If you already have a website, it might be a good idea to start off by seeing how many of your pages are in the index. This will yield some great insights into whether Google is crawling and finding all the pages you want it to, and none that you don’t. BHS Links Jes Scholz digs into the foundations of search engine crawling in this Whiteboard Friday episode.
Just like with CPCs, “low” and “high” monthly search volumes are relative to your niche. There are two ways to use The Google Keyword Planner as a keyword generator. But it’s kind of hard to pull out the best questions that people are asking. And learning SEO is an ongoing process that requires keeping up with the latest updates, trends, and developments in the SEO industry.
Create Quality Content
Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. It’s important because search engines can treat these kinds of links (backlinks) as indicators of your site’s trustworthiness and quality. According to statistics, most businesses benefit from local searches. This is one reason why “…near me” is one of the most used phrases in search engines. Search engines constantly update their algorithms, and competitor strategies change. Regular optimization and content updates are necessary to maintain and improve rankings.
- This is a way to get high-quality backlinks WITHOUT having to grind with outreach.
- Comments, reactions, and interactions have a direct impact on your visibility in search results.
- Local SEO is a strategy to make your business more visible in local search results on search engines like Google.
- The higher (or more frequently) a website is displayed in a search engine list (like Google), the more visitors it is expected to receive.
- While you may look at your site on a desktop computer, the majority of web users now access most sites through search via their phone.
Semrush’s On Page SEO Checker can help you spot on-page optimization opportunities. But SEO tools can make it easier to monitor and manage your SEO efforts. This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.
How Does SEO Work?
You’ve learned a lot, from SEO’s meaning to SEO’s functionalities, and now you’re ready to bring search engine optimization to your organization’s digital marketing strategy. Like search engines evaluating content based on more than 200 ranking factors, SEO does the same. Search engines like Google publish best practice guidelines, and many professional SEOs share their findings from working on hundreds of sites. For most of us today, when we need something—whether it’s an answer, an idea, a product, a strategy, or a service—we start by asking search engines.
Following these simple steps will help you avoid common SEO pitfalls, and set you on the path to success. They’ll also provide a starting point to learn the fundamentals, so you can raise your SEO traffic levels to new heights down the road. You may have noticed that things like “ranking” and “traffic” weren’t on the KPIs list, and that’s intentional. If you end up looking for expert help, it’s important to know that many agencies and consultants “provide SEO services,” but can vary widely in quality.
A content audit in SEO involves a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of all the content on a website. The purpose of a content audit is to assess the quality, relevance, and performance of existing content to identify opportunities for improvement. It is a strategic process that helps website owners and marketers make informed decisions about content creation, optimization, and overall content strategy. Think about the words that a user might search for to find a piece of your content. Users who know a lot about the topic might use different keywords in their search queries than someone who is new to the topic. For example, some users might search for “charcuterie”, while others might search for “cheese board”.
Image compression is a process that removes some unnecessary image data while preserving image quality. If you’re not sure whether your website is mobile-friendly, you can test it with this tool from Google or go to Search Console and see if there are any issues in the Mobile Usability section. Besides the structural internal links, it is a good practice to also link to other relevant pages from within the page body. Yes, external backlinks are essential in SEO (more on that in the next chapter.), but having a proper structure of internal links is equally important.
Search engines like Google aim to present the most relevant information to users. Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to analyze the health of your website. This tool evaluates your website for over 140 on-page and technical SEO issues. This is the threshold generally recommended for sufficient search traffic. Use Backlinko’s Free Website Authority Checker to find out your website’s authority score.