SEO Diploma | SEO Training Courses

Introduction

This is a four day, intensive Masterclass Diploma, which will give you all the necessary skills and knowledge to understand SEO. By the end of this training course, you will know everything there is to know about SEO and have enough knowledge to implement the strategies to get your website to number 1 on Google.

Pre-Requisites

There are no pre-requisites for this course.

Who should attend?

This workshop is ideal for search engine marketers with responsibilities for SEO, either at an agency or client-side, or for digital marketers getting to grips with the channel and keen to learn. You will need to have the experience of having worked on SEO projects to gain the most from the session. Digital marketing managers or agency account managers who need to be familiar with advanced approaches to review and discuss the current SEO strategies adopted by their staff or clients will also find this workshop useful.

What will you learn?

Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to understand all aspects of On-Page and Off-Page SEO.

Course Outline

Day 1

What copywriters need to know about SEO

• What SEO really is
• The opportunities it provides for copywriters
• Why copywriting is the critical SEO skillset
• Why print/broadcast copywriting techniques don't work
• Why your audience probably isn't the one you have in mind
• Why you really do need to understand some techie ‘gobbledegook’

Search engines, social media, and searchers

• How search engines and social media gather data
• How they use machine-based content analysis
• How search engines and social media mediate your messages
• How to get your messages through the mediation
• How searchers compose and express queries
• How to make your texts findable and enticing and useful and valued
• The importance of social media within your SEO campaign.
• How to use the different social media platforms such as; Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin and Pinterest.

An SEO anatomy of a web page

• Dozens of different types of text — per page
• Dozens of different use cases and reading scenarios
• Each with different audiences
• Each requiring different types of content
• Each requiring different copy writing styles
• Practical exercises re-writing your own web pages for SEO
• Addressing each text type to the right audience in the right way

A copywriter's guide to HTML markup and metadata

• Why you really do need to know this stuff — yet again
• Semantic elements and tagging
• Whole page metadata
• Dublin core and Open Graph Protocol (OGP)
• Rich snippets metadata
• Microformats
• Microdata
• RDFa

Day 2

• The Case For Local Search & A Very Brief History -Local search has grown up fast over the past few years, understand how it's grown, and the potential of owning your area and reaching customers in their own backyard.
• How to Verify Google+ Local Listings & Implement Best Practice
• Local Website Optimisation – Asher will walk you through the most effective local optimisation tactics for your websites
• How to Boost Your SERP Potential with Rich Snippets
• How to Build Citations & Influence People - Long Term Off-Site Ranking Success
• The Future: Local & Mobile - With mobile traffic well on the way to overtake traditional desktop search, marketers are continually searching to deliver the best local, user-centric experience possible for those on the go.

New HTML5 elements and attributes

• Page and content structures
• Main, article, aside, etc
• Date type elements, e.g.
• Data type attributes
• New metadata options
• Implications for SEO
• Opportunities for SEO
• Findability, searchability, message presentation

Semantic metadata

• Microdata
• Microformats
• RDFa
• How they are used by search engines
• How they are used by social media
• Implications for SEO
• Opportunities for SEO
• Findability, searchability, message presentation

Optimising HTML5 elements and attributes

• Real-world examples
• Comparing SEO competitors
• Practical exercises

Optimising metadata

• Real-world examples
• Comparing SEO competitors
• Practical exercises

Day 3

Comparing non-interactive, visible, content

• Titles
• Headers
• Introductions
• Subheads
• Emphasis
• De-emphasis
• Lists
• Order and sequence
• Focus
• Vocabularies
• Expression
• Content layering

Comparing link content

• Keyword locations
• Within pages
• Within content blocks
• Within links themselves
• Keyword selection
• Keyword layering
• Relationship between anchor descriptors and target content
• Anchor descriptors and adjacent content

Comparing link relationships

• Finding and counting competitors' links
• Tracking social media links
• Link types and attributes, e.g. nofollow
• Qualitive link relationships, e.g. source value, targeting, etc
• Google's link: syntax
• Commercial link-finding tools
• SEOMoz, WordTracker, SEOElite, Majestic SEO, etc
• Understanding how these tools gather data
• Tool-specific metrics, e.g. MozRank, ACRank, etc.
• Identifying potential link sources

Comparing semantic markup and metadata

• Visual order vs. source code order
• HTML5 semantic elements — presence and organisation
• HTML5 semantic attributes
• Whole page metadata
• Dublin core and Open Graph Protocol (OGP) metadata
• Rich snippet metadata
• HTML5 Microdata
• Microformats
• RDFa
• Other invisible metadata, e.g ARIA roles

Day 4

Introduction

• Problems of scale — billions of pages
• Why search dominates — the limitations of directories
• How link analysis created Google
• Using link relationships to identify and evaluate content
• PageRank — the original idea, and its flaws

Link in SEO - some basics

• Really understanding links and their attributes
• Different types of link element
• Different address types
• Attributes: title, target, rel, next, glossary, nofollow
• Link usage and positioning within pages
• What links do for your search engines
• Google PageRank in some detail
• Tools for identifying PageRank and related metrics
• PageRank in practice — less important than you might think
• Keywords in links — the semantic key describing site content
• Link keywords vs. keywords in non-interactive content
• Google bombs
• The ideal link
• Problem links — things to avoid, e.g. nofollow, redirects, etc.

Competitive Link analysis

• Evaluating your own links
• Evaluating competitors' links
• Quantity vs. quality
• Google's link: syntax
• Commercial link-finding tools
• SEOMoz, WordTracker, SEOElite, Majestic SEO, etc
• Understanding how these tools work
• Tool-specific metrics, e.g. MozRank, ACRank, etc.
• Identifying potential link sources

Getting Links built

• Real vs contrived links
• Low-hanging fruit
• Engendering 'link conciousness' in coders and copywriters
• Directory links
• Reciprocal links
• Content marketing and syndication
• Link bait — how to and how-not-to
• Blogging and bloggers
• Social media links
• Press releases
• Forums, mailing lists and other communities
• Other link sources, e.g. classifieds, Q+A sites, news, ads, etc
• Link-building software

Gaming link values with cash

• Link aspects of Google Penguin and Google Panda
• Paid-for links — search engine punishments and rewards
• Bought links that do work — value-added editorials
• How search engines can and can't track down paid links
• Finding link services — and avoiding scams
• Link selling newspeak and jargon
• Finding out what you are getting for your cash