bloggingThis course will be available within the next few weeks. Just check the NICA website at this link and you will find it alphabetically. Of course, we suggest taking the Introduction to Blogging and Blogs – Creating and Marketing Content courses first, as they will give you a great foundation for the Search Engine Optimization course.  

This third course in the blogging series discusses that SEO is a process of optimizing your website and blogsite with the goal of improving your rankings in the search results and getting more organic (non-paid) traffic.

The history of SEO dates back to the 90s when search engines emerged for the first time. Today, it is an essential marketing strategy and an ever-growing industry. Search engine optimization focuses only on organic search results and does not include Pay-Per-Click (PPC) optimization. Both SEO (Organic Results) and PPC (Paid Results) are part of Search Engine Marketing.

The search engines are used by internet users when they are searching for something. You want to provide the answer to that something. It doesn’t matter whether you sell a product or service, write a blog, or anything else – search engine optimization is a must for every website and/or blogsite owner.

To put it simply: SEO is all the actions you do to make Google consider your website and blogsite a quality source and rank it higher for your desired search queries.

The topics presented in this course are:

Module 1 – Introduction to SEO

  • Key Aspects of SEO
  • Useful Vocabulary
  • Learning SEO

 Module 2 – Keywords

  • Keyword Research
  • Keyword Tools
  • Keyword Difficulty

 Module 3 – Basic Site Setup for SEO

  • Setting Up Your Blog
  • SEO Plugins for WordPress
  • Meta Descriptions and Page Titles

An addendum is also provided via a link at the end of this course. It is a detailed, step-by-step instruction guide for those who want to build their own blogsite. This information is not included in the exam. And, if you choose not to develop your own blogsite, our Associate Member Mary Gillen is an excellent web developer and will create a professional one for you.