Identifying the terms that searchers use in Google search and other search engines provide direction on what existing content can be optimized and what new content can be created. While they may offer short-term gains, they can lead to long-term penalties, including lower rankings or even removal from search index listings. Among these tactics, keyword stuffing is one of the most prevalent issues. Here’s a beginner-friendly overview of what these practices are, why they’re problematic, and how to ensure your SEO strategy remains ethical and effective.
Learn SEO basics with a beginner’s guide even your grandma would understand
For this reason, Google typically considers the mobile version of your site for ranking purposes. Ask yourself if the site is truly worthy of appearing in search results. Spam, non-original, or low-value content may be excluded by search engines by default.
- Most account strategists will provide an update monthly for clients; some provide weekly updates when warranted.
- These tactics have the potential to improve your rankings in search engines.
- Not to mention that there are hundreds of them – the estimate is that about 70% of all the traffic comes from long-tail keywords.
- Local citations are mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) online.
- As you might expect, the keyword “SEO case study” is MUCH less competitive than “white hat SEO”.
Plug-ins, theme updates, and other issues can impact UX and hurt your technical SEO efforts. In 2018, Google moved to mobile-first indexing, which means the search engine uses mobile versions of your site to rank your sites in their results. The more high-quality, relevant links you acquire, the higher your site will likely rank for related key terms. Rather than buying links, I’d recommend starting with our guide to link building.
Additionally, it highlights the role of decision models like the DEMATEL method in forming effective SEO strategies. Properly implementing SEO practices helps businesses improve their online presence, drive more organic traffic, and achieve their marketing goals. Search engines like Google rely on over 200 ranking factors, including page quality, backlinks, and user engagement metrics, to determine which pages are most relevant.
It’s just another reason to be very careful when choosing an SEO expert or agency. Organic search results cover more digital real estate, appear more credible to savvy searchers, and receive way more clicks than paid advertisements. For example, of all US searches, only ~2.8% of people click on paid advertisements.
SEO test
Work with experts who understand technical SEO and focus on delivering results. The right partner will help you achieve long-term success in the competitive world of search engines. It also improves user experience by ensuring the information is clear, relevant, and easy to find. Websites with optimized pages are more likely to achieve higher search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic. Search engines recommend SEO efforts that benefit both the user search experience and page’s ranking, by featuring content that fulfills user search needs.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages technology allows faster content distribution on mobile devices. In practice, it means the content is served in a simpler, stripped-down version of your page on smartphones. But there’s one particular mobile SEO factor that you should pay close attention to. Luckily, most of the developers keep mobile-friendliness in mind these days so if you pick a quality WordPress theme, you should be fine. The security of your website’s visitors should be a priority for you. If you’re not sure how to create a sitemap and your website runs on WordPress (which it most probably does), we recommend creating the sitemap with the Yoast SEO plugin.
Use Backlinko’s Free Website Authority Checker to find out your website’s authority score. Keep in mind that driving more traffic to your site isn’t the only key to business growth. For “on-page seo” query, the top two results are Semrush and Backlinko.
Thus, even a small improvement in search engine rankings can result in a website receiving more traffic and potentially business. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of getting pages to rank higher in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Because search is one of the main ways in which people discover content online, ranking higher in search engines can lead to an increase in traffic to a website. After implementing on-page SEO techniques it’s useful to review your strategy and monitor results over time to ensure your practices are working.
Also, consider giving low-performing pages a boost by linking to them from your pages with high link authority to share authority between pages. Your URL (and the larger structure of your website) can also influence how your URL path is displayed in search results. Heading tags are HTML tags on pages that organize your content into sections and help Google understand the structure of your pages. A call to action (CTA) is a prompt that encourages site visitors to take a specific action, like subscribing to your newsletter, scheduling a demo, or making a purchase. Most website platforms (like WordPress and BHS Links Wix) create sitemaps automatically. But you can also create one using a tool like XML Sitemaps Generator.