If you've hired an SEO expert then
you've received an SEO report. I'm going to show you the critical elements that
you should be seeing in those reports and how to know when it's time for a
change. So, as you watch my videos you're going to tell that I am like tool crazy. I
love to geek out over tools that just you know translate this technical
world of search engine optimization and I like to call findability into
something that's digestible and easy to understand by a layman –someone who's not
a techie geeky sort of person. So, I'm going to show you some of my favorite tools.
And the first one is a tool called SEM rush.com. Now, this tool is one of my
favorites. I spend most of my professional career in this one report.
And I'm going to walk you through how to take a look at where you rank in the
search results and how to generate an SEO report based on your existing
ranking. Alright, I'm going to show you one of my favorite tools it's called SEM
rush.
I did a bunch of speaking for them and it's a wonderful organization. They
have a plethora of tools. Now, I'm going to pop into this but I don't want to… And I
don't want to intimidate you. So, I'm also going to show you one thing about this
and then I'll as you subscribe and watch my additional videos, I'll keep diving
into this tool because it has so many great features. What you're going to do
is go to SEMrush.com and you'll see the screen in front of you. Now, you're
going to put your website address in here. So, I'm going to go ahead and put my
website then hit start now. Now, the trick with this is going to give you ranking
but it's only going to give you a limited amount because you don't have a
paid subscription. I have a paid subscription so I'm going to go ahead
now.
You'll see here I can register to get ten free requests. It is absolutely
worth giving them your email address and setting up a password so you can go in
and really have fun geeking out over this tool. I'm gonna go over to my next
tab where I'm already logged in. Now, what you're gonna see when you run your
report is I'm just gonna come up here to the top which is the same thing I just
showed you. Ooh, I love the tool. I'm showing my geek.
Okay. Let's see what's going on. You know it's hard because you can subscribe to a
lot of different tools. This one is definitely worth subscribing to. The
basic account is $99 a month and that might like get you in the throat a
little bit.
But when you see what this tool can do, you'll be like, "I want that."
Alright. So, we're going to go back here to findability just on the main screen at
the very top. And this is the same thing as the homepage screen as well. Now, I'm
going to get a dashboard of all of my ranking. Oh, I love a dashboard. So, you'll
see here that I have 557 keywords I currently rank for. It also tells you
like how many backlinks. So, I have almost 2,000 backlinks. Backlinks are when other
sites are linking from their site to my site. And now these are very important
because they're like one directional endorsements from other people's
websites back to yours. I like to think of them like a restaurant review. You
have a fabulous dinner and then you go on to like Yelp or some other website
and you endorse that restaurant and how great they are.
Similar to a backlink is
man she spoke here. She did this, we love that and then they linked from that
their site back to yours. Which is gold for Google. They love those
one-directional backlinks. So, I've got a nice backlink profile. Now, we're going to
come down here. Look at this. So, you might think, "Well, why would anyone from
internationally visit my website?" Well, you can see here that I have quite an
interesting spread of people who are visiting my site from the US to the UK,
Canada, Australia, Denmark and Spain, in the Netherlands.
I guess I'm huge in the
Netherlands. It's only about this much search so maybe not really huge. It also
tells you how much people are coming from mobile devices and other. So, this
can be very very telling about are you getting reach internationally and not
just by US searches. So, I'm going to go in here and I'm going to click top
organic keywords. This is going to give me a master list of all the keywords
that my website currently ranks for. I think a lot of people don't even know
these kinds of tools exist. And I love… I love the data because the power is in
the data. If you know how you're ranking then you can hold the people who have
said they're doing SEO for you.
You can really hold them to task and make sure
they're actually doing what you're paying them to do. So, let's come down
here. You'll see right now. Let me walk you through what you're seeing here. So,
the first one is the exact keyword phrase findability.
So, I ranked number 2 for the word findability. It's 52 percent of my total
traffic to my website.
So, people really love that phrase. And it gets 880
searches per month. Now remember, that's one month worth of data and I'll take
that. But then you have the times that by 12 to get the full year which is I don't
do math in my head but that's a lot. So, 880 is a lot. I'm very happy with that
phrase. And you'll see here that we've got the exact page that ranks for it
which is my home page.
Now, let's take a take a look and see what other keywords
I currently rank for. So, SEO coaching is the number two keyword that i rank for.
I'm in sixth position So, if you think about a search result
page, there's ten positions on a search result page. Above the fold means I
haven't scrolled down yet. It's an old newspaper concept. So, if I have a
newspaper folded up, above the fold is the newspaper. Fold it down, that's below
the fold. Why they use a newspaper reference for an internet search? I have
no idea but here we are. So, ideally I want to make sure that I'm above the
fold. That would be one to five. And then 6 is just below the fold. Now, here's
the scary stats as 86% never scroll down they're just they make a decision right
at the top.
And then 92% never go to page 2. They say the best place to bury a
dead body is on page 2 of Google. So, just keep that in mind that if you're on
page 2. Not really going to be helpful. We want to make sure that you're on page
one. So, you'll see SEO coaching, I'm just
slightly below the fold. It gives me 7% of the total traffic to my
website. And people search that phrase 320 times per month
on average over 12 months. That's a good keyword for me. I'm ranking
for SEO coaching, I could do that all day, every day. That's my jam.
So SEO coaching is definitely where I want to bring. Then we come down, of
course you're going to always rank for your name. But I love to see that
actually Findability University is not the number one way people are searching
for me. I want to have more people searching for what I do and what I know
and not necessarily for my name. If they're searching for my name, they
already know me and that's not helpful to Findability.
I want to make sure that
when people are typing in keyword phrases that they're finding me for that
topic. Not necessarily just for my name. Now you'll see Candyland map. You wonder probably like why does she break for that? Well I have a video in my YouTube
channel called Customer Journey map. So you might want to check that out because
I talked all about how your website and your customer journey is similar to
Candyland. Of course I'm going to rank under my name.
I got a rank. So Heather let's see Oprah. I was on Oprah a million years ago
of course you don't really ever stop ranking for Oprah keywords. So I'm still
on there and then as you come down you'll see all the other phrases I rank
for. So SEM rush is absolutely fantastic for giving you keyword data. So let's
take a peek at websitegrader.com and it's w-e-b-s-i-t-e-. G-r-a-d-e-r.com. So
what you're seeing in front of me right now is the website grader says how
strong is your website? So we're going to come in here and I'm going to put in my
website.
Don't have to give him your email address. Remember, they're very good
marketers and you're going to hit get your answer. Now the cool thing about
this tool is that it gives you a very high level, 10,000 feet overview of what
your website looks like to a Google bot. Now, I got 84 which is an excellent score.
But there's always room for improvement. It's like these little tiny tweaks that
you can make. So you'll see here performance. I love a big slider and what
I'm not talking about a burger.
I'm talking about a website slider. So let me
go to my website and I'll show you what I mean by that. Now, some people argue
whether these are a little dated, some of them say it's a dated. I love it. I saw
you see here that I've got a nice big slider
on my homepage. So if I come down here, you'll see that I have one slider then I
have my second slider then I have my third slider and then I have my fourth
slider, okay? Now, these are great. They're very egocentric. I think a lot of
business owners love these sliders because they can put these beautiful
images on there. However, when we go back to website grader, you'll see that I'm
getting dinged on this.
So performance is how fast is my website pulling? Is it
slow like taken forever like molasses or is it superfast? Google is a nervous
Nellie. Google does not want to wait for the data. They want to make sure that
that data is being pulled fast. Remember, that over 40% of all traffic coming to
Google is by mobile devices. So you have to remember your website is like this
big not this big and Google wants that to pull fast. I'm getting dinged on
performance because I love my sliders. So I can always go in there and compress it.
See if I can get it to pull quicker but the next one you'll see is mobely
responsive. That means I can look at the website this big and I can push it and
all the way down to a little tiny screen on a phone and it still looks great. It
should beautifully collapse on itself. Let me show you a trick to test your
website and how it looks on a mobile device. So I'm going to come back to my
screen and I'm going to go here.
So when you go over to… I use Internet… I use Chrome.
Any browser will do this. Firefox, Safari. You're going to come over here to the very
end of the browser and you're going to get this little double arrow then you're
going to pull it over. Pull it over, pull it over. Do you see how it's collapsing on
itself? Then I'm going to do is you'll see here that as I go down, Oooh look,
everything has neatly stacked on top of each other and this is so important
because your website better look good on a mobile device. There's how people can
come in and run their own website grader.
So if you'd like to come in here,
you can run a website grader right here. It comes from SEM rush and it'll go
right into your inbox if you like just to kind of shortcut the whole process.
It's very important. You'll see here. Even my map, it had you know it looked like a
Candyland map right it goes all the way down.
Well now that map has been compressed and it goes all the way down. So very
important that you really take a hard look at what is my website look like on
a mobile device. Google will absolutely penalize you if your website is not
mobile irresponsive. The next one is SEO. Now, this is an incredibly big topic.
Clearly that's what my expertise is in. However, what it's looking at is a
keyword consistency on the homepage. Finally, security. Now, I don't want you to
freak out if the security says zero out of ten, it means that every page in your
website needs to be HTTPS. That means that every page in your website is
secure.
One of the reasons this is so important is because lots of people have
WordPress websites. Maybe you have a wordpress website. WordPress is great. It
is easy to use you can you know set it up you can add new themes all the time.
It's a great great platform for a website. However, it has a lot of security
issues. Do you know some of the number one ways that people save their password
is actually the word password? Don't do that.
Anything that's available on
Facebook. Your birthday, your dog's name, your husband's name,
your anniversary. These are not things you want to use for your passwords.
Because people can easily come in and figure out what that password is. That's
a no-no. We don't want that. So, what we're going to take a look at is make sure that
HTTPS is on every single page of your website. So, when Google comes they see
that. Okay, I trust you. You have some nice security built in. How do you get that
fixed? Call your hosting provider. Say, "I want to be on a dedicated IP and a
secured server." Now, I'm sorry for all the geek talk. But it's so important you
understand this at a baseline level. A dedicated IP is like a cul-de-sac. You
move into a cul-de-sac you got a bunch of neighbors on the Cul-de-sac.
Hosting companies cell storage or website hosting and something called an
IP block.
Like a cul-de-sac. You have lot of other people that you're
sharing that block with. Now, one site could be a porn site. Hopefully not. Once
I could be banned by Google. You're keeping company with other web
sites that have been penalized by Google. You don't want that. Sharing is not
caring here. So, what we need to do is make sure you're on a dedicated IP.
Meaning, just you on that IP address. And then of course HTTPS. You set up your
hosting on a secured server. Very important. Just give your hosting company
call. Say, "I want a dedicated IP and I want a secured host." Very, very important
for your credibility and Trust. So, as you go down, I've just looked at this whole
area right here. Performance, mobile, SEO and security. Now, if you scroll down,
you're going to be able to get very specific feedback on how to make these
better.
So, what I would do is you can come up to this little share button
right here. Top right corner and you can share it on Twitter, you can share it on
Facebook or LinkedIn, if you want to. Or you can just come up… Here's my
little kind of hack. So, you don't have to give me your email address and still get
the report. You come up here in chrome to file and print. Now, you're able to get
all the goodies from this report without ever giving him your email address.
Woohoo! Try not to give out your email because
trust me, especially with HubSpot. They will never stop emailing you. No matter
how many times you unsubscribe, they keep showing up in your inbox. So, remember. You
are in control. You own the keys to your website Kingdom. Run SEMrush.com.
Get the keywords you're currently ranking for and then go to website
grader. And see how you can continue to tune up your website. These elements are
so important to Google.
And they should be important to you. Have you hired an
SEO person and didn't really know what they were doing or didn't have a way to
check their work? Well, I'm going to give you my book. Marketing Espionage. Chapter
10 is hire and fire a web developer and how to
really understand what you're getting for your SEO dollar. So, below in the
description, I have a free download of my book. Go to chapters 10 11 and 12 to
really understand what are you buying and are you getting your money's worth?.
