Online Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide
Do you know who Chandler Bolt is?
If you’re an online marketing nerd like me, you probably do.
But, if you’re part of the other 99.9% of the world who isn’t super excited about this “Internet marketing stuff,” you’ve probably never heard of this man.
So, what is he doing with this headline on Business Insider?
businessinsider
How did he get on there?
Is he rich or something? Yes, he is indeed.
That’s part of the beauty of online marketing.
This 21-year-old kid has made hundreds of thousands of dollars from his kitchen table.
No need for fame, magazine interviews, talk show visits, or acting classes (you know, to act in a blockbuster movie).
You have no clue who Chandler Bolt is. But he has made tons of money, and he’s also helping others do the same.
His company, Self-Publishing School, helps people publish books on Amazon and make a living from it.
If you’re an introvert, that’s a cause to celebrate!
Fewer than 20 years ago, extroverts had a way better chance of becoming rich and successful.
Why? It involved a ton of networking.
You had to hire employees and build a huge company. Or, for a career in arts, music, movies, etc., you had to get every person in your industry to know you.
While connections are still a huge deal, today you can get them right from your couch (or from your living room floor in my case).
floor
As a single individual, you can build a huge business from the comfort of your home after work, during your afternoons, and on your weekends.
I don’t think that I’m being overly dramatic when I say that online marketing is your shot at the life of your dreams.
Trust me — I would know.
I want you to have as much fun at work as these guys and I do. So, today I’ll introduce you to this world with my online marketing guide.
Note: Even if you’re deep down the rabbit hole already, you can still learn a ton of new things from the following examples.
If you’re interested in a particular topic, feel free to jump ahead:
Definition
Overview
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
Content marketing
Why content marketing?
Social media marketing
Pay-per-click advertising
Everything that you need to know about Google AdWords
Affiliate marketing
Email marketing
Definition
If you’ve read my previous guide on digital marketing, you already know that it’s different.
Not every digital marketing campaign is automatically an online marketing effort.
According to TNMedia, online marketing is “…any tool, strategy or method of getting the company name out to the public. The advertisements can take many different forms and some strategies focus on subtle messages rather than clear-cut advertisements.”
Want the drop-dead simple version of it?
Online marketing is any effort to spread the word about your company that uses the Internet to reach people.
Basically, it’s anything that you do online to get more eyeballs on you, grab people’s attention, and hopefully, at some point, get them to buy from you.
There are seven major sub-categories of online marketing that I want to cover in this guide.
Overview
We’ve already talked about search engine optimization (SEO), and I showed you all of the important aspects of it that you have to get right.
Next to SEO, there’s search engine marketing (SEM), which is simply the paid version of SEO.
Marketers pay Google to display ads in their search results in the hopes that they will drive traffic (especially interested people, or leads) to their product landing pages.
Then there’s content marketing. This is where marketers try to create valuable media and content to distribute to potential future customers. This is the good guy version of online marketing where you mostly try to guilt people into buying.
Of course, you already know social media marketing, which is where you use one or several social media channels to engage with customers, build relationships, and then send them to your products and services.
Pay per click advertising (or PPC) is similar to search engine marketing, but it isn’t limited to Google and its competitors. Most social media networks let you create ads that integrate naturally into their feeds, allowing you to pay for clicks to your website.
Affiliate marketing is a kind of referral marketing where you share profits with fellow marketers in exchange for promoting each other’s products.
And finally, there’s email marketing, which some already consider old-school. But it’s still one of the most effective channels. Once your customers have given you permission to contact them, you can email them at any time, providing value and asking them to buy when the time is right.
You can already guess how big online marketing really is. You know how huge of a space each of these individual categories fill.
I mean, just think about how many social media platforms you can name off the top of your head:
Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Google+, YouTube, Periscope, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon…
OK, you get the point.
I want to give you a good grip on all of these categories just like in our beginner’s guide, yet not drown you in the vast information that’s out there.
That’s why I’ll give you one example in each category of someone who absolutely crushes it in their niche along with some great points to help you get started.
Ready. Set. Go!
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
It goes without saying that I think Quick Sprout is one of the best sites when it comes to SEO (we’re kind of a big deal, I think).
Our Advanced Guide to SEO alone has gotten thousands of shares.
But, instead of spending an entire category bragging, I want to point you to someone who is a true search engine marketing ninja who has worked for us at Quick Sprout for quite some time.
I want to point him out not only because he has all of the SEO skills you need up his sleeve, but also because he is super underrated.
Every time I read an article like“15 SEO Gurus That You Should Know for 2015,” I’m shocked that he’s not on there.
Brian Dean, aka Backlinko, might be flying under the radar. But when you start Googling around and learning SEO, you’re bound to bump into him.
He outranks huge sites like Wikipedia, Forbes, and Copyblogger, and he completely dominates the SEO space with his super long case studies that provide actionable, step-by-step instructions for upping your SEO game.
backlinks
Backlinko ranks #1 AND #2 for “how to get backlinks.”
What’s great about his blog is that instead of just rounding up SEO news like Search Engine Land and others do, he actually shows you how to implement good SEO techniques that work.
As I outlined in one of the previous guides in this series, SEO is the process of optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword.
Brian is one of the best sources on the web for you to learn how to do search engine marketing right.
For example, Brian recently published an article called “How to get backlinks with guestographics.”
There, he does two things.
1. He shows you the results that prove that the strategy works.
results
2. He gives you detailed steps that you can follow to execute it.
As a case study, he talks about someone who he’s helped pull off this strategy in their niche.
You see the results, and then you can just scroll down and follow along as you read. In this case, the steps are:
Step 1: Publish an Awesome Infographic
Step 2: Simple (But Effective) Link Prospecting
Step 3: Show Them Your Infographic
Step 4: Bribe Your Prospects With Free Content
Step 5: Get Your Contextual Links
That’s easy to follow, right? So, what’s the catch?
It’s hard to execute. It takes time.
And that’s the reason that not many people do it. Be one of the few who does and you’ll get the results.
Just check out this backlink that we got to a Quick Sprout infographic:
oldschoolseo
Do you want more proof?
Go through the entire Backlinko blog. You’ll find fewer than 40 posts over the last several years.
If Brian’s SEO didn’t work, then he would never have been able to grow Backlinko to 100,000+ monthly readers, 100,000 email subscribers, and such a massive SEO brand with fewer than 40 blog posts.
The following three blog posts are the best ones to help you get started:
How to rank for any keyword
Link Building: The Definitive Guide
Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List
Within search engine optimization, there are two big sectors to be aware of:
On-page and off-page SEO. Let’s dive into each.
On-Page SEO
Over the past few years, Google has made numerous updates to their algorithms.
Data tells us that Google makes up to 600 changes to their algorithm every single year.
It’s almost impossible to keep up with Google’s rapid pace and changing user behavior.
But one thing that’s remained relatively constant is conducting on-page SEO.
Most on-page activities for SEO aren’t linked to direct ranking factors, but rather to indirect factors like click-through rate and time on site.
For example, an on-page SEO task that’s common is to optimize your meta description and title tag:
pasted image 0 378
Your title tag and meta description are what shows up on a given Google search result. For example, if someone searches for “SEO Tips,” my post will show up with the headline and description that I’ve personally customized.
While placing keywords in the title and description can help users navigate the content faster (as seen by the bolded text), it doesn’t directly increase rankings.
So simply stuffing keywords in your meta and title tags isn’t an option.
But they do contribute to click-through rate. When your title tags and meta descriptions are more compelling or related to the topic that someone is searching for, you can expect higher click-through rates.
And the higher the CTR, the higher the chance of ranking better.
Google is all about providing the best user experience possible. So if Google notices that your post that ranks at #10 is getting a higher CTR than the post above you, they will move your content up.
On-page SEO consists of a few major elements to be aware of:
Crawl errors
Keyword research
Page optimization
Speed
In this section, I’ll walk you through how you can improve each of these elements to get your on-page SEO on the right track.
Crawl errors
Crawl errors can be anything from a 404 error (broken link) to duplicate content. And all of these issues can plague your website with:
Slow speeds
Impacted rankings
Penalties from Google
Increased risk of users leaving your site (bouncing)
If you’ve ever seen this on your site, it’s a broken link error that can cause major problems:
pasted image 0 315
For example, 404 errors can impact your traffic heavily if another external source is linking to them.
If you’ve gotten your content featured on another site, but the link is broken, you’re losing out on tons of traffic.
One of the fastest tools to fix crawl errors that could be harming your site is Screaming Frog.
It’s a technical SEO tool that can scan your website for free, telling you detailed information on what you need to fix and how to do it:
pasted image 0 365
When scanning your site, be sure to look for common problem areas like:
Duplicate or missing content
404 errors
These issues are all too common on the majority of sites.
Keyword research
Keyword research is a fundamental process in any online marketing game plan for SEO.
Keywords are what you search in a search engine to find the content you are looking for.
For example, type “SEO Guide” into Google — that would be a keyword. And pages can target these keywords to compete in the rankings.
There are a few types of keywords to be aware of before conducting a basic keyword research strategy. There are two major kinds:
Long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer keywords made up of 3-5+ words. They are often easier to target due to specificity, less traffic, and less competition.
Head keywords: Head or short-tail keywords are one-word or two-word keywords that are more general. For example, “basketball shoes” would be a competitive head keyword.
pasted image 0 259
A good SEO strategy will target a mixture of both of these kinds of terms.
Short-tail keywords will be much more competitive because they are more general (and therefore have a higher volume).
On the other hand, long-tail keywords will get you less traffic but will convert better:
pasted image 0 354
To conduct keyword research, all you need to do is head to a keyword tool like Moz or the AdWords Keyword Planner.
Simply start by entering the basic topic that you want to cover for your next post or page:
pasted image 0 276
Searching for your basic keyword will give you a list of metrics telling you the volume (how many searches per month), difficulty (competition ranking for it), and the number of clicks that come from organic search.
Lastly, it will also give you keyword suggestions.
Generally speaking, when looking to target keywords for your next blog post, you want to find long-tail terms with higher volumes and lower difficulty scores.
Then, you can take that keyword and follow the next steps under page optimization!
Page optimization
Page optimization is a critical step in the process of SEO. Page optimization involves doing a few basic tasks to optimize your page for specific keywords and for search engines.
Remember: You’re writing content and optimizing pages for both the user and the search engine.
Everything from URLs to internal links can have an impact on your page performance.
This on-page SEO checklist from Backlinko is one of my favorite ways to stay on top of every new blog post that I write:
pasted image 0 293
All of these factors help you to both add context to the page for Google and structure it in a friendly way for the user.
For example, when you search for an article on Google, you expect to get something similar to your search:
pasted image 0 341
Everything from the permalink (URL) to the title and structure of your post (h1 and h2 headings) makes a difference in how Google scans your content and how user-friendly it is.
The better on-page optimization you have, the longer users will stay around to consume your content.
Plus, optimizing things like internal links (where you link to another article on your site from a new post) will help you drive users throughout your entire site.
Always be sure to follow the on-page SEO cheat sheet above when you write new blog posts.
Improve your page speed
One of the biggest factors for success is improving the speed at which your page loads.
When it comes to SEO, you want your content to load fast. Google prefers websites that load fast as well.
Studies have shown time and time again that top-ranking sites are faster than their lower-ranking competitors:
pasted image 0 312
According to their latest reports, as page load times increase by just a few seconds, the likelihood that someone will leave your site increases dramatically.
pasted image 0 318
If your site loads in ten seconds, you can expect users to run for the hills.
Google’s current standards state that best practices are three seconds or below. Yet the majority of businesses in every industry are still too slow:
pasted image 0 266
Thankfully, Google offers free tools like Test My Site and Pagespeed Insights. Each of these can help you improve your site speed dramatically.
pasted image 0 334
When you improve your site speeds, you can expect users to stay around on your site, reducing bounce rates that can negatively impact your organic rankings.
Always continue to test your site speed and improve where you can. These tools will help you fix any lingering problems by offering detailed, step-by-step solutions under each problem area.
Off-Page SEO
What’s off-page SEO? It’s simply the opposite of on-page SEO.
pasted image 0 329
That means that it’s all of the factors and activities that you can do (off-page) to raise the ranking of your site on search engines.
There are a few major ways that off-page SEO comes into play. Everything from link building to social promotion and content syndication can improve your off-page SEO.
Even things like guest blogging or writing a promotional piece on another site can result in a link (i.e., off-page SEO).
Here are a few ways to rank higher with off-page SEO.
Link building is critical
Link building is the most important factor in any off-page SEO strategy. According to a video from 2016 featuring Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, links and content were tied as the top two ranking factors.
Google confirmed this official video. Links are one of the biggest factors when it comes to ranking in a given search result.
When Brian Dean of Backlinko tested this with his own study, he found that the sites that rank number one dominate the competition in terms of backlinks.
pasted image 0 290
The more links you have back to your site from other sites, the stronger authority you have in the eyes of Google. It means that your content is relevant.
But not just any links will do the trick. That same study found that top-ranking sites with backlinks had links from hundreds of different sites:
pasted image 0 343
And the vast majority of those links were from the highest-ranking authorities in their space:
pasted image 0 281
Link building is tough, but it’s necessary to compete with SEO for online marketing.
Ranking higher with links involves everything from your total number of links to the quality of those links and the diversity of the sources.
When it comes to getting links, you need great content. The majority of content ranking #1 on Google is stellar.
And that’s why they have thousands of links. The content is nearly unmatched!
In Moz’s book “How to Rank,” they explain the 90/10 rule of link building:
pasted image 0 345
That means that you should spend 90% of your time creating amazing content and dedicate 10% of your time to link building.
Without great content, you won’t get the links you need to bring in more traffic and drive sales.
One of my favorite ways to build backlinks fast is by mentioning other influencers in my content. This adds great value to your content while also mentioning and giving praise to others.
And as we all know, humans love it when people lift their egos. It’s a great feeling to get compliments and praise for your knowledge in a space.
By tapping into that and getting value and input from influencers, you can easily drive backlinks.
For example, Shopify recently mentioned me in this post:
pasted image 0 257
I was a featured influencer on the post because I gave them tons of input. So in this post, I received a backlink to my site in exchange for my time and effort.
Do you know who Chandler Bolt is?
If you’re an online marketing nerd like me, you probably do.
But, if you’re part of the other 99.9% of the world who isn’t super excited about this “Internet marketing stuff,” you’ve probably never heard of this man.
So, what is he doing with this headline on Business Insider?
businessinsider
How did he get on there?
Is he rich or something? Yes, he is indeed.
That’s part of the beauty of online marketing.
This 21-year-old kid has made hundreds of thousands of dollars from his kitchen table.
No need for fame, magazine interviews, talk show visits, or acting classes (you know, to act in a blockbuster movie).
You have no clue who Chandler Bolt is. But he has made tons of money, and he’s also helping others do the same.
His company, Self-Publishing School, helps people publish books on Amazon and make a living from it.
If you’re an introvert, that’s a cause to celebrate!
Fewer than 20 years ago, extroverts had a way better chance of becoming rich and successful.
Why? It involved a ton of networking.
You had to hire employees and build a huge company. Or, for a career in arts, music, movies, etc., you had to get every person in your industry to know you.
While connections are still a huge deal, today you can get them right from your couch (or from your living room floor in my case).
floor
As a single individual, you can build a huge business from the comfort of your home after work, during your afternoons, and on your weekends.
I don’t think that I’m being overly dramatic when I say that online marketing is your shot at the life of your dreams.
Trust me — I would know.
I want you to have as much fun at work as these guys and I do. So, today I’ll introduce you to this world with my online marketing guide.
Note: Even if you’re deep down the rabbit hole already, you can still learn a ton of new things from the following examples.
If you’re interested in a particular topic, feel free to jump ahead:
Definition
Overview
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
Content marketing
Why content marketing?
Social media marketing
Pay-per-click advertising
Everything that you need to know about Google AdWords
Affiliate marketing
Email marketing
Definition
If you’ve read my previous guide on digital marketing, you already know that it’s different.
Not every digital marketing campaign is automatically an online marketing effort.
According to TNMedia, online marketing is “…any tool, strategy or method of getting the company name out to the public. The advertisements can take many different forms and some strategies focus on subtle messages rather than clear-cut advertisements.”
Want the drop-dead simple version of it?
Online marketing is any effort to spread the word about your company that uses the Internet to reach people.
Basically, it’s anything that you do online to get more eyeballs on you, grab people’s attention, and hopefully, at some point, get them to buy from you.
There are seven major sub-categories of online marketing that I want to cover in this guide.
Overview
We’ve already talked about search engine optimization (SEO), and I showed you all of the important aspects of it that you have to get right.
Next to SEO, there’s search engine marketing (SEM), which is simply the paid version of SEO.
Marketers pay Google to display ads in their search results in the hopes that they will drive traffic (especially interested people, or leads) to their product landing pages.
Then there’s content marketing. This is where marketers try to create valuable media and content to distribute to potential future customers. This is the good guy version of online marketing where you mostly try to guilt people into buying.
Of course, you already know social media marketing, which is where you use one or several social media channels to engage with customers, build relationships, and then send them to your products and services.
Pay per click advertising (or PPC) is similar to search engine marketing, but it isn’t limited to Google and its competitors. Most social media networks let you create ads that integrate naturally into their feeds, allowing you to pay for clicks to your website.
Affiliate marketing is a kind of referral marketing where you share profits with fellow marketers in exchange for promoting each other’s products.
And finally, there’s email marketing, which some already consider old-school. But it’s still one of the most effective channels. Once your customers have given you permission to contact them, you can email them at any time, providing value and asking them to buy when the time is right.
You can already guess how big online marketing really is. You know how huge of a space each of these individual categories fill.
I mean, just think about how many social media platforms you can name off the top of your head:
Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Google+, YouTube, Periscope, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon…
OK, you get the point.
I want to give you a good grip on all of these categories just like in our beginner’s guide, yet not drown you in the vast information that’s out there.
That’s why I’ll give you one example in each category of someone who absolutely crushes it in their niche along with some great points to help you get started.
Ready. Set. Go!
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
It goes without saying that I think Quick Sprout is one of the best sites when it comes to SEO (we’re kind of a big deal, I think).
Our Advanced Guide to SEO alone has gotten thousands of shares.
But, instead of spending an entire category bragging, I want to point you to someone who is a true search engine marketing ninja who has worked for us at Quick Sprout for quite some time.
I want to point him out not only because he has all of the SEO skills you need up his sleeve, but also because he is super underrated.
Every time I read an article like“15 SEO Gurus That You Should Know for 2015,” I’m shocked that he’s not on there.
Brian Dean, aka Backlinko, might be flying under the radar. But when you start Googling around and learning SEO, you’re bound to bump into him.
He outranks huge sites like Wikipedia, Forbes, and Copyblogger, and he completely dominates the SEO space with his super long case studies that provide actionable, step-by-step instructions for upping your SEO game.
backlinks
Backlinko ranks #1 AND #2 for “how to get backlinks.”
What’s great about his blog is that instead of just rounding up SEO news like Search Engine Land and others do, he actually shows you how to implement good SEO techniques that work.
As I outlined in one of the previous guides in this series, SEO is the process of optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to show it as a top result for searches of a certain keyword.
Brian is one of the best sources on the web for you to learn how to do search engine marketing right.
For example, Brian recently published an article called “How to get backlinks with guestographics.”
There, he does two things.
1. He shows you the results that prove that the strategy works.
results
2. He gives you detailed steps that you can follow to execute it.
As a case study, he talks about someone who he’s helped pull off this strategy in their niche.
You see the results, and then you can just scroll down and follow along as you read. In this case, the steps are:
Step 1: Publish an Awesome Infographic
Step 2: Simple (But Effective) Link Prospecting
Step 3: Show Them Your Infographic
Step 4: Bribe Your Prospects With Free Content
Step 5: Get Your Contextual Links
That’s easy to follow, right? So, what’s the catch?
It’s hard to execute. It takes time.
And that’s the reason that not many people do it. Be one of the few who does and you’ll get the results.
Just check out this backlink that we got to a Quick Sprout infographic:
oldschoolseo
Do you want more proof?
Go through the entire Backlinko blog. You’ll find fewer than 40 posts over the last several years.
If Brian’s SEO didn’t work, then he would never have been able to grow Backlinko to 100,000+ monthly readers, 100,000 email subscribers, and such a massive SEO brand with fewer than 40 blog posts.
The following three blog posts are the best ones to help you get started:
How to rank for any keyword
Link Building: The Definitive Guide
Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List
Within search engine optimization, there are two big sectors to be aware of:
On-page and off-page SEO. Let’s dive into each.
On-Page SEO
Over the past few years, Google has made numerous updates to their algorithms.
Data tells us that Google makes up to 600 changes to their algorithm every single year.
It’s almost impossible to keep up with Google’s rapid pace and changing user behavior.
But one thing that’s remained relatively constant is conducting on-page SEO.
Most on-page activities for SEO aren’t linked to direct ranking factors, but rather to indirect factors like click-through rate and time on site.
For example, an on-page SEO task that’s common is to optimize your meta description and title tag:
pasted image 0 378
Your title tag and meta description are what shows up on a given Google search result. For example, if someone searches for “SEO Tips,” my post will show up with the headline and description that I’ve personally customized.
While placing keywords in the title and description can help users navigate the content faster (as seen by the bolded text), it doesn’t directly increase rankings.
So simply stuffing keywords in your meta and title tags isn’t an option.
But they do contribute to click-through rate. When your title tags and meta descriptions are more compelling or related to the topic that someone is searching for, you can expect higher click-through rates.
And the higher the CTR, the higher the chance of ranking better.
Google is all about providing the best user experience possible. So if Google notices that your post that ranks at #10 is getting a higher CTR than the post above you, they will move your content up.
On-page SEO consists of a few major elements to be aware of:
Crawl errors
Keyword research
Page optimization
Speed
In this section, I’ll walk you through how you can improve each of these elements to get your on-page SEO on the right track.
Crawl errors
Crawl errors can be anything from a 404 error (broken link) to duplicate content. And all of these issues can plague your website with:
Slow speeds
Impacted rankings
Penalties from Google
Increased risk of users leaving your site (bouncing)
If you’ve ever seen this on your site, it’s a broken link error that can cause major problems:
pasted image 0 315
For example, 404 errors can impact your traffic heavily if another external source is linking to them.
If you’ve gotten your content featured on another site, but the link is broken, you’re losing out on tons of traffic.
One of the fastest tools to fix crawl errors that could be harming your site is Screaming Frog.
It’s a technical SEO tool that can scan your website for free, telling you detailed information on what you need to fix and how to do it:
pasted image 0 365
When scanning your site, be sure to look for common problem areas like:
Duplicate or missing content
404 errors
These issues are all too common on the majority of sites.
Keyword research
Keyword research is a fundamental process in any online marketing game plan for SEO.
Keywords are what you search in a search engine to find the content you are looking for.
For example, type “SEO Guide” into Google — that would be a keyword. And pages can target these keywords to compete in the rankings.
There are a few types of keywords to be aware of before conducting a basic keyword research strategy. There are two major kinds:
Long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer keywords made up of 3-5+ words. They are often easier to target due to specificity, less traffic, and less competition.
Head keywords: Head or short-tail keywords are one-word or two-word keywords that are more general. For example, “basketball shoes” would be a competitive head keyword.
pasted image 0 259
A good SEO strategy will target a mixture of both of these kinds of terms.
Short-tail keywords will be much more competitive because they are more general (and therefore have a higher volume).
On the other hand, long-tail keywords will get you less traffic but will convert better:
pasted image 0 354
To conduct keyword research, all you need to do is head to a keyword tool like Moz or the AdWords Keyword Planner.
Simply start by entering the basic topic that you want to cover for your next post or page:
pasted image 0 276
Searching for your basic keyword will give you a list of metrics telling you the volume (how many searches per month), difficulty (competition ranking for it), and the number of clicks that come from organic search.
Lastly, it will also give you keyword suggestions.
Generally speaking, when looking to target keywords for your next blog post, you want to find long-tail terms with higher volumes and lower difficulty scores.
Then, you can take that keyword and follow the next steps under page optimization!
Page optimization
Page optimization is a critical step in the process of SEO. Page optimization involves doing a few basic tasks to optimize your page for specific keywords and for search engines.
Remember: You’re writing content and optimizing pages for both the user and the search engine.
Everything from URLs to internal links can have an impact on your page performance.
This on-page SEO checklist from Backlinko is one of my favorite ways to stay on top of every new blog post that I write:
pasted image 0 293
All of these factors help you to both add context to the page for Google and structure it in a friendly way for the user.
For example, when you search for an article on Google, you expect to get something similar to your search:
pasted image 0 341
Everything from the permalink (URL) to the title and structure of your post (h1 and h2 headings) makes a difference in how Google scans your content and how user-friendly it is.
The better on-page optimization you have, the longer users will stay around to consume your content.
Plus, optimizing things like internal links (where you link to another article on your site from a new post) will help you drive users throughout your entire site.
Always be sure to follow the on-page SEO cheat sheet above when you write new blog posts.
Improve your page speed
One of the biggest factors for success is improving the speed at which your page loads.
When it comes to SEO, you want your content to load fast. Google prefers websites that load fast as well.
Studies have shown time and time again that top-ranking sites are faster than their lower-ranking competitors:
pasted image 0 312
According to their latest reports, as page load times increase by just a few seconds, the likelihood that someone will leave your site increases dramatically.
pasted image 0 318
If your site loads in ten seconds, you can expect users to run for the hills.
Google’s current standards state that best practices are three seconds or below. Yet the majority of businesses in every industry are still too slow:
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Thankfully, Google offers free tools like Test My Site and Pagespeed Insights. Each of these can help you improve your site speed dramatically.
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When you improve your site speeds, you can expect users to stay around on your site, reducing bounce rates that can negatively impact your organic rankings.
Always continue to test your site speed and improve where you can. These tools will help you fix any lingering problems by offering detailed, step-by-step solutions under each problem area.
Off-Page SEO
What’s off-page SEO? It’s simply the opposite of on-page SEO.
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That means that it’s all of the factors and activities that you can do (off-page) to raise the ranking of your site on search engines.
There are a few major ways that off-page SEO comes into play. Everything from link building to social promotion and content syndication can improve your off-page SEO.
Even things like guest blogging or writing a promotional piece on another site can result in a link (i.e., off-page SEO).
Here are a few ways to rank higher with off-page SEO.
Link building is critical
Link building is the most important factor in any off-page SEO strategy. According to a video from 2016 featuring Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, links and content were tied as the top two ranking factors.
Google confirmed this official video. Links are one of the biggest factors when it comes to ranking in a given search result.
When Brian Dean of Backlinko tested this with his own study, he found that the sites that rank number one dominate the competition in terms of backlinks.
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The more links you have back to your site from other sites, the stronger authority you have in the eyes of Google. It means that your content is relevant.
But not just any links will do the trick. That same study found that top-ranking sites with backlinks had links from hundreds of different sites:
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And the vast majority of those links were from the highest-ranking authorities in their space:
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Link building is tough, but it’s necessary to compete with SEO for online marketing.
Ranking higher with links involves everything from your total number of links to the quality of those links and the diversity of the sources.
When it comes to getting links, you need great content. The majority of content ranking #1 on Google is stellar.
And that’s why they have thousands of links. The content is nearly unmatched!
In Moz’s book “How to Rank,” they explain the 90/10 rule of link building:
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That means that you should spend 90% of your time creating amazing content and dedicate 10% of your time to link building.
Without great content, you won’t get the links you need to bring in more traffic and drive sales.
One of my favorite ways to build backlinks fast is by mentioning other influencers in my content. This adds great value to your content while also mentioning and giving praise to others.
And as we all know, humans love it when people lift their egos. It’s a great feeling to get compliments and praise for your knowledge in a space.
By tapping into that and getting value and input from influencers, you can easily drive backlinks.
For example, Shopify recently mentioned me in this post:
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I was a featured influencer on the post because I gave them tons of input. So in this post, I received a backlink to my site in exchange for my time and effort.
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