What Is SEO? Meaning, Examples & How to Optimize Your Site

“So from my experience, when they business owners have a small website, it’s totally possible to do SEO optimization themselves. Most likely, that would be on-page,” Zhukova says. If you’re a service-based business, Ashbridge highly recommends that you also track your leads internally. According to Levy, client perceptions, particularly where the business owner is your point of contact, are crucial. That means you must make sure you can see local search results similar to what they see. “When you update these settings, you will likely see much different data, opening additional keyword strategies due to a lack of competitiveness within that geographic market,” Levy says.

According to web analysts and SEO experts, optimizing your on-page content around target keywords is the most effective SEO strategy for ranking highly on SERPs. With a list of keywords at hand, the next step is to optimize your content. When done right, SEO is why you can usually find exactly what you’re looking for from Google and other search engines.

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• Google also takes into account other factors like how long someone stays on a website and the bounce rate (leaving the site after viewing only one page).
• The All Pages report is the most basic report and one of the main reasons most people use Google Analytics – to see how much traffic their pages get.
• They have a newsletter, partner with other brands in the space, and have social media accounts with 1M+ followers.
• But whatever the format is, the content is always discovered by links.
• Your content should help them do this, probably by reviewing and listing several options.
• It’s this omnipresent approach to media that allows them to build authority with Google and maintain such strong rankings.

The indexing stage is like a librarian reviewing, organizing, and shelving various books in the library. Here, the search engine’s algorithm catalogs the content, which the search engine then relies on to deliver results to searchers. 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.

Focus On Keyword Frequency

If you find that speed is an issue, you can invest in a CDN later on. People are likely searching for what you do, and you can attract customers by ranking for those terms. But you’re unlikely to rank without effort, as others are trying to do the same. Search engines are working hard to get a better understanding of a user’s search intent, to show that user the results that fit their need best.

Start by searching for words or phrases that relate to your service. As you do so, note Google’s suggestions, which show common search terms and queries related to your topic. The starting point in SEO is to understand what your target customers are searching for. Getting your site indexed by Google is basic SEO; it helps Google crawl your site and identify key pages.

This time, the link to my competitor’s page is part of a big list of resources. That’s why I invest a lot of my marketing budget into content design. The design might be the BHS Links most underrated part of content marketing.

If you want to win big with content marketing, then hire the best people and find someone that is an expert in your industry. A study by Aberdeen found that marketing thought leaders experienced a 7.8x higher yearly growth in site traffic versus content marketing followers. Another reason is that moderating and replying to comments can take a ton of time, especially as your blog gains a significant following. Taking time to reply to comments takes away time you could be spending creating more content or doing other things to grow the business. To win at content marketing, you have to be able to make your own judgments about what works and what doesn’t. What works for your business won’t work for someone else, and vice versa.

Focus on pages ranking in positions 5 to 9 on the SERP—these are within striking distance of high performance. Improving these pages could generate meaningful traffic increases. Higher positions typically earn several times more clicks than lower positions. Ultimately, the goal of SEO was never just about getting more traffic.

Read our comprehensive SEO strategy guide that walks you through the essential steps for crafting an effective SEO plan tailored to your goals. Now, it’s time to channel all this knowledge into a solid SEO strategy for your website. So, if you haven’t yet created a Google Business Profile for your business, sign up for one. For example, if you sell influencer marketing software, you can find relevant publications in your niche by using the string “influencer marketing” + “guest post” on Google. To further improve indexation, create and submit an XML sitemap.

Plus, Google has increasingly been making the SERP more visual. To drive organic traffic, your content needs to be created specifically for topics that people actually search for. Otherwise, no one will be able to find your page on Google’s search result pages (SERPs), and you won’t get any organic traffic. SEO works by creating high-quality, relevant content with good UX about things people search for, and then proving to Google it deserves to rank. For example, if you sell coffee, SEO can help your website show up on the first page of Google when people search for “buy coffee”. Higher rankings lead to more clicks to your website, and that means more potential customers for your business.