#SEO, like a lot of skills, has a significant barrier to proficiency at the beginning of the learning journey.

I'll illustrate what I mean with a more common example:

Learning to play the guitar.
The guitar is known for being deceptively challenging for beginners.

You can strum a chord. You can pluck a note.

Understanding progressions and confidently moving between notes is often the first major hurdle.

Aka even learning a simple pop song feels like attempting Mozart
For SEO, the initial barriers to success are often:

1) Understanding what a keyword signifies

2) How to "use" keywords.

3) The relationship between a page and keywords and Google

4) Understand what you need to know when targeting a keyword
Those questions are exactly what I'll be tackling in this weekend's issue of The SEO Trade School newsletter.

Screenshots, examples, and instructions to be included as always!

derekseo.substack.com
For a glimpse of the hands-on approach to SEO that I'm taking, I recommend checking out parts 1 and 2 of my handbook for updating content.

And I invite you to subscribe for more practical tips for early-mid stage SEO advice.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with 🔎 Derek Flint ↗️

🔎 Derek Flint ↗️ Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @I___DEREKflint

Feb 18
A painfully obvious initial #SEO strategy for content such as blogs [Thread 🧵]

One of the cores of marketing is helping your potential customers solve their pain points.

Pain points are another way of saying "challenges."

#SEOstrategy #contentmarketing #ContentStrategy
Let's say that your company provides either a service or software solution for employee onboarding.

Doing a simple Google search for "onboarding challenges" gets us these results:
Copy and paste the link of any of these top pages into @Ahrefs or @semrush

Great - low KD - relatively small traffic - but it speaks to the audience I want to help.

This becomes my pillar target. The connective hub of my initial content-building strategy.
Read 15 tweets
Feb 18
If SEO isn't working for you, it's VERY likely because you don't know what you're doing, yet.

Most people read the concept/theory behind SEO, then begin with keyword research.

There is a lot you need to understand before you'll even be able to do that research effectively.
If enough people are interested, I'll do a newsletter post on exactly what (I think) most people initially get wrong and should understand.

And I'll give you very specific examples.
(And by enough interest, I just want you all to know that I'm making this piece of content either way because I'm the creator and it's my interest)
Read 4 tweets
Feb 12
6 SEO and/or content marketing pieces of content worth sharing. 🧵

These were either shared with me or something I found via others on Twitter.

They're a bit all over the map but these were great!

#seo #contentmarketing
1) @Kevin_Indig's #Wordle deconstruction of the viral growth this game experienced.
kevin-indig.com/wordles-growth…
@RossHudgens' creating high-converting content could be made into a digestible pdf for clients to build CRO plans. It's great.
siegemedia.com/creation/high-…
Read 8 tweets
Feb 5
You can learn #SEO for free. Most of the people selling a course or a book did it without either. I know I did.

Protect your wallets/purses/money pouches.

Here are some courses that I've interacted with, completed or previewed, and my quick notes on each. 🧵
@azarchick's 45-day SEO challenge.

One of the few courses worth the money. It actually takes you through the technical steps such as how to connect your website to GSC, build content, etc.

-the things that matter more than just philosophy.

seochallenge.co/seo-challenge-…
@thetafferboy has a course/classes of some sort out there in the world (hard to find).

I've seen them and the curriculum listed over the past couple of years on LinkedIn - and from what I've seen, they're thorough.

If you ask him nicely, he has let some people test it.
Read 10 tweets
Feb 4
A practical guide to creating content clusters with the content you already have 👇🧵
If you follow any #SEO professionals, you know about pillars and clusters or wheel and spoke models. If not (go search it out).

Few of us, however, often launch an entire cluster of content at one time.

So...
...how can we build our internal link infrastructure in the interim while we receive and upload each piece individually?

Important reminder/additional info - a pillar post and a cluster of other posts is not typically siloed.

What I mean is...
Read 12 tweets
Feb 3
For #SEOs and #marketers out there:

Your pillar/cluster does not have to be the same as your competitors.

Use competitor's clusters for ideas, but ultimately you'll need to decide what makes the most sense for your client.
A lot of people (myself included) like to look at what has worked for other companies to rank similar content.

Meaning, what topics did they clump together.

Hint: For internal links and cluster information run ScreamingFrog's visualization tools.
Do that for every competitor on page 1 for a pillar keyword and you'll notice that their clusters can be wildly different.

Your cluster should tell a comprehensible story and create a funnel.

Moral of the story:
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(