Intro to SEO: Rocket Your Site to the Top of Search Results

Have you ever wondered how Google determines how to rank your website? Or why your competitors are beating you onto page one of Google?

These things don't happen by chance. There isn't a person behind a computer at Google HQ deciding who will rank where. There's a science to all of it, and it's called search engine optimization (or SEO for short).

There are a number of factors contributing to how websites rank and learning about these factors will help you to "optimize" the sites you work on. This course will cover a variety of these topics:

• On-page: On-page optimization is one part of SEO that you may be most familiar with - we'll cover the basics from meta tags, in addition to other on-page factors that may help you rank.

• Technical: Discover the technical issues that may prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your site. We'll also cover some other technical aspects of the semantic web that are beneficial for SEO.

• Link Building: Learn about what link building is, why it's vital for every website, and how to get started.

• Social Media: Discover the ways that having a engaged social community can help with SEO

• Measurement: Learning to analyze your websites' performance is vital to determining its success or failure. We'll cover the basics of how to get started with analytics and necessary metrics to be aware of.

What You Will Walk Away With:

• An understanding of the factors that help a website rank in search results

• A collection of tools you can immediately start using with your site

• Resources to explore to learn more — from beginner to more advanced

Prerequisites: There are no skills or programs required for you to take this course. A laptop is required.

About the teacher:

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Emma is an SEO Account Manager at Philadelphia's SEER Interactive (http://www.seerinteractive.com/). Emma has been with SEER for over a year, and has been doing SEO for 2+ years. Her passion for SEO is driven by the technical yet creative skill sets required to be successful in the field. When she's not hanging around SEER's #searchchurch, she is an avid yoga-practitioner, nail polish enthusiast, and wannabe blogger (http://emmastill.com/).