Manipulating sites to link to you is against Google’s guidelines, so ignoring this could cause your site to be penalized. This is a standard approach for podcasters because links allow listeners/viewers to dig deeper and learn more about the guest(s) and their business. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) is a concept highlighted in Google’s Search Quality Raters’ Guidelines and has become a focus for SEOs in recent years. The general idea is that websites should be built with EEAT in mind, showing that they are experts in their niche while demonstrating authority and trust. Remember, however, that Google sometimes automatically rewrites meta descriptions based on the search queries, meaning what you input isn’t necessarily what will always show up in SERPs.
Once you identify the key components that appear to be boosting their presence relative to yours, brainstorm ways to improve upon what they and you are doing. Effective reputation management can significantly impact local SEO performance. Your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) appearing in citations help strengthen local SEO as they confirm your geographic relevance to Google. As such, reviewing your competitors’ GBP can reveal how often you need to post content or how many reviews you need to compete. Tools like Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool can help with this. Structured data is also an important consideration in optimizing for AI Search, a topic we’ll leave for another day.
Creating Valuable, Engaging Content
Google primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled. In many cases, these are other websites that are linking to your pages. Other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time, and you can also encourage people to discover your content by promoting your site. Manual actions are penalties Google imposes for violating their webmaster guidelines, such as engaging in spammy link building or cloaking.
Keep in mind that when reviewing a competitive website or content, the assumption is that it was created and published with SEO in mind. However, this may not always be the case, so don’t be surprised if your competitor’s pages are not optimized; rather, look at this as an opportunity. Any effective competitor analysis will naturally begin with a review of competitors’ websites to see “how” they may be able to outrank you and/or what they may be trying to rank for. As such, BHS Links when it comes to online visibility and local SEO, competitor analysis isn’t just a best practice – it’s a necessity. Hiring a full-service SEO agency is typically a significant investment, but it also provides the most comprehensive support. Agencies offer a team of experts who manage all aspects of your SEO, from strategy and content creation to technical SEO and analytics.
What Is SEO? An Intro to Search Engine Optimization
The goal of SEO is to increase visibility in search results, making it easier for people to find relevant, trustworthy, and useful content when they search for information, products, or services. This involves optimizing webpages, improving technical performance, and building credibility through links and engagement—so that both search engines and users see your site as valuable. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of improving a website’s visibility in organic search results on Google and Bing, or other search engines. SEO involves researching search queries, creating helpful content, and optimizing the user experience to improve organic search rankings. In October 2019, Google announced they would start applying BERT models for English language search queries in the US.
- Most keywords are competitive for the simple reason that there are LOTS of sites trying to rank for them.
- By compiling helpful resources and promoting them to your target audience, you can attract natural, high-quality backlinks from websites that appreciate your content.
- For example, if your goal is to drive more inbound traffic and generate brand awareness through content, then you might create a good amount of keyword-targeted content to drive SEO traffic.
- The algorithm has so many ranking factors because it wants to connect people with the exact product or service they’re looking for.
- National SEO services ranges from $3,000 per month to $10,000 per month, and that doesn’t even include services for enterprises, which requires a custom quote.
On-page SEO
Google will highlight the search term in bold when displaying it in search results. By dividing your keywords into small, manageable groups of related keywords, you’ll cut down on your workload (significantly), while still creating targeted, specific pages. Your last step should be switching to off-page SEO where you try to build links with other sites by writing guest posts or sharing other types of content like infographics. As we described in this article, start by optimizing your on-page SEO. This includes how keywords are used on pages as well as site architecture. Once everything is locked down on your site, you should begin expanding on your content using the same high-performing keywords.
Outrank your competitors by effortlessly unearthing hidden keyword gems, refining underperforming content, and safeguarding your golden keywords—all made simple with Keyword Gap. Ahrefs not only gives our team insights to improve rankings and beat ROI targets, Ahrefs makes it easy to evangelize SEO and get buy-in from our organization. Ahrefs’ PPC section & stats are more accurate than their competitors. I love how they shows trends about keywords in different locations. Marketers from all kinds of businesses turn to Ahrefs to grow their search traffic. Shopify stores have an advantage over sites on alternative website builders because Shopify is built for speed.
