What is SEO? Understanding the basics of Search Engine Optimization

This resulted in a number of algorithm updates, each resulting in a smarter Google that was more capable of understanding the relevance of a page. Incorporating Core Web Vitals into your UX and SEO strategy not only aligns your website with Google’s ranking factors but also ensures a superior browsing experience for your visitors. By focusing on these metrics, you can enhance your site’s visibility in search engine results, attract more organic traffic, and foster a loyal audience base. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. On-page SEO focuses on optimizing individual pages to improve search visibility and user experience. It involves aligning your content, HTML elements, and site structure with SEO best practices.

search engine optimization

On-page vs. off-page SEO

Use Keywords Everywhere, Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Search to research high-volume, low-competition search queries relevant to your business and target audience. Focus on long-tail keywords SEO Anomaly (queries with three to four words) for a more targeted reach. How content appears in the search results is based on these factors, plus more than 200 other factors. These ranking factors (which are not weighted equally) cover everything from website security and online reputation to content helpfulness and authority. Link building is the process of acquiring the links from other websites to your own, has become a key strategy in seo optimisation.

Your Ultimate Guide to Do on-Page and off-Page SEO

  • Build a fast-loading, fast-to-respond website by following best practices like compressing images, minifying code, enabling browser caching, and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
  • Besides the structural internal links, it is a good practice to also link to other relevant pages from within the page body.
  • If you’re open to a little technical challenge, you could also submit a sitemap—which is a file that contains all the URLs on your site that you care about.
  • Search is also becoming more conversational, with users phrasing queries naturally.
  • This comprehensive SEO program will equip you with the skills needed to excel in entry-level roles in digital marketing.

But there ARE tactics that you can use to quickly choose the best keywords for you. And you’ll get more detail on the topic, including estimated monthly search volume. And Google will use the content of that page to come up with keyword ideas. First, you can pop in a seed keyword and see what the tool comes up with.

The higher the score is, the harder it is to rank on the 1st SERP for the keyword. Once you find keywords you want to rank for, you’ll need to find out how hard it will be by evaluating the competition. It is usually expressed with the metric called keyword difficulty.

✅ Make Sure All Important Pages Are Linked

The Search Essentials outline the most important elements of what makes your website eligible to appear on Google Search. While there’s no guarantee that any particular site will be added to Google’s index, sites that follow the Search Essentials are more likely to show up in Google’s search results. SEO is about taking the next step and working on improving your site’s presence in Search. This guide will walk you through some of the most common and effective improvements you can do on your site. Both search engine crawlers and users need to be able to access the most important pages on your website.

search engine optimization

Content freshness, in different forms, is an actual Google ranking factor. Don’t let your content go stale, and make sure to update your content regularly to keep it relevant. Not every piece of content needs updating for freshness sake, but if your out-of-date content isn’t as good as the competition, consider a content refresh. But first, you need to know exactly what people are searching for, e.g. the “keywords” they use. For a quick look at how search engines see the mobile version of your site, you can try Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Ask yourself if the site is truly worthy of appearing in search results.

search engine optimization

This makes it easy for users and search engines to navigate your pages. If you’re not sure which keywords within the Level 3 group to target first, prioritize those with the highest search volume and lowest keyword difficulty. Yes, social media can indirectly influence your SEO efforts by driving traffic and increasing brand visibility.

Use a tool like Listing Management to automatically submit your business information to top directories. Many of your suppliers, business partners, and industry associations have partner pages or member directories where they can link to your site. Find pages with high link authority using the Internal Linking report in Site Audit. Also, consider giving low-performing pages a boost by linking to them from your pages with high link authority to share authority between pages. Heading tags are HTML tags on pages that organize your content into sections and help Google understand the structure of your pages.

When someone searches for a website, Google will display sites that offer the best value to its users, according to their standards. Undoubtedly now more than ever before, local results are being influenced by real-world data. This interactivity is how searchers interact with and respond to local businesses, rather than purely static (and game-able) information like links and citations. PageRank (part of Google’s core algorithm) is a link analysis algorithm named after one of Google’s founders, Larry Page. PageRank estimates the importance of a web page by measuring the quality and quantity of links pointing to it.

The goal is to reach the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), specifically on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, among others, when users input certain keywords. Search engines are giving more visibility to video content and image-based results. Video is now appearing more frequently in search results, with captions, metadata, and engagement signals influencing rankings. While on-page SEO focuses on optimizing content, off-page SEO strengthens a website’s authority, credibility, and trust in the eyes of search engines. With 58% of searches coming from mobile devices, Google prioritizes mobile-optimized websites.