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Backlinks are crucial for improving your website’s visibility in search engines and driving organic traffic. As a business owner, you need to ensure your backlink profile is healthy and high-quality to achieve (and keep) high rankings in the SERPs. Your meta title is the text that appears as the blue link in search engines. An optimized meta title can improve your organic rankings and increase the CTR for users. Each page should have a unique title that includes the topic (or keyword) that that page is meant to target. Performing an SEO audit regularly helps maintain your website’s health and search visibility.

• In this guide, I’m going to teach you how to perform a simple website audit to improve your SEO, usability, and maybe even your revenue.
• With a reputation for client satisfaction, WebFX provides proven — and trusted — SEO audits and implementations.
• Smartphone usage worldwide has grown exponentially, and it’s important for websites to be compatible with the rising demand.
• SEO audits are the best first step in creating an SEO strategy based on your specific website, niche, and business goals — no matter what stage the website is in.

Reclaim authority by fixing broken pages

Study after study outlines the importance of page speed (especially for mobile) and how it can affect your rankings and conversion rates. Lastly, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability; strive for a CLS score of less than 0.1. To improve this, ensure images and embedded videos have dimensions, and avoid inserting new content above existing content unless in response to a user’s action. Another way is to use Google Analytics to view traffic from all search engines.

Using an SEO tool is essential for efficiently analyzing and improving your website’s performance. SEO tools provide valuable insights into your site’s health, help identify issues, track rankings, and optimize content. By analyzing their keyword targeting, backlink profile, content quality, and technical SEO (such as site speed and mobile optimization). Mobile devices are accounting for a significant portion of internet traffic (62% in Feb 2025), so it’s essential to make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

Overlooked issues and bugs often result in poor website indexing, faulty user experience, and lost profit. SEO audit tools are an absolute game changer when it comes to improving your SEO. Technical issues surface on almost every website at some point in their life. Bing Webmaster Tools is a suite of SEO tools that looks at your performance data and analyzes them so you can optimize your pages on Bing search results. SEO analytics tools enable you to monitor the performance of your SEO efforts.

Analyze Search Performance

If you partner with a digital BHS Links marketing agency like WebFX, your SEO plan may already include monthly reporting and optimization. When you create content, you don’t want to duplicate your content. Duplicate content dilutes the authority of your page, and it hurts your SEO rankings. You can also invest in page speed services from a digital marketing company like WebFX.

It’s a handy free SEO tool for marketers looking for related keyword suggestions. In addition, KeywordsFX provides you with questions related to the topic of your target keyword and modified versions of keyword phrases. The free version shows you the top 100 backlinks with details like the domain rating.

Performing an SEO audit gives you lots of data to understand where your website is positioned within your industry. This report provides information about pages Google hasn’t indexed. That’s why we recommend compressing your images with a tool like Kraken. But Google is also continuously adapting how they assess your site’s speed. Which measures how fast your website responds to user interactions.

They usually can’t “connect the dots” or assess the real significance of certain findings. Even after getting those basics right, link building should never be random or reactive. These straightforward steps are often enough to achieve SEO success, yet many overlook them while searching for complicated shortcuts. This isn’t busywork; it’s the foundation of a solid SEO strategy.

It was probably the new links that had the most positive effect. The recovery process began with a comprehensive audit of all website content. Using tools like Google Search Console and SEO analytics platforms, I identified pages with declining rankings and pinpointed the causes. The focus was on relevance, accuracy, and adherence to current SEO best practices. I’ve dealt with an SEO penalty before, and reassessing keyword targeting was one of the key strategies that helped me recover my rankings. In my case, I realized I had been unknowingly over-optimizing some pages with the same keywords, causing them to compete with each other.

First, find a competing site that’s already ranking well in Google. That way, you’re reverse engineering sites that already know what they’re doing. You see, ads that you see for competitive keywords are the result of hundreds (if not thousands) of split tests. Research shows that people online are more likely to click on content that contains a number. As you can see, the happier you make Google’s users, the higher you’ll rank. This can be a bit too technical, but overall, it’s about the user’s experience when they first come into contact with your website.

Use the Google Search Console

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of optimizing a website to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal is to increase visibility and attract organic (non-paid) traffic. BHS Links But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any low-hanging opportunities to improve your SEO. Not only will the tactics below improve your search engine rankings, but they also don’t need you to create new content. SEO is all about making sure search engines can crawl and index your pages.

These pages help search engines understand where you operate and make it easier for potential customers to find you. Plus, additional information for each keyword like their search volume, KD%, search intent, and more. Links are how search engines discover new pages and judge their “authority.” It’s hard to rank for competitive terms without links. Second, add descriptive alt text (HTML image descriptions) to images that carry important meaning. To help search engines and users of screen readers understand what the image depicts.

Keyword optimization

Now that I knew my keyword’s Search Intent, it was time to create a piece of content that was 100% aligned with that intent. Of course, you don’t need to go through your list manually like this. You can always filter out keywords with high levels of keyword competition and super low search volumes. Compared to most paid keyword research tools, The Google Keyword Planner isn’t that great at coming up with keyword ideas. Link building is a set of practices aimed at increasing the number of links you get from relevant, quality sites.

Or, if you elect to employ “nofollow,” the search engines will not follow or pass any link equity through to the links on the page. By default, all pages are assumed to have the “follow” attribute. Once you’ve ensured your site has been crawled, the next order of business is to make sure it can be indexed. That’s right — just because your site can be discovered and crawled by a search engine doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be stored in their index. In the previous section on crawling, we discussed how search engines discover your web pages.

Technical SEO

• Before you do any of that, you have to first understand your website’s goals to execute a strategic SEO plan.
• Bruce Clay is the master that has trained many other search marketing agencies.
• You may find it easier to start with the core content of the page and let that inform the rest of your on-page SEO strategy.
• Search engines constantly update their algorithms, and competitor strategies change.

Adding keywords to your URL helps explain your page content to search engines and users, as well as reflecting where the page sits in your website. For example, squarespace.com/pricing helps search engines categorize the page as a plan pricing page and makes the page content clear for browsers before they even click through. These metrics not only provide insights into the effectiveness of your website and content strategy but also offer valuable clues on how to enhance your user experience and engagement. Here’s a beginner-friendly guide on measuring conversion rates and click-through rates for SEO success. By focusing on these key areas, you can optimize your website for the growing trend of voice search.

SEO is important to create brand awareness and reach target audiences. It helps search engines align your website with potential customer needs so that visitors look specifically for what you offer. Our comprehensive search engine optimization (SEO) solutions, where we offer a complete range of services tailored to boost your online presence. With our expertise, we ensure your website is optimized for both search engines and users. Below is a partial list of our offerings; start a conversation to learn the scope of what we offer. Blogs can help you improve your website SEO by expanding your visibility in search.

An SEO audit refers to the process of analyzing and identifying the factors affecting your site’s ability to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Monthly SEO audits help to pinpoint problems with your website that could be impacting performance, staying current, and adapting to changes. Add your relevant H2s, H3s, and further headings using both primary and secondary keywords where applicable. Make sure your content is both valuable and unique for readers, and that it matches their search intent—what they’re looking to get out of visiting the page.

Few free SEO tools are as powerful and insightful as Google Search Console and Google Analytics for SEO. You can use them to track these metrics and gain valuable insights about your website’s performance. SEO key performance indicators (or KPIs) are measurable values that give you an idea of how effective your SEO strategies are. This can help you understand how well you’re performing in search results. And respond to them promptly to maintain a positive online reputation. Let’s say you’re managing the online presence for “FreshBake,” a local bakery in San Francisco.

The page meta description is shown on the search engine results page (SERPS). It has to be descriptive, up to 200 characters, and unique for each page. No need to include your domain in the title – There is no need to include your domain name in the title because this is added automatically by Google.

A custom, proactive strategy

Common on-page SEO practices include optimizing title tags, content, internal links, URLs, and other ranking factors. It’s a foundational SEO strategy and an excellent place for beginners to practice SEO. On-page SEO focuses on optimizing visible page elements like content, images, and meta tags to improve user engagement and relevance. Technical SEO involves backend elements such as site architecture, SSL certificates, and XML sitemaps that help search engines crawl and index a website more effectively. Since these improvements occur only on your own website, they’re typically entirely within your (and your team’s) control, and don’t require coordination with other businesses.

AIOSEO will tell you whether you’ve gone over the character limit. You also have the option to create a different title, that will display in search results, than the one on your page. Picking the right keywords can make a big difference when it comes to achieving your online goals. If you have a small business, acquiring that qualified traffic is key to growing brand awareness, conversions, and sales. The URL is a minor ranking signal, but you cannot expect to rank on the BHS Links basis of the words in your domain/page names alone (see Google EMD update).

• Search engines like Google will not refer traffic to websites that are not secure and do not handle users’ data properly (ironic, I know).
• And if you want to manage all the processes more efficiently, try working in sprints and analyzing the results of each work week.
• You can get a quick benchmark of how fast your site loads with Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
• It’s about improving things like your technical set-up, your content, and how user-friendly your site is.

Optimization Checklist:

You’ve learned about on-page SEO’s definition, plus its importance. Now, you’re ready to learn how to do on-page SEO for your website! Keep reading for a beginner’s walkthrough with tips from our SEO checklist, plus resources for learning even more about these on-page optimizations so you can perform DIY SEO. For this reason, when you publish a new page, it pays to internally link from there to other relevant pages. This won’t help the new page’s rankings, but it might help the rankings of the pages you internally link to. Search for your target keyword in Google, open a few top-ranking pages, and eyeball them for commonalities.

As a result, you’ll know exactly what to create content on next. There are some key on page things you should be implementing to improve your site functionality and experience. Check out more of our top SEO tools in this post about 11 SEO tools you should know. Search engines like Google can penalize your website for keyword stuffing.

While on-page SEO is within your control, off-page SEO involves factors influenced by external sources. Review the final layout of your webpage and ensure your content is accessible across mobile and web browsers. We recommend creating a checklist of items to review on each web page before publishing for consistency.

In this example, having a description that includes both “books” and “coffee” in the description will be BHS Links very important for capturing both audiences. This example further illustrates why descriptions and keywords are so important for ranking in Google Maps. The Google algorithm uses hundreds of signals to rank content on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Best Dead Link Checkers to Keep Your Site Error-Free

• Google’s AI overviews now appear in up to 47% of all search queries and take up half the screen on both mobile and desktop devices.
• By providing descriptive alt text for images, you not only improve accessibility for visually impaired users but also give search engines valuable information about the image’s content.
• This signals opportunities to optimize your meta titles, descriptions, and page content.

A hidden way to get links that can influence your rankings is going after unlinked brand mentions. Incoming – links pointing from other websites to non-valid pages on your site. You can ignore these links unless they are coming from a valuable source. If you haven’t run a broken link audit before, your website will probably have broken links. This is normal because the web is dynamic, and websites change as they grow.

Last Word on SEO Tools

If Google detects that you’ve used black hat techniques to manipulate the algorithm, they may enforce a manual penalty that will cause your rankings to drop dramatically. This shift in ranking has resulted in a decrease of 1.2K in traffic. Overall, the Organic Keywords Trend graph is useful for obtaining an overview of your ranking positions.

So I’ll start with an overview of the latest developments and opportunities in Google Images search. Respond to reviews and build relationships faster with smart AI tools. In fact, according to Google, simply increasing the load time of a page from 1 second to 3 seconds increases the bounce rate by 32%. As a result, the audience we were driving to our blog was not the kind of audience that was interested in what we had to offer and—not surprisingly—no one converted. To date, we’ve yet to get a single conversion from that blog post. For a big site like Hootsuite, increasing their domain authority from 91 to 92 is a pretty monumental accomplishment.

You’ve done 90% of the work in our downloadable checklist, and your content is ready to be re-submitted to Google. Join professional networks, create case studies, collect client testimonials and get relevant certifications for your industry. For example, when I talk about case studies within the content, I always link to the case studies section of the site. Almost all of your pages should have at least 1-2 outbound links as citations. Think of a citation as borrowing someone else’s expertise to add more credibility to your own content.

While most small businesses want to rank in the map pack, few understand the optimization process required to secure these positions. It gives your keywords’ average positioning as compared withyour competitor. With this metric, you can instantly compare your keyword’ssearch position performance versus your competitor’s keywords position. Therefore, “It is worth reviewing your content pages atleast once a year, especially for money pages that you want to rank for. Updating older content is a great way to improve your performance in the SERPS,” shares FreedomRep’s Ilir Salihi along with many others experts.

These are the search terms that people utilize when they go on a search engine to get what they are searching for. Before you can begin developing content for your site, it is complicated to conduct keyword research. Search engine optimization is a collection of strategies and techniques utilized to boost the number of visitors to a site by achieving a high ranking in search results. An essential feature of SEO is making your site intelligible for SEO for both search engine robots and users. The good idea is to create content hubs by identifying cornerstone content pieces that cover broader topics and are comprehensive guides. Link related blog posts or pages to these hubs, forming content clusters that signal your site’s expertise to search engines.

Analytify’s Search Term Dashboard streamlines this process for WordPress users by offering a simplified view of search term performance directly within the WordPress admin panel. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s web analytics platform, designed to offer deeper details into user behavior and performance. Unlike its predecessor, GA4 focuses on event-based tracking, making it ideal for monitoring user actions like clicks, scrolls, and conversions. 75% of consumers judge a company’s credibility by its website design. In other words, an outdated or poorly designed website can push potential customers away, even if you offer great products or services. Your website should be user-friendly and well-structured at all times.

For “content creation”, it’s likely a “2” because you can make content without a tool, but you can do it even better with one. But you’ll need to use external tools to monitor your rankings. And they should appear in your subheadings, body content, and alt text, where appropriate. This means it’s extremely difficult to outrank the top results since they’re mainly high-authority sites from big brands.

Short-tail keywords are broad terms with high search volume and high competition, such as shoes. Long-tail keywords are more specific phrases, usually containing three or more words, like best-running shoes for women. These have lower search volume but are easier to rank for and often lead to higher conversion rates. You can use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush to discover keywords related to your niche, evaluate their search volume, and assess the competition. For example, if you’re targeting the keyword how to grow tomatoes in pots, the search intent is clearly informational.

Better ads mean better Ad Rank

However, I have no one post that overviews the entire process of how to rank a website in Google…that would be easy to consume and understand by someone just getting started. Since Google’s goal is to connect people with the web pages and sites that they’re looking for, they pay a lot of attention to things that increase bounce rate. After all, a high bounce rate indicates a poor user experience. Since Google doesn’t want a reputation of sending people to frustrating, poor-quality websites, sites with slow load times get deprioritized by Google’s algorithms. Secondary keywords are incredibly important because they help you cast a larger metaphorical net into the search engine sea. Secondary keywords should be closely related to your focus keyword and have the same intent.

Check your privacy setting

Comprehensive, longform content that provides information gain is the way to go if you want to rank higher on Google search. Here at HawkSEM, we use Clearscope to grade our content against top posts BHS Links on the SERPs. But when you have hundreds of web pages, it becomes inefficient to do so. Some tools we recommend are Google Search Console, Semrush, Google PageSpeed Insights, and ScreamingFrog. It’s the result of a hard-to-fail strategy backed by years of experience and a wicked smart team of creators.

Finally, all of this is confirmed by seeing how many “Juice Page Links” there are (final highlighted column above). This was simply meant to drive home the significant importance of keyword relevancy over links and page authority. You can read about the entire “Spencer Likes Honeycombs” case study here. However, if you look at the keyword, “Niche Business Ideas”; the results are much less authoritative. This means it would be easier to rank for than the keyword, business ideas (example provided below). Domain Authority and Page Authority are terms used by SEOmoz.org to quantify how authoritative a site or page is overall.

Encourage Customer Reviews and Respond Promptly

• Google’s algorithm has become adept at spotting “keyword stuffing” and penalizes pages that use keywords excessively, in ways that interfere with the reading experience.
• With this method, you create a hub/pillar page on a particular topic, usually a broad, high-volume keyword.
• You should see a list of 2 or more links, depending on how your sitemap is structured, and on whether you’re using an SEO plugin like Yoast.
• Can you try going to the competitor analysis tab and checking the keyword competitiveness is working there?
• This comprehensive resource will show you how to rank higher in Google search.
• These tools can help ensure that your website meets web accessibility standards.

No matter how much content you create to target those highly competitive keywords, you may never rank on the first page of Google. To avoid disappointment and make tangible progress, it’s wise to choose keywords that are easier to rank for, at least initially. You can use free keyword research tools like WordStream or Semrush to find relevant keywords to your industry, their search volumes, and their competitiveness. When targeting question-based keywords, it’s important to provide detailed and informative answers within your content.

A Facebook Business page is for your business, your fans will like your posts and you have no limit on the number of likes on your page. Use a template to suit your business, create video content, whether it is live, pre-recorded or the new premier option. Use advertising to attract your target market, Facebook messenger bots and much more.

Google Maps SEO is no longer optional—if you want local customers to find you quickly and easily, it’s a must. By optimizing your Google Business Profile, building strong local signals, and keeping your listing fresh, you can climb the local rankings and stay ahead of competitors. Once in the customization menu, add the address you’re interested in for tracking.

With this knowledge, you can prioritize which keywords to target based on their potential impact on your website traffic. Claiming your GBP makes your business look more credible and professional, ensuring that customers see accurate, up-to-date information. It also gives you full control to respond to reviews, post updates, and optimize your listing — key factors in improving your Google Maps ranking. Before you can start optimizing for Google Maps, you need to create or claim your GBP. Without it, your business has no control over how it appears in local search results, and potential customers may see outdated or incorrect information.

The first tactic you should use in your link-building campaign is guest posting. Guest posting is when you write a blog post for another website for free. The guest site will usually allow you at least one link back to your website. When you link out to a different site, you are essentially passing a bit of your page authority onto the page you are linking to. Because of this, pages with higher domain authority and page authority can give a much bigger boost to SEO when they link to another website. If you can get many sites to link back to you, Google will notice, deem your content high-quality, and rank it accordingly.

We’ve covered a variety of methods, from the basic RANK function to more BHS Links advanced techniques involving multiple criteria and dynamic rankings. By combining these tools, you can tailor your approach to fit any data set or specific requirements you might encounter. It certainly isn’t as fun as creating content or getting backlinks, but technical SEO is still important.

Content Optimization: Writing for Both Users and Search Engines

The Organic Research tool’s Positions report shows a variety of keyword metrics. And the “URL” column shows which webpage ranks for each corresponding keyword. There are 7 references for the same page in the image but for different keywords. Probably the reason you didn’t have a post like this to reference 7 or 8 years ago is because Long Tail Pro didn’t exist back then! Imagine trying to write this post and give examples like you did, but using manual keyword research methods and analysis. You might have never written the post because it would be too long.

By being mindful of these potential issues, you can streamline your ranking process and reduce the likelihood of errors. This formula ranks the value in cell A2 within the range A2 to A10, from highest to lowest. If you want ascending order, you’d replace the zero with a one. Also, if you’d like to learn more about how we collected and analyzed our data, here is a link to our study methods.

Expert Ideas for the Best Local Marketing Strategy in 2024

• Anything that’s too technical or not easily understandable will not be sourced.
• Here are 12 essential SEO best practices to help you level up your website’s performance in search engines.
• Above all, make sure your content matches search intent and is helpful to users.
• Since Google’s goal is to connect people with the web pages and sites that they’re looking for, they pay a lot of attention to things that increase bounce rate.

If a reader expands one of those questions, whichever page is answering that question now ranks higher than the #2 result in Google. This is (often) a clear sign to Google that people aren’t happy. And if users aren’t happy, you can kiss your rankings bye-bye.

Yahoo and Bing are very similar, but a couple of years behind in my opinion. So more exact match anchor text and more links generally still work well in Yahoo and Bing. Bing tends to take much longer to index and rank sites than Google does as well. I honestly didn’t know where to start when it comes to manual link building. I love to hear from those building a significant web presence through consistent content production (without all the manual link building)…great job. I’ve done ZERO link building in 3 years+, and my traffic has grown to over 200K uniques a month fyi.