Meta Tags SEO Guide: How To Use Meta Tags Effectively 2025

For example, you might have seen this voice search SEO study that we published on the Backlinko blog a while back. We recently used the Broken Link Building approach to build some really nice backlinks to Exploding Topics. This email lets the person know that you have a post coming out (or that just came out) on a topic that they’re interested in. And instead of shoving a link in their face, you ask them if they’d like to see it. First, find someone that’s legit interested in your content’s topic.

That’s why all the tips and techniques in this guide are mainly about Google SEO, although many things are universal and apply to the optimization for any other search engine. Clearly it takes a lot of time and effort to create truly valuable content that’s also optimized for SEO. So, when considering how to optimize your content for SEO, go beyond keywords and think about how you can provide real value to your audience through information gain. But the next step is to add more instances of the main keyword—along with variations and secondary keywords—throughout the content. Take it a step further and get thousands of relevant keyword ideas for your content with the Keyword Magic Tool.

  • We recommend creating a checklist of items to review on each web page before publishing for consistency.
  • Here’s a breakdown of what on-page SEO is, how it can help your website, and a step-by-step list of techniques to use.
  • As the name implies, technical SEO has to do with optimizing the technical aspects of a website.
  • Search engines prioritize websites that are fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate.
  • AI Overviews are concise summaries provided by Google’s Gemini engine that appear at the top of search results.

If you take the long view on SEO, there are three broad eras you need to know. It’ll come as no surprise that all three of these eras are defined by Google, the world’s most popular search engine. Of course, SEO helps many other types of businesses besides the wedding industry as well. Just as you perform a competitive analysis to identify market gaps and differentiate your products and marketing efforts, you’ll need to investigate and analyse competitors’ SEO. That way, you can give yourself a competitive edge regarding your site and its content. Now that you’ve fixed your site’s technical SEO problems, it’s time to go on offense.

If not, let your site builder help you out or hire someone with a background in technical SEO. When that’s done, you can start looking at site structure and the content on your pages. After ensuring proper crawling and indexing, focus on user experience factors such as page speed, website security, and mobile-friendliness. Use Semrush’s Link Building Tool to start building quality backlinks. It most commonly involves link building, which is the process of getting other high-quality websites to link to your website.

what is seo

Search engines

Specifically, you want to set up an SEO-friendly site architecture. In fact, tools like Screaming Frog exist for people that want to run DIY audits. The real value of this content is the fact that we gave people in the marketing space LOTS of stats to cite in their articles.

Strategies for Off-Page SEO

what is seo

Build Credibility With Users – Users trust search engines, and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching increases the website’s trust. Enhance User Experience (UX) – SEO is not only about search engines but good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a website. This can be trickier than just looking at your daily rankings but will give you a better idea of the success of your SEO strategy and how you’re perceived.

what is seo

One black hat technique uses hidden text, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off-screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking. This is in between the black hat and white hat approaches, where the methods employed avoid the site being penalized but BHS Links do not act in producing the best content for users. Grey hat SEO is entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.

And to earn those rankings – to nail that “Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness” qualifier from Google – you must be a subject matter expert. Nowadays, ranking for almost any keyword is much harder than it was in the past – most niches are oversaturated. What they mean is that you should find synonyms and related keywords and “sprinkle them” across the page to make sure Google knows what it’s about. Once you have a focus keyword, you should use it to optimize your page for the given topic.

One final aspect that you shouldn’t forget about is your business listings. Make sure these are accurate on your Google Business Profile and other websites that are relevant to your business. Set up Google Analytics 4 (or an alternative analytics tool) to track SEO metrics like organic traffic and conversions. First, import your target keywords into Semrush’s Position Tracking tool. Enter a broad starting term related to your business, choose your country, and click “Search.”