Ahrefs Tutorial

A Simple 7-Step SEO Tutorial
for Beginners
AHREFSTUTORIAL
UNOFFICIALEBOOKCREATOR

Foreword
ASimple7-StepSEOTutorial for Beginners
Some Digital Marketing Tools that you may consider in the next page. You can combine all these tools to
get optimal results.

ASimple7-StepSEO TutorialforBeginners
1. , sales funnel creator
It is obviously one of the best free sales funnel creator, landing page along with free email tools
with 100 subscribers, it is a must tool for digital marketer. The paid tier is also very good, the
features almost same with ClickFunnels but with far cheaper price.
Although you cannot use your own domain for free tier, but they put advertisement which is
your a liate link on the site you created. So, it is win-win solution, you get commission and
Builderall get customer.
Builderall
2. , easy eBook Creator
This is tool for eBook marketing. Combine it with BuilderAll and you can make a lead magnets.
The eBook created looks very professional. It has lifetime deal for about $20 using this
Sqribble
link with
coupon CINDERELLA
3. , 3D animation video creator
If you want to make stunning video easily, you can use Viddyoze. Though, to get the latest and
coolest template, you have to subscribe. But, the basic one is already good.
Viddyoze
4. , whiteboard and doodle animation creator.
Tool to make whiteboard animation or doodle (cartoon). Make informative video or tutorial
using this tool. Many digital marketer use whiteboard or doodle animation for their sales video
and converts.
DoodleOze

5. or ,
These tool will help you to voice over the video you made using other tools mentioned above. As
you can see in , voice over is very expensive. For 200 words, the cost around $10. If you use
or , you may not get super professional voice like Morgan
Freeman, but you will get natural sounding voice over that hard to di erentiated with human
voice. It is because they use AI Deep Learning for the text-to-speech. I speculate that they use
Amazon Polly.
Speechelo NewsCaster Vocalizer
Fiverr
Speechelo NewsCaster Vocalizer
6.
After you make video along with voice over, you can use video marketing blaster to help you
with the YouTube SEO. It is not instant result, but it is much better than if you research it
yourself.
Video Marketing Blaster

It’s as simple as that, and it cool!is
Want to wrap your head around , but getting scared o by technical terms and complex concepts?
This friendly article walks you through everything you need to know to start ranking in Google.
SEO
When I rst started learning , I was very nearly frightened o by terms like crawlers, backlinks,
, nofollow vs. “dofollow,” … the list goes on.
SEO anchor
text white-hat vs. black-hat
Here’s a fun perk of working in the industry—people always ask me some variation of this question.SEO
The industry seems to be plagued with technical jargon and complicated concepts, to the point where
people struggle to understand what needs to be done.
So…I’veheardthatthis thingisgoodformybusiness.Why?”SEO
Sounds like you? If so, you’re in the right place.
I’ve since perfected my pitch:
I’ll be preparing you for your rst steps in , all with explanations and language that are easy to
understand.
SEO
Whenyou’regoodat ,yourwebsitegetsonthefirstpageof
Google.
SEO
This usually gets an “Oh, that’s so cool. I want that!”
Let’s get ranking! But rst, a quick primer…

Whataresearchengines,actually?
What’s the big deal with Google? What makes it di erent from Yahoo and Bing? Also, what manner of
creatures are Naver, Baidu and Yandex?
They’re all search engines.
Essentially, what search engines do is collect information and content from all over the web and store it in
a database.
According to a November 2018 report by , 73% of all searches are powered by Google. In
second place is Bing with 7.91%.
netmarketshare
An almost shockingly huge di erence, yes.
So… what exactly makes one search engine so di erent from another?
The answer:
1. Size of their database;
2. How they determine which pages are relevant;
3. Specialization in market/type of content.
Google dominates the market because of the sheer size of its index, as well as the way it calculates page
relevancy: i.e., its algorithm (more on that in a bit.)
In short, it’s proven itself to be by far and away the best at answering peoples’ queries with appropriate
content. It’s now pretty much the way everyone in the world–except China– nds stu online.

Of course, more specialized search engines also exist. Naver, Baidu and Yandex are examples of search
engines that target speci c markets–Korea, China and Russia respectively.
Fun fact: YouTube is also a search engine!
HowdoesGooglework?
So we know who the biggest player in the game is; now we need to know how it works.
Here’s a simpli ed version of the entire process of search, split into three parts: crawling, indexing and
returning queries.
Or, in plain English: nding pages, storing them and then showing them to searchers.
Crawling
Imagine that you need to explore an unknown country. You start in a small town and drive down a road
that connects you to the next town. You take the next road to the next town, and the next road after that. If
you drive down every possible road from your starting point, you’ll eventually end up discovering every
town.
This is how Google works–except the towns are web pages, and the roads connecting them are backlinks.
So: Google rst starts with one webpage. It nds the links on these webpages and follows them to discover
other webpages. It then nds all the links on those pages, and the next pages, and the next. Eventually,
they’re able to discover pretty much everything on the web.
And how does Google do this?
It uses a computer program that’s commonly referred to as a crawler to “crawl,” or discover, pages and
links.
Sidenote.

Crawlers are sometimes also called “spiders”–because they, too, crawl the web.
In , we want to do everything we can to make the spider’s job easier. This, in turn, makes it easier for
our webpages to get crawled.
SEO
Indexing
After nding pages on the web, the spiders then extract data from them and store, or “index,” said data in
Google’s database—to then be shown in search results.
Here’s the fun part: spiders don’t actually view webpages the way humans do.
This is how you and I see the :Ahrefs blog

And here’s how Googlebot (Google’s web crawler/spider) sees the Ahrefs blog:

That’s the kind of data spiders collect and store: the date a page was created, its title and meta description,
main keywords, links to and from it and other details speci c to that search engine’s algorithm.
Try it out for yourself—think of your favorite website, then enter it into to see how it looks to a
spider. Pretty di erent, huh?
this page
In , we want to ensure that the data that Google indexes after crawling our pages is as accurate as
possible. This makes it much more likely that they show up in search results where we want them to.
SEO
Returningqueries
When you enter a search query into Google, it searches in its database for the webpages that are most
relevant to your query and displays them as search results. This relevancy is determined by its algorithm.
Unfortunately, nobody knows exactly what Google’s algorithm prioritizes…except for one universally
agreed-on factor:

The number of quality backlinks to the target page.
Google places strong emphasis on backlinks as a form of authority and relevance.
Even as a beginner, there are thankfully plenty of ways you can get yourself ahead of the game when it
comes to backlinks. We’ll cover this a little later on.
HowdoIoptimizemywebsiteforGoogle?
Now we know that webpages need to be crawled and indexed.
Which brings us to the big question: what do we do to help this process along? And when it comes down
to it…just what are we optimizing in “search engine optimization”?
The answer can generally be split into two categories, namely on-page and o -page e orts.
is all about adjusting elements on a webpage so that Google understands what it’s about,
recognizes how awesome it is and decides that it deserves to be #1 in search results.
On-page SEO
(This doesn’t happen all the time, but one can dream.)
On the other hand, is a fancy way to say “build lots of great backlinks so that Google thinks
of your page as trustworthy.”
o -page SEO
Generally speaking, the more and better quality backlinks you have, the more your pages are prioritized in
search results. We have Google’s algorithm to thank for this.

Don’t worry; you don’t have to wrap your head around everything right now.
Here’s a 7‑step tutorial you can follow along with easily which incorporates both elements mentioned
above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvwS7cV9GmQ
1.Understandwhatkeywordspeoplearesearchingfor
People search for your brand or business in tons of di erent ways.
For example, let’s say that you’re a hairdresser in San Francisco. People could search for “hairdresser in San
Francisco,” “San Francisco hairdresser” or possibly even “hairdresser near me.”
Although they’re all phrased di erently, they’re essentially asking the same thing.
So it’s really important to start by nding the most popular ways that people are searching for you. This
way, you can cater to and optimize your content for those phrases (i.e., keywords.)
You have two options: guesswork, or keyword research tools.
is one good (and free-of-charge) option that shows you the of any search
queries you enter.
Google Trends relative popularity

One caveat: while it’s great for tracking trends, what Google Trends doesn’t do is show the search volume
of said search queries.
So while we can see that “San Francisco hair salon” is clearly the winner here, it could, in reality, get four
searches a month while the other terms get one. In which case, none of them would be considered to be
popular at all.
That’s where Ahrefs comes in.
Take your best guess at a search term and enter it in . Let’s try “San Francisco hair
salon” in this case.
Keywords Explorer
From here, look at the “parent topic” feature that takes the #1 ranking page for your keyword and shows
the best keyword that this page ranks for.

There we have it: hair salon San Francisco!
Now that we know what people are searching for, we can either create content on our website around “hair
salon San Francisco” or modify existing content to t these keywords.
Keywords should always be chosen on a page-by-page basis.Important:
For example, if you sell multiple products or services, you’ll want to target di erent keywords for each
page. Google ranks webpages, not websites!
Also remember that in general, it’s not a good idea to blindly target broad, sweeping queries like
“hairdresser.” Not only is competition nearly impossible to beat, but it’s also di cult to gure out search
intent.
Which brings us to…

Want to rank for a topic or keyword? Then we need to optimize our content for “search intent.”
Here’s the coolest thing: we don’t actually have to guess search intent. Since Google’s algorithm already
works to serve the most relevant content for each search query, we can use this to our advantage. Just look
at the existing top results to gure out what people are looking for.
Think about our topic of hairdressing.
I can’t gure out what people want to know just by looking at this term on my own. Do they want to know
more about hairdressing techniques? Do they want to nd a good hair salon?
We can check this in Google by typing in the term (note that the results are automatically localized to
your country), or in Ahrefs’ —simply scroll down to “ overview” to see the top
results for your keyword.
Keywords Explorer SERP
Let’s dive into some examples.
2.Createcontentthatsearcherswanttosee

Looks like all the results are blog posts. The search intent here is clear: you need to write a blog post if you
want to rank for “short hairstyles.”
Here are the results for “short hairstyles”:

Putting Yelp’s dominance aside, individual salons are also ranking here. Seems like that’s what people
want.
Now, here are the results for “Korean hair salon”:

Some of the results are hair salon websites; some are blog posts. One is even from Wikipedia. And the
others are de nitions. Search intent is all over the place, so we have no idea what searchers want here.
Remember when we talked about how you shouldn’t target broad, sweeping queries like “hairdresser”?
This is further proof—in general, the less focused a query is, the less clear search intent is likely to be.
Bottom line: Spend some time analyzing search intent, and make sure you give people what they want to
see.
3.Getclickswithacompellingtitle
Finally, here are the results for “hairdresser”:

Let’s look at the actual Google results for “braid hair tutorial.”
Personally, that rst result would de nitely get a click from me. Not 1, but 23, tutorials which are creative
easy-to-do? Count me in.AND
So: make your titles (and descriptions) as click-worthy as possible. Make your content scream “
” in the search results!
CLICK
ME
We’ve talked about how to rank a webpage for popular keywords. But you don’t just want to rank, do you?
Searchers should actually click into your webpage.

1. Don’t forget the previous step and stray too far!Stay true to search intent.
2. Google cuts your title o with the dreaded ellipses (…) if it gets too long,
which hurts your click-through rates. Use to check that it falls within limits.
Avoid truncation.
this tool
3. See the example above: phrases like “deceptively easy”
make the title more enticing than just “simple.”
Make it descriptive (but not clickbait).
4. Sell your brand, whether it’s “free delivery”, “est. 1975”,
“only uses fresh milk from Hokkaido”…you get the gist.
Include your unique selling point.
5. Prioritize keeping your title natural-sounding and avoid
keyword stu ng. Be honest; how do you feel about this description?
It sounds unnatural, right?
Include your keywords if possible.
“We’re a hair salon in
California with the best hairdressers in California. Looking for a California natural hair salon?
We are one of the leading organic hair salons in California.”
Recommended reading: How to Craft the Perfect Title Tag (Our 4-Step Process)SEO
4.KeepURLsshortanddescriptive
Your could beURL https://www.co eegrinders.com/2018/01/15/287539884.php
Or it could be https://www.co eegrinders.com/bialetti-macinaca e-review/
Which one includes the keywords you’re looking to target with this article? Which one are you more likely
to click on in the search results?
With that said, here’s a good set of rules that will get you o on the right foot:
Unfortunately, there’s no exact science to writing compelling title tags and descriptions. It’s really about
understanding your target audience and knowing what matters to them—then crafting a title which gets
them to click.

state that “the lename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image.
For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than . .”
Google themselves
IMG00023 JPG
In the same vein, optimize all your images by including alt tags with descriptions.
This is the text that shows up whenever your image fails to load or if the user is using a screen reader.
Here’s what it’d look like:
<img src=”/my-new-black-kitten.jpg” alt=”A picture of my adorable black kitten, Mittens.”/>
Remember how we discovered that spiders don’t “see” images on pages the way we do as humans?
Naming them helps Google to understand the images better.
Here’s what ranking in Google image search looks like for “bad links”:
Keep your URLs as short and sweet as possible. The collective sanity of internet searchers thanks you.
5.Optimizeyourimages
It can be a little tedious, but make sure to name all your images appropriately.

Here, I plugged the Ahrefs blog into our and used the lter to check how
many keywords our images rank for.
Site Explorer featuresSERP
This tra c actually adds up over time, too!

It’s widely believed in the industry that user signals in uence rankings.SEO
Do your best to optimize things like your title and image tags—but keep in mind that user experience is
also important. If your content is di cult to read and digest, readers are going to leave (and for good
reason).
Start using <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags in your webpages. Think of these as a hierarchy for your content,
with <h1> being the most important (and only used once per post), and <h2> being a subheading. <h3> is
a subheading of <h2> and so on.
Here’s an example of a heading structure:
6.Makesureyourcontentiseasytoread
Recommended reading: Image : 12 Actionable Tips (for More Organic Tra c)SEO
Ahrefs Site Explorer > Organic Keywords > Apply “ features” lter: Tick “Image pack” and “Only
linking to target”
SERP
That’s a total of 1,529 keywords.
While they’re unlikely to be a huge source of organic tra c, it’s de nitely tra c that’s welcome.
Also, do your best to keep your image sizes as low as possible. You can use free tools like and
to do this.
Imageoptim
Shortpixel

Many of the above tips were heavily condensed from our original . Head on
over for more in-depth strategies.
Note: guide to on-page SEO
7.Gethigh-quality,relevantbacklinks
Backlinks are very, very important.
Let’s start by breaking it down a little. Firstly, what’s a backlink?
It’s an incoming hyperlink from another website, or referring domain, to your target webpage. In plain
English, when another website links to you, it’s giving you a backlink.
Use formatting like paragraphs, bolding and lists to break up big chunks of copy.
Don’t use big words—write how you would speak to a friend. So instead of using “feasibility,”
use “chance.” Writing is about communication, not about making yourself look smart.
Tools like help to analyze your copy and check if it can be easily understood.Hemingway
Include images (with alt tags, wink) to better illustrate your points and break up walls of text.
: Ponytails are greatH1
: Why are ponytails so great?H2
: They are easy to doH3
: There are lots of ways to style themH3
: How to tie a ponytailH2
: High ponytailH3
: Low ponytailH3
Place your keyword within these header tags strategically, but make sure they sound natural—avoid
keyword stu ng.
Additional tips to keep your content readable:

Sidenote.
Correlation does not prove causation, which means that this is not direct evidence that links help you rank
in Google.
So, how do you build a backlink?
For example, is a backlink to the Ahrefs Medium account.this
In general, any will tell you that the more and better quality backlinks you have, the higher your
chances are of ranking a page and the more search tra c you’ll get.
SEO
Findings from our support this as well: we found a linear correlation
between the number of referring domains and search tra c.
study of almost a billion webpages

Backlinks to backlinko.com – one of our competitors in the SERPs – via Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
Sounds interesting? We have an entire guide on .looting your competitors’ backlinks
But to get you started, here’s a super simple way to gain yourself a backlink right now—maybe even
within the next couple of hours:
Get links from people you already have a good relationship with.
Think about everyone you already have a connection to through your business: partners, stockists,
suppliers, clients, agencies.
Plenty of brands link out to others on their websites. You just need to reach out and ask.
There are tons of tactics and strategies: , , or even researching your
competitors’ backlinks and trying to replicate them are some.
guest posting broken link building

Backlinks you can get if you’re a stockist

Backlinks you can get from partners
Make a list of all relevant companies that might give you a backlink and start ! As always, be
gracious: ask nicely and don’t be a jerk if they refuse.
reaching out
There we go—that was a really simple link building strategy you can try right now. Not so scary, right?
When it comes down to it, getting backlinks is as easy as nding webpages where your link will add value,
then getting a person who can edit the page to add it.

Some great places to learn more: head over to our in-depth , or dive into our
YouTube tutorial on
easy link building tutorial
how to get backlinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ddo63kHHI
HowshouldIgetstarted?
is a marathon, not a sprint–you’re playing the long game.SEO
It’s not about a one-time optimization of ve existing pages and never looking at your website again. It’s
not even only about planning and creating that will get you steady amounts of passive
tra c.
evergreen content
These days, seems to be everything at once, from optimizing pages for search engine readability to
creating content that’s a perfect match to searchers’ needs.
SEO
Industry experts even seem to be in agreement that the itself is evolving. Once upon a
time, the most in-depth strategy involved stu ng a post chock full of the same keyword so that
Google would associate said keyword with the page.
de nition of SEO
SEO
Clearly, those times are past.
In general, you want to:
With that said, we’re obviously barely scratching the surface of the art of backlink building.

It can be very overwhelming to try and get everything right at one go, so my advice is: don’t bother.
Pick the area which suits your resources and aligns with your own skills the most.
If your existing team doesn’t have content creation abilities but love to network and do outreach, look at
backlinks instead. Start o by trying to build one backlink through any strategy at all. Then build ve
more. Then aim for twenty.
By the time you decide to invest in , you’ll have a website with a much stronger backlink
pro le to send those awesome authority signals to Google.
content creation
You get the gist!
Start o small and expand from there. You’ll learn the skills needed and gure it out as you go.
Overtoyou
We’ve just about covered the basics, I think!
That was quite a bit of information to get through; I’m glad that you made it all the way to the end.
Where to go from here? I highly recommend checking out the other articles for a ton more in-
depth strategies and case studies.
on our blog
Keep content up-to-date and relevant;
Produce quality content that targets high-converting keywords in your industry;
Actively work towards ;building backlinks
Monitor your keyword rankings and backlinks—if there are sudden drops, you can investigate
the issue (Do this easily with . Here’s a guide on );Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker how to set it up
Perform every so often to optimize your existing content.content audits

If you’re so done with reading right now and would prefer to switch to video, we also have lots of step-by-
step tutorials and guides over at our .YouTube channel
Hopefully, this post gave you enough background information as well as actionable tips to get started on
your journey. I’d love to know if it did, and how you progress from here on out.SEO

AHREFS is good
SEO Tools
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