Module 4 – Optimize Behind-the-Scenes
In the previous modules, you determined which pages you will be optimizing during this course and have started creating content for each. This module will focus on the 'behind the scenes' aspects of content optimization - on-page SEO, including the structure of the pages, and overall website SEO.
To do this, you'll need to know your way around your website's control panel and add any SEO plugin, add-on, or app that will be helpful. In the first lesson, we will review options from the most popular website builder sites (e.g., WordPress, Wix, Weebly) and what to do if your website isn't on one of these builders.
⦁ Lesson 1: Choose Your SEO Plugin/Tool
⦁ Lesson 2: Structure Your Pages – On-Page SEO
⦁ Lesson 3: Structure Your Website – Technical SEO
Lesson 1: Choose Your SEO Plugin/Tool
Most small business websites are created using website builders like WordPress, Wix, and SquareSpace. These builders include built-in SEO content management tools that allow you to go in and add, adjust, or customize titles, headers, alt text, tags, meta descriptions, URLs etc., based on feedback from Google or other SEO tools.
Take the time to familiarize yourself your website platform's built-in SEO tools and content management section. This will help you as you work through the next two lessons of this module.
Once you have a grasp on the basics, you can use SEO plugins, add-ons, or apps for a monthly fee. They offer extra tools, guidance, and insights to improve content and make it more appealing to search engines. This includes page recommendations, SEO projections, checking broken links, and more.
The top plugins for WordPress sites include All in One SEO, Yoast, and Rank Math.
Wix offers Wix SEO as part of its platform, with add-ons like Rabbit SEO and SEO audit tool Deepcrawl.
Squarespace has built-in SEO tools, features, and guides that can help you boost visibility in search results. It's plugin SEO Pro analyzes your SEO and provides detailed steps for improvement.
Weebly's SEO tools can be augmented with apps like Positionly and Breadcrumb.
Key Takeaways:
⦁ No matter what website builder was used to create your site, take the time to familiarize yourself with its built-in SEO content management section.
⦁ Check out your website builder's plugin, add-on, or app store for SEO-specific tools that are popular with other users.
Action Steps:
⦁ Take time to familiarize yourself with your website builder's built-in SEO content management section. This will help you as you work through the next two lessons in this module.
⦁ Once you have a working knowledge of the SEO content management section, sign up for a free trial of 1 or 2 SEO plugins, add-ons, and apps to see how they can help you.
Lesson 2: Structure Your Pages – On-Page SEO
In this lesson, you will learn the essentials of on-page SEO – optimizing each individual page on your website to get more traffic and rank higher. There are two elements to on-page SEO:
⦁ Content
⦁ HTML code
In the previous module, you learned how to create content that search engines (and people) like. This lesson will cover additional elements, including headings and internal links.
You will also learn how to optimize source code, which is visible to search engines and to searchers who aren't yet on your site.
These on-page SEO tactics, which include optimizing the title, URL, and meta description, will help your page stand out among other pages listed in the search results.
On-page SEO is not just about appealing to search engines – it's also about heightening the user experience. Always keep your real-life potential customers top of mind. This lesson will explore ways to make sure that your pages are people-friendly too.
Content
You have created content that is relevant and valuable and you've added in your target keyword in a natural, unobtrusive way. Now it's time to polish your content, adding the SEO 'finishing touches'.
Headings
Headings provide clarity for both search engines and users. Readers gain an understanding of what the page is about and search engines will determine what content is important, and how it's all connected to your keywords.
When creating your headings and sub-headings, be sure to use the correct heading style. There is only one H1 header on your page – your main heading. After that, use H2 and H3 headers to break down the sections of your page. This helps both Google crawlers, and people, easily navigate your page, scan your content, and figure out what it's about.
At a minimum, include your seed keyword in the heading, but ideally try to work in the entire target keyword phrase.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is an important on-page SEO element. An internal link connects one page on your website to another. People and search engines use links to locate content on your website. Search engines won't see pages on your site if there are no links to it.
There are different kinds of links on websites: links from the homepage to other pages, links from your menu, and links within the content called contextual links.
Contextual links direct visitors to additional content on your website that is related, relevant, and valuable. The links also tell search engines which content on your site is related and which pages contain the most important content.
The more links a page has coming into it, the more valuable it seems to search engines. External links are also very valuable, but you have limited influence over which links are directed to your website. With internal links, you have complete control of which post or page gets the most links, signaling to Google that it is a high-value page and should be given more authority.
If you want a specific page on your site to be set apart from the rest, and rank higher for a particular keyword phrase, then direct your linking efforts to this page. For example, if you want a specific product page to gain prominence on Google, direct a number of internal links to this page.
HTML Code
There are also elements of your website that aren't part of the actual page content but are visible in your code and elsewhere on the internet (e.g., search engine results pages, links in social media, browser tabs etc.). While primarily created for accessibility purposes and for search engines, these optimization additions are also seen by real-life searchers.
Title Tags
Located in your page's HTML code, the title tag specifies the title of the document. Title tags should be optimized with your target keyword phrase.
Once added to your HTML code, title tags are visible on:
⦁ Search engine results pages
⦁ The top of web browsers/tabs
⦁ Links you share on social media
Meta Description
The meta description is a tag in your page's HTML code that summarizes what the page is all about. If the keyword phrase that people search is within your meta description, it will appear on the search engine results page.
While it doesn't directly contribute to SEO rank, searchers see it and will click to your page if it appears to be relevant. This higher click rate helps boost your SEO ranking.
Meta Description Tips
⦁ Use strong words that create an emotional response
⦁ Keep it short – ideally between 50-60 characters
⦁ Include your target keyword
Optimized URLs
Google likes simple URLs that describe what your pages are about. You can't alter the fundamental elements of the URL – but you can optimize the URL slug. The URL slug is the last part of the URL, the hyphenated text after the final forward slash.
Create Your Optimized Slug
It is easy to construct an optimized slug. Simply take your page title, remove any unnecessary elements in the title (e.g., special characters (!), numbers, adjectives etc.), work in the page's keyword (which you already did when creating your title), and then separate the words with hyphens.
Use your header, title tag, and target keyword to create your optimized SEO slug:
Target keyword: SEO-Friendly URL slug
Header: How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs (Step-by-Step)
Title tag: How to Create SEO Friendly URLs (Step-by-Step) – Ahrefs
Alt Text
Alt text is added to HTML code to describe the appearance and function of an image on your page.
The primary function of alt text was to improve web accessibility for visually impaired users who use screen readers. Alt text is also displayed if the image file is broken or can't be loaded. Alt text, in terms of SEO, gives context to search engine crawlers and allow them to index your images correctly.
Key Takeaways:
⦁ On-page SEO involves optimizing individual pages on your website to get more traffic and rank higher.
⦁ There are two parts to on-page SEO: Content (copy, headings, internal links) and HTML code (title tags, meta descriptions, alt text etc.)
Action Steps:
⦁ Return to the list of the 5-7 webpages you will be optimizing for this course. You have developed relevant content for each page (or have created the schedule to do so). It is time to build on this work:
⦁ Choose which page you want to highlight as a 'high-value' page. Which page is most important right now? (A specific service on your Services page? A blog post that will eventually direct people to a specific offer? The About page that highlights the history of your core product?) Once you decide, plan to direct links from all of your other pages to this page.
⦁ Go page by page and add relevant headings and subheadings that contain your target keyword for that page.
⦁ Add links to each page that direct people to what you've determined to be your high-value page.
⦁ Now that you've added the finishing touches to your content, it's time to focus on the HTML code and URLs. Using your website builder's built-in SEO content management tools, go page by page, optimizing:
⦁ Title tag
⦁ Meta description
⦁ Alt text (on images)
⦁ URL
Once you have optimized these elements, start to explore plugins, add-ons, and apps that can offer recommendations and improvements to your content and HTML code. SEO is something you will continually refine and improve. These plugins and extra tools can help.
Lesson 3: Structure Your Website – Technical SEO
This lesson focuses on more technical SEO, exploring some improvements and SEO best practices for your website as a whole so that search engines can easily crawl, index, and rank it. This includes page load speed, redirects, sitemap, navigation, and more.
Conduct a Site Audit
To uncover any issues on your site, conduct a technical site audit to see where you stand. This will evaluate areas including:
⦁ Page load speed
⦁ Duplicate content
⦁ Crawl errors
⦁ Image issues
⦁ Site security
⦁ URL structure
⦁ Redirects
⦁ XML sitemaps
There are a number of free online site audit tools including SEOptimer, Semrush, and Ubersuggest. Audits can take up to 10 minutes and offer a broad range of recommendations to follow up on. If you sign up for any of these sites, they will save your reports and give you the ability to compare your current crawl with historical charts and monitor your progress.
The audit will rank the health of your site, 'crawlability', site performance, internal linking, crawl depth, load times, and more. Audits will also normally highlight top issues from all the URLs on your site (e.g., duplicate title tags, slow load times etc.) and offer recommended changes.
Common Issues & Fixes
Any of the mentioned site audit tools will uncover issues and offer recommendations, but here are some of the most common issues found on sites:
Slow Load Times
This is a common issue that is critical to fix. Visitors are impatient and will navigate away if pages take too long to load. The ideal load time is less than 2.5 seconds.
Recommended fix: Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check the speed of each page URL individually and get tips to boost speed (e.g., image size compression, remove unnecessary plugins etc.)
Site Security (http vs https)
HTTP refers to Hypertext Transfer Protocol and is used to transfer data over a network. You'll also see it precede website URLs. HTTPS indicates that the protocol is encrypted and secure.
Your site security has a large impact on your SEO. In fact, Google will flag a website as "not secure" if you don't have "https". This will discourage people from navigating to your site, which in turn can negatively impact your page and site rank.
Recommended fix: Make sure your website is secure and uses https. How you execute this change will differ depending on your website builder or platform.
Not using the right redirect at the right time
A redirect is how you send users and search engines to a different URL than the one originally requested
⦁ 301 "Moved Permanently"
Passes full link ranking power to the redirected page, SEO-friendly
⦁ 302 "Found" or "Moved Temporarily"
Used when a URL has changed temporarily (e.g., sale or event)
⦁ Meta Refresh
This is the classic "If you are not redirected in five seconds, click here." Executed on page level. Not recommended for SEO.
Recommended fix: Use the right redirect at the right time.
Out-of-date XML sitemap
The sitemap lists a website's pages. If it isn't up-to-date, your pages might not be indexed, you won't be ranked in organic search results, and you'll lose traffic to your site.
Recommended fix: Use an online tool, plugin, or your CMS platform to generate a sitemap. Submit the updated sitemap to Google Search Console
Your website isn't mobile-friendly
Most website builders now create a mobile-friendly version of your site automatically. Check to see how your site looks and functions on mobile phones, tablets, and laptops/desktops.
Recommended fix: Google's Mobile-Friendly Test can help identify any issues. If you are using an older theme on your website builder, you may need to update it.
It may seem overwhelming at first, but just tackle the key issues the audit has brought to light and then work your way back, in order of priority.
If some of the issues that the site audit flagged seem a bit too difficult to fix on your own, or you just don't have the time, you might also consider outsourcing. You can find a freelancer on sites like Upwork, Indeed, or Fiverr; consult your network; or look for a local digital marketing agency.
Key Takeaways:
⦁ Technical SEO focuses on improvements and best practices for your website as a whole so that that search engines can easily crawl, index, and rank it
⦁ Conducting a site audit is an essential first step so you can see where you stand
⦁ The most common technical SEO issues include page load speed, security, duplicate content, and redirects
Action Steps:
⦁ Enter your domain name into an online site audit tool and get your results.
⦁ Conduct a page speed test (Google's PageSpeed Insights) on the URLs you are working during this course. Make any recommended changes.
⦁ See if your website is mobile friendly. Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to help identify any issues.
⦁ Make note of the most pressing issues and start working on them in order of priority. Create a schedule, setting aside a certain amount of time each week to tackle any SEO issues.
⦁ If the needed recommendations exceed your ability or time, explore some outsourcing options based on your budget.
Go to Module 5
In the previous modules, you determined which pages you will be optimizing during this course and have started creating content for each. This module will focus on the 'behind the scenes' aspects of content optimization - on-page SEO, including the structure of the pages, and overall website SEO.
To do this, you'll need to know your way around your website's control panel and add any SEO plugin, add-on, or app that will be helpful. In the first lesson, we will review options from the most popular website builder sites (e.g., WordPress, Wix, Weebly) and what to do if your website isn't on one of these builders.
⦁ Lesson 1: Choose Your SEO Plugin/Tool
⦁ Lesson 2: Structure Your Pages – On-Page SEO
⦁ Lesson 3: Structure Your Website – Technical SEO
Lesson 1: Choose Your SEO Plugin/Tool
Most small business websites are created using website builders like WordPress, Wix, and SquareSpace. These builders include built-in SEO content management tools that allow you to go in and add, adjust, or customize titles, headers, alt text, tags, meta descriptions, URLs etc., based on feedback from Google or other SEO tools.
Take the time to familiarize yourself your website platform's built-in SEO tools and content management section. This will help you as you work through the next two lessons of this module.
Once you have a grasp on the basics, you can use SEO plugins, add-ons, or apps for a monthly fee. They offer extra tools, guidance, and insights to improve content and make it more appealing to search engines. This includes page recommendations, SEO projections, checking broken links, and more.
The top plugins for WordPress sites include All in One SEO, Yoast, and Rank Math.
Wix offers Wix SEO as part of its platform, with add-ons like Rabbit SEO and SEO audit tool Deepcrawl.
Squarespace has built-in SEO tools, features, and guides that can help you boost visibility in search results. It's plugin SEO Pro analyzes your SEO and provides detailed steps for improvement.
Weebly's SEO tools can be augmented with apps like Positionly and Breadcrumb.
Key Takeaways:
⦁ No matter what website builder was used to create your site, take the time to familiarize yourself with its built-in SEO content management section.
⦁ Check out your website builder's plugin, add-on, or app store for SEO-specific tools that are popular with other users.
Action Steps:
⦁ Take time to familiarize yourself with your website builder's built-in SEO content management section. This will help you as you work through the next two lessons in this module.
⦁ Once you have a working knowledge of the SEO content management section, sign up for a free trial of 1 or 2 SEO plugins, add-ons, and apps to see how they can help you.
Lesson 2: Structure Your Pages – On-Page SEO
In this lesson, you will learn the essentials of on-page SEO – optimizing each individual page on your website to get more traffic and rank higher. There are two elements to on-page SEO:
⦁ Content
⦁ HTML code
In the previous module, you learned how to create content that search engines (and people) like. This lesson will cover additional elements, including headings and internal links.
You will also learn how to optimize source code, which is visible to search engines and to searchers who aren't yet on your site.
These on-page SEO tactics, which include optimizing the title, URL, and meta description, will help your page stand out among other pages listed in the search results.
On-page SEO is not just about appealing to search engines – it's also about heightening the user experience. Always keep your real-life potential customers top of mind. This lesson will explore ways to make sure that your pages are people-friendly too.
Content
You have created content that is relevant and valuable and you've added in your target keyword in a natural, unobtrusive way. Now it's time to polish your content, adding the SEO 'finishing touches'.
Headings
Headings provide clarity for both search engines and users. Readers gain an understanding of what the page is about and search engines will determine what content is important, and how it's all connected to your keywords.
When creating your headings and sub-headings, be sure to use the correct heading style. There is only one H1 header on your page – your main heading. After that, use H2 and H3 headers to break down the sections of your page. This helps both Google crawlers, and people, easily navigate your page, scan your content, and figure out what it's about.
At a minimum, include your seed keyword in the heading, but ideally try to work in the entire target keyword phrase.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is an important on-page SEO element. An internal link connects one page on your website to another. People and search engines use links to locate content on your website. Search engines won't see pages on your site if there are no links to it.
There are different kinds of links on websites: links from the homepage to other pages, links from your menu, and links within the content called contextual links.
Contextual links direct visitors to additional content on your website that is related, relevant, and valuable. The links also tell search engines which content on your site is related and which pages contain the most important content.
The more links a page has coming into it, the more valuable it seems to search engines. External links are also very valuable, but you have limited influence over which links are directed to your website. With internal links, you have complete control of which post or page gets the most links, signaling to Google that it is a high-value page and should be given more authority.
If you want a specific page on your site to be set apart from the rest, and rank higher for a particular keyword phrase, then direct your linking efforts to this page. For example, if you want a specific product page to gain prominence on Google, direct a number of internal links to this page.
HTML Code
There are also elements of your website that aren't part of the actual page content but are visible in your code and elsewhere on the internet (e.g., search engine results pages, links in social media, browser tabs etc.). While primarily created for accessibility purposes and for search engines, these optimization additions are also seen by real-life searchers.
Title Tags
Located in your page's HTML code, the title tag specifies the title of the document. Title tags should be optimized with your target keyword phrase.
Once added to your HTML code, title tags are visible on:
⦁ Search engine results pages
⦁ The top of web browsers/tabs
⦁ Links you share on social media
Meta Description
The meta description is a tag in your page's HTML code that summarizes what the page is all about. If the keyword phrase that people search is within your meta description, it will appear on the search engine results page.
While it doesn't directly contribute to SEO rank, searchers see it and will click to your page if it appears to be relevant. This higher click rate helps boost your SEO ranking.
Meta Description Tips
⦁ Use strong words that create an emotional response
⦁ Keep it short – ideally between 50-60 characters
⦁ Include your target keyword
Optimized URLs
Google likes simple URLs that describe what your pages are about. You can't alter the fundamental elements of the URL – but you can optimize the URL slug. The URL slug is the last part of the URL, the hyphenated text after the final forward slash.
Create Your Optimized Slug
It is easy to construct an optimized slug. Simply take your page title, remove any unnecessary elements in the title (e.g., special characters (!), numbers, adjectives etc.), work in the page's keyword (which you already did when creating your title), and then separate the words with hyphens.
Use your header, title tag, and target keyword to create your optimized SEO slug:
Target keyword: SEO-Friendly URL slug
Header: How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs (Step-by-Step)
Title tag: How to Create SEO Friendly URLs (Step-by-Step) – Ahrefs
Alt Text
Alt text is added to HTML code to describe the appearance and function of an image on your page.
The primary function of alt text was to improve web accessibility for visually impaired users who use screen readers. Alt text is also displayed if the image file is broken or can't be loaded. Alt text, in terms of SEO, gives context to search engine crawlers and allow them to index your images correctly.
Key Takeaways:
⦁ On-page SEO involves optimizing individual pages on your website to get more traffic and rank higher.
⦁ There are two parts to on-page SEO: Content (copy, headings, internal links) and HTML code (title tags, meta descriptions, alt text etc.)
Action Steps:
⦁ Return to the list of the 5-7 webpages you will be optimizing for this course. You have developed relevant content for each page (or have created the schedule to do so). It is time to build on this work:
⦁ Choose which page you want to highlight as a 'high-value' page. Which page is most important right now? (A specific service on your Services page? A blog post that will eventually direct people to a specific offer? The About page that highlights the history of your core product?) Once you decide, plan to direct links from all of your other pages to this page.
⦁ Go page by page and add relevant headings and subheadings that contain your target keyword for that page.
⦁ Add links to each page that direct people to what you've determined to be your high-value page.
⦁ Now that you've added the finishing touches to your content, it's time to focus on the HTML code and URLs. Using your website builder's built-in SEO content management tools, go page by page, optimizing:
⦁ Title tag
⦁ Meta description
⦁ Alt text (on images)
⦁ URL
Once you have optimized these elements, start to explore plugins, add-ons, and apps that can offer recommendations and improvements to your content and HTML code. SEO is something you will continually refine and improve. These plugins and extra tools can help.
Lesson 3: Structure Your Website – Technical SEO
This lesson focuses on more technical SEO, exploring some improvements and SEO best practices for your website as a whole so that search engines can easily crawl, index, and rank it. This includes page load speed, redirects, sitemap, navigation, and more.
Conduct a Site Audit
To uncover any issues on your site, conduct a technical site audit to see where you stand. This will evaluate areas including:
⦁ Page load speed
⦁ Duplicate content
⦁ Crawl errors
⦁ Image issues
⦁ Site security
⦁ URL structure
⦁ Redirects
⦁ XML sitemaps
There are a number of free online site audit tools including SEOptimer, Semrush, and Ubersuggest. Audits can take up to 10 minutes and offer a broad range of recommendations to follow up on. If you sign up for any of these sites, they will save your reports and give you the ability to compare your current crawl with historical charts and monitor your progress.
The audit will rank the health of your site, 'crawlability', site performance, internal linking, crawl depth, load times, and more. Audits will also normally highlight top issues from all the URLs on your site (e.g., duplicate title tags, slow load times etc.) and offer recommended changes.
Common Issues & Fixes
Any of the mentioned site audit tools will uncover issues and offer recommendations, but here are some of the most common issues found on sites:
Slow Load Times
This is a common issue that is critical to fix. Visitors are impatient and will navigate away if pages take too long to load. The ideal load time is less than 2.5 seconds.
Recommended fix: Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check the speed of each page URL individually and get tips to boost speed (e.g., image size compression, remove unnecessary plugins etc.)
Site Security (http vs https)
HTTP refers to Hypertext Transfer Protocol and is used to transfer data over a network. You'll also see it precede website URLs. HTTPS indicates that the protocol is encrypted and secure.
Your site security has a large impact on your SEO. In fact, Google will flag a website as "not secure" if you don't have "https". This will discourage people from navigating to your site, which in turn can negatively impact your page and site rank.
Recommended fix: Make sure your website is secure and uses https. How you execute this change will differ depending on your website builder or platform.
Not using the right redirect at the right time
A redirect is how you send users and search engines to a different URL than the one originally requested
⦁ 301 "Moved Permanently"
Passes full link ranking power to the redirected page, SEO-friendly
⦁ 302 "Found" or "Moved Temporarily"
Used when a URL has changed temporarily (e.g., sale or event)
⦁ Meta Refresh
This is the classic "If you are not redirected in five seconds, click here." Executed on page level. Not recommended for SEO.
Recommended fix: Use the right redirect at the right time.
Out-of-date XML sitemap
The sitemap lists a website's pages. If it isn't up-to-date, your pages might not be indexed, you won't be ranked in organic search results, and you'll lose traffic to your site.
Recommended fix: Use an online tool, plugin, or your CMS platform to generate a sitemap. Submit the updated sitemap to Google Search Console
Your website isn't mobile-friendly
Most website builders now create a mobile-friendly version of your site automatically. Check to see how your site looks and functions on mobile phones, tablets, and laptops/desktops.
Recommended fix: Google's Mobile-Friendly Test can help identify any issues. If you are using an older theme on your website builder, you may need to update it.
It may seem overwhelming at first, but just tackle the key issues the audit has brought to light and then work your way back, in order of priority.
If some of the issues that the site audit flagged seem a bit too difficult to fix on your own, or you just don't have the time, you might also consider outsourcing. You can find a freelancer on sites like Upwork, Indeed, or Fiverr; consult your network; or look for a local digital marketing agency.
Key Takeaways:
⦁ Technical SEO focuses on improvements and best practices for your website as a whole so that that search engines can easily crawl, index, and rank it
⦁ Conducting a site audit is an essential first step so you can see where you stand
⦁ The most common technical SEO issues include page load speed, security, duplicate content, and redirects
Action Steps:
⦁ Enter your domain name into an online site audit tool and get your results.
⦁ Conduct a page speed test (Google's PageSpeed Insights) on the URLs you are working during this course. Make any recommended changes.
⦁ See if your website is mobile friendly. Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to help identify any issues.
⦁ Make note of the most pressing issues and start working on them in order of priority. Create a schedule, setting aside a certain amount of time each week to tackle any SEO issues.
⦁ If the needed recommendations exceed your ability or time, explore some outsourcing options based on your budget.
Go to Module 5
