Understanding SEO

You will review the fundamentals of SEO. Then, you’ll gain a basic understanding of how the Google Search engine works and how websites are ranked. Then, you’ll learn how to do keyword research.

Dedication to study

• Videos: 46 min

• Leitura: 1 h 10 min

• Teste: 1 Teste com avaliação

Learning Objectives

• Understand how search engines work and the make-up of the Google search engine results page.
• Explain the purpose of SEO and essential SEO terms to know.
• Describe the first steps when working on SEO for a business.
• Learn about keyword/keyphrase research and recommendations.
• Organize a website’s structure..

Content

1. How search works
2. Understanding the basics of search engine optimization (SEO)
3. Keyword research and website structure
4. Review: Understanding Search engine optimization (SEO)

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1. How search works

Welcome to week 2

Video. Duration: 2 minutes

Hello! Let’s imagine that a potential customer uses a search engine to solve their problem. If you’re a business that provides a solution, you’d want to get found in the search results, right? A really important aspect of digital marketing is getting your website found in search engines. In the following lessons, you’ll learn more about how to make that happen. I’ll introduce you to how the Google search engine works and how it determines website rankings. I’ll explain to you the structure of the search engine results pages, also called SERPs. Then I’ll introduce you to search engine optimization, also called SEO. Now, this is the practice of getting a website found in a search engine results page. I’ll discuss the pre-steps to take before you start to consider SEO. And then your first steps, which include keyword research and organizing a website structure. Personally, I love working on SEO. The thing is, I can say it has been my greatest marketing tool for my brand. But I must admit when I first started, it didn’t really make sense to me. People talked about keywords and tagging and being found in search engine pages, results, all that. But when I first started, it honestly sounded like I was speaking or understanding a language that I’d never read before. After implementing strategies for several months, something interesting happened for my brand. I actually remember a friend reached out to me saying they read one of my articles and saw an image I posted online for my business. I remember thinking, what are you talking about? I didn’t share anything. Then they said they were looking for advice on a topic and my article and picture came up. I can’t tell you how excited I was when that happened. Years later, a simple Google search of my name now brings up dozens of images, content, and videos. My online trust and my credibility saves me so much time now not having to re-pitch myself over and over. For me, SEO is one of the best marketing strategies to expand the exposure of a brand online. Welcome to the world of search engines and search engine optimization. I hope you’re excited to get started.

How does the Google search engine work?

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

Before you learn about how to optimize content for a search engine, we need to first understand what a search engine is and how it works. In this video. we’re going to cover the three main processes of the Google search engine: crawling, indexing, and serving. The Google search engine uses these processes to locate the most relevant content to a user’s search query. Just a quick disclaimer about the search content you’ll learn about: There’s no confidential information in this content. It’s all available publicly, and you can learn more in Google’s official search documentation. So what is a search engine? Think of a search engine as any software that locates information on a search query. As a marketer, you may work with several search engines. For example, in e-commerce you may work within the Amazon search engine or the Etsy search engine. Every search engine works slightly differently. However, many of the concepts and strategies we cover will apply to all. Let’s discuss the processes Google uses to organize information online: crawling, indexing, and serving. The first step the Google search engine takes is crawling, which is the process of finding new and updated webpages. Google explores the Internet with automated programs called crawlers. These crawlers find new and updated webpages, and once the crawlers discover a new or updated webpage, Google then stores these page URLs in a big list to review later. A page URL is a web address such as ”www.example.com/blog”.

There are several ways that Google crawlers finds webpages. The main way is to follow links from pages already identified. Links are any web addresses on a webpage. Let’s imagine that as a marketer, you create a new webpage for a website. The crawler will primarily discover that new page by a link within the website or from a separate website. Before crawling the page, it will check if it is allowed to do so by the website owner. Okay, once the new pages are crawled, Google then stores them in an index. Think of an online index as similar to an index in the back of a book. A book index is a list of content and its associated pages. Similarly, Google stores web content with its location: the URL for each webpage. What type of content will Google index? Well, almost anything on the page including text, photos, and video content. Remember, indexing is only possible if the website owner allows the webpage to be crawled. If the owner doesn’t want it to be crawled, indexed, and appear in Google Search, then they can indicate it in the website’s code. After the webpage content is indexed, the Google Search algorithm goes to work. In this context, an algorithm is an automated software that helps locate information to answer a user’s query. The Google search algorithm sorts through billions of webpages to deliver the most relevant content for a given search. The purpose of the search algorithm is to deliver the best results for a search. For example, if you search for a product, the results are likely the best available to help you learn about or purchase that product. Now what does the algorithm consider when ranking a webpage for a search? Well, it considers many factors, including what’s on a website and information on other websites. Some of the factors are more obvious than others, such as location and language. Google wants to really return results that meet the needs of users with a great user experience. We’ll discuss five key factors, such as quality of content and usability of webpages, in an upcoming video. Overall, Google Search wants to return results that meet the needs of users with a great user experience. Now, if all of this sounds confusing, don’t worry. By the end of this course, you will know a lot more about strategies to rank a website in the Google search engine. When doing digital marketing, you’ll encounter algorithms frequently. Generally speaking, an algorithm is just a set of instructions for solving a problem or accomplishing a task. One simple example of an algorithm is a recipe. You want to make a meal, and the recipe provides instructions to make that meal. Websites and platforms use different algorithms to decide what to show users. A search algorithm for an e-commerce site may display the most likely products a shopper would purchase. Factors such as price and shipping time might influence the results. A social media algorithm may focus on what it thinks is most entertaining for the user. Factors such as popularity and content length may influence the results the social media algorithm provides its users.

Okay, you’ve been introduced to how the search engine works and algorithms. As a marketer, it’s likely you’ll be thinking about how your website, products, or posts can be delivered to more and more people. It’s part of the job!

How Google determines website rankings

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

In digital marketing, understanding how pages show up in a search can help you get the most out of your marketing efforts. In this video, we’re going to go more in depth on ranking results in search engine results pages, also called SERPs. We’ll cover five key factors, which are: meaning of the query, relevance of the webpages, quality of the content, usability of the webpages, and overall context and user settings. Think of these key factors as concepts. As you will learn, they can be applied in several different ways. That’s why creating content to rank high in the SERPs is often open to interpretation. For example, how much information should you write about a topic, and how should you order the information? Would the searcher prefer the content with photos or a video? We’ll get into more strategies later. For now, consider these key factors from a search engine’s perspective so you understand what the search algorithm considers when ranking websites. The first key factor is the meaning of the query. A query is simply the words typed into a Google search bar. To return relevant results, the search algorithm needs to establish what the user is searching for— in other words, the intent behind the query. Google’s algorithms have created language models to decipher the meaning and intent of a search. As a marketer, you want to consider the meaning and intent of your potential customer’s searches as well. One of your tasks may be to create content that addresses the searchers needs. An effective marketer will understand the potential customer’ intent and meaning of a search. That’s why you want to build customer persona— to better understand your customers. A second key factor is the relevance of web pages. This is when the algorithm determines what content is relevant to the search. The most basic signal that information is relevant is that the webpage contains the same keywords as the search query. A keyword is a word or multiple words that people use to find information, products, or services online. The keyword either matches, or is similar to, this searchers query. For example, if the keywords appear in the headings or body text of a webpage, the search algorithms may determine that page to be more relevant. The Google search algorithms review more than just keywords for relevance. They will match phrases and topics at the searcher may be interested in. For instance, if someone searches for “dogs,” they likely don’t want the word “dog” listed a bunch of times on a page. They may also be interested in other content, such as dog breeds or a dog photos. Depending on the type of search, different types of content may be relevant as well. Maybe a searcher is more likely to watch a video than read several paragraphs of texts. Or maybe the content includes photos, rather than just text. Another key factor to consider is quality of content. This is a topic we’ll be discussing throughout this course. As a marketer, you may be tasked with creating great quality web content. One way Google determines quality content is understanding if prominent websites link or refer to the content. Google uses a number of factors to try to work out the quality of a piece of content, as well as the quality of a website overall. These factors are generally not technical elements that site owners can turn on or off, but rather, try to capture the bigger picture. For example, just because a book is well made doesn’t mean that you’ll enjoy reading it. Additionally, Google search uses aggregated feedback from a search quality evaluation process to further refine the algorithms used for ranking. A fourth key factor is the usability of webpages. Google algorithms also consider the content’s ease of use. Now, if you have two webpages with exactly the same content, the webpage that has a better user experience may perform better. Google calls this the page experience ranking factor. What does a better user experience you mean? Well, it means that a page is mobile friendly so it renders better on a phone, or that a page loads quickly. These are among the many factors that contribute to how a page ranks. The last key factor in the searcher’s context and setting. Information such as the location, past search history, and search settings help the search algorithm deliver relevant and useful results. The country and location of a search can alter the results. For example, imagine you live in Chicago and search for “football.” You’re likely to get results for American football and the Chicago Bears. Whereas if you search “football” in London, Google will likely show you results about soccer and the Premier League. Here’s another interesting context feature that may affect search results. Google may tailor results based on activity in your Google account. For example, if you search for “events near me,” Google may tailor some recommendations to event categories they think you might be interested in. These systems are designed to match interests, but they’re not designed to infer sensitive characteristics. Now you know about how Google search works and some factors that SEOs consider to be important when ranking content. This is great foundational knowledge to have. Remember the key factors: query meaning, webpage relevance, content quality, webpage usability, and context and settings.

Breakdown of the Google search engine results pages (SERPs)

Video. Duration: 3 minutes

Let’s go more in depth on the makeup of the Google search results. The search engine results pages, also called SERPs, appear whenever someone performs a search query. The first thing you need to know is that there are different types of SERP features based on what you search. For example, if your search is about a product, it may be structured with shopping or products. Or if the search is news-related and timely, then it may be structured with news articles. A best practice is to always Google Search your product or service for the brand name and several related words. Analyze the results. Like, what are the possible placements in the SERPs? When analyzing the SERPs, you should keep in mind that there are both search listings and ads. Typically, you’ll find paid ads towards the top of the search results page. After the paid ads are search listings. You may find Google Ads at the end of the search results page as well. There are several SERP features you should know about. Let’s cover some common ones. A featured snippet is a special box that displays information about a search in the results page. The featured snippet displays when the algorithm determines the format or how people more easily discover what they’re looking for. It’s a non-paid feature. A digital marketer or e-commerce analyst can mark a webpage as a featured snippet. Google systems will determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet for a user’s search request. Rich results provide specific information about a website. This information helps a website display with additional features in search results. An example of this is for a product-based webpage. Additional product information showing search results, such as its review rating, price, and availability. Images may appear when the Google system determines that visual content is valuable to the search. The images may appear in any search position including the top, the middle, and the bottom of the SERPs. Images are a non-paid feature. Similar to images, videos may display if the Google system believes it is valuable to the search query. Videos may also be at the top, middle, or bottom of the search results. The videos in the SERPs come from across the web. When searching for a local business, product, or service, you may get a couple of different local-based SERPs’ features. The most prominent feature is a map and listings of local businesses. The businesses listed are tied to a non-paid business profile listing provided by Google. The profile is available to any business who has local customers. Additionally, if someone searches for the business name, its business profile will likely appear as a panel on the right side of the SERP, separate from the non-paid search results. There are also paid ads. You’ll learn more about different types of ads later in this course. That wraps up our lesson on the Google search engine results pages. Here’s something I want you to do to improve your SERPs knowledge. As you conduct searches in Google or any search engine, study the results. What websites, products, featured snippets appear? Where they’re located, and why do you think that they’re there? By studying these results, you’ll get more comfortable with search results and one step closer to thinking like a digital marketer.

Other popular search engines

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

While Google is an enormously popular search engine, it is not the only search engine on the internet. To market products and services effectively, digital marketers must consider other platforms as well. Search engines continuously evolve as technology improves. This reading will identify alternative, popular search engines used for digital marketing needs and their characteristics.

Traditional search engines

In an earlier video, you learned that a search engine is a website that individuals can use to input search queries and receive results based on certain keywords. Traditionally, when a user enters and searches for a query in a search engine like Google Search, they receive a range of related links to select from. The following search engines offer a similar search structure as Google Search.

Yahoo! Search and Bing

Similar to Google’s creation of Google Search in 1995, American web services company Yahoo! created the search engine Yahoo Search as their flagship product.

The company has since transitioned into other endeavors. In 2009, Yahoo! announced that the search engine portion of their website would now be powered by Bing, a search engine created by technology corporation Microsoft. Now, the user-facing search platform is called Microsoft Bing, while the digital marketing backend is called Microsoft Advertising. Microsoft Advertising has features similar to Google Ads and is the second largest search engine to advertise on.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is an internet search engine that launched in 2008. One of DuckDuckGo’s defining characteristics is its commitment to provide searchers unfiltered search engine results pages (SERPs) by not incorporating information about the individual beyond the specific query provided. By doing so, the search engine avoids collecting private information on the searchers. Ads on DuckDuckGo are served by Microsoft Advertising.

Baidu (China)

Baidu, owned by a multinational technology company of the same name, is the most used search engine in China and holds a 76.05% market share in China’s search engine market.

Key takeaway

In our current digital age, search engines are necessary to help users find the information, content, and products they are looking for. As a digital marketer, being aware of additional search engines can lead you to additional audiences and more opportunities to achieve your goals.

Jake - The purpose and process of search algorithms

Video. Duration: 3 minutes

Hi, I’m Jake, and I’m a Search Lead at Google. So, I work with pods and clients. Pods at Google are a group of account managers and account executives who work on a group of clients. You really partner with AMs and AEs on overarching strategy within their entire pod or their entire group of clients across their books. But you also work directly with clients and get to talk to them about how to tie their business objectives to their search efforts and make sure that there is a direct tie there so that everything that they grow within their search advertising or also connects to growth for their business. So some examples of some popular search engines— obviously, Google is a big player in this space, really across the globe. But there’s a lot of players in this space. Bing is one of the biggest players in the United States. Baidu is one of the biggest players over in China. There’s Yandex, there’s Yahoo Japan. There’s a plethora of options when it comes to different search engines that you can show for, organically, and also advertise on. Skills across these search engines are very transferable. The reason for that is that they have very similar algorithms involved in terms of getting what information users seek, specifically on the organic side. The big thing that you need to learn on the ad side is you might need to learn different platforms’ user interfaces on the ad side. But when it comes to the organic side, they’re very transferable. A lot of times, similar searches will show similar results on different search engines. They’re really the three stages of the search algorithm. The first is crawling. We’re trying to basically hunt for all of the information across the web. The next is indexing, which is where you take all of that information and you start to understand it, start to understand the relevance, the themes, and things of that nature. And then third is serving, which is what we’re familiar with as users. When we search, that’s when things get served, and the serving is tied to relevance of everything that’s indexed. So it goes through everything that got indexed and it decides what’s served based off the relevance of the search. So another piece of these three stages—crawling, indexing, and serving—is that it’s always continual and ongoing. The crawling stage doesn’t stop and go into the index stage. The index stage doesn’t stop and go into the serving stage. This is very important because there’s different websites coming across the web all the time. That’s important for the crawling stage to continue and find this information. And 15% of searches are unique, so it needs to have an understanding of relevance and how to serve users differently off of these new searches that it’s never seen before. So the process is continual, not static, but they do feed into each other and go in that order. What’s really the purpose of search algorithms? Getting users relevant information that is available across the web. That’s really what it comes down to. And the goal of all of these search engines and in all of these companies is really to be as relevant as possible for the user so that the user keeps coming back.

Test your knowledge: How search works

Practice Quiz. 4 questions. Grade: 100%

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2. Understanding the basics of search engine optimization (SEO)

What is SEO and why is it important?

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

We’ve covered some paid and non-paid ways to get websites found in the search engine results pages. Let’s chat specifically about the non-paid process to get websites more visible in the SERPs. Search engine optimization, also called SEO. This is the process of increasing the visibility of website pages on search engines in order to attract more relevant traffic. Think of relevant traffic as the ideal customers you’d like to visit the website. You may also encounter SEO as the title of someone who does it for a living, such as, “We just hired a new SEO to improve our online presence.” Every digital marketer should learn the basics of search engine optimization. Even if you’re working for a business with a website on a platform such as Blogger, Wix, or Squarespace, it’s worth learning a little about SEO. A little knowledge can go a long way towards helping people find the site. Overall, a website that has search engine optimization may make it easier for search engine algorithms to crawl, index, and understand its content. SEO is important because if search engines cannot crawl a website, they may not get found in a search engine like Google. And if a search engine algorithm struggles to understand a site’s content, it may not display when a potential customer searches for the business products and services. SEO is often about making small modifications to parts of a website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like minor improvements. But when combined with other optimizations, the impact can be large. An impact to the website visitor’s experience could affect the performance in search results. Specifically, for the Google search engine, there’s a tool to help with SEO called Google Search Console. This tool helps people monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot a website’s presence in Google search results. We’ll talk more about Google Search Console later in this program. It’s important to remember that there are a lot of opinions on how best to do search engine optimization. Typically, Google will publish SEO guidelines. It’s often, though, up to the digital marketer, SEO professional, or a company to determine how to best implement those guidelines. Depending on the company a digital marketer works for, they may receive different strategies on how best to implement SEO. Luckily, there are many separate paths that can result in a site being visible in Search. You don’t have to match other websites one to one. Let’s discuss some tasks often involved with search engine optimization. Someone doing SEO may review website content or structure. It’s important to have a well-organized website that is easy for the search engine algorithms to crawl. You’ll learn about what exactly a well-organized website means in a later section. For now though, know that if a website isn’t easily crawled, certain pages may not display in search results. Another SEO task is technical website development. This task is more advanced. It can involve tasks related to hosting, webpage redirects, error pages, or use of JavaScript. JavaScript is a programming language which is considered a type of computer code. Technical development may also involve improving page load speeds. A third SEO task is content development. Think of content as anything a visitor experiences on a website. Content includes text, videos, and photos. Search engine optimization also includes user experience. When developing content, it’s important to consider how the website visitor experiences and interacts with the content. A fourth SEO task is keyword research. Keyword research is the process of finding terms and phrases that potential customers are typing into search engines. It’s important to create website content that aligns with what your potential customers are searching for. Keyword research is often combined with content development. A company may use keyword research to inform its content strategy. Keyword research is an example of an SEO strategy that may be different depending on the company you work for. While some strategies may be more effective than others, there’s no perfect way to do it. Now you have an overview of search engine optimization, why it’s important, and common tasks. Any digital marketer or e-commerce analyst should have working knowledge of SEO best practices. Most digital marketers and e-commerce analysts will, at a minimum, create content for a website. It’s important to learn these best practices so that both people and search engines can easily understand the content.

First steps before implementing SEO

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

As a digital marketer responsible for an organization’s SEO, you should do some pre-work. This pre-work is done for two groups: the company or organization requesting the SEO, and the potential website visitors. Implementing SEO without doing this pre-work can lead to several problems. The work you do may not align to the organizational goals. You need to make sure the work you’re doing helps the organization achieve its goals. Another problem is related to the website visitors. What if the work you’re doing isn’t connecting with them? Even worse, what if it’s turning them away? A little pre-work before implementing SEO can help avoid these situations. Let’s go over a few factors to consider before doing any search engine optimization tasks. The first factor is to know your website or organization’s goals. What would they like to primarily achieve? For instance, would they like to get more sales, More emails? Or phone calls? The type of SEO work you do depends on their goals. It’s important to get clear on these goals. You want to work on tasks that you believe will positively impact these goals. Remember, as a marketing professional, you may have influence over these goals. Most business owners know that they want to make sales and earn more revenue, and it may be up to you to figure out how to do that. For example, let’s imagine the marketing form that you create for the business prioritizes email collection. You know that if you collect emails from potential customers, it will lead to sales. So, as the person implementing SEO, you prioritize creating content for email collection. Another step to take before starting SEO is to know the customers well. This principle is why we started this course with customer personas. Before doing SEO, you need to really understand the people reading and experiencing your content. Let’s imagine a potential customer visits a website that can help them solve their problem. If they read a few sentences or experience visuals that they don’t connect with, they’ll just simply leave. They’ll go to the next website. There are several other websites that can help them solve their problem. Additionally, you need to know the visitor’s intent. What do they want to achieve? Communicate with them directly, and ultimately, help them fulfill that intent. A third step to take before starting any SEO is brainstorming content for people first. To understand what it means to create content for people first, you need to understand what it’s like to work in SEO. When you’re creating content or improving content, you’ll be reviewing what’s already in the SERPs. It’s easy to fall into the habit of crafting content for what you believe the Google SERPs want to show people. If it’s already working, just create similar content, right? However, great SEO-based content marketers don’t create content for Google search results first. They create content for people first, Google second. What does this mean? It means that the marketer prioritizes and considers what the searcher needs from their query more so than what is already in the search results. Is there any information that is missing? For example, should the marketer try to explain the content more visually, such as with photos or video? Just because all the articles in search results are text-based doesn’t mean that it’s what the searcher wants. A last factor to consider is to know your competitors well. To rank higher in the SERPs, you’ll often have to create content that is better than the competition. Remember, “better” means different things to different people. It could be a video instead of a text, but it could be more in-depth content such as including a lengthy story or a case study to illustrate a point. Or it could be shorter, more concise content. That’s your job as a marketer to figure that out. To create better content than your competition, you must study what they created. Study what they’ve done and do it better. All while keeping the ideal customer in mind. In future sections, we’ll be discussing a lot of SEO concepts and big-picture strategies you’ll be able to use as you enter the field of digital marketing. Great work so far.

Beginner SEO terms

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

You’ve learned the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) and how it works. Now, it’s time to review the SEO terms you’ve learned and introduce a few more that you’ll learn about later in this course. This glossary will help you become familiar with some of the beginner SEO terms and definitions you may need to know for an entry-level position in digital marketing or e-commerce.

Bounce rate: The percent of visitors that view one page and then leave the site.

Breadcrumbs: A row of internal links at the top or bottom of the webpage that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the home page. Also known as a breadcrumb trail.

Broken link: A link that leads to a webpage that no longer exists. For example, the webpage may have been deleted, or the content may have been moved to a different location.

Crawl: The process of looking for new or updated webpages. Google discovers URLs by following links, by reading sitemaps, and by many other means.

Crawlers: Automated software that crawls (fetches) pages from the web and indexes them.

Domain: The core part of a website’s URL, or internet address. For example, in the URL ”www.google.com/ads”, the domain name is google.com.

Googlebot: The generic name of Google’s crawler.

Google knowledge panels: Information boxes that appear on Google when you search for people, places, organizations, or things that are available in Google’s knowledge database.

Index: Google stores all webpages that it knows about in its index (similar to the index in the back of a book). The index entry for each page describes the content and location (URL) of that page.

Keyword: A word, or multiple words, that people use to find information, products, or services online.

Keyword research: The process to find terms and phrases that potential customers are typing into search engines.

Meta description: Provides the search engines a summary of what the page is about. In some situations, this description is used in the snippet shown in search results.

Mobile-friendly: A webpage that is designed to load quickly and render well on a phone screen.

Organic search: Unpaid results a search engine produces when a search is performed.

Rank: A webpage’s position in the search engine results pages (SERPs), which is determined by an algorithm.

Rich results: Enhanced results in Google Search with extra visual or interactive features.

Search algorithm: Automated process that helps locate information to answer a user’s query.

Search engine optimization (SEO): The process of making your site better for search engines.

Search engine results pages (SERPs)

results pages that appear when someone performs a search query.

Sitemap: A file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently.

Structured data: Code used to better describe a webpage’s content to search engines.

Subdomain: The subset of a larger domain used to organize an existing website into a different page URL. Subdomains are usually found at the beginning of a URL. For example, support.google.com is a subdomain of google.com.

URL: The address of a webpage or file on the Internet. For example, ”www.google.com”.

Webpage title: Provides users and search engines the topic of a particular page.

404 page: A page that informs the user that the webpage they were trying to visit does not exist.

Key takeaways

We’ve covered a lot of SEO terms, and you’ll be learning more as you progress through the course. This glossary will help you remember what a word means so that you have a better understanding of how SEO relates to digital marketing and e-commerce. Plus, you’ll be familiar with commonly used terms when you start working in a new role.

Resources for more information

To learn more about beginner SEO terms, reference this glossary:

Google Search Central-Reference the SEO Starter Guide’s glossary of SEO terms

Test your knowledge: The purpose of search engine optimization (SEO)

Practice Quiz. 4 questions. Grade: 100%

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3. Keyword research and website structure

Keyword research and recommendations

Video. Duration: 3 minutes

As a digital marketer or e-commerce analyst, an organization may have you create content for a webpage. Before creating that content, it’s helpful to know the terms or phrases potential customers type into Google to find that information. For example, let’s imagine you’re writing a webpage about a type of couch and its style. Before writing any content, it’s helpful to know what words potential customers are typing into a search engine to find that type of couch information you’re writing about. Now, this may seem easy, but it can be complicated. For instance, in addition to couch, are they searching for sofas, sectionals, or lounges? Is one word use more than others? Or are words combined, such as “sofa sectional.” Understanding the preferred words will help you create content that closely relates to what your customers are searching for. This content will connect with them, and when content connects, they’re more likely to take a desired action. In SEO, these words are referred to as keywords, which are the search terms people use to find information, products, or services online. But how do you come up with the keywords in the first place? Keyword research is a process to find the terms people use in search engines. There is no single correct way to do keyword research. You may work at one organization, and they have their recommended process, and you may work at a different organization, and they have their recommended process. It’s all a matter of opinion. When doing keyword research, there are tools that can help you. These tools provide data on how many times people search for keywords. They also provide how competitive a certain keyword is. Keyword research varies depending on the organization you work for and also can be somewhat based on opinion. It is also something best learned on the job, so we won’t spend time on it in this program. However, Google’s SEO quality guidelines recommend not doing one keyword related practice, and this practice is called keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in the search results. Often, these keywords appear in a list or group. They’re typically out of context and not really natural to the webpage content. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience and can harm your site’s ranking. You should focus on creating useful, information- rich content that uses keywords appropriately, and in context. Examples of keyword stuffing include blocks of texts that lists cities and states that a webpage is trying to rank for or repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, such as, “We sell custom candles. Our custom candles are handmade. If you’re thinking about buying a custom candle, contact a custom candle specialists.” That’s our introduction to keywords and keyword research. Just like creating customer personas is crucial before developing marketing materials, doing keyword research is crucial before developing webpage content. Keywords are the topics of your webpage. Getting accurate keywords will help you create content that connects more closely with searchers. When you connect, you can drive action, and getting your potential customer to take action will make you successful in your digital marketing role.

Daniel - Steps and tips a beginner digital marketer should take to optimize a website for SEO

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Hi, my name’s Daniel. I’m a Product Marketing Manager, and I work for Google Store. SEO stands for search engine optimization. When someone has a curiosity about anything in the world, they go to Google, and they will search that question. Essentially, what a SEO specialist or professional does is understand what people are searching for in their respective market, in their respective business, and how do they answer that question that allows them to be at the top of the page. And Google has created this algorithm that allows businesses to compete for that space in the most organic fashion that doesn’t get overwritten by paid advertisements and sponsored posts. So the purpose for search engines is to provide an answer to a certain question. It delivers either product and answer information or service that people are curious about and want to have more information about. If you rank highly on a certain topic or keyword query or search query, then you’re more likely to get those traffic visitors to your page, which then you can optimize your page even further to convert those people to sales if you are selling a product or a service or you can increase the engagement on your page, if you’re just providing information that you want people to take a part of. So, if you’re optimizing your page for SEO, you will get more visitors and traffic to your page. One of the most common issues that people find with a page that isn’t optimized, is that they’re not getting traffic to their page. If they are a business that relies on selling products online, that means that they’re not going to make sales because no one is finding their pages, unless they want to put marketing dollars and spend money to push their page up on top of search results. They can do that but that also has a lot of capital and a lot of small businesses can’t afford to do that. So, a free, organic way to do that is SEO. So if you optimize for SEO, you can organically and in a free way push your content higher and get that traffic flowing into your website. Hopefully, those people will convert and you will make more sales. So there are two types of SEO. There’s the user-facing SEO component, which is about content and keywords and what people actually see on the page. And then there’s the backend SEO, which is more on the technical side, which is about site speed, and site performance. Some low-hanging fruit for SEO optimizations for your own page is to really look at keywords that are really relevant to your page, to your business, to your industry. Build content around those keywords and around those search queries that you know that people are interested about. If you can provide an answer, such as a blog page or informational page on your site, then that can be used to funnel traffic into your site. You can also look at keywords that are relevant. There are a lot of free tools out there that you can search certain industries, and those industries will have the top keywords per industry or per market or per business. And if you haven’t already incorporated that, then you can start building content around those those topics. So if you want to understand how your website is doing in terms of SEO, there are a lot of free tools out there that provide a free audit that showcases how fast your page loads. What steps and actions you can take to decrease the size of the page, which means your page can load faster. If you can increase the speed for the page when it loads, then you’ll have a better user experience. So one piece of advice I would give for people really interested in SEO, or seeing if they want to pursue SEO, is to understand that SEO is always changing. But the bottom line still stays the same: it’s trying to understand the customer, what they’re organically interested in, what they’re organically curious about. And if you can focus on that, then you’ll have a successful career in SEO.

Organize your website’s pages: Website structure and navigation

Video. Duration: 6 minutes

Welcome back. An important aspect of SEO is having a well-organized website structure. Think of a site structure as how the web pages are all linked and connected. It’s also how a visitor navigates through the website. You consider the structure when first creating a website or you may be on a team tasked with overhauling an existing website structure. Many large companies have entire departments focused on website architecture and user experience. Even if you’re on a team with experts, it’s important to understand how websites structure affects SEO. Site structure generally falls under technical SEO. A smaller business may have 10 pages. This is fairly easy to structure. However, if it’s an e-commerce business with thousands of products, the organization can get complicated. Overall, a good site structure is hierarchical, which means web pages fall under and are associated with another webpage. For example, e-commerce sites often organize products into a hierarchy using product categories. Visit a home improvement website and you’ll encounter categories such as hardware, electrical, and plumbing. In general, the hierarchy should be a flat structure. As a best practice, every page should only be three, maybe four clicks from the homepage. From a technical perspective, the Google crawler should have no issue moving from page to page in understanding the flow of the site. From a user’s perspective, the webpage should be easy to use. Think about your own experiences on a website. Have you ever been on a website and found it difficult to navigate? Or maybe just plain confusing? With good site organization, that shouldn’t happen. There are a few reasons to plan out a website structure. The first is added assist the search engine crawlers. Remember, the primary way the Google crawlers discover a new or updated webpage is through links from other pages. If you create a page that has no links to it, it could take longer for Google crawlers to discover it. There’s another way crawlers discover webpages, and that is through a sitemap, which is particularly important for larger websites. You’ll learn more about sitemaps later in the program. Another reason is for a consistent and readable URL structure. Remember the URL is the address of a webpage. It’s a best practice to have clear URLs. Website visitors may be intimidated by extremely long encrypted URLs that contain few recognizable words. Additionally, remember that a URL may be displayed in some form in a Google search result near the document title. Potential customers may read it before actually deciding to click on the search result. A third reason to plan out a website structure is for the improved user experience. If a user has trouble navigating a website, it’s likely that they’ll leave. This increases your bounce rate. Remember, a bounce is a percent of visitors that view one page and then leave the site. High bounce rate means that even when users come to your website from search, they tend to leave without converting into customers. Let’s discuss a few tips to consider when creating a website structure and navigation. One tip is to use https:// whenever possible, and ideally for every URL on the website. HTTPS is an Internet communications protocol that protects the integrity and confidentiality of data between the user’s computer and the site. When you create a webpage or a website with HTTPS instead of the older HTTP, it provides protection to your websites user connection regardless of the site content. Another tip is to create a navigational page for users. A navigational page is a simple page on the website that displays the website structure. It usually consists of a hierarchical listing of all the pages on the site. Users may visit this page if they’re having problems finding pages on the site. While search engines will also visit the navigation page, it’s mainly aimed at human visitors. A third tip is to show useful 404 pages. A 404 page is a URL that tells the user that the webpage does not exist. Occasionally, a user will come to this page either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Creating a custom 404 page for the website kindly guides visitors back to a working page on the website. This can greatly improve a visitor’s experience. Consider adding a link back to the homepage or links to popular content on the website. A fourth tip is to make your website navigation Google crawler friendly. To help Google find all pages on a site, make sure that the pages are reachable by following links through the site’s navigation. For an e-commerce website, specifically, the product category page should link to the subcategory pages and then to the product pages. Website structure may seem simple, but it can get complicated, especially as you’re adding more pages to the website. A little work before creating the website can avoid challenges such as a disorganized website with pages not being crawled by the Googlebots. As a digital marketer, you may find yourself reorganizing a website, maybe they didn’t consider the site structure when first creating the website. You’ll be a big help to them.

Practice: Structure an e-commerce website

Ungraded Plugin. Duration: 10 minutes

Site hierarchy best practices

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Organizing a site hierarchy makes it easier for Google search engines to crawl and index the pages on your site. Crawling is the process of finding new or updated pages. An organized site hierarchy also ensures that URLs are simple and readable, enhances SEO, and makes it easier for customers to find what they want on your site. This reading will help you understand best practices for organizing a site hierarchy.

Planning your site hierarchy

Every website has a homepage—also known as the root page. This is the starting point for creating your site hierarchy. It’s also the page that many of your customers will land on when they first visit your site.

The homepage, which is at the top level of your site hierarchy, should contain general information about your business or products. The subpages, or lower-level pages that appear below the homepage, should contain more specific information, such as product details.

You may have three or four levels of subpages within your site hierarchy. Each level includes more specific information than the previous level. Some sites include more than four levels, but it’s usually best to make every page no more than three or four clicks away from the homepage.

Here is an example of how the site hierarchy might be organized for an e-commerce website, starting with the homepage and then leading to three levels of subpages: category pages, subcategory pages, and product pages.

Imagine you work for an online bookstore. The homepage for the online bookstore would feature content that interests the majority of their customers, such as current deals, new releases, and bestsellers.

The first level of site hierarchy below the homepage would include category pages, which group similar content or products together. For example, the categories for an online bookstore might include fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books.

The second level of site hierarchy would include subcategory pages, which are pages that relate to the category pages. For example, underneath the category page for children’s books, the website might include subcategories for chapter books, picture books, graphic novels, boxed sets, and other related subjects.

The third level of site hierarchy would include more specific information, such as a product detail page for a specific children’s book title.

The site hierarchy below demonstrates how a portion of the online bookstore’s website might be organized.

Using breadcrumbs

Let’s say a visitor finds their way to the product detail page for a specific children’s book, but then they want to browse other books. How do they return to a broader selection of books? One option would be to use breadcrumbs, which is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the homepage.

Breadcrumbs typically begin with the homepage and include links for each level in the site hierarchy leading up to the page the visitor is currently on.

For example, the online bookstore’s breadcrumbs would start with the homepage, then include a link to the category page, and end with a link to the subcategory page. The breadcrumbs below demonstrate how this would be laid out:

A visitor who lands on the product detail page for a specific book title would encounter a breadcrumb trail similar to this:

By clicking on one of these breadcrumb links, the visitor will be able to return to a broader selection of books.

Using simple, descriptive URLs

Another best practice for site hierarchy is to create URLs that are simple and descriptive. The text in the URLs should describe the content on the page. This makes it easy for visitors to understand what they’ll find when they visit that page. This also enhances SEO by making it easier for search engines to understand what the page is about.

Best practices for URLs

Keep URLs as short as possible

• URLs that are too long can overwhelm or confuse your visitors.

• Shorter URLs make it easier for visitors to share a link to your page.

Make URLs easy to understand

• Visitors should be able to tell where a link will take them when they click on the URL.

  • For example, if you’re creating a URL for a subcategory page for mystery books, you might use a URL like this: Books Galore. The visitor will know they are visiting a website about books. They’ll also know that the link will take them to mystery books within the fiction category. Note: the Books Galore is fictional and the link does not work.

• URLs should include words instead of cryptic numbers that don’t mean anything to the visitor. You’ll also want to avoid using generic words like “page1” or excessive keywords like “books-fiction-books-fictionbooks” in your URL.

• Keep in mind that URLs are visible in search engine results, which is why it’s important to make sure your URLs are user-friendly.

Keep URLs updated

• A broken link may occur if a webpage is deleted, or if the content is moved to a different location. Broken links are links that lead to webpages that no longer exist.

Create useful 404 pages

• Occasionally visitors may land on a 404 page, which is a page that informs the user that the webpage they were trying to visit does not exist.

• 404 pages with a vague message or no guidance on what to do next will lead the visitor to a dead end.

• Custom 404 pages help guide the visitor back to a working page on your site.

Key takeaways

Following best practices for organizing a site hierarchy is important because it makes it easier for visitors to find what they need. It also makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site. Following these best practices will help users navigate your site, improve SEO, and make it easier for search engines to understand how the pages on your site relate to each other.

Resources for more information To learn more about site hierarchy best practices, read this article:

Google Search Central. Learn more about organizing your site hierarchy

Test your knowledge: Keyword research and website structure

Practice Quiz. 4 questions. Grade: 100%

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4. Review: Understanding Search engine optimization (SEO)

Wrap-up

Video. Duration: 1 minute

Excellent job. You now have a working knowledge of how search works. You started off with an introduction to how search engines work and how Google ranks websites. You also went over the organization of the SERPs, also called search engine results pages. Then you dove into the world of search engine optimization. You went over pre-steps before implementing any SEO. Steps like understanding the organization’s goals and ideal customers. Keywords and keyword research is another topic you learned. You now know recommendations from Google about keywords. You wrapped up by, then, learning about website structure and navigation— a very important task when creating any new website. Having a working knowledge of search engine optimization can be very helpful in a beginner digital marketing or e-commerce role. You should always try to keep up with the latest changes in the SERPs. If your organization learns about an online placement and opportunity before competitors, it can increase visibility and sales for the organization. Additionally, if you ever create content for a website, keep in mind the key factors on how Google ranks websites. Use the principles such as relevance and usability to guide how you create content for the site. You covered some big, complicated search topics. I hope you feel like you’ve learned a lot, and you’re ready to continue your journey learning more about search in digital marketing.

Glossary terms from module 2

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Link to: Glossary terms from module 2

Module 2 challenge

Due, Oct 29, 11:59 PM WET. Quiz. 10 questions. Grade: 80%

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END! - Week 2 - Course 2