SEO for Beginners: 7 Proven SEO Tips to Rank #1 on Google in 2020

– Hey in this video, I'm goingto show you how to do SEO, even if you're a beginner.

And you're gonna learnseven proven SEO tips that any beginner can have success with.

So if you wanna rank number one on Google and get more organic search traffic, then please keep watching.

Also tip number four isthe most important concept for an SEO beginner to understand.

So make sure you watchthis entire free training.

Let's jump right in.

(upbeat music) So before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel because you'll getnotified whenever I publish new videos just like this.

So the first SEO beginner tipis to perform an SEO audit.

And don't worry, auditinga site doesn't require super technical skills.

In fact, you can completea professional SEO audit using nothing but free tools.

So the question is, why should you even do an SEO audit in the first place? Well, the reason is becauseit will uncover all issues that may be holding yourSEO performance back.

Think of it this way, youcan create content all day acquire tons of backlinks, but if your website ison a shaky foundation, you won't see the results you really want.

So you have to understandthat getting consistent SEO results requires anall encompassing approach.

And in other words, you need to have all the pieces in place, or your website won't reachits full SEO potential.

So the question is, what are you looking for when you actually do an SEO audit? Well, I like to break the process down into six primary categories.

Number one is technical.

Number two is userexperience, also known as UX.

Number three is content.

Number four is backlinks.

Number five is local, andnumber six is reputation.

Pretty much every facetof SEO will fall under one or many of these categories.

Now I can't cover everymicroscopic detail of an SEO audit, but you can uncover 99.

9% of issues using the following tools.

Number one is Screaming Frog SEO spider.

You can use this tool for free, but I highly recommendupgrading to the paid version because it's so incredibly powerful.

And to get the most out ofScreaming Frog SEO spider, I recommend integratingboth Google Analytics and the Ahrefs API.

This is really powerful, because you'll be able to see the key performance indicators of each individual page on your site.

And more importantly, you'll be able to see how many backlinks each page has and how much trafficeach page is receiving.

This is critical information when you're performing a content audit.

So here's how you do it.

Open up Screaming Frog SEO Spider, make sure you have the URL copied.

And then what you wanna do is over here on the righthand side under API, and they'll probablylook like this initially, go and click on API.

And then we're gonna actually connect the Google Analytics to Screaming Frog.

And this is super important.

So let's go ahead and do that.

So as you can see here, you'll be able to choose the accounts that you have.

And so in this case, wewanna do story track.

And we want the segmentto be organic traffic, because that's gonnabe the how we determine whether these pages areworth keeping or not.

So the next thing youwanna do is depending on whether you're usingMajestic or Ahrefs or even Moz, you're gonna wanna connectwhichever one you have.

So in this case, I'm going to use Ahrefs.

So once you click the gear icon, it's gonna take you tothis little pop up window.

And what you wanna do is click Connect, and then it shows that it'sconnected and we're good to go.

So now at this point, Screaming Frog is going to crawl the entire site.

And it's also gonna pull all the data from Google Analytics and Ahrefs for every single URL on their website.

So once you have prepared the API's, just go ahead and click Start.

Okay, so the analysis is complete.

And so when it's done, what you can do is you can actually just do a full analysis just from this internal tab, but it's a lot easier if you export and then you'll be ableto get an Excel file.

And then you'll be ableto actually filter things and be able to sort things a lot easier.

Okay so I'm in the Excel file, obviously, this looks very overwhelming.

And a lot of this really isn't important.

So what you wanna do isfirst we want to go ahead and add a filter to this.

So just click the filter option.

So what we wanna do iswant to delete some columns that are not necessaryfor the content audit.

So now what we wanna do is go ahead and start with the indexability column.

And basically what wewanna do is wanna see if there are pages that are indexed that shouldn't be indexed, or pages that are not indexedthat should be indexed.

And so the best way to do that is we'll just go aheadand use this filter.

And we'll start with the non-indexable, 'cause usually that's wheresome issues come into play.

And we're only focused on text HTML, 'cause these are really thepages that are most important.

This is where we're gonnado a lot of content pruning.

Alright, so now this is the super fun part because we get to lookat each individual page and determine whether weshould keep these pages or we should do something with them if they're not up to thestandards that we're looking for.

So there are a few thingswe're gonna be looking at.

First we're gonna look at the total organic search traffic to each page.

We're gonna look at the total amount of backlinks going to these pages.

And then we're also gonnalook at the word count for these pages.

And so those three things, if you can just lookat those three factors, you're gonna pretty much be able to determine whether pages should continue to exist or have to be deleted, 404ed or even redirected.

And then also, the otherbig thing we're looking for in a content audit is if there are keyword cannibalization issues.

And just looking at this rightnow without even scrolling, I can tell there's justa lot of content here, a lot of pages.

And so there's a very high probability that there is some keywordcannibalization going on here.

And so we will dive deep into this and I'll show you whetherthat is happening or not.

So if you wanna learn how todo a professional SEO audit, then I highly recommend checking out my extensive SEO audittemplate and step by step SOP.

I'll have a link below this video.

So the second tip is a mistakethat many SEO beginners make and that's creating tons of thin content targeting the same orsimilar keyword phrases.

And this is what leads tokeyword cannibalization and generally makes your SEO campaign harder than it needs to be.

And that's also when the caketechnique comes into play.

In short, the caketechnique is the process of consolidating similar content assets into a single mother asset.

So going through thisprocess has a wide array of benefits such as numberone increased word count, consolidating assetswill naturally increase your word count which often is correlated to better rankings.

Number two is deeper content, spreading your knowledgeacross multiple posts usually produces thin content.

So consolidating your assetsproduces the opposite effect.

Number three is it eliminates keyword cannibalization issues.

Keyword cannibalizationwhen two or more pages target very similar keywords forces Google to choose which one is best.

So why would you evenwant to take that risk? It's much better just toconsolidate similar assets to eliminate thispossibility all together.

Number four is it consolidates authority.

You'll be 301 redirectingyour other assets, which means your mother asset will inherit all the existing backlinks.

And that will turn your mother asset into an authoritative powerhouse.

Number five is it actuallymakes content promotion easier.

It's easier to acquire backlinks to and to promote a single content asset, plus people are more likelyto link to a super valuable and in depth resourcethan a thin content asset.

So here are the steps toexecuting the cake technique.

First, identify content assetsthat are targeting the same or closely related keywords.

Second, decide what content asset is going to be your mother asset.

Third, map out how you're going to combine these content assets into a single piece of content.

Fourth, consolidate the content.

Fifth 301 redirect allthe supporting assets to the mother asset.

And six annotate youractions in Google Analytics to measure the performanceof your new asset.

And I've used this exact technique with many clients and even on Gotch SEO when I consolidated a few different assets around the topic of backlinks.

I had individual blog posts on what is a high quality backlink? How to build tier one backlinks.

How to build tier two backlinks.

How to build tier three backlinks, and how to earn backlinks.

And this was borderlinekeyword cannibalization, so I decided to consolidatethem into a single asset which became my backlinks guide.

And as a result, GotchSEO currently floats around number one for backlinks and we've grown this page'sorganic search traffic by almost 300% since 2016.

So the third SEO beginner tip is to choose the right keywords.

So here's a funny factabout keyword research.

Anyone can find keywords, but it takes skill to know what keywords to actually target.

So how do you know whatkeywords are worth going after? Well, the most basic rule is that you should only target keywords that your website is actuallycapable of ranking for.

So one of the fastest ways to do this is to use Ahrefs' keyword difficulty tool.

Here's how you do it.

Copy a keyword you want to rank for and open up Ahrefs and clickon the keyword explorer option.

And Ahrefs will then showyou what they believe is the keyword difficultyfor your target phrase.

They make this estimationbased on how many links you'll need to rank.

And the good news is thatyou can beat your competitors on many other fronts not including links, but it's still a good 30, 000 foot metric to help you weed out keywords that are probably going to be too hard and expensive to rank for.

So after a keyword passes thefirst qualification stage, it's time for the second levelof keyword qualification.

And I call this the 10second competitor analysis.

In my opinion, this isone of the fastest ways to prioritize a huge list of keywords.

So here's what you do.

First, download the Ahrefs or Moz toolbar, and then go to Google and enter one of your prospective keywords.

Now all you need to do is scan the results and look for positive or negative signs.

And here's some goodsigns you wanna look for.

Number one, there arelow authority websites.

Any page ranking with a DA or DR lower than 50 is a good sign.

Number two is thereare you YouTube videos, and this is another goodsign because YouTube pages usually aren't contentrich but that's not all.

The other awesome thingwhen you see this happen is that not only can you rankin Google's organic search, but you can also rank in YouTube search which means you actually get two listings for that target keyword and that means even more exposure for yourbrand and your website.

Number three is their sub domains.

Web 2.

0's are usually lowquality and very easy to beat.

Number four is there areforum or Quora threads.

These pages can be content rich, but the information is unorganized.

I consider this a good signwhen I see these results.

Number five is there are press releases, ease-in articles, eHowarticles, hub pages et cetera.

Any general article website or press release website is a good sign.

Number six is there arelimited SERP features.

So less SERP features meansmore SERP click through rate for you in most cases.

Number seven is there are Google ads.

If advertisers are willing to invest money in your perspective keyword, you know it has value.

So now those are all the good signs.

But here are some of the badsigns you wanna look for.

Number one, there are superauthoritative websites.

If all the ranking pages are authoritative with DA or Dr 70 Plus, then it's a bad sign.

And this isn't to say that you can't beat authoritative websites, it's just much harder and costly and will likely take longer.

Number two is thereexcessive SERP features.

As I mentioned above, your CTR will decrease if Google is serving many SERP features.

Now it's possible for your website to get into these SERP features, but it isn't as predictable as traditional organic search rankings.

Now what do you do if this keyword doesn't pass the initial test? Well don't delete thekeyword from your list, just push it down the priority list, because you could target it in the future when your website becomesmore authoritative.

I recommend going through this process until you have five to 10 wellqualified keyword targets.

And after you have five to 10 key words that have passed the 10 second analysis, it's time to gather data to see what you're truly up against.

Now this stage of theprocess will give you the intel you need to understandwhat it will actually take to beat your competitorsfor your target keyword.

So here's what you do.

Select one of yourkeywords and open up Ahrefs and click on the keyword explorer tool.

Then scroll down and export the results.

Open up the sheet I provided and now you'll begin entering data and intel about these competitors.

So while analyzing the competitors on a one to one basis may be helpful.

The goal here is to gather averages and then use that as our guiding light.

So with that said, add the URLbacklinks referring domains and domain routing informationfrom the Ahrefs export.

And the next part of the process is time consuming but definitely worth it.

Copy the first URL andopen up wordcounter.

net.

Then enter the URL and copy the word count and added to the words column.

(upbeat music) The next step is to getthe page loading speed for each of your competitors.

Now this step isn't totally necessary, but it helps identifyweaknesses in your competitors.

So just copy your competitorsURL and open up Pingdom and then copy the site's speed and add it to the speed column.

(upbeat music) The next column page typerequires a manual analysis.

So there are only a few different types of options in this case.

It's gonna be a homepage, category page, product page, blog post, or other.

And this is super important because we'll wanna model the page, type that Google is showingfor the target keyword.

And the final stage of this process is to gather metrics for your page if you've already attemptedto rank for this keyword.

Now the beauty ofgathering metrics like this is that it gives you clear targets.

For example, you'll know approximately how many backlinks you'll need to compete for this keyword phrase.

And of course, not allbacklinks are created equally, but it still gives youa target to aim for.

So that's all you needto know about finding and qualifying keywords.

So the fourth SEO beginner tip is to understand search intent.

Now I believe thatunderstanding how to satisfy search intent is a fundamental SEO skill.

In fact, you can have StephenKing write an article for you and it still wouldn't rank if you don't properlysatisfy search intent.

That's how important it is.

Not only that what you're about to learn will dispel the generic advice that every page you wanna rank in Google needs at least 1800 words.

Slapping 1800 words on a pageisn't how you rank in Google.

In fact, a page with the high word count is practically worthless if it doesn't satisfy search intent.

And no, it will not matterhow many backlinks you get if you get search intent wrong.

Now here's the good news, it's easy to figure out howto satisfy search intent.

The first part you need understand are the different types of search intent.

So here are the primarycategories of search intent.

The first type of search intent are going to be informational queries.

So all informational search queries are usually at the top of the funnel.

Some examples include, what is SEO, or how do you build backlinks.

Searchers at this stage of the funnel are probably not ready to buy.

So that's why you need tocreate educational based content that satisfies this type of intent.

The second type of intentare for comparison queries.

Searches at this stage aredeeper into the funnel, and they're trying to figure out what solution they wanna choose.

So an example would be Nikeshoes versus Adidas shoes.

The third type of intent is transactional, which means the searcher is at the bottom of the funnel and ready to buy.

And an example of atransactional search query is buy Nike baseball cleats.

And the fourth type ofintent is navigational.

Which means a searcheralready knows your brand or is a customer of your brand.

For example when someonesearches Gotch SEO they already know my brandand are navigating to it.

So pretty much every keyword phrase will fall under one ortwo of these categories.

And the next thing youneed to do is examine the top 10 results foryour target keyword.

Just ask yourself whattypes of pages are ranking? Let me give you a few examples.

So the first keyword example is backlinks.

And in this example, you can classify it in two different search intent categories.

First is problem awarenessand transactional.

So when someone searches backlinks, they're either A, trying tolearn more about backlinks because they know howimportant they are to SEO.

Or B, they're looking to buy backlinks.

So what do you do ina situation like this? All you have to do is analyze the pages that are currently ranking.

If the majority of the pagesare informational content, then you should take a similar approach.

The second keyword exampleis for SEO checker.

So in this example, theintent behind SEO checker will not require a longform piece of content.

So why is that? It's because the searcheris clearly looking for a tool to solve their problem.

Keyword example numberthree is SEO audit service.

In this example, whoever issearching for SEO audit service is clearly at the buying stage.

So it wouldn't make sense totry to educate this person with a super long form piece of content.

So this is the main point, analyze the competitors and see how they are fulfilling searcherintent for your target keyword and follow the same strategyor there's a good chance your page won't rank well.

So at this stage, you understand how to satisfy search intent.

So the fifth SEO beginner tipis to create linkable assets.

So linkable asset is designedto attract backlinks.

And the truth is some pagesjust simply are not linkable, and those include category pages, product pages, local lead pages, or any page that isn't really content rich and is more transactional in nature.

Now sure, with some creativity, you can definitely drivelinks to these pages.

But it's much harder thanjust creating linkable assets, that our information rich and content rich because people are much more likely to link to these content assets as opposed to transactional pages.

So in short, the goalof the linkable asset is to add massive value to your industry.

So the people who arecapable of linking to you start to take notice, and then you can start to acquire links just becauseyou added so much value.

Now the challenge is that not every type of SEO content is linkable.

For example, you can create aperfectly optimized homepage for a local business, or abeautifully optimized page for a category page onyour e-commerce website.

This is necessary, but these pages likely won't attract many backlinks.

And they will also bevery hard to promote.

So the situation I justoutlined is why so many local and e-commerce businessesstruggle with SEO.

The truth is, they are making the process harder than it needs to be.

So if you're workingon a local SEO campaign or an e-commerce website, then you need to listen very carefully, you must understand theconcept of a reverse silo.

In short reverse silo iswhen your content asset becomes the focal point for building your website's authority.

So instead of acquiringbacklinks to your homepage, category or product pages, you instead focus on acquiring backlinks to your information or content assets.

This is by far the mostnatural and safe way to acquire backlinks because your content is likely more deserving of a backlink.

In short, your goal should be to build your overall website authority through creating linkable assets.

Now just to be clear, there are other ways to acquire backlinks thatdon't require new content, and I'll be showing you a few.

But the most scalable linkbuilding strategy you can use is to create linkable assets.

So how do you actuallycreate a linkable asset? Well, all you need to do is copy one of your qualified keywords, throw it into Ahrefs keyword explorer and see if your competitorspages have attracted backlinks.

If so, you know that your targetkeyword is a linkable idea.

Now keep in mind that this doesn't mean you shouldn't target keywordsthat aren't clearly linkable, it's just a nice qualifier.

So the sixth SEO tip for beginners is to acquire quality backlinks.

So I have a super in depth video about link building on my channel.

And I'll share the link below.

But let me cover some of my goto link building strategies.

So the first method youshould use to promote your linkable asset is tolook for resource pages.

Resource pages are great for two reasons.

First, if your resourcepage is high quality, you can land a link pretty easily.

And secondly, manyresource pages are filled with broken links, which meansyou can use that as leverage.

So here's what you doto find resource pages.

Go to Google and enter keyword, intitle column and then resources.

So in this case, I'll use finance intitle and then resources.

And I'll give you more search strings you can use below this video as well.

And then open up each opportunity and then I highly recommend installing the Check My Links plugin because this will help checkthese pages for broken links.

So once you've installed the plugin, run it to see if thesepages have any broken links.

So in this case, thislifehack.

org article, there are no broken links.

So you would just send atraditional outreach template to get your content featuredon this resource page.

On the other hand, if thepage had broken links, you'll need to use a slightlydifferent outreach template and I'll have one below.

The next link building strategyis relatively untapped, and I call it the merger technique.

Now before I jump into the strategy, you must first understandwhat a merger actually is.

Investopedia defines a merger as the combining of two or more companies, generally by offeringstockholders of one company securities in the acquiring company in exchange for thesurrender of their stock.

Now with that intense definition, let me explain it from an SEO perspective.

So from an SEO perspective, merger occurs when the old brand's website will get 301 redirected to theacquiring company's website.

In short, the mergertechnique is the process of 301 redirecting a relevant domain with a relevant linkprofile to your website.

And the ultimate objective is to increase your site's authoritybecause a stronger website makes ranking much easier.

So the strategy simplyimitates the process of a big brand acquiringand other business.

And I came up with thename of this technique because we executed iton one of our clients who acquires data centersacross the United States.

So every time theyacquired a new data center, we would 301 redirectthe acquired brand site to their most relevantpage on their website.

So for example, if theyacquired a Dallas data center, we would 301 redirect that website to their Dallas data center page.

And within a year, we increased organicsearch traffic by 256%.

And although these results were awesome, I wanted to make sure itwasn't an isolated event.

And that's why I implementedthe same exact strategy on Gotch SEO and severalother client sites.

For my site, I took anold marketing website and 301 redirected it toa landing page on my site, this redirect, push the targetkeyword to the first page.

I then did the same exactthing for a local website and grew its organicsearch traffic by 425%.

And if you want an exampleoutside of my own experiences, then I highly recommend you take a look at Neil Patel's link profile.

He's acquired a few different companies and merged them with NeilPatel.

com.

This has absolutely explodedhis organic search traffic.

So you get it.

301 redirects work.

But wait a second, notall 301 redirects work.

And that's why didn't want to call this the 301 redirect strategy.

The key is to find extremelyrelevant businesses to acquire.

These can either be expireddomains or existing businesses.

And the good news is youcan use tools like DomCop, ExpiredDomains.

net, or FreshDrop to find and filter throughthousands of expired domains.

And I have videos on my channel for all three of these tools, so make sure you check those out.

Now finding expireddomains is the easy part.

But vetting them is whereyou need the most skill.

And this is incredibly important and not a step to take lightly.

Because you don't wanna redirecta toxic website to yours.

You want to make sure it'sthe highest quality possible.

So here's what you need to look for when vetting expired domains.

Number one is the link profile.

The domain should have high quality links from relevant websites.

Number two is the anchor text, the domain shouldn't have anyaggressive anchor text use.

Meaning a high usage ofkeyword rich anchor text.

And the ideal situation is to find domains that have predominantlybranded anchor texts.

Number three is the link stickability.

Links are important but making sure they actually stick iseven more important.

In general links withinthe body of content are more likely to stick.

But links in footer such as those you see from web design companiesor site wide blogroll links have a low stickability potential.

And another way to ensurethat your link stick is how you go about actually redirecting the acquired website.

If possible, you should try to redirect individual pages to the mostrelevant page on your site.

And this is far more effective than a full on site wideredirect to the homepage as far as links stickabilityand even effectiveness overall.

Number four is the domain usage history.

Just use archive.

org to see how the domain has been used throughout its history.

The ideal situation is that domain should have only been used by one owner and hasn't been used since it expired.

This simple process iswhat led me to acquire a website called Minternetmarketing.

com which had many inboundmarketing relevant links such as this one from HubSpot.

Now the vetting process for an existing inactive business is identical.

The only difference is howyou find these companies.

For example, Brian Dean from Backlinko just acquired Jon Cooper'sblog, Point Blank SEO.

And this is a perfectexample of a proper merger because Point Blank SEO ishyper relevant to Backlinko, and it has an incredible link profile.

All you need to do is just start digging through your industry andcreate a list of bloggers or companies that aren'tupdating their website and maybe don't seem to be doing too well.

Just use simple search queries in Google like list of topic blogsor city niche companies.

You'll need to do a lot of manual analysis to see how active these blogs are.

But one thing you can do isuse the Check My Links plugin to see if any blogs are dead when you're going through these lists.

And once you've identified some targets and vetted their websites, all you need to do is reach out and gauge their interestin an acquisition.

So finally, the seventhand final SEO beginner tip isn't actually about tactics, it's about your mindset, which is half the battle in my opinion.

Listen, SEO is a long term game, it is not a get rich quick scheme.

Making sustainable long termincome is a long term game.

It is not a get rich quick scheme, you have to take action andyou have to put in the work.

So if you're looking to getrich quickly without any work, then A, SEO probably isn't right for you.

And B, good luck with that.

Because I haven't met asingle legit entrepreneur who hasn't done the work every single day for an extended amount of time.

You need to be committed and super patient if you wanna be successful in this field.

I've personally been running my company for over five years, and Ihave worked every single day, just ask my wife.

Success takes a ton of time, but it also takes a lot of consistency.

And the truth is being anentrepreneur isn't for everyone.

You have to be willing totake action, fail frequently and be incredibly patient.

And the truth is everyone achieves what they define a successat different speeds.

Some people will get there before you and that's totally okay.

You can only control yoursituation by taking action.

Write out your primary SEO goal and then when you writeout your daily to do list, just ask yourself if those actions are getting you closer to your goal.

And if you believe thatthen take action and learn.

You won't always take the right actions but approaching your day in this manner will accelerate your success.

So those are the seven actionabletips for SEO beginners.

If you enjoyed this video, please like it and subscribe to my channel because you'll get first accesswhen I publish a new video.

And also if you have anyquestions whatsoever, please leave it below and I respond to every single question.

So thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.

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