These are the sponsored results you often see above the organic listings. PPC allows you to buy immediate visibility, making it a fast-track option for driving traffic to your site. In simple terms, when you search for something online, search engines sift through their index to find relevant pages. They then use algorithms to rank these pages, placing the most relevant and high-quality results at the top of the SERP.
Sometimes, the user wants a quick answer—like the hours of operation of a business or the price of an item. Zero-click searches cater to these habits by giving searchers BHS Links an immediate answer without them needing to click through to a website. To conduct keyword research, use a free SEO tool like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest.
As part of the Search team, she enjoys creating content that helps you master SEO. We also offer a variety of SEO courses in our Yoast SEO academy, where you can find 5 free courses to get started. For example, the SEO for beginners course, the WordPress for beginners course and a course on structured data. If you’re a Yoast SEO Premium user, you get access to all 16 courses on there.
Google PageRank
At the same time, the best kind of topics are the ones that hold business value to you. Otherwise, you’re unlikely to attract potential customers through SEO. Keep in mind, the above list of sub-buckets just gives a glimpse of the available ranking factors. What’s important to know when having SEO explained to you is these factors have different weights.
- It’s advisable to look at your SEO rankings routinely even if you rank highly in search.
- This is helpful from a UX perspective as it helps visitors to move from one relevant page to another and keeps them browsing your site for longer.
- Regularly audit your site’s speed with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to identify and resolve bottlenecks.
- You have to know the technical stuff and create an omnipresent media brand.
- On-page SEO involves optimizing the content and other elements within your website’s boundaries.
SEO Learning Center
Keyword research will help you identify the most relevant words and phrases people use when they’re searching for topics that are related to your products or services. You can use keywords in your website copy and content, which will prompt search engines to surface your web pages for searchers. Search engines take many factors into account, from how quickly your website loads to how many people click to your page from search, to rank websites. Having good SEO will make search engine algorithms more likely to show your website to searchers. SEO is the process of improving your website so that it ranks higher in search engine results for certain keywords. Typically people focus on appearing in Google, but there is also Bing.
Keyword research
Search engines are programs that allow users to search and retrieve information from the vast amount of content available on the internet. They use algorithms to index and rank web pages based on relevance to a user’s query, providing a list of results for users to explore. Organic searches drive most website traffic, making SEO one of the most powerful digital marketing strategies.
AI-driven changes are reshaping how users search for information. Generative AI chats like ChatGPT and Perplexity and social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram have diversified search behavior. Businesses must optimize content for multiple digital touchpoints to ensure visibility where users actively seek information. On the other hand, black hat SEO uses questionable techniques to trick search engines into quickly raising a site’s ranking. These techniques may include keyword stuffing, cloaking, and link farming.