SEO basics archives

Once you finish a Yoast SEO Academy training course, you get a shiny certificate of completion and a badge you can embed on your site or share on social media. This way, you can let everyone know about your newly acquired SEO expertise. Awesome! But how useful is an SEO certification, really? Does it make …

If you want your content to rank in Google, it needs to know about the existence of that content. That means that you (or another site) have to link to this content. Google follows these links and saves every post or page it finds through links in the index. So, you’ll understand that it’s important …

How does a new website start ranking? Does it just magically appear in Google after you’ve launched it? What things do you have to do to start ranking in Google and get traffic from the search engines? Here, I explain the first steps you’ll need to take right after the launch of your new website. …

If you’re not already working on it, now is definitely the time to start with SEO. You need to rank high if you want customers to find you online. So, what should you do? How do you get started with SEO? Or, how do you start with SEO on a brand new site? In this …

How does Google work? What does Google actually do? For many of you, this will be fairly old news. But for everyone who is new to the world of SEO: let me explain what Google does and how SEO works. In a way that is easy to follow, because understanding this really helps you create …

HTTPS secures the connection to the website you are visiting. I’m sure you have seen this in action; look at the address bar in the browser and find the lock icon on the left-hand side. Is the lock closed? Then the connection is secure. Is it open, or is there another type of icon or …

Anchor text — or link text — is the visible, clickable text of a link. It usually appears in a different color than the surrounding text and is often underlined. Good link text tells the reader what to expect if they click on the link. Getting your anchor text right increases the chance of someone …

Content marketing consists of all marketing activities that focus on the creation and sharing of information. If you’re serious about your SEO, it should definitely be part of your strategy. But nowadays, it’s also crucial for branding. Sharing valuable information is a great way to attract an audience and show them that you’re an expert in what …

Maybe you’ve heard about the concept of rich snippets. SEO experts seem to think everyone knows exactly what they are. But, for SEO newbies, a rich snippet is a vague term. What is it exactly? Time to explain what they are, why they’re important for SEO, and how you can get them for your site. …

A website allows you to target the entire (online) world. Local SEO, on the contrary, is focused on ranking higher in your local area. Especially now, when people are trying to reach you more often online than offline, it’s worth investing in it. Getting found online by your local audience highly increases your business’s chances of …