Yesterday I attended a talk on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) by Ebrahim Mehrno, hosted by the WordPress Neuchâtel Meetup and Coworking Neuchâtel. Here are some of my notes.
SEO is 40% science – it’s simple, you can learn that easily in a few months – but 60% is art – you need experience, think strategically for your business, think about backlinks. To write new content, you need to be artistic.
SEO terminology
Ebrahim started the talk with going through a list of terms used by SEO folks:
- Backlinks: relationships with your business. The process of linking between websites.
- Internal linking: a link inside of the site, e.g. from homepage to article.
- Linking-out: linking to another site.
- CTR: Click-through rates: % of people clicking on your Google results. Impressions = views on the first page of Google. CTR = people who click the link.
- SEA: “search engine advertising” – actually, all about Google Adwords.
- SEM: Search engine marketing.
- SMO: Social media optimisation.
- DA&PA: Domain Authority, Page authority. A ranking that goes from 1-100, used by SEO service MOZ. (“everything is estimation… but you can trust MOZ.”)
- SERP: search engine results page – another word for “the first page of Google”.
- Bounce Rate: how long do people stay on the website? “it’s about time, how much time they stay”. When they come to the landing page, do they click to another page? A good bounce rate: “40-70% is a good one. More than 70% is not a good sign”.
Some tools I discovered during this talk
- ahrefs.com – an analysis tool (for Competitive Analysis)
- KWFinder – a Keyword Research and Analysis Tool
- SEMrush
- Keyword Planner for Google advertising
- MozBar – a browser plugin
- Wappalyzer – a browser plugin
- SEOquake – another browser plugin
- DeepL – a translation tool
- A method to “fake” your location with Chrome Dev Tools
Book recommendations
A list of his must-read books:
- Confessions of an Advertising Man, by David Ogilvy (1963)
- Deep Work, by Cal Newport (2016)
- Zero to One, by Peter Thiel (2014)
- Guerilla Marketing, by Jay Levinson (1983)
These are the books I like to read again and again!
Ebrabim’s backstory
Ebrahim Mehrno is an SEO professional, and has worked for web agencies Enigma and SparkWorks. He learned the technical side of the job through a course from Power Coders. He had a very exciting career in Iran as an entrepreneur in education and marketing, before moving to Switzerland.