A typical Google Search results page consists of a few different visual elements that you can influence to help users decide whether they should visit your site through those search results. In this section, we’re focusing on the title link and the snippet because these are the more visually significant elements. The content in the policies directory seldomly changes, however the content in the promotions directory likely changes very often. Google can learn this information and crawl the different directories at different frequencies. To learn more about search-friendly site structures, check out our guide for ecommerce sites, for which a good URL structure is more important as they tend to be larger. When Google crawls a page, it should ideally see the page the same way an average user does.
With search engines like Google, the process consists of crawling, indexing, and ranking. The crawler is an online bot that scours the web to collect all the pages out there and save them in a gigantic database called the index. This index is constantly updated with new pages or updated versions of existing ones. When someone searches online, the search engine calls on the index and uses complex algorithms to determine which pages are relevant to show. This determines the ranking of results shown to the online searcher.
Your goal with SEO is to rank at the top of search engine results for your defined keywords. Also known as robots or spiders, these are automated software programs that search engines use to scan or ‘crawl’ websites on the internet, collect information, and create an index. Search engines are prioritizing location-specific searches, making local SEO more essential than ever. Businesses that maintain accurate listings, generate reviews, and engage with local audiences are seeing stronger rankings. SEO success isn’t just about improving rankings—it’s about understanding how your efforts are performing and making data-driven decisions. Finding the right keywords is critical for ranking in search results.
At any given moment, billions of people use search engines to find information. Keywords are words or phrases that users type into search engines to find information. SEO can help your website rank higher in search results and consequently drive more traffic to your website, it’s just that ranking and traffic are a means to an end. There’s little use in ranking if no one is clicking through to your site, and there’s little use in increasing your traffic if that traffic isn’t accomplishing a larger business objective. Every website is different, so take the time to really understand a specific site’s business goals.
Internal linking is one of the easiest SEO best practices to use. All you need to do is keep these two image SEO best practices in mind. So if you use images on your page, you want to make sure they’re optimized for SEO.
Rank for more SERP features
Off-page SEO refers to any activities performed outside of a website to improve the site’s ranking on search engine results pages. It gives the search engine an indication of how well the audience perceives a site, business, or product. That’s why we offer a free and Premium version of our WordPress plugin, allowing BHS Links you to get started with SEO without too much trouble. Our free plugin comes with features like the SEO and readability analyses, which give you feedback on your content right away. Our Premium plugin gives you access to some more features like AI-powered features, a redirect tool, and the possibility to add multiple keywords per page.
- This example excludes all search engines from indexing the page and from following any on-page links.
- Practicing SEO is the best way to continue your learning journey and could be key to growing your website’s revenue.
- Once you have a list of keywords, prioritize the list by purchase intent.
- We recommend reviewing this mobile version to ensure that it looks the way you envisioned and that all site elements are easily findable.
- Search engine developers realized that if many quality resources link to a certain page, it means the page is valuable and trustworthy.
Ethical Backlink Practices
Build a fast-loading, fast-to-respond website by following best practices like compressing images, minifying code, enabling browser caching, and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to get URL-specific recommendations. Finally, keep an eye on the progress of your link building campaigns in the “Monitor” tab. Look for high-authority domains that regularly link to your competitors and examine the content they find valuable enough to link to. Pay attention to the anchor text, as this can give you clues about the context in which the link was shared and what specific aspect of the content appealed to the linking site.
For example, when I search for the term ‘sustainable phone case’, these results are shown by Google. Based on my search term and the intent behind it, Google deems these results the best ones found in its index. The simplest way is to accurately discuss the item or service which you know the most about. Thus, if your service is an online store selling flowers, built with an online store builder, and your site has a blog, this blog should discuss topics surrounding flowers and flower care. Your portfolio is your first impression, your foot in the door—it must engage your audience and stand out against the hundreds of others they might be reviewing.
Build Backlinks to Your Site
On-Page SEO refers to techniques you can apply to your website’s individual pages to improve their search engine rankings, such as optimizing content, HTML code, and metadata. AI-driven search is shifting how results are displayed, with search engines now generating direct answers and topic summaries instead of just listing web pages. Content ranking is becoming less about keywords and more about context, expertise, and user engagement. By focusing on off-page SEO, businesses can strengthen their digital reputation, improve rankings, and drive long-term organic traffic.