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The SEO track to become an SEO Expert

SEO expertise is a highly demanded marketing skill in 2015. After all, it allows companies to have a free and relatively constant flow of new visitors.

Today, our minds are digitally emerged, and we spend most of the day behind a screen. As consumption and shopping habits turn digital, so does our Marketing methods.

This course aims at developing your practical SEO skills with a hands-on approach. The course is supported by the crème de la crème of online courses and resources! Enjoy:)

SEO Track

Introduction to SEO

When people do searches on Google, your goal is be the 1st result that appear on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Being the 1st result for a specific search gives your site free traffic. It also gives you authority for that specific term. Think of it as having a store in a crowded and popular street.

Course overview

Search engines have different rules for deciding which searches appear on top. In this course, we’ll be focusing on Google, as it is the most popular search engine. Once you know how Google works, it will be easier to understand other search engines!

The goal of this track is to make you acquire the skill set of an SEO manager. In this course, you’ll:

1) Learn by doing. Do first, and then look at the theory. It’s the method to learn better and faster !
2) Learn by yourself (create independence) and be self-reliant and freer. You are learning because you want to, not because someone tells you to!
3) Gain confidence! You’ll get no diploma, but you’ll have a nice portfolio of skills to show!

Note:

  • If you are serious about this course, I recommend you quickly go through the chapters. It could be an idea to plan ahead for external professional experiences (covered in Chapter 4).
  • This course is not a checklist! It’s a guide! It’s made for complete beginners, but you are flexible to learn at your own pace!

Careers in SEO

Becoming an SEO Expert qualifies you for many roles including:

  • SEO manager positions
  • SEO team lead positions
  • Creating your own SEO company
  • Creating a passive income stream
  • Starting your own company

Many SEO Experts have become children of freedom. They travel the world and live the life because they’ve made profitable blogs and e-commerce websites that give a fixed monthly income; that only requires minor maintenance and work!

What an SEO expert does

An SEO Professional’s goal is to make his clients or his company’s website appear on the first page of a search engine for specific searches (keywords).

There are rules and variables that define how search engines (like Google) display searches. These variables often change. The most important is the amount of relevant links to your website. When many websites in your industry link to your content, it tells search engines that your page is popular.

Skills you’ll get

Your goal should be to qualify for a SEO Manager position. To achieve this goal, it helps to be great at the stuff you want to manage. These are some of the skills we want you to acquire:

  • Be familiar with website structures (CSS, HTML, and Javascript) and content management systems (WordPress)
  • Design basics (with good design, more people will click and interact with your website; a good click-through rate improves your SEO)
  • On-page SEO optimization and site audits
  • Off-page SEO optimization (great content, link building & creating partnerships)
  • Web analytics, measuring the impact of different projects and use SEO reporting tools
  • Design skills and search engine marketing skills
  • Team management
  • Business skills

Remember: You won’t become a SEO Expert or get your website ranked as no.1 overnight. On the other hand, you’ll have fun, learn a lot and get skills that are highly demanded in 2015 :).

SEO communities

Meetups — Check out the SEO communities on Meetup.com. Get together with other SEO enthusiasts to discuss and share SEO insights.

Facebook — Ask questions in our Facebook group and start your learning with your peers.

When I first started with SEO, I read lots of blog articles about how SEO works. A lot of it was outdated and wrong. The rules of SEO are constantly changing. So be careful about what you read!

Only search engines knows the real rules of SEO, but these are not made public.

To reduce the chances of having the wrong SEO information, I recommend following these resources:

  • Matt Cutts: Head of Google’s Webspam team
  • Moz.com : The SEO company
  • Smartpassiveincome : The famous passive “incomer”
  • Searchmetrics : Massive monitoring of websites and search engines that estimate Search engine SEO variables.

SEO Syllabus

Chapter 1 – Getting your website running
SEO roadmap

  • Step 1- Choose your niche
  • Step 2- Buy domain name + set up website
  • Step 3- Add SEO plugins to your website
  • Step 4- Create your first posts
  • Step 5- Take a Photoshop course
  • Step 6- Start creating WOW content
  • Step 7- Get your first links
Chapter 1

Chapter 2- Check the Market

  • Step 1 – Check if your website has a market
  • Step 2 – Create a landing page for testing
  • Step 3- Launch Facebook And Google Ads
  • Step 4- Analyze traffic with Google Analytics
Chapter 2

Chapter 3- Digging deeper into SEO

  • Step 1- SEO lecture list
  • Step 3- Improve SEO and start link building
  • Step 2- Optimize on-page SEO
  • Step 4- Explore other content
  • Step 5- Learn to A/B test
Chapter 3

Chapter 4- Get more experience

  • Step 1- Define your available time
  • Step 2- Do an internship, freework or freelance work
Chapter 4

Chapter 5- Become an SEO manager

  • Step 1- Recruit and train your interns
  • Step 2- Setting SEO goals and strategies
  • Step 3- Creating SEO strategies
  • Step 4- Analyze SEO efforts
Chapter 5

SEO tools

Great resources to analyze your on-page SEO: ———————————————————————
  • SEO Site Checkup: Checks your website’s SEO problems for free
  • Hubspot Marketing Grader: Grades your marketing
  • Quicksprout: Does a complete analysis of your site
  • Woorank: Page and SEO review
  • Nibbler: Analysis your page
  • Site audit list by Moz: Checklist for site audits

Checks your Keyword rankings

  • SERPs Rank Checker: Checks how your keywords are ranking

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Website Analytics

Checks all website analytics- Is used to check website’s analytics before establishing partnerships

  • Alexa Ranking : Analyzes any site’s rank
  • SimilarWeb: Analyzes website statistics for all domains
  • Searchmetrics: Paid option, but much better than Alexa and Similarweb
  • Sistrix: Paid option, but much better than Alexa and Similarweb

Website Page Speed

  • Pingdom Website Speed Test: Test website’s loading time and suggest improvements
  • Google page speed insights: Test loading time and suggest improvements

SEO reporting Tools

  • SEMRush
  • BrightEdge

Link checkers
  • Mozbar (a must): Checks links, Domain authority and Page authority
  • Open Site explorer : Tool for link analysis
  • Check my links extension: Finds Broken links
  • OpenLinkProfiler: Finds all your backlinks and shows the quality of backlinks
  • Majestic site explorer: Analysis site links

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Finding great content
  • Google Keyword Planner: Finds interesting keywords to target on Google
  • SubReddit: Allows you to check for popular topics, as well as ask for feedback
  • Quora: Allows you to check for popular topics and ask for feedback
  • Buzzsumo: Allows you to check trending topics
  • Google Keyword Planner: Finds interesting keywords to target on Google

Creating great content

  • Grammarly: Corrects your English
  • Copyscape: Searches for copies of your page content on the web
  • Copyblogger: Inspiration for creating good post titles

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Posts and SEO Blogs to follow

You won’t find many people more qualified in SEO than these guys (they live for SEO):

  • Smartpassiveincome.com with Pat Flynn: About SEO and how to earn passive income
  • Quicksprount by Neil Patel : Learn to get more traffic
  • Backlinko by Brian Dean: The backlinking expert
  • Ali Mese: How to present content

Ranking factors:

  • Ranking factors for 2014 Searchmetrics : Google ranking factors of 2014
  • Ranking factors of 2013 Moz: Shows the biggest ranking factor influencers in 2013

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WordPress SEO Plugins:
  • WordPress SEO by Yoast: Have a fully optimized WordPress site
  • XML Sitemaps: Sitemap generator that creates XML & HTML variants (to be uploaded to Google Webmaster tools.
  • WP super Cache : Makes website navigation faster for users
  • Bwp minify: Minifies HTML, CSS and Javascript files
  • Smush.it: Image optimizer WordPress plugin

I recommend compressing images on Photoshop, Iphoto (on Mac) or Tinyjpg . Too many plugins slow your site down.

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Online course platforms
  • Lynda.com: Courses by professionals (covers all types of courses)
  • Udemy: Courses by professionals (covers all types of courses)
  • Generalassemb.ly: Business courses
  • Teamtreehouse: Coding classes
  • Coursera: Online University classes (covers all types of courses)

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