In many cases, SEO is the first touchpoint with your company, and after an initial investment, it can generate leads with a very efficient ROI.

Keep reading to know how you can use this tool to grow your business!

Why is SEO Important for Your Business?

There are many digital marketing strategies, each with its own use, but SEO is arguably the most versatile.

SEO can benefit your business in various ways. First of all, simply appearing in the search results and having users click on your website improves brand awareness and puts your business on the map. 

As more consumers interact with your website, whether it’s with products or with content, more will subscribe to your social media or newsletter and, in doing so, enter into the first stage of the sales funnel.

What’s more, SEO can be used for lead generation. According to Klarna Shopping Pulse research, 64% of customer journeys start with a search engine. 

Almost half of shoppers begin their journey towards a purchase by Googling something they need, that’s why this strategy it’s so important.

There are two main ways of using SEO for lead generation. You can work with informational searches by writing helpful content to convert readers into subscribers and nurture them. You can then try to convert them with website pop-ups or email marketing.

Another way is to work with commercial and transactional searches by optimizing product pages and receiving sales directly.

The truth is that SEO is important for any online businesses because it’s the middle ground between most other digital marketing strategies. 

It provides long-term gains, doesn’t require the level of constant spending that paid advertising does, nor does it require the combination of creativity and luck that it takes to become popular on organic social media.

That’s one of the reasons why 88% of companies that use SEO plan to invest more in it in 2024.

– 12 practical SEO tips for beginners

7 SEO lead generation techniques to make your business thrive

SEO requires a bit of creativity, but it’s also important to know the best practices and analyze and implement data correctly in your niche. 

Here are seven SEO lead generation tips that will help you.

1. Do Keyword Research

The most important thing for any SEO campaign is doing keyword research. 

Incorporating keywords into the page content helps Google understand what the page is about so that it can show it to people who are looking for a particular subject.

Therefore, your job is to take words and terms that represent your business and products and find similar keywords with a suggestion tool. 

You should end up with a list of keywords, both commercial and informational, related to your business. 

Commercial keywords are those that describe products or services, and informational keywords represent questions about your industry.

To use a commercial list to your advantage, group the words into clusters that fit a single product or category page and the keywords to those pages.

Make sure to add those keywords not only in the text on the page but also in the right HTML tags. 

You want to have them in the title, meta description, and H1 tags.Preferably, add supporting ones in the H2 and H3 tags on the page as well.

Once Google indexes the page again, it will update its understanding of the content and display the page for more relevant keywords.

– How to do Keyword Research for Your SEO Strategy

2. Create Informative and High-Quality Content

To implement a list of informational keywords, you’ll have to not only cluster them according to a topic but also create content that answers the search intent. 

To do that, you’ll have to analyze the competition for that keyword.

For instance, you’re targeting the keyword “how to create a website.” To have a standing chance of your article ranking high on Google, you’ll have to take a look at what content is ranking at the moment.

In some instances, you’ll find a lot of videos on the results page. In this case, you might consider creating a video too, or making this keyword low priority. 

To analyze the articles in the results, look at the subtopics they cover and how they present information.

Your job is not just to add all the relevant keywords to your article but also to create a better piece of content. 

You can go into greater detail in certain areas, share your personal experience, cover more subtopics, or provide better illustrations or interactive elements. Anything that helps the user understand the topic better.

You’re likely to have dozens, if not hundreds, of informational keywords to cover, so creating content is a long process where you’ll have to prioritize tasks. 

Start with keywords that have the highest traffic and lowest competition — you’ll have higher chances of ranking for them faster.

– How to use your Blog as a marketing tool

3. Perform a Website Audit

Technical SEO is another major aspect of search engine optimization and lead generation. Google has a variety of standards it uses to gauge how good a website is from a technical standpoint. 

Having those standards met ensures you have better chances of ranking any content on your site.

The easiest way to meet these standards is to run a website audit with an SEO tool. 

This analysis will show you all the technical problems your website might have, from 404s and missing SEO tags to issues with page loading speed. 

Some tools will also show you a list of suggestions on how to fix those issues.

A part of the website audit can be done with Google’s free tool, Lighthouse.

For a more detailed analysis, you might have to invest in a paid tool.

Make sure to run a website audit monthly or at least quarterly and fix any pressing issues. This will ensure the rest of your SEO efforts pay off.

4. Start the Link Building Process

Another major factor that influences how well your site ranks on Google is the number of quality links you have. 

Each link that points to your site acts as a vote of confidence and signals to the search engine that your site is trustworthy.

The first step towards building a link profile for your site is getting the links that all sites in your niche should have. 

For instance, if you run a SaaS business, you need links from review sites and aggregators like G2. If you run an eCommerce business, you need links from industry catalogs or local directories.

Next, you might try guest posting on blogs that publish content related to your industry. 

Look for large, popular blogs, find ideas for an article that would benefit their audience, pitch it, write the article, and leave a link to your business.

You should also leverage PR opportunities to get featured on news websites, an essential part of building a strong link profile through outsourced link building.

You can provide comments to journalists through platforms that connect experts with media professionals or reach out to journalists on your own with a content idea.

The last link building strategy is to create linkable assets — pieces of content that are so helpful people will be linking to them on their own. 

These could be expert roundups, case studies, surveys, statistical roundups, whitepapers, or any type of independent research.

– Link building: 5 techniques that give results

5. Keep Your Website Content Fresh and Up to Date

One of the ranking factors in SEO is content freshness. 

If the information in an article is outdated, it may start losing its position. The same goes for product pages that feature discontinued or unavailable products.

Make it a quarterly practice to comb through the website content and update anything that’s outdated to not lose any opportunity to improve your lead generation through well ranked content.

6. Promote your content on Social Media

Once you publish an SEO article on your site, it won’t start ranking for a week or two, and few people can discover it if it’s not in the Google search results. 

Promote your content on social media if you have an active following to send traffic to the page right from the start. 

This might result in backlinks, conversions, or simply gathering data on user behavior on the page.

You can also try to send traffic to new content from any other available channels you may have, like email marketing, or by leaving a link to a new post in older content.

– 8 Marketing Channels for an Amped Up Digital Strategy

7. Track and Analyze your results

Using SEO for lead generation differs from industry to industry, and from business to business. That’s why you should track how your approach performs and analyze the results.

Some key metrics that you want to focus on include:

• Search visibility
• Organic traffic
• New to repeat visitors ratio
• Keyword ranking
• Number of indexed pages
• Number of referring domains
• Conversion rate

It’s best to track those metrics for both the site as a whole and for individual pages. 

If you see that a particular page is not performing as well as the rest, analyze how it compares to competitors in terms of optimization and content quality and improve it.

Use SEO to boost your online business

SEO is a reliable lead generation strategy for many businesses. 

While it’s not a cure-all, it rightfully deserves a place in your digital marketing arsenal.

To leverage its full potential, focus on the three most important aspects of SEO — keyword optimization, technical optimization, and link building. 

When you nail the first two and consistently build high-quality links to your website, you’ll ultimately see a rise in rankings, traffic, and sales.

Remember that SEO doesn’t produce lightning-fast results. It might take a few weeks for the changes you’ve made or new links you’ve built to register with Google, so keep that in mind when analyzing performance.

Produce content regularly and see which ones bring the best results, that’s where your audience is. And don’t forget, consistency and planning are the key to any successful business.

Complete eLearning platform optimized for SEO, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet.

Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System.

– Learning Management System: What is it?

To learn more, visit our website, test the platform and understand why we are the best option for your business.

The post 7 Ways You Can Use SEO for Lead Generation appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

In this practical guide about Video SEO, we’ll cover everything you need to know to improve your videos’ rankings in search engines, increasing traffic and conversion.

What is video SEO?

Video SEO refers to video optimization for search engines (SEO – Search Engine Optimization). 

This involves several practices to improve the positioning of content in search results and on hosting platforms such as YouTube. 

Why is Video SEO important?

The growing popularity of videos in recent years has not gone unnoticed by search engines, which is why this type of content has gained more visibility and even its own tab on Google’s first search page.

In fact, the search giant is also preparing to launch its AI-based software, called Search Generative Experience (SGE), which will display relevant video results right at the top of the search results.

With search engines themselves signaling the importance of this type of media and the privileged visibility they are gaining, it is no wonder the care that companies and professionals are taking with video SEO.

We also cannot forget that the second most accessed website in the world, behind only Google, is YouTube, a platform focused on video sharing.

Jane Javor, SEO Manager at NP Digital, has this to say about the platform: “YouTube is the second largest search engine and shouldn’t be ignored – there are over 2.7 billion active users on YouTube, and publishing Optimized videos can put your brand in front of potential customers.”

But with thousands of people sharing content every day, you might be wondering: how do I stand out? That’s where video SEO comes in.

– How to choose the right video hosting platform for my business

Video SEO Best Practices

If you create content for the internet, you probably know that search engines can’t read visual content. 

Therefore, to optimize the SEO of your videos it is essential to make the most of all available textual resources, as we will see below.

Keyword Research 

Just like the keyword research you would do before writing a landing page or blog post, it’s crucial to do the same to optimize your videos. 

Focus on terms that have decent search volume and low competition. Use tools like Google Adwords to do this.

Use the defined keyword in the video title, description, tags, transcript, and any additional content related to the video. 

Take a look at the list below so you don’t miss anything:

• Optimized title: Create a compelling title that includes your main keywords.

• Detailed description: Write a complete and informative description that explains the content of the video, using the defined keywords.

• Tags: Use tags that help search algorithms understand the video content.

• Attractive thumbnail: Create an attractive thumbnail that catches users’ attention to get more clicks and signal to search engines that your content is relevant.

• Transcription: Include a transcript of what is being said and shown, as the more text, the better for video SEO

– How to do keyword research for SEO

Video description

A well-crafted description makes your video easier to find. 

Use relevant keywords at the beginning of the description. They should reflect the content of the video and present the terms your audience is likely to use to search for content like yours.

Write one concise and compelling summary of the video in the first 150 characters, as it is what appears in the search results.

Then continue explaining what the video is about and provide additional information that may interest the viewer and make them watch until the end.

Use relevant hashtags at the beginning or end of the description. On YouTube, these hashtags appear above the video title and can help with discovery.

Finally, include links to other videos, your website, social media or other relevant resources. 

Add calls to action, encouraging viewers to subscribe to the channel, like the video, or leave comments.

Look at this example below:

TIP: If the video is long, include timestamps in the description to help viewers jump to specific parts of the content, or even better, list the most important chapters, like the example.

Optimized Tags

Tags are words or short phrases used to describe the content of a video in a summarized and categorized way. 

They are an important SEO step for video, as they help the algorithms of platforms like YouTube to understand the topic and context of the material, facilitating indexing and display in search results and recommendations.

Follow these three tips to get the right tag choice:

• Keywords: Start with your main keywords. They must be highly relevant to the video content.

• Variants and Synonyms: Include variants and synonyms of your main keywords to cover different ways of searching.

• Long Tail Tags: Use long-tail tags (longer, more specific phrases) which may have less competition and be more effective at reaching a specific audience.

In the case of a video about how to make chocolate cake, here’s an example of the tags that could be used:

chocolate cake, chocolate cake recipe, simple chocolate cake, easy cake recipe, how to make cake, quick cake, chocolate dessert, dessert recipe, homemade cake

Use the number of tags allowed by the platform, always keeping them relevant and related to the video content.

– Practical guide to SEO and Copywriting for online sales

Video transcript

A transcript is a textual version of spoken content in a video.

It includes all words and dialogue spoken by participants in the video, as well as other relevant auditory information, such as sound effects and descriptions of background music.

Transcription is useful for improving accessibility, video SEO, and user experience.

As we mentioned earlier, search engines cannot index visual or auditory content. Therefore, having a transcript allows the content to be indexed and ranked in search results, increasing visibility.

Take a look at the transcription of the video we used as an example earlier:

When creating transcripts, consider the following for effective video SEO:

• If there is more than one person participating in your video, indicate each time a new person starts speaking.
• Include sound effects to represent different sounds, such as when someone laughs or claps.

Another feature currently much appreciated by the public is subtitles.

Although video platforms like YouTube automatically create captions, they are often inaccurate. Therefore, we recommend that you create and upload your own caption.

Transcripts are also great for creating translations and subtitles in other languages, expanding the reach of the video to a wider audience.

Eye-catching thumbnails

Thumbnail is that small image that appears next to the video title in the search results. 

This is what, most of the time, first captures the user’s attention, encouraging them (or not) to stop scrolling and click on your video, so it’s vital that your thumbnail stands out.

For those who post content regularly and want to build a brand that their audience can easily recognize, it is advisable to maintain a standard colors and fonts in your thumbnails. See the following example:

Note that in addition to the attractive image, thumbnails must clearly describe what the video is about in very little space, so be clear and concise. 

Also make sure your thumbnail looks good on mobile. Avoid very small or low-resolution elements.

Thumbnails are so important for video SEO (as they complement an optimized title and description) that we highly recommend you do these with different models to see which generate more clicks and conversions.

Shorts and Sharing Links

Shorts are short videos that can be used to attract a larger audience, as they are more likely to be watched until the end, increasing completion rate and watch time, important SEO factors for videos.

They are also easier to share and can become an important referral marketing resource for your channel, increasing the reach of your content and your chances of sales.

Furthermore, you can take advantage of these shorts yourself to update your social networks, publishing strategic and thought-provoking cuts of your videos and inviting people to watch more on your channel or buy your course to have access to the complete material.

Leave links to your social networks in your video description, encouraging people to visit your other channels, leave comments and share your content.

– 5 steps to create promotional videos for your online course

Video format and size

Finally, pay attention to the format, size and resolution of your video, as this directly influences the quality with which it will be seen.

Although it has nothing to do with text, this is undoubtedly an important video SEO factor, as it implies the time the viewer will spend watching and the possibility of being published on different platforms.

We recommend that you save your video to MP4 (MPEG-4) to ensure high quality and a small file size, ideal for it to load quickly and look good.

Improve your video SEO strategy and sell more online courses

Now that you know how to ensure good video SEO, it’s important to apply these strategies and track your performance to ensure you’re on the right track. You can do this by monitoring:

• Keyword performance in search engines and social media searches
• Click through rate 
• Conversion Rates
• Video engagement (likes, shares and comments)

Also, by using a video analytics tool you can gain deeper insights into how each video performs, track viewer behavior in detail, and identify which content drives the most engagement, helping you refine your video SEO strategy and maximize results.

Other than that, stay consistent! Do regular posts to keep your audience engaged and your channel growing and gaining more visibility.

Nowadays, with a good cell phone and microphone it is possible to record quality videos. Set up a studio at home and make a creation and publishing schedule to help you maintain consistency.

– How to set up a studio at home to record videos

Keep in mind that it’s really worth investing in this type of content, since they stay online forever and even your older materials generate new views every day, improving your SEO.

Furthermore, videos are a great way of publicizing for anyone who wants to sell online courses, helping you attract an audience and proving your authority in the area.

Learning Management System (LMS), Coursify.me has all the necessary features for you to integrate and import content from video hosting platforms such as Vimeo and YouTube.

– Whats is a Learning Management System

With the Coursify.me you upload videos, texts and other materials from your computer and the main platforms to your online school with complete ease.

Visit our website, do a test and take advantage of all the features we offer to create and sell quality online courses.

The post Video SEO: A Guide to Optimizing Your Videos for More Views appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

Seo for beginners: what is Search Engine Optimization and why it is important

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of guidelines published by Google on how to improve the placement of a website in search results. 

Although the term is already known, how to apply SEO techniques is still a question that affects many digital entrepreneurs.

And why is SEO for beginners important? Because Google and other search engines are the main source of research for those who browse the internet. This means that if you want your website to be seen, you need to get their attention first.

Think with us: when searching for a subject, the user usually accesses the first options that appear as a result, giving preference even to organic results, not sponsored ones.

Organic results are those that appear in the top positions without anyone having paid for it. How did these sites get there? Doing an excellent job of optimization.

That’s why our practical guide SEO for beginners is so important, especially for those who don’t have much money to invest in paid ads.

– How to reduce costs with Google Ads

Reaching the top positions in the search results is certainly not an easy task, considering the large number of competitors fighting for the same goal.

Working on your site’s SEO takes time and requires dedication and consistency, but it is certainly worth it.

Most accessed platform in the world, if your business cannot be found on Google, it does not exist.

12 practical tips of SEO for beginners

The subject is complex and mastering it completely is quite difficult, since, in addition to constant changes applied by Google, certain strategies require knowledge in website programming.

But don’t worry, because following some practical tips carefully, you will be able to do a job capable of leveraging the number of visits to your page.

– How to generate leads

Check out 12 tips of SEO for beginners to apply today on your website.

1. Have your own domain

Setting up your own domain for your page is a good way to convey more professionalism and authority.

Doing this costs little and means that you will no longer have the provider’s name in your address. 

Those who have an online school within Coursify.me, for example, can choose to have their own domain and remove the name of Coursify.me from their address. Ex: https://escoladecodigo.com.br/ and https://lunnadesign.coursify.me/, note that both are hosted within the platform, but the first has its own domain.

2. Redirect between WWW and non-WWW addresses 

When setting up your own domain for your page, you have the option of choosing to use WWW or not, as in the sites mentioned above.

Although it makes no difference to Google, the two forms of address should lead to your site. 

This is important for the indexing properties of both addresses to be considered for your page. So, if someone creates a link to an address with the same name as yours, but without the WWW for example, who gets the SEO benefits is you.

3. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools 

To help website administrators and give SEO a boost, Google provides several free tools for you to take care of and monitor the performance of your page.

Just go to https://www.google.com/webmasters and register your website address.

A tip that we consider very useful is to select the option “Message forwarding” that sends alert messages to your email. That is, any problem on your site, you will be informed.

4. Include Google Analytics code 

Valuable tip of SEO for beginners! Add code to your page for an analytics tool like Google Analytics. 

Analyzing your traffic data, length of stay, most visited posts, among other access information is very important for you to improve your performance.

With this, you learn about what works and what not and make the necessary adjustments to move up in the search results.

5. Configure means of conversion

Conversion is the name given to an action that the visitor performs when entering your website that reverts to some result, such as: contacting you via email, subscribing to your RSS, buying a product, etc. 

Define the means of conversion (buttons, banners, etc.) and make them as visible and easy to use as possible.

The less clicks the user has to make the better, no one likes to go through several pages and steps to get where they want.

– How to create a sales page

6. Use keywords 

This is a practice of fundamental importance. Keywords are the terms that users type in Google and other search engines to perform a search. 

Before starting to develop the content of your page, list all the words and terms that relate to your business and that someone could search for. 

– How to define keywords for your SEO strategy

Then work on your text so that it includes the largest number of those words, without losing relevance. Google identifies exaggerated repetitions and may disregard the site for that. 

If you need help listing relevant keywords for your business, you can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

7. Answer questions and comments

Respond as quickly as possible to questions and comments left on your page and on any other digital channel of your brand, such as social networks.

If you are aware of doubts that most people usually have about your business / product, it is a good idea to answer them in the development of content, through a FAQ, for example. 

Working on these questions and answers not only enriches your content but also encourages the visitor to stay longer on your page.

8. Include important elements of SEO in your articles

When producing articles for your website or blog, pay attention to the following aspects:

• Interesting title – the title of your article is the first information shown in the Google result and is usually the only information that influences the user’s decision to access your page or not.
• Anchor text in links – when citing another article or page on your blog, avoid placing the link in a “click here” text. This is bad because Google uses this text (anchor text) to measure the relevance of a page. Write interesting text for the link that describes the topic covered on your landing page.
• Coherent URL – when defining the address of your page, Google recommends that the main keywords be used, in lower case and separated by a hyphen.

– How to start a Blog to promote your business

9. Take advantage of the internal links 

You may have noticed when searching Google that sometimes it shows more than one result that leads to the same website. This means that he considered specific pages within that site relevant, in addition to the home page. 

This is called internal links, that is, links from the same site considered important for the search made by the user.

The best way to achieve these links is through content creation. By keeping your website/blog always updated, you create possibilities to generate internal links and other factors that catch Google’s attention, such as:

• Articles with a high number of visits.
• Recent content with good audience.
• Featured links on the main blog page.

In order to make a correct structure of internal links, you can use a Link Extractor tool. This tool will detect all internal links on a website or a specific web page and analyze them. It will also help you identify all the broken internal links.

– Link building: 5 strategies that work

10. Don’t try to trick Google

This is a great alert of SEO for beginners. Everyone has seen posts or comments from people with the promise of followers, instantaneous audience growth, exchange of likes and all sorts of tricks that promise to make your business known overnight.

Don’t fall for it. Google usually punishes this type of action by losing position and banning the index, which means practically limbo for your site. So stay tuned for what you should NOT do:

• Do not hire companies that guarantee you will be on the first page of Google results the next day.
• Do not give more importance to image than content. Your content will always be the most important element for any search engine. 
• Do a real link building work, linking only to content that offers real value to your audience.

– Advantages of Content Marketing for your business

11. Develop a lightweight website

Nobody has the patience to wait for a page that takes time to load. If yours does, it is very likely that the user will not wait and almost certainly will not come back. 

Keep on your page only what is useful to the visitor and pay attention on these basic tips of SEO for beginners:

• Decrease the resolution and size of the images as much as possible and save them in an optimized format.
• Forget background music.
• Put only the summary of the articles on the main page.
• Remove broken and unnecessary links. 

– Copywriting tips

12. Make good use of social media

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and so many other social networks are now an indisputable part of any business’s marketing plan. 

Using social media well is essential to promote and attract visitors to your website. Through social networks you can create a community, which enhances the dissemination and customer loyalty. 

But it is important to interact and maintain an update flow, so that people know they are not there talking to themselves and your business ends up losing its credibility. Therefore, never fail to answer any questions, spread news and interact with your followers.

– 6 ways to sell on social networks

Host your online course on a platform optimized for SEO

Essential for anybody that wants to gain visibility and has a chance to compete in the current market, apply optimization techniques ceased to be an “extra” to become a necessity.

With these practical SEO for beginners guide, you can improve your position in search results, gain credibility and become visible to potential customers.

Complete eLearning platform optimized for SEO, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet.

With perfect integration with the main social networks, with Coursify.me you are halfway through the job of positioning yourself well in search engines and attracting customers.

Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System (LMS).

– Learning Management System: What is it?

Visit our website, test the platform and start promoting and selling online courses right now.

The post SEO for beginners: a guide for digital entrepreneurs appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.