SEO Basics for Non SEOs

BizatWeb
68 followers
Mar 31, 2026
So in this lesson, we're going to talk about how you can help Google understand your site.
We're going to cover how Googlebot works, how Google reads the content on your site,
and how Google crawls through the links on your site.
The first thing that you need to know is the way that Google understands the web
is that it crawls with a web crawler called Googlebot.
Googlebot reads your page, and it tries its best to understand it the way a person would understand it.
That means not just the HTML, but also the CSS.
Or, if you're not as used to those sorts of terms, not just the text on the page,
but also how it's laid out.
What you can always do is check on Google to see how it's understood your web page
by searching for cache, colon, and then the URL that you want to see.
So this is my sister and brother-in-law's website, EducationRickshaw,
which I'm borrowing for this lesson.
You can see it's a pretty standard blog structure.
This should be easy for Google to read.
So let's go ahead and search for cache and EducationRickshaw.
So here's Google's version of their site.
It looks pretty much the same.
I always do a sweep of the page to make sure that Google has loaded the whole thing.
So let's look both at the top of the page, the links up here,
and then let's go to the bottom just to make sure that the whole thing's been loaded.
It's all here.
This is pretty standard for a standard blog, but it's definitely a good experiment for you to try.
So what you're going to want to keep in mind is that Google understands text best on the web page,
and that's what you're going to want to focus the most on.
Information that's at the top of the page, in bold and in headlines,
is considered as more indicative of what the page is about, so focus a lot on those.
Also, did you know that you can actually control the content that shows up in Google's search engine results pages?
The page title and meta description are written by you, and they're in the HTML.
They're not obviously visible to the website reader.
Did you know that you get to write the headline and description that Google puts on its results pages?
That's called the page title and meta description,
and it's in the HTML of pretty much every web page on the Internet.
You can always write that in in HTML if you're actually coding your own site,
although most people at this point are normally using CMSs.
A CMS will normally have a place for you to put in the page title and meta description.
This is what it's for.
You get to be in full control of that.
If you can't find out where that is, or if it seems like your CMS is dynamically generating it,
what I like to do is I like to go on a website, and I right-click, and I get to View Source.
Now we're getting a little technical here.
It's going to come up with the HTML.
What you can do then is search for title and description.
You'll normally find the code in there that's showing the title tag and the meta description,
and then if that is being dynamically generated based on how you're titling a page
or the beginning of the description that you have somewhere,
you might be able to piece together how your CMS is working.
I'm showing my cousin's site here.
It's an art site.
He is using a blog structure, but the primary focus of this is his art, and to show that off.
I want to show my cousin's site because with a blog, the navigation is kind of built into it.
Each post is listed.
Normally you show a little bit of a clip on the homepage, and the homepage gets most people to blog posts.
It's a little different when you have a site like this where he's trying to show off all of his art at once.
What I think is great here is that he has links to his different types of art in the top nav,
and then when you click on that, you'll see his different examples of that, which are presumably blog posts.
But these are very clear.
You can really see where you're going.
He's also using a way that people would describe it,
so Google is going to be able to understand what all of these are as well.
So top navigation like this, this is where you link to the most important pages.
This is a great example of that.
Now this is his blog.
So here's an example of a huge blog, Moz, where I'm a writer occasionally.
This is an example of a site where you would have to work with an SEO.
This is too much, but I still want to give you an idea of when you have more complexity, how you can handle that.
So they actually have layers of navigation here, and what is interesting is they are SEO,
so they're going to be optimizing this to an extreme.
But you'll notice that the top nav, top, top nav up here, this is actually to their core website.
This isn't even to the blog.
And then below that, they actually made it a dropdown.
Dropdowns like this can work.
It means you can get more topics than you can physically fit on the screen.
You'll just need to make sure that's in the HTML.
Often dropdowns are built with JavaScript.
And then this is an example for HBO Watch.
So here, HBO Watch, they do have a top navigation.
What I want to do is scroll you down here.
They've got their legalese and their contact us in the footer.
So you'll notice, for example, in my sister's blog that I've shown before, they have contact us at the top.
And then for HBO Watch, they have contact us at the bottom.
The key difference here is, like I mentioned, Google's going to look at where you linked to the page,
and honestly, users are as well.
And if something's at the top, that's probably more important.
And if it's the bottom, it's probably less important.
So for HBO Watch, they're not really encouraging you to reach out to them.
They want you to just enjoy their content.
But you can reach out to them.
For my sister's blog, they're actually using this as a networking tool.
So they would like you to contact them.
And that's why they put it at the top.
Okay, we're at the end of lesson one.
What we learned in this lesson is what Googlebot is, how you can optimize your site so Google can read it better,
and how you can optimize your links.
Okay, so the project for the end of this lesson is to review your page titles, meta description, and navigation.
For page titles and meta description, carefully review all of the pages on your site.
If you have a blog and you have tons of pages, go ahead and just choose the most recent ten.
But look over all of those.
It's really important to make sure, when you take that page title and meta description,
is that going to make people want to click and get through to your site?
This is your opportunity to advertise for free.
Then also check out your navigation.
Is your navigation easy for users to find?
Is it easy for Google to find?
Ideally, can you get more of that in the top navigation?
Can you move your most important pages up there?
See if you can play around with that.
When you finish your project for this lesson, take notes on what you've done.
We're going to want to share those at the end of the course,
so that way we can see what you've done to change your site and make it better.
Good luck.
All right, so in this lesson, we're going to talk about how you can use the right words on your site.
In this lesson, we're going to cover what a keyword is,
tools that you can use to identify the right keywords,
and how you can integrate keywords in with your content.
So let's start off by talking about what is a keyword.
So a keyword is a phrase that you've decided you want to use on your site,
because if someone searched for that phrase,
you'd like them to find your site or specific webpage.
It doesn't mean that that's the only phrase that you're going to rank for,
but it's a way for you to hone in on that.
It's a really common term used by SEOs,
so I just want to make sure that you know what that is.
Don't worry about it too much. It's really just what you're targeting.
So let's take a step back and ask,
how does Google decide, when you search for something, what pages come up for it?
In the past, it was just what webpages used the exact same phrase that you searched for.
Definitely not the case with Google anymore.
Google understands that there are synonyms.
Google understands that there's context.
They're going to look through all of that.
That said, if you match something exactly,
you're going to do a whole lot better.
So when we identify keywords,
what we want to do is we want to identify the keyword
that is the most common way that people would describe
what your webpage is talking about,
and we want to target that.
Okay, so let's go into a real-world example of keyword targeting.
I chose swimsuits and bathing suits
because they're synonyms.
They're actually regionally different, I believe,
why you would choose one or the other,
but they're basically the same thing, right?
So you think that Google would look at that and go,
they're the same thing.
We know that Google understands synonyms.
What's interesting is that if we look at the results from swimsuits,
it's American Eagle and PacSun,
and then we look at bathing suits,
that's Venus and Amazon.
Those are completely different sites.
So why did that happen?
The first thing I'm going to say as an SEO,
without looking this up,
is I'm going to assume that swimsuits
is the most common phrase in America
because PacSun and American Eagle
have decided to target that.
They're the bigger brands.
Venus, as a smaller brand,
has decided to target bathing suits.
Now, I have not worked for Venus,
but my guess here is that they chose bathing suits
because that way they can actually rank number one
for one of these phrases.
It's going to be hard for them
to outrank American Eagle outfitters.
What about Amazon?
How is Amazon showing up for this
when their page title says swimsuits?
Well, on the page,
Amazon used the word bathing suits.
Why didn't the other companies do that?
Well, it's a little bit weird
to switch between regional dialects.
The good news is,
in most cases when you're talking about synonyms,
you actually can switch between the synonyms.
That's really common in English.
So when you're writing a blog post
and you find a few different ways
to describe the same thing,
do switch through them.
That's awesome for SEO,
and it also just sounds better.
The benefit of targeting the keyword
that people are more likely to search for
is that Google will bold it in search results,
and you'll rank slightly better for that.
And this will be especially important
when you're ranking against competitors
that maybe aren't targeting
the exact same phrase as you,
but are bigger than you.
This is how you can sneak up on them,
sort of like Venus with Amazon.
So how do you choose the right keywords to target?
How did American Eagle and PacSun decide
that they wanted to target swimsuits
rather than bathing suits?
There are tools for that.
The biggest one is Google Keyword Planner.
Google Keyword Planner
is actually part of Google Ads.
So they want you to pay to use it.
Now there is a way for you to sign up
and not pay anything,
and I have a PDF below
that you can use to figure out how to do that.
The thing is,
until you start spending a lot of money,
they're not going to give you a lot of detail.
So in that case,
you might actually want to pay
for a keyword tool
that's different than Google Ads.
Most of those cost $30 to $50 a month.
You can probably get a trial period
if you just want to do some keyword research
and save all of that.
You'll get more specific keyword volume
if you do it that way.
So let's get used to the Google Ads interface
and compare swimsuits versus bathing suits.
So what I'm going to do is say
that I want to find the volume
of a keyword.
I'm going to put in swimsuits and bathing suits.
And there you can see
that swimsuits is a more common phrase
in the United States than bathing suits,
which is probably why American Eagle
and PacSun chose to target them.
As you explore keywords,
one thing I really want to stress,
don't go too broad.
You're going to see these really high search volumes
for each month and go,
oh man, if I can just get the tiniest piece of that pie,
that'll be great.
The thing is, if you don't rank in the first 10 results,
it doesn't really matter.
People aren't going to get there.
You really want to focus on keywords
that you actually can rank for.
So think about how you can be different.
Think about how you can be a little bit more niche.
If you're a new blogger,
you're not going to be able to rank for swimsuits.
Venus can't even rank for swimsuits.
But instead, can you do swimsuit reviews?
Can you do swimsuit reviews
for plus sizes?
Can you do swimsuit reviews for professional swimmers?
Something like that.
Get a little bit more detailed.
And then, if you have an idea, you can go ahead and see
if Google has the volumes there.
Your project for this lesson is to review the content
that you already have and target it
with the new keywords that you found.
I'm including this even for your homepage.
Your homepage should be targeting a keyword
that describes what you're offering.
So think about what your niche is.
Once you've come up with those keywords that you want to target,
figure out how you're going to target them.
Like we talked about,
if it's in the page title or meta description,
that can be bolded when someone's searching for something.
It's going to feel way more relevant.
See if you can get that content into those page titles
and meta descriptions.
After that, like we talked about in the previous lesson,
content higher up on the page and bolded
is going to carry more weight.
Can you get those into the headlines?
Into the top of the page?
Can you get some synonyms so you can hit multiple keywords at once?
Go through your site and see what you can optimize.
Make notes about it so you can put it together in your project.
I'm excited to see the changes you're able to make.
One of the things you might have been thinking
during the last lesson was,
can I use this tool to find new keywords
that I want to target?
The answer is yes.
It's actually a great way to identify content
that you want to target.
Not just for SEO, but because
SEO is actually indicative of what people
are searching for.
That's the benefit of it.
This is my sister and brother-in-law's blog again,
EducationRickshaw.
They're both teachers who teach abroad right now
and they're in Canada.
They share concepts they've learned about teaching here.
Using Keyword Planner, you can find new keywords
related to a topic or URL with the Find Keywords option.
In my experience,
Google's not the best with the URL option,
but it's always worth a try.
Yeah, so I don't think
you want to write a blog about
teacher teacher.
Instead, I'm going to use the Find Keywords tool
to find keywords about teaching.
There are a lot of
irrelevant keywords that come up here, but don't be discouraged.
I put in a really general
term here. Google's going to try to match it
in as many ways as possible.
Scrolling down this list, I see culturally responsive
teaching, reciprocal teaching,
professional development for
teachers, qualities of a good teacher.
The first two are theories on how to teach
that seems really in line with what
my sister and brother-in-law are working on.
Professional development for teachers is
probably a search for actual professional
development courses. Remember how
I talked about wanting to be the best result when someone's
searching for something? Imagine you're a teacher
searching for professional development.
How can my sister and brother-in-law's
knowledge help their search? I think probably
a review or a list of fun
or uncommon options. Put your own spin on it.
Then last, there's qualities of a good teacher.
This one seems really simple and
arbitrary, but keep in mind that my sister
and brother-in-law are the perfect people to write about
this. They're good teachers.
They have their master's degrees in teaching, and they've been
teaching for seven years at four different schools
in four different countries. They've seen all
different types of teaching and teachers. This can end up
being for a really wide variety of audiences.
I can see it being interesting for people who
are trying to identify good teachers,
people who are interested in becoming teachers,
looking into it for good career development
for them. I really want to stress
you don't have to choose what content
you want to create based on what keywords
get the most search volume. You really
want to keep this true to yourself. You want to write stuff
that you're passionate about. But like I said
as we were going through education rickshaw,
if you feel like you can be a great answer
to that, that that's something someone would seek out,
go for it. So your
project for this lesson is to come up with three
new pieces of content that you want
to create for your site.
So this lesson is called Be the Best
Result. And as you may have guessed from
the word best, that means we're
talking about competition. So in this lesson
we're going to talk about how to not
freak out about the competition
and how to use the competition to actually make your
site better. So let's
take a step back. Why is competition
important? Well, there's an
insane amount of content on Google.
Just go ahead and try searching for
something that's a keyword that you're targeting.
Look right beneath the search bar
and see how many results there are for that.
So here's an example of culturally responsive
teaching. This is something that we mentioned in the
last lesson. That's something that my sister might
want to try to rank for. Culturally responsive
teaching has over 8 million
results. She has over 8
million competitors for that keyword.
You've got to keep an eye on this
stuff. So I said the point here is going
to be to not freak you out. Here's
why I think you shouldn't freak out. There
is always competition in everything
you do. The difference is with
SEO, you know what your competition
is. You can see what Google has
chosen to rank first. You can see what
content they have, and you can learn from
that. And that's what we're going to cover in today's
lesson. So let's go back
to our keyword, culturally responsive
teaching, that we found in the last lesson
where we were talking about EducationRickshaw,
my sister and brother-in-law's website.
So the top four results
for culturally responsive teaching are
brown.edu, which is basically
a definition. Edutopia,
which is basically a category page within their blog.
Then there's an ASCB
and TeachAway article, and both of those
are how-tos, and I think that fits a lot
better with the style of EducationRickshaw.
And this is potentially what they should look at
to see if they can build a better page.
Let's look at each of them. The ASCB
article is actually a research paper written
in 1995, so a little out of
date, but probably foundational on this sort of subject.
If my sister and her husband write
on this, they'll almost definitely want to read
this thoroughly and see if it adds to their own article.
They might even want to reference it.
The TeachAway article,
it's much more readable than the ASCB article.
This is a benchmark, because this is more
like what they're going to write. If they write
something, they need to write something better than the
TeachAway article. I think they can do that in a lot
of ways, and this is where it becomes just a marketing
exercise. So for me personally,
I think that they can make this a bit more personal.
The TeachAway article, I don't really know
who wrote this. I don't know what their background is.
My sister and her husband,
they can talk a lot more about
how they've experienced this sort of thing.
So they can make different points than the article.
The TeachAway article only has five points.
They could use the same ones and potentially
add to them, but you don't really want to
copyright. So I would come up with their own list
of what they think are the most important points for
culturally responsive teaching.
So hopefully that gave you a feel for how an SEO
would book a competition and come up
with how you can make better content.
You basically want to find the
content that you're trying to mimic,
find the content that Google likes to rank
for a given keyword, and then
see how you can offer something that is
more diverse, more in-depth,
generally better.
So your project for this lesson is to
choose three keywords that you're targeting,
look at the competition,
and decide how you want to change your site
based on the competition.
Take notes, share in the project,
and I'm excited to see what you come up with.
So at this point, you know how to structure
your site, how to identify keywords,
and how to put them on your site.
What's the next step? Link building.
So in this lesson, we're going to talk about
why link building is important,
why you want to get links from more reputable sites,
and why you probably actively don't want links
from sketchier sites. So think about it.
Google the computer. Google can't
tell the difference between word vomit
and Shakespeare. It can just see the words
on the page. So Google determines
how much it can trust you by how many
links are linking to you and the quality
of those links. That's often
called page rank by Google.
There are other metrics you might hear out there, like
domain authority or page authority.
Those are third-party systems that have tried
to mimic page rank because
Google actually offers page rank.
But page rank is the number that
SEOs will use to determine the strength
of a given webpage. Now,
that's getting a little bit technical. You don't have to
go into that. What we're going to talk about now is just
why link building is important to get
you psyched up to do some link building of your own.
So the way that I like to describe
the impact of links in SEO
is to imagine recommendations in real
life, like links.
So first of all, let's imagine
that you want to go to a new restaurant.
And you remember that like 10
people have recently told you to try out a new restaurant.
That's pretty impressive, right?
Because 10 people independently
just decided to tell you about the restaurant.
That's cool. That's like the quantity
of links. That's like getting a lot of links
to your website. Now imagine that one
of those people is a food critic
or a food blogger that you have a lot of respect for.
They know what they're talking about.
Imagine that they told you the restaurant
was great versus just
one other random person. They're probably
going to convince you a lot more than that other
person. That's similar to how Google
looks at different websites as carrying different weights.
If you get a link from the New York Times
it's going to have a way better impact
on your rankings than if you get a link from
Jobo's blog. Even more so than
I think in my example. It's huge.
Get a link from the New York Times if you can.
Last, think about when you're looking
for a new restaurant and there's that person
standing on the corner and they're like handing out
coupons and they're saying it's great.
That doesn't really mean anything.
If it's done in a shady way, like if they're trying
to lie to you about it, that actually might make you
think less of the restaurant.
If they're just passing out the coupons, it's probably
no big deal. Similarly, if Google
gets a whiff that these are paid links
and especially if you're trying to hide
that it's paid from them, that doesn't go over
very well. It's not really worth it.
I wouldn't recommend paying for links.
We'll talk a little bit later. You can potentially
be partnering with people
but just don't pay for links
or if you say that something's sponsored,
Google's going to identify that and see that it's
just not as valuable.
The moral of the story is
more links are better.
Links from more reputable sites
are even better.
Don't pay for links.
Don't try to get links from sketchy sites.
Just don't. There's no project
for this lesson because the next one's going to get pretty big
so head on over to that video.
Hopefully in our last lesson
I convinced you that link building's important.
It's extremely important and it's something you need
to be doing on an ongoing basis in order for your
SEO to do well. In this lesson, we're
going to talk about the how-to of link building.
We'll talk about which
sites you might want to reach out to,
what could be an enticing offer, and how
to write a link building email. I want
to start off that any ideas that
you have for an easy way to get
links probably won't work.
If it's easy because it's a friend,
yeah, maybe. But if it's
a directory, if it's
a blog post website that accepts
any submissions and you can just
write a guest post,
if it's a comment section,
other people have thought of it and
it doesn't work. Google's figured it out.
You're going to have to put a little bit of work into this.
So as you start out on this,
any idea for how you can get easy
links probably won't
work. The thing is,
everyone else has thought of whatever you just
thought of. Directories don't
work very well. The exception there is
if it's a directory that you can actually imagine yourself
using. Maybe
if it's curated and that indicates that
the directory owner has actually looked at your site
and thinks it's valuable,
that might work. But if it's a directory
where you can just submit your website,
it's not really worth your time. Not even
to submit a website. Comments
aren't going to work. Google understands how
forums work. It's not going to do anything.
And if you pay for
a post or if you find a website that just
accepts any guest posts,
it's just really not going to carry a lot of weight
because Google's going to see the easy
sign-up or the payment wording.
So, no easy
wins here. You're going to have to put in some elbow grease.
The first thing you need to do is figure
out who you're going to reach out to. The most
obvious thing that you can do is reach out
to bloggers or site owners that
are very similar to yours. There's going to be
a natural connection there if you're in the same
niche. So, Education
Rickshaw, for example. My sister
can find other teachers who also have
blogs. It'll be really easy for
them to find something that they have in common
where they can share knowledge or they can partner up
on something. For long-term link building,
you're going to have to reach outside of your niche.
That's where you're going to have to get creative. You're going to have
to think, what expertise do I have
that another niche would be interested in?
For Education Rickshaw, I think
a really easy example is a parenting blog.
She's a teacher. Parents
work with teachers all the time. They're probably really interested
in that. As a teacher, she can offer
expertise as to how to be
a teacher themselves if they want to homeschool.
How they can work with teachers who
maybe are difficult or having a hard time working
with the kids. How they can help
their kids work better with teachers.
There's a lot of options there, but the
key is, when she's reaching out, she's
not going to want to reach out and offer to write the same
content she's writing on her blog.
Her blog is writing for teachers.
If she's reaching out to a parenting
blog, she needs to write something
for parents. So keep in mind here,
you're going to have to represent yourself,
but you're going to want to be yourself
and share your brand in a
way that's going to appeal the most to the niche that you
reached out to. So once you've chosen
who you want to reach out to, you're going to need to
reach out to them and suggest how you
can work together. There's a lot of different ways
you can do partnerships, but more often
than not, you're going to offer a guest post,
which means that you'll write content for their blog.
That can be really valuable.
That can be a lot more valuable than you'd think because
content producers, especially for larger sites,
need to create so much content. It can be
helpful if they can get good quality content from you.
So once you've chosen a site
that you would like to get a link from, you're going to want to reach out
to them and suggest a partnership to them.
Keep in mind, what you need to
offer is something where you're offering them
value because the link back is value
to you. You need a fair trade.
Often this is going to be a guest post.
The value there is that they're going to get
good quality content. So keep in mind,
it really matters that you write something good,
not only because what you post over
there is going to be an advertisement for your site,
but also because you want to have
this good exchange where the other site owner
is happy that you built this for them.
They don't have to link to you. You want them to
want to link to you. So a guest post
is going to be the most common option here.
Just write some good quality content.
It's a good advertisement, and then also
the site owner is more likely
to actually link to you if you write good quality
content. I can't emphasize
this enough. If you write a bad guest post,
you may never hear back from them again.
But think outside
the box. It doesn't always have to
be guest posts. So earlier
I've shown you an example of my cousin's
website. My cousin's website is
really almost like a living resume
for him. He's showing pieces of his art.
So he can reach out to
other bloggers and maybe find some content
that he thinks is really interesting, and then
illustrate it. It's such a great ego
boost for the site owner to have some
illustrated content, something else that adds to
it. They're probably going to want to reference
that. So that's the mindset
you want to take here. Think,
what can I do that
another site owner would think is awesome
and want to link to
and want to reference me for?
So once you know who you want to reach out
to and what you want to suggest,
you need to actually reach out.
More often than not, you're going to want to do this as an email,
but you can also do it through social media.
Whatever works for you. The key here
is do something that's uniquely
you. Don't make it weird.
So many people make it extremely
professional or just
way too eager, and that just
doesn't make it interesting for the person who
wants to connect with you. So this is an
example for my former co-worker.
It's casual, it's personal,
and it explains what he wants
really easily. He's not putting any
burden on the person reading it.
It's interesting for them.
They know why they would want to connect with him, both
because they know what he's offering and they know who he is.
So think about that.
When you're writing an email,
what are you offering?
If you were reading this email from you, would it be
intriguing? Would you want to work
with that person? Once you write
the email, and I cannot stress this enough,
sit on it and look at it again
the next day. Once you get used to this,
you probably don't need to wait so long, but
you need to look at it with fresh eyes
and ask yourself, is this the sort of email
that I want to respond to?
So once you've written an email that you think is really good,
save it. You're going to want to use it
as a template for next time.
The thing about SEO is that everyone's
always asking for links, so just know
that when you're sending out these emails or these
social media posts, the people you're reaching out
to probably get inundated.
So when you get a good email written,
you want to use that to make sure that next time
you keep a good email.
Definitely personalize it each time though.
Your project for this lesson is to reach out
to the owner of a site that you admire.
Social media, email, however you want to do it.
But make a note of how you do it.
It's going to be really interesting the better
that you get at this, how much you grow,
and you're going to want to see the first way that you did it.
And also I'm going to want to see the first way that you did it.
Include it in your project and
share it so that everyone else can learn from each other.
I'm excited to see what you come up with.
So, that was
SEO for non-SEOs.
I hope you're finishing this up feeling more confident
in your ability to make the right
SEO decisions as you build out your website.
Let's go over again what we learned.
First of all, site structure is important.
Always keep an eye on your page titles,
meta descriptions, and internal links.
Use the specific phrases
or keywords that people are using
to try to find the content that you've created.
You can find search volumes in Google
Keyword Planner or pretty much any paid
keyword research tool.
You can also use those tools to figure out what sort of
content you want to create if you'd like that sort of guidance.
And last,
link building is important.
Links show Google that your site
is valuable to other website owners
and that's how you're going to rank better.
So, make those connections. Build those contacts.
Reach out to other sites and see
how you can offer something to them
that they're willing to link to you in exchange.
Your project has been to practice this on your actual
site, but hopefully you've been taking notes of what
you've been doing along the way.
Please share the changes you've made and your sites
down below. The community is going to
be interested in the changes that you've made
and it's always good to lean on the community and the SEO
world to make sure that you're making the right calls.
I know this is a lot, but hopefully
it makes sense in a way that you can
bake it into how you build your site.
You can always come back for a refresher.
I've also included a resource list below so you can dig
into more specific topics on SEO.
Now, go forth and kick some SEO butt.
You can do this.
Hi, I'm Christina Kledzik and this is
SEO for Non-SEOs.
I've been an SEO for the past eight
years. I taught myself SEO
when I first started out. I've worked in-house
and I've worked in agency and I've worked
on mods blog posts to help lead other
people with SEO. So I've trained people at pretty much
every level of SEO. Whenever I
tell someone that I work as an SEO, one of the
first things that they ask is, can you look at my site?
Can you see if everything's going okay?
And I get it. SEO is really complicated
and it's really vague what you're supposed
to do and what you're not supposed to do.
Google gives you rules but they're not really direct
about them and sometimes SEOs say that you
should ignore them. And the thing is, all the
literature out there that SEOs rely on
were written by SEOs
for SEOs. So if you're not an
SEO, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
That's why I created this course.
This course is meant to be for
non-SEOs who want to learn just enough
SEO that they aren't hurting themselves
and maybe they can set themselves up for success
as they grow their websites. It's probably
best for people who are running small to medium-sized
blogs, small e-commerce sites,
or people who want to boost their resume
website or their artistic website.
That's one that we'll get some examples on later.
This probably isn't best for you if you
want to learn SEO and learn all of the
vocabulary. I'm going to give you some out vocabulary
where it makes sense, where you
need to learn what a keyword is, or
what link building is, but I'm not
going to be teaching you about all the metrics that you need to track
to be a full-time SEO. Instead,
this is going to feel a lot like if you hired
an SEO to audit your website
and they gave you some guidelines on how you could continue
to integrate SEO into your practices every day.
So by the end of this course, you're
going to have a good idea of how you can
integrate SEO into building the site structure,
building content, and as you get
the word out there with other websites.
We're going to have a project as you go along with this course,
and the project is literally just to work on SEO
on your website. If you don't have a website, just
create one. Go to WordPress, go anywhere
where you can create a website. It is actually
really important that you play with this yourself, because
it's not super intuitive all the time.
So, let's get started.
