Search engine optimization SEO Meaning, Google, History, & Facts

Pages with increased visits helps SEO, as it signals to search engines that your site is an authority on your chosen topic. SEO is short for search engine optimization, and SEO Anomaly though it may only be three letters long, it can make a world of difference in your digital marketing strategy. Strategic keyword research is a must-have in any SEO’s toolbox, as it is the process of finding relevant phrases a website should rank on and optimizing pages, particularly content, for those phrases. Unique, high-quality, relevant content that is authoritative, optimized, aligns with a website’s overall theme and captures the interest of the site’s target audience is key to any SEO content strategy.

seo meaning

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. Add your relevant H2s, H3s, and further headings using both primary and secondary keywords where applicable. Make sure your content is both valuable and unique for readers, and that it matches their search intent—what they’re looking to get out of visiting the page. For example, it’ll make sense for many people to start with their homepage.

There are different practices for optimizing AdWords, shopping, and local results. If your rankings and organic traffic increase, you are probably in the right direction. As the name implies, technical SEO has to do with optimizing the technical aspects of a website. These are settings to make the job of search engine crawlers easier. Some of the most important local SEO ranking factors are Google Business Profile, NAP (name, address, phone numbers) citations, customer reviews, and backlinks. Some of the key technical SEO tasks include optimizing site speed, structure, crawling, indexing, and schema markup.

seo meaning

Add Your Website To Google Search Console And Check For Errors

To write a meta description for a landing page, focus on clarity, value, and persuasion. This short snippet is your chance to explain what users will get from visiting your page — and why it’s worth their click. So is this a KPI we haven’t met let’s say this quarter, or is it part of a longer-term trend? Again, because that really allows you to start to unpick like what is actually the problem here.

seo meaning

You can start with our guide on SEO for beginners or take free courses in Ahrefs’ Academy. 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. E-E-A-T (aka Double-E-A-T) is a set of guidelines that Google’s quality raters use to assess the quality of search results. That’s why they operate like librarians by reading content across the web and adding it to their library.

seo meaning

As a result, SEO has changed from optimizing fixed criteria to working toward optimal user experience. Smart SEOs understand that they have to go beyond backlinks and content. They have to understand the needs of searchers in the context of a keyword. Of course, search engines keep the exact calculations of their algorithms in secret.

seo meaning

Local SEO: Definition & How to Improve It

  • This is about ensuring the images on your webpage can be understood when someone can’t view an image and by search engines.
  • Site migrations can lead to significant headaches if not handled carefully.
  • Additionally, many of these terms apply across other businesses and industries outside of SEO.
  • Search engines have come a long way since they used to display only results with a keyword and didn’t actually comprehend what users were looking for.

To do so, they survey and “understand” the vast network of websites that make up the web. They run a sophisticated search engine algorithm that determines what results to display for each search query. Major search engines rely on search engine crawlers to index pages, measuring factors like page speed, structure, and content optimization to decide how high to display them in search rankings.

seo meaning

To keep pace with these evolving tactics, websites must demonstrate that they are authorities on subjects by structuring content effectively. Advanced semantic SEO methods such as topic clustering and internal linking, enable better contextual understanding by search engines, enhancing relevance and higher ranking. It’s imperative in today’s digital age, which demands a robust online presence. An SEO marketing strategy makes it easier for search engines like Google and Bing to “crawl” your content and determine how it should rank on SERPs. In the previous section, we talked about how backlinks to your content from quality sources can help increase your authority, and thus your ranking on the search engines. That’s why it is vital for businesses to work to improve their SERP ranking so that they can increase visibility on the search engines and reach more potential customers.