Make sure these are clear, descriptive, and incorporate your target keywords where relevant or applicable. Good alt text is brief and avoids details that are irrelevant to the context an image provides. It may also be useful to check your content against other pages ranking for your chosen keyword. For example, if competitor content has a compelling and friendly tone, you can mirror this to meet the expectations of your audience.

Be sure to validate your results using one of the validators mentioned above. At a minimum, schema types such as Article or Product offer basic markup for the majority of pages. Other schemas may be more appropriate for your individual circumstances. The more specific information you can offer—such as author, dates, prices, etc.—the better off you’ll be. Make sure you create descriptive, unique titles that accurately describe what a visitor will find on the page. If you performed a site crawl using a recommended SEO tool (step 1) it should highlight any major issues that might prevent your site from being indexed.

• Search results are presented in an ordered list, and the higher up on that list a site can get, the more traffic the site will tend to receive.
• The more votes (or backlinks) a web page receives, the more trustworthy it appears to search engines, which can significantly impact its ranking in search results.
• How do search engines ensure that when someone types a query into the search bar, they get relevant results in return?
• Traffic that comes via SEO is often referred to as “organic search traffic” to differentiate it from traffic that comes through paid search.

After the search engine discovers a new page, it analyzes its content and (hopefully) stores it in a huge database of pages called an index (e.g., the Google index). The lesson will conclude with On-Page practices to avoid keyword stuffing, hidden text, repetitive anchor text, cloaking, and finally, a SEO Anomaly guide on creating a perfectly optimized page. Costs can vary widely depending on whether you handle SEO in-house or hire an agency.

This means when people search for your products or services, they can find your website easily. In the 2nd chapter of this SEO guide, you will learn what are search engines, how they work and what are the most important SEO ranking factors in Google. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process of optimizing your website with the goal of improving your rankings in the search results and getting more organic (non-paid) traffic.

If it’s like a local website and you’re trying to rank it locally, you can use directories and the classified ads websites for that. For instance, the top results for “how to increase productivity in the workplace” contain a specific target keyword. Search engine algorithms help present more advanced search results for users based on the purpose of their search. Also, if you have a Google Ads account, you can even check the pay-per-click for certain search terms. Those with high pay-per-click are usually harder to rank in organic search.

SEO Basics

Schema markup can highlight specific information, such as your business’s location, hours, and products, making this data more accessible for voice search queries. Voice searches are predominantly made on mobile devices, making mobile optimization critical. A mobile-friendly website with fast loading times provides a better user experience and is favored by search engines. Use responsive design, compress images, and minimize code to improve site speed and usability on mobile devices. Recognizing and catering to the search intent behind target keywords is fundamental to connecting with your audience and enhancing your website’s visibility and relevance.

Marketing Library

Many content management systems or website builders, like WordPress, offer themes that automatically adjust to different screen sizes. Search engines like Google default to the mobile version of a website for crawling. That means if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it might not perform well in SERPs. Go through this report and act on the recommendations to improve your website’s page speed.

On page SEO refers to the optimization techniques applied directly to a website’s pages to enhance their visibility and ranking in search engine results. It involves optimizing content, HTML source code, and other on-page elements to align with search engine algorithms. Keywords is the most basic process in SEO because it aims to serve the most relevant information to its users. Clearscope uses artificial intelligence to suggest relevant keywords and phrases with a focus on natural language. It helps keep your content aligned with what search engines are looking for.