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SEO Crash Course - Rank in Google and AI Search (1 HOUR!) — Transcript

by Caleb Curry · 9,818 words · 1,479 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Hey, welcome to your SEO master class.
0:02Everything you need to know to get
0:03started with SEO, especially when it
0:05comes to AI and having your website show
0:09up in AI results. Now, it does not
0:11matter how much time you write articles
0:13or do keyword research if you skip some
0:16of the fundamental SEO concepts that
0:18we're going to talk about in this video.
0:19This material will be valuable to you if
0:21you are a software developer building
0:23your own app or a business owner running
0:25your own site. For the last several
0:27months, I've been building my own
0:28software to help people build their own
0:30websites. And now I'm getting to the
0:31point where I'm really focusing in on
0:33SEO, helping any of my websites that
0:36I've created get the best possible
0:38chance of ranking inside of Google or
0:40other search engines, including LLMs.
0:44So, an LLM here would be ChatGPT,
0:46Claude, Gemini, any of the AI tools out
0:49there that you're doing requests to that
0:51can then go search for things on the
0:53internet. Very similar to the idea of
0:55SEO, but specific to AI. Before we even
0:59start to make improvements when it comes
1:01to SEO, we need to have a baseline. How
1:03do we actually know the performance when
1:05it comes to SEO?
1:07And our first goal is to figure out the
1:10baseline, how well our app or website is
1:13currently performing when it comes to
1:14search engines. Now, you will also often
1:17see SERP,
1:20and this stands for search engine
1:23result page. So, for example, if you
1:26look up best tech YouTubers, there's a
1:28chance I might show up in that search
1:30engine result page, probably at the very
1:32top. The page that comes up when you do
1:34that search is the search engine result
1:36page or SERP. Now, people typically
1:39think Google search, but there are other
1:41search engines out there. However, if
1:43you're doing things right for Google,
1:45it'll get you pretty far. There are some
1:47specifics when it comes to AI search
1:49we're going to talk about, but the two
1:50biggest things you need to be aware of
1:52is that we want to build out good SEO
1:54for Google. And the other thing that I
1:57think is worth talking about is that
1:58YouTube is the second biggest search
2:00engine right now. So, a lot of people
2:03don't even think of that as an option,
2:05but if you have some business or some
2:07site and you add some videos up on the
2:09YouTube that are really good when it
2:10comes to SEO, you could actually get
2:13better results than if you're just going
2:14and creating web pages on your website.
2:17But, I want you to think of this in
2:18multiple media types. Within this web
2:21page, we could have a video.
2:24We could also have some photos.
2:26And these photos can be found through
2:30image search,
2:32giving you additional ways for people to
2:34find your site. So, don't just think
2:36we're going to create a web page, put
2:38some text in there, and it's going to
2:40rank super well on the search engine.
2:43There's a chance, but you're going to
2:44have a much bigger chance of success if
2:47you think in all of the different
2:48possible media types. For example, me,
2:51most of my traffic is actually routed
2:53through YouTube. So, people find my
2:55videos, not only does that help people
2:57discover me, but all of the links to any
3:00of my personal stuff are in the
3:01description and people click through to
3:03those links. So, let's now go into the
3:06details of getting the baseline of SEO,
3:09so we can actually improve. There's a
3:11few different ways that we can track the
3:13performance over time and see how our
3:15website is performing when it comes to
3:17SEO. The first is to install some form
3:20of analytics for your site. Second is
3:22verifying your site in Google Search
3:25Console.
3:28We can actually see different search
3:31engine result pages
3:33and take a look at how our site actually
3:35shows up when people search for things.
3:37So, you can filter your searches to find
3:40your pages and see how they show up. And
3:42there are various other tools out there
3:43to help with that. And the last big
3:45thing I'm going to be talking about is
3:46the use of proxies. So, if we ignore
3:49proxies for a second, basically the way
3:51it works is we access the internet
3:53through our device.
3:55Let's say this is our computer or our
3:56phone or whatever it might be. Well, the
3:58problem is whatever we're searching
4:00here, someone else could search that
4:02from a different location or with
4:03different configuration or settings and
4:06get a completely different result. So,
4:08if you search your website up and you
4:09see it ranking, it doesn't necessarily
4:11mean it's ranking for everybody
4:13everywhere. And that's where the value
4:15of proxies come in. It's basically going
4:17to allow you to check the search engine
4:19result page from multiple different
4:22clients in different locations. For
4:24proxies, we will actually use the
4:26sponsor of this video, Data Impulse,
4:28which provides proxies in over 195
4:31countries. Data Impulse has over 90
4:34million residential IPs, traffic never
4:36expires, and no subscription is
4:38required. I'll show you hands-on how we
4:40can use Data Impulse later on in this
4:42video. But to get started, I will have a
4:44link down below. They have a very simple
4:46page you go payment structure, so you
4:48can get started very easily. And this
4:49will allow you to do things like check
4:51the search engine results across various
4:53countries. If you're just looking at
4:55your own search engine results, you're
4:57pretty much driving blind, so you will
4:59definitely want to give Data Impulse a
5:01try. Again, I'll have a link down below.
5:03Now, let's talk about SEO and AI.
5:06So, this is a very big topic and a lot
5:09of people are using
5:11AI as basically a new trick to get
5:15people to invest in SEO services.
5:18Basically saying, "Hey, you thought SEO
5:21was important? Well, it's not anymore.
5:23Actually, what's important is AI SEO."
5:26And you might hear a couple of different
5:27acronyms. For example, GEO
5:32or AEO.
5:35These are all basically variations of
5:37the same thing. These stand for
5:38generative engine optimization and
5:40agentic engine optimization. And there
5:42are probably a few other variations of
5:45this. Now, you might hear AI, you might
5:47also hear LLMs. Just if you are
5:49unfamiliar, LLM
5:52is large language model.
5:55And these are the models that are being
5:57used behind all of the major AI tools.
6:01So, if you're using something like
6:02Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, whatever
6:05it might be, they are all using large
6:07language models behind the scenes. So,
6:10you might hear LLM SEO or some other
6:12variations like that. So, there are some
6:14specific things you want to be aware of
6:16when it comes to LLM SEO, but at its
6:19core, the same SEO principles apply.
6:22Meaning, if we optimize our site
6:25correctly for SEO, there's a really good
6:28chance we will already be performing
6:30well with LLMs. Then there are just a
6:32couple of additional things that we can
6:34add in there to get the best possible
6:36result. But, don't think that SEO is
6:39dead. Instead, I want you to actually
6:41embrace SEO farther because if done
6:43correctly, you will get good results
6:45from search engine results and LLM
6:47results as well. Here's a quote from one
6:50of the developer docs on Google. Is SEO
6:52still relevant for generative AI search,
6:55GAO? In short, yes, the best practices
6:58for SEO continue to be relevant because
7:00our generative AI features on Google
7:02search are rooted in our core search
7:04ranking and quality systems. These
7:07features rely on AI techniques to
7:08highlight content from our search index.
7:12You don't need to create new machine
7:14readable files, AI text files, markup,
7:17or markdown to appear in Google search.
7:20Including its generative AI
7:22capabilities.
7:23As Google search itself doesn't use
7:25them. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean
7:27any of these extra things are not
7:29helpful as Google is not the only search
7:32engine out there. Google does
7:34specifically say, "Hey, it's not going
7:36to hurt if you do any of these extra AI
7:38things, but it's not specifically used
7:41for Google search and the Google AI
7:43results at the top of the page. And
7:45there are various other things that you
7:47can find in the documentation, which
7:49I'll have linked to in the notes for
7:50this video. So, I put together all of
7:53the notes that you can follow along as
7:55you go through this material. One simple
7:57example of something you can do for LLMs
8:00is to add an LLMs.txt,
8:04which can help AI parse and use your
8:06site. So, that's just one example. There
8:08are various others that we can talk
8:10about. The big thing though is that we
8:11want to start with the strong SEO
8:14fundamentals. So, let's focus on that
8:16first, and then we can add in the AI
8:19capabilities. Once you have both of
8:21these, you are going to be unstoppable.
8:24So, to best understand SEO, you should
8:26first understand a bit about how search
8:28engines work. Now, they might seem
8:30simple. You type in some words and it
8:32brings up a couple of different results,
8:34but behind the scenes it's a very
8:35complex system design problem, and these
8:37search engines have a lot that goes on
8:39behind the scenes. So, there's three
8:41main pieces that you should be aware of.
8:43So, this is
8:48how search engines work.
8:51And this is really just going to talk
8:52about the essentials you need to know
8:54for SEO. You could go into this topic
8:56forever, I'm sure, as there's people
8:58that dedicate their whole lives to
9:00building search engines.
9:02So, we have crawling,
9:07indexing, and serving.
9:11So, let's talk about crawling first. You
9:13might hear of crawlers or bots or
9:16spiders or any of these technical terms
9:19to talk about crawling. In the world of
9:22Google SEO, it's Googlebot that does the
9:25crawling, but at a high level, most of
9:27the search engines are going to work
9:28pretty similarly. So, whatever search
9:30engine you're using, they're going to
9:32crawl the content. And basically, the
9:35way that works is we have some
9:37destination a webpage
9:40or have images and videos and other
9:43media.
9:44And the bot is basically just going to
9:46navigate to these different things
9:49traveling through the links on your
9:52pages.
9:54So, that's crawling.
9:56And as it does this, all of the
9:58information
10:00is indexed. You can think of indexing
10:02just as a massive database that all of
10:04this important information goes into
10:07after it is reached by the crawler. And
10:09then serving, we already talked about
10:11that. That would be the search engine
10:12result page. So, whenever we search
10:15something, that search will go to the
10:17index, grab all the important
10:19information from the database, and give
10:21back a search engine result page.
10:25S E R
10:28P. And I forgot to put work here.
10:33Well, every single piece that we just
10:34talked about has important things you
10:36need to know about as the admin of your
10:39site. Starting off, if we're talking
10:41about crawling, we need to have a site
10:44map.
10:45This is a file. The site map just shows
10:48the crawler what is available within
10:50your site. So, the site map is very
10:52important because it shows how to
10:54navigate your site. So, let's say we
10:56have
10:57page A, but it's not linked to from A or
11:01from B. This would be an orphaned page.
11:05You can think of it almost as an
11:06unlisted webpage. We don't have any
11:08direct way to find this unless we know
11:12that specific URL for that page. If it's
11:15not linked to from another page and it's
11:17not in our site map, it's basically
11:19going to have a much harder time to get
11:21any rankings within the search engine.
11:24Now, there's two pieces to this. We can
11:26have the orphaned page not being linked
11:32and we could also have it not in the
11:35site map.
11:38So those are two different things you
11:39need to consider. They're not always
11:41going to be the same. So for example, we
11:43could put it in the site map
11:46but not have it linked. And in that
11:48situation, the crawler is still going to
11:49be able to find it. Or vice versa, we
11:52could have it linked
11:54and not in the site map and it could
11:57still be navigated to from that original
11:59page if it links to it like this.
12:02For a very important page, we want to
12:04make sure that it's both linked to from
12:07another page in your site and it is in
12:10the site map. However, some people
12:12choose to just put the very important
12:13stuff in the site map. So you might
12:15still link to certain things and not put
12:18it in the site map. That's okay as well
12:21if we want to basically prioritize
12:23certain pages within the site map. But
12:25you can adjust these for what you want.
12:27So
12:28an example might be
12:32in site map
12:36not linked.
12:40An example of this might be some custom
12:42landing page.
12:46If I have a software that I'm selling
12:49to, let's say, business owners and then
12:51I want to do a specialized page for
12:54software developers or content creators
12:56or whatever it might be, I might put
12:58that page in the site map but not link
13:01to it directly from the home page or
13:03from any other pages. In that situation,
13:06Google can still find that page because
13:08it looks at the site map, but an organic
13:11user is not going to navigate to that
13:13page clicking around on the menus. So
13:16there are use cases when a page might be
13:19in one and not the other. So it might be
13:21in the site map and not linked to
13:23directly or it might be linked to two
13:25and not in the site map. If it's not a
13:28very important page within the structure
13:30of the site.
13:31There are other things as well, such as
13:34robots.txt.
13:39And this is basically a permission
13:40layer, whether the crawler can navigate
13:43through your site at all. So, this will
13:45block crawlers.
13:48Think of it as a gate they have to go
13:50through,
13:52but it doesn't necessarily prevent
13:53indexing, especially if your page is
13:56linked to from some other site, for
13:58example. There's a chance it could still
14:00be indexed. So, there is a way around
14:02this. If you don't want your page
14:04indexed in the search engine result
14:05page, there's a no index option you can
14:08look into that can be part of the page's
14:10metadata. So, this is different than no
14:13index.
14:15But within the robots.txt, we can
14:18disallow
14:21navigation or even certain paths. But,
14:24an important thing here is that
14:25robots.txt is a public page, so don't
14:28use it to say disallow and then put a
14:30bunch of private URLs that you don't
14:32want people to know about. So, you can
14:33see that there are a lot of different
14:35things. There's different files you can
14:36use, different ways to control what
14:38shows up in the search engine, what
14:39doesn't. It could be a bit confusing,
14:42and some people just go in and start
14:44typing in keywords in their pages and
14:46fail to do some of the basic fundamental
14:48stuff like structuring their site map
14:51and their robots.txt
14:53to be optimal for the best chance at
14:55higher SEO. So, you might want to use no
14:59index for certain pages that might be
15:02variations of landing pages or things
15:04like we talked about earlier with the
15:06site map that we don't want users
15:08navigating to directly.
15:10Disallow is what is related to
15:13robots.txt,
15:15and this would prevent crawling. So, for
15:16example, if you had a bunch of different
15:19variations of the same page or minor
15:21variations in the URL structure, we
15:24could disallow certain paths to prevent
15:26potentially infinite possibilities for
15:29the crawler to navigate through. Or if
15:32for some reason the crawler is hammering
15:34a page that we don't need it to be
15:36crawling, then we could disallow it.
15:38There are various other use cases that
15:40you can read about for disallow, but
15:42that's just an overview.
15:43You should also be familiar with the
15:46idea of canonical pages.
15:50This structure should be seen as bad
15:53where we have duplicate data
15:55effectively. So, what we want to do is
15:57identify what page is the real thing,
16:01and that is said to be canonical. It's
16:04canon. And the indexing process of the
16:06search engine will go through similar
16:09pages and potentially group these
16:11together.
16:13And the search engine has information
16:14not only on your site, but everybody
16:16else's site as well. So, if we have
16:18another site over here
16:22of what you have over here, well, how
16:25does the search engine understand which
16:27one is the correct page and which one is
16:29a duplicate? As your reputation within
16:32the search engine increases, if somebody
16:35was to duplicate your site, copying your
16:38exact page, it would be able to identify
16:41that your page is the legit one. And
16:45this is actually a pretty common issue
16:47because sites can be duplicated whether
16:50it's intentionally to copy someone for,
16:53you know, fishing or scamming or
16:54whatever it might be, or if it's just
16:56being indexed and displayed on some
16:58other site. So, if you've done any
17:00searching for like forums or anything
17:02like that, you might see different sites
17:04that have the same data put onto that
17:07other site. And this is something where
17:09you might get some duplication of data.
17:12You should also be aware of the domains.
17:14So, for For could have coursecatalyst
17:19.com
17:21/pricing
17:23or we could have www
17:26.coursecatalyst.com
17:29/pricing.
17:30You could also have variations with the
17:32protocol HTTP versus HTTPS.
17:36And potentially, you could have
17:37variations with the URL ending in a
17:39slash versus not ending in a slash. And
17:42this process will figure out which page
17:45is correct one when we have very similar
17:48pages or duplicate content. However, if
17:51we're just trusting the search engine to
17:53do that for us, there's a good chance
17:55it's going to do it right or in the best
17:57way possible, but sometimes we want to
17:59explicitly say, "Hey, this is the main
18:02page."
18:04So, let's say we wanted to say that this
18:05page was the main page. This is called
18:08the apex URL, by the way, without the
18:10www. And we can specify these things
18:13clearly using canonical tags, something
18:16you can look into. Basically, when
18:18you're linking, you can say what the
18:21full correct URL is.
18:23When you have a link, you can say link
18:25rel
18:27canonical
18:31as well as within DNS, you can do a
18:33redirect from one domain to the other.
18:37So, you can learn more about the
18:38different types of redirects. I think we
18:40talk about this in more detail in my API
18:43architecture video, if you want to get
18:46the full run through of HTTP methods and
18:49the different number codes. But, having
18:52that redirect makes it very clear which
18:55domain is the canonical one and which
18:58one might just be something somebody
19:00accidentally types in or somebody links
19:02to from their own site or social media
19:05or whatever it might be. You can also
19:07configure stuff like this within the
19:08site map and within Google Search
19:10Console, which I'm not sure if I
19:12actually mentioned this formally, but
19:13what is Google Search Console? It's a
19:15way for you to actually verify ownership
19:18of your domain,
19:20your site, and get insights into how
19:22your page is showing up in Google search
19:24engine results, as well as different
19:26things you can configure and tell Google
19:28to change those results. So, definitely
19:30something you want to look into if you
19:32are managing your own site. So, we've
19:34talked about some of the fundamentals
19:35when it comes to actually crawling and
19:37indexing your page, but what is actually
19:40in the page is also very important.
19:42Especially when it comes to indexing,
19:44what you do on the page will help
19:45determine what the search engine does
19:47when it actually retrieves all of the
19:49information on your page. So, you have
19:51the ability to influence how the page is
19:54actually indexed. Some of these are just
19:56going to be basic checks you can do to
19:58make sure your page is structured
20:00properly.
20:02So, just having correct markup. I'm not
20:04going to get into the details of all of
20:06these, but you can do various SEO audits
20:09on your page to check for titles,
20:11specifically the title hierarchy as
20:14well. So, H1, nested H2,
20:19H3, all of those.
20:21Also, making sure you have just proper
20:22HTML throughout the entire page, so
20:24you're not using elements incorrectly or
20:27nesting things incorrectly. And then a
20:29big one here is the meta description,
20:32and this can influence how Google or
20:34other search engines interpret your
20:36site. What is your page actually about?
20:39You need to take a look at how you are
20:41linking things, making sure that's all
20:43done good.
20:45Proper anchor text.
20:46This list is a massive list. Basically,
20:49anything with basic SEO is what you want
20:52to concern yourself. Just making sure
20:54the page is actually structurally good
20:57and correct.
20:58If we have any images, you can have alt
21:00text.
21:02This is good for SEO and also for things
21:04like screen readers.
21:06Good size for the page, making sure the
21:09page loads fast and does not retrieve
21:11too much data.
21:14And I'm going to add into this the
21:15performance.
21:18So, this is all very important stuff,
21:20but this applies to all pages and has
21:22absolutely nothing to do with what
21:24you're actually putting in the page.
21:26It's just how you're structuring it,
21:28making sure it's structured as good as
21:29possible. The second big thing when it
21:31comes to the content is not the markup,
21:33but the actual
21:35content
21:37and intent.
21:39So, content would get into things like
21:41keyword search and Google Trends.
21:44And then high-quality content, basically
21:46creating stuff
21:49that's not commodity content, that's
21:52harder to reproduce. If you do something
21:54very basic and general, well, that's
21:56been done a million times. So, you want
21:58to infuse as much as you can into it to
22:01make it human, unique, interesting, and
22:04not something that's easy to reproduce.
22:06And then as for intent, well, this is a
22:08general idea of, "Hey, what's the
22:11purpose of the page?" But it's also kind
22:13of like this formal structure. There are
22:15different page intent types.
22:18So, it can be an information page, it
22:20could be a commercial page.
22:24Could be a transactional page.
22:27It could be a navigational page.
22:29You can do more research on these.
22:32There's also aspects like the freshness
22:34of the page. So, you might benefit by
22:37putting the date or the last updated
22:39date within the page and various other
22:41strategies. This is where I'd say much
22:44of the strategy portion is. So, for
22:46example, something I do with YouTube
22:48videos is I might make a bunch of videos
22:52and point people back to a very
22:55important video.
23:01And this is a pillar approach, but all
23:04linking back to some very high value
23:06content, and you put extra effort into
23:09keeping this one up to date and making
23:11sure it ranks. And these act as a way to
23:13basically boost that. That's just one
23:15example strategy, but there's like a
23:17million SEO strategies. Again, this all
23:19comes back to being able to track. So,
23:22if you can set up analytics,
23:24you'll be able to know what's working
23:25and what's not working when it comes to
23:27people finding your page. So, would
23:29highly recommend you have something like
23:30that set up. Next up, I would say would
23:33be performance and experience.
23:36We'll just cover this lightly.
23:37Basically, we want to make sure our
23:39webpage is very fast. There are
23:40different tools to audit that and
23:42actually check the performance of your
23:44page. You can also go to the Google
23:45DevTools within Google Chrome or
23:48something similar in other browsers.
23:50There are certain things you should
23:50concern yourself with like time to first
23:52byte. When you make a request,
23:55how long does it take to get the very
23:57first byte back from the server? That's
24:00very important because this time is kind
24:03of wasted or lost. We're not actually
24:05downloading anything. It's just to get
24:07to the server back. Then, how long does
24:09it actually take for the whole page to
24:10be downloaded? What's the actual file
24:12size of the full page? And then some
24:15stuff when it comes to user experience.
24:17Is the page responsive on mobile
24:20devices? Are we following all of the
24:22accessibility best practices and so
24:24forth? Again, what I would recommend is
24:27just auditing using some of the tools
24:29out there, and I'll show you one when we
24:31get to the on-screen portion of this
24:33video.
24:34This one is huge and probably the
24:36hardest to fake. And that is actually
24:39building authority. The biggest way to
24:41basically track this idea is backlinks.
24:46And that is if this is your site and we
24:48have someone else's site over here, and
24:50they link to your site, this action is a
24:53huge win. But it's not necessarily going
24:55to help you if this is a low quality
24:57site. So, it's quality over quantity.
25:00You don't just want to pay some
25:02backlinking service that's just going to
25:04link to your site from a million
25:05different low quality sites. What we
25:08want to do is get linked to from
25:11reputable sites. And that reputation
25:14follows to your site. You'll hear
25:16various terms for this. Some people call
25:18it link juice. Basically, we need to
25:21boost the reputation of our site. And
25:24then the last big thing is AI-related
25:27search results and improving those.
25:30So, it is possible to check generative
25:35AI performance.
25:40And I will show you some of that. So,
25:42there are certain steps you can do to
25:44increase the chance of your page showing
25:47up in LLMs, but you can also track what
25:50is working. So, if you have your site
25:52and you're checking analytics, you'll
25:55have
25:56source showing where did people come
25:58from. And if you're seeing results from
26:01ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude or any
26:04of these LLMs, then we could check what
26:06pages are these people going to and what
26:09could we do more of, increasing the
26:10chance further that we show up in the
26:13response for any LLM prompts. Now, I
26:15just wanted to share a bonus section
26:17here, and this only is relevant if you
26:19are working within a multi-tenant
26:21platform. So, for example, the site I
26:24built allows people to create their own
26:28site. So, this is my site,
26:31my app, and this allows people to create
26:34their own site. So, this will be
26:37relevant for you if you are the app
26:39developer creating a multi-tenant
26:41platform or if you are building a site
26:45that is powered from a multi-tenant
26:48platform. So, for example, if you have a
26:50Shopify site, Wix, Squarespace, Kajabi,
26:54any of these multi-tenant platforms, and
26:57basically the only thing you need to be
26:59aware of is that certain things might be
27:01out of your control. So, you might need
27:03to check with the settings of the app to
27:07see if you can set up analytics, if you
27:10can check your sitemap to see that it
27:14correctly created all of the pages you
27:16need in that sitemap.
27:18If you can connect your site to Google
27:20Search Console, and all of these various
27:22steps that we've talked about so far,
27:25you can still do a lot of that from one
27:27of these instances, but this would be
27:29most likely a collaborative effort with
27:32the app that your site is being built
27:34from.
27:35So, they might give you some built-in
27:36features to do those things, or they
27:38might give you a lot of different
27:39customizations, and you can work with
27:41them directly. So, nothing specific you
27:43have to worry about with this. I just
27:45wanted to mention it
27:48as many sites out there are going to be
27:51part of a multi-tenant system. Now, if
27:53you're doing something like self-hosted
27:55WordPress, where you actually install
27:57WordPress, that's not a multi-tenant
28:00system. That's your own site that you
28:02fully control. So, that's an overview of
28:05the most important concepts, just to
28:06give you an idea of what you should look
28:08into. Now, let's get into some hands-on
28:11going through some of these things and
28:12getting some practice. And thank you for
28:14joining me so far. Again, I will have
28:16links to the notes and any important
28:18other stuff in the description. Let's
28:20now get started with the hands-on
28:21portion of this lesson. I'm going to
28:23show you exactly how you can start
28:25seeing your performance with SEO, and
28:27know what your site looks like within
28:28search engine result pages. So, you're
28:30not just driving blind, making changes,
28:32writing articles, hoping that something
28:34sticks. We're going to get started with
28:36Data Impulse, and this will allow us to
28:38check search engine result pages across
28:40various geo-locations.
28:42You can get started for as little as a
28:43dollar per gigabyte for residential
28:45proxies. So, I'm going to choose a
28:47residential proxy, which gives you all
28:49of these capabilities, which will work
28:50for what we're trying to do. This will
28:52now show here under our products. Now,
28:54I'll do the proxy setup and all the
28:56configuration on Chrome, but for
28:57actually using the proxy, I'm going to
28:59go with Firefox. We're going to download
29:01this FoxyProxy Standard, add to Firefox,
29:04and then from the extensions, we will go
29:06to options,
29:08and then proxies, and add. Now, within
29:11Data Impulse, you will have the new
29:13option here under products, where you
29:15will get the login, password, and all of
29:17the other information you need. So,
29:19we'll start with the proxy host, paste
29:21that here,
29:22and then I'll go in and fill out the
29:23rest of this information. Now, you'll
29:25actually ignore this information over
29:26here, and the country of choice that you
29:28want to use will be appended to the
29:30username, such as _ _
29:33cr.ca
29:36for Canada. You can find these values by
29:39going into the proxy configuration in
29:41Data Impulse, and you can see that
29:44appended to the username right there.
29:46And then we will hit save. Now, you can
29:48check your IP with any IP checking site,
29:50such as IP-API,
29:52and you can see this is from Ontario,
29:55and that is with that proxy selected.
29:57There are also some buttons here that
29:58you can use, such as clicking your
30:00location,
30:01and that will show you your IP address.
30:03And now, when we do a search, such as
30:05restaurants near me, you can see we get
30:07this allow access to your location. I'm
30:10going to block this. It kind of defeats
30:12the purpose of the proxy, but you can
30:15see here the search results are showing
30:17Canadian websites.
30:20Similarly for Bing, you can go through
30:22here and see all of the .ca domains. So,
30:26you can switch between these, going from
30:28Canadian to your original location, or
30:31you can add multiple in here to switch
30:33between countries. So, a quick check for
30:35software engineering fundamentals, which
30:37is going to come up later, I can scroll
30:39through these. Most of these are .org or
30:41.com. However, there is a .ca for Amazon
30:46and then there is a YouTube video.
30:48Again, YouTube super valuable for SEO.
30:51I'm not on YouTube doing the search, but
30:53that video is actually pulled into
30:55Google search results. And you can see
30:56that's a video of mine that ranked here
30:58for software engineering fundamentals.
31:00Now, I disabled it and I'll do a refresh
31:03and you can see that video did still
31:04rank, but so did my website here,
31:06software engineering fundamentals.
31:08Switching back to Canada.
31:12Refresh and that's totally gone. So,
31:16that's interesting. Basically, I'm
31:18ranking in the US or for my search and
31:21not through the proxy. So, while I might
31:23be super excited because I'm ranking, it
31:25might not be a universal experience. So,
31:28this allows me to start figuring out why
31:30that might be the case. But, I can't
31:31actually fix that unless I know it's a
31:33problem. So, that's why a proxy can be
31:35very valuable for you. Now, over in the
31:37dashboard, I can see that usage. So, it
31:39looks like I've spent 7 cents from all
31:41of the various things I was tinkering
31:42with in this video. And how that traffic
31:45is actually charged it is down below.
31:47Special thank you to Data Impulse for
31:49supporting this video. I will leave a
31:51link for you guys to give it a try. Go
31:53sign up through this link as that will
31:54let them know I sent you their way. But,
31:56none of the search engine result page
31:58checking is going to matter at all if
32:00we're not able to rank for anything. So,
32:03let's figure out now how to actually
32:04approach improving our SEO. Let's first
32:07start talking about intent. This is very
32:09important if you want your pages to show
32:11up in any search engines. This is
32:13basically a way to describe what type of
32:16content you would expect for the search
32:19term you are using. Now, there are
32:20certain categories of intent, but
32:22sometimes the intent behind a search
32:25term is not 100% clear. For example,
32:28with software engineering fundamentals,
32:30this could be a blog or some kind of
32:32instructional information. As you see
32:34this YouTube video here.
32:37Or if we go back to
32:39the non-Canadian search, we might see
32:42some landing page software engineering
32:44fundamentals.
32:46This is clearly designed to sell
32:48something. So, I would say that software
32:50engineering fundamentals is a mixed
32:52intent search term. Now, these
32:55categories of intent, I would say are
32:57kind of informally defined, meaning
32:59there is not one source of truth for
33:02what the different options are, but I'm
33:04going to give you the overall
33:05categorization you should be familiar
33:06with. The first would be informational,
33:09so that would be this here for example,
33:11software engineering fundamentals,
33:13purely informational designed to teach
33:15or instruct. Here's an example page with
33:17primarily commercial intent, best
33:20software engineering online courses for
33:212026. It shows a couple of different
33:24options comparing the two and then lists
33:26their own courses in here. So, it's kind
33:28of like nurturing content or sales copy,
33:31ultimately trying to lead people to some
33:34sale. However, once you actually get to
33:35that sale, that would be transactional
33:37intent. So, back to my software
33:39engineering fundamentals page, I would
33:40say this has a little bit of both cuz I
33:42do talk about some of the common
33:44questions and stuff, but the primary
33:47purpose of this page is to get people to
33:48buy. And then there is navigational
33:50intent. So, this page is really just
33:52trying to get you to log in, nothing too
33:54crazy about it. So, when somebody looks
33:56up a login for a certain site, they know
33:59exactly what page they're trying to get
34:00to. They're not trying to learn, compare
34:02options, or make some purchase. Why
34:05exactly does intent matter? Well, when
34:07we are talking about search terms,
34:10something somebody searches in the
34:11search engine, there is some implied
34:13intent behind what they are searching.
34:15And this is how the search engine knows
34:17what to put on that page. So, when
34:19you're trying to rank for certain
34:21keywords, you have to first ask, what
34:23would the intent be behind this search
34:25term? The easiest way to figure that out
34:27is just look at the results for a
34:29certain search term, and whatever the
34:30intent is behind those pages is what
34:33would be expected to compete in that
34:36search term. In other words, if you're
34:37trying to compete for some search term,
34:39you want to rank for it, but you're
34:41using primarily informational intent for
34:44a search term that has higher intent for
34:46commercial or transactional, you have a
34:48harder time competing for that keyword.
34:51Now, as I showed, there might be
34:53multiple different types of sites that
34:55show up for a certain search term. Some
34:57might be educational, some might be
34:58transactional or commercial, and some
35:01might just be navigational, but usually
35:03there is an overwhelming obvious answer
35:05when it comes to the intent. However, to
35:08caution you, if there's not a very clear
35:10winner when it comes to the intent of a
35:12certain search term, it's probably a bit
35:14broad for you to be trying to compete
35:16for it. So, if I just wanted to take
35:18over the search term software, this is a
35:20very general term. It's not clear if I'm
35:22trying to buy software or download some
35:24software, learn about software, or
35:26whatever it might be. It's very general,
35:28and there's going to be a ton of
35:29possible search engine results that
35:31could fill that page, so it's much
35:33harder to compete for that spot. So,
35:36let's talk about some of the different
35:37ways you can come up with search terms
35:39that you might want to create content
35:41about or create pages for. One option is
35:43Google Trends. This is probably the
35:45easiest. So, I can just come in here and
35:46say Agent AI or whatever it might be,
35:49and I can see the interest over time.
35:51So, I'll probably want to zoom out a
35:53little bit,
35:54probably the past 3 months,
35:58and get an idea of how things are
35:59trending, but also comparing it against
36:02something else, as that'll help me
36:04understand relative to something I
36:06already know if it's popular, if it's
36:08growing or shrinking.
36:10So, you can get some idea from this.
36:12From here, you can also suggest search
36:14terms
36:15and use their little AI tool here, and
36:17it'll give you some options. So, this is
36:19a good way to figure out some of the
36:20trends going on, but these are all going
36:22to be pretty general topics. So, you can
36:24see machine learning, Agent AI, large
36:26language models. If you're going for
36:29ranking for certain search terms, you
36:31might want to do some more specific
36:32things. So, you can see some of these
36:34searches here. This might be something I
36:37would target instead of just general
36:39machine learning. I would target
36:41something specific. What is machine
36:43learning used for? Five top use cases.
36:45That might be an example article I could
36:47write. That's just going to give you a
36:49much higher chance of actually ranking
36:50and getting some views to your page. So,
36:53that's the first thing. For other ideas,
36:55you can actually go to the search engine
36:56results page, see all of these options
36:58here, as well as this people also asked.
37:01You can scroll through, get some ideas,
37:03check out the AI overview, and then at
37:05the bottom, there's probably some more.
37:07So, here are some of the other search
37:08suggestions. For more advanced options,
37:10you can go into Google Ads Keyword
37:12Planner, discover new keywords.
37:16We'll search Agentna AI, get results.
37:19You can put in some keywords, or you can
37:21start with the website.
37:22And it fills it with a bunch of
37:24different keyword ideas.
37:26So, you can go through here, figure out
37:27what things are doing well, finding some
37:30open opportunities. Now, these values
37:32here can be useful, such as the
37:34competition, but this is for ads. It
37:37doesn't necessarily translate to
37:39competition for organic searches, so
37:42just keep that in mind. However, it does
37:44show you the volume, which is very
37:46helpful. And you can find the most
37:48valuable search terms here. So, software
37:50engineering technology has the highest
37:53bid on here, as well as software
37:55engineering program, program software
37:57engineering. So, I'm guessing a bunch of
37:59schools or different courses and
38:00programs are advertising, and the
38:02competition is pretty fierce for those
38:05terms. Let's now talk about how do we
38:06actually track performance and improve
38:09over time. You'll definitely want to
38:11start with Google Search Console,
38:13verifying ownership of your site. Here,
38:15you'll be able to see the performance
38:17for your site in search engines. So,
38:19here's a quick example. On Monday, we
38:21got eight clicks from 259 impressions,
38:24and you can see the actual search terms
38:26that my site showed up for. The big
38:28things I would care about are the
38:29impressions and the click-through rate.
38:32Now, obviously, the click is kind of the
38:35same idea, but the click-through rate is
38:37the ratio between these two. So, for
38:38example, for Code Breakthrough, we have
38:40one impression and one click.
38:42It's a super high click-through rate.
38:44Click-through rate does not necessarily
38:45translate to better SEO or higher
38:48ranking, but it does translate to more
38:50total visits. So, your site might
38:52actually be getting ranked in searches,
38:54and you might not even know of it until
38:56you go here, but you then might find
38:58that people are not actually clicking on
39:00your site. And that's an indication that
39:01you might need to change some stuff to
39:03actually improve the click-through rate.
39:05But this might show me that, "Hey, if
39:07I'm able to improve that click-through
39:09rate, I could actually get organic
39:10traffic just from that Software
39:12Engineering Fundamentals term that we've
39:13been seeing throughout this video. But
39:15it's especially nice to know that even
39:17though I migrated my entire site to my
39:20own platform, I'm still getting rankings
39:22for some of these terms. And if you're
39:24wondering how your site actually shows
39:26up, you can use site colon, then put
39:28your URL, and then here are the
39:29different ways that my page is being
39:31shown inside of Google. So, this will
39:34allow you to see if anything weird
39:35stands out. You know, my first thought
39:37is this favicon could definitely be
39:39improved. Now, most of this data here is
39:41just parsed from Google, so
39:43that'll change based off of what's being
39:45searched. I also don't like this here,
39:47how I have the same name twice, so I
39:49should probably go and improve that.
39:51Now, Google Search Console is just one
39:52piece of the puzzle. You also want to
39:54have analytics for your site.
39:58So, here's an example analytics page for
40:00my app. We have the visitors for last 24
40:02hours,
40:03the different paths that have been
40:05visited.
40:07And a big thing here is the referrer.
40:09So, how are people coming to this site?
40:12You can see there's 20 visits from
40:13google.com.
40:15Now, when we open this, you can see what
40:17pages were actually hit. But, that's
40:19actually not what I would primarily use
40:21analytics for. Rather, I would figure
40:22out what other ways people are finding
40:24me. Specifically, in this case, YouTube
40:26is a huge driver of my traffic. So,
40:29instead of spending a ton of time on
40:31some of these other options, I might
40:32just go heavy on YouTube. How can I make
40:34that even better since it seems to be
40:36working? Sometimes people focus on
40:38improving the worst of the list, trying
40:41to boost everything up when maybe you
40:42just want to go heavy on the things that
40:44are actually working already. You can
40:46also find location, environment, times
40:48of day. All of these things are very
40:50important. Another big thing is the
40:52visit duration. We want people actually
40:54stay on the site. You should also see
40:55how many page views per visitor, so you
40:57can see I have 833 views split across
41:00366 unique visits from 314 unique
41:04individuals. So, on average, we're
41:06getting a little less than three page
41:08views per visit. There's a lot of other
41:10different stuff you can do in analytics,
41:13such as UTM tracking, which allows you
41:15to be a little bit more specific on how
41:16somebody reaches a certain page. So, if
41:19I wanted to have an affiliate program
41:21and wanted to track who sent people to
41:23my site, I could use UTM tracking for
41:26that. Now, my platform is actually a
41:28multi-tenant platform. So, what that
41:30means is I can go in here and grab just
41:34a single site,
41:36apply,
41:37and now I can see the visits for just
41:39that site, which are the majority of
41:40views. But, then I could compare to
41:42other sites under my platform. Or, I
41:45could go for the actual platform page
41:46itself and see the details on that, the
41:50different pages people are viewing. So,
41:51you can see most of my traffic are end
41:54users, people watching course content,
41:56not potential customers of my platform,
41:58course creators. Now, this is just for
42:00the last 24 hours, so you can expand
42:03that out and go to this month, for
42:04example.
42:06And you can get a lot more detail on
42:07where people are visiting. Most sites
42:09are going to have a sitemap.xml,
42:13and that's going to show the most
42:14important pages for the search engine to
42:18go through as well as a robots.txt.
42:22And you can see they added to the
42:23disallow the API and LP directories. And
42:27then llms.txt is a little less common,
42:30but it'll probably become more common.
42:32Here's an example of one that I found.
42:35So, this is just text describing the
42:37product and the different pages and how
42:39an AI could go through this material.
42:41Next up, let's talk about your page
42:43speed. This site is very helpful,
42:45pagespeed.web.dev.
42:47You will want to get these scores as
42:48high as possible for both performance
42:51and for SEO. And it'll go through here,
42:53measure all of the different values and
42:56different areas that could be improved.
42:58As well as within here, there is some
43:01stuff on AI.
43:03Uh there's a lot of stuff here, but this
43:05agentic browsing, the accessibility tree
43:07is not well-formed. So, that's something
43:09I should go and improve. And then there
43:11are some not applicable ones that you
43:12might want to consider such as webmcp,
43:15which we're not going to get into in
43:16this lesson, but you might want to add
43:18something for that or llms.txt.
43:21And then within Google Search Console,
43:23you can also get generative AI features.
43:25So, this is in beta right now, but this
43:28will show the impressions you've
43:30received through the AI summary within
43:33Google. Now, I'm pretty sure this is
43:34just for within the Google Search AI
43:36summaries, but you can see I was able to
43:38get mentioned 12 times just in this one
43:42day. So, that's pretty awesome. Now
43:44again, this is going to be a lot better
43:45if your core SEO is good. Like I didn't
43:47do anything to optimize for LLMs and I'm
43:50still getting views. So, let's talk
43:52about how you can actually improve your
43:53SEO rankings. It's a little scary
43:56because if you make a change, it's not
43:58guaranteed to improve the results. It
44:01could actually make things worse. So,
44:03you have to be really careful with your
44:04changes. So, instead of just thinking,
44:06"Hey, how could I get this to rank
44:08higher for a search term?" I'm going to
44:10think, "What are the least destructive
44:12things I can do to this page to likely
44:14increase its ranking without the risk of
44:16it being lowered in the rankings or
44:18removed from that search term
44:19altogether." So, let's talk about some
44:21of the major changes and improvements
44:23you can make, and then we'll go from
44:25least destructive to a little bit
44:27destructive to very destructive. Now,
44:29for each one of these, if it's something
44:31seems like you might want to do, you can
44:33do additional research on it. Some of
44:35these will directly affect your
44:37rankings, and then others in this list
44:39might just help with your overall site
44:42reputation and branding. Again, you can
44:44learn the specifics of every single
44:46thing that the Google search engine
44:48cares about, but it's going to vary
44:51across different search engines, and
44:53these things change over time. So, what
44:55might be super important today might
44:57become less valuable tomorrow. So, we're
45:00going to talk about the most important
45:01things you should do, even if right now
45:03it's not a direct influence on your
45:05search engine ranking. So, let's get
45:07started with things that you should
45:08always do. You should have a custom
45:10favicon. That's the little image that
45:12shows up with your website. I showed you
45:14one earlier and said that, "Hey, it
45:16could probably be improved." If you're
45:17on a multi-tenant platform, they
45:19probably give you a default one. You
45:20will want to update it to a custom
45:23favicon. You will want to update any alt
45:26text or anything dealing with
45:28accessibility, as this can help with
45:31your site's reputation and even
45:33potentially avoid some legal issues as
45:36well. You'll want to update any outdated
45:38information or outdated dates. So, this
45:41is something that you will want to
45:43change even though the content of the
45:45page might change, you don't want to
45:47have any outdated info. So, for example,
45:49I might have conflicting information on
45:50the page accidentally saying, "We have a
45:5214-day free trial." Or, "We have a 7-day
45:54free trial." If you notice something
45:56like that, you should make that change
45:58because you want to have the page be
45:59correct and up-to-date. Meta
46:01descriptions, you should change these.
46:03This is to help with click-through rate.
46:05So, if you can set a description for
46:06your page, you should. That might not
46:07always show in the search engine results
46:09page because Google still might choose
46:11what to put there, but it can show up
46:13and it can help with click-through rate,
46:16which can overall get you more visits to
46:18your site and boost your long-term site.
46:21Although Google does say click-through
46:22rate does not affect the ranking within
46:24the search engine result page, it's kind
46:26of one of those things that's still very
46:28important to do and has an indirect
46:29benefit. You should add links to your
46:32own pages. When you post something new,
46:34you can go update pages and get internal
46:37links pointing to those pages. This is
46:39how search engines can know certain
46:41pages are more important or have higher
46:43ranking within your site. When you have
46:45links, you should anchor the text of
46:48where it's supposed to go, not the click
46:50here. So, for example, you could say,
46:52"Get my 30-day challenge." Highlight the
46:5630-day challenge instead of "Click here
46:58to get my 30-day challenge." The alt
47:01text is used by crawlers to know the
47:03intent of that click, where it should be
47:05going. You should redirect 404s to
47:08correct pages. If you have people going
47:10to old pages, you want to get those
47:12updated to the latest stuff. Now, let's
47:14talk about some of the riskier changes.
47:16Removing links, this can actually be
47:18more dangerous than adding links because
47:20when you remove a link, you are
47:22basically reducing the authority of
47:24whatever page it points to. So, you
47:25could basically have side effects
47:27changing one page and potentially
47:29hurting another page. Now, these are all
47:31internal links if you're linking to your
47:33own pages, but this is still very
47:34important. You should be cautious with
47:36bigger content changes. So, if I wanted
47:38to do a complete rewrite of my landing
47:41page, that could be more dangerous,
47:42especially if I've already ranked for
47:44certain things, like software
47:46engineering fundamentals. Most likely,
47:48I'm just not going to modify that page
47:50all that much cuz I know something in
47:52that page is working. So, I'm not going
47:54to go in there and redo everything. And
47:55if I am going to redo things, I'm going
47:57to do it slowly, working mostly from the
47:59bottom up as the things at the top you
48:02should consider to be more important
48:04than the things at the bottom.
48:05So, I would first work through my FAQ
48:07and lesson structure, maybe then my
48:09about me, and then some of the more
48:11specifics to the actual product. So,
48:13yeah, be cautious with higher-up content
48:16changes.
48:17Not that you can't do them, just
48:19understand it's riskier. You don't want
48:20to change too much and then Google no
48:23longer finds that page to be relevant
48:25for a certain search term. Now, let's
48:27talk about the riskiest. The first I
48:29would say is incorrectly modifying your
48:31robots.txt. If you accidentally say,
48:33"Hey, no search engines allowed." Well,
48:35that's going to be bad. The next thing
48:36would be a change of intent for a page.
48:38So, if I have a certain URL, let's say
48:41it's software engineering fundamentals,
48:43and I change it from a landing page to
48:45an instructional page, that would be a
48:47change of intent and can harm rankings.
48:50Next up, we have title changes. This
48:52one's a big one. So, you can set the
48:54page title in the metadata, and that's
48:56really how you can tell the search
48:58engine this is what this page is about.
49:00So, if you're ranking for what your
49:01title says, I'd be very cautious about
49:04changing it. There's a good chance you
49:05could be removed from that ranking. Next
49:08up, we have URL or slug changes. So, if
49:11I change it from software engineering
49:12fundamentals to beginner coding, that is
49:15a completely different URL structure.
49:17Not only will the previous page 404, but
49:19now we have different terms in that URL
49:21structure. This is basically like
49:23restarting. The 404 redirect to the new
49:26page can help, but it's not going to be
49:28as good because the previous search
49:31engine results pages that I was showing
49:33up in will no longer feature that URL.
49:35And then the last one here is a domain
49:37migration. So, a big example of this is
49:40going from a subdomain to a full domain,
49:43a custom domain. You're basically
49:45restarting all of your SEO progress.
49:48Now, if you're still at the point where
49:49you're using a subdomain, you're
49:51probably not that ranked, you're
49:53probably still pretty early on in this
49:54journey. So, I would still switch to a
49:56custom domain because a custom domain is
49:58higher value. You're going to have a
50:00higher chance of being successful with
50:02that custom domain. So, even if you lose
50:03out on a few rankings you might have
50:05landed, you will have a higher value
50:07domain that will give you more results
50:09over time. So, it's kind of like
50:11investing. And then you'll want to 301
50:13the previous domain so that it points to
50:16the new domain. Do this as early as you
50:18can so you're not building a bunch of
50:20reputation on a subdomain, which is
50:22basically its own thing.
50:24So, if you have calebcurry.wordpress.com
50:27or whatever, and you switch that to
50:29calebcurry.com, first off, how did you
50:31get my domain name? You're basically
50:33going to lose all of that original
50:34progress with the subdomain. Now, if you
50:37do any of these things and you mess it
50:38up and the rankings actually go worse,
50:40well, mostly it's reversible, you know,
50:42unless you change the actual URL
50:44structure and you can no longer visit
50:45that page. It's more going to be ups and
50:48downs. So, track this over time, make
50:51small improvements, and what you can
50:53actually do is add new content with
50:56different intent or different URL
50:57structures or different keywords to
50:59amplify what you already have. So, if I
51:02wanted to talk more about software
51:04engineering fundamentals, I could create
51:06some content pieces like the top five
51:09software courses, and that could be
51:11nested under blog/software engineering
51:14fundamentals or top five software
51:16engineering courses. And I could talk
51:18about the content from a different
51:19angle, more informational or more
51:21commercial, and then link to the landing
51:23page for that actual transaction. This
51:26is how you can get different keywords,
51:28get more rankings overall, and improve
51:30the SEO ranking overall for your site.
51:33And then lastly, give it time because it
51:35takes a lot of time to build this
51:36reputation. Like I mentioned, I
51:38transferred my domain to a new platform,
51:41and I removed some pages, added some
51:42pages, made some big changes, and I'm
51:44still getting traffic from earlier SEO
51:47ranking even without trying just because
51:49I've been building on the same domain
51:51for a number of years now. The last tip
51:52I have is percentage improvements are
51:55often outweighed by volume improvements.
51:58So, if I can create YouTube content and
52:01send a bunch of traffic to my site, it's
52:03just going to make my site overall
52:05better. And to me, that's going to give
52:07me more results than if I have 10 views
52:10from the search engine, optimize a bunch
52:12of things, and get it to 20 views. When
52:15you're really early, you just want to
52:16send as much traffic to your site
52:18manually as possible using social media,
52:21YouTube, which is kind of a social
52:23media, newsletter, and all of the things
52:25that can just send people to the URL,
52:28not through a search engine. Eventually,
52:30you'll start to get backlinks, which
52:32will improve the reputation of your
52:34site. And as you go, you add pages and
52:36articles, and you compound your organic
52:39search engine views over time. This is
52:41going to be way more valuable than over
52:43optimizing nothing. Because if you 2x
52:46nothing, you still have zero. So, to get
52:48that initial burst, I really recommend
52:51direct traffic. And then, once you have
52:53some actual traffic, doing those
52:55optimizations is going to make a much
52:57bigger change. Cuz if you're getting
52:58thousands of views and you do a 2x
53:01improvement, you're going to now have
53:03twice the thousands of views. So,
53:05long-term, focus on both of these. Don't
53:07worry too much about optimization
53:09ignoring direct traffic through social
53:12media and backlinking and all of this
53:14stuff. But don't ignore SEO either and
53:16only focus on just sending people there
53:19directly. You want both of these in your
53:21long-term strategy. Also, this is a very
53:23vast topic, so I encourage you to follow
53:25SEO content like this. If you enjoy this
53:28content, be sure to subscribe, hit the
53:30notification bell, hit like. That really
53:33helps out my channel. And also, check
53:34out things like the SEO subreddits or
53:36different threads or websites that will
53:39give you up-to-date information so you
53:41can absorb this information over time
53:43and work to improve your sites. So,
53:45thank you for watching. If there's any
53:46specific content from this video you
53:48want me to do a deep dive on, let me
53:50know because I think this topic is
53:52becoming an increasingly valuable skill
53:54and something you want to focus on if
53:56you are a business with your own website
53:58or if you are a software developer
54:00building your own apps. Building the
54:01actual app is less of a challenge now
54:04with the help of AI, but getting the
54:06word out there about your app, that's
54:08the challenging part. And SEO and AI SEO
54:11can be very helpful in that process.
54:13Thank you so much for watching. Again,
54:14I'll have all the important links down
54:16below. Stay tuned for the next lesson.

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