While traditional ranking factors still have weight, there’s also the need to cater to AI-driven algorithms when structuring the content and site navigation. Backlinks, or links to your site from other websites, are the third most important Google ranking factor. Backlinks from higher credibility sites are, of course, more valuable than those from lower credibility sites. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher you’ll rank.

Each social media user’s approach to SEO depends on their goals. Users who want to sell their products, hire a new employee, or find a job would all use a different approach to profile optimization. Additionally, as the LinkedIn search engine evolves, the SEO best practices change as well.

You don’t need to know ALL the factors and the exact algorithms Google uses to rank your website. But you need to cover the key components of SEO to be successful. Search engine optimization focuses only on organic search results and does not include PPC optimization. Finally, track the backlinks your content picks up with tools like Semrush’s Backlink Analytics. So you can understand if your content optimization efforts are working, and which pages you might need to revisit. For that, you need more data beyond the list of keywords themselves.

How to do SEO: Technical optimizations

Use the Semrush Local toolkit to streamline and improve your local SEO strategy. One of the most important factors in local SEO is optimizing your Google Business Profile because Google evaluates and ranks profiles (rather than webpages) in map-based results. According to Semrush Sensor data from September 2024, Google displays images in the top 20 results for over half of U.S.

• You don’t need to come up with SEO and link building ideas from scratch.
• To describe all the features and data reports Google Analytics has to offer, we would need a separate ultimate guide.
• There are also various other listings that can appear in the Google search results, such as map listings, videos, the knowledge graph and more.
• There are a million things you can do to get higher Google rankings (including advanced SEO strategies and techniques).
• The objective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to attract website visitors who can turn into customers, clients, or a loyal audience that consistently returns.

Namely, a backlink with an anchor text that is relevant to the linked page is more valuable than the one with an irrelevant or generic anchor. So there’s a big difference between a backlink from a page that links to 3 resources and a backlink from a page that links to 30 resources. If you have two links from the same page, the one that appears first may have more value than the second one. A backlink from a website that hasn’t linked to you before is usually more valuable than the one from a site that has already linked to you before.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

It’s a free tool that tends to give a more accurate feel of how your site loads to actual users. So if your site is hard to use, uses intrusive popups and ads, and has a bunch of broken links… people aren’t going to link to it. If enough people bounce from your site to the search engine results, this tells Google that your result didn’t give that searcher what they were looking for. Improving your site’s user experience (UX) can, directly and indirectly, help with your SEO. I try to write title tags that are interesting, compelling and push people to share.

SEO & SEO Marketing

In this guide, let’s focus on a handful of simple techniques to improve your on-page SEO. Some marketers published “spun articles” (i.e. computer-generated remixes of content) to gain Google’s favor. Next, we also saw the rise of content mills—companies that paid large numbers of writers small fees to churn out content. While Google’s search engine model has never been disclosed in detail, SEO experts have found ways to optimize the system. If you take the long view on SEO, there are three broad eras you need to know.

The best is to get a trusted website (that is relevant to your website) to link out to you. But even getting mentioned without a link is still important for getting shown in ChatGPT and other LLMs. While also following the search engine’s rules for optimization. These organizations will bend or break the rules in order to improve their site rankings to make a quick buck. The more quality content you publish, the more likely you will be to get people to share your content with others.

Ranking organically is extremely cost-effective, but typically requires a greater investment of time and continued effort. That includes speaking to user intent—what someone wants to get out of a search. For example, someone searching “best website builder” likely wants to see a trustworthy comparison of options. Search engines are more likely to rank a neutral comparison page over comparisons from a website building company. Whether your website exists to sell a product, promote your services, or showcase your portfolio, good copywriting will go a long way in helping search engines index your website. Don’t forget to include keywords in copy throughout your website, but don’t go overboard either.

They use total feedback from their evaluation process to improve how their systems determine information relevance and authority. This SEO Anomaly 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.