Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is sometimes used as a lofty term by marketing agencies to show expertise and get business/website owners to take action and use their service/product. On many occasions it’s used wrongly and not fully understood. After reading the 5 points below you will hopefully have a grasp for SEO, its role in website development, and how it can benefit your online course.
1. So What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation describes the actions taken to rank higher in the search engine results pages (Google, Yahoo etc..). It is done ‘under the hood’ of your website and so is usually performed by the tech team of a company/business or the third-party developer that built your website (although it is sometimes omitted).
2. How Important is it?
Consider this; you have a gold coin to give, and there are 2 people in front of you, it’s easy to weigh the 2 up and make your decision on who should get it. However, if the same scenario had 100+ people looking to receive the gold coin, it becomes much harder to weigh the contenders up and so you just give it to the person closest to you. Good SEO puts you closer to the front, so in non-competitive searches, it’s less important, but in highly competitive searches, it’s very important.
3. What makes for Good SEO?
There are many factors that go into a search engine’s consideration for good SEO (it is not made public as that would incentivise ‘gaming the system’ to rank higher in searches). As far as we know, the most important factors are:
Keywords – Do the words used in someone’s search appear on your site often? I.e how relevant is your site to the search.
Heading Types – This is taken care of in the development of your website, but having no more than one H1 tag per webpage is favourable.
Outbound/Inbound Links – Is your site linked from other reputable sites, and does your site link to other reputable sites? Think of this like a vote of confidence in the quality of information on your site.
There are many other considerations, but these are a very good place to start.
4. How do I know if my SEO is good enough?
There are plenty testing sites to check the general performance and SEO of your site, some of our favourites are:
UberSuggest – https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
PageSpeed Insights – https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Moz Link Explorer – https://moz.com/link-explorer
HubSpot Website Grader – https://website.grader.com/
5. Do I need to improve my SEO?
It’s hard to say without running some tests! But SEO is an area that can always be improved upon. We perform website audits to give you an idea of where your site is currently with regard to performance and SEO, and from there you can make the judgment for yourself. Trying the tests above will give you the broad strokes of what you may need to improve on.
At BrandedCourses, we help you earn more for less time commitment. Our online learning portal development gives your business a fully branded platform to teach and help your clients in their own journey, with no tech know-how needed on your end. Contact us today to get started!
