The Basic concepts of Search Engine Optimization by StayOnSearch

The forth free Online Marketing Lesson of StayOnSearch is about Search Engine Optimization. In this course Mark goes through the basic concepts and techniques of SEO. He starts by discussing the importance of Domain Age, Domain Authority, SEO Friendly Hosting and Domain Credibility.

Then he focuses on on-page optimization and he describes briefly the main techniques that are used in order to fine-tune the texts of a website (Optimization of Titles, Meta-Descriptions, Alts, H1-6, etc). Additionally he elaborates on the importance of URL structure and of Loading Time.

Later in the course he focuses on off-page optimization techniques and mainly on link building. At the end of the ebook Mark describes few popular Blackhat techniques that you should avoid at all costs and he discusses the importance of Website usability. If you are new to SEO we strongly recommend you to read carefully this lesson and signing up for the free 10-week course.

Additional Resources

In our blog you can find lots of interesting articles on SEO that can help you learn basic and advanced SEO techniques. Here are few posts that we highly recommend you to read:

• The guide “Why my SEO campaign Failed?” part 1-4 describes common SEO mistakes on Onpage Optimization, Web Development, Link Structure and Link Building.
• The HowTo article “How to optimize page Titles and improve click through rates” describes one of the most effective whitehat SEO techniques.
• The 2 articles “Duplicate Content: the effects on Search Engine Rankings” & “Duplicate Content: How to solve the problem” explain in detail the Duplicate Content issue and they propose ways to solve the problem.
• Finally in the previous articles “The robots.txt, META-robots & rel=nofollow and their impact on SEO”,  “Multiple Domains vs Subdomains vs Folders in SEO” and “Link Structure: Analyzing the most important methods” we saw few more advanced subjects in SEO.

The SEO Tools you must use

The SEO seems a complicated technique because you must have always in mind lots of different parameters and have good understanding on how each action affects your campaign. Thankfully there are several tools that can simplify this process. For those of you who are interested in improving their Search Engine Rankings and the SEO Status of their websites, we recommend you the following SEO Tools:

• Link Structure: This tool enables you to analyze & optimize the link structure of your pages. It can be used to optimize your PageRank flow and make your website more effective.
• Backlink Analysis: The Backlink Analyzer is a valuable tool that helps you analyze the link building strategy of your website and of your competitors. This information can help you determine on which keywords you should focus and which keywords are more likely to achieve high Rankings on Search Engines.
• Web SEO Analysis: The tool creates a complete SEO Analysis and it enables you to get a close look on the strong and weak points of your competitors. Also use this tool to create a complete SEO report for your website and optimize your SEM strategy.
• Keyword Battle: This Keyword Ranking tool enables you to compare your website’s and your competitor’s Rankings for a list of keywords on the Search Engine of your choice. This is a great tool to monitor the effectiveness of your SEO campaign.