Human-Led SEO: The Best Place to Learn SEO

Welcome to Human-Led SEO, your one-stop shop for learning searcher-first principles to generate more revenue in less time from organic search.

Discover basics like keyword research, on-page SEO and link building, to more advanced topics such as programmatic SEO & AI-driven content growth loops — here's your new hub for learning SEO.

SEO Articles

A Beginner’s Guide to Google Search Operators

Here's a basic overview of Google Search Operators

10 Questions to Ask an SEO Company, Consultant or Freelancer Before Hiring Them

Looking to hire? Take a look at some important questions on SEO to ask

5 SEO Best Practices For Your Website

Top SEO tips and advice to boost your traffic

How to See How Much Traffic a Website Gets - Quick and Easy, Like a Pro

Here's the easiest way to find out how much traffic a website gets

The Google Algorithm Update: An Updated History Lesson for Search Marketers and Businesses

Have a look at Google’s Search algorithm updates over the years, from 2016 till present

How to Improve SEO: 10 Ways to Improve Search Engine Rankings

Looking for ways to improve SEO? Here are 10 things you can do optimize your search engine rankings today.

12 Expert SEO Tips To Improve Your Rankings

Take your website's rankings to the next level with these SEO tips

Google Freshness Algorithm: How to Use it to Increase Your Organic Traffic

Here's how to use Google's Freshness Algorithm to increase your website traffic.

Google Alternatives: 12 Alternative Search Engines To Use

Looking for alternative search engines to Google? Here's twelve (12) of the best options to use.

How to Get SEO Clients from Just 1 Hour a Day

Looking for clients for your SEO agency? Here's a straightforward guide to follow

Google Ranking: Top 10 SEO Ranking Factors to Consider

Want to know the Google ranking signals that can help push up your site to the top of SERPs? Here they are:

How to Increase Organic Traffic: 3 Evergreen SEO Strategies for Marketers

Here are 3 proven ways to increase organic traffic to your website

Link Building Strategies To Increase Organic Traffic

Increase organic traffic to your website using these awesome link building strategies

Fetch and Render: How to Inspect Any URL for Maximum Coverage

Learn how to use Google's Fetch and Render tool

7 Proven Ways to Generate Residual Backlinks

Here are 7 proven ways to generate quality backlinks for your website.

A Guide to Using 301 to Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

Migrating your site? Here's how to use 301 to redirect HTTP to HTTPS.

SEO Report Template: 6 Essential Metrics That'll Impress and Retain Clients

Looking at creating the perfect SEO report, here are Six important metrics you can't afford to ignore

Black Hat SEO Made Transparent by Linxact

Black Hat SEO Made Transparent by Linxact

How to Do Competitive Keyword Research: 5 Step Process for Beginners

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to do competitive keyword research

12 Essential SEO Techniques To Boost Organic Traffic And Improve Rankings

Boost your organic traffic and rankings with these essential SEO techniques

‘Near Me’ Searches: How To Optimize For It

Get the edge over your competitors, learn how to optimize "Near Me" searches.

How to Generate Valuable Wikipedia Backlinks

Learn how to generate powerful backlinks from Wikipedia

11 Best Backlink Checker Tools for Improving Your Link Profile

Compare these backlink checking tools and determine which suits you best

Technical SEO Website Audit Checklist

Learn how to run an SEO Website Audit and take your website ranking to another level

Google Advanced Search Operators: 10 Ways to Use Them

Here's how to master advanced Google search operators to take your search skills to the next level.

On-Page SEO Checklist: A Quick Guide

Here's the only SEO checklist you need to give your content an excellent head start

How To Submit A Site To Google

Learn how to submit a website to Google for it to perform incredibly well

Shopify SEO Tips: Improve Your Store's SEO

Simple tips to improve your Shopify store's SEO

13 Free Google SEO Tools to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Free SEO tools offered by Google that you probably use everyday... or do you?

SEO Copywriting Tips For Relevant Content And Better Rankings

The best tips to create perfectly optimized content

Our SEO Tool kit: Essential SEO Tools For Your Business

Discover the right SEO Toolkit for your business

APIs: Understanding How They Enhance SEO

Learn more about how APIs can help you save time with keyword research and other aspects of SEO.

Google Snippets: How to Land Featured Snippets

Want to rank for Google featured snippets? Here are 3 proven ways:

How to Use Google Keyword Planner: A Beginners’ Guide

Here's an overview of how to use Google Keyword Planner

What Is Yandex and Why Should You Care?

Should you optimise your content to rank in Yandex?

What Is Google Trends? Top 7 Solid Ways to Use the SEO Tool as a Digital Marketer

Here's how to use Google Trends as part of your SEO tools

SEO Software

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SEO Glossary

Schema Markup

A schema markup is a kind of structured data that informs crawlers about the content of a website and what it means. Read on to learn more.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is using the same keywords over and over again in your website’s content. Learn some simple ways to avoid keyword stuffing in this guide.

Page Authority

Page Authority or PA is a score that indicates where a specific page will rank on SERPs. It is different to domain authority, which measures the entire website.

Share of Voice

Share of voice shows how your rankings compare to your competitors. Learn how to discover and measure share of voice with the right tools.

SEO Content Audit

An SEO content audit allows you to identify the strengths and weaknesses in your SEO strategy. Learn how to conduct a content audit easily with this guide.

Robots.txt

What is Robots.txt? A robots.txt file is a text document used to give directives to search engine bots and spiders on how to crawl and index pages on a website.

Freshness Factor

The freshness factor is a part of search engine algorithms that gives priority to newer more recently updated content for some search queries.

Semantic SEO

Semantic SEO is optimising your web pages around topics instead of individual key phrases. Use our guide to grow traffic to your site and improve rankings .

Article Spinning

Article spinning, is where a piece of content is rewritten hundreds of times, often with the help of ‘spinning software’. It is black hat SEO technique.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing a website to achieve higher search engine rankings in order to increase quality traffic to the site.

Search Volume (SEO)

Search Volume shows the number of people searching for a particular query. Learn more on the value of search volume to you SEO campaigns.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers that is geographically dispersed to enable faster web performance. Learn more with our guide.

Link Equity

Link equity is based on the idea that a link can pass authority from one page to another. Learn the key factors that determines whether a link will pass equity

Noindex Meta Tag

Noindex meta tags instructs Google crawlers not to index a webpage to ensure it doesn’t show up in SERPs. Learn how to implement and use it to your advantage.

Search Snippets

A search snippet is a generated extract of content from a web page that is presented in SERPs, drawn from a search term and collated from stored meta data.

Local SEO

Local SEO is the practice of increasing search visibility and brand awareness of local businesses to users who are searching for their product or service.

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO informs search engines about what you post is about. Use this guide to improve on-page seo and drive more traffic and engagement easily to your site

Dofollow Links

A Dofollow link is an HTML attribute assigned to a backlink that allows users and crawlers to access the site. Learn how to gain dofollow links with our guide

HTTP Status Response Codes

Permalink

A permalink is a permanent URL attached to a web page. It is the domain name which comes before the ‘.com' plus the slug following the backslash.

Content Optimization

Content optimization involves ensuring content is written and presented in a way that search engines understand. Here's how to do it in 6 steps.

Crawl Budget

Crawl Budget is the number of pages Google bot crawls and indexes on a website within a given timeframe. Learn how to optimize for crawl budget.

Keyword Clustering

Keyword clustering is creating a group of keywords that are semantically linked to target a page. Improves your website’s SEO strategy with our guide.

Gateway Page

A gateway page is a page that redirects a user to a new page without fulfilling their request or answering their search query.

Keyword Research

Learn what keyword research is, what it involves, and the tools to help you create a simplified and effective process.

Content Gap

A content gap is essentially a gap within the market that needs to be filled in order to fulfil search intent.

Breadcrumbs

A breadcrumb trail is a tool that helps users navigate a website and appears in the form of a menu or single line at the top of the page.

Google Panda Update

The Panda Update is a part of Google's core algorithm that was initially developed when content farms rose in popularity to counteract them.

Google Penguin Update

The Penguin Update is a feature of Google's core algorithm created in order to reduce sites appearing in SERPs that manipulate results with link schemes.

Orphan Pages

Orphan pages are very bad for your SEO optimisation campaigns. Learn how to easily find and also fix orphan pages on your website with our guide.

Cloaking

What is cloaking in SEO? How does it affects your website, and what are some of the things you can do to avoid it? Read on to find out.

Meta Title Tag (SEO)

Meta title tags are the descriptive title of web pages which search engines use in their index. Optimise your meta title tags with this guide

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO refers to legitimate techniques used to increase a website's ranking on SERPs, in line with Webmaster Guidelines and search engine algorithms.

Search Queries

Search queries are a list of phrases and keywords users enter in search engines to find things of interest.

404 (HTTP Status Code)

404 (HTTP Status Code) is an error message given when a user or web browser, attempts to visit a page but could not return any content.

Middle of Funnel Keywords

301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is a directive given to crawl bots to permanently redirect all incoming traffic and authority from one page to another.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is improving the technical aspects of a website in order to increase rankings. Learn the best practices/ways to optimise your technical SEO easily

Rank Tracking (SEO)

Rank tracking is about tracking/analyzing the organic positions of keywords in time. Use this guide to easily track your website's rankings using the best tools

Meta Tags (SEO)

Meta tags are descriptive tags which search engines use to place web pages in their index. Improve how your webpages appear in SERPs with this guide.

Meta Description (SEO)

Meta description is an HTML tag you can set for a post/page of your website. Learn how to write the perfect meta description and increase CTR with this guide.

Internal Links

Internal links or inbound links are hyperlinks on a web page that link to another web page in the same domain. Here's how to make the most out of them.

Search Quality Evaluator

Search quality evaluators are people who evaluate Google search results. Learn about what they do and how it affects search rankings.

Rich Results

Rich results are the cards and snippets that improve search results with images, reviews, ratings and other similar information from your site.

Pillar Page

A pillar page is a single web page on a site that gives a comprehensive insight into a topic. Find out why they're important for SEO.

Nofollow Links

Nofollow links instructs google crawlers not to follow a hyperlink. Learn the benefits of nofollow links to your website/business in this guide.

Content Decay

Content decay is a piece of content that has been decreasing in organic traffic over a long period of time. Use this guide to detect and prevent content decay

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable phrase or keyword that embeds a hyperlink within it. Learn about the types of anchor text and why they are important for SEO.

LSI Keywords

LSI is used by search engines to discover terms related to keywords within content so they can provide search results that accurately reflect searcher intent.

Disavow Backlinks

Disavow backlinks is the process of instructing Google to ignore unwanted backlinks in order to positively impact ranking in SERPs.

Search Visibility (SEO)

Search Visibility is a metric which shows how visible a business is on search engines for keywords of interest.

Position (SEO)

Position in SEO refers to the place a web page ranks in search engines for a given keyword or search query.

Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization refers to the phenomenon of having multiple pages targeting the same keyword. This can occur by accident, or can be a deliberate tactic.

Google Crawlers

Google Crawlers aid Google to review and track new content through internal and external links. Increase your site's crawlability with these easy-to-do steps.

SEO Website Audit

An SEO website audit helps website owners to gain insight into the performance of their website. Get in-depth knowledge on what to cover during an audit.

External Links (SEO)

An external link is a hyperlink that points from one website to another. Optimize and build high-quality external links for better rankings with this guide

Search Intent

Search intent can essentially be defined as the goal of the searcher, when they search a query into the search engine.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content refers to content that is identical to content elsewhere on your domain or other domains. Learn simple solutions to combat duplicate content

SEO-Friendly URL

An SEO friendly URL is optimised to rank highly in SERPs and answer a searcher’s queries. Follow this simple guide to create URLs that are SEO friendly.

Bottom of Funnel Keywords

Topical Relevance

Topical relevance is a process search engines use to determine how relevant a web page is to a corresponding search query. Based on links, keywords and content.

Backlinks (SEO)

Backlinks are external hyperlinks used to link from one website to another. Find out why they are still important and how to build quality backlinks.

XML Sitemap (SEO)

An XML is a document which provides search engines with a map of content pages to index.

Negative SEO

Negative SEO is using black hat SEO techniques against other sites, in order to get them penalised. Learn how to combat negative SEO in this guide.

Private Blogging Networks (PBNs)

A private blog network is a network of authoritative but unrelated sites all linking to one central domain to pass on link equity and improve its’ rankings.

Black Hat SEO

What is Black Hat SEO? It is a form of search engine optimization where a website uses ill tactics to artificially improve their search rankings.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority or DA is a search engine score that determines how well a website will rank on SERPs. Use this guide to improve the DA of your website

Flexible Sampling

Flexible sampling is a markup that enables Google crawlers to crawl an entire website in order to index all of its content.

Target Keyword

A target keyword is a word or phrase that websites use to rank in search engines in order to attract their desired potential customers.

Keyword Difficulty

Keyword difficulty is a metric used to determine how difficult it is to rank for a keyword.Learn how to check/calculate keyword difficulty easily with our guide

Header Tags

Header tags are used to divide up the different headings in a page’s content. Learn how to improve your website's SEO using header tags with this guide

Dwell Time

Dwell time is the duration a searcher spends on a web page after clicking on the link in the SERP. Learn to increase dwell time on your page with this guide.

Automatically Generated Content

Auto-generated content is content created by a program to publish large amounts of pages in SERPs. Not all auto generated content is inherently "black hat".

Alt Tag Attribute

What is alt tag? An alt tag is a type of HTML text that contains information telling search engines what an image is about. Here's how to optimize them for SEO.

Google Penalty

Google penalty is penalization placed on a site for using ill practices to artificially increase their rankings. Learn how to remove a google penalty easily.

Indexing (SEO)

Indexing is the organization of information that occurs after crawling which allows pages to displayed in SERPs. Learn how to optimise your website for indexing

Redirects

A URL redirect is a directive or command given to search engine robots to control the index coverage of a website.

TF-IDF Score

TD-IDF or term frequency-inverse document frequency is a Google algorithm used to score and rank a piece of content’s relevance to any given search query.

Structured Data

Structured data makes it easier for search engines to organise your web pages in search results. Use this guide to implement structured data easily on your own

SERP

A SERP is the web page presented to a user when they search a query into a search engine. Use this guide to easily achieve SERPs success.

Link Building

Find out what is link building, why it is important and proven strategies you can use to build high quality backlinks today.

Content Farms

A content farm creates vast amounts of low-quality content often duplicated and monetized through advertisements. LEARN to avoid them with this guide..

Website Readability Score

A web page readability score measures the accessibility of a web page based on a range of factors including sentence length and word count.

Google E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness

Google EAT is the metric by which Google determines the quality of a website, and its ability to rank. Use this guide to improve EAT for your website