research. So, we want to perform good keyword research. Why? Because we want to choose keywords. Remember, we're choosing multiple keywords per page. One keyword could be related to our brand. One keyword could be related to the content, but another keyword could be related to a user's intent, like recipes. If you recall the example we used with bread recipes, maybe somebody's looking to type in a keyword that says, "How do I make, you know, a bread?" Or, "How do I make a specific type of bread?" Or, "How do I make banana bread?" Or, "What's the best recipe for banana bread?" They're question related and we want to be able to answer those questions. So, that's where choosing those right keywords that's going to respond to a user's intent. So, starts with choosing the right keywords. So remember we talked about a number of different tools when we talked about keyword research. So there's a research tool that you can use called phrase.io and that will help you do quick research on you know keywords and trends and whatnot. So if you know about a research tool that you use for keyword research then drop us a comment below. I'd be interested in getting your comments about keyword research and what research tools are out there. So, if you know something better than phrase.io, drop a comment below and we'd be interested in getting keyword research is key, but creating content that fulfills users requirements. So, answering those questions. If it's a recipe, we want to answer that question. If it's directions, we want to answer that question. If they don't know how to do something, we want to answer that question. And that's the whole idea behind content. Content is not just to fill a page. It's to really fulfill users requirements. That's when you get good engagement. So if somebody's typing in something on Google and they're looking for an answer, your content should answer that question. But we also want to make the content readable. So in other words, you know, write for your audience. Don't impress anybody with very high vocabulary type words that somebody doesn't necessarily know the meaning of. Don't use jargon. Don't use a street language, for example. use everyday common language that's just easily digestible when your audience is reading. And then we want to keep that content organized. And so when we mean organized, we want to use headers and subheaders. You know, break your content into paragraphs. Keep the flow organized. If we can keep the flow organized, then it's going to be easier for somebody to read. And then it's okay to add resources, especially resources from credible sites. So if you can incorporate those resources in there, then it's just going to add the credibility to your content. Let the audience know that, hey, I've done my research on this topic and this is what this person has to say about it. This person who seems to be credible. Okay, so it only adds value to your content. So these are all tips to remember when creating content. And then the one important tip here is we want to use white hat techniques. And when we say white hat techniques, that means, you know, if we've chosen keywords that are going to answer somebody's question, we don't want to stuff those keywords into the content. We want the content to be naturally written. So, when we say opt for white uh techniques, that's what we mean. Write the content naturally. Keep it organized, keep it readable, include third-party sources, and make sure it answers a question. So, there are different types of content. So there's content where you just write words. It's all textbased. You could also use an infographic. An infographic is simply just a graphic that visualizes exactly what you're trying to explain. For example, if we want to write an article about how to write good engaging content, we don't necessarily have to write all that out as a text. We can create an infographic. So, for example, here's an infographic on 20 effective ways to basically not bore your readers, but write engaging content. So, you could see this is an infographic. It's all graphically laid out. So, infographics tend to be easier to understand because they're visual. They're easy for the end user to comprehend because there's generally no jargon. It's usually images that are portraying the point of what you're trying to get across. And so it tends to break it up the monotony of just text. It's more visually appealing and it's laid out and organized. So you could see this infographic has 20 different steps or rules. And they lay those out all here in this infographic. And the great thing I like about infographics is you could you could share them on social media. You can re-engage them as a post. You could save them on really any social platform. So infographics tend to tell a better story versus say just writing text. You can use video and images. So you don't necessarily have to lay it all out in an infographic. You can certainly insert a video or an image into your content, especially if it's a blog post. If it's a blog post, then sometimes video and images on its own tell the story. You don't necessarily need text to go ahead and tell your story. A video or an image, as they say, tells a thousand words. And so images and videos are great to use in a blog post. So using different forms of content, you know, you always want to review your content. When a user dwells on your web page for a longer time, Google will tend to think, okay, this person's engaged, so we're going to rank that favorably. So if you're using infographics, videos, and images, then the chances of somebody being more engaged are going to increase versus just text that's not well organized and written out in a way that somebody doesn't necessarily understand. So be creative in the types of content you use. So longer engaging content tends to bode well with search engines. So this is according to HubSpot. So the more word count you use, the more words you use, the chances of you ranking higher are going to be better. Just take into account best practices. You want to maybe break up the content with an image, organize it, make it engaging, use headers. So, it's not necessarily just words. It's the words and how those words are written, how they're structured, the types of key words you're using, how you're engaging with your audience. There's a lot of factors. Again, those best practices we just went over. But the key is, you know, if you have longer, more engaging content, then it's going to bode better for you on search engines. So, couple of steps to create high quality content. So you want to begin with a comprehensive introduction. So always introduce your content. Remember the content should be relevant to the keyword. So if you're choosing keywords in your keyword research, think about answering that question. If somebody's typing in bread recipes, maybe they're looking for banana bread recipes. How to make the best banana bread or how to make banana bread using dried figs. We want to be able to align our content with that keyword naturally. You want to create a title that's worthy, that's clickworthy. So remember, if you're in Google search and you're doing search for something simple like bread recipes, we want to some make something that's going to be, you know, engaging for somebody to click on like easy perfect yeast bread or easy crusty French bread or something that's going to be engaging. you know, the best bread recipes or how to make the best homemade bread, you know, something that's going to draw somebody's attention to the title of that blog post. So, we want to include LSI keywords. So, what I mean by LSI keywords in your content, we mean, you know, longtail keywords. Make it natural. Headings and subheadings should consist of keywords and variants. So, if you're writing headers and subheaders, include the keyword in there. And that way, the the content always stays relevant to the audience. Okay? Shorten your sentences and paragraphs. So, don't write long paragraphs. Remember, we want to break this up. We want to make it easy for the end user to read. And we want to always put internal links on our blog post. Why? Because if we have internal links, then if we have a link from one blog post to another blog post or say our blog post to an internal page on our website, we want to make sure that it's relevant content. That way, if somebody's reading something and you have an internal link, let's just say from a bread recipes page to a banana bread recipes page, then they may find it interesting, click on that link, and go to the banana bread recipes page. So, it's keeping somebody engaged on your website. So, putting in internal linking will help keep the the end user engaged because you're offering up links that's relevant to the content. You always want to break up that content with images. Okay? We want to use alt tags, meaning we want to pen the image with text so that way if the image doesn't load, then at least the alt text will load. So we can incorporate call out boxes and more importantly we want to update our content regularly. So we always want to get the best recipe out there if it's banana bread or different ways to create banana bread or always just coming up with ways to update the content. So we want to keep our content or blog post fresh and then we want to include a CTA call to action. If we include a call to action, then that's going to keep somebody engaged and have them act on your content. So, these are steps to creating highquality content. And so, let's look at an example here. And this is a threemonth-old post on BuzzFeed, and it's 21 pictures that restore your faith in humanity. So, it has a lot of likes, a lot of tweets, and that means it's engaged. People are engaged when reading that. And so if we go and look at it as an example, we could see it on a BuzzFeed here. 21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity. So this was written back in 2012. Again, a lot of engagement, but if we look at it, we can see immediately that it's taking into account third party sources. It's got some content. It's got images. It's being broken up by images. We could see there's call to actions on there in the form of social. So people can go ahead and go ahead and share it if they like it. Okay? It includes videos, it includes images, third-party sources. So it's a good post because listen, you know, it's engaging content. It's probably answering somebody's question about humanity. And we could see clearly that look, you know, there's a lot of different examples here from a lot of different sources. And we could take action on this content. So not just video, not just images, but text as well. And so it's very engaging, answers questions, takes into account the different types of content available. So this is a good post in that regard. So content's updated regularly, it's engaging, and it includes sources from high authority websites. Some dos and don'ts on the content. So take into account the best practices I mentioned about creating highquality content. Okay, answer those questions that the end user wants to hear, you know, because that likely is going to be their search. And so, you want to be able to respond to the end user. That's part of creating high-quality content. Different types of content, i.e. in the form of infographics or videos or text or images. You can add images from public domain sites. You can be relatable and use examples to clarify points just like the Buzzfeed article. Simplify complex words. Don't use sophisticated language. Talk to your audience as if you they were standing right in front of you. And use bullet points to exemplify your examples, your points. So some dos, the don'ts. Obviously, don't lift content. We don't want to lift content from another website. So that's plagiarism. So we want to have our own unique content. We also don't want to take images from other websites. And so if you do happen to find an image that works for your post and it's on somebody else's website, ideally that's not a good situation. But if you do happen to do that, then always give credit to the website. Okay? So if you took it from xyz.com, credit xyz.com for the image and even put a link back. But ideally, you don't want to take images from other websites. Just as much as you don't want to take copy, you don't want to take images. Use your own imagery and content. But if you don't have imagery, then you can always go to stock photography. There are plenty of websites out there where you can sign up for a subscription like uh Adobe Stock images as an example. You could sign up for an account and in some cases you can sign up for a free account and use stock imagery. Okay? Don't give less information to your audience. Give your audience what they deserve, which is the information they're looking for. They're looking for the best banana bread recipes. Give them the best banana bread recipes. Incorporate your own images. Break it up with titles. Give them a good quality piece of content that they're going to be able to engage with. And so, if you put long paragraphs in your content, then it's going to be less engaging. So, try to avoid those long paragraphs. Remember, shorten up the paragraphs, keep the language simple, add in images, answer those questions, use third-party credible sources, but write it in your own words, and you should be on your way to creating good quality content. Okay, so now that we've talked about high quality content in order to get your pages ranked high on Google search, let's turn our attention to optimizing on page elements and discuss some website level factors that are both going to help you rank high on Google search. So let's just do an overview of what we're talking about when we talk about onpage elements and website level factors. So optimizing onpage elements include a number of different things, but primarily we're going to focus in on meta tags, also known as metadescription tags, header tags, also known as title tags, and URLs. So those are just some of the onpage elements we want to be able to optimize using relevant keywords in order to rank high on Google search. We also want to take a look at some website factors that will affect our ranking on Google search. They include website architecture, having a secure website, having a site map, and taking a look at page speed. So all of those are some of the website factors we need to take into account in order to rank high on Google search. So title tag and metad description together are considered meta tags. So both play an important role in ranking high on Google. So we want to be able to write unique title and descriptions for each page on our website. When I say unique, that means a title and a metad description need to be different for every page on the website. And so if you're not quite sure what a title tag and a metad description tag is, if you go to search and just type in any particular search query, the title tag is what's going to show up here in bold and then the description is going to show up below it below the URL and that's going to describe the page. So both of these meta tags are important because it describes what your page is all about and that's what Google uses in the search results pages. So, we want to be able to pay attention to the length of our metatags. So, if we go back to our search results pages, met title tags are generally 60 65 characters. Meta description tags are generally 160 characters. So, anything really longer than that, then what's going to happen is the metadescription tag or the title tag will get truncated. And so if we look here for example, we could see all of the title tags here fit the 65 character limit. But if you run over the character count on metadescription, then Google is going to truncate the copy. So you want to stay within your parameters in order to avoid getting your content truncated. And so the other thing when we're writing title metad description tags, we want to minimize keyword repetition. So if we're optimizing for keyword, we don't want to necessarily just plug that keyword into the title tag and metad description multiple times, we want to make sure our title tags and metad descriptions are naturally written. So if somebody's typing for banana bread recipe with dried figs, you know, we want to have a nice title tag in a description that is going to get somebody to respond uh based on their need. And so we definitely want to avoid keyword repetition, but we want to be able to use that keyword in the title tag because if you remember from the earlier segment when we did the all- entitle syntax to find out exactly how many competitors were using that particular keyword, well, we obviously want to use that keyword in the title tag because again, the title tag is an important factor when it comes to search engine results. So, we want to use the keyword, but we want to avoid stuffing or using it repetitively in our title tag and our metad description. We want the title tag and the metad description to describe the page, sound natural, but also be engaging because the point is we want people to click on our link and go to our website from search engines. So, title tags with numbers tend to result in higher clickthrough rates. This is according to Moz. So, for example, if you just put in a title tag that says learn digital marketing, well, that may work, but if you put a number in there like five easy ways to learn digital marketing, that might get somebody to click on your link and go to your website. So, having questions in your metatags can also increase your click-through rate. For example, if you just put learn the importance of first page rankings, not too bad, but they're getting generic. But if you put it into the form of question, how to rank number one on Google, it's more actionoriented. It's going to get somebody to resonate with the question that they have and that may be their query. How to rank number one on Google. And so these techniques will help you get higher clickthrough rates. And so according to Back Linko, title tag with a keyword can improve site ranking. So remember, we want to include that keyword in the title tag even though we only have 65 characters. We want to include that keyword, but we want to avoid stuffing the keyword in there. We want to again make the title tag actionoriented, maybe with a number, maybe as a question with the keyword in there once naturally. Not easy to do, but that's the beauty of SEO. If you can follow these best practices and write a good title tag, then the chances of you improving in your search results are going to be greater. So having only one H1 tag in your post is going to be good. So remember when somebody clicks on a link, so let's just say they do find a title tag engaging and they click on this this link here and they go to that website. You know, you want to start out with having that particular H1 tag because the H1 tag, especially with the keyword in it, is going to signal to Google, hey, we're organizing our page. And because it's an H1 tag, it's important. We're structuring the page according to best practices. So having only one H1 tag in your post is definitely helpful. Having multiple tags, H tags in your post help organize the page a lot better. So we want to add that targeted keyword in that tag and your header tag should be relevant to the content. So if we go back to our example of the using dried figs with banana breads, well the title says California fig banana bread. And remember the last segment when we were talking about high quality content? Well, look no further than including a video into our content. So, not only will this video help keep the engagement high, but it breaks up the monotony of the page and it's from a third-p partyy source. So, it adds credibility to the page. So, adding a video based on the last segment of highquality content definitely helps with ranking high on Google search. So following hierarchal structure that means putting those H tags in there. H2 tags help break up the content and we want to avoid repetition of H1 tags on your different web pages of your site. Meaning don't just put the same H1 tag with the same keyword in it and keeping it blasze. We want to make those H1 tags exciting to read but also used appropriately to break up the content. So remember all white hat techniques. We want to avoid hidden tags. We want to avoid stuffing keywords. We want things to be natural. We don't want things to be forced. And your H1 tag should be 20 to 70 characters. Don't make long H1 tags. If we go back to our page example, a short, sweet tag here, California fig banana bread. It's relevant to the content. It's short, sweet. and it breaks up the monotony of the content. And more importantly, and again, any content you have on the page should always answer the user's intent. Remember, people are using search to answer questions, find information. Our content should be able to answer that for them. So, according to John Mohler, senior web master trends analyst at Google, header tags would definitely help Google for rankings in the search results. So, we want to use header tags. So, when it comes to URLs, we want to use hyphens and avoid underscores. So, if we look at this URL here, this uses hyphens, fig and banana bread. So, it's all broken up with hyphens. That's a best practice. Remember, canonical URLs. A canonical URL signals to Google this is the original content. So, we want to use original content. And if you have multiple sources of content out there on say different websites, we want to use a canonical tag to signal to Google this is the original content please index this content and not doesn't hurt to use a favicon in URL meaning a small icon. It helps to break up the monotony and help your URL stand out. We can add targeted keywords in the URL. So again, looking at the URL here, I could see we're using targeted keyword as part of the URL structure. Fig and banana bread. And notice the H1 tag is fig banana bread. So it's all consistent and it flows naturally. URLs that are no longer existing. Then we want to be able to set up a redirect for those URLs. Meaning a 301 redirect is a server response for Google that says, "Hey Google, this page is no longer available, but we permanently redirected it to this page which is now available." So that's what a 301 redirect does. It helps signal to Google and all the other search engines that if the page is no longer there, that's fine. You're just going to go to this page. This is the page that's permanently there now. And another thing we want to do here is if you have mobile URLs, you want to include those in the site map. And we're going to hit on that in just a minute. But all URLs should be mobile friendly as well as desktop friendly. Meaning take into account this best practices. Keep your URL short. Use hyphens. Put the keyword in that URL and make it easy to understand. Want to avoid capital letters in the URLs. The URLs are case sensitive. So go lowerase. You should always go lowercase on the URL. Readable URLs. Again, the rule of thumb here is if you understand what the URL is, then Google's going to understand what the URL is. So the shorter the URL, the easier it is to read, the easier it is to read, the better chance you have to rank high on Google search. So according to backlink to URLs that are shorter definitely definitely help you rank. So, we want to be able to shorten those URLs. Keep them short and sweet. Don't make them long and unreadable. So, those are some on optimized ways or on page elements that help you optimize. Now, we want to look at some website level factors that will help you optimize and rank high on Google search. So, good site structure provides better crawling for search engine bots. And what do we mean by that? Well, we mean having your site organized in a fashion that Google's going to be able to find all the pages. So, what do we mean by that? Create a logical hierarchy structure. So, if you're selling shoes, you know, you're going to have a homepage. Break the structure up into men's shoes, women's shoes, children's shoes. Then, under men's shoes, you could have it by brand. It could be Nike Puma Adidas. On the women's side, it could be Nike Puma Adidas. On the child side, it could be Nike, Puma, Adidas. And so, you want to keep the structure flow in a hierarchy. So, we want to balance the amount of subcategories within each category. So, the men's, if it has Nike, Puma, Adidas, the women should have Nike Puma Adidas. And so, you want to code your site navigation in CSS or HTML. Meaning, we want to be able to use something that Google's going to be able to index. So most sites are built in HTML and that's what Google likes to index. They like to index something that they could take back to their servers. And then more importantly, build a comprehensive structure for internal linking. So internal links mean that if you're on a site, you should have natural links pointing to other pages on your website. So to keep the flow going and we don't want to have unnatural inbound links. You always want to have natural internal links to keep the flow of the user going from one page to the other. So here I could see as an example all the ingredients in this recipe. Well, this has an internal link to another page on our site and this happens to link to a page where somebody can buy the ingredient. So it's a natural internal link. So John Doherty of Credo has claimed that one of the biggest changes that he can make in fixing the CTO website is architecture. So for example in credo John Dhy has increased the organic sessions by 74% and pages by per session by 41%. Just by changing the site architecture. So you'd be surprised by changing the site architecture what that will do to engagement. And so let's turn our attention to secure versus non-secure. So what we mean by that is securing your site. We want to make it sure that compliant with certain protocols. And so if we go back here, we can see that this particular site is compliant. It is secure. HTTPS means it has a secure license, meaning the site is secure. So Google likes secure versus nonsecure. So nonsecure would be HTTP. So we want HTTPS as our protocol. And what that means is just enabling SSL certificates. And that means when you enable an SSL certificate, that means your domain or your protocol is going to be turned to HTTPS. So Google prefers sites that are secure versus nonsecure. So if you use HSTS as a protocol, that adds an extra layer of security over the HTTPS and HSTS prevents cookie hijacking. So adding multiple layers of security always helps in my opinion. If you have an HTTP website, a nonsecure website, you should look into buying an SSL certificate, getting your site flipped over to HTTPS, because what's going to happen is your URL structure is going to change. When your URL structure changes, Google's going to recognize that because they're going to index your site. And when they index your site, they're going to see those secure URLs and that's going to work favorably in your favor and help you rank higher on Google search. So websites using secure or HTTPS have a higher chance of ranking higher. So HTTPS is a ranking signal because Google indexes those pages. So let's also talk about sitemaps. So sitemap is one of the most important ways to improve your website ranking. Why? as well because sitemaps are a way to organize all your URLs into one file. So we're basically going to prioritize all our web pages in a sitemap. So if you go to any particular website and you type in sitemapxml, you're likely going to see all the pages on your website. So usually the sitemap is located in the root directory. So if I type in sitemap.xml, XML, I'm going to be able to see all the pages in my root directory and I can also prioritize them. I can also alert Google as to how often they change and every page is going to have a date stamp associated with it. So Google can actually see how often it changes. So remember, we want our content to be updated frequently. So if content's not updated frequently or it's not fresh, then Google's going to see that site that that date stamp, that last modification date. So we want to be able to make sure content's updated frequently. We want to let Google know that we changed it frequently. And we want to be able to prioritize our pages, let Google know, hey, these pages are important to us. So all that can be set up in a sitemap. We want to be able to add canonical versions of URLs in the site map. So, we want to be able to add all our original URLs in our sitemap. And so, we always want to build dynamic URLs, site maps for larger websites. And what do I mean by dynamic URLs? That means that if I look at this site map and we're always adding content, let's just say in the form of a blog. Well, guess what? We want those pages to be added to the sitemap as they're published. So, as we add pages to the blog or to the site, then they should automatically be added to the site map. And so in effect, what's going to happen is we're going to be able to see the site map grow with more URLs. When the sitemap grows with more URLs, then that means then Google's going to index more pages. They're going to index more fresh pages. So they're going to be able to get those pages that are just published quicker. So that's the whole idea behind dynamic sitemaps is we want to be able to capture all the URLs just as they're published and we want to be able to maintain our site maps and so I would always recommend a dynamic sitemap but you can always create your own sitemap just by going to a tool called XML sitemap. So if I just type in XML sitemaps into Google search here I could see XML sitemaps generator and I can be able if I have a small website just create a free and simple sitemap on my own. When XML sitemaps creates it or your platform creates a dynamic sitemap either way the sitemap's going to sit in the root directory and then what we want to do in turn is let Google know where that sitemap is. So in search console, we want to be able to submit the sitemap. So you're going to add the sitemap. You're going to let Google know where it is. It should be in the root directory and it should be called sitemap.xml. And when you do that, Google's going to be able to take those URLs and index them. So we could see we submitted 528 URLs. Google index 521. So, one thing about URLs here is when we create a site map, we're putting all your URLs in there. We do not add no index URLs in your site map. And what that means is that any URL we don't want Google to index. We're just going to exclude from the sitemap. Okay? So, we want Google to take all the URLs we want indexed and put them in the sitemap. So, according to Edgy, using sitemaps for SEO can increase your website's visibility and help you get indexed. Why? Because what you're in effect doing is taking all your URLs that you want indexed. You're telling Google how often they're modified. You're telling Google which ones are important and you're submitting that to Google. And so Google's going to be able to take all these URLs quicker, index them quicker, and when they're indexed quicker, you can get ranked quicker. And when you get ranked quicker, you can get traffic quicker. So that's the whole idea behind sitemaps. So let's turn our attention to page speed now. So, one of the last factors for our website besides architecture, making it secure, and adding sitemaps is we want to take a look at how quick our pages load. Here are some tips in order to optimize page speed. Because ideally, the quicker a page loads, the more engaged the user is going to be. If it takes a longer time for the page to load all the elements of that page, then what's going to happen is the user is going to get impatient, maybe leave the website alto together or go to another page. And so we want to be able to optimize images. So any image that's of large size in terms of megabytes, we want to be able to optimize that, compress the image. So that's one way to speed up page speed. We want to use a simple website design, you know, HTML with CSS or cascading stylesheets. Just a simple design with simple hierarchy and website navigation structure. So, nothing fancy, nothing complex, just a simple website design with optimized images. We want to leverage browser caching and we want to upgrade the server response time. Meaning all your files are sitting on the server. So when somebody goes to a web page, the server is serving up all of those files, the images, the text, etc. And so we want the server to respond as quick as possible. So when it comes to page speed, we can look at the factors affecting page speed in Google Analytics. So if I go to Google Analytics and I go under behavior and I go under sight speed and I go to overview, I'm going to be able to see what my average load time is for my site. And ideally, we want our pages to load as quick as possible. So that means anything under 4 seconds, anything 4 seconds or higher. And it's likely the end user is going to leave the page. There's a correlation between page load time and bounce rate. And so what Google actually does is give you speed suggestions. So if we do have a page that loads slow, we can just go to speed suggestions in Google Analytics. And we go to speed suggestions. Then Google's going to be able to tell us, hey, this particular page load fast, this particular page load slow, and if it loaded slow, why is it loading slow? So here we could see the homepage as example is loading on average of 7 seconds. Well, if we look here, they're going to give us some suggestions. So if I click on this page speed suggestions, it's going to load a report and a tool called page speed insights. And basically what it's then going to do after it's done running is it's going to tell me all the ways in which I can optimize my pages not only for desktop but also for mobile. So here I can see for desktop or for mobile I can look at some ways in which I can optimize it to increase page speed. for example, sizing my images properly, server response time, reducing my server response time, avoiding multiple page redirects. So, there's a lot of opportunities that we can do to speed up page load time and all that's found in page speed insights and all that's found within Google Analytics. So, remember optimizing code, minimizing redirects, optimizing your images, upgrading your server response, all of those are factors. And so again, you can go into analytics, page speed insights, and you could see exactly what Google is recognizing as what's lowering or slowing down your page load time. So Google takes sight speed as one of the most important ranking factors. Why? Because they're going to rank pages not only with high quality content that are relevant to the keyword queries, but they want those pages to have a good user experience. So if somebody clicks on the page, then the user should be able to see that content fairly quickly. And so that's why it's such an important factor. So the quicker your pages load, the chances of you ranking higher are going to be better. So according to web performance today, Walmart, as an example, experienced a decline in conversions. So what they did was looked at their page speed. And when they looked at their page speed, you'd be surprised what that did. just increasing it from 1 to 4 seconds or decreasing it basically increase conversion. So there's always going to be a correlation between how quick a page loads and how engaged the user is because if it's users engaged they're going to stay on the site and if they stay on the site then their chances of converting are going to be higher. So just even one to two seconds increase in page load time will make a world of difference in terms of engagement and conversions. turn our attention to off-site engagement. So, previously we talked about onpage elements and website factors that are affect our rankings for search results. But we also need to turn our attention away from our website, meaning what we do on our website and turn our attention what we can do for our website off our website and onto other websites. So, that's offsite engagement. And so, let's look at an example. So that ice cream recipes blog I'm going to talk about how to rank YouTube videos today said simply learn we take our videos on YouTube very seriously meaning that when we create videos we want people to see them because we know we make good videos and we know we have good content and we know that our audience is going to enjoy it and so we want our audience to see the videos that we're creating. And so we're going to give you some tips and tricks and methodology and ideas on how to get your videos to rank on YouTube. So at SimplyLearn, if I go to YouTube and I just type in machine learning, you could see we're right here is the first organic video on YouTube for machine learning. If I jump over to Google and I type in machine learning basics, you can see we're number we're number one for machine learning basics under videos. If I click on all, we're also ranked here as well under the video section on organic search results. Another example, data science for beginners. We ranked number one for that. If I look at another keyword, data science interview questions. Okay, we're ranked number two for that. So, we're ranking for a lot of videos. And why are we ranking for a lot of different content and videos on Google search and on YouTube? Well, we put a lot of work in behind the scenes of creating the video. And that's what we want to show you. So part of that has a lot to do with, you know, how our audience engages and sees our video. So for example, we're looking at the machine learning basics video here. And we could see that it has over 221,000 subscribers for this video. 234,000 views. We've had over 2,000 people like the video. And we have had over 270 plus comment on the video. So when we get our videos to rank, then we can see there's a lot of engagement. And so that's the whole idea is when you do a video and you want it to show up on YouTube, you want people to enjoy it, you want people to share it, you want people to like it, you want people to comment on it. And that's part of the whole ecosystem of YouTube. It's, you know, we're going to show you behind the scenes of what it takes to get your videos to rank. And then we're going to show you some of the metrics involved with some of these videos. We're going to talk about how to get traffic to your website. So, thank you for joining and let's get started. So, let's imagine you're setting up your own website. Okay, you're clicking away, you're developing using some good tools, you're developing, you're designing, you're doing some QA, you're testing, you're sharing with friends in an alpha version, and then finally, your website is all set up. Congratulations. Well, when you hit enter and your website is finally published, what's going to happen? Well, few days later, you're checking your website and you're looking at analytics and you notice your traffic's very low. Okay? Well, you're scratching your head because you've done all this work with your website, but you're not getting any traffic. So the reason is you spent all your time developing designing the website to make it look good but you didn't do anything or any planning or any strategy around bringing users to your website. So the two go hand inand you just can't build a website without thinking about how to drive users to the website. And so before I tell you how to bring traffic to your website, let me tell you why this is so important. Okay? Why do we want to bring users to our website? I mean, it has to be on equal ground as web development and design is somebody who goes to your site and then does something when they get to your site. So, you have users and when those users get to your site, they're generating page views and traffic and you want to turn that traffic into engagement. Okay? So, each page's traffic is configured independently of all their pages. So when you go when somebody goes to your website, they look at a page, that's a page view. And certain pages on your website, you want to turn that page view into a conversion. Okay? Whether that be, you know, looking at a video or purchasing something. So think of these pages on your website as salespeople. They're trying to convert visitors who come to your website. But first, we need to get the visitors to your website. So when you get visitors to your website again you can generate sales which means revenue or you can increase brand awareness or you can earn revenue through sponsored post and advertisement. So if you have for example a lot of content on your website you can turn that in to revenue by hosting ads on your website. So when somebody clicks on that ad you're going to earn a percentage of that click. Okay what that click is worth. So having a website means a lot of good things for you, but first you got to get the traffic there. And so what we're going to do is we're going to tell you how to drive traffic to your website. So there's lots of different ways in which you can bring traffic to your website. Well, the first is paid advertising. So paying to advertise your products, services with ads is one of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your website. So some of the options available are search ads, social media ads or display ads. So search ads are ads that are displayed in the search engine results. So when a user types in a keyword query, you want your ad to show up based on that keyword query. Okay? So an example is digital marketing course. Somebody types in digital marketing course and simply learn is the first ad that shows up. How do we know it's an ad? because you could see the word ad next to the domain. So when somebody clicks on that link, simply learn is going to pay Google. So that's how search advertising works. Okay. The next is social. So social media marketing involves increasing traffic or engagement or brand awareness or lots of different strategies, but you're instead of doing this on search, you're doing it on a social media platform. Okay? So for example, you can advertise on any particular platform and the way you advertise could be with an image, it could be with a video. So in this case, you could see Cobrio is doing a sponsored ad here. How to succeed with Google ads. And then another form of advertising is display. So display means creating ads that are placed on specific websites. So with display unlike search you have a choice in the ad format. With search you only have text ads but with display you have text ads, image ads, rich media ads, video ads. So you have lots of different options in which you can advertise on other websites. So the idea here is to get your ad in front of the right audience. when they could see your display banner, your banner ad, then it's going to be more visual, more appealing, generate some brand interest, and hopefully you can get somebody to click on that ad and over to your website. So, that's paid advertising again through search, through social, through display. But you can also promote your site on social media. So, once your content has gone live, you could take advantage of different social media platforms. I mean, it really depends on what you're trying to promote because what you're trying to promote needs to align with the appropriate social media platform. So, Facebook is best suited for industries like food and beverages and news and media. And if you're selling a product, so you fall under one of those categories, then Facebook could be the right platform for you. If you're involved in again beauty or food and beverage or e-commerce, then you can also leverage Instagram which is part of Facebook's ecosystem. So if you advertise on Facebook, you can also advertise on Instagram andor Instagram. So it doesn't have to be and Facebook and Instagram. It could be Facebook or Instagram. You also have LinkedIn as a platform. LinkedIn is great for B2B. So, if you're trying to promote industry news or or tips and best practices or job postings, then LinkedIn is the place for you. It's a B2B platform. It's great for targeting specific industries, targeting specific job levels or job descriptions. Okay, so LinkedIn is great if you're into B2B, focusing on the business side of it. So, you also have YouTube. Now, YouTube is part of Google's ecosystem. YouTube is a video platform. Okay, so it's great if you're trying to promote gaming or entertainment or if you're a vlogger. Okay, so YouTube's a great way to promote your site uh by getting your product out there in the form of a video. Then you have Twitter. Twitter to me encompasses a lot of different industries, beauty and fitness, news and media, entertainment. Okay, you have limited number of characters, but a lot of people are active on Twitter and it's a great way to generate some awareness and get some clicks over to your website. So, these are just some of the most popular social media platforms. Of course, there are plenty more out there. The third way in which you can drive traffic to your site is guest post blogging. So, most of you already know what blogging is all about. Well, if you're blogging for your own site, you can jump on somebody else's site and blog on their behalf. So, having the opportunity to guest post on another website can be very helpful because one, that other blog could have lots of traffic and have a a well-known brand. So, if you're blogging on another blog, it's going to build your brand awareness and potentially increase traffic to your blog or website. So, it exposes to you to targeted traffic. So, if you're going to guest blog, guest blog on a site that's very relevant to your business or industry. That way, you're targeting the right audience, okay? You can expand your personal network. So, getting yourself out there, getting your brand out there in front of a different audience. And then obviously for SERs because it generates a backlink. So, SERs search engine ranking pages means that hey, if you want to rank organically, you're going to have to generate some backlinks. So guest blogging is an a way to generate some back links to your site and in effect that's going to help you get your pages ranked higher because Google is going to recognize the relationship from one blog to your blog and build up your relevancy. So some other benefits here to guest blogging is you can grow your social media pling because you can then promote that on social media that you're guest blogging. Okay. Again, you can improve your online authority. Okay. Because when you're guest blogging and you have recognition on that guest blog, if it's a popular blog, then that's going to help your domain and page authority for SEO. And then the end result is going to improve your backlink score. So, a lot of benefits to guest blogging. To me, at the end of the day, it's just about reaching out to your audience using another platform to do that in the form of a blog. And the results of that is going to mean more brand awareness for you and turning that traffic from that other blog into qualified leads. So you can also interview industry thought leaders. So that's another way an interesting way to generate traffic to your site. So reaching out to thought leaders for interviews, okay, could generate some credibility for you and the other person. So it's reciprocal. So it means that you're active in the industry that you're in and it allows you to engage with other leaders in the industry and the indirect net result of that could be increased traffic because if you do the interview and you record it or if it's via video then you can obviously post it on other platforms and that could in turn drive traffic to your website. Obviously just like guest blogging it's going to increase your reach. So getting yourself out there. If nobody knows who your brand is and they know who the thought leaders are and they see you're interviewing the thought leaders, then that's going to put you in front of these people and so it's going to increase your reach. Another way to drive traffic to your website is just to make sure your website's responsive. And what do we mean by responsive? Well, we mean does it work on multiple devices, specifically mobile. So depending on the device, your website hides, shows, shrinks, enlarges, or moves content so that it conforms to the browser that that person's looking at on your for your website. So if somebody's looking on mobile at your website, you want to make sure that your website adjust accordingly. So you want to be able to, you know, test to make sure it's responsive. And so is content arranged based on importance. Okay? Does it work across different browsers on different devices? And do the images, text, and everything else align just like it does on desktop? So, there are plenty of tools out there on the web. All you need to do is just do a search for, you know, check my website for responsiveness, you know. So, you you can use plenty of tools to check to see if your website is responsive towards multiple devices. Why is that important? Because if somebody goes to your website via mobile and your site doesn't align properly or the content's all stretched out and somebody has to maneuver their browser just to see your website, then chances are they're not going to come back. Chances are they're not even going to convert. Okay? So, you want to be able to revise your device browser combinations. You want to make sure that everything works accordingly. You want to be able to test those fonts, make sure they look good. And then you also want to make sure that people can navigate. So if they're on mobile, are they going to navigate just as easy as they can on desktop? And if you have any popups, you want to probably make sure they're removed. So that way when somebody's looking at your website, they're not getting interfered with on mobile. And then of course, you want to make sure that these pages load. Okay? So they load just as quick on desktop as they should on mobile and vice versa. So this should not take a long time to load. So moving on from responsiveness on mobile to building a brand community. So brand community refers to a group of people who identify your brand and use your brand as a platform to exchange ideas and contribute content. Some advantages of having a brand community are promoting brand evangelism and loyalty. It can be a source of feedback, loyalty and ideas. So build a community, build a brand community who, you know, identify with you. Okay? So continue to, you know, treat these people as loyal customers. Okay? Maybe give them a promotion uh to use specifically just for them that they can use on your website or talk directly to them because you know that they're followers, they're repeat customers, they purchase from you multiple times. So talk to them differently as well. you know who these people are. And that's what building a brand's all about. It's about identifying your brand with other people, okay? And then identify people who identify with your brand and messaging and talking to them as if they're part of your own community, your own family. So you can use usergenerated content that provides future marketing strategies. So the feedback you get from your own community could be in turn used to promote or used in future marketing strategies i.e. advertising i.e. post on social. Okay. It can also provide PR opportunities. So it's a chance for you to you know put out press releases based on the community that you build. So any brand regardless of who it is should be able to identify with your audience, their target audience. And that target audience eventually going to become part of a community. These are group of people who identify with you. What you're trying to sell, what your cause is, what your mission statement is, what your service is, they identify with you. So leverage them and reciprocate. Identify them. Talk to them separately. give them the what they deserve, the respect and loyalty that they deserve as well because they're communicating and they're following you as a brand. So the next thing you could do to drive traffic is be active in the comment section. So engage in relevant and thoughtprovoking conversations on other blogs and sites. It doesn't necessarily have to be another blog per se. It could be other sites like Reddit or Kora or Media, sites that have a lot of content that are broken out by industry that allow you to engage in conversation, that allow you to either upvote or share or respond. Okay? So, be active because when you're active, people are going to see that, hey, you're a leader in the industry. You know what you're talking about. You have some some brand equity. you have some thought and some knowledge on the specific topic and subject. So, it just puts you in a better light when you can respond and be active on these different platforms. Okay, let's turn our attention to search engine optimization, also known as SEO or organic search. So, in order to drive traffic to your site, you're going to have to implement an SEO strategy. Why do you want to implement an SEO strategy? because it can help you improve your overall searchability and visibility on search engines and obviously that comes with advantages. One of those advantages is obviously more traffic to the site. Search is still king in terms of volumes of people using search on a daily basis. So you have a great opportunity to be found. It also builds trust and credibility because still a majority of the people who do a search click on an organic search listing. And so if you're found organically and you're ranked number one, then chances are somebody's going to click on your listing. And it provides increased engagement and traffic. And so what that means is more traffic, more engagement. And engagement is something you define. It could be again a download of a document or the clicking on the play button of a video or or submitting a form or signing up for a newsletter or calling. These are all forms of engagement. So then the amount of traffic you drive from organic search to your website is only going to improve engagement. Okay. So you can also provide an improved user experience. And what do we mean by that? Well, if you're getting lots of traffic from organic search, you have a really good opportunity to do AB testing. And when you do AB testing, you can improve user experience. meaning you're showing one variation against the other from people coming from organic search. And so this is helpful and that you know if you're running an AB test, the variation has a chance to improve or outperform the original. And if it outperforms the original, you're improving user experience. And then it helps target quality traffic. So SEO to me or all search is the only medium in which you're meeting somebody halfway. you're you're addressing what they're looking for. So, if somebody's looking for a pair of red women's Nike shoes, the 2019 model, and you have that particular product to offer, well, you have a chance of showing up via organic search. somebody types in, you know, women's red Nike shoes, size whatever at the year 2019 model, then of course they're going to probably likely click on your listing because you have what they're looking for. And and that goes with any keyword, any industry, any business, any segment, any type of product you're selling. So again, you have a chance to really be visible for what people are looking for. And so that's the beauty of search engine optimization. You have a really good opportunity here to meet people halfway to drive quality traffic to get them to enjoy a good user experience all the while generating engagement and along with SEO we want to be able to build backlinks. So SEO is a two-pronged approach meaning you have two strategies in one onpage and off- page. And so off-page involves backlinking. So back links are just links that direct users from other websites to your own website. So with that inherently it's going to drive traffic, qualified traffic to your website because if somebody's on a relevant website that's linking to yours and they click on that link and go to your website, it's likely going to be qualified, meaning they're going to be relevant. And so backlinking because it's an off- page strategy. Why is it an off- page SEO strategy? Because if Google crawls that other site that has a link to you, then that's going to give you credit because Google say, "Hey, this site's getting some links from some relevant sites. We must think they're relevant and therefore we're going to trust this site." So, by Google trusting your site, it's going to improve your organic ranking. And with the organic rankings being improved, meaning it's going to mean faster indexing. So, what does that mean? So, you want to be indexed by the search engines. And so, the quicker Google can find your pages, even if it's on somebody else's site. Then that means they're going to follow that link, go to that page on your site, and take that page back to their servers to be indexed. Okay? So, the quicker you can get indexed, the quicker you can get found. And then it helps with referral traffic. So, again, we noticed that our efforts are on SEO, organic search, but if you're getting traffic from another website, hey, that still counts. That's referral traffic. Okay. So that's a side advantage to having backlinks is good traffic from other sites. Okay. So those those are inherently the some of the reasons to do backlinking. Okay. Never hurts. I mean there's brand awareness reasons to being on other sites as well. There's industry leadership meaning if you you you post content on Reddit. Okay. You're coming across as an industry leader but yet generating a backlink which helps with SEO and referral traffic. So there's a lot of benefits to building back links and the opposite of backlinks are internal links. So you want to do internal linking and that just means connecting one page on your site to another. And why is that beneficial? Because it can help direct visitors to other pages they wouldn't normally otherwise find via your navigation. So if you're active on a blog, don't be afraid to include multiple internal links. You want to move people through your site. You want the flow of traffic to go from one page to another to another. And so when you do internal linking, just like with backlinks, it's going to improve the indexing of your website. Google's going to follow those links and index those pages. And Google does give credit from an SEO perspective, from an internal linking perspective. So if one page is linked to another and that page has really good relevance in the eyes of Google, then the other page is probably going to benefit from that. The other reason you want to do internal linking again, you want to move people from your one page of your site to the other. And when you do that, it's going to reduce bounce rates. So bounce rate is simply the rate at which people land on a page and then leave. So if I have a 100 people land on my homepage and only one person went to another page and the other 99 left the site, then that's a 99% bounce rate. So by putting internal links in place, you're helping people move from one page to the other and thus reducing the bounce rate. And that's what you want. You want to keep people on your site. You want to be greedy. It also drives traffic to older posts. So again, when we say older post, we're really referring to blog post. So if you have a relevant blog post and you're writing a new blog post, then link the two together. If it's relevant, link it. I don't, you know, regardless of how old it is. You know, you want to show Google that these older blog posts, just because they were written a year ago doesn't mean they're outdated and old-fashioned, okay? Or useless. You want to keep them alive by linking to them. So to me, that's a good strategy for internal linking. link to older blog post. You know, show people you're an industry expert. You've been doing this for a while and you have lots of content to share. Okay? So, the longer you can keep somebody on your website, the more likely it is they're going to engage and convert. And some other inherent benefits, improves page rank. So, what we mean by page rank is simply just a rank that Google gives pages. So, the more internal linking you have, the better off you are. And then it helps spread link juice across websites. And what we mean by link juice again just like backlinking it builds relevancy. So just keep all these inherent benefits in mind to internal linking the end result is keeping the flow of traffic on your site and all these other benefits will fall into place. Okay. So another way in which you can really hone in on traffic to your website is longtail keywords. And longtail keywords to me are more than just one or two keyword phrases. Okay? So they're usually three or longer keywords in a phrase. Okay, so longtail keywords really nowadays account for most web searches. People really take the time to even post questions as a search query. Say likely somebody, it's unlikely somebody's going to go into search and just type in the word shoes. They might type in red shoes, but that's unlikely. what they're probably going to type in is, you know, red Nike running shoes 2019 or some variation of that. Okay, that's a longtail keyword. And some of the advantages of using longtail keywords to be found for are less competition. So, if you're using broad keywords like red shoes, then who doesn't want to be found for red shoes? Well, you don't necessarily you don't want to be found for red shoes because it's too broad. You don't know what type of shoes somebody's looking for. You just know they're looking for red shoes. It could be running shoes. It could be work shoes. It could be, you know, boots. It could be slippers. Okay? It's too broad. So, longtail keywords help narrow it in. And the more narrow and focused a keyword is, the less competition it's going to have. And when something's not competitive in the form of a keyword, then that means your chances of ranking for that keyword are going to be greater. and the chances of you ranking faster are going to be greater. And then of course, if somebody's looking for exactly what you have to offer, then you have a higher chance to convert that person. So if you have exactly those 2019 red Nike women's running shoes and somebody does a search for that and that's a longtail keyword and they click on your organic listing, if you have the right price, then they're probably going to convert. So you have a really good chance of converting somebody using longtail keywords. So my point here is if you're looking for keywords to use, focus on longer tail. Don't focus on one or two keyword phrases. What it also does is brings targeted traffic. So even if somebody doesn't convert, hey, they could be back because it's exactly what they're looking for. And if you're focusing on longer tail keywords, like I just mentioned, stay away from the shorter ones. It's just easier to optimize your page for SEO. So remember, SEO is a two-pronged approach, on page and off- page. We talk about off- page with internal linking and backlinks. On page is all about making sure those keywords you choose are integrated in with the page you want to be found for. And so if you're using a longtail keyword, it's just easier to work that keyword in. So it enables easier on page optimization. Okay, let's switch away from SEO to email marketing. So let's focus on email marketing as a form or method of driving traffic to your website. So email marketing has been around a long time in terms of digital marketing. Why? Because it provides an effective way to convert leads into sales. Why? Because you can send personalized emails to a target audience. So when you send an email to somebody on a regular basis, you know who that person is. So what are you doing in the email? you're writing a specific message to that person. Well, email marketing is the same thing except you're just sending an email to a larger group of people. And when you send an email to a larger group of people, you're still going to personalize the message, right? You're not going to send a generic email to 1,000 people, okay? Nobody's going to do that. So, make sure your email is targeted. And if it's targeted, it could be cost effective. Why? Because sending large amounts of emails or let's just say an email to a large amount of people or a large group of people is going to be cost effective. It's not cost per click, you know, it's not cost per open. Okay? So, email usually depending on the the email provider you're using really is a flat fee. So, it just really depends on how many emails you're sending or how how many people you're sending the email to as well. So, but email generally tends to be more cost effective than other forms of marketing. So, look at the email content provider you're using and just get a sense of what they charge. But if you look at it and do a comparison, email generally is cheaper than say doing pay-per-click because with pay-per-click you're paying for each click. Okay? So, that could be expensive depending on the keywords. So, email marketing is also time-saving. Okay? Meaning it's a one-time thing and done. So once you send the email, it's just a matter of, you know, watching and looking at the metrics and learning what's going on so you don't make the same mistakes again. But it is time conducive, meaning you send out one email and that's it. With pay-per-click, you're constantly measuring and managing the campaigns. And it provides real-time marketing. So when you do send the email, more than likely majority of the people on day one or the day you send the email are going to be able to view it, open it, click on some of the links and convert. So that's normally what happens in email. Majority of the people open it on day one and it kind of tails off from there. So think about it as real time. So when you send that email and if you have a thousand people on your email recipient list, break it up. send the first 500 first with a different subject line and then you can see the data come in. And if you don't see the good results from the subject line or the body of the email or you know the page they're going to then make adjustments before you send the other email to the next 500. So that's a great thing about emails. You can break up the email into two groups. The first group and then the second group with different subject lines and you can probably send them a little bit of time apart. That way you can learn from the first email because with email you are generally going to get results right away. Okay, within the first 24 hours. So that's a great thing about email. Okay, so the other thing about email, it's less intrusive. So normally people who are going to get the email are the ones who sign up for the email. So they're almost expecting your email. So when they get your email, again, as long as you're not sending an email on a daily basis, normally most companies send it monthly or bi-weekly, it's not going to be as intrusive. Okay? And then it also helps build credibility, increase visibility and brand awareness, meaning you're going to build your brand in that email. You're going to put content in that email that's going to show off your credibility. Meaning, you could put some testimonials in the email. You could put some good affiliations. you can put a good article to an industry article you just wrote. So, email is going to inherently continue to build brand awareness for you. Okay? And it's an easy way to track ROI. So, if you're e-commerce, it's pretty clear. You send the email, somebody opens it, clicks on it, checks out, and purchases something, it's easily trackable because you could track it right from that email. So, one thing I want to say there is just if you do send an email, make sure you're tracking that campaign. And you want to be able to use an analytics program like Google Analytics. If you use Google Analytics, you're going to be able to track when you send the email, who clicks on it, and who converts. So, you want to be able to measure an ROI for these emails, and you can, and that's the beauty of email marketing. Okay, let's move away from email marketing to webinars. So, webinars, great method for effective social media promotion. It's a great way to bring traffic to your website. So why do we recommend webinars? Well, because it provides direct contact within your target group. What do we mean by contact with your target group? Well, you're going to host a webinar and you're going to invite this targeted group of people who are interested in your product or service. So, if you have a Facebook community, you could do a Facebook live event or you could do a YouTube or, you know, you can even set up a webinar on another platform, but promote it on social media. And if you're promoting something on social media, you're probably promoting it to people who are already following you or like you. And so, that's what we mean by direct contact with your target group. So, you're you're going to be able to create a webinar and talk directly to that group. And that's going to help build brand awareness and credibility. And the great thing about webinars is you don't need some fancy software. I mean, I'm talking to you on a webinar right now. And so webinars are free. All you need is a video camera and a recorder. That's all. And that's all built in with software. So there's plenty of software out there that allows you just to do a webinar really quick and easy. There's lots of opportunities in software. So, and a lot of them are very coste effective. So if you want to build uh create a webinar, you can do that by spending very little money. And webinars again allow you to talk to your targeted group, your community, maybe prospective clients. It helps build credibility and in effect drive traffic to your website. And when somebody does attend a webinar, they're likely going to be highly engaged because you're inviting them. They're going to opt into the webinar. And the great thing about webinars is even if they don't attend the webinar the day you have it, it's going to be recorded so they can always go back and watch it. So whoever watches the webinar is going to be engaged because it's going to be a topic they're interested in. And then users are likely to become prospective customers. So having a webinar talking about something inherently interesting to maybe a larger group of people, you can promote that on social media and potentially get prospective customers to sign up and watch the webinar. And if you do, they're going to be engaged and then take the next step. Oh, I like what this guy, this person has to say. They seem to be credible. I like their personality. I like their brand. I like their product. I'm going to go check their web out their website. Okay, so webinars allow you to kind of pull in more people as well as just your community because you can promote the webinar and you can promote it in advance and you can leverage social media for that. Okay, so something related to webinars incorporating video content. So videos have been proven to be a really good way to attract new visitors and it just it makes your website very engaging when you have videos on your website as well. So if you create video, you have an opportunity to post it on various video platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. Okay, there's plenty of video platforms out there or just embed it in a blog post or embed it in a Facebook post or a tweet. Okay, so you can do a lot with video and having video on your site is going to increase engagement. Okay, when you increase engagement, good things happen. That's going to lead to increased conversions and sales or or ROI or just like we mentioned the webinar can help build trust with your audience. So even that webinar you could post on your website. So you want people to engage by watching this video. they watch the video, they're going to gain trust in you because you're talking directly to that person, that user, that audience, that visitor to your website. And when you can build trust, it's going to increase engagement. And that's the beauty of video. Unlike text or imagery, videos really do engage with the audience. And so, the more video you can do, the better off you are because again, you can leverage social to draw attention to your brand and product and service. And then you can have that video on your website to increase engagement which in turn increases conversions and sales and improves ROI. So always think video. There's plenty of video software out there that you can leverage. And the great thing about video too is hey most people are using mobile phones these days, smartphones. And so video works just as well on mobile as it does on desktop. So keep that in mind. you know, video is going to be engaging regardless of what device somebody uses. And then, of course, if they're watching the video on Facebook or YouTube, then it chances are they're going to share that particular video, which is going to bode well for your brand and traffic. Okay? So, video, if somebody likes a video, it's very easy to share video, especially from a mobile phone. So, YouTube just makes it so easy to share or like or subscribe to a channel. it just it becomes that much easier. Things can go viral and chances of them going viral with video are going to be greater. Okay, so other ways to drive traffic to your website is submit your content to content aggregators. So what's a content aggregator? Well, a content aggregator is like Reddit that provides a great platform for you to post your content. So that's what a content aggregator is really a site like Reddit or Medium or Kora where you could post content to a large number of people. Okay, so with Reddit, people are either going to upvote it or downvote it. So the more up votes you get are thumbs up or likes or people who encourage that content, the more of a chance it has to be found. And so first thing out of the gate, if you do provide content to a content aggregator like Reddit, make sure it's good quality content that's interesting. And that should be a case the case across the board, whether it's a a social post or blog post. Make sure the content's unique, professional, and interesting. And then if you do say put something on Medium or you do put something on Kora and it is professional and interesting and thoughtprovoking, then people are going to react to it. And then that again could lead to traffic, but even if it doesn't lead to traffic, it helps build brand awareness. So if you have content, just like videos, leverage it. Put the content out there. Okay? And when you put content out there, it's only going to, especially if it's good content, put it's going to put you in a good light. So don't be afraid to share your content on the likes of Reddit or Medium or course traffic, SEO, brand awareness, conversions. So all these are inherent benefits of just sharing your content. Okay. And then finally, we want to learn from analytics. Okay. So what do I mean learning from analytics? So there are plenty of analytics platforms out there. One of the most popular is Google Analytics. So, you want to make sure you're tracking traffic from are they coming from that email campaign that I sent out to a thousand people. Are they coming from YouTube based on that video I posted? Or are they coming from Reddit based on the content I just posted there? Or are they coming from organic search? It so Google Analytics can help us understand how much traffic we're getting from organic search. So, it'll help us measure our SEO efforts. And then with Google Analytics, you could segment. So we could segment by mobile, we can segment by desktop, returning user, new user, by campaign, by page, by language, by city, by region. I mean, there's so many ways in which to segment your audience. And segmenting simply is breaking up the entire group of people who come to your website into different segments based on what you want to see. So if you want to look at, you know, females between the ages of 18 to 24 who come from mobile via organic search, that's a segment and you can look at that information in analytics. If that's your target audience, then you could see how they're performing. Okay? So anal there are a lot of benefits to Google Analytics. Definitely want to take advantage of segmenting in Google Analytics. You could look at your competition. So there's a benchmarking report. The great thing about Google Analytics, you can also look at content and how your content is performing once somebody lands on your website. Are they what page are they spending time on? What page are they engaging on the most? Okay, what pages have the highest bounce rate or the lowest time on page? So, you can really determine what pages work best. And then, of course, the end result in analyzing all this data is you want to be able to fine-tune your website. to take advantage of the data that Google Analytics or any other analytics platform is giving you by learning. Once you learn what's going on with your website, you can make adjustments to your website to improve user experience. Okay, so we went over a lot of different ways to drive traffic. Imagine giving your website a boost with the power of AI, helping it climb higher in search results and attract more visitors. Exciting, right? That's exactly what an SEO audit does. It's like a health check for your site where AI tools can quickly find the little things that might be showing you down from page speed to broken links and suggest smart ways to fix them. By using AI to optimize your site, you not only improve how it looks to search engines like Google, but also give users a smooth, faster experience. It's a simple but powerful way to get more eyes on your content. Stay ahead of the competition and make sure your site is always in the tiptop shape. Regular SEO audits powered by AI are your secret weapon to keep growing and succeeding online. Now you must be wondering what an SEO audit is. Is it necessary? How to even perform it? No worries. In this video, I will let you know everything you need to know about SEO audit and how to perform it as a complete beginner. Without making any delay, let's understand what is an SEO. SEO or search engine optimization is a process of making a website easier to find on search engines. It involves using the right keywords, creating helpful content, and ensuring the site loads quickly and works well on mobile devices. SEO also includes improving individual pages and building links from other sites. The goal is to help the website rank higher in search results so more people can discover it. After we have a basic understanding of what SEO actually is, let us know what is an SEO audit. An SEO audit is a detailed check of a website to see how well it can be found on search engines. It looks at factors like how fast the site loads, if it works well on mobile devices, and if the content uses the right keywords or not. AI tool plays a crucial role in the process by analyzing data more efficiently, identifying keyword trends and accessing user behavior to provide insights. The audit also checks how other website links to it and whether the content is useful for visitors. It examines how easy it is for users to navigate the site and compares it to the competitors. After the audit, you receive a report with suggestions, often enhanced by AI recommendations on how to improve the site's SEO, helping it rank higher in the search results and attract more visitors. So by now you must be wondering why it is important to conduct an SEO audit. So here's why conducting an SEO audit is crucial for improving a website's search engine rankings and overall performance. It helps identify technical issues such as broken links or poor site structure that can hinder search engine crawling and indexing. Additionally, an audit enhances user experience by ensuring the site is mobile friendly, fast, easy to navigate, which reduces bounce rates and increases conversions. It also ensures content remains relevant and optimize for target keywords, driving organic traffic without the need for paid ads. Regular SEO audits help websites stay updated with algorithm changes and provide insights into how to outperform competitors. Now the most important part I will let you know the two AI tools to conduct a basic SEO audit for complete beginners. So let's get into the video. So the first SEO audit website I would be talking about today is AIO SEO that is all-in-one SEO. It is very easy and beginner friendly. What you need to do is you have to paste your website URL over here in the search box and then you have to click on analyze. So let's get started. I'm using today the Shopify's website to get you an SEO audit. So I will just show you analyze. It may take a few minutes as it is scanning and see it has provided with a SEO free SEO report over here. So it will first start with the overall site score that is how your website is doing overall. It is 82 by 100 is like good obviously it's excellent. It has commented also and a very good score is between 60 to 80. For best results you should strive for 70 and above. So 82 it is already good. It has now further broken down in the uh audit into five critical issues, zero recommendations and good results. uh the best part is it also shows you the good results and even the critical issues. So basically it has divided the uh report into 1 2 3 four types like the basic SEO properties advanced SEO performance and security. So first get into the first basic SEO. So it it is good. It is good like the uh correct symbols are for those that are working well on your website and the cross red mark is basically you need to fix this issue. So some images on the page have no alt attribute. So like there are 51 links you can see you can even see the URLs over here and this is working good. Moving on to the next advanced SEO. The page is using the uh canonical link tag. Uh all this is fine. You don't have to fix over like the advanced SEO part performance. The server is not using expires headers for the images. And you can click over here and see basically what is the problem. The page makes 43 requests. More than 20 requests uh can result in slow page loading. Like uh the performance would be less because it makes 43 requests. more than 20 requests can actually hamper the page loading. So it is necessary you need to focus on this and the size of the HTML document is 73 KB. You need to also focus over here. So this is over our recommendation of 50 KB. So they will provide you the recommendations too and basically this is nice I would say. Moving on to the security part everything looks nice. Uh directly listing seems to be disabled on the server. That is nice and see it is uh very beginner friendly and the best part is you can even download the report from here like you can click on download and get the uh like whole report into your own uh device and you can see and make the free changes. So it is very uh beginner friendly and I would suggest that use it and have a uh for all the beginners I would say use it and it would like help you to get a free SEO report. The next website I would be talking about is rankmath.com. It is also an SEO analyzer and this is nothing different. You will just need to paste your website URL over here and then click on analyze and after that you will get the free report. Your free SEO audit report is ready. So it is getting giving you the overall website. It is 82. It is nice. We have seen it and there are zero warnings and three failed tests. So let's see move on uh common keywords SEO description. So it has given a right symbol that the meta description was found and it is 145 characters long. So it is has no problem. You don't have to fix anything. And yeah coming to the image alt attributes as we have seen in the previous um website uh SEO audit that some images on your homepage have no alt attributes. So yeah you will need to see this and uh the best part over here is you know you will be getting some recommendations on how to fix it. So if you click on it basically it will give you some suggestions that check your images for missing all tags and add useful descriptions to each image. add your keywords or synonyms but do it in a natural way. So you basically need to check your images that you are giving it um the all tags and use and using the descriptions for each image that what that image is about and you have to uh give the um keywords or synonyms of that uh to make it a better one. So uh this all looks good links ratio SEO title. Coming to the next advanced SEO search preview is good. Nothing is uh nothing no problem is there. And scrolling down you will see that it all uh works good. Performance is also good. But yeah we can see one uh cross symbol. Your homepage makes 42 requests. More than 20 requests can result in a slow page loading. We have found this in the previous audit also. So like it will give you how to fix. Try to replace embedded objects with HTML 5 alternatives. This HTML uh new version has some alternatives and you need to replace the embedded objects of that page size. The size of the HTML document is 71 KB over the average of 33 KB and our recommendation is of 50 KB. You need to uh like uh their recommendation is they're recommending you need to do it on 50 KB and you are having 71 KB. Then let's see how to fix it. uh first remove any unnecessary tags from your markup. Okay, from that HTML you need to uh like um remove the unnecessary tags. This includes developer comments which are invisible to your users search engines and uh ignore the text in comments too. Sometimes inline CSS is a culprit. Okay, a little inline CSS can help your page uh render faster too much will bloat the HTML or obviously their they prefer outline uh CSS and inline CSS is not preferred. You can reduce the CSS repetition with HTML class and ID attributes. Uh that is fine. Everything you need to change on the HTML CSS that is coding part and everything else looks fine. You can even share and email and print this SEO audit and I will say there this is 3 million plus happy users. So it is basically a very good website for a free uh SEO audit and is very beginner friendly and I will recommend to use this. So both the free AI tool will help you get a free SEO audit and make sure you fix your website issues and make your website rank higher. Imagine a small online boutique with a great product line and a beautifully designed website. Despite all the effort put into the business, it's barely getting any traffic and sales are stagnant. The owner is frustrated and wondering why potential customers aren't finding their store. That's when they turn to Google Ads. By setting up targeted campaigns, they start reaching customers who are actively searching for products just like theirs. In a matter of weeks, the business sees a noticeable increase in website traffic and sales. All thanks to the power of Google Ads. Google Ads has become an essential tool for businesses looking to connect with the right audience at the right time. A Google Ads campaign helps businesses reach potential customers online by displaying targeted ads across Google's vast network, including search results, YouTube, and partner websites. Advertisers set a budget, choose a campaign objective, and create ads that are shown to specific audiences based on keywords, demographics, and interests. The campaign operates on a pay-per-click model, meaning you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, making it an effective way to attract interested customers, and achieve your marketing goals. So, in this video, we are going to walk you through everything you need to know to get started with Google Ads. We'll cover how to create a campaign from scratch, set your budget, and choose the right bidding strategy. We'll also dive into targeting options to ensure your ads reach the right audience. And we'll show you how to craft compelling ads that drive results. By the end of this video, you'll have the knowledge and confidence to launch your own successful Google Ads campaign. So, let's get started. So, to kick off our Google Ads campaign, we'll start by creating a new campaign. So, once you're logged into your Google Ads account, begin by clicking the blue plus new campaign button. So, here you're presented with a list of campaign objectives. Now, choosing the right objective is crucial because it guides Google Ads on how to optimize your campaign. So, let's see one by one. The first objective is sales. So this is perfect for businesses looking to drive direct conversions whether it's online purchases, phone orders or inerson sales. So for instance, if you run an e-commerce store, this objective will help you target users who are ready to buy. So Google will prioritize showing your ads to people most likely to complete a transaction based on their behavior and intent. So this makes it ideal for businesses focused on generating immediate revenue. So you can use this when your primary goal is to turn clicks into sales, making it perfect for businesses with clear purchase parts like online stores or service providers. Now next we have the leads objective. So this is designed for businesses that want to gather contact information from potential customers such as through form submissions, phone calls or signups. So for example, imagine you are a real estate agent aiming to build a list of potential home buyers. So by selecting the leads objective, Google ads will optimize your campaign to reach users likely to fill out your contact form or call your office. Now next is website traffic. Now this is the objective you'll want to choose if your main goal is to drive more visitors to your website. So this is particularly useful for increasing brand awareness or getting people to explore your products and services online. Like for instance, if you're a blogger or a content creator. So this objective will help you attract visitors to your site to engage with your articles, videos or any other content that you put up. So now next comes app promotion. So this is when you have created an app like for example uh you know an online gaming app or anything and you want more installs or downloads. Now next you have awareness and consideration. So it is designed for businesses that want to engage users and engage them to think about their products or services. So this is especially effective in introducing something new to the market. And then you have local shop visits and promotions. And then you can also create a campaign without a goals guidance. Okay. So here we are planning to give an example for lead generation like how to generate lead for an a free online course provider. So let's select leads and continue. Now as we have selected an objective which is generating leads. The next step is to choose your campaign type. So there are several campaign types like Google ads offers several types but the two most common are search and display ads. So anyways, let's start with the search ads. So these are the text based ads that appear at the top of the Google search results when someone searches for keywords related to your business. Like for example, let's see, let's just see car rentals near me. So your ad could appear like this. Like as you can see the sponsored ads. So your ads could appear at the top of the search result. So this is highly effective for capturing high intent users. So people who are actively looking for what you offer. Now next we have display ads. So these are visually engaging ads that appear across the Google display network like which includes websites like the ads basically the ads you see in others websites apps or even YouTube. So now display ads are perfect for building awareness and keeping your brand top of mind. So they work well for retargeting like showing your ads to people who have previously visited your website but didn't take any action. Now the next one is shopping ads. Now shopping ads are a powerful tool for e-commerce websites. So these ads showcase your products directly in the search results complete with images, prices, and your studio. Like for example, if we search leather jackets, just a second. Leather jacket. Yeah. So your shopping ad could appear displaying a product image, price, and a link to purchase directly from your website as you can see here. So this makes it easy for potential customers to see what you're offering and click through to buy. So shopping ads are ideal if you're looking to drive sales of physical products providing a visual direct path to purchase. Then we have video ads which is another impactful way to reach your audience especially on platform. Video ads you can create engaging content that appear before during or other videos on YouTube. So this is basically the videos like the ad videos that you see like while watching your YouTube video. And then we have performance max campaign. So this type uses Google's machine learning to optimize your ads across all Google properties like including search, display, YouTube, Gmail, etc. So performance max campaigns are perfect when you want to maximize your results without managing multiple campaign type separately. So Google's algorithms will automatically find the best combination of ad formats and placements to meet your objectives. So right now we'll select the search campaign type and we want like we'll be giving lead form submissions and let's press continue and let's just keep like lead search. So now that we have selected our campaign type the next step is to set your budget and bidding strategy. So this is crucial as it determines how much you're willing to spend and how Google ads will manage your bids. So now for bidding since our objective in this demo is to generate leads we'll choose conversions. So this strategy lets Google automatically set your bids to get the most conversions within your budget. So now you can set a target cost per action. So this budget is the amount you're comfortable spending per action. So like you can just give 0.3 rupees you know per action and let's press next. Now next let's define our targeting options. So this step is about deciding who will see your ads, where they will see them and when. So you can target users by location. As you can see all countries in teries, India or any other location you have options. So for example if your store is in Delhi you might want to target only people within a 50 mile radius. Now additionally you can also refine your audience based on demographics such as age, gender and household income. So this ensures your ads reach the most relevant relevant customers and you can also select the languages that your you know customers speak like you can give English, you can give uh Hindi. So you can select multiple languages that your target audiences speak and also you can you know select the audience segments like what your audience might be doing. So like for example we are actually you know giving this example for lead generation for a free online course provider. So what we do is we can actually like our audience will be students right. So we can give students yeah you can give current university students and this is also for working professionals. So you can give working education, jobs, IT and technical. So you can select who your target audience are. So effective targeting is crucial for maximizing your ad spend. So take the time to consider who your ideal customers are. Now let's go to next. So now next is selecting keywords. So for search ads, keywords are the backbone of your campaign. So these are the words or phrases users type into Google when looking for products or services like yours. So choose keywords that are closely related to your business. So for example, we are actually looking for lead generation for this particular website which is simply learn skill website that provides free online courses. So first you have to give the final URL and then you have to enter your keywords. You can also you know type in the products or services like you advertise like the course name and everything and you can enter the keywords. Now you can take the help of Google's keyword planner for keyword ideas and see how often they are searched. So let's just go to keyword planner discover new keywords. So now here you have to enter the products or services closely related to your business. So here I'll just type online sorry free online course digital marketing. So you can give so many keywords. Okay. And let's give get results. So now these are the keywords that are suggested by the keyword planner. So what you can do is you can just select the keywords like you can select so many multiple keywords you can copy it you can paste it here. So this is a demo that's why I've just taken you know three to four keywords but in fact you have to use more keywords. So now you have selected your keywords now it's time to create your ad. So your ad copy includes the headline, description and display URL. So this is what users will see in the search results or across the display network. So basically in your ad. So making it engaging and relevant. So first you can give the URL of your website. So in the headline you can grab the attention by highlighting your key offerings and including one of your main keywords. Like for example you can give master digital marketing and you can give like you have to fill at least three headlines. So you can get free digital course or you can get best and you can even fill more headlines. Now you can use the description. So this is the description part. So you can use a description to expand on your offer. So like you can highlight unique selling points of yours like expert instructors. For example, you can give expert instructors sorry or flexible learning or like endor to boost your career etc. So once you have done this let's go to next. Now this shows your budget. So as you can see we had given like 0.244 cost per conversion. So your weekly cost will be 50,000. So here you