Video
Transcript
Hi everybody online and thanks for joining us today. My name is Krystian and I’m an online marketing specialist at Positionly. Welcome to SEO Basics Made Easy!
If you’re a beginner then this webinar is right for you. We will cover everything you need to know about getting started with Search Engine Optimization and how to start your first campaign from scratch. We are going to talk about:
- how does SEO actually work
- how do keywords work and where to start keyword research
- and how to measure your SEO efforts
I will also talk about the main features of our tool. This way you’ll better understand not only how SEO works, but you will also learn how to make the best use of the application itself. You’ll see that it really isn’t that difficult.
Duration, Questions and Additional Reference
Before we start I’d like to tell that the Webinar will take about 30 minutes. If you’ll have any questions I’ll try to answer them at the end of this tutorial.
All of the materials and additional resources I’ll mention, will be available for you to download after the webinar. You will also receive a copy of this video straight to your inbox. Let’s get started!
SEO Basics
Have you ever wondered how the way we look for information has changed over time? Previously it was really time consuming. Thanks to search engines we are able to find the information we are looking for in a matter of seconds. In the same way it possible for you to make your website findable on the Internet. But how it actually works?
The role of keywords
In order to find the information we are looking for we use keywords. Thanks to keywords I can find a good coffee shop nearby or the price of a smartphone which I’m considering to buy soon.
General keywords can broadly refer to products or services, but a bit more complex phrases also can indicate an intent, for example:
- coffee shop + los angeles
By adding a location variable I’m telling the search engine that I’m looking for a coffee shop in LA, not any random shop in the country.
- iphone 6 + price
As for the iPhone 6 – By adding a price variable I’m stating that I’m looking for an actual offer. I’m not looking for reviews or comparisons. This might be a clear indicator that I’m a potential buyer.
That’s the reason why search engine marketing is so effective.
What keywords should you pick
The idea behind SEO is quite simple – connect searches with your website. Knowing which specific keywords people use to find products or services like yours, will make your website easier to find by new customers.
E.g. If you run a coffee shop, the most appropriate keyword would be precisely “coffee shop”, right? What is important to mention at this point, is that people who are using this phrase have a specific need (they want to buy some coffee), but they don’t know your brand.
If someone is looking for your company with a phrase containing your company’s name, like “coffee shop YOUR NAME”, that means that he is already aware of it. The point of SEO is to make your website more easy to find by people who have a specific need, but aren’t familiar of your brand.
And basically that’s it. That’s what SEO is all about.
How Positionly Can Help You
Let’s jump into the application. Positionly was designed to make SEO really easy, especially for people who just started doing SEO and would like to receive really useful information about their campaign’s performance.
Rankings
One of the main features you will be referring to during your campaign will be the rankings.
Rankings are a really simple metric that gives you an overview of how visible your website is for the particular set of keywords. The math is really simple here. The higher your website will be in the search engine results page, the more visibility it will get. That means more clicks and more targeted traffic.
Positionly makes it incredibly easy to track and manage even thousands of keywords. My personal recommendation would be organizing keywords around a specific topic or a product.
Let’s get back to the coffee shop example once again. Many people when looking for a coffee shop will use this particular keyword (search engines will take care of the rest to show you the most relevant results). But there are other keywords as well like:
- Synonyms – coffee house, coffee bar
- Local phrases: coffee shop los angeles, coffee shop santa monica
Coffee shops also might sell other merchandise, like coffee mugs or offer breakfasts – these are the additional sets of keywords. You really ought to divide these from the rest of the phrases you would like to rank.
Keyword Groups
Another good way of organizing your account is to group the keywords to reflect the actual structure of your site. By doing this you will be able to keep things organized. It is especially recommended for users who manage large amounts of keywords, like online stores or SEO agencies.
By organizing your keywords this way you will also have an opportunity to check the average rankings of the whole group.
Keyword Research Tips
If you don’t have any ideas on how to do keyword research, the best way to start it is to write down all of the keywords related to your business that your potential customers might use to find your business.
Once the list is ready you could expand upon it with synonyms. The suggestions we show you during the set-up process might help you as well. Last but not least – check them out in Google Keyword Tool (it is available in Adwords for free). Look for low-hanging fruits – keywords with a high number of monthly searches and low competition level.
Learn more about keyword research and management
Competitors
Let’s check out the competitors tab.If you measure your website rankings in Google, nothing stands in the way of tracking your competitors as well. In Positionly, you are able to compare your rankings with your competitors for a particular keyword. Such an analysis will give an information on how well you are performing in comparison to other websites that are trying to rank in Google.
Learn more about competitor analysis
On-page SEO grader
Ok, let’s go to the research tab. A properly optimized website is the foundation of SEO. It will not only be more user-friendly (thanks to the clear structure and readability), but it is also more accessible for search engines.
The third feature I’d like to talk about is our on-page optimization check. If you’re not 100% sure if your website is properly optimized you can use it to find any potential issues.
We analyzed one of the web pages. As you can see it’s optimized really well, but the pictures available on the website are missing some alt-tags. Alt-tags are used to describe what’s the content of the picture. Search engines are clever, but they can’t scan what’s in a particular image. If the website owner would fix the issues with the alt-tags, his website would be fully prepared to meet search engine crawlers.
Learn more about on-page optimization
Backlinks
The next thing I would like to talk about are backlinks.
Backlinks are one of the most important elements of search engine optimization. They are links that are placed on other web pages on the Internet and which refer to yours.
Have you ever wondered why you see particular results in search engines for your query?
Results that appear there aren’t accidental. Thanks to backlinks search engines can determine the popularity of your website. Think about it as casting votes. The more votes your website receives, the more popular it is in the eyes of Google.
Another e.g. you run a your coffee shop and someone has visited your place. That guy likes to blog and he liked the visit so much, that he decided to write a review with a link to your spot. This link is a signal for the search engine that your website is starting to get more popular – if you properly optimized it with keywords, the rankings will move up.
With Positionly, you can check and track your link building progress and see how it impacts your rankings growth.
Focus mostly on getting quality backlinks – few of them will do the work of dozens of medium quality ones. Additionally your rankings will be really hard to beat by your competitors.
Learn more about backlink analysis
Summary
And basically that’s it. I hope you liked the tutorial and I really hope you found it useful. In this introduction we touched only a few of the features that Positionly has to offer. There are many other really handy and time-saving tools that you’ll discover along using the application like:
- reports
- add-ons
- mobile app for your favourite platform
- or if you’re running a digital agency – a white labeling option
I really encourage you to try them all.
Before we’ll finish I’d like to mention a few additional things.
Explore Feature
At this point you might have some questions about how to use the app itself. In the top right corner you’ll notice a bulb symbol. By clicking on it you’ll run a handy guide with information how to use a particular feature.
You’ll also notice a contact form. Feel free to drop us a message anytime you like – our support is really there to help you.
Additional Resources
If you would like to learn more about the topics we touched today like keyword research, on-page optimization or how to analyze backlinks, check out our step-by-step visual guide to Positionly. It pretty much covers everything I talked about in this tutorial.
I would also like to personally thank you for joining me in this tutorial today. Thanks again and see you next time.
