Make sure that customers leave happy and that this experience is positive, offline and online. Although your activity there does not directly impact rankings, it pays off to be in contact with your audience there as well. And provide a similar (positive) experience through these platforms as well. White Hat SEO is an ethical approach to optimizing your website for search engines.

• The ‘trick’ back then was making sure the keyword was being used enough times throughout your page and in your meta tags.
• Now that Google uses a mobile-first index, problems with your site’s mobile usability can directly impact rankings.
• The reason that so many (big) companies heavily invest in SEO is the high impact that it can have when done right.

Which has helped my page rank for terms like “drive traffic” and “how to drive traffic to your website”. Or analyzing your title using CoSchedule’s very helpful headline analyzer tool. Last up, you want to use your keyword in an H2 subheading, like this. This guide covers pretty much everything there is to know about mobile SEO. And before I even wrote my outline, I looked at the SERPs for that keyword. Keyword research might be the most important part of the SEO writing process.

Once the keywords get past an initial screening of quality (based on the criteria above), we add the best keywords to an AirTable spreadsheet so they can be prioritized. However, to become a true SEO expert, you need to understand that EVERYTHING can have an impact on your search rankings. Read on to learn more about SEO, from how it works, to SEO best practices, and tools for tracking and improving SEO on your website over time. Read our SEO Tips guide to find out more about how you can optimize your website for the search engines.

Boost your authority and credibility online

It’s about creating a well-balanced strategy that includes high-quality content, researched phrases, and keywords that your audience is actively searching for. If you understand what your audience wants, you’ll be able to use effective SEO methods to increase engagement to meet your business’s goals. It is important to find a balance between creating content that is valuable to the user and optimizing that content for search engines. Ensure that you provide value to the user and aren’t just advertising your brand, products, or services.

“Having a sitemap can hurt your website performance. You shouldn’t use one unless you have thousands of pages.”

Since then, there have been hundreds of algorithm changes, driving marketers to constantly adapt their strategies. The history of SEO demonstrates that a comprehensive digital marketing strategy is the best way to stay ahead. Creating content that genuinely benefits visitors but builds a sustainable and effective online presence. 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.

One of the main tactics is incorporating keywords and phrases your target audience is searching for into specific areas on your webpage. With a team working non-stop on improving Google’s search engine, the focus moved from factors like keyword density to user experience and high-quality content. These algorithm updates are still very much a part of the SEO field, with Google releasing a new one (or multiple) every year.

SEO vs. Search ads

There are a number of great online classes, tutorials and guides to help you get started. If you want to improve your search engine rankings in 2025, you need to get backlinks. The best way to learn SEO is to start your own website and learn the basics of SEO, such as keyword research, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. Also, you can read some of the best SEO books to learn and master search engine optimization.

For search engine rankings, high-quality content isn’t necessarily the most beautifully written, it’s the most helpful and relevant content for users. That means whatever’s on the page is designed to answer someone’s search query quickly and accurately. As you build authority, other websites may link back to your content—a strategy called link building. More backlinks to your website signals authority and interest in your content for search engines as well. The more you position your website and brand as an authority, the more search engines will prioritize your content in search results. SEO is a digital marketing strategy that makes it easy for search engines like Google or Bing to understand the content of your website.

Enter any domain, and we’ll show you top competitive SEO metrics like Domain Authority, top pages, ranking keywords, and more. Enter any domain, and we’ll show you top competitive SEO metrics, such as Domain Authority, top pages, ranking keywords, and more. Read the free resources we linked to above, take the free course, and use the free trial to implement what you’re learning on the go. Like every SEO Anomaly 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.

SEO writing is about using the right words and phrases so that search engines know what your website is about. If your website manages to get a position on the top of search engine result pages, it can help establish your brand or business’s trust and credibility. The right amount of authorized backlinks will bring more benefits than having excessive links from spammy websites. For instance, the top results for “how to increase productivity in the workplace” contain a specific target keyword. Search engine algorithms help present more advanced search results for users based on the purpose of their search.