You’ve made it! The final chapter of our SEO Crash Course. Hopefully, you’ve learned a few things along the way and feel confident moving forward with your SEO campaigns. In this final part of the course I really just want to give some final thoughts and a few helpful tips and tricks.
SEO: Ever-Changing and Always the Same
In this course, we’ve covered a lot. We’ve gone over site optimization, content, and link building. We’ve talked about what the search engines want from your websites as well as the best ways to do keyword research to maximize your free traffic.
Along the way, I’ve also discussed how things were in the past. Mentioning that once upon a time you could do this or that to increase your rankings while also saying how many of those things don’t work anymore. This is because SEO is ever-changing and although it is ever-changing, within this tutorial I tried to go over the methods that truly work and have worked for a long time.
Each Google algorithm change brings with it a slightly new playing field. What I want to stress here though is that if you stick with the core elements of SEO, proper site optimization, quality content, and high-quality link building you should never have to worry about these changes and updates.
These elements have been a staple of a good web page and a web page that ranks high in the search engines for close to 2 decades now, with no signs of that stopping. What can get people into trouble is taking shortcuts, trying to find loopholes, and jumping on new “fad” SEO tricks. If we’re building long-term businesses here let’s stick to the basics and reap the rewards for years to come.
Keep up with the Times
Be mindful of the necessary changes, for example, the mobile revolution. Don’t be a dinosaur that doesn’t optimize for mobile. You’ll get left behind. There will be other changes like this along the way. Make sure to re-assess the current environment often. Does your web page look dated? Have you upgraded to HTTPS or are you stuck on HTTP when everyone else is moving on? Keep up with the online world because it’s going to keep moving.
Don’t Let Oversights Bring Down Your Site
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked to look over friends’ websites that aren’t ranking well to see that the site is returning errors everywhere or files missing etc… These things can happen but be on top of them.
Keep up with your site, for example, update your WordPress often (or any other CMS), and after doing so look over your site to make sure everything is still functioning. Updates mean changes which means things can break. This can cause huge problems with ranking.
If you are linking to files on external pages make sure they are not dead. This is a big problem with old content that hasn’t been looked at in years. It’s a bad look and can hurt rankings.
There are many examples of these types of issues but they can mostly be avoided by looking over your website every now and then and making sure all looks and works correctly.
5 Awesome SEO Tips & Tricks
If you search online for SEO tips and tricks a lot of what you see is things we’ve already covered in this tutorial. Essentially they are SEO basics and things to know, not actual tips and tricks. I wanted to give a little icing on the cake for those of you brave enough and patient enough to make it through this entire course by offering some actual SEO tricks and tips you won’t find many places. So let’s dive in.
Indexing Your Pages Quickly
Now and again you are bound to have some indexing troubles. Google might be slow to index your pages, or maybe just not index a page at all. Why.. who knows! A very simple trick is to use Google’s own Fetch as Google Tool to get your pages indexed usually within a few hours.
Make sure you are logged into Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) then at the top you’ll see a search box, enter the URL and submit. You can then “Request Indexing” and your URL will be added to the indexing queue. If this tool doesn’t get you in the Index after a few days then almost nothing will so there may be some sort of page error or site error that’s causing indexing problems.
Find Great Backlink Opportunities
This trick requires access to a paid Keysearch plan but it is highly effective so I wanted to include it. What this trick does, is use your competitors to find link opportunities for your web page. Here’s how to do it. Goto Keysearch’s Backlink Checker under the Competitive Analysis section.
So for this example, I’m going to use my brother’s business. He owns a moving company in Brooklyn. Let’s say I wanted to find backlink opportunities for his website. I’d search Google and find a few URLs of his competitors. In this example one of them I found was dumbomoving.com. I’d search the URL in the search box and then I open the filter and switch to show just dofollow links. Why dofollow? Why not! If I’m going to get some links may as well first see if I can get some links that will pass link juice. Many times I won’t bother filtering just dofollow but you guys did want an SEO trick right? So why not go for the gusto!
So now that I’ve loaded up my competitor’s backlinks and have it so it’s only showing Dofollow links, I can basically just look through and see what links I can get as well. For this example right away I see 2 links with good domain strength (DS). The 2 highlighted in the picture below are both business directory sites that I can easily submit my website and get the same links. So already I’ve found 2 great links that are super easy to get and I just started!
I’m sure there are plenty of other links I could find either from directories, forums I could signup to, free sites to submit to, or even just contacting site owners asking them to add me to the articles or lists. This is an incredible way to find great link opportunities. After searching a few competitors I could have dozens of new backlinks with great metrics!
Include The Year in Your Keywords or Titles
This is such a simple trick and at the same time works so well. If you are looking to bypass some of the competition for really tough keywords add the year into your article titles or backlink anchor texts. For example, if you want to write an article about “The Best Baby Strollers” there is probably a lot of competition. If you instead write an article “The Best Baby Strollers For 2023” you may weed out a lot of competitors since many of them may not be optimized for searches with the year included.
This isn’t a magic bullet but it can help gain some long-tail traffic if you are able to utilize it. I once made a killing on a small niche site solely grabbing traffic for keywords in my niche and the year. I couldn’t rank well for the main keywords, but optimizing some of my articles and backlinks to include the year made a huge difference.
Utilize Authority Sites For Rankings
Ever notice how many Youtube, Facebook, and Pinterest pages show up in search results? These are just a few of the sites you can utilize for rankings and traffic, especially when you are just getting your site off the ground.
If your website doesn’t have much authority yet it’s going to be tough to rank. Utilizing sites that already have authority for your own gain can be hugely beneficial and a great way to start traffic flowing. Get accounts on Youtube, Facebook, Pinterest, or whatever may work for you and your site. Then start using these entities to target keywords.
Have you found an easy keyword but your site is still too new to rank for it? Make a Youtube video optimized for the keyword with a link back to your site in the description. The same goes for Facebook. Make a Facebook post optimized for the keyword and utilize these domains’ power to do the ranking for you. These domains already hold authority and you may just get these pages into the top 10 of Google without doing anything else.
Use Paid Traffic to Optimize and Build Links
I know what you’re thinking… “If I wanted to pay for traffic I wouldn’t need to do SEO!” Trust me I totally understand but there is a method to this madness. Buying some paid traffic, especially in the beginning can actually be a very cheap way of getting your site optimized to convert well and also build backlinks.
Natural backlinks aren’t going to come unless you have traffic. Once you start getting those backlinks though, you’ll move up in the rankings and traffic will be coming in on its own. So the point of this method is to get traffic right away, get eyes on your site and get people talking about it. It also allows you to see how people are reacting to your page and may give you ideas of changes to make that can help you rank better. You can see which keywords convert well and are worth targeting.
Paid traffic doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg. I love using Facebook ads and Bing ads to get some really cheap traffic. With Facebook, I like to pay per 1000 views rather than per click. This allows me to try and get a lot of eyes on my ad and it’s super cheap. Just make sure you really narrow down your audience.
Bing allows you to get paid traffic at a fraction of the cost that you would pay for the same clicks on Google. There is also a lot less competition so that means your ad can be shown a lot.
When using these traffic sources make it your goal to get people linking to you. Send traffic to some of your best or most shareable content. Give things away for free. Do whatever it takes to try and get people linking back and soon you won’t need any paid traffic once these links start propping your rankings up.
Final Thoughts
I hope you guys have enjoyed the SEO Crash Course. I had a great time putting it together. If you’ve made it this far I think it’s safe to say you are no longer an SEO beginner. You have taken the steps to understand SEO at a level most people never will.
One thing I’ve learned about building online businesses is that actually “doing” something is worth so much more than thinking and doing nothing. You need to take action to get anywhere. I started out making small niche websites with barely an idea of what I was doing but I learned along the way, making many mistakes, and in the end, had built a huge network of passive income websites that lasted years.
When I released my first SEO product it was a huge piece of junk. Definitely not ready for primetime but by releasing it and getting it off the ground it lead to bigger and better products and opened a whole new world of success and opportunity for me.
What I am getting at is you now have the tools to build your business bigger and better than it ever was before. For those just starting out, you are ahead of the game. Most people who own websites have no idea about any of this “SEO stuff”. So don’t plan for “one day I will do this” Get going right now! Trust me you will be happy you did. Take these new skills and start dominating your competition today!
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