Learn SEO From The Experts

Why is SEO important?

SEO is essential to the success of any website. If you want people to find you when they search online, you must optimize your site to rank better in search results.

Here are just a few of the many benefits of learning SEO and implementing it:

• Improved visibility: When you rank higher in search results, more people will see your site and become familiar with your brand, improving your visibility and brand awareness.
• Improved credibility: The higher your website ranks on search engines like Google and Bing, the more credible you appear to visitors. When you rank higher, people trust your website has the information they need, so they visit it.
• Improved traffic: The higher you rank on Google, the more traffic you will get. With SEO, you can also improve the quality of your traffic by targeting specific keywords that are relevant to your audience.
• Increased qualified leads and sales: SEO allows you to target keywords that are relevant to your audience and leads so you can attract potential future customers to your website. You can also rank for keywords related to your products or services.

How do search engine rankings and SEO work?

Understanding how search engines work can be helpful when you start optimizing your site for search. Here’s a brief overview and some additional resources for understanding search engines.

Search engines like Google and Bing use bots called crawlers or spiders to find and index content. These crawlers travel around the Internet through links and scan pages, adding pages to search engine’s indexes as they discover them. Once a page is part of a search engine’s index, it can appear in search results.

Search engines also assess pages to determine what they’re about and how useful they may be to users.

When a user searches something, search engines use various algorithms to determine which pages will be the most useful to the searcher and ranks them accordingly. These algorithms rank content based on more than 200 factors.

The role of SEO, then, is to optimize pages so that search engines:

• Find and index your pages
• Understand what your pages are about
• Assess them favorably and rank them highly based on the various ranking factors

Search engines want to rank the most useful content well, so essentially, SEOs want to make content as valuable to searchers as possible.

The goal is not to trick search engines into ranking your content highly. Trying to do so can lead to penalties that lower your rankings or prevent your site from ranking entirely. Instead, the goal is to make your content useful and relevant to searchers in alignment with search engine algorithms.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is one of the main subsets of SEO strategies, along with off-page SEO and technical SEO. On-page SEO covers factors that are part of your website and that you can directly control.

Keyword research

Conducting keyword research is one of the most important things you need to do to succeed with SEO.

When researching keywords, choose terms that are relevant to your business and website and that your target audience is likely to search. You can use a keyword research tool to help you find terms to target with your content.

Most companies focus on long-tail keywords when performing research.

Long-tail keywords are phrases containing three or more words, like “women’s purple rain boots.” There is less competition for long-tail keywords, so you can rank higher in search results.

Additionally, since long-tail keywords are specific, they can drive more qualified traffic to your business, which leads to more revenue.

Short-tail keywords are shorter, broader search queries. While these keywords are more competitive, ranking well for them can bring high volumes of traffic to your site. Larger, well-established websites may be able to rank for relevant short-tail keywords.

Use our proprietary keyword research tool, KeywordsFX, to help you find high-quality keywords for content and PPC campaigns.

Identify Top Keywords for Free

Content for SEO

Content is another fundamental component of SEO. With each piece of content, you get another opportunity to rank in search engines and another chance for your audience to find your website.

You can create content that focuses on the keywords you chose during the keyword research process. There are numerous types of content you can create, including blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, and much more.

When publishing content, try to have a consistent schedule and make sure that your content is informative and matches user search intent.

Another key SEO technique is including keywords in your content. You’ll want to use them throughout your copy as well as in prominent places such as titles and URLs. It’s also essential not to sacrifice readability and user-friendliness to include keywords.

User experience

User experience is one of the most important ranking factors for Google. If people bounce from your website, it signals to Google that your website delivers a poor user experience or doesn’t have the information people need.

To ensure you deliver a great user experience, check that your website is easy to navigate and that it’s easy for users to find the information they need. You’ll want to ensure that your website is organized, aesthetically pleasing, and functional to deliver the best user experience.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO includes factors that aren’t part of your website itself and that you can’t directly control.

Link building

One of the main off-page SEO factors is backlinks — the links that your website gets from other sites.

When you publish content, you want people to link to it to build your backlink profile. Backlinks send signals of trust to Google, which can help improve your website’s ranking.

If you publish great content, you are likely to naturally attract links. To build your backlink profile, you can also:

• Reach out to other sites and ask for links
• Encourage shares on social media
• Write guests posts on other websites and include natural backlinks to your site in the posts

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to backend website and server optimizations that improve a site’s performance in search engine results. These optimizations may require web development skills to implement.

Here are a few examples of technical SEO optimizations.

Page speed

How quickly your pages load is key to user experience, and a fast page speed may lead to higher rankings. Ideally, your pages will load in three seconds or less.

Some methods you can use to improve your page speed include:

• Compressing images
• Using browser caching
• Minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Responsive design

Responsive web design ensures your website displays correctly no matter what device someone uses to access it. Responsive websites can adjust to the screen size of the device on which a user views it. It’s especially important to make sure your site displays well on mobile devices since Google uses a mobile-first index.

Of course, these techniques are just a few examples of the many methods you can use to improve your SEO. The examples listed on this page will give you the fundaments you need to get started. For more SEO techniques, check out the additional resources linked throughout this page.

SEO techniques to avoid

When looking at techniques to improve your SEO, you’ll come across some tactics that seem like a good idea but will hurt your website in the long run. These tactics are known as black-hat SEO techniques.

Black-hat SEO refers to strategies used to boost SEO quickly that go against search engine guidelines. Here are some techniques you must avoid:

• Keyword stuffing: This refers to overloading a page with keywords in an unnatural way to try to get it to rank for those terms. Keywords should always be inserted naturally within the text and should never be overused.
• Paid links: You should never pay for links, as this can hurt your website’s credibility.
• Plagiarized content: Google can detect plagiarized and duplicate content. Don’t take content from other people’s websites or publish the same content repeatedly on your website, as it can impact your ranking.

Types of SEO

There are also several specialized types of SEO that businesses may use, depending on their goals.

1. Voice SEO

   Involves optimizing your website for searches users conduct by speaking to a voice search-enabled device, such as a smartphone or smart speaker.

   Voice SEO tactics include optimizing for more conversational queries and featured snippets — the text that often appears at the top of search engine results pages and aims to quickly answer users’ queries.

   Learn more about voice SEO

   Looking to learn more about voice SEO? Check out these beginner SEO resources for voice search!

   Voice SEO resources

   • What Is Voice Search Optimization?
   • Voice Search SEO: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Site
   • How Does Voice Search Affect SEO?
   • 5 Smart Speaker Voice Search Optimization Tips for Success
   • Winning Voice Search Marketing Tips
   • What Is Speakable Schema Markup?
   • 4 Tips for Adapting to Voice Search
   • 5 Reasons to Invest in Voice Search Optimization
   • How to Do Keyword Research for Voice Search Optimization
   • 15 Voice Search Trends & Statistics
   • 13 Voice Search Statistics That Prove You Need Voice Search Optimization
   • How Hiring a Voice Search Optimization Company Can Power New Traffic
   • Voice Search Optimization Services

2. Local SEO

   Aims to reach searchers in certain geographic areas, typically those close to a business’s physical location or within their service area. It involves techniques such as:

   • Including your business on directory sites and review sites
   • Targeting keywords that include location names and phrases like “near me”

   Local SEO Resources

3. Enterprise SEO

   Companies with larger websites may benefit from enterprise SEO strategies. Enterprise websites can often target more competitive short-tail keywords and use other tactics tailored to the needs of large websites.

   Enterprise SEO Resources

4. SMB SEO

   SMBs benefit from SEO strategies tailored to their needs. SEO for SMBs is typically more segmented and targeted and focuses on long-tail keywords.

   SMB SEO Resources

5. B2C SEO

   B2C companies can use SEO strategies that are tailored to their needs. B2C SEO strategies take into account the shorter sales cycles many B2C companies have and target long-tail keywords that consumers in the company’s target audience might search.

   B2C SEO Resources

6. B2B SEO

   B2B SEO strategies have a longer sales cycle to consider, as well as multiple stakeholders for each potential client. Because of this, B2B companies need to target keywords that various stakeholders might search. They often produce more content than B2C companies, and their content often includes lots of detail and has a more professional tone.

   B2B SEO Resources

7. Ecommerce SEO

   Ecommerce SEO is another specialized type of SEO. Ecommerce SEO strategies include ranking product pages and can involve ranking on sites like Amazon and in Google Shopping.

   Ecommerce SEO Resources

Plan your SEO strategy

To make the most of your SEO, it’s essential to have a research-based, data-backed SEO strategy in place. Check out these resources for help planning your SEO strategy.