Search engine optimization is complicated.

For many, it’s considered a dark art, peppered with unknowns and uncertainties. And while some marketers consider it an exciting challenge, others back away from it in fear that they’ll simply never get it right. 

However, the truth is, if you are doing any kind of online marketing, having even a basic understanding of SEO can help you deliver more successful strategies and campaigns.

So to help set you up for success, we’ve put together a 30-day plan designed to give you a better sense of how SEO works, how it fits into your strategy, and what tools you can use to measure and report on your efforts. While this post won’t turn you into an SEO pro overnight, we promise it’s full of resources that will make your life as a digital marketer just a little bit easier.

Let’s get started. 

Section 1: SEO Concepts

After completing days 1-4 you’ll have a basic understanding of how search engines work, a clear sense of the difference between on- and off-page SEO, as well as an overarching understanding of how Google’s algorithmic updates have shaped how people approach SEO today.

Day 1: Learn about how search engines work.

Before you start digging into SEO concepts, you’ll need to develop your understanding of how search engines work.

To ease yourself into your 30 days, sit down and watch this video by the former head of Webspam at Google, Matt Cutts. By the end of it, you should have a better understanding of how search engines work.

Day 2: Build out your SEO reading list.

SEO is a constantly evolving phenomenon. For this reason, a huge part of being “au fait” with SEO is reading. Thankfully, there are a number of really great SEO blogs out there that can help you keep on top of the ever-changing SEO landscape.

Here are some blogs you should bookmark right now. We encourage you to make some time each day to visit at least a few of them:

• Moz
• HubSpot Marketing Blog
• Search Engine Land
• Search Engine Watch
• Backlinko
• Point Blank SEO Blog
• MatthewBarby.com
• SEOnick
• DejanSEO blog

Day 3: Learn about SEO’s role in inbound marketing.

SEO and inbound marketing are part of the same ecosystem. The relationship between them is symbiotic — SEO aids the success of inbound marketing by ensuring content is found, and inbound marketing enables SEO by creating relevant quality content that people want to link to.

To really understand how to create a successful inbound marketing strategy, inbound marketers must understand where SEO fits with inbound marketing.

HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Certification is a free and comprehensive way to learn the basics of SEO and how it fits within Inbound Marketing.

Here are two other great resources for helping you understand this important relationship:

• The Relationship Between SEO and Inbound Marketing
• The Future of SEO and What it Means for Inbound Marketing [SlideShare]

Day 4: Learn the basics of on-page SEO.

For most, on-page SEO is the easiest part of SEO to understand because you can actually see and control it. On-page SEO refers to what search engine crawlers can discern from the content and structure of your site. These elements include the following:

1. Content (both design and words)
2. Title Tags
3. URLs
4. Image Alt Tags
5. Internal linking
6. Schema Markup
7. Site architecture 
8. XML sitemaps

To learn more about on-page SEO, check out this comprehensive guide from the folks at Moz.

Day 5: Learn the basics of off-page SEO.

This is the side of SEO that breaks people out it a cold sweat. It shouldn’t.

Off-page SEO factors largely revolve around links. They encompass anything that affects your search engine visibility outside of the information that can be read on your website.

At this stage, you just need to develop an overarching understanding of what’s involved in off-page SEO. (You’ll learn more about link-building later on.)

This handy resource from Search Engine Land lists all the factors related to off-page SEO.

Day 6: Become familiar with the Google zoo.

Google algorithm updates are a headache for search engine optimists. In fact, they are a headache for all digital marketers.

That said, it’s helpful to become familiar with the major updates: Google Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird, and Pirate. Again, Moz has a great resource which documents and details all known algorithmic updates since the year 2000.

To better understand if and how these updates affect your website, try checking your site using Baracuda Digital’s Panguin tool.

Section 2: SEO Tools

Before you get your hands dirty with SEO, you need to have your analytics tools all set up and ready to go. At the end of this section, you’ll have done just that.

Day 7: Set up your analytics.

Take the time to set up your analytics package of choice. Google Analytics tends to be the most popular choice of in terms of analytics packages. (If you’re a HubSpot customer, you can integrate Google Analytics with your portal.)

For more on how to configure your Google Analytics for SEO, follow this guide.

Day 8: Set up the Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) for your site.

If you’re serious about wanting your website to rank in Google, the Google Search Console is essential. Essentially, this tool helps you see your website as Google sees it by giving you insights into pages that have been indexed, links that are pointing to your site, popular keywords, rank positions, click through rates, etc.

Take some time to set up your Search Console and dig into the data. Once you become familiar with it, you can also go ahead an install Bing’s Webmaster Tools for further insights.

This beginner’s guide to the Google Search Console from Moz has everything you need to get started. 

Section 3: Competitor Analysis & Keyword Research

Competitor and keyword research is an essential ingredient for implementing successful SEO strategies, as well as overall content or blogging strategies. For this reason, you should spend ample time developing your skills in this area. This will take some time, so have patience. The goal here isn’t to copy or replicate what the competitors are doing, but rather, it’s to make sure you’re doing more, doing it more effectively, and providing a better solution for your visitors.

Follow the steps below and you’ll have the basic skills required to execute successfully.

Day 9-15: Turn yourself into a keyword research pro.

There’s nothing quite like learning how to do keyword research on the fly. However, a really great resource to help you do so is Nick Eubanks’ one-week course on mastering the skill.

After signing up to this course, you will receive one email per day for seven days explaining how to implement different stages of keyword research. It’s very practical — so much so that at the end of the seven days, you’ll have completed your first keyword research project for your business.

The course does cost $127 (you can get a starter version for $67), but if you have the budget, it’s an investment that’s totally worth it.

If you don’t have the money to spend on the course, check out this really great 50-minute keyword analysis tutorial from Matthew Barby. It brings you through a full process for carrying out extensive keyword research for blogs, along with all the different tools that you can use — both free and paid.

Day 16-19: Run a competitor analysis.

Running a competitor analysis is an essential part of defining an SEO strategy. Competitor and keyword analysis go hand in hand, and in many ways, they provide the basis for a solid SEO strategy.

During your SEO analysis, you’ll need to uncover answers to the following:

1. Who are your main competitors?
2. What do their traffic levels look like? 
3. What keywords and phrases are they ranking for?
4. What does their backlink profile look like?
5. What kind of social media presence have they got?
6. What does their content strategy look like?

Here are some resources that will help you to get started:

• How to Conduct a Competitive SEO Audit to Outrank Industry Rivals
• 5 Steps for SEO Competitive Analysis & Research

Section 4: Link Building

Link building remains at the heart of SEO. At the end of this section, you should have made a start on developing your own link-building strategy.

Day 20: Develop an understanding of link building.

Link building – a term synonymous with off-page SEO — refers to the practice of acquiring links from other websites to your own.

The number of high-quality links linking to your website remains one of the most important ranking factors in SEO. There are many techniques for building links, but it is by no means an easy job. It’s both challenging and time-consuming. However, by creating great content you’re likely to attract many links organically, without actually having to spend time looking for them.

This ebook by Paddy Moogan of Aira explains the importance and art of link building.

Day 21-23: Start developing a link building strategy.

This does not mean finding out where you can purchase a million supposedly high-quality links to your blog.

After reading Paddy’s ebook, you should have a thorough understanding of the importance of link building, as well as a good idea of how to do it. Now it’s time to take that to the next level.

Jon Cooper of Point Blank SEO, has put together a comprehensive list of link building tactics. You should take the time to familiarize yourself with them (there are lots of them), and figure out how you can go about implementing some of them into your own strategy

Section 5: Local SEO

Day 24-26: Educate yourself on local SEO.

Local SEO is something that more and more people have started to speak about and specialise in over the last couple of years. It’s different from organic, traditional SEO, as it is focused on providing results that are relevant to a searcher based on their current location.

For example, if I search for ‘best pubs’ on my desktop right now, Google would provide me with results that are nearest to me.

The best place to start with local SEO is Google My Business, where you can begin by claiming your page.

Once you’ve done that, check out our Introductory Guide to Improving Your Local SEO.

Other great resources include this guide from eConsultancy and all these SlideShares by Local SEO expert, Greg Gifford. Here’s one of my favorites that presented at BrightonSEO earlier this year:

Section 6: Measuring SEO

Measurement is essential for implementing successful SEO strategies. You’ll need to track data around things like rankings, referrals, and links in order to analyze your SEO strategy and optimize it for success.

Day 27-29: Learn what you need to measure.

The first step towards successful measurement is finding out exactly what you need to measure. Here’s what we recommend you start with:

1. Search engine share of referring visits
2. Search engine referrals
3. Visits referred by specific search engine terms and phrases
4. Conversion rate by search query term/phrase
5. Number of pages receiving at least one visit from search engines
6. Rankings

Another really important thing to note here is that you should try to align your SEO metrics against business objectives. If your goal is to generate more email signups from blog content, then the search visibility of long-tail keywords coming through to your blog content should be high on the list. Having such clear objectives will make it very easy to deem the success or failure of your SEO strategy.

To get started, follow Neil Patel’s guide to measuring SEO success.

Day 30: Relish your newfound knowledge.

Looking for more SEO tips? Tune into Marketing Grader Live on Wednesday, October 21st (4pm BST/11am ET) to see HubSpot’s Kieran Flanagan and the king of SEO, Rand Fishkin, grade three websites LIVE in 24 minutes.

Have you ever wondered how much other marketers out there are making?

What about the marketers working right alongside you? How much are they making? More than you?

While discussing salaries is kind of a taboo subject in the U.S., it’s perfectly normal to be curious about how your salary compares to that of other marketers. (Trust me, we think about it too.)

And although we can’t answer those questions directly for you, we have come up with a way to get a general sense of how your salary stacks up. 

Introducing the Marketing Salary Grader

HubSpot’s Marketing Salary Grader makes its calculations using self-reported data collected from marketers across the country.

By cross-referencing your salary with criteria including years of experience, education level, and company size, we can show you what percentile your salary puts you in compared to marketers with similar characteristics.

These salary “grades” are adjusted based on location to account for geographic salary variances. This puts everyone on a more even playing field, since the same salary can be considered more or less valuable depending on an area’s cost of living.

That being said, salary grading is not an exact science. When you’re exploring the tool, keep in mind that it was created for your amusement and to pique your curiosity.

What do you think about the new Marketing Salary Grader tool? Let us know in the comments section below. 

It’s no secret that many consumers are fed up with banner advertising. That’s one reason why ad blocking software adoption is gaining in popularity worldwide. It’s not just consumers, either. Many marketers complain about their effectiveness, too. Publishers are stuck in between both party’s complaints and many of them are reacting to this pressure.

It may sound cliché, but according to Solve Media, you’re more likely to. . .

. . . survive a plane crash than click on a banner ad.

. . . get into MIT than click on a banner ad.

. . . complete Navy SEAL training than click on a banner ad.

I wouldn’t suggest sounding the death knell for display advertising just quite yet, however. While many of the signs and trends point to its waning, it will likely be around for a very long time.

Even with these predictions of doom and gloom from some marketers the investment in display advertising continues to grow. Ad blocking software isn’t slowing that down. One of the reasons why is simple – targeting, retargeting, machine learning and programmatic approaches to serving up ad units is creating a much more efficient system. This helps increase brands’ return on investment.

Why are Some Marketers Complaining About Display Advertising?

Some marketers not only loath display advertising as a consumer, but swear up and down it doesn’t work as well as other channels. That’s true in some cases, but ultimately it boils down to what the banner is promoting and how well it’s targeted. These complaints from marketers have largely grown with the adoption and deployment of content marketing.

Most content marketers produce and promote mainly top funnel content – articles, ebooks, guides, how-to’s, etc. However, historically, display advertising success has come from the promotion of mid to bottom funnel content – case studies, free trials, coupons, catalogs, products, etc.

This is problematic, because getting someone to visit top funnel content still requires additional investment to move them to the middle, and ultimately, the bottom of the funnel. In the B2B world this process can take months and sometimes over a year or more.

So those marketers attempting to use display advertising to distribute top funnel content are correct. It doesn’t always work for them because they’re paying the same cost at the top of the funnel that other brands are paying at the bottom of the funnel.

Generally, the B2C buyer’s journey is much quicker – days and even minutes in some cases. B2C brands with funnels that look like this don’t necessarily have much additional investment to drive revenue using display advertising like B2B brands. That’s precisely why the vast majority of investment in this form of advertising comes from B2C industries.

How Does this Affect the Digital Advertising Landscape for Publishers?

According to HubSpot’s Digital Publishing Benchmarks Report, the majority of publishers expect the value of display advertising (from a revenue perspective) to increase in the next six months. There are two other important trends to note, too. Sponsored content and native advertising are widely predicted to increase in value alongside display in the next six months.

This is not a surprise. With predictions of continued investment in display advertising, largely driven by B2C brands, publishers’ thoughts around future revenue mirror the reality of the marketplace. Display is what most publishers know and can scale, thus cementing it as a revenue driver in their minds for the foreseeable future. 

Native Advertising and Sponsored Content

As mentioned above, display advertising is primarily built to deliver ROI on mid-to-bottom funnel content distribution. This makes it a tough channel for top funnel content marketers to scale distribution because of the additional investment required to move that traffic from the top to the bottom of the funnel over time.

This leaves a giant distribution gap for content marketers. Display advertising is too expensive for top funnel content, generally. What’s filling this gap? Sponsored content and native advertising does for B2B publishers what display advertising can do for B2C brands – drive ROI-producing traffic at scale. Cost per clicks or cost per thousand impressions are generally much less for native advertising.

David Ogilvy, the “father of advertising,” once said, “It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read.”

This is precisely what native advertising and sponsored content does for top funnel content marketers. It’s ideal, too, because it’s exactly what these marketers want from their content – to be read.

Bob Gilbreath, Co-Founder and President of Ahalogy, claims that publishers can gain 100-times more revenue per visitor compared to display advertising. He also points out that brands and publishers can tell stories together that are 100-times deeper than what a banner ad can do. Hence, native advertising and sponsored content can be a better experience for the consumer.

According to Relevance’s Media Buyer’s Guide to Sponsored Content, this filling of the gap is reflected by adoption rates from brands and publishers alike. 

Juxtaposing predicted social display advertising versus social native advertising spend gives us a good view of the growth and evolution of both channels, comparatively, over time. Again, this just reflects the reality of the marketplace – display and native advertising is on the up and up.

Another reason why publishers are increasingly developing sponsored content programs is simple – it’s relatively cheap to execute and can have great profit margins. Below are just a few examples of what some big name publishers charge for sponsored content. 

Here’s the actual price distribution for sponsored content in premium publications outlined in our study.

The sponsored content insights above were developed from the first ever pricing study done on this channel. We contacted over 1,000 publishers and collected over 550 data points to create a sponsored content pricing formula that is available for download here.

Is Display Advertising Really in Trouble?

The answer to that question is simple – No. Despite some consumers’ complaints and the loathing of some marketers, display advertising is here to stay for a long time. However, display advertising must be paired with the right content.

For some brands native advertising and sponsored content are alternative viable channels to consider for driving profitable content visibility over time. Publishers, brands and even consumers tell us directly or indirectly to keep investing in these forms of advertising and that’s not going to change anytime soon. 

Spending countless hours analyzing your marketing performance every week? Sure, it’s important, but you also have to create content, manage contributors, run your marketing campaigns … the list goes on. 

What if I told you it was possible to analyze your marketing in just 15 minutes a day? 

Well, with the right reports, it’s entirely doable. And while the ramp of period — deciding what reports are the most important, getting feedback from your team, setting them up — may take some time, we promise you’ll win it back with all the time you’re saving once the initial work is done. 

As for those reports we mentioned, let’s check out some examples that you’ll want to consider including in your new and improved daily reporting routine. 

12 Reports for Analyzing Your Marketing

1) Number of Contacts

This report shows the number of new contacts you are generating over a specific period of time. We recommend that you monitor it throughout the month to ensure that you are on track to hit your goal.

To add some context, you can also add a layer into this report that will compare your performance against the previous month. This will give you a clear frame of reference when determining your performance. 

2) Contact Lifecycle Funnel

It is important to generate new contacts for your company, but it is just as important to make sure those contacts are moving through the different lifecycle stages. This funnel report will show you how leads are converting from marketing qualified leads to opportunities to customers.

Essentially, this will help to give you an idea of how qualified the leads you generate are. This information can then be used to determine if you’re running campaigns that are effectively generating the type of leads your sales team can actually close. 

3) Contacts by Conversion

Want to know how many contacts you generate from specific pieces of content? Try this report. 

This report will show you what types of content — ebooks, blogs, webinars, etc. — are working, as well as what topics your audience is the most interested in. For even more information about running a content analysis, check out this blog post.

4) Contacts by Segment

This report gives you an idea of how different segments of your audience are responding to your marketing. For example, you may want to focus on comparing the number of contacts you’re generating from particular industries. 

To get even more information from this report, you can run it based on who viewed or converted on a piece of your content. This will give you a better idea of how different segments are responding to a specific marketing activity.

5) Contacts by Source

This report shows you how many contacts you generate from marketing efforts that originated in a particular marketing channel. For example, if you’re promoting a piece of content on social media, you want to know how many contacts actually saw that piece of content on social media.

By comparing the performance of each marketing channel you’re leveraging, it’s easy to determine the best places to promote your content. 

6) Average Days to Close by Source

After you figure out how many contacts you are getting from your different marketing channels, it’s also important to figure out how many contacts you are closing by these channels. This report is designed to help you determine just that. 

This report will help you figure out what marketing channels are attracting new contacts and helping to close them as new customers. If you know that your social media efforts aren’t generating a lot of contacts, but that those contacts close at a much quicker rate, then you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

7) Number of MQLs

In addition to understanding the number of leads coming to your website, you also need to understand how many marketing qualified leads are coming to your website and converting on your content.

Marketing qualified leads often refer to the segment of leads that have shown interest in your company beyond just reading content — maybe they requested to talk to someone on your sales team or asked for a demo. 

8) MQLs by Source

After you see the number of marketing qualified leads you have, you need to dig into their behavior in order to attract as many of them as possible. That’s where this report comes in. 

Similar to the other sources reports, this will give you insight into what marketing channels are the most effective in generating not just leads, but qualified leads for your sales team. 

9) Revenue

Quite simply, your revenue report will show you how much revenue your company is generating per month. 

Given that it’s marketing’s job to generate leads for the sales team to ultimately turn into revenue for the company, keeping up to date on this number will help you better understand how you’re tracking against the goal.

10) Traffic by Source

While it is important to know the total amount of traffic coming to your website, it is also important to understand how that traffic is finding your website, right? This report breaks down the amount of traffic your website is generating from specific channels.

Seeing the breakdown between all of your different marketing channels can help you understand how to prioritize your time and resources. For example, if you are investing a lot of time in social media and blogging, but your social media numbers are not as high as your organic search numbers, this may be a sign that your should shift your primary focus to blogging.

11) Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate

The next step to analyzing the traffic coming to your website is taking a look at your visitor to lead conversion rate. This metric will show you how the traffic coming to your website is or isn’t converting into leads.

If this metric is too low, you may need to assess how you are driving these conversions. Are there enough conversion points on your website? Are you asking too much of new visitors? 

12) Blog Leads by Source

This report will show you what marketing channels are the most effective in generating leads for your blog. If you’re promoting your blog content across every single channel you have, this report will help you determine which sources are actually delivering results. 

For example, if you find that you’re spending a lot of time creating emails that promote your blog content, but they aren’t converting people into leads, you may want to try promoting it on a more effective channel. 

What other reports do you think are important to include in your analysis? Let us know in the comments section below.