Skip to main content ↓

Learn SEO From The Experts

SEO is the best way to influence greater visibility in search engine rankings in order to produce a steady stream of qualified traffic to your site. Get started on your SEO journey with these SEO resources!

What Are Backlinks?

Glossary

What are backlinks? How do you get them? We answer these questions and more in this insightful guide on backlinks!

~ 13 minute read View Full Story

Best SEO Companies in the World

Learn

9 Best SEO Companies in the World Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to grow your business — offline and online. The challenge is finding the best SEO agency to lead and manage your strategy. With […]

~ 2 minute read View Full Story

The Ultimate SEO Help Guide

Learn

Looking for SEO help? Get insight into SEO basics, find out how to put together a strategy and troubleshoot SEO challenges in this article.

~ 15 minute read View Full Story

Your 56-Point SEO Checklist for 2025

Learn

Your 9-Point SEO Checklist Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most popular marketing strategy in the world today. Get the perfect recipe to do it with this SEO Checklist! View our SEO Services

~ 43 minute read View Full Story

How to Do Keyword Research for Beginners

Learn

How to Do Keyword Research: The SEO Keyword Research Guide

~ 14 minute read View Full Story

Guaranteed SEO Services

Learn

Guaranteed SEO Services: Why You Should Never Use Them Working with an agency that offers guaranteed SEO services might seem like the right move, but it typically does more harm than good. Learn why you should avoid SEO guarantees and […]

~ 10 minute read View Full Story

SEO Exploration: Detailed Topics and Beginner’s Guide

Explore one of these categories to go more in-depth on a specific SEO topic or keep reading for our beginner’s guide to SEO, complete with additional SEO resources.

Magnifying glass icon.

Learn the basics of SEO

Ebook icon.

Learn key SEO terminology

lightbulb icon.

Get the latest SEO statistics

Analytics icon with arrow pointing upwards for improved results.

Learn about SEO technology and tools

storefront icon.

Learn about SEO for SMBs

laptop website computer icon

Learn about SEO for B2B companies

Target audience icon with three people icons.

Learn about SEO for B2C companies

Shopping cart icon with a plus arrow.

Learn about SEO for ecommerce companies

Global commerce icon.

Learn about SEO for enterprise companies

Learn SEO from the experts: Your beginner’s guide to SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is becoming increasingly important in marketing. With millions of active websites on the Internet, it’s vital that your website ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs) so it’s visible to Internet users.

The right SEO strategies boost your business’s visibility in search results so you drive more qualified traffic to your website that turns into revenue.

Keep reading to learn all about SEO or jump to a specific topic using the buttons below.

If you need help getting your SEO strategy off the ground, WebFX has a team of SEO experts ready to help. Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our SEO services!

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s rankings in search results for relevant keywords to attract qualified traffic to your site. SEO involves a wide range of optimization techniques.

This strategy is organic, meaning you can’t pay to improve your rankings — you must improve your rankings through optimization.

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.

Learn SEO techniques: The basics of SEO

Now that you’ve learned what SEO is and why this strategy is important, you can learn SEO to start optimizing your website for search engines.

Here are some basic SEO techniques you need to know to get your campaign off the ground:

Site indexability

If Google and other search engines can’t see your site, you won’t rank in search results and will miss out on valuable traffic for your company. An easy way to tell if your site is indexed in Google and Bing is to search “site:nameofyoursite.com.”

This search will return all indexed pages.

You can also use Google Search Console to identify pages that haven’t been crawled and indexed or pages that show crawling errors.

To make sure Google can find and index your site, link to each new page from other pages on your site and ensure you’re not accidentally blocking Google from crawling your site. Explore the resources below for more tips.

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 arrow right

cta50 img

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.

Learn more about user experience and SEO

Learn more about how user experience and SEO work together to improve your website and digital marketing.

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 SEODSC01091 768x512 1

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.

  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

Measuring SEO results

A crucial part of any SEO strategy is measuring your results. The following resources will help you measure the results of your SEO campaigns, including their return on investment (ROI).

Consider hiring an SEO agency

Hiring a professional SEO agency is often the best way to maximize the results of your SEO, especially as your business grows.

Explore the following resources to find out what it’s like to work with an SEO agency, how to decide whether to work with one, and how to choose the right SEO agency for your needs.

More SEO resources

Dive further into the world of SEO and digital marketing with these additional resources.

Additional channels and strategies

Discover additional digital marketing strategies that your business can use to increase its online visibility, plus drive leads and revenue.

RECOMMENDED READING
TO TOP