Search engine optimisation is essential to ranking well and high on Google. I have worked on both client websites and our company website to ensure the pages are well optimised. Here I will examine some key areas of SEO and what role they play.
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1 | As part of the WordPress CMS, we use a plugin called Yoast SEO. This allows for easy optimisation of our website pages. This is an example for the Shopify Ecommerce SEO Course landing page. The screenshot shows the title tag, with the primary keywords being ‘ecommerce SEO course’. The plugin gives an indication of the effectiveness of the SEO content. The title in this case for this page is short, concise and tells the user what the content of the page is. The slug in a url is part of a URL that tells users the content of the page. By optimising, this it helps Google crawlers understand the context of the page whilst also being relevant and helpful to the user.
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Meta description | This is an important part of web page SEO as this will be featured on SERPs. This also helps Google and the searcher understand the context of the page. This should be kept between150-160 characters, anything more than the recommended characters would not be displayed, and instead would show as ellipses.
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Keyword Research | In line with the SEO optimisations we also use tools such as SEM Rush and Answer The Public. SEM Rush allows me to target keywords based on criteria including search volume and keyword difficulty. In this case I have included the keyword research analytics for “Shopify Ecommerce Course”. The volume is fairly low, but that isn’t necessarily a bad indicator. When it comes to keyword volume, a low volume score can be seen as potential for directing high quality conversions compared to targeting key words that may have a higher search volume, but the flip side can result in lower quality traffic and conversions. Due to the increase of ecommerce businesses during the pandemic, our research of the market has determined that people are more likely to look for courses especially smaller-medium sized businesses.
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SEO Practices
H1 Title Tags | This an important part of SEO as the title should be presented as a H1 title tag. This allows Google’s crawlers to understand the context of the page. General rule of thumb is a page should only feature one H1 title tag as this could confuse Google’s crawlers. Our page simply tells the user the content of the page whilst also featuring the primary keywords ‘Shopify Ecommerce SEO Course’. By having the title feature the keyword, google will rank this page in the results as being relevant to a users search.
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Alt Text | Another SEO feature that can quite often be overlooked is the the optimisation of Alt text. Alt text describes to visitors the context of an image. This is worth optimising as this will help users with visual impairments. This will also help Google’s crawlers again understand the context of the webpage as well as the image. In this case, I have named the image in-line with the subheading that the image is featured under. Google prioritises websites that optimise accessibility for users of both visual and auditory impairments. Therefore, optimising the alt text is very good practice in SEO.
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VidIQ | Youtube SEO Plugin
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Tags | Another set of useful analytics that I gain from this plugin is the ability to see what tags other users have used for their videos. This is great as I can target high performing videos and use this insight to optimise my content. These tags will assist in the categorisation and proper indexing of the video, but the area that this will contribute to the most, is the suggested videos feature on YouTube. By optimising the tags, I can increase the chances of the being featured in suggested videos based on similar content.
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1 | As part of my role I also optimise content for YouTube. The process for optimising YouTube SEO is extremely similar to Google SEO. I start by identifying any trending topics by using social media as well as keyword research, using SEM Rush and Answer the public. After creating a keyword document along with their volume, I cross reference these with YouTube using the VidIQ plugin.
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VidIQ | The plugin gives me insight and analytics into search results based off keywords. This is presented with a colour scale for the volume score and competition. The overall score indicates how effective the keyword would be in my optimisation efforts. In this example the search volume is very high which can be a great indicator for keywords and creating searched based content. However the competition score is very high, and similar to Google SEO this can be very hard to rank for and may affect the number of a potential traffic and views. Ideally, at the very minimum I aim to go for keywords that have medium search volume and medium competition.
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After I have picked out a primary keyword/phrase using the mentioned tools, I then ensure I feature the keyword within the title and description. I may also pick out a secondary and even tertiary keyword to increase my chances of ranking for multiple keywords and feature it in the video description. Similar to how meta descriptions work, the description lays out the context of the videos so YouTube's algorithm can correctly index and categorise the video. This also contributes to being featured as a potential video Schema on Google's SERPs. If my objective was for the video to be featured as a video Schema on Google, SEM Rush does provides this insight on whether a keyword features video Schemas.
