What Is SEO? Search Engine Optimization Best Practices

In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random web surfer. You don’t have to choose between GEO or SEO when you can optimize for both. Use STAT to find AI Overview opportunities, invest in digital PR to increase brand mentions, and track the right performance metrics. Start by narrowing your dataset to keywords your site already ranks for in positions 1–10.

Structured Data and Schema Markup

With that kind of visibility, you can reach your target audience at the perfect moment, as they search for products or services you offer. Search engine optimization (SEO) is optimizing a website to improve its visibility in organic search results, like on Google. Common optimizations for SEO include improving page speed, researching keywords, and creating content. SEO costs can be expensive, but that’s because they take into account so many different aspects, such as content creation, link building, keyword research and more.

Conduct a Technical SEO Audit and Fix Any Errors

There’s an interesting analysis of the “coffee” keyword by Kayle Larkin. I highly recommend it if you want to get a hint on how to spot these kinds of opportunities. For example, for “best all season car tires,” we see almost only articles (except for the #1 result). So if you were to compete for this keyword, your best chance to do so would be with an article too because that’s the dominating content type. We’ll talk about search intent more in the next step of this guide.

These tools can help you understand if your site has improved in the rankings and note which keywords your site is ranking well for. If you’re unhappy with your rankings or traffic, you can consider all of the previous items on this list and tweak your content accordingly. We suggest thinking of a number of topics that are related to your brand and using these as driving forces in your keyword research and content creation. In recent years, Google has gotten better at understanding that beyond the specific words that pages can be optimized for, there are overarching topics that pages can provide an answer for. Instead of searching for just one keyword upon which to base your SEO strategy, consider the general group of keywords that your page could rank for based on the given topic. You can still choose a top keyword to use in your page title or URL, but think about your pages as providing complete answers to the topic, rather than focusing solely on that one keyword.

As the premier search engine, it’s no surprise that Google offers a masterful tool to support SEO strategies. Google Search Console lets you directly request URL indexing, receive notifications about site problems, and gain suggestions for optimization  — all for free. Our FAQFox tool can help generate topic ideas by crawling other websites and creating a list of things your audience is talking about online. A primary keyword is a keyword that a piece of content is centered around.

It determines what sites have the most information and qualifications to report on a given topic, then prioritizes them by presenting them to searchers. Google refers to this as E-A-T or Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Together, these elements make up what Google considers important when it comes to loading times.

It provides easy access to advanced metrics on webpages and SERPs. Edit pages in real-time using tools that are built into Google Chrome DevTools. While they’re not cheap, you can get started with a 14-day free trial to test the premium features. Or follow the company’s guide on how to use features with a free account. Conduct local searches using Google Search or Google Maps with Brightlocal’s Local Search Results Checker. Use this tool to find your Google Review listing and generate a shortened link to your page.

Best Practices for Preventing Duplicate Content

Like every skill, you get better at SEO by practicing on live websites. Search engines use automated bots called “crawlers” or “spiders” to scan websites. These bots follow links from page to page, discovering new and updated content across the web. If your site structure is clear and content is regularly refreshed, crawlers are more likely to find all your pages.

For this, Google needs to be able to access the same resources as the user’s browser. The Search Essentials outline the most important elements of what makes your website eligible to appear on Google Search. While there’s no guarantee that any particular site will be added to Google’s index, sites that follow the Search Essentials are more likely to show up in Google’s search results.

• To make sure that search engines understand what your website is about, you have to provide meta-information that helps them categorize your content.
• Website authority plays a big part in it, and your content needs to be high quality too.
• There are no secrets here that’ll automatically rank your site first in Google (sorry!).
• Like ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai is a tool with a ton of different AI capabilities.
• Because users will instantly know that your content matches their search query (which can make them more likely to click).

Optimize your images with short, descriptive filenames and alt text. Then, compress them before uploading them to your site with a free tool like Squoosh. Write compelling title tags for your content by following key best practices in SEO SEO Anomaly 101. For example, use your target keyword’s search results to determine the optimal format and phrasing.