In this video you’re going to learn exactly how to rank your site in Google step by step. Now I should warn you this is an advanced SEO tutorial, so if you don’t even know what SEO stands for this video is not for you. But if you want to learn about advanced SEO strategies that get results you’re in the right place. In fact I’ve used the techniques from this video to grow my organic traffic in record time.
I’m Brian Dean the founder of Backlinko and in this video i’m going to show you my step by step action plan for higher Google ranking, including lots of real-life case studies. We have a lot to cover in this video so let’s dive right in. I launched my first website way back in 2008. Needless to say SEO was a lot different back then. Back in the day I’d spent hours looking for a domain name that contained my target keyword dog birthday cake recipes Dinah is still available. I’m going to be rich today tricking Google with exact match domains or phony backlinks simply doesn’t work. So what the strategy I’m going to share with you in this SEO tutorial? So without further ado let’s get started with step number one.
First up let’s boost your site’s loading speed. Google has publicly confirmed that they use your site’s loading speed as a ranking factor and from my own experiments I’ve discovered that site speed does impact ranking but not in the way you probably think. Most people think that Google rewards you for having a fast loading web site, but that’s simply not true. My SEO experiments have revealed that Google doesn’t reward fast loading websites. It penalizes slow loading websites.
This makes sense if you think about it. Google’s number one job is to give their users the best result for a given search and everyone and I mean everyone hates slow loading web site loading the page finally it loaded. So if your site loads slower than molasses, yes Google is going to demote you. But once you hit a certain threshold of speed you’re on par with most other pages on the internet. So Google doesn’t see any reason to rank you higher. It makes sense. Now it’s time to actually improve your site’s loading speed first.
Head over to Google PageSpeed insight. Enter a page from your site here. Now as a pro tip don’t automatically put your homepage into this field, instead enter an internal page from your site that gets a lot of traffic like a blog post or article. That way you’ll get info on a page that lots of your visitors actually see. Next hit analyze and Google will show you where your pages code could use a tune-up now. Google’s tool is helpful but it has one big problem. It doesn’t measure sites actual loading speeds. Seriously, instead Google PageSpeed insights simply analyzes your pages code to get a more accurate feel for how your site loads to real-life users. Check out GT metrics.com. GT metrics will show you data on how your page actually loads to real-life users which is a much more accurate measurement of how your site speed stacks up.
Next up, the second it’s time to check on your technical SEO. Here’s the deal. You can have the best site with the best content, but if your website has serious technical SEO issues you’re not going to rank. Fortunately identifying and fixing these sort of issues can be super easy. Here’s how to do it. Your first step is to log in to your google search console account. Pay special close attention to the crawl error section. If you see any issues with DNS server connectivity or robots.txt, that’s something you’ll want to fix ASAP, but if they all show a green checkmark, you’re all set. Next click on the crawl errors button. This will take you to the URL error section of the search console. It’s perfectly okay to have a few server errors and 404 but if you see hundreds of errors here, this is something that you want to fix ASAP.
Moving right along we have our third step in this SEO tutorial with keyword research. Here are three quick techniques for finding awesome keywords . First up we have Google Suggest to use it. Enter a keyword into Google but don’t press Enter. Google will suggest longtail keywords that you can target and when Google actually suggests a specific keyword to you, you know that it’s a keyword that lots of people search for. You can also use the very helpful Uber Suggests tool to see hundreds of these. Google Suggest keyword is in one place now. Sometimes the best keyword is a term that you already ranked for.
What I mean I’m talking about finding untapped keywords in the Google search console. Here’s exactly how it’s done. First log in to your google search console account and click on search analytics. Sort the results by position then scroll down until you hit positions 11 through 15. These are keywords that you’re already ranking for on the second page and with some extra on-page and off-page SEO help you can get them to the first page pretty darn quickly. I’ll show you exactly how to do that later in this video.
Our last keyword research technique is to use SEMrush. SEMrush is my favorite keyword research tool. Here’s why with most keyword research tools you pop a keyword into the tool and get a list of suggestion. But SEM rush is unique, instead of entering a seed keyword into the tool you enter a competitor’s website and SEMrush shows you all the keywords that they already ranked for.
Next up we have content development. Back in the day Google would reward sites that publish lots of unique quality content that’s why so many blogs started pumping out mediocre 400 word blog posts. But the truth is the whole published lots of unique content approach simply doesn’t work anymore today. Google’s number one goal is to show their user the best result for a given keyword which means they don’t care how many pieces of content your site puts out or how often you publish. For example, my site Glinka.com has only 34 total posts and I rank for super competitive keywords like keyword research and SEO technique.
So publishing lots of unique content doesn’t work. What does publishing less often but making each piece of content that you do publish absolutely crazy amazing. Here’s how to create crazy amazing content. First, make your content insanely actionable. A few years ago Dr. Jonah Berger from the University of Pennsylvania ran a research study to discover what made online content go viral. So what did he find? Dr. Berger discovered that highly practical content was 34% more likely to go viral than big content that didn’t contain practical info. For example, my post 21 Actionable SEO Techniques You Can Use Right Now contains 21 practical SEO tips and this highly practical post has generated thousands of social shares and hundreds of backlinks. This page also ranks in the top three of Google for the keyword SEO techniques.
Next you want to make sure that your content is at least one thousand eight hundred ninety words long. Yes this might go against conventional wisdom. After all you may have heard that people won’t read anything online that’s more than 500 words, but I have data to prove that this simply isn’t true. In fact last year I teamed up with a bunch of SEO software companies to conduct the largest ranking factor study ever. In total we analyzed 1 million Google search results and we discovered that longer content significantly outperformed short blog post. In fact we found that the average first page result in Google boasted 1890 words. Do you remember that SEO techniques post that I mentioned earlier? In addition to being highly practical, the post is also super long. In fact that post is over 4,000 words.
Next you want to make infographics part of your content marketing. Most similar their own study did into what makes content go viral and they discovered that infographics get an average of two point three times more shares than other content formats. I found the same thing from my own experiment. For example, this post on-page SEO contains a big infographic and that’s one of the reason that this piece of content gets shared.
Now that you’ve published an awesome piece of long-form content, it’s time to optimize it around your target keyword. Here’s how. First make sure that you publish your page on a short URL. Our ranking factor study found that short URLs tended to outrank long URL. For example, my target keyword for this page is SEO tool. So I made my URL simply SEO – tool. Note that my URL also contains my target keyword. This is also important for on-page SEO.
Next include your target keyword once and in the first 100 words of your article. Why Google puts more weight on keywords that appear at the top of your page? So to help Google understand what your page is all about make sure to include your keyword once in the first hundred words of your page. For example, in my SEO tools post you can see that I use my target keyword right off the bat.
Our last on-page SEO tip is to add outbound links to your page. Google wants to see that your content is a comprehensive resource on that topic. And that’s only possible if you link out to other helpful pieces of content. In fact a recent industry study found that pages that link out consistently outrank pages that don’t link out to other web sites. Okay so you just published your in-depth keyword optimized piece of content so you’re all set right? Wrong.
In many ways after you publish a piece of content your job has just begun. That’s because it’s time for the most important part of SEO, link building. There are a thousand ways to build links to your website. So I’m going to share one of my absolute favourites with you right now, broken link building. Here is the three-step process.
Step 1, find a page you want to get a link from. Step 2, find broken links on that page. Step 3, let the site owner know about their broken link. Let’s break it down. Your first step is to find a page that you want to get a link from this. Page should be from a site in your niche that has quite a few outbound links. To find pages with lots of external links use search strings like keyword plus helpful resources and keyword in URL links. This will bring up pages with lots of external links.
Next it’s time to find broken links on that page you can find links that aren’t working by installing the free check my links extension for Chrome. Then when you find a page with lots of external links, run check my link. It will reveal all the links on that page that aren’t working. Finally it’s time to let the site owner know about their broken link and offer your content as a replacement. Here’s the exact script to send, “Hi [name]. I was looking for some information on topic today when I came across your list of resources. Great stuff. I couldn’t help but notice that there was a broken link on the page. I just thought you’d like to know also I recently published a guide on that topic. It might make a nice addition to your page”. Either way keep up the awesome work and you’re set.
Last up I have a bonus tip for you which is to optimize your site around user experience signals. In 2015 Google announced that they now use a machine learning algorithm called ranked brain. Even though Google has been quiet about the details of exactly what rank brain does, Larry Kim for Word Stream has discovered how rank brain probably work. According to his data rank brain measures how users interact with your site in Google search and ranks you partially based on these user experience signals. For example Larry noticed a clear correlation between organic click-through rate and ranking. Specifically he found that pages with a high CTR tended to outrank pages with a below average click-through rate.
In other words rank brain probably measure CTR and uses this data as a key ranking factor. Larry also discovered that pages with a bounce rate below 76% tended to rank best. That’s because rank brain also looks at how often people bounce from your site. Obviously the lower your bounce rate the better.
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