What Is SEO?

You can actually do more harm than good by trying to use the keyword a certain number of times in your text. It is best practice to use your focus keyword in the H1 heading of the page. Whereas the query “best vacuum cleaners” has a lot less search volume (13,000 average monthly search volume). But the query is much more commercial in nature and will for sure generate more revenue which is why Google is showing buying guides instead of Walmart product page.

So you need to consider all the aspects and find the balance between the effort and the potential benefits. The suggestions are based on real search queries used by people all over the world. Features such as Google Autocomplete, People Also Ask or Related Searches can be a great source of keyword ideas. They use small pieces SEO Anomaly of programs (called crawlers or bots) to follow all the hyperlinks and discover new pages (as well as updates to the pages they discovered before). When people use the phrase “SEO is dead”, they usually mean that “the spammy attempts to cheat the Google algorithm that were used 10 years ago are dead”.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates are small files installed on a web server which act as a security measure for websites. Although only a simple text file, not setting it up correctly can seriously mess with your site’s indexing. It’s therefore worth giving this WordPress robots.txt guide a read. Now you just want to submit this sitemap to Google Search Console.

High-quality backlinks help your SEO rankings, while poor-quality backlinks can hurt your site’s credibility. SEO plugins are great because they give you recommendations on what exactly you need to do to optimize the content for specific keywords. It’s super easy – start by entering your key phrase, then it’ll analyze your content and provide a list of suggestions for optimization. When people search for “doctors near me” or “pet stores near me”, search engines will identify their locations through their IP addresses and present relevant results accordingly. To get a spot on local search results, it is necessary to optimize your local SEO.

When ChatGPT and other generative AI tools burst on the scene in late 2023, many predicted that the death of SEO was imminent. Search engines would wither away, with people turning to AI answer engines like Perplexity and Gemini to answer all their queries. Lucky for all the SEO pros out there, that prediction has not yet proved correct. Instead, nimble marketers have discovered how to employ AI to improve their SEO tactics.

This approach keeps search results helpful and accurate for users. Search engines look at mobile-friendliness, loading speed, and secure connections (HTTPS) to determine page rankings. These features affect how users access and interact with your content. Organic listings build trust because users know they aren’t paid ads. In this post, you’re going to learn exactly how to create and implement an effective SEO strategy, step by step. Search engine optimization is a key part of online marketing because search is one of the primary ways that users navigate the web.

• You can also improve your SEO knowledge by taking courses that will help you learn the basics.
• These factors include both on-page and off-page factors, which we will discuss below.
• I couldn’t figure out a way to include the keyword “SEO strategy” really early in my title.
• After indexing, search engines rank pages based on relevance, quality, and user experience.
• On-page SEO refers to actions you conduct on your website to improve its ranking.

Specifically, you want to set up an SEO-friendly site architecture. In fact, tools like Screaming Frog exist for people that want to run DIY audits. The real value of this content is the fact that we gave people in the marketing space LOTS of stats to cite in their articles. For example, you might have seen this voice search SEO study that we published on the Backlinko blog a while back. We recently used the Broken Link Building approach to build some really nice backlinks to Exploding Topics.

Average time on page / Session duration

If you’re curious to learn more about Google and its impact on SEO, check out our timeline of Google algorithm updates. Besides learning the different concepts and theories, the only way to find out what works is to apply the various SEO techniques on a website and monitor your rankings. Besides the changes you can make to your website (on-site SEO) to rank higher in the SERPs, the other way to influence your website’s ranking position is by using off-site SEO factors.

Keyword Research

It’s typically limited to 160 characters to fit within the preview on search engines, but can sometimes be calculated in megapixels depending on your preferred search engine. Use this space to highlight the key points of your page and encourage searchers to click through to your page. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the set of practices and actions aimed at increasing a website’s organic traffic from search results. SEO is one of the most important and effective marketing channels for various types of businesses.

But I DO recommend going after keywords with an above-average CPC. For example, if your website is brand new, it doesn’t make sense to try to rank for super competitive keywords with a KD of 90+. You can easily find dozens of trending topics and keywords with a free tool called Exploding Topics. And in my experience, it will sometimes spit out a GREAT keyword that you’d be hard pressed to find in any other keyword tool.