Before starting, if you haven't read the first topic about the Basics of SEO, I recommend you take 4 minutes of your time to read it, it’s very important.

In today’s article, I will give you briefly the most important 'Free' SEO tools and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to have a starting point for tracking efficiently your SEO journey.

So if you want to learn more about them, you will find links to detailed articles at the end of every tool.

Let’s go 🤩

📊 8 SEO KPIs to get started

The following key performance indicators are the most used ones by SEOs, make sure you track & analyze them to have more accurate conclusions.

• Organic Traffic (Search Clicks): for every click you get from SERPs, an organic click is recorded. Track your organic traffic by keyword to know which keywords are performing well and which ones need improvements.

  Eg. Check the red tag number 1 on the image above.

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Google Search Console

• Impressions (Search Visibility): how often your website is shown in search results. When your website is shown on search results = Impression recorded.

  Eg. Check the red tag number 2 on the image above.

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Google Search Console

• Position (Search Ranking): your ranking positions on SERPs for your targeted keywords. Try to make a list of your targeted keywords and track them daily/weekly/monthly.

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Manually on Google + Google Search Console

• Clickthrough Rate (CTR): it's simply the ratio of total clicks and total impressions on search results. High CTR = High Traffic Volume.

  Eg. Check the red tag number 3 on the image above.

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Google Search Console

• Branded Traffic: any traffic that comes to your website by searching for your brand/company name. This metric lets you know your brand awareness level. Check the image below, an example of organic clicks by brand/company name.

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Google Search Console

  

• Events: let you measure user interactions on your website like clicks on a link, purchase events, submitting a form, ... Analysing this metric will help you discover which actions and elements are taking users' attention in your website.

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Google Analytics

• Sessions: a set of user activities(events) on your website that happen during a specific period of time.

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Google Analytics

• Bounce Rate: the percentage of visitors that leave your website without engaging (without making any events).

  Low percentage = More events, more time on your website

  🛠 SEO Tool needed to track this metric: Google Analytics

🛠 6 Free essential SEO tools to get started

There are hundreds of SEO tools to discover during your SEO journey, but I will give you the most needed to get started.

The following Free SEO tools are your starting point and essential platforms to get started correctly.

1- Google Search Console ⚙️

After creating your website, this is the first and most needed tool for all SEOs, Google Search Console is your best friend for tracking your website’s performance and technical SEO. GSC lets you track your organic traffic by keyword, impressions, CTR, ...

2- Google Analytics 📈

Google Analytics (GA4) provides you with more advanced data about your website.

Besides giving the total number of visitors & real-time visitors, you can track events, sessions, bounce rate, and more.

3- Google Business Profile 📄

For local SEO, creating your Google Business Profile (Formerly Google My Business) lets you reach new local customers from Google Search & Google Maps.

4- PageSpeed Insights 🚀

When it comes to your technical SEO, you need to have a fast-loading website to prevent users from leaving your website, PageSpeed Insights lets you know your website's page speed score and what makes it slow.

5- Google Keyword Planner 🔑

For keyword research, you will need to have a keyword data source and Google offers you this via the Keyword Planner, which provides you with keyword search volume with keyword ideas and suggestions.

6- Mobile-Friendly Test 📱

With more than 60% of searches performed on mobile devices, it's strongly recommended to have a website mobile-friendly, and Google already offering you a "Mobile-Friendly Test" tool to test your website's mobile-friendliness.

📚 Learn less, 💻 Practice more

Remember, always take it easy, don't try to know everything, learn the minimum, and start practicing. LEARN BY DOING is the best approach to learning 📖

Like always, I hope you enjoy reading this article and finding it useful, let me know your thoughts and opinion 💬

In the next article, you will know the topic when it's live 😆

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter(𝕏) and subscribe to the newsletter to get notified 🔔

Thank you for your precious time 🙏

So, don't expect a very detailed article that consumes a lot of your time ⌛️

Let's begin, taking 'Google' as our principal Search Engine,

How do websites get ranked in Google?

Getting ranked on Search Engine Result Pages(SERP) works on a process of 3 steps and I will simplify them for you,

• 🔍 Crawling: Google has robots called Web Crawlers, and their work is to explore the web & download the content found on internet pages.

• 💾 Indexing: The content crawled gets analyzed and stored on the Google database that's called Google Index

• ✅ Serving Results: When a user searches a query such as "Best SEO Course" in the Search Engine, Google shows the best optimized & relevant results from the Google Index database for this query.

SEO stands on 2 essential parts

To simplify your understanding, SEO is divided into 2 essential parts,

1) On-page SEO

Related to any improvements made inside your website. The following are the most important elements to take into consideration about the ON-PAGE SEO

• Meta tags: <meta> tags help Google get data & information about your page. The most important meta tags are the meta title & meta description, but there are also meta robots and social media, and some other less important meta.

• Website structure: Your website should be well structured using categories & subcategories, structuring pages by importance, and using relevant URL slugs(eg. https://domain.com/this-is-a-slug).

• Keyword Research & Optimization: This is a very important step before creating your page content because you will get keyword ideas and have your list of keywords to use wisely on your content and this is important to get well-ranked. In the next article, I will give you the tools needed to accomplish this step.

  💡

  A full article about topic clusters, keyword research & optimization coming soon in the course

• Page Content: Using a well-structured hierarchy(eg. <h1> title, table of contents, <h2>-<h6>subtitles & main sections, <ol>-<ul>lists, <table>tables, <img>images breadcrumbs, follow-up content ...) helps Google and users easily understand your content.

• Internal Linking: Having links between your more & less important pages passes the "page authority" between them and helps Google index your pages rapidly and improve your ranking.

• Technical SEO: Securing your website with HTTPS protocol, making your website mobile-friendly, optimizing your images, improving your page speed, and your Core Web Vitals can give a great push for your website ranking in the search engine.

• Sitemap:(a technical SEO element) This is simply a file that you submit to Google where you provide information about your pages & content, so Google can read this file to crawl your site more efficiently. More about the sitemap here

• Robots.txt file:(a technical SEO element) A robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which URLs the crawler can access on your site. This is used mainly to avoid overloading your site with requests. More about the robots.txt file here

2) Off-page SEO

Related to any improvements made outside your website. The following are the most important elements to take into consideration about the OFF-PAGE SEO:

• Local SEO: Adding your website to Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) lets you appear on Google Maps and get more local visitors.

• Link building: This is the act of getting links referring to your website to boost the “authority” of your pages in the eyes of Google and rank better in the SERP.

  💡

  A full article about link building coming soon in the course

• Directories & bookmarks: This method stands on getting backlinks by submitting your website on some directories and bookmarks (you should be careful of those websites' quality).

• Guest posting: This method lets you get backlinks by creating articles/content to be published in other blogs and linking to your website.

• Forums & blog comments: Commenting on articles and forums is also a good way to have links to your website. (should be do-follow links)

• Social signals: Sharing your website content & links on social media lets you improve your social reputation and SERP ranking.

• E-Reputation & Branding: Promoting your website as a brand is a great way to increase your e-reputation and enlarge your user base. This will let you have users searching for your brand by name.

Last word

I hope you enjoyed reading the article and finding it useful & valuable.

Let me know in the comments 💬 if you have any opinions or thoughts 💭

In the next article 📝 I'll dive into the key performance indicators (KPIs) 📊 that will help you measure the success of your SEO efforts & essential tools 🛠 to use for your SEO journey.

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter(𝕏) and subscribe to the newsletter to get notified 🔔

Thank you for your precious time 🙏

The goal of this course

I made the decision to create this course and to share my SEO knowledge, for a simple goal, explain SEO to anyone searching for a course easy-to-understand (created with the principle of "Explain like I'm five" )

Prerequisite

Do you have a laptop with an internet connection and a *website(domain+hosting)? Great, you are well prepared ✅

\if you have you don't have a website where you can apply your knowledge, you can create a [blogger website](https://www.blogger.com/) and practice. It's free.*

What is SEO in brief?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is simply a process and series of actions & techniques made by an SEO Specialist in order to improve the ranking of a website in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).

Is this course enough to label yourself as an SEO Specialist?

From my point of view, you're a student who is learning SEO until you practice and get some results then you can call yourself a junior SEO Specialist.

I can assure you that if you put the knowledge of this course into action and practice it, you will improve your experience and discover more and more aspects of SEO.

Practicing is the key to moving from a junior SEO Specialist to an SEO Consultant

What you will learn in this course?

I will try to cover all the important topics of SEO with use cases(if available), from the essential tools and the basics of SEO to auditing and reporting, without promising you to give very detailed explanations, since I will try to simplify the course as possible as I can to let you understand all the essential aspects of SEO in short articles (not bored) and in an easy way.

Disclaimer

All present and future articles may be updated if needed for improvement reasons.

Make sure to follow me, and subscribe to the newsletter to get notified when a new topic gets published.

Happy to have you on board & see you next week with a new article.

Thank you again for your precious time 🙏

If you haven't seen my "About" section, I'm MOUSTAID Hamza, a digital entrepreneur active as a full-stack developer, CTO & SEO consultant, and in this first article, I will try to talk spontaneously and give you an honest view about myself personally & professionally and I’m planning to keep myself as authentic as possible, no lies, no fake stories, no hidden requests. (Tell the truth or tell the truth)

Enjoy reading!

Who's MOUSTAID Hamza

I'm a Moroccan guy, born in 1996,

I lived my whole childhood with my parents in Bejaad, a small city in the center of Morocco.

We thank god for the wonderful parents he gave us, and we can never thank them enough, because they have made every possible effort to raise us to stay humble, be grateful for what we have, and not be related too much to money.

This taught us to work hard in order to get what we want without hurting people directly or indirectly.

I have two brothers, I'm the middle one, so you know that we had a lot of meaningless children's fights 😂

Btw, both are my partners in work now.

My education path

Without digging deeper and getting bored with the details,

I have a master's degree in "Computer Engineering".

I participated in the WorldSkills Abu Dhabi 2017 as a "Web Design and Development" Competitor, you can find the link to my profile here,

Since the end of 2017, when I started my journey as an employee, so, I worked as a webmaster, web developer & SEO Specialist for more than 3 years,

At the end of 2021, I started my hustle life and currently, I am active as a digital entrepreneur and working in different fields, active as a full-stack developer, CTO & SEO consultant,

Last but not least

I started this content creation journey, to improve myself and at the same time to share my thoughts, knowledge, and experiences hoping to help the maximum of people,

I hope you enjoyed reading this short story about me, and let me know if you have any questions or thoughts in the comment,

If you're not yet subscribed to the newsletter, click here to subscribe, to be notified when I publish a new article.

I'm active mainly on Twitter(𝕏), Follow me if you're a daily user of it.

🙏 Thank you again for your valuable time 🙏