Everything a Marketer Needs To Learn for HubSpot’s SEO Certification

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is among the high expertise which might be wanted by advertising professionals. It’s getting more difficult every single day to grasp the ins and outs of this artwork type. HubSpot presents an SEO certification that may improve your information and improve your profession. In this text, we’re going to let you know what it is advisable know to acquire the HubSpot SEO certification.

Why Become SEO Certified?

According to a report from HubSpot, roughly 64% of entrepreneurs actively make investments time in SEO, with 63% of manufacturers making the identical funding. Given the problem and challenges of getting a web site to look within the high Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), it is sensible to study as a lot as doable about SEO ways and techniques. Aside from trying good on one’s resume and/or LinkedIn web page, a certification is a superb method to turn out to be extra educated about any given topic.

The HubSpot SEO certification could be very complete, that includes 24 movies, and it supplies entrepreneurs with all the info they’ll want so as to turn out to be proficient at SEO. 

The course is damaged down into particular matters, beginning with an summary and introduction to the course, then strikes on by the fundamentals, after which into extra slim facets of SEO, and takes roughly 3 hours to finish. We will stroll by every part, stating the highlights and the issues the scholar will wish to bear in mind.

Each lesson contains a number of movies, and most embody a quick quiz, together with a useful resource part that options the slides from the movies, transcripts, hyperlinks to SEO instruments and web sites which might be talked about, and hyperlinks to associated articles and blogs.

Niva Maharjan, marketer, SEO knowledgeable, and content material author for MagnetTechnologies, a Nepal-based digital advertising service, reported in a recent blog that when she started working as a gross sales and advertising govt for the Himalayan Glacier Adventure and Travel Company, the whole advertising crew was anticipated to obtain a number of certifications from Hubspot Academy. It’s a nice method to get everyone on the identical web page, working from the identical information base — for free of charge. 

It’s not simply companies which might be trying for job candidates which might be HubSpot licensed, there are lots of faculties that require HubSpot certifications. The Mike Ilitch School of Business, a part of Wayne State University, requires college students taking the Inbound Information Technology course to turn out to be HubSpot licensed. Additionally, Northeastern University now accepts HubSpot certifications as switch credit for their Social Media Concentration in both the Master of Professional Studies in Digital Media or the Masters in Corporate and Organizational Communication. In reality, HubSpot companions with over 500 faculties and universities to align their curriculum with trade expectations.

SEO Basics

HubSpot begins its SEO college students out by instructing them the historical past of serps, and the way they grew to become a a part of our lives. The first classes present particulars about how the web is constructed and the way serps are utilized by nearly all of individuals as they browse the online, with 93% of worldwide site visitors originating from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps. Although there are lots of serps out there, resembling Bing, Yahoo, and others, this course is primarily involved with Google.

There are 4 movies on this part, starting from three to seven minutes, for a whole of 33 minutes of instruction protecting matters resembling: 

• Why is SEO necessary?
• How do serps rank your content material?
• How to create an SEO technique.
• How to measure your web site’s SEO authority.

Once the scholar has watched the movies in every lesson, there may be a quick quiz to see if they’ve retained what they watched, after which a possibility to work by an SEO worksheet. 

Key takeaways from this lesson:

• 68% of on-line experiences begin with a search, utilizing a search engine.
• A wholesome SEO technique balances constructing relevancy with constructing authority.
• The three phases of rating are: discovery, relevance and authority.
• In the context of SEO, E-A-T stands for experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, all of that are traits that Google makes use of to rank your web site.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for SEO embody: natural site visitors, key phrase rating, conversion fee, bounce fee, web page load time, and backlinks established.
• A backlink profile is a checklist of all of the websites which might be at present linking again to your web site, and which pages they’re linking to.

On Page and Technical SEO

This lesson is the place we truly start to get into SEO practices. Students find out how Google indexes internet pages, what meta descriptions and hyperlink textual content are, and trade greatest practices for web site optimization. Also mentioned is how inner linking impacts SEO, how URLs needs to be structured, and the introduction to technical SEO. 

Seven movies, which vary from two to 14 minutes for a whole of an hour of instruction, cowl the varied facets of SEO, with the emphasis on studying methods to optimize a web site for serps to crawl and index. 

• Videos for this lesson embody the next:
• How to optimize content material for SEO
• Allowing Google to index your pages
• Writing and enhancing meta descriptions
• Writing descriptive hyperlink textual content
• Internal linking
• URL construction
• Technical SEO fundamentals

Key takeaways from this lesson:

• Heading tags present hierarchical construction to a internet web page. Title tags specify the title of a internet web page in search outcomes, and needs to be underneath 60 characters if doable.
• Words like “click on right here” or “study extra” usually are not efficient hyperlink descriptions, and neither is the web page’s URL. 
• The most necessary facet of making SEO content material is to deal with creating user-friendly, related, and authoritative content material. 
• A sitemap is an XML file that’s in your internet server (host) that lists all the URLs in your web site. It is utilized by serps to index your web site, and is submitted by Google Search Console.
• You want a meta description as a result of it will increase clickthrough charges and visits from natural search, supplies customers with the proper info when it’s wanted, and will increase visits from social. The meta description needs to be 155-160 characters, and may embody one or two key phrases.
• Your web site needs to be securely served utilizing a legitimate SSL certificates.

Keyword Research for SEO

In this lesson, college students will study a step-by-step course of for doing key phrase analysis for their web sites, then they’ll discover ways to use matter cluster methods to enhance SEO. 

There are three movies on this lesson that whole 31 minutes of instruction about key phrase analysis, and methods to use it to tell your content material technique. 

Videos for this lesson embody the next:

• Why key phrase analysis is necessary.
• Why are matter clusters necessary.
• How to do key phrase analysis.

Key takeaways from this lesson:

• Keyword analysis tells you what individuals are looking for, how many individuals are looking for it, how troublesome will probably be to rank for a search question, and what format individuals wish to obtain info in.
• Head phrases (additionally known as fats head) are normally single-word key phrases with a lot of search quantity and competitors. 
• Body key phrases (additionally known as chunky center) are 2-3 phrase phrases with fairly good search quantity, barely greater than head phrases, with barely much less competitors.
• Long tail key phrases make up nearly all of searches on-line. “Long tail” refers back to the graph exhibiting the demand curve, fairly than the variety of phrases within the search question.
• The matter cluster mannequin is a method of organizing a web site’s content material pages utilizing a clear, deliberate web site structure. It is completed by creating pages that focus on clusters of particular and related content material matters, all linked from a centralized hub that’s known as a pillar web page. The pillar web page must also present a complete overview of the subject, and the subject needs to be related to the focused key phrases of your web site.

Link Building for SEO: Scaling Your Backlink Strategy

Backlinks are extraordinarily necessary for SEO, as they inform the various search engines that your web site is authoritative (as a result of different websites hyperlink to it as a result of the content material is related). That’s why hyperlink constructing is so necessary for bettering the SERPs of your pages. This lesson discusses hyperlink constructing, and tells the scholar methods to calculate the variety of hyperlinks your web page wants so as to rank on web page one of many SERPs.

As with many issues in life, hyperlink constructing depends upon constructing significant relationships with individuals that can result in extra hyperlinks down the highway. One hyperlink constructing tactic that’s talked about on this lesson is using press requests. Press requests come from journalists which might be writing tales, and they’re trying for consultants on particular matters. They use quotes from the consultants of their articles, and sometimes will hyperlink to the knowledgeable’s web site. The thought leaders in your enterprise can present quotes that can be utilized, which end in backlinks to your web site from high-quality media websites. 

This lesson options 4 movies that run a whole of 24 minutes, together with the same old quiz and a “press request alert response worksheet.” 

Videos for this lesson embody the next:

• Why is hyperlink constructing necessary for SEO?
• How many hyperlinks does your content material must rank on web page one?
• Why relationships are the important thing to hyperlink constructing at scale.
• How to scale hyperlink constructing utilizing press request alerts.

Key takeaways from this lesson:

• Google cares how fascinating different individuals assume your content material is, and measures that high quality primarily by backlinks.
• Backlinks point out to Google that your web site is a high-quality useful resource that others take into account worthwhile and related.
• People usually tend to organically hyperlink to informational content material, and much much less prone to hyperlink to product pages.
• To get on web page one of many SERPs, you want as many backlinks because the at present ranked pages which might be there. You can examine your personal and competing websites utilizing instruments resembling Moz’s Link Explorer.
• Unique and completely different content material isn’t essentially a good factor in the case of SEO — emulate what the highest rating websites are doing in the case of content material.
• Build long-term relationships with bloggers, companions, enterprise house owners, influencers, and journalists as a part of your backlink technique.

Optimizing Your Website for Rich Results

This lesson is concerning the construction of SERPs, and the way a show space known as wealthy outcomes works, and why web sites would wish to have their pages featured in them. Additionally, this lesson covers structured knowledge and methods to use it along with your web site, and methods to optimize content material so it may be used as a featured snippet on Google’s outcomes pages. 

There are three movies totalling 28 minutes of content material on this lesson, in addition to a possibility to take part within the HubSpot neighborhood to debate wealthy snippets. 

Videos for this lesson embody the next:

• What are wealthy outcomes?
• What is structured knowledge?
• Optimizing featured snippets.

Key takeaways from this lesson:

• Google makes use of structured knowledge (a markup language that’s in a standardized format for offering particulars about a web page and classifying the content material) to higher perceive the contents of a internet web page, in addition to to create wealthy outcomes.
• Rich outcomes are visually enhanced search outcomes that embody further particulars concerning the web site, together with the conventional title, URL, and meta description.
• You can not optimize your internet pages for all types of rich results, nonetheless you possibly can optimize them for a number of sorts of wealthy outcomes.
• SERPs can embody natural outcomes, wealthy outcomes, featured snippets, information graphs, and paid advertisements.
• Local brick-and-mortar companies ought to create a Google My Business web page to enhance native SEO. Many individuals use voice search on cell units to go looking for “companies close to me.”
• Featured snippets present individuals with on the spot solutions to particular questions. Google creates a featured snippet that’s displayed as a abstract of a solution to a individual’s query, and it’s displayed on high of the natural search outcomes. The reply comes from a internet web page, and in addition contains the web page’s title and URL. 
• Web pages could be crafted that reply particular questions that relate to the subject material of the web page, resembling “what’s the common temperature in Honolulu, Hawaii?” The reply needs to be concise, and cleanly formatted. It must also be on the high of the web page, and fewer than 50 phrases.

SEO Reporting

This lesson discusses the best way that your SEO progress could be measured by monitoring particular SEO metrics, and utilizing reporting instruments resembling people who HubSpot supplies, together with Google Analytics, and Google Search Console. 

There are two movies on this lesson totalling 18 minutes of viewing, together with a possibility to take part within the HubSpot neighborhood to debate SEO goal-setting and reporting. 

Videos for this lesson embody the next:

• How to report in your SEO efforts.
• Create your SEO reviews.

Key takeaways from this lesson:

• It’s not sufficient to work on SEO with out setting measurable objectives and KPIs and analyzing the outcomes recurrently. 
• Since SEO is an iterative course of, the main points gained from measuring your outcomes could be alternatives for further SEO practices. A extremely rating key phrase could possibly be driving site visitors to your web site, however you don’t have a lot content material referring to that key phrase. Time to create extra content material across the key phrase.
• Do not change too many issues in your web site without delay; over-optimization could be detrimental and may have an effect on your rank on the SERPs.
• Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Moz’s Link Explorer are free to make use of, and could be extraordinarily helpful for monitoring your progress.
• Search site visitors is measured in click on throughs, pageviews, classes, and distinctive views, and completely different SEO instruments could contradict each other and use completely different phrases. 

The HubSpot SEO Exam

There are 60 questions within the examination, randomly drawn from a pool of 73 questions, all of that are answered within the movies and transcripts. Typically the examination takes about an hour to finish, although college students are given 3 hours to complete it. To move, college students should reply not less than 45 questions (75%) appropriately, and if they don’t move, they need to wait 12 hours earlier than taking it once more. Upon profitable completion of the course, college students are offered with a digital certificates, together with the flexibility to show the certificates on LinkedIn in addition to their web site. HubSpot additionally emails the examination breakdown to the scholar, and tells them what number of questions they obtained right. The HubSpot SEO certification is legitimate for one 12 months.