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The Open University

Search Marketing: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The Open University and Target Internet via FutureLearn

Overview

Discover tips and techniques to get smart with search engine optimisation (SEO)

Getting your search engine optimisation (SEO) right is the all-important way to increase the visibility of your website on popular search engine results pages (SERP).

This two-week course is your step-by-step guide to SEO and how to get the best from it.

Develop practical skills in search engine optimisation

You’ll learn about search engine crawlers or spiders, including how they work, algorithms and ranking factors, and how to focus on keyword research to find out what your target audience is searching for. You’ll be introduced to a range of free tools to help identify search behaviours and phrases, so you can create content that answers your users’ needs.

Explore how to maximise your web pages to achieve quality search results

You’ll learn about on-page SEO and how to optimise your web pages for search engines to crawl and index, including how to write meta titles, meta descriptions and link text. You’ll discover how to use link building and social signals to boost your results by getting others to ‘point’ back to your content from their websites and social media posts.

Put user behaviour at the centre of your SEO strategy

By understanding user behaviour and learning how to carry out an SEO audit, you’ll learn how to adapt content to improve the discoverability of your website. You’ll also explore the basics of technical SEO that you need to consider, such as load times and how to structure URLs.

Learn from digital marketing experts

You’ll learn with Lead Educator Daniel Rowles of Target Internet, who will share his expertise gained from more than 20 years as a digital marketing practitioner.

By the end of this course, you’ll have the skills and knowledge to look at your website critically and make practical improvements straight away.

This course is designed for anyone who would like to increase their awareness and understanding of search marketing. You don’t need any prior knowledge, although any work experience will help contextualise and enhance your learning.

Syllabus

  • Understanding how organic search works
    • Welcome to the course!
    • Search engine algorithms and ranking factors
    • Keyword research and user intent
    • Search engine spiders
    • SEO audits, planning and tools
    • Week 1 review
  • Step-by-step search engine optimisation
    • Welcome to the week
    • On-page optimisation
    • User behaviour
    • Link building
    • Social signals
    • Technical SEO factors
    • Week 2 review

Taught by

Daniel Rowles

Reviews

4.5 rating at FutureLearn based on 2 ratings

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