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Free course for SEO & Landing pages. Learn how to run successful campaigns and think like professionals who have been implementing marketing strategies to grow client business revenues to millions of dollars.
Free Landing Pages That Convert & SEO Foundations Courses @ Zen Academy
AssociatedLzenacademy @ Zen Academy on 29/06/2021 - 09:25
Last edited 29/06/2021 - 09:31 by 1 other user
Last edited 29/06/2021 - 09:31 by 1 other user
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Thank you, appreciate your criticism & I have gone ahead and fixed it.
Not updating at my end. I've hit refresh several times.
Give it a shot now. I have cleared all cache and removed the bar completely. Once again, appreciate the feedback to weed out all the issues.
@zenacademy: Still not updating.
Even your WordPress source code is showing this
<div class="copyright">
© Copyright 2019, Zen Academy, All Rights Reserved. </div>Are you updating source code or a plugin?
@MS Paint: I have removed the entire bar from the PHP file. I suspect it is cached locally on your browser. Would you mind double checking this on your incognito window ? I have gone ahead, sshed into the server and cleared all Nginx cache as well.
@zenacademy: That part of the footer is deleted now. I'll remove my neg vote. Given your quick response I may now even enrol and have a gander. Cheers.
Who are the 'best growth marketers in the industry' who wrote these two courses?
The notion of Zen academy is to work with best growth marketers in industry to create cohort courses. We are working on these cohort based courses with some leading experts which will eventually be available to take.
However, these two foundation courses are created by yours truly. I have been working in the industry for over 15 years. You can find a bit about me in the course instructor page. I have worked on growth strategies for Victorian Government, Melbourne central, Luna Park, Lombards, M-City and countless other international brands.
Good on you for starting this and giving it a go. The SEO course contains a lot of incorrect, outdated and unproven advice so I would recommend having the content reviewed and updated by a professional.
Anybody taking this course should complete further reading to clarify some of the mis-interpretation of guidelines this course presents as fact.
Would you please care to elaborate on incorrect, outdated part ?
@zenacademy: The 'on-page' section contains a somewhat bizarre list factors which are just wrong. Brand search volume and domain age are not ranking factors. Neither are parameters in the URL or server location. Many others in this list are also wrong but are based on incorrect advice that circulates in the SEO echo chamber.
Having a whole section dedicated to 'keyword density' is laughable.
I appreciate the course is aimed at beginners however with that in mind it would be best to stick to the simple, base factors that are tried and tested rather than opinions.
@dreamypires: I think you had looked at the attached PDF but not the video itself. Regarding your claim that domain age and brand searches not being relevant, I would say watch the video before you pass on the assessment.
Further to your claim, brand searches are used for entity determination. Here is Gary Illyes of Google saying as much in plain language https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/ao3fmk/i_am_gary_i… . Entity determination will be further used to strengthen your overall positioning.
Further to this, you really want to look at citations both structured and non structured and how it relates to ranking.
https://blogs.perficient.com/2017/12/12/does-google-use-onli… This news is as old as 2017.Further to this from memory, another Googler in the Tech SEO subreddit also explained how brand searches indirectly affects your overall traffic from Google.
The keyword density video says that despite the fact that Yoast and other plugins talk about keyword density - that it is simply not important and should be ignored. The reason to talk about that is because the video further talks about document citations, term topicalness and so on. It says that while there is advice on this matter, you should simply ignore it and focus on the big picture. This is exactly what you are claiming. Again, before you pass on the judgement, it is recommended that you actually do the course or even view the specific video.
@zenacademy: Entity determination and brand search volume are different things. The file in your video that you are speaking to lists 'volume of brand searches' under 'important'. Ironically the text above states 'its important to understand what are impact changes and what are myths'. There are a lot of myths in your advice here and, personally, I feel its important to not spread mis-information.
Another example being 'generally the shorter the url the better the returns'. What? How? Why? Because Brian Dean said so? The rest of your advice on URLs is fine… make it easy to understand and remove complexities etc, but the solid advice you are sharing throughout is often littered with unfounded opinions which I don't think you need to do. The training would actually be better for your users if you made it more vanilla and left this stuff out
domain age are not ranking factors
Domain age goes to site authority which affects ranking. A brand new domain will not rank as quickly as using an aged domain (unless that domain had red flags against it in the past).
@kapone: Yep, so domain age can correlate with a sites authority on the premise that an older site has had more time to gain links. The age of a domain itself has no impact on ranking
@dreamypires: But an old domain re-used for a new site with no common or redirect links will also rank more quickly.
A few things:
- Your site doesn't rank at all for "seo training course melbourne" or other relevant keywords
- You've got thin content on the page your linked to
- You've got duplicate content issues on your main pages
- You got very little content on the site overall
- No details that make you look legitimate (ABN? Testimonials? Contact details? Details of who is behind the business?)You can find a bit about me in the course instructor page.
And where is that? Can't even find it in your sitemaps
Also, most people in the Wordpress space who know their SEO moved off of Yoast years ago.
Even at the price of free, I'm not convinced that this would be worth anyone's time based on the above. Would love to see you attention these items and prove me wrong, but the SEO and growth marketing world is full of people making big claims. Some are bullshitters, and some just don't know what they don't know and think they're better than they are.
- Your site doesn't rank at all for "seo training course melbourne" or other relevant keywords
Yes, because the site itself is only a month old. A lot of content is being created and would probably end up as landing pages in the near future. To compete with sites like Google, udemy & a few others will take a bit.
- You've got thin content on the page your linked to
The intention is to create a few courses on that page without spamming the user interface. Home page is being targeted for course related pages so right now the focus is on getting that indexed.
The course page lacks content but to spam it with content at the bottom that is meaningless will only take away from future credibility. I totally understand this decision as it was made after assessing the pros/cons of this situation.- You've got duplicate content issues on your main pages
As I said, the site is just hot of the press. There are still a lot of issues being funnelled and being addressed. The duplicate content you are talking about is mostly the rehashed sections around "Why Zen Academy" which will go out as we get more pages. I have checked the Google crawl report today and Google is already beginning to rank it for pages that you mention.
- You got very little content on the site overall
Agreed. Its a month old site.
- No details that make you look legitimate (ABN? Testimonials? Contact details? Details of who is behind the business?)
Again, all valid points. However, you have only given it a cursory look. You can see the ABN in privacy policy page. Without people taking courses, I won't have testimonials. As I have mentioned before, this site is just new and the goal was to move forward to build an audience while we optimise the site for SEO/Paid ads. Not taking away from your criticism, but all of these points will be addressed over the course of the next few months as content will be introduced in the site. The course software is the third party software which should host the About author page. This is the reason it is not in the sitemap.
- Also, most people in the Wordpress space who know their SEO moved off of Yoast years ago.
Can you provide citations ? Infact, most reputable people in the industry use yoast.
Here is search engine journal using Yoast. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/
Here is search engine round table using Yoast. https://searchengineland.com/These are both reputable and well know journals in the industry.
- Even at the price of free, I'm not convinced that this would be worth anyone's time based on the above. Would love to see you attention these items and prove me wrong, but the SEO and growth marketing world is full of people making big claims. Some are bullshitters, and some just don't know what they don't know and think they're better than they are.
Like I said in the above thread, I have a very long exposure in this industry and understand what spam is. I worked with Google in 2013 on a tracking implementation project for a client with extremely large spend and have collegues who are ex-Googlers. While, your initial criticism is valid, I do beg to defer with your assessment that the course is not worth taking.
Having said that, I have to agree with your statement that "Some are bullshitters, and some just don't know what they don't know and think they're better than they are." Nonetheless, thanks for your time and have a great day.
Hey mate, thanks for the reply.
Yes, because the site itself is only a month old. A lot of content is being created and would probably end up as landing pages in the near future. To compete with sites like Google, udemy & a few others will take a bit.
Totally understand. When I took a peek at the sitemaps there was 'last modified' dates of 2019, which lead me to assume the site was at least that old.
Can you provide citations ? Infact, most reputable people in the industry use yoast.
Everyone has moved to RankMath for their new sites. Both in the more advanced Wordpress forums/communities and the people I know on a professional basis, most people moved away from Yoast at least two or three years ago. SEO Framework was also popular for a while, but RankMath has really come out ahead over the last year or so.
You can see the ABN in privacy policy page.
But having an ABN in the footer often works as a good credibility indicator, so whether it's 'technically' there on the site or not, it should be more visible to help conversions.
While, your initial criticism is valid, I do beg to defer with your assessment that the course is not worth taking.
My summary was based on the assumption that the site was somewhat established. Given it's basically brand new, I withdraw that final assessment. If I find some time might have a look. Would be good to have something reputable that I can direct people to with little or no SEO and growth marketing experience to.
All the best with this mate.
Not a problem, and with respect I appreciate you taking time in having this discussion.
I have used RankMath but it does not allow dynamic title insertion via hooks that I can customise using a custom function in PHP. What I had like to do in the future is have customisable hooks to include dynamic numbers in the title - for an example number of students enrolled in the course at this point in time reflected in title. This would also include some advanced long tail keyword manipulation and insertion in titles which often results in better traffic. This is something I would cover in an advanced course including A/B tests in SEO.
As my intention would indicate, I am following the first rule of startups. Move fast and break things. What you see is merely an outcome of that. You are not wrong in your criticism and it is totally warranted. Have a great day.
I have used RankMath but it does not allow dynamic title insertion via hooks that I can customise using a custom function in PHP. What I had like to do in the future is have customisable hooks to include dynamic numbers in the title - for an example number of students enrolled in the course at this point in time reflected in title. This would also include some advanced long tail keyword manipulation and insertion in titles which often results in better traffic. This is something I would cover in an advanced course including A/B tests in SEO.
Makes sense. I use Wordpress purely for blogs, and have custom platforms for everything else. Have had very good success with dynamic content generation including for titles, meta descriptions, etc (we're talking sites with thousands of pages, not counting product pages).
Replying to my own comment for visibility (it's been too long for me to edit my original comment), after reading the OPs reply, I am less critical of what's being offered here.
My statements above were based on the assumption that the site dated back to 2019 (based on what I saw in the sitemap), but I now know that it's only a month old, so look forward to seeing improvements made as the site becomes more established and builds up it's search engine profile.
Also good to see OP being so responsive and constructive to feedback. That's a very good sign.
Commenting again after taking a look at the courses (very briefly).
1) The site itself isn't best practice, but OP has explained that the site is brand new, hence why he's offering free access to these initial courses. So I'll give a pass on that.
2) These foundations courses seem best suited to complete newbies, in particular business owners or bloggers or have their own Wordpress site they manage themselves, but who have next to no experience or prior knowledge of SEO and growth marketing.
3) I'd be very interested to see what the follow-up courses look like, as it's this next level of knowledge where you can really make an impact. Particularly internal linking strategy, which I did see is planned for the follow-up course.
4) OP seems like a good guy, which gives me faith in this.
TLDR; If you already know a bit about SEO or landing pages, these particularly courses aren't for you (but the followup courses may be). If you are a complete noob, this looks to be a good introduction.
Your publilshed links and telephone numbers on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn don't work and you have 0 followers and 0 following on Twitter. Are you running a real business?
Website — https://zen.academy
Phone — 1800936222
Email — [email protected]All dead.
If you can't even keep your own website current you lose all credibility with me.