5 billion searches are performed, On Google every single day Seriously, no matter what you do, people are Looking for your products and services on Google cell phone repair, shop, 1,700, monthly searches, iphone charger, 34,000 monthly searches, best smartphone, 41,000 monthly searches And these search volumes are Only for US based searches, But here ’ s the thing, Even though there are billions of searches.

Every single day, our recent study shows that 91 % of content gets no traffic from Google. So how do you join the other 9 % of web pages? And start getting free, consistent and passive traffic from Google. If you ’ re a beginner to SEO, then you ’ re. Going to want to read this whole tutorial because I ’ m going to show you how to Start attracting customers from the world: ’ s largest search engine Stay tuned.

What ’ s up? Everyone? Sam, Oh here with Ahrefs The SEO tool that helps you grow your search, traffic research, your competitors, And dominate your niche, This tutorial is called “ SEO for beginners, ” Because, even if you haven, ’ t got the slightest clue what SEO is you ’ ll have very clear. And easy action items that you can implement into your website right away, So we ’ ll, be covering the most important Things that you should know to ensure that your website is optimized for search, Let ’ s get started.

So what is SEO SEO stands for search engine optimization? It? ’ s the process of optimizing. Your website, And webpages to get free, organic traffic from search engines like Google, Think of Google like a filing system. In a library, The library has billions of books with hundreds Of trillions of pages, So let ’ s say that you want to find something: On “ global warming. ”, Then Google would search through these books.

And extract pages that contain your keywords or closely related words, But, as I ’ m sure you know, search results. Aren’t returned in any random order. Google tries to return the most relevant results. First, by using sophisticated algorithms And they’re so good at this, that most of Us never have to click through to page 2 of the search results. Nobody knows exactly how these algorithms Work or the exact factors it looks at to rank a webpage, but we do know a lot of the so-called “, Google ranking factors,”, so we are able to make some optimizations.

So your job is going to be two-fold Number. 1. We need to make sure that it’s easy For search engines to understand what your page is about and create that content that Matches what we call “, the searcher? ’ s, intent,” right And number 2. We need to show Google and Other search engines that it ’ s, ‘ worthy, ’ of ranking. So throughout this tutorial, let ’ s say that I ’ m a new and budding photographer and I live in Toronto, Canada.

I ’ m starting my new wedding photography. Business called “ Sam PhOHtography., ” Yup, I ’ m, pretty awesome…, but I don ’ t have any friends. So referrals Are out of the question Alright great Step 1 is to find relevant keywords that people Are searching for and see how these search queries fit into your business? The easiest way to start finding relevant Keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer, So I would think that a bride or groom looking For some magical wedding photos would search for “ wedding photographer in Toronto.

. ” Makes sense right. So I ’ ll, go to Ahrefs’ Keywords: Explorer Tool which is one of our SEO tools that provides rich data on Google searches and I ’ ll – enter In that search, query here, I ’ ll also change the country to Canada since People in other countries, they probably aren, ’ t looking for a Toronto. Based photographer, as often Now I ’ ll run the search, And you can see that there are only around 60 or so monthly searches for this keyword – phrase which is far from exciting But looking below you, ’ ll, see that the parent Topic for our query is different.

The parent topic determines, if you can rank For your target keyword, so the one that we originally entered here, while targeting a More general topic on your page. Instead, In this case, the parent topic is showing That more people search for “ toronto wedding photographer, ” over “ wedding photographer in toronto. ”. Now, if we scroll to the bottom of the page, You can see the top 10 Google rankings for your target keyword and a bunch of keyword metrics.

I ’ ll just touch on two of them. For this article traffic and keywords Take a look at these two ranking pages. You can see that they generate well over a Thousand search visitors every single month and next to that you ’ ll, see that each page Individually ranks for hundreds of keywords: If we click on the number of keyword rankings, Here you can see all of the different keywords and the ranking positions in Google search.

This is a good thing to do, because you already Know that Google is ranking this single page for all of the keywords, so why wouldn ’ t You be able to rank for these keywords and maybe even more Try and remember this part, because we will Be exploring things like keyword usage, multiple times throughout this tutorial? Alright, now that we have a list of keywords: It ’ s, time to optimize your pages In the world of search engine, optimization This is called “ on-page SEO.

”, Since we know the keywords that people are Searching for in Google, it gives us clues on the language we should use to. Let both Google and potential customers know what your page is about, For example, knowing that “ toronto wedding Photographer ” is a more popular search query than “ wedding photographer in Toronto. ” That will help us make smarter, copywriting decisions. So for your homepage content you might want To say: “ Hi, I ’ m Sam, a Toronto wedding, photographer Blah blah blah blah blah ” instead, Of “ Howdy, I ’ m Sam and I do wedding photos for couples in Toronto.

”, But I do need to make two things very clear. First, you don, ’ t have to use your exact Match keyword since Google has gotten pretty smart at understanding what your page is about, And second it ’ s very important to note. That you shouldn ’ t try to trick Google by using keywords where they don ’ t belong. Your first priority should be to optimize For people, because the last time I checked, robots, aren, ’ t going to pay you for your services.

Here. ’ s an example of what you shouldn! ’ t do “! I ’ m a Toronto wedding photographer that Does Toronto wedding photography for your Toronto wedding. ” This is known as keyword stuffing and long Story short, it does more harm than good, So key takeaway Don, ’ t do it So for on-page SEO. I want to pass on 4 very Basic but important tips that you can use on every page you optimize First, is to optimize your title.

Tags and meta descriptions When you look at the Google: ’ s search results. You ’ ll, see this part in blue and the text below The top part is called your title tag and The other part is the meta description. The purpose of these is to entice someone To click through to your page, And if people are actually clicking through To your page, then that ’ s telling Google that your page is likely relevant to the reason Why they had searched for the query in the first place right, And you can see that Google actually even Bolds these keywords and similar keywords within the search results making them stand out.

With that in mind, I might create a title. Like “ Award-Winning, Toronto, Wedding, Photographer, ” and then my brand name, But of course, if you ’ re going to do something. Like this, it should be true, Then, for the meta description you can explain. In a couple brief sentences, what the page is about, But rather than putting a generic description, That everyone else is doing and calling yourself the best you can put something like “.

Sam, Oh, was rated the Star. ’ s Best! Toronto! Wedding Photographer, He combines creativity with science to capture Life: ’ s happiest day in a million pixels., ” Awww…. How sweet is that Now? This would make me as a consumer, want To find out who this awesome photographer is The last part of on-page optimization is the Most important and that ’ s the actual content on the page For a typical wedding, photography, home page I might have some images, a short “ about us, ” or “ about me, ” section, possibly The services that I provide and some testimonials from happy brides and grooms Without over complicating things.

You ’ ll, Likely want to use your primary keyword. Phrase in the main headline often referred to as an H1 tag And looking at one of the top ranking pages. You ’ ll, see that they did this right here An example of what you probably shouldn. ’ t Be doing is something like this hello there. The H1 or heading tag here says “, hello, There ”, which doesn ’ t help anyone understand what the page is about And remember.

Your job is to help Google best Identify your page as being relevant to the user. ’ s search! Query! I ’! Ll! Go back to the organic keywords! Report! In Ahrefs to see one of my competitor, ’ s keyword rankings and see if there are any Other ideas that might help Google better understand what my page is about. You can see some other relevant keywords in Here, like bridal photos and GTA, which stands for the Greater Toronto Area.

So as you ’ re, writing the copy for your page You might want to keep these in mind and sprinkle them in where it makes sense. And reads, naturally, to visitors: Alright! So let ’ s take this Sam PhOHtography Example, one step further: Let ’ s say that my business was growing. I got a lot more experience under my belt and I found out that I have some mad skills. In areas like landscape portrait travel product photography, So I decided heck.

I ’ m going to offer those services too, Rather than trying to rank my homepage for Keywords that aren ’ t exactly related. I could easily create new services pages, So I ’ d, do the same thing by first going To Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Then I ’ d type in something like “ toronto. Product photographer,” and I ’ ll, quickly, look at the search volume and see it has 100 Or so monthly searches in Canada, Then I ’ ll.

Take a look at the parent topic. That has around 200 searches And here ’ s a quick but super interesting side. Note With wedding photographers people seem to Be searching for “ Toronto wedding, photographer, ” the most While people looking for product photographers In Toronto are searching for “ product photography, Toronto. ”, So this step is vital to ensure you ’ re, targeting Keywords that will provide you with the most exposure for your pages, So for our services page, we would do the Same thing as we did before with the title tag, meta description and the content on the page.

The last thing you should do is to include your Primary keyword phrase in the URL of the page So for a product photography, services, page Your final URL might look like this. If you ’ re a WordPress user, you can just Click here and edit it using hyphens to separate spaces. So in this case I would change it to product-photography-toronto. A really quick hack you can do is to look At the top 10 rankings and see how they ’ ve optimized those pages to rank there.

So if we look at the Google search results, For “ Toronto product photography, ” you can see that some of the pages are keyword. Stuffing in the title tags and that the meta descriptions are all kind of cheesy or they’re truncated Clicking through to this result, you can see That it ’ s just a classifieds site similar to Craigslist, so it ’ s, clearly not optimized Clicking through to this one.

You can see That they included their keyword phrase in the heading and title tags, but then there ’ s. Pretty much no content on the rest of the page And then clicking through to this one here, This one seems to be over optimized for their keyword target And, if I do a ‘ find ’ for the word, “ photo ” You can see over 110 instances of it on this page, which again will do more Harm than good, in the long run, What you ’ re seeing here is an opportunity.

To overtake these search results, Basically, Google has no choice but to choose The best options from a bad pool of pages Alright. So by this point we ’ ve, optimized Our main pages for our different services and we’ve covered the basics of on-page SEO And if you ’, ve done this for all of your Key pages, then, I can assure you that you are miles ahead of a lot of your competitors, The next part and arguably most important Piece of ranking high on Google is off-page SEO.

Off-Page SEO often refers to link building And link building is the process of getting Other websites to link to your web pages, Basically links act as votes or other people. Vouching for your website saying: “: hey! These people are really good at what They do, and I trust them enough – that I would send my visitors to their website. ” It works in a similar way that you would refer. Your friend to buy a product from whatever store, because you ’ ve tried it used it and loved it In general, the more quality backlinks you Can get from relevant pages the higher you ’ ll rank in Google.

Now I ’ m. Putting the emphasis here on the Word, “ quality, ” because there are a lot of different types of links you can get from Like forums, directories and editorial links to name a few, But if you think about it, a place like a Forum, where virtually anyone can place a link will likely hold less value than a link from Someone else’s blog, But to be clear, other types of links will Still hold some kind of value, but probably not as much as links like editorials would.

So, if you ’ re focusing on quality, then you ’ ll. Probably want to prioritize editorial links And the main way to get links from other people. ’ s! Blogs is through something that SEOs often refer to as “ outreach.. ” And outreach is exactly the way it sounds. You ’ re, contacting people and asking them for a link, But you can ’ t just email, someone and be like “ yo. I need a link Hook, it up.

”. It doesn’t work that way. There are a three things that you need in Order to make your outreach campaigns more successful 1. You need people who are actually Interested in the stuff that you do 2, You need a good reason to contact them. 3. You need a pitch that somehow benefits them. Let ’ s go through a few examples. Shall we First we need to identify people who are interested In what you are doing, The most commonsensical one in the context, Of link building are websites that have already linked to your competitors.

You can find these pages by going to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and entering in a domain or URL, So I ’ ll enter in mangostudios.Com, who also Does wedding photography in Toronto? I ’ ll, also narrow our search down to pages That are linking just to their home page From here. I can click on the backlinks option. In the left column – And here I ’ – ll – use this filter to narrow Down the backlinks to only links within content, since I mentioned that, I want to get some Editorial links On the left side, you can see the websites That linked to the target, URL or domain and on the right side, you can see which page They linked to and the context of the backlink.

Next, let ’ s click through to this one. On “ Jaw-Dropping Gorgeous Wedding Flower Ideas..”. You can see that there are a bunch of pictures. Of flowers And hey, I actually have a great one that ’ s way better. Than all of these, So let ’ s check that off on our checklist. For successful outreach We now have a prospect, So I can contact the author, Nicole and let Her know about one of my pictures that was published in some kind of wedding magazine.

Because it ’ s that awesome, So this now fulfills checkbox # 2. We have a good reason to contact her because We have something relevant to her piece And, of course, I ’ d be giving her rights To publish my photo, which also checks off # 3 As a side note it doesn, ’ t mean that she ’ ll. Publish my photo or give me a link As a general rule of thumb, the better, the ‘, excuse, ’! You can come up with to contact the author, the better your chance will be To get the link Another good reason to contact someone is To offer a guest post Blog owners are always on the hunt for new Content and since your site is new, you ’ ll, be getting in front of someone else.

’ s audience! In exchange for some of your time and content where you could easily use some watermarked Photos that you ’ ve, taken With guest posts, your reason to contact them Is pretty reasonable and you ’ ll be providing value, which is free content ( that should Be good ) that benefits them and/or their website. The next outreach prospect you can find are Businesses in a lateral, non-competing niche, So as a wedding photographer, you might want To contact other local flower shops, reception, halls and wedding planners, If you look at the “ jaw, dropping flowers, ” Article you can see that there are two people mentioned in the article There: ’ s Mango Studios, which is the site That we ’ re analyzing, as well as an event and design planning company.

You can contact these people To form meaningful relationships, Just think about it for a second, Your businesses go hand-in-hand and you can Pass on referrals to each other, you can link back to each other as a ‘ preferred vendor. ’! Or link to others, ’ content in guest posts where it’s relevant And this isn ’ t limited to just local businesses. This applies to everyone, So find some solid partners who are on that.

Same journey as you in a lateral niche and help each other out Now with link building, there are numerous Tactics and strategies, so if you want to expand your knowledge in this sphere, then I highly recommend reading our series on link building where you ’ ll, get a full scope. Of how to do this effectively, Alright, We are on to the last SEO tip that I see a Lot of beginner! ’ s avoiding! Now, if you have something to sell setting Up your homepage and product/services pages is probably the first thing that you ’ ll do or Did and for good reason, These are the pages that will directly generate Leads and revenue for your business, But here ’ s the final tip start blogging.

Now I ’ m, not telling you to write about How you changed your storefront sign from red to green By blogging? I ’ m, referring to providing Practical content that can and will help your prospective customers solve problems In Dr. Jonah Berger. ’ s book Contagious! “, Why Things Catch On,”? He shares his research on why content gains popularity and even goes viral Content that provides “ practical value, ” Was one of the key factors to success? People don? ’ t just share funny.

Cat articles or emotional stories, They share things that help others And the same goes for gaining links. People are more likely to link to your content. If it ’ s, helpful, actionable and solves a problem. Look at what we do for the Ahrefs blog. We have numerous SEO tools, but we tackle Different big topics like keyword, research and link building, And even if you don ’ t, use our tools, you can gain A ton of value through these monstrous posts, But you ’ ll, see that we include shortcuts Or hacks, where our tool can make doing SEO a whole lot easier To further prove my point: if you look at The “ top pages ” report inside Site Explorer.

You ’ ll, see that the pages that generate The most search traffic for us mostly come from our blog articles Blogging lets you reach large audiences. For example. We saw that Toronto wedding photographer had around 900 monthly searches in Canada. Let ’ s, look up something like “ wedding, Venues: Toronto, ” in Keywords Explorer. You can see that it has around 1,400 monthly Searches in Canada, If you ’ ve, been in the wedding photography.

Business long enough, then you ’ ve, probably done shoots at numerous venues, So you could create a post with Helpful and practical value, For example, I might create an article of Some of the best venues that I had taken photos at and display pieces from My portfolio within the blog post, I would also detail pros and cons of each Place pricing information, location, details, items on their catering menu or anything Else that would be genuinely helpful to a person visiting this page And, if you think about it, people usually Book the venue before the photographer, So there ’ s a solid chance that after people See some of your stunning watermarked photos, they might look through your portfolio and Contact you for a quote that can generate more customers for you And, if you think about it, they may have never Discovered you through a different means, because they didn ’ t type in a keyword.

Phrase like “ Toronto wedding, photographer,” or their friends didn’t refer you to them. When you ’ re. Thinking of these ideas put Yourself in the searcher, ’ s, shoes. What would they be looking for and what would Help them solve the query Now, when you ’ re, picking, topics try and Stick with ones that provide value to your business. So as a photographer, I would want to almost Always showcase my work because I would be judged by my portfolio As a software company.

We showcase how our Tools can help in people. ’ s SEO process, because people will buy our tools if they see how It benefits them As a coffee roastery, you might show them How to make the perfect cup of coffee or an article on how to roast beans? I cannot emphasize enough how much a blog Can help you boost your SEO efforts It ’ s a great way to get ahead of your competitors. Who have been in the game for longer than you, but they’ve been targeting only these ‘, obvious: ’ keywords From here: you can just rinse and repeat the Keyword, research process, the on-page, optimization tips and continually build links to your Content and articles and start climbing the Google search rankings, We have a ton of really helpful articles where We expand on these topics, so I ’ ll, leave links to those in the description Make sure to subscribe for more actionable.

Seo and marketing tutorials and if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. And I would be happy to jump in and help out, Sam PhOHtography signing out

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Isn’t it to talk about how much we get paid And that’s exactly what I Want to do in this article, because I don’t think that money talk should be a thing that we avoid The more we talk about how much we earn the more we can help each other To be paid, what we’re worth So right now, I want to take you through my design career, so Far and my history of raises and negotiations and talk, About the different changes that led to my different salary increases over the past eight years, ( upbeat electronic music ).

A few disclaimers that I want to make before we get into this article fully. I am going to be sharing Real numbers in this article, because why the heck not But what’s more important, is the context surrounding those numbers. So that’s what I want. You to focus on okay, My career has been in different countries, different currencies and Location has a huge impact on how much you’re paid For certain design jobs, so just keep that in mind when I’m talking about These different jobs, I’m going to tell you where They were in the world and that should help You for context there I’ll be converting all my Salaries into US dollars, though, just so we’ve got a constant Going throughout this Different areas and Disciplines within design can also be paid very differently.

So what I’m sharing with you here is my personal experience as A web and graphic designer. I also want to note that the only reason I feel comfortable talking about this now is because the company I currently work for has standardized salaries, so I feel confident that I’r being paid fairly, but I haven’t always felt that way. So please don’t take any of these numbers that I’m sharing with you as a benchmark or as my advice on what you should ask for in certain stages of your career Cool.

Alright, With that out the way, let’s get into it, My first ever full-time job as a designer was working as a graphic designer on the marketing team at a reseller of Mitsubishi Electric Products in New Zealand – I worked there part time. While I finished my studies and basically as soon as I finished, my last university classes, They offered me a full-time job for 35,000 New Zealand dollars. I did not negotiate that salary at all, which spoiler alert is Unfortunately, a common theme throughout my career history, But honestly I was just thrilled to be earning a full-time Living doing design work After I’d been there a few months.

They gave me about a 14 % raise, and I can’t remember if I had any other raises, while I was at that company, but the next big jump I had in my salary was when I left that job To start my career in tech, So this first job in tech, Was a marketing design role at an accounting software company based in Wellington? New Zealand called Zero. The company had, I think, around 350 400 employees worldwide.

When I started there And I was making this transition from print to web and when they asked me my salary expectations, I said that I wanted to make over $ 50,000 and what they offered me was 60,000. So well over what I offered. I was obviously undervaluing myself and I appreciated that Zero Didn’t take advantage of that I took that offer again. Without negotiating, because it was a 50 % Increase on the salary, I was earning at Mitsubishi Electric, and so I was stoked with that.

I know now that I should’ve negotiated because one it can’t hurt to try Right Might as well And two when you get a raise at a company. It’s usually based on the percentage of the salary that you are on. So when you come in you’re sort of setting this baseline for What you’re getting paid and your raises that You get on top of that will be building on that initial salary, So the higher you can negotiate for that initial salary to be the more you’ll get in Your raises essentially, But you live, and you learn So not negotiating when You first start out can limit your potential earnings.

At the company as a whole, which is unfortunate so Learn from my mistake: Zero was also a company Though that offered bonuses, both in the form of a catch bonus yearly where it was like a set amount, and then you get a percentage of it based on how well the company did So, you might get like 80 % of your cash bonus for that year, for example, And they also had what they called a long-term bonus in the form of shares, because Zero was a Publicly traded company, So I’ve got some Zero shares.

For my time working there I’m not going to go too deeply. Into benefits in this article, but it’s important to note that the overall package is What you should look at when you’re evaluating a role, not just the pure number of salary? I’ve got a couple of Raises at my time at Zero through just performance reviews and as the company grew my 10 year, there sort of became more and more valuable and I ended up being paid.

73,000, New Zealand dollars by the time I left New Zealand and moved to London Now the cool thing about This move to London was that Zero had an office there, so I was able to transfer Within the company, and not have to look for a Job in London, which was cool, But my biggest mistake here, was that I treated this move too much like Zero was doing me a favor and not enough, like I Was filling a vacant role at the design position? In the office in London They didn’t have any Designer there anymore, when I moved over, to fill that Zero didn’t help with any Relocation costs for this move because they said it was A self initiated thing, so that’s why they Weren’t going to pay for it And yea.

Basically, just I have some regrets about how I handled that situation. It was all very complex but yeah. I think there were some things. That I could’ve done better Anyway. I didn’t know that living in London, I was going to have a higher cost of living and Zero knew this too, and So what they offered me for this transition for this move to do the same job, essentially that I was doing in New Zealand, but based in London, They offered me 42,000 Pounds as my starting salary, So that was about a 15 % increase from my salary for the Same role in New Zealand, Now I’ve done my research and found that the cost of living in London was about 27 % higher than in New Zealand.

And so that’s what I was Hoping for in a raise and what I did speak To my manager about, but this is what we ended up on and I took it and I don’t regret that. Because it did allow me to move to London pretty seamlessly to turn up in a country on The other side of the world with a job was pretty great. My next salary increase Came about six months later, when I actually left that job at Zero to start working at a London-Based tech company Now in this role, the mistake that I made in this process was Actually answering them when they asked me what I was earning currently.

This is something that A potential employer is always going to ask you in an interview, And I would advise you not to be the person who says a number first, When they ask you what you’re earning or what you want to earn. It’s always good idea to ask them for what the range is for this role, and then you can give Your answer, based on that, If you go in there and lay a number down on the table first, then you are setting that benchmark and it’s potential that the company could take advantage of you in doing that.

Honestly, what you are currently earning should have no impact On what your value is in a role at a new company, It shouldn’t play a part, So don’t be the first one to say a number Anyway, I told them that my salary package, I was earning currently At Zero was 45,000 pounds and they said well, you’re, probably actually getting paid pretty well for where you’re at in your career, and they ended up offering to match that.

In a stroke of boldness, though, I decided I was going to try and negotiate, and I asked them for a Whole thousand pounds extra, I asked for 46,000 pounds and they agreed pretty much immediately. And that’s when I knew that I obviously should’ve asked for way more than that in the negotiation I know I tried. This is what I hate about this whole salary negotiation process. Is that you end up being Paid a lot of the times based on your negotiation skills, rather than your design.

Skills which I think is lame, But anyway, this ended up being about a 9.5 % increase on my base salary from my role at zero, But because Edited didn’t offer any bonuses or all that sort of things. As part of the salary package, I was ending up being Paid around about the same, which was a good salary to allow me to live comfortably in zone two in London. Sadly, I did not get any sort of raise or even a performance Review that I remember in the whole 18 months I was there, I don’t know the company wasn’t great at career development.

I will say that, But so my next change in salary. My next increase came when I changed roles to my current job that I Have now at ConvertKit, This is my first remote role and it’s also a US-based company so theres a whole lot of Different factors in there The company was about twenty something people. I think when I started Oh and for context, Edited was maybe about 40-ish when I started just to give you some context for that.

Salary that they offered me Anyway, I was really excited with this new job offer to be working remote and to not be having to Commute every day in London, because that was taking up a lot of time. But I did want to make Sure that I was being paid enough to sustain my lifestyle in London and to keep up with the Cost of living there I ended up starting at ConvertKit on just a few thousand dollars more than I was making at Edited, But ConvertKit is a company that also has some great that benefits Like they do.

A vacation Bonus they do profit sharing you get to share on the Profits of the company, So I felt confident that It was a smart decision, salary wise and that I Was going to be making more, as well as having a Better work, life balance with this whole remote thing, In stark contrast to that previous role, where I had no raises I’ve, had quite a few increases in salaries since I’ve been at ConvertKit, I ended up getting an 8 to 10 %, raise every six months for The first little, while until the company did Something that I really like and introduced those standardized salaries that I talked about in the beginning.

So this is based on data Collected by Radford, They put together a report on the industry for lots of different roles within Tech. They give you an idea of Where the market is at, what the market range is for different roles at Various different levels Companies can purchase access to this data and choose what percentile Of the market rate they want to meet when Paying their employees So when this got introduced, I was set as a Level Three Web UX designer and my salary increased To 85,000 US dollars Now, like I said, negotiation, Hasn’t really been much of the through line in This salary history has it, But I got a chance to practice some negotiation skills earlier this year, when I decided to advocate for myself to be moved up from Level Three to a Level Four, Each level within these Standardized salaries has a description of the Skills and responsibilities that you are expected to have and be responsible for at Each different level, So I essentially took a look at what the Level Four ones were.

And made a case for myself and talked to my manager, and he agreed that it was time to move me up a level. This resulted in a 23.5 % Increase in my salary, which is very cool and I was proud of myself for having advocated for myself. You know We just recently got in a new Years worth of Radford data and they remapped all the Salaries in the levels and that sort of thing – and so I ended up getting a little bit of an increase there, because the market rate For my job has increased So right now my salary Is 115,000 US dollars, which is 9.

5 increase on what I was earning previously And because those Salaries are standardized. I can expect that I’ll stay at that level, either until the market Rate for my role changes until the company decides To change the percentile at which we’re meeting of These industry averages, or until I get a promotion To be moved up a level again, This way of doing things means that I’m not getting those 8 to 10 % regular every six months raises like the ones before But I like a lot better, because I know that I’m being paid fairly and I know that everyone else on my team is being paid fairly as well.

And that’s important to me: I don’t know if these numbers Are surprising to you at all, either surprisingly low Or surprisingly, high, depending on where you’re Coming at this from, I know that I could be Earning a lot more for my role, if I wanted to work at A bigger tech company, or perhaps one of the hot start ups with the low VC funding That sort of thing You can get some some very high salaries at those sorts of companies.

But, what’s more important to me, is quality of life working For a mission driven company that I believe in and doing work, I love So yeah, I’m happy with Where I’m at the moment, I hope this is interesting to you to hear about my career history. From the salary perspective, Keep in mind, like I said at the start, that none of these numbers should Really be used as a benchmark, There is location and experience and inflation even to consider But yeah.

I hope it was interesting for you to hear about. Nonetheless, Thank you for reading. I’ve left a link in the description to a podcast episode, because if you didn’t Know I have a podcast called Design Life with a cohost, My friend Pamka, who works at Uber she’s a product designer And we did an episode where we talked about compensation and negotiations. So if you want to dive more in depth on all that stuff be more about, it then go give that a listen.

Through the link below Thanks for reading and I’ll See you in the next article Bye, ( upbeat electronic music, )

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So this isn’t going to be like a lot of the other Articles you’ve probably seen about how to learn SEO because I’m not going to focus On the definitions of things, I’m not going to tell you what backlinks are or what keyword research is.

You can find all that stuff on your own and it’s totally available. For free everywhere online, so I’m not going to get into that because the truth is anyone. Can find information, but if it was as easy as just Getting more information more people would be successful at SEO. So what makes the difference between people who succeed in SEO and people who don’t succeed in SEO? Well, that’s exactly what I’m Going to cover in this article, so let’s talk about how you Can learn SEO the right way so back in 2011, I started My very first website – and it was an absolute ghost town – It had no traffic for months.

And months and months and no matter what I did, I Just couldn’t get more traffic and that’s when I finally stopped trying to figure it all out on my own, and I started to do a Little more research, and then that is when I discovered SEO, and so I immediately started taking action on everything that I was learning and then, within a few short months I was able to grow my Traffic substantially – and I even made my very First, affiliate sale, so that was a huge thing for me because all at the time I was really trying to do was just make enough money to be able to pay my bills in the future, and then I would be happy and it’s amazing what it turned into.

But ever since I used Seo to grow that website. I got absolutely obsessed with it, and so I started creating Website after website, because I really just Wanted to get better at SEO, I actually wasn’t too concerned About making a ton of money, I just wanted to get better at SEO, because I knew if I can Consistently rank websites. On the first page of Google, I was able to drive organic search traffic to any website that I wanted.

That would be an extremely valuable skill and then in the future I could take that skill and Start to sell it to businesses or use it to grow my own company, so I knew at that time. I really needed to focus on learning how to do it the right way. So in this article I’m going to show you the exact process, I used To learn SEO the right way and how to learn it fast and learn it in a way. That it actually sticks so that you can continue to be an expert and continue to get results.

Now and into the future, so the very first thing you have to do is you have to get base knowledge so there’s unlimited information. About SEO on the Internet, You can go into Google and search. You can go into YouTube and search, but really this is of Course a little biased, but you can just go right. Into my YouTube blog or go to the Gotch SEO Blog and you’ll, pretty much Find all the information you need to know about SEO and to give you that base Knowledge that you need before starting to take action before moving on to the next step.

Now before you take All the base information that you’re going to learn And start acting on it, you need to understand that not all actions in Seo are created equally Some actions produce 100 Times bigger results, while some actions produce Very little results so knowing the difference. Between those actions is absolutely critical and that’s really what makes A difference between people who are extremely effective, In their SEO, campaigns and people who focus on a bunch of stuff that doesn’t actually produce results, so you wan na focus on the things that are going to produce the biggest results with the minimal amount of effort.

So what are those Actions that you can take that are going to produce huge results. Well, the first is understanding how to create keyword-targeted content, also known as SEO content so SEO content actually applies to informational pieces of content which are going to be blog posts. And also transactional pages, which are going to be lead capture, pages, local pages or even e-com pages and the way you structure, those pages will completely depend on the intent behind the keyword phrases.

That you’re going after so, for example, if you’re targeting how To train a Great Pyrenees, that page should be completely focused on educating that person about how to train a Great Pyrenees. It shouldn’t be built to Convert them into a customer, It should be built just to educate and once you’ve done that job, then you can ask for something which, typically, in that case you wan na just ask for an e-mail address, because you’re so early in the sales cycle that it’s not Going to convert very well, if you immediately try to Hit them with a sales pitch, so it’s best to when it’s An informational asset to go after something that’s a little lower barrier to entry, so that would be like trying To get their e-mail address and you can offer a lead Magnet or something of value in exchange for their e-mail address and then transactional Pages, on the other hand, would be built to actually Convert the searcher into a lead or into a customer.

So if you were a dog trainer in St. Louis and you wanted to rank For that keyword, phrase you’d want that page to be structured to build a lot of trust and, most importantly, build it in a way that’s completely designed to convert. So you see the differences that the information Was designed to educate the transactional is designed to convert so knowing the difference? Between those two is completely dependent on Understanding search intent, but I won’t go deep into that because I have a ton Of articles on my blog about search, intent and make sure you read those, but regardless understanding how to create New keyword-targeted content and how to improve existing Content on a website is one of the most fundamental Seo skills that you can learn’cause the truth is websites are filled with Thin duplicate, outdated and just sometimes Straight-Up, bad content, and so you have to understand How to go through a website and find these issues? These content issues and then know what to do with The content once you find it so, in a lot of cases, you will actually end up having To delete a lot of content or consolidate, or even redirect, Content to primary assets, but once again I have A article on my blog about how to do a content audit so make sure you read that but understanding how To create SEO content and how to optimize existing content is a fundamental SEO.

Skill, you have to learn. Number two is link building, so I know there’s a lot of Stuff out there right now about how links don’t matter, but there’s so much evidence. Showing that they still matter and have mattered pretty much forever, so it’s kind of a silly discussion. Overall but regardless it is very, very difficult. To rank without links – and it can be done but you’d have to be willing. To wait a very long time to be able to get those results, and so, if you’re willing to Wait years and years and years to get results, then you might be able to do it, but in most cases you’re going to need links if you’re competing in even A semi-competitive niche – and you have to think about it this way, If all things are equal, let’s say you have two competing websites: They both have incredible content.

They both have incredible design. They both have incredible user experience. Well, what is Google going to use to determine? Who should rank Well? The only thing they Can do at that point if all things are created equally is they have to look to external sources? They have to look to external factors to determine which pages are best, so the number-one factor that they can use are links from other relevant websites or links from other credible sources.

And so whoever has the Most high-quality links is going to definitely Outperform the one that does not because if all things are equal, that’s going to be the determining factor to do decide who wins in that battle. So that’s why it’s absolutely critical that you have a concentrated effort to acquire new links to your website, because otherwise it’s Going to be extremely hard, no matter how good your content is no matter how good your website is, and that may change in the future, but right now that continues to be one of The most important factors for SEO performance so make sure you learn.

Everything about it, so the third high-impact area that you need to study and learn is user experience, optimization and so a lot of the Technical SEO, optimization that you’ll go through, will improve user experience, but anything you can do in a website that improves user experience. Is going to benefit SEO and, most importantly, it’s going To benefit your conversions, and so it’s a critical Piece of the puzzle and so understanding how to create and Optimize existing content, understanding how to acquire links and understanding how to Optimize for user experience, if you get those three right, And you understand those and you really hone in on Getting better at those, you are going to be a really Really good SEO expert and then number four Which I consider a bonus, but I really think every SEO should be competent in this skill and that’s conversation rate optimization also known as CRO and CRO is critical.

Because it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to your site, if you don’t actually turn that traffic into leads and customers and that’s when CRO comes into play, so I won’t get deep into CRO. But it’s absolutely critical that you’re consistently Testing your pages and trying to improve your pages so that they convert at The maximum that they can so that you’re getting the Most out of all the traffic, that’s going to your site! Okay! So now that you know that you need to Establish base knowledge, — Knowledge, and you need to focus on the high-impact actions within SEO.

The third and most critical Part of this process, which I always recommend to People within Gotch SEO Academy is to start your own side hustle Now I know that might seem like a kind of a weird suggestion, but believe it or not when You start your own project and you use that as your Testing breeding ground – you will learn so incredibly fast, and this is the process. That I recommend doing so, while you’re getting Your base knowledge, while you’re learning the key elements of successful SEO campaigns.

What you wan na do is study one thing. So, let’s take one of My articles, for example, Go and read one of my articles and when you see something That’s actionable, take that action item and put it what I call On a future actions list, and so what I do is I Literally, take actionable items from content books articles whatever, and I put it on a future actions list so that I am accountable to Take action on that information, and so you need to have That process in place, because otherwise you’ll just Consume consume consume and you won’t actually Act on the information, and so everything that you have consumed doesn’t matter unless It’s actually acted upon, and so it’s so incredibly critical to understand that concept.

You’ve probably seen many people online, maybe on Twitter or where else where they know a lot of information, but they can’t actually Demonstrate that information, so, for example, there may Be some college professors that know a ton about business. They may know the history of business. They may know everything You could ever imagine historically about being an entrepreneur but they’ve, never actually Started a business They’ve actually never grown a business, so that applies in SEO too.

There are tons of people Who know everything every single, nook and cranny about SEO? But honestly a lot of Them don’t actually know how to execute that information, so you don’t wan na, be a person that just knows a bunch of information. You wan na be someone who actually knows how to Execute on that information and knows how to get real results and the only way to get real SEO results is to act on every piece.

Of information that you get so that you can learn from It and iterate over time because there are no rules in SEO. Everything is a hypothesis. Everything is a best practice, but you should always be putting those best practices to test and that’s really really important, and even my own advice. Anything I give you put it to the test, See if it works. You should always be questioning. Everything at all times, but the way to really Question it the right way is to actually act on it and get that feedback.

Based on your own actions, Now, the good news is that I’ve done a massive amount of Testing and failure for you. I’ve worked on hundreds of SEO campaigns, so you can really bypass a lot of the stupid stuff that I did so you don’t have to it yourself and trust me. I did a lot of Stupid stuff in between here to get to the point where I am now so believe me, you don’t wan na go through any of the stuff that I did in between.

So that is really the value of working with someone who has expertise, and I’ve had to do that many many times throughout my SEO career seeking out information from people who are way. More experienced than I am because I know that I do not Wan na go through this again in any other field, so I always look for people who are way more experienced than I am to leverage their expertise. So I don’t have to go.

Through all the failing and the testing and the experimentation and the time-wasting, I don’t Wan na go through any of that, I’d rather just bypass all that and work with someone who Already knows what they’re doing and so understanding That principle is huge because at the end of the day, We only have so much time. You can’t learn every skill in the world, so you have to work with other people to acquire these skills and the only way to do It is to work with people who are more experienced than you are so the big takeaway for step number three is to start your own side hustle and make sure that you act.

Far more than you consume, I recommend about a 90/10 split, so 90 % of your time. Should be spent acting 10 % of your time should be spent educating yourself and learning Okay. So let me review how To learn SEO the right way so step number one establish The base foundation so learn just enough so that you can start to take Action on the information Number two learn the most Important parts of SEO, which is going to be content, Link building user experience and conversion rate optimization and then number three start your own side, project or side hustle, so that you can get Real-Life experience in SEO, and even if you’re already An experienced SEO and even if you’ve worked On SEO campaigns before it’s still really important to have your own side projects, Because it keeps you fresh, It keeps you thinking’cause when you have to Start something from scratch: it forces you to think in A totally different way – and so I highly recommend you check out the article on my blog about how to build a niche site, because that goes through.

The entire process of how to start a niche site. So, if you wan na start Your own side project at an affordable price that Is the best way to do it Just go through that article? It’s completely free It’s about an hour long, so make sure you set some time aside, but it will give you everything. You need to learn exactly how to start a niche site or start your own side project. So that’s all I have for you.

Today about how to learn SEO and to be honest, if you wan na not have to Go through all the testing and all the failure and All the time-wasting and honestly wasting a ton of money like I did for many many Years, trying to learn SEO, you can actually just Join Gotch SEO Academy, which over 800 other SEOs, are Already inside there learning and what it is, is an exact, step-by-step Seo training program and the real value of Gotch SEO Academy is that you’re really just piggybacking off my years and years of SEO experience and the cool part is you don’t have to go? Through that entire phase of trying to learn and Testing and failing and doing all kinds of Stuff trying to learn SEO: Instead, you can just Learn a proven SEO process, that’s based on real-life experience and you can save a ton of time and money and you can actually Learn SEO the right way so that you can start Getting better rankings and more traffic and you can really grow Any company that you want It’s such an incredibly powerful skill but, like I said, I’m not Going to pitch you super-hard about Gotch SEO Academy, I just hope this article gave You a nice little framework for learning, SEO the right way and if you got a lot of value from it, please, like this article And leave a comment below and if you’re not Subscribed please subscribe because I’m going to be Publishing a lot more articles just like this one, so that’s all I have for you today I’ll see you in the next article ( off-kilter, music, )

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The first 200 people to use the coupon code WPBVIP will get 50 % off MonsterInsights. Are you finally ready to tackle SEO and increase traffic to your site? Well, keep reading In this article we’ll cover what SEO is and how you can use it to increase traffic to your blog In a recent survey.

Many of you asked us to create content that will help you increase traffic for your website. One of the best ways to do that is to optimize your site for search engines and in this series, we’ll cover everything you need to know to get started with SEO and by following the tips in this series, you could easily add 1,000 more visitors to your Website in a month, So, let’s dive in If you’ve done, research on how to increase traffic to your website.

You’ve probably seen everybody talking about “ Improve your SEO” on your site. But what does that really mean Seo stands for Search Engine Optimization or just how easy it is for Google to find your website Now there are several different search engines out there. You have things like Bing and Yahoo Yandex, but 90 % of searches are done on. Google, So that’s usually what we’re talking about when we say search, engines and basically search engines just go out and scour the web to find pages and index them in their catalog, It’s very similar to when you have a book and at the end of the book You have an index where it tells you where everything was talked about and the location, That’s pretty much Google and their indexing system as well on the web in the cloud.

So let’s take a look at an example. Now this is a typical search page with results. You can see that these are ads. This is what’s known as a knowledge graph and what it’s doing is it’s pulling in a result that might be further down on the page, but since Google thinks it’s answering, the query really well it’ll get shown up here as well as down further on the page. Then below all of that, you have organic results.

Typically they’re about ten organic results on one page and organic listings simply mean that these results aren’t paid at all. They show up on Google because they’ve done a good job of telling Google that this page is about this particular query. Then you have a people also ask area, and this simply shows the related searches that people will do on this topic. Now fewer than ten percent of people will actually ever click on the next page If they don’t find what they’re looking for on the first page they’ll simply adjust their search criteria and that’s why Google added in this’People Also Asked’ area and here’s the biggest? Why SEO is so important for your website, These top three organic results? They get over 70 % of all the clicks.

This first position usually gets the bulk of the clicks Between 35 % and 40 %. The second will get between 15 % and 20 %, and then the third position will get around 10 %. So that’s why it’s so important to make sure that your website is first on Google. But how does Google even determine what should go on the first page? The biggest factor is relevancy. You want to make sure that your website is exactly what the searcher is.

Looking for when they’re searching Google, Now Google uses over 200 factors to determine what’s relevant in their algorithms and there’s no way that we’re going to be able to cover all of those. But if we can concentrate on a few, then we have a fighting chance to get seen in the search results. In addition to relevance, you’ll also want to make sure that your site is useful. All that means is that, when a user clicks on your site, the information that they’re looking for is easily found Think about the last time you did a search.

If you went to a page that you thought had the answer, but you had a hard time finding. It on the page, did you stick around Most people? Will click back and go look for a different answer So make sure that your site is also useful and that you’ve arranged the answers for the topic in a meaningful way. That’s easier for readers to find what they’re looking for. So there are two main ways that you can work on SEO on your website and they’re called on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-Page SEO is simply telling Google and the reader that you have everything that they’re looking for. You have all the indicators that they’re looking for, and really this just means you have all the right keywords on your site. Now, on-page SEO is easier to deal with, because most of the changes needed are within your control. For instance, if your site is is about barbeque, then you want to make sure that your site has the right keywords in the title in the body in the image descriptions.

It also means you have supporting keywords in it. Like BBQ recipes, grill temperatures, types of meat, best BBQ grills and everything else that is related to that topic Throughout this article series, we’ll cover all the ways that you can do on-page SEO, so you can get started soon And the cool thing is: if you already Have a website with some articles on it, then you may be just a few tweaks away from seeing massive results with your traffic Without writing any new content.

So if you want to see about that, make sure you click on the subscribe button and go ahead and click on the notification bell to be notified of all of our articles coming out With Off-Page SEO. That simply means that you are making sure that other websites are linking back to you. These are called backlinks Off-Page SEO is a little bit more out of your control, because you’re relying on other people to believe that your site is worthy of a link.

But if you’re writing great content and networking with your industry or your topic area, then it shouldn’t be a problem Now I just want to let you know, as we go through this SEO process just realize that search engine optimization does take time, and sometimes it can Be a little frustrating when you’re not seeing the results fast, But if done properly the results from your SEO. Efforts can, last months or even years, depending on the topic you’re in So now that you know a little bit about what SEO is and how it can improve the traffic on your site in the next article, we’ll go a little bit deeper into on-page SEO and We’ll cover keyword, research and how to do it properly for your website.

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I’m one of the people you talk to when you call us here at Bluehost. Have you ever wondered how to help more people find your website? Well, here Bluehost, we host almost 2 million websites and we have a lot of experience. Helping clients successfully increase web traffic. One of the best ways to do this is through what’s called search, engine optimization or SEO. For short, the goal of this article is to give you a basic overview of how search engines work, so you can better understand what search engine optimization or SEO is all about.

Let’s get started as of today, there are over 130 million registered websites out there on the internet to sort through all of it. Most of us rely on search engines to find what we want, and these search engines have become so good that over 90 % of people using the internet rely on them to find things now, there’s lots of good search engines out there, but about 83 % of People worldwide use Google.

So that’s what we’ll use in this article just keep in mind. The concepts were discussing applying on all the other search engines too. When you search for something with Google, you get back a results page and there’s lots of stuff on it. This shows you how many websites, Google found that are probably relevant to what you’re looking for here. Companies can pay Google to place ads for when people search for particular things, but this is the section most people care about it’s the actual results list, which is just a list of websites that are most likely to contain what you’re looking for and you’ll notice.

This is just the first results page. You can click down there for more now. Here’s the important part that most people just don’t know over 94 % of people that use Google. Only click results on this first page if they don’t find what they’re looking for. They usually don’t bother clicking on subsequent result pages. Instead, they typically prefer to just adjust their search terms and start from scratch and of those people who do click on that.

First page, most only click in what sometimes referred to as the golden triangle, or top three or so results, in fact, about 63 % of people just click right in there. This is why optimizing your website for search engines or doing SEO is so important when people search for something that’s relevant to them, and they see your website in their search, results, they’re, going to click and visit your page, and these aren’t just any visitors.

These are people that are looking for exactly what you offer so of anyone they’re the most likely to convert into customers, subscribers, etc. But if your website isn’t showing up towards the top 3 results or so or if it isn’t, even on the first page, it’s almost like your website doesn’t exists. No one can even find it now. In our example, we search for California sandals, and we got back about twenty.

Two million website results. It’s not exactly a small number. Have you ever wondered why some websites show up on this first page and others are stuck way down at the bottom of the pile? Well, a site’s position in search results is determined by what’s referred to as PageRank. Every website has a ranking for particular search terms or keywords. In the beginning, the first search engines worked by tracking all the words on web pages.

So if you searched for California, sandals you’d get back a list of websites containing those two keywords and the websites that had those words most often were ranked higher and they showed up towards the top of results pages well. In 1996, two Stanford PhD students notice, while they were researching academic papers. That sources that contained a lot of keywords didn’t necessarily mean that they were more relevant.

What matter? A lot more was whether those papers were cited, often by other papers, so they applied this citation concept to web search. They suggested websites that were backlink Talaat, that is to say, we referred too often by other websites, were more likely to be relevant. That’s how Google was born search engines today all follow this model. They still look at your website’s keywords, but they then rank your site’s relevance on the number and quality of backlinks to it from other websites.

So think of it. Like this keywords, let’s Google see your site and know what it’s about backlinks determine how much Google trusts your site to be relevant. So keywords are important because they tell Google you’re out there, but backlinks move your website up the food chain. That’s why the search results. You see are called organic or natural results, they’re constantly changing, based on what people actually do out there on the web.

Unsurprisingly, as there are the two aspects to how search engines find and drink pages, there are two corresponding components to SEO. First is the on-site component. This is where you ensure your site is full of keywords that are relevant to what your site’s about. So, for example, if you sell sandals in California, you want to make sure relevant. Keywords are on your site, like sandals California, Ocean Beach, flip-flops shoes, leather sand, things like that.

The second component of SEO is called off-site SEO. This is where you work to create backlinks to your website that originate from other sources. Links to your site can be created using articles, social media, blog posts, discussion, boards and so on, but keep this in mind the more influential or legitimate the website is that links back to you, the more effect that backlink from that site. It’s going to have on your search result ranking, so that’s it SEO is super important because it helps you move to the top of relevant search results and since almost everyone relies heavily on search engines to find anything online SEO is the most effective way to increase Traffic to your site, good SEO takes time.

So the sooner you start the swing you move up the results ladder to learn more about SEO. Read our next article: how to grow your business with SEO and visit our Help Center or feel free to give us a call. We have SEO specialists standing by to help you and, as always like subscribe or follow us to get the latest info tips and special offers.