Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of practices that improve the quality and quantity of traffic to a website from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic, also known as “natural” or “organic” results.
SEO is about:
- Optimizing a website’s technical configuration
- Improving content relevance
- Increasing link popularity
- Creating relevant, high-quality content
- Providing the best possible user experience
- Aligning a website page with a search engine’s ranking algorithm
SEO is the foundation of holistic marketing. Once you understand what your users want, you can implement that knowledge across your campaigns.
Here are some ways to improve your search engine rankings:
- Understand your online customers
- Use keywords on your website
- Update your content regularly
One of the easiest ways to tell if your site is SEO optimized is to look at your title tags, meta descriptions, and H1s. The title, description, and headers on each page should include keywords that you want your page to rank for.
What is an example of SEO?
On-page SEO
On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing webpages to improve a website’s search engine rankings and earn organic traffic. It involves aligning page-level elements like title tags, headings, and content as well as search intent with a specific set of keywords.
Examples of on-page SEO include:
- Publishing relevant, high-quality content
- Optimizing headlines, HTML tags (title, meta, and header), and images
- Aligning page-level elements like title tags, headings, and content as well as search intent with a specific set of keywords
- Optimizing page speed and keyword density
- Optimizing internal links and URLs
- Meta descriptions
- Structured data
- Checking robot accessibility and page indexation
- Building a perfect site structure
- Linking to quality external sources
- Improving page loading speed
- Making your website mobile-friendly
- Securing your website
- Creating short and simple URLs
- Monitoring your uptime
Some tools for on-page SEO include:
- SEOCrawler
- Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer
- Copyscape
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- Google Developers PageSpeed Insight
- Moz On-Page Grader
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of making sure a website meets the technical requirements of modern search engines. The goal is to improve organic rankings.
Technical SEO includes the following core factors:
Crawlability, Indexation, Page speed, Mobile-friendliness, Site security (SSL, Structured data, Duplicate content, Site architecture.
Technical SEO can improve both visibility and ranking within search engine results pages (SERPs). This can drive more organic traffic to your pages by elevating your position above competing search results.
Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is a type of search engine optimization (SEO) that uses actions outside of a website to improve its rankings in search results. The goal of off-page SEO is to make search engines and users view a site as more trustworthy and authoritative.
Off-page SEO can include:
- Building backlinks
- Being active on social media
- Guest blogging
- Encouraging branded searches
- Increasing engagement and shares on social media
- Local citations
- Social mentions
- Partnerships with authoritative websites
Search engines weigh many factors when determining a page’s ranking. For example, Google looks at off-page factors like backlinks and brand mentions
Local SEO
Local SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that helps businesses increase visibility in local search results. It can help customers discover, evaluate, and contact local businesses. Local SEO can also help businesses increase brand awareness, leads, foot traffic, and sales.
Common local SEO tasks include:
- Optimizing your Google Business Profile
- Finding local keywords
- Creating locally relevant content
- Building “NAP” citations
- On-page optimizations
- Link building
Any business that has a physical location or serves a geographic area can benefit from local SEO.
Some local SEO tools include: GrowthBar, SEMrush Listing Management Tool, BiQ, GeoRanker, Local Falcon.
