What Is SEO? Search Engine Optimization Best Practices

In 2025, SEO will focus less on raw keywords and more so around search intent across diverse platforms like social media and LLMs. As well as this, it’ll be important to produce more video content as discovery platforms integrate these more into their SERPs. Advertisements are almost consistently shown at the very top of a search result, or in a left/right sidebar. Although the basic principle of operation of most of the search engines is the same there are minor differences between them which lead to major changes in their results. For example, for search engines like Yahoo and Bing, on-page keyword factors are of primary importance, while for Google, links and hyperlinks are more important.

• Keyword prominence does work as a ranking signal if the theme of the page is aligned with the keyword.
• In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources.
• SEM, or both SEO and PPC, is beneficial for ad-heavy keywords—terms that trigger many ads in search results.
• By the end, you’ll understand that SEO friendly does not mean a robotic text filled with keywords but quality writing that follows specific guidelines.
• And when you combine other social media marketing strategies, like influencer marketing, into the mix, then you can take this exposure even further.
• Search engine optimization does take a little while to work its magic and start bringing more organic traffic to your site.

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To write a meta description, you should combine technical best practices (right length, proper keyword use, correct placement) with clever writing (clear benefits, emotional pull, actionable language). Bethan is a B2B marketer and entrepreneur, with over 12 years marketing experience leading to Marketing Director level. Bethan knows what it’s like to start your own businesses, they are a regular speaker at international conferences, and podcast host of “The Brave”.

Top SEO tools

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. In this post, you’ll learn what SEO is, how it works, and why it’s an important digital marketing process for the success of online businesses. On-page SEO (or on-site SEO) is the set of actions you can do on your website directly to help search engines better crawl and understand your pages and connect them to relevant keywords. On top of that, you need to follow some simple on-page SEO best practices.

SEO analytics lets you find what’s working, what isn’t, and what to do next. You can use the previous chapters in this guide to explore those optimizations in-depth. Companies that adopt answer engine optimization now are giving themselves a first-to-market advantage. Not to mention, they’re practicing SEO, which is critical to appearing in answer engine responses. Create a better page experience by optimizing your site’s accessibility and usability.

By URL structure we mean the format of your permalinks (also known as slugs). It is highly recommended that a breadcrumb menu allow users to return to the previous level and eventually to the homepage. Search engines work by crawling a website’s homepage and following any links from there to discover and index more pages. For example, if you have different pages for desktop and mobile with the same content, you need to tell Google that these pages are the same. You can read this guide, which provides step-by-step instructions on how to optimize your XML sitemap. Run a free SEO analysis to uncover site issues, competitor gaps, and ranking opportunities.

Even if you prefer a more hands-on approach, you might enjoy collaborating with SEO experts. Depending on the SEO firm, they may offer all, some, or only one of these services. If you’re looking for an agency that can do it all, focus on full-service agencies since they have larger, BHS Links specialized teams for these different search engine optimization areas. Rank tracking is the process of monitoring how your website performs in search engines for your most important keywords. The most natural link building technique is to create a unique and valuable piece of content – a so-called linkable asset – that will attract backlinks. Backlinks have been a very influential factor of search engine algorithms since the very beginning.

If you are using All in One SEO, then you can set the focus keyword in your article’s SEO settings. The plugin will then give you a score so you can see how effectively you have used it in your article. Keyword research can also help you identify important topics that your existing content doesn’t cover. You can uncover them by performing a content gap analysis, and this will give you an ongoing source of content ideas to write about. To check your website (and your competitors’), you’ll need to use some SEO tools. You may also find it helpful to analyze how your competitors’ websites are performing with SEO.