What Is SEO? Understanding Search Engine Optimization in 2025

One reason for this may be that Google moves to serve search journeys rather than search queries. This step is arguably the hardest part of the process, so here are some considerations to think about right from the start. Based on your website audit, plus your business objectives, your dedicated account manager will generate actionable recommendations for your site. You can decide who should implement the recommendations — you or your WebFX team. Deliver results that drive revenue, grow market share, and spark expansion with our SEO consulting agency.

But as I said, getting caught often results in a site being completely wiped out from search listings. That said, although it might have its lure and can be used on test sites, black hat SEO typically ends in a penalty from search listings. Again, it makes sense, as the search engine needs a way to assess the company’s location. However, one additional element of on-page optimization is a company’s name, address, and phone number on a page. All this information combined helps customers choose which business to engage with. That’s how you waste your reader’s time and inevitably decrease the value of your content rather than add to it.

• By implementing responsive design, robot directives, and other technical elements like structured data and meta tags, you can tell Google (a robot itself) what your site is all about.
• For example, your pillar page can be about “link building,” and cluster subtopics can be “guest blogging” and “email outreach.” Among others.
• Advertisements are almost consistently shown at the very top of a search result, or in a left/right sidebar.
• A newer SEO suite for WordPress, RankMath has 15 modules and provides SEO guidance using 30 different types of improvements.
• Instead, I focused on products that could fit into one of four distinct SEO product categories.
• Making the title tag attractive can entice them to choose your page over the others on the SERPs.

Improvement in User Experience

I spoke with Liam Fallen, SEO Consultant and Founder of the MostlyMarketing Slack Community and LiamFallen.com. Fallen has ten years of experience in SEO and has worked with companies like monday.com, Riverside.fm, and LeoVegas, focusing specifically on tech SEO. I reached out to eight specialists to get the inside scoop on their SEO best practices.

This freshness factor isn’t always the most important SEO strategy, but it is nonetheless a best practice. 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 SEO Anomaly surrounding flowers and flower care. If you’re unsure what the best route is for various optimizations, consider trying one option and storing the others in a list for potential future use. Take note that SEO success takes time, so be sure to be patient. Both on-page and off-page SEO are essential in driving traffic to your site and in ultimately signaling to Google that your site is a significant player on the internet.

Remember the “First Link Priority Rule”

This is where you optimize your pages to help search engines understand them. Before you start learning SEO, you need to understand how search engines work. Not only will this boost your business and ensure that people searching from their phones can use your site, but it is also important to Google.

Continuously Refine Your Keyword Strategy

It’s proficient in comparing domains and their related keyword rankings, which can let you branch out to competitors’ high-ranking keywords. You can then turn those generated topics into valuable content that not only satisfies your audience’s need for info, but boosts your rankings in the search results! So, if you’re searching for one of the best SEO management tools for content, look no further than FAQFox. 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. A search engine results page or SERP is a page that shows up when a user enters a search query.

The more high-quality, relevant links you acquire, the higher your site will likely rank for related key terms. If you just want to try with free tools first, you will find lots of them online. Ahrefs provides fourteen free SEO tools, one for every aspect of SEO, including your central SEO dashboard called Webmaster Tools. Link building is something is something that preoccupies the SEO industry. To give you an idea of how this works, here’s a quick overview of a few popular backlink building techniques. If you’re an Ahrefs user, you can also use the Indentify intents AI feature to see the type of search intent that gets the most traffic.