We Took HubSpot’s SEO Certification So You Don’t Have To
Welcome to the arena where digital visibility isn’t just a strategy; it’s the heartbeat of every successful business. In the early days of the internet, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was a murky world of keyword stuffing and link spamming until you started ranking high under your desired keywords. However, the start of a new chapter began when Google transformed the SEO landscape into an ever evolving practice.
Today, SEO is a digital marketing leader aimed to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to a website to ensure businesses don’t just exist online, but thrive. While some practices are clear and make sense (like creating quality content and keeping websites updated), Google is tight-lipped on what it's actually doing behind the scenes. The elusive understanding of this skill set by marketers makes the demand for qualified SEO experts extremely high.
Brace yourself as we spill the beans about what we’ve learned during the HubSpot SEO Certification - the insights, strategies, and secrets that will elevate your digital marketing game, whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a curious intern.
The Importance of SEO
In an era where search reigns supreme as the primary gateway for consumers seeking products or services, SEO becomes the backbone for online visibility. HubSpot mentions that search engines account for the beginning of 68% of online experiences, with Google commanding over 90% of global search queries. Without a well-optimized website, even the best content remains hidden from the public eye, underscoring SEO’s imperative role in achieving success among competitors
Hubspot emphasizes the value of SEO in achieving discoverability within a target market. When SEO is well done, your website comes up at the top (or near it) of the first page of search results based on keywords people are searching for. Because consumers equate top search results with quality they rarely dig much deeper than the first few search results on the first page.
Because SEO relies on performance indicators like website visits, bounce rates, and how often a site is updated, a mixture of high quality, relevant, and valuable information becomes the key to ensuring a competitive ranking.
Decoding the Search Engine Ranking
How do we go from knowing we need solid SEO performance to actually making it happen? Let’s start with what we know about Google’s process of discovering, analyzing, and ranking content. At the heart of Google’s ranking criteria lies E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These guiding principles apply to both the page’s contents and the creator.
Elevating your site’s E-A-T relies on several factors. The URL structure, often underestimated, plays a pivotal role in enhancing the site’s trustworthiness and guiding users effectively to the site. Beyond this, Discovery, Relevance, and Authority form the foundation of search engine functionality
Discovery
The Discovery stage involves search engine bots (sometimes referred to as crawlers or spiders) “crawling” (exploring) your site. They discover and catalog the content. Bots follow links (think of them as trails) which means that sometimes, new pages are discovered because bots follow a known link to a new page.
Curious about how many of your pages have already been discovered? You can type “site:yourdomain.com” into Google and gain access to a page number representing how many of your pages have been discovered. You’ll need to verify domain ownership, so if you’re curious about your competitors, this isn’t the way to find out.
For a more structured approach to being discovered, you can submit a sitemap with all of the relevant URL’s your website carries to Google. This approach ensures your website will get crawled in a timely manner. Hubspot recommends Screaming Frog or XML-Sitemaps.com to create the sitemap.
Keyword Research
The creation of a discoverable website involves a crucial step: selecting the right keywords and phrases that align with the user's search queries. However, not just any keywords will suffice.
Keyword research serves as the cornerstone of your SEO endeavors, offering valuable insights into your audience’s preferences.What are people searching for? How many people are searching for it? Will my content meet the demands of my preferred audience? Business owners oftentimes assume they understand their audience, but contrary to common misconception, making assumptions about the audience may lead to targeting the wrong keywords, posing a risk to their website’s performance.
While your website needs to provide robust information, it’s important to steer clear of including as many keywords as possible – keyword stuffing. The practice of keyword stuffing goes against Google’s SEO guidelines. Google penalizes websites engaging in keyword stuffing.
The recommended approach for effective keyword research is to identify the topics you want to be associated with and assign one keyword per page of your website. The essence lies in creating content that your customers are actively searching for. HubSpot highlights several platforms that aid in finding the search volume of keywords, such as Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, and Answer the Public.
Embracing keyword research sets the stage for you to balance creating content on topics you feel are critical for your audience to know and your audience is actively looking for.
Relevance
Following Discovery, the Relevance stage determines how well your content aligns with specific search queries through indexing – storing the contents to the database due to signals.
Keywords identical to a search query is a basic signal that information is potentially relevant. The presence of these keywords increases the likelihood of a page being deemed relevant. As emphasized earlier, channel your efforts into optimizing content for a single keyword per page, aligning with what is beneficial to your audience.
Elements of on-page SEO
On-page SEO elements involve elements that are within your control, shaping the user experience and aiding search engines in comprehending your site. HubSpot lists a couple of components that can be adjusted to optimize your site.
The page heading tag is an element that provides a hierarchical structure to web pages. A well-crafted page heading tag not only adds structure to your page, but also discourages visitors from prematurely leaving your site because heading tags make it easier to read, consequently reducing the bounce rate. The key lies in formulating a tag that effectively describes the content and incorporates the target keyword.
The title tag, also recognized as the SEO title, specifies a web page’s title. Different from the heading tag, it is designed for individuals who aren’t currently on the website. Its primary purpose is to entice users to click on your website. Crafting a compelling title tag involves answering the searchers queries.
Internal Links
Internal links serve as pathways within your website, connecting one page to another. Their role extends beyond navigation, as they help Google learn the relevance and relationship of the pages throughout the website.
Determining which pages should be linked to each other involves a strategic approach. Start by grouping the pages of your website into topic clusters. Pages that fall within the same topic cluster naturally complement each other, therefore making it acceptable to link them.
Authority
The Authority stage is the final step and it emphasizes building credibility through external links to other websites. The strength of your site’s authority directly impacts your ranking and can make or break your SEO efforts.
Measuring Authority
Measuring authority involves a comprehensive evaluation of the volume and quality of backlinks associated with your website. This assessment is centered around your backlink profile, which is a list of all the sites currently linking back to yours.
While manual analysis of your backlink profile can be daunting, there are free tools recommended by HubSpot that offer valuable insights into credibility, including Moz, SEMrush, Majestic, and Ahrefs.
Link building, an integral part of this process, requires proactive efforts to encourage other websites to link to yours. Google views backlinks as an indicator of how compelling and engaging your content is to others. There is no magic number of backlinks that Google seeks; rather, the emphasis is on matching or surpassing the amount of backlinks that top-ranking results on page one possess.
To align with and potentially outperform competitors, establishing a baseline target for backlinks is essential. Begin by entering a topic you wish to be recognized for into a search engine. Using those results and a link-checking tool, assess the top 10 URLs. Calculate the average of root domains (the main part of a website’s domain name) linking to these sites to find your baseline.
Creating an SEO Strategy
Now having unraveled the intricate stages of search engine functionality, the next step involves crafting a personalized SEO strategy. strategy balances user focus and search engine accessibility. It’s tailored to your business’s current online presence, available resources, and industry.
Set specific, measurable goals with a timeframe and metrics for success, with HubSpot recommending 3-5 goals for a set period.What should your goals be? HubSpot recommends 3- goals for a set period of time. Start by considering specific, measurable goals that take into account available metrics and a specific timeframe.
At Green Loop we know that implementation is where strategy goes to die. That’s why we’re here. We partner with organizations to guide SEO implementation. Ready to go from goals to results? Get in touch.
This post was written by Green Loop’s Intern, Sarah Oliver. Sarah is a bright, young marketing student at the IUPUI Kelley School of Business. Through her experience with MORE Magazine and MySherri, she developed advanced skills in social media management, web design, and sales. Sarah also serves as the President for IUPUI’s Women in Business club. When Sarah isn’t spending her time working, she enjoys dancing Salsa and Bachata!
