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. Authorized backlinks refer to links coming from reputable websites. Google’s algorithm sees backlinks as votes of confidence on your site and considers the source’s domain authority to validate them. For instance, Google’s algorithm not only gives users relevant search results but is also able to determine their specific search intent. On the other hand, long-tail keywords have less competition and allow you to build highly relevant content for your audience.

How to learn SEO and get started

This is a sustainable way of getting more website traffic in the long run and is worth the effort. This is why marketers are so invested in SEO and spend so much time and effort on it. SEO is all about using different methods to demonstrate a website’s value to Google so that it can rank highly in search results. For example, if your main keyword is “kettlebell workout”, use variations like “kettlebell exercises” and “easy kettlebell movements”.

Focus keyword optimization

• Title tags are one of the main ways that Google can understand what your page is about.
• Google’s systems want to spot signals that show expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
• It is the practice of improving your website's content, structure, and visibility to rank higher on search engines like Google.
• It’s advisable to look at your SEO rankings routinely even if you rank highly in search.
• And that makes it WAY more likely to convert them into customers.

It covers everything from technical stuff, through SEO Anomaly content and CTR optimization to monitoring and analysis of your progress. Image compression is a process that removes some unnecessary image data while preserving image quality. It can be very useful for content-heavy websites (like news magazines or larger blogs). If you run a WordPress website, there’s an official AMP plugin to help you with implementation. Last but not least, make sure the physical location of the server is as close to your target audience as possible (e.g. if you target the US market, don’t have a server located in Germany). These links include contextual in-text links or “further reading” boxes that link to other pages from your website that might be interesting for your visitor.

Sometimes you want to create something bigger and better than what’s out there. At the end of this step, you should have identified at least 4-5 main organic competitors. Because of this, many businesses and website owners will try to manipulate the search results so that their site shows up higher on the search results page (SERP) than their competitors. Most website templates and themes allow you to show a navigation menu on your site, so make sure to use it for easier access to your website users. Almost every single page and a blog post can be discovered from that navigation menu.

And in this first step I’m going to show you how to create a list of awesome keywords for your business. And besides optimizing my content for that specific term, I also added a handful of LSI keywords like “drive traffic”. And they’re helpful for search engines because it helps them index your site’s pages… and understand your site’s structure and architecture. However, driving organic traffic to your site is not easy, and this is where SEO comes into play. With SEO, you can optimize different parts of your website and page to fit various criteria of the ever-changing search algorithms.

Yes, getting on the phone with your website users and customers will help you improve SEO. The final lesson in this SEO for dummies guide is something a bit different. Take the SEO for dummies approach by focusing on a small number of tools. You don't need to come up with SEO and link building ideas from scratch. Making your website understandable to Google is only part of the story. Backlinks are like “word of mouth” for the web—the more people who talk about you, the more likely you are to be discovered.

This will help search engines better index your images, which may appear when users perform an image search for a certain keyword or phrase. Building internal links or hyperlinks to other content on your site can help search engines learn more about your site. Technically, the clicks from organic search are free, but ranking your website to get those clicks requires time, effort, and potential financial investment. You might need to invest in SEO tools, hire experts, or spend significant time learning and implementing SEO strategies yourself. Google’s algorithm is a complex system that retrieves the most relevant data to deliver the best possible results for a search query. The algorithm considers over 200 factors to determine rankings, and the list is constantly updated.

Technical SEO is important because if you have problems with crawling and indexing, it can negatively impact your rankings. Usually, once you get your technical SEO correct, you may not have to deal with it again. As part of the Search team, she enjoys creating content that helps you master SEO. We also offer a variety of SEO courses in our Yoast SEO academy, where you can find 5 free courses to get started. For example, the SEO for beginners course, the WordPress for beginners course and a course on structured data.