Understand search engine optimization (SEO) | Google Digital…

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[Music] 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 in 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 for 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 you know i must admit when i first started it didn’t really make sense to me you know 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’ve 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 um what are you talking about like i didn’t share anything and they said they were looking for advice on a topic and my article and picture came up thing is i can’t tell you how excited i was when that happened because 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 [Music] 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 google search engine crawling indexing and serving the google search engine uses these processes to locate the most relevant content to user search query just 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 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 web pages google explores the internet with automated programs called crawlers these callers find new and updated web pages now once the crawlers discover a new or updated web page google then stores these page urls in a big list to review later a page url is the web address such as www.example.com forward slash blog there are several ways the google crawler finds web pages the main way is to follow links from pages already identified links are any web addresses on a web page let’s imagine that as a marketer you create a new web page 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’s allowed to do so by the website owner okay once the new pages are crawled google then stores them in an index think of it as an online index is 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 the web content with its location the url for each web page what type of content will google index almost anything on the page including text photos and video content remember indexing is only possible if the website owner allows the web page to be crawled if the owner doesn’t want it to be crawled index and appear in google search then they can indicate it in the website’s code after the web page 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 web pages 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 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 web page for a search oh 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 need of users with a great user experience we’ll discuss five key factors such as quality of content and usability of web pages 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 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 of an algorithm is a recipe you want to make a meal and the recipe provides instructions to make that meal see 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 a 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 [Music] 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 web pages quality of the content usability of web pages 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 rig high in the search is often open to interpretation for example how much information should you write about a topic and how should you order the information will 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 searches as well one of your tasks may be to create content that addresses the searcher’s needs if you don’t do that well then the google search algorithm may index your quality content and then show it to potential customers an effective marketer will understand the potential customer’s intent and meaning of a search that’s why you want to build customer personas to better understand your customers a second key factor is a 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 if the web page 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 the searches query for example if the keywords appear in the headings or body text of a web page the search algorithms may determine that page be more relevant the google search algorithms review more than just keywords for relevance they will match phrases and topics that 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 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 reads several paragraphs of text 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 a 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 web pages google algorithms also consider the content’s ease of use now if you have two web pages with exactly the same content the web page that has a better user experience may perform better google calls this the page experience ranking factor what does a better user experience even 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 how a page ranks the last key factor in the searchers context and setting information such as their 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 in 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 even categories they think you might be interested in these systems are designed to match interests but they’re not designed to inverse 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 web page relevance content quality web page usability and context and settings [Music] 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 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 simply 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 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 will help 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 web page as a featured snippet google systems will determine whether a page would make a good feature snippet for a user 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 web page additional product information is 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 the bottom of the serps images are 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 service features the most prominent feature is a map and listing 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 okay so 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 are they located and why do you think that they are there by studying these results you’ll get more comfortable with search results and one step closer to thinking like a digital marketer [Music] we’ve covered some paid and non-paid ways to get websites found in the search engine results pages let’s just specifically about the non-paid process to get websites more visible in the serps search engine optimization also called seo this is a 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 really 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 then it 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’s visitors 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 consult 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 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 algorithm 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 web page 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 texts 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 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 differ depending on the company you work for while some strategies may be more effective than others there is 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 [Music] 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 task the first factor is to know your website or organization’s goals what would they like to primarily achieve for instance we’d 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 and 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 it may be up to you to figure out how to do that for example let’s imagine the marketing funnel 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 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 serbs you’ll often have to create contact 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 we’re keeping the ideal customer in mind [Music] as a digital marketer or e-commerce analyst an organization may have you create content for a web page 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 it’s 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 loungers is one word used 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’s 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 stopping refers to the practice of loading a web page 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 web page 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 text that list 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 or custom candles are handmade if you think about buying a custom candle contact custom candle specialist 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 web page 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 [Music] welcome 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 task 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 website 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 ecommerce 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 home page from a technical perspective the google crawlers should have no issue moving from page to page and understanding the flow of this site from a user’s perspective the web page 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 that it assists the search engine crawlers remember the primary way the google crawlers discover a new or updated web page is through links from other pages so 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 web pages and that is through a site map which is particularly important for larger websites you’ll learn more about site maps later in the program another reason is for a consistent and readable url structure remember the url is the address of a web page it’s the 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 this site a 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 colon forward slash forward slash 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 web page or a website with https instead of the older http it provides protection to your website’s 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 are 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 four or four pages a 404 page is a url that tells the user that the web page 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 the 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 sub-category 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 google bots as a digital marketer you may find yourself reorganizing a website you know maybe they didn’t consider the site structure when first creating the website you’ll be a big help to them congratulations on finishing this video from the google digital marketing and e-commerce certificate access the full experience on coursera including job search help and start earning the official certificate by clicking the icon or the link in the description watch the next video in the course by clicking here and subscribe to our channel for more lessons from google career certificate

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