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SEO stands for Search engine optimization. SEO is important for the success of any online business.

Every webmaster should understand what is SEO, how it works and the traffic potential it can generate for all types of websites.

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Let’s get started.

What Is SEO?

SEO is a set of rules and processes to follow to increase the visibility of your website or blog in search engines, with the goal of getting more organic traffic.

Higher rankings mean more traffic.

And more traffic means new customers and more brand awareness.

The No. 1 organic result is 10 times more likely to receive a click than a page ranking in position No. 10.

And the top three organic results get more than 70% of all the clicks.

SEO has two main goals:

• First, is to fulfill users’ search needs by creating relevant, high-quality content and providing the best possible user experience.
• Second, is to help you create a website or blog that search engines can find, index, and understand its content.

In addition, following good SEO practices is a great way to increase the quality of a website or blog by making it user-friendly, faster, and easier to navigate.

The most important SEO practices have to do with:

• Creating high quality content that will make users happy
• Identifying what users are searching for that is related to your products and services
• Providing the right signals to search engine crawlers and algorithms through various SEO techniques

SEO can be considered a complete framework since the whole process has a number of rules or guidelines, a number of stages, and a set of controls.

SEO vs PPC

Most search engine results pages (SERPs) contain two main types of results: 

• Organic results: Rankings through SEO
• Paid results: Rankings through PPC (pay-per-click) advertising

Why not just pay to appear in the ads section?

The vast majorities of people just ignore ads and click on the organic results instead.

Yes, SEO takes more time, effort, and it focuses on “free” organic traffic. 

But once you rank in position 1 for your target keywords, you can reach more people and generate more organic traffic that does not disappear the moment you stop paying.

Now that you understand what SEO is, it is time to take a closer look at why is SEO important.

And main stages of the SEO in this process.

Why Is SEO Important?

SEO marketing is more important than ever.

Every day, Google users conduct billions of searches for information and products.

It’s no surprise that Google search engine is one of the biggest traffic sources to websites.

To harness this traffic source’s potential; you need to appear in the top search results for your target keywords.

The higher you rank, the more people will visit your page.

In simple words, neglecting SEO would mean neglecting one of the most important traffic channels—leaving that space completely to your competitors.

If you have a website, online store, or a blog, SEO can help you get free targeted traffic from search engines.

SEO is important because:

• The majority of search engine users are more likely to click on one of the top 5 suggestions in the SERPS. To take advantage of this and gain more visitors to your website needs to appear in one of the top positions.
• Users trust search engines and having a presence in the top positions for the right keywords the user is searching, increases the website’s trust.
• SEO can put you ahead of your competitor. If two websites are selling the same thing, the search engine optimized website is more likely to have more customers and make more sales.
• SEO is good for the social media promotion of your website. Users who find your website by searching Google or Bing are more likely to promote it on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media channels.
• SEO is not only about search engines but good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a site.
• SEO is important for the smooth running of a big website. Sites with more than one author can benefit from SEO in a direct and indirect ways. Their direct benefit is an increase in organic traffic and their indirect benefit is having a common framework to use before publishing content on the website.

What are the main stages of the SEO process?

As we mentioned above, SEO is a framework with rules and processes.

For simplicity though, SEO can be broken down into 3 main types:

SEO:  Overview

• Technical SEO: SEO techniques applied on your website to ensure that search engines can access, crawl, understand, and index it without any problems.
• Off-page SEO: SEO techniques applied outside your website to help it rank higher in search engine results.
• On-page SEO: SEO techniques applied on your website and its content to improve your rankings in search engine results.

Technical SEO: What It Is and How to Do It

The first stage in the SEO process is called technical SEO.

Technical SEO has nothing to do with the actual content of your website or with website promotion methods.

It has to do with settings you need to configure to make the job of search engine crawlers easier.

Usually, once you get your technical SEO correct, you may not have to deal with it again.

On the other hand, if you have issues with crawling and indexing, it can negatively impact your rankings in the search results.

What Is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website to help search engines access, crawl, understand, and index your pages without any problems.

The main goal of technical SEO is to optimize the infrastructure of your website to improve its rankings in the search results.

Why Is Technical SEO Important?

Technical SEO is a very important step in SEO.

Any technical SEO problems will negatively impact your website’s SEO performance in search engines like Google, Bing and others.

If search engine crawlers cannot access and understand your pages, your website content will not be in their index and will not appear for any searchers.

In addition, some technical SEO factors like mobile-friendliness, website load speed, and HTTPS are crucial Google ranking factors.

What Is The Difference Between SEO and Technical SEO?

Technical SEO involves optimizing the technical part of your website, while SEO is the process of optimizing all aspects of your website for search engines.

Technical SEO is part of the SEO process.

For simplicity, there are three main pillars of SEO: Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, and Off-page SEO.

On-page SEO is related to content and how you can make it more relevant to what the user is searching and off-page SEO is the process of getting links from other websites to increase trust during the ranking process.

As you can see, there are no clear boundaries between technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO because they all have to work together for a fully optimized website.

To understand what technical SEO covers, you need to learn how search engines work and in particular about the crawling and indexing process.

How Do Search Engines Work?

The ultimate goal of search engines like Google is to make searchers happy with the results they find.

To achieve this, search engines need to find the best pages.

And serve them as the top search results.

Your job as a website owner is to help search engines crawl and index all the pages on your website that you want them to.

You can ensure the crawlability and indexability of your pages through a number of actions and best technical SEO practices. 

The first step taken by search engines, long before answering a search query, is the crawling process.

During crawling process, Google uses “bots,” or computer programs, to crawl the web and look for new pages or updated pages to add to their index.

In order for Google to find a page, the page should have at least one link pointing to it.

During the indexing process, information identified by Google “bots” is organized, analyzed, and stored in their index (a huge database of webpages) so that they are later accessed by the ranking algorithms to provide precise answers to the queries entered by users.

Some Technical SEO examples associated with these two processes include optimizing your robots.txt file and the noindex tag.

robots.txt

Robots.txt is a text file residing in the root directory of your website that gives instructions to search engines as to which pages of your website or blog they can crawl and add to their database.

The format of robots.txt file is very simple and in the majority of cases, you don’t have to make any changes to it.

Here are a couple of examples:

Robots.txt Examples

What is important though is to check and ensure that search engine crawlers can access, crawl, and index your website without any problems.

noindex tag

Another way to control which pages search engines can add to their database is the “noindex tag”.

By placing the “noindex tag” in the head section of a page, you instruct search engines NOT to index the particular page. Here is an example of a noindex tag:

NoIndex Tag

You can use this technique to ensure that search engine crawlers will not index pages that are not important to your website.

Typical examples include ‘thank you’ pages, autogenerated tag pages, landing pages used for Facebook and Google Ads and more.

Technical SEO Best Practices

Follow these technical SEO techniques to fully optimize your website to help search engines access, crawl, and index your website for better rankings.

• Optimize Your URL Structure
• Check Your Canonical URLs
• Choose Your Domain Format
• XML Sitemap Optimization
• Navigation and Website Structure
• Website Speed
• Optimize Your 404 Page
• Find and Fix Broken Links
• Structured Data Markup
• SSL and HTTPS
• Mobile-Friendly Website
• Optimize For Core Web Vitals
• Multilingual Websites

1. Optimize Your URL Structure

The next item in your technical SEO list is to revise the URL structure (URLs format) of your website.

Best technical SEO practices dictate the following about URLs:

• Use your target keywords in the URL
• Use lowercase characters
• Use – to separate words in the URL
• Avoid using unnecessary characters (or words)
• Make them short the descriptive

In general, once you define the format of your permanent link structure, the only task you will have to do is to optimize your URLs when publishing new website content.

If you are using WordPress as your CMS, you will notice that when creating a new blog post, it takes your blog post title and creates the URL.

For example, if this is your blog post title “15 Technical SEO Best Practices for Beginners”, the URL generated by WordPress will be:

• https://www.example.com/15-technical-seo-best-practices-for-beginners.

This is not bad, but you can make it shorter like this:

• https://www.example.com/technical-seo – which is more targeted and easier to remember.
• Check Your Canonical URLs

Every page of your website should have a canonical URL. This is defined by adding the canonical tag in the HEAD of your blog posts and pages like this:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”CANONICAL-URL”/>

What is a canonical URL?

It’s a simple way to tell search engines like Google which version of a page to take into account when indexing your website.

The concept is similar to the domain name format where a single page is accessible through various URLs.

You can use the rel=”canonical” when you have pages with similar content for paging purposes and to avoid duplicate content issues.

As a general rule, you should specify a canonical URL for all your website pages.

The simplest way to check if your website provides a canonical URL is to visit any of your pages, right-click anywhere on the page, and select VIEW SOURCE.

Search for rel=canonical and investigate the value.

If you cannot find any reference to canonical then you can either use a plugin to add this automatically (if you are on WordPress, you can use Yoast SEO) or hire a developer to make the necessary changes to your code.

As with other technical SEO elements, once you set your website to output the canonical URL correctly, you don’t have to do anything else.

You can use the Inspection Tool on Google Search Console to check your canonical URLs on Google.

• Choose Your Domain Format

One of the first technical SEO settings you need to configure is how you want your domain to be accessible by users and search engines.

By default, your website is accessible with www and without www in front of your domain name.

For example, if your domain name is yourwebsite.com, your website can be accessed by:

•          https://www.yourwebsite.com

•          https://yourwebsite.com

While this is okay for users, it is confusing search engines because they consider these as two different websites.

This means you may encounter indexing problems, duplicate content problems, and loss of page rank.

To solve this problem, you must decide which format you want to use and use it consistently throughout the lifetime of your website.

There is no SEO advantage to choosing one format over the other.

It’s a matter of personal preference. We prefer to have www in front of our domain names because it seems more natural to us but there is nothing wrong if you decide to go with the non-www version

If you’re on WordPress, make sure that both the WordPress Address and website Address point to your preferred version.

To test that your website is configured correctly, open a browser window and type https://yourwebsite.com.

If your preferred domain name is set to https://www.yourwebsite, then the page should automatically redirect to https://www.yourwebsite.com.

• XML Sitemap Optimization

One of the most important technical SEO elements is XML sitemap optimization.

An XML Sitemap is an XML file listing all posts and pages on your website that you want the search engines to know about.

Besides their title, it also includes the last updated date.

Search engines can use the XML sitemap as a guide when crawling your website.

Here is an example of what an XML sitemap looks like:

Example of an XML Sitemap

The majority of website CMS have the sitemap functionality built-in and all you have to do is select which pages you want to include in your XML sitemap.

How to Optimize Your XML Sitemap?

XML sitemap optimization is simple; only include in your XML sitemap the pages that are important for your website.

In most cases, these are your posts, pages, and categories.

Don’t include in your XML sitemap tag pages or other pages that have no original website content on their own.

Make sure that your XML sitemap is automatically updated when a page is updated or a new page is published.

• Navigation and Website Structure

Your website structure is a very important SEO factor for many reasons:

• Users are more likely to stay on your website longer and find out what they want faster, and
• Search engines can understand and index your website more easily.

Google does take into account the overall website structure when evaluating a particular page, and this is something that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Best technical SEO practices indicate that you should use a hierarchical website structure.

A website’s crawling starts from the homepage and crawlers follow links from the homepage to discover other pages.

Ideal Website Structure

As a rule of thumb, make sure that each page on your website is accessible in less than 3 clicks from the homepage.

If have enough pages around a specific topic area, create optimized category pages to group these related pages.

Add Breadcrumb Menus

Another element that helps your technical SEO is breadcrumb menus.

A breadcrumb menu is a set of links at the top or bottom of a page that allows users to navigate to a previous page or the home page of a website.

A breadcrumb menu serves two primary purposes:

• It helps users navigate a website easily without having to press the back button on their browsers, and
• It gives another hint to search engines about the structure of a website.

Breadcrumbs are mentioned as an SEO element in various SEO articles because they are highly recommended by Google.

If you don’t already have breadcrumbs enabled, ensure they are enabled on your website and have the proper schema.

1. Website Speed

Another known ranking signal is website speed.

Google is mentioning the importance of speed in all their SEO recommendations and from our research we confirm that faster websites perform better than slower websites.

Tackling website speed is a technical issue and it requires making changes to your website and infrastructure to get good search results.

Your starting point is to check your website speed using Google page speed insights.

You’ll get recommendations on what you need to change to improve your website speed, but as we mentioned above, it’s a technical issue, and you may have to hire a developer to help you.

In general, what you can do to make your website load faster is the following:

• Optimize and minify your CSS and JS Files
• Upgrade your server to use 64 bits operating system
• Upgrade to the latest software versions for your CMS
• Minimize the use of plugins
• Compress your images.
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Using a caching mechanism to serve cached pages to users
• Use asynchronous javascript loading
• Avoid adding too many scripts in the <head> of your website
• Optimize Your 404 Page

A 404 page is shown to the users when the URL they visited does not exist on your website.

Maybe the page URL was changed, the page was deleted, or they mistyped the page URL in their browsers.

Most modern CMS have optimized 404 pages by default, if not; you can easily make your 404 page SEO friendly by using a plugin or editing your theme templates.

What is an optimized 404 page?

An optimized 404 page should:

• Have the same structure and navigation menus as your website
• Tell visitors in a friendly language that the page they are looking for is no longer available
• Make it easy to go back to the previous page, your homepage, or other important pages
• Give them alternatives (suggest other related pages)

How to check your 404 pages?

Testing how your 404 page looks is very easy, just open a new browser window and type a URL on your website that does not exist. What will be shown in the browser is your 404 page.

Don’t spend too much time optimizing your 404 pages.

Just make sure that when a page is not found, it returns a custom 404 page.

• Find And Fix Broken Links

As part of your technical SEO process, you must find and fix any broken links on your website.

It’s bad for the user experience, and any backlinks pointing to missing pages lose their value.

You can find broken links on your website using the Not Found (404) report in Google Search Console or a free tool like W3C Link Checker.

When you find your broken links, you have three options:

• Redirect the missing URLs to a valid page
• Fix them by changing the links to point to the correct page
• Show a 404 (Not Found) page to users
• Structured Data Markup

Structured data has gained more importance in the last few years because Google heavily uses it in Search Results.

What is structured data?

In simple terms, structured data is code you can add to your web pages that is visible to search engine crawlers only and helps them understand the context of your website content.

It’s a way to describe your data to search engines in a language they can understand.

How is structured data related to technical SEO?

Although structured data has to do with the website content, it is part of technical SEO because you need to add code to your website to get it right.

Usually, you add the structured data definition once and then you don’t have to do anything about it.

For example, in the case of breadcrumbs, you need to configure your structured data once, and no further actions are required.

The same goes for blog posts. Once you add the correct structured data definition to your content management system (CMS), it will automatically be applied to new website content.

What is the benefit of using structured data?

It can help you enhance the presentation of your listings in the SERPS (like gaining featured) and increase your click through rate (CTR).

What are the uses of structured data?

There are many ways you can use structured data to describe your website content.

The most popular are articles, reviews, products, recipes, job postings, local businesses, and more.

SSL and HTTPS

As part of your technical SEO, you need to make sure that your website has an SSL installed and that it uses HTTPS.

HTTPS is a known ranking signal and an additional way to establish trust with your users.

When you install an SSL on your server, your website can be accessed using HTTPS and not HTTP.

This indicates that any information transferred between your website and server (such as passwords, usernames, personal data, etc.) is encrypted.

In the past, SSL was only important for eCommerce websites but nowadays all websites should have an SSL installed.

If you don’t have SSL installed the first thing to do is to contact your web hosting provider and ask them to enable SSL on your account then you need to follow a migration procedure to activate SSL on your website without losing your rankings.

Adding an SSL is similar to migrating to a new domain name you will have to do it correctly.

Mobile-Friendly Website

Having a mobile-friendly website is not optional but mandatory for two reasons:

• With the introduction of the mobile-first index by Google, if you don’t have a fast, mobile-friendly website, your rankings will suffer.
• The majority of your users are on mobile

Mobile-friendliness is part of technical SEO because once you have a mobile-friendly theme that is properly configured; you don’t have to deal with this again.

It’s also a process that requires technical knowledge on how to set it up.

The first thing to do is check your website’s mobile-friendliness using Lighthouse, a Google tool available in the Google Chrome Browser.

Analyze the results and implement the recommendations until you reach the desired levels.

Besides taking care of these, there are several things you need to know about mobile SEO.

• Your mobile website should have the same content as your desktop website. With the introduction of the mobile-first index, Google ranks websites based on their mobile content, so any content you have on the desktop should also be available on mobile.
• It is normal to have a lower conversion rate on mobile compared to desktop, but that does not mean you shouldn’t try optimizing your mobile website as much as possible.
• Your mobile website should load in less than 3 seconds.
• Avoid using popups or intrusive interstitials on mobile.

If you already have a responsive website, then most probably you won’t have to worry about the mobile-first index, but if you have a separate mobile website on a subdomain or folder, then make sure that it has the same content as your desktop website.

Optimize For Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics used by Google to evaluate the speed of a website. They are part of the page experience ranking system.

To provide a good user experience, websites should strive to achieve these core web vitals values:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) –2.5 sec or less
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – 0.1 or less
• First Input Delay (FID) – 100 ms or less
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) – 200 ms or less

Update: INP will replace FID as core web vitals metric as of March 2024.

To check your website’s core web vitals score, use the core web vitals report in Google Search Console.

To get recommendations on how to improve your score, use the PageSpeed Insights report.

Again, this is another technical SEO process that can be handled with the help of a developer.

Multilingual Websites

If you have content on your website in more than one language, then you need to use the hreflang attribute to give Google more information about your website structure and content.

This will help them serve the right content to users and help you optimize your SEO by avoiding duplicate content and indexing issues.

It’s a highly technical SEO process that can be configured with the help of a web developer.

Technical SEO Tools

To carry out the most important technical SEO processes, you need the help of SEO tools.

• Google Search Console – The most complete set of SEO tools is the Google Search Console, provided by Google. With the Google search console, you can test your robots.txt file, submit a XML sitemap to Google, and find and fix crawl errors.
• PageSpeed Insights – use this tool to evaluate your page speed and core web vitals metrics.
• Screaming Frog – use this tool to find broken links, review robots directives, discover issues with canonical URLs, and much more.
• Ahrefs and Semrush – use these tools to perform a technical SEO audit of your website and get recommendations on fixing errors.

On-Page SEO: What It Is and How to Do It

What Is On-Page SEO?

The second stage is On-Page SEO.

On-Page SEO has to do primarily with the content and other elements found on a page.

Unlike technical and off-page SEO, the main focus of on-page SEO is to provide search engine crawlers with enough signals so that they can understand the meaning and context of your content.

So, what is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing content and webpages for both search engines and users.

It can help improve rankings of your website and its content on search engines like Google and drive more organic traffic. 

Common on-page SEO techniques include optimizing for search intent, internal links, title tags, and URLs.

As we mentioned above, off-page SEO covers anything you can do outside of your website to boost your rankings. 

Backlinks are arguably the biggest off-page SEO factor.

Both off-page SEO and on-page SEO are important components of any good SEO strategy.

But you have more control over on-page SEO factors.

So focusing on those is the best place to start.

Why Is On-Page SEO Important?

Search engines use keywords and other on-page SEO elements to check whether a page matches a user’s search intent. 

And if the page is relevant and useful, a Search engine serves it to the user.

In other words:

Search engines like Google pays attention to on-page SEO signals when ranking pages.

The Google algorithm is always changing, but Google continues to prioritize user experience.

Google recommends focusing on “people-first content.” 

Meaning creating high quality content that matches user intent is more important than ever.

Now, let’s take a look at how you can update your website content to reflect on-page SEO best practices.

9 On-Page SEO Techniques for Your Website

Here are some key on-page optimization tactics you should consider:

1. Write unique, helpful content 
2. Place target keywords strategically
3. Use headings and subheadings to structure your page
4. Write keyword-rich title tags
5. Write click-worthy meta descriptions
6. Optimize URLs
7. Add external links 
8. Add internal links
9. Include and optimize images 

Let’s look at these on-page optimization techniques in more detail.

Write Unique, Helpful Content 

One of the most important on page SEO steps you should take is to create high-quality content that matches your users’ search intent.

Start by performing keyword research to find relevant topics and target keywords.

In the meantime, here are a few on page SEO best practices to create optimized, high-quality content:

• Incorporate keywords naturally into your content (and avoid keyword stuffing)
• Include visual content
• Write unique and content that offers something competitors don’t have.
• Fully answer the query—your content should be useful to readers
• Make sure your content matches the search intent of your target keyword

Place Target Keywords Strategically

Now that you have your target keywords. It’s time to strategically place them in your content. 

Search engines scans your content to see what a page is about—and users will likely do the same.

So you should include your target keywords in these key areas:

• H1
• Sub headers (H2s, H3s, etc.)
• First paragraph

This will help Search engines gain context about the topic of your page.

And users will be able to quickly tell whether the page matches their search intent.

Use Headings and Subheadings to Structure Your Page

H1 tags and subsequent headings allow users to easily skim your page.

And help search engines understand the hierarchy of your page.

Headings also help search engine better understand your page’s structure and determine whether your page matches a user’s search intent.

Which can help you rank higher for relevant keywords.

You can use keywords and keyword variations in headings to give Search engine more contexts about the structure of your page and what information you cover.

Use the H1 as your page title or headline. And include H2s to cover subtopics. 

If you need to cover content in further detail, use H3s, H4s, H5s etc.

• Write Keyword-Rich Title Tags

Title tags are pieces of HTML code that indicate what the title of a web page is.

And display that title in search engines, and browser tabs.

Additionally, they can influence whether a user decides to click on your web page.

Here are a few top tips to follow when writing your title tags:

• Include your target keyword. This helps both Search engines and users determine what your page is about.
• Keep it brief. We recommend keeping title tags between 50 and 60 characters so a Search engine doesn’t cut them off.
• Be unique. Avoid duplicate title tags so that each individual page’s purpose is clear to Search engines (and users know what they’re clicking on).
• Write Click-Worthy Meta Descriptions

A meta description tag is an HTML element on a website that provides a brief summary of the web page.

And search engines may use it to generate a snippet (the descriptive text part of a search result). 

It usually shows up on the SERP below your page’s title.

But, like title tags, they can be a deciding factor between a user clicking on your page or another one.

This means they can encourage more search traffic.

And if your meta description doesn’t match the user’s search intent (or the content on the page), search engines may choose its own description for the SERP. 

So it’s best to follow these best SEO practices to increase your chances of search engines like Google using your chosen meta description:

• Consider mobile devices. Google truncates meta descriptions after about 120 characters on mobile. So it’s best to keep them on the shorter side.
• Add a call to action (CTA). Entice users to click with CTA phrases (like “try for free,” or “find out more”).
• Include your target keyword. This helps users determine if your page matches their search intent. Search engine also bolds keywords (and synonyms of keywords) that match the user’s search query. This stands out visually and could boost clicks.
• Use active voice. Active voice saves space and communicates your message more clearly.

Optimize URLs

Search engine like Google recommends using simple URLS that don’t look “cryptic” or intimidating. In other words:

Use words that are relevant to your content so users can tell what your page is about.

And not random numbers, publish dates, or full sentences.

Website themes will often use these by default, so it’s important to update your URL before publishing.

Using your target keyword in your URL is a good way to ensure your URL matches the topic of your content.

The more context search engine has about a particular page, the better it can understand it.

And if search engine understands what a page is about, it’s able to match it with relevant search queries.

Add External Links to Authoritative Sources

External links are links on your website that point to other websites.

They’re important because they enhance user experience and build trust with your readers.

Google has said that adding links to authoritative external sources is a great way to provide value to your audience. 

And providing solid user experience is always a good thing.

Here are a few best SEO practices for you to follow:

• Only link to authoritative and trustworthy websites related to the topic and your niche.
• Balance the number and placement of external links to avoid looking spammy.
• Use descriptive and natural anchor text to show your readers what to expect when they click.

Strategically Add Internal Links

Internal links are hyperlinks that point to different pages on the same website. Here is what internal links look like on our blog website:

• Best Web Hosting
• How to Start a Blogging Business
• How to Start Affiliate Marketing
• How to Create a Website 

Internal links are crucial part of on-page SEO optimization.

Here’s why:

• They help search engines understand your website’s structure and how pages are related to each other.
• They signal to search engines that the linked-to page is valuable.
• They allow search engine crawlers to discover and navigate to new pages.
• They help users navigate through your website and keep them on your website longer.

Include and Optimize Images 

Including images in your content increases your chances of ranking in Google Images.

This is a great way to get more traffic to your website.

The best place to start optimizing your images is by writing descriptive alt text for them.

Alt text (alternative text) is text included in HTML code that describes an image on a webpage.

It has two main purposes:

1. It allows users using screen readers to hear descriptions of images
2. It provides context for search engine crawlers

Here are some tips for writing good alternative text:

• Include a target keyword. Include your target keyword for context.
• Keep it brief. Screen readers stop reading alt text after about 125 characters.
• Don’t include “image of” or “picture of.” Alt text implies that it’s describing an image, so there’s no need to waste characters on these phrases.
• Don’t add alt text to decorative images. Graphics like horizontal page breaks, a magnifying glass in a search bar, etc., don’t require further explanation.

Aside from adding optimized alt text, here are a few of key ways to optimize your images:

1. Write descriptive file names to help search engines understand what your image is about.
2. Use lazy loading, which tells web browsers to wait to load images until the user scrolls to them.
3. Use free tools like ImageOptim to compress images for faster load times.

Further reading: 

Advanced On-Page SEO Techniques

Once you’ve got the on page SEO basics down, you can try out some more advanced SEO page optimization techniques. 

Let’s start with key on-page SEO factor—page speed.

Optimize for Page Speed

We may never know every Google ranking factor. But we do know that page speed is one of the Google ranking factors.

So it’s good to optimize for page speed.

You can use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to get an overall performance score for both desktop and mobile, in addition to actionable suggestions for improvement.

This tool assesses Google’s Core Web Vitals, which are factors that impact page experience. 

The Core Web Vitals include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): amount of time it takes for the main piece of content to load
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): amount your webpage shifts (or “moves down”) as more content (e.g., banners, images) loads
• First Input Delay (FID): amount of time it takes for your website to respond to the first interaction from a user (like a click on a link)

Target Featured Snippets

Because featured snippets appear in “position zero” above other organic results, they can help boost your CTR (click-through rate).

There are different forms of featured snippets, including:

• Definitions
• Lists
• Tables
• Videos

If you want better rankings, update or create your own page following on-page SEO best practices.

Some ways to target a featured snippet include:

• Answering the query in a concise, user-friendly way
• Formatting the answer accordingly—could be a quick one- or two-sentence answer, a table, a video, etc.
• Understanding the user’s search intent

Add Schema Markup

Schema markup allows search engines to better understand information on your website. 

It adds code to a page that better communicates the page topic. So you can convey to search engines that your page is about a blog, contains a recipe, etc. And the SERP result can reflect that.

In addition to taking up more valuable space on the SERP, schema markup also can improve your page’s organic CTR.

Common types of schema include:

• Products
• Reviews
• Local businesses
• Events
• People

And more.

You can find information on every type at Schema.org.

Now that you know what on-page SEO is, it’s time for you to take action. 

Execute on the on-page SEO techniques mentioned earlier, and you’ll be on your way to better rankings and traffic.

Off-Page SEO: What It Is and How to Do It

The third stage is Off-Page SEO. Off-page SEO refers to SEO techniques applied outside of a website to improve its rankings.

These techniques often include link building, social media marketing, guest posting, and more. 

The main goal of off-page SEO is to get users and search engines to see your website as more trustworthy and authoritative. 

It’s one of the most essential parts of a successful SEO strategy.

Off-page SEO vs On-page SEO

Off-page SEO and On-page SEO are two essential components of SEO.

Each with its own set of techniques and best practices.

Let’s break down the differences:

No.	Off-page SEO	On-page SEO
1.	Off-page SEO includes building backlinks, social media marketing, guest posting  etc.	On-page SEO includes creating high quality content, making sure relevant keywords are present, adding internal links, creating an optimizing title tag, etc.
2.	You have limited control over off-page SEO.	You have full control over on-page SEO.
3.	The tools you’ll use for off-page SEO include: – Link Building Tool – Backlink Audit – Social Poster – Brand Monitoring, etc.	The tools you’ll use for on-page SEO include: – Keyword Magic Tool – SEO Content Template – SEO Writing Assistant – On Page SEO Checker, etc.

Why Is Off-Page SEO Important?

Think about off-page SEO as building your website’s reputation. 

And highly reputable websites tend to rank better because search engines consider them to have more Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T).

One of the best ways to show E-A-T is through off-page SEO tactics like backlinks, reviews, and recommendations.

This means:

Off-page SEO is not only important—it plays a key role in your website’s ability to rank. 

5 Best Off-Page SEO Techniques That Work

Let’s take a look at five different off-page techniques you can use to boost your website’s authority and organic search traffic:

• Content Marketing
• Link Building
• Reviews
• Local SEO
• Events

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an important off-page SEO technique.

Publishing useful content is an effective way to earn backlinks, gain media attention and show E-A-T. 

And finding ways to distribute that content to other channels can help boost off-page signals.

Some of those channels include:

• Social Media Marketing
• Influencer Marketing
• Guest Posting
• Podcasts
• Content Syndication
• Forums

And more. 

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing isn’t a direct Google ranking factor.

But it’s great technique for getting more attention. 

The more people share your content on social, the more links for that specific piece of content you’ll probably get. 

And even if you don’t get a backlink, you’ll get more attention.

And more attention leads to more branded searches and mentions.

A win-win for your off-page SEO.

You can publish, benchmark, monitor, and more with one social media platform. 

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a content strategy where brands work with social media creators and bloggers to promote their products or services. 

It’s a great way to build your brand, amplify your content, and reach new audiences. 

Influencers have large audiences. And can help ensure you’re present, as a business, on tons of different platforms. 

Guest Posting

Guest posting gets your brand in front of a different audience and can lead to mentions and backlinks. 

It signals to search engines that you’re an industry expert. 

Plus, it’s one of the most effective link building tactics.

To find guest blogging opportunities, try searching on Google with search operators like these:

• “your target keyword” + “this is a guest post by”
• “your target keyword” + “guest post”
• “your target keyword” + “this is a guest contribution”
• “your target keyword” + “contributing writer”
• “your target keyword” + “guest column”
• “your target keyword” + “contributing author”

This will show you websites with at least one blog post written by a guest author.

For example, if you’re writing about affiliate marketing, you can search for “affiliate marketing” + “this is a guest contribution.”

If they’ve accepted guest posts before, they might also accept yours.

And they might allow you to include a backlink to your website in your contributed piece of content.

And once your article gets published on another website, keep track of its performance.

Both in terms of referral traffic and social media shares.

It’ll help determine which websites are worth reaching out to again and which to avoid. 

To start, open up Semrush’s Post Tracking tool. 

Then, enter your blog post’s URL and click “Track Content Performance.”

You’ll then see a dashboard with a quick overview of your article’s metrics. 

Analyze each blog post’s referral traffic, backlinks, and social media shares.

Determine which topics and content types are more likely to attract new audiences.

And work on creating and pitching more of those. 

Podcasts

Podcasts are immensely popular nowadays. And that popularity shows no signs of slowing down.

If you are not using them as part of your content marketing strategy, you could be missing out on huge opportunities. 

Why?

Most businesses still aren’t using podcasts as part of their content marketing strategy, so they’re a great way to gain a competitive advantage.

They’re also a great way to reach new audiences, share your expertise, and gain visibility on other websites.

Podcasts also offer an additional SEO benefit: backlinks.

If you’re a guest on a podcast, they might link to your website.

Or if the podcast is discussing a particular subject, they could find your website and use it as a source somewhere in their description.

And if you know what the podcast usually covers, you can reach out to them with a suggestion to link to your website content.

Content Syndication

Content syndication refers to republishing website content on one or more websites. 

Some publications like to syndicate website content because it’s easier than creating fresh content all the time. 

And it’s great for you because you’ll get your brand in front of a new audience. 

Here are a few popular website content syndication platforms:

• Medium
• LinkedIn
• Outbrain
• Taboola
• Business 2 Community
• Quuu

You can also find websites in your niche and reach out to them about syndicating your website content.

But syndicate website content carefully. 

Google says it will “always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.”

To prevent that from happening, make sure the syndicated version of the content links back to your original one.

And properly configure your canonical tags.

Forums 

Dropping links in forums for SEO purposes won’t help you rank better in Google. 

But you can use forums to get involved in conversations that relate to your expertise.

To position yourself as an expert and quickly be seen as an expert in your niche. 

Very few other platforms allow you to have open discussions with potential customers who are already asking questions about what you have to offer. 

This is a fantastic way to begin building relationships and trust. 

Reddit and Quora are key large-scale platforms to use. But forums within your niche can be just as effective. 

Like Google’s Search Central Help Community, for example. 

Link Building

Link building refers to getting other websites to link to pages on your own website.

In SEO marketing, these links are called backlinks. 

The more backlinks from high-authority websites a page has, the more authoritative it may seem to Google.

And that can help the page rank higher. 

Here are the two key factors you should consider with link building:

Authority

“Authority” is a measurement of a website or webpage’s overall quality.

It’s based heavily on how many high-quality backlinks it has. 

This means:

You want backlinks from high-authority websites.

They tend to be more valuable and can help you rank higher. 

To find a website’s authority score, you can use Semrush Backlink Analytics tool.

First, enter your domain name and click “Analyze.”

Then, you’ll see the “Authority Score.” 

Note: This doesn’t mean you should avoid links from websites with low authority. They probably won’t be as valuable. But they also won’t hurt your SEO efforts. 

Unique Domain Names

Another critical link building metric is the number of separate domain names (referring domain names) that point links to your website.

Getting links from as many relevant, quality domain names as possible should be a key focus of your content strategy. 

You can quickly see the number of unique domains that link to your website in Semrush Backlink Analytics. 

Enter any domain and click “Analyze.” The dashboard will quickly show the number of referring domain names.

Reviews

Reviews are a great way to help others trust your website.

In fact, reviews are one of the most important factors Google takes into account when evaluating your website’s E-A-T. 

This means they are vitally important to your local SEO success.

Google recommends replying to all reviews. Good and bad.

Doing so shows that you value your customers’ business and feedback. 

You can quickly find (and reply to) reviews with Semrush Listing Management tool.

Just click on the “Review Management” tab. 

This dashboard shows all your reviews. To reply, just enter your comment in the tab and click “Reply.” 

Here are a few tips for your online reviews: 

• Kindly ask all customers to leave reviews
• Build trust by responding to all reviews
• Don’t accept or offer money in exchange for reviews 

Local SEO

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence to increase local traffic, visibility, and brand awareness. 

It’s an SEO technique in its own right. 

But certain local SEO elements are key off-page SEO techniques, like Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) and NAP citations.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

A Google Business Profile is a free business listing tool that helps you influence how your business shows up in Google.

And because that occurs outside of your website, optimizing your Google Business Profile is a key off-page SEO technique.

In fact, it’s a critical local SEO ranking factor.

And it can increase your website’s visibility in high-value positions on Google’s search results pages. 

Here are a few Google Business Profile tips:

• Be meticulous with your contact information
• Respond to all reviews
• Publish posts regularly including photos and videos.

NAP Citations

NAP citations are places online that mention key information about your business: your name, address, and phone number (NAP).

Citations usually appear in business directories, social media profiles, and review websites.

But they can show up on all kinds of websites. 

NAP citations are super important because Google uses citations to confirm that all your business information is accurate. 

So one of the keys to success with citations is consistency.

Inconsistent citations look inaccurate. 

You must take the time to ensure that all of your NAP references match.

And a quick way to do that is to use Semrush Listing Management tool. 

Start by entering your business name and clicking “Search.” 

You’ll see a dashboard with a summary of your overall online presence.

Including reviews, duplicate listings, and more. 

Here are a few NAP citation tips:

• Keep your citations consistent everywhere
• Submit your information to niche and local websites
• Run monthly NAP audits

Events 

Events can contribute to your off-page SEO strategy.

This can drive social engagement and links.

For example, you can earn brand mentions while the event is being promoted. Or if attendees write summary articles afterward.

Your event landing page could also attract backlinks. Maybe people just like the event.

Perhaps a speaker wants to promote it. Or influencers may share it for the sheer value to their audiences. 

Events may require more effort to run properly, but they’re a great way to pick up some fantastic PR coverage. 

Truths about SEO

So that’s what SEO marketing means in practice. 

But here are seven truths you should take to heart before embarking on your SEO journey: 

• SEO is not about cheating Google. Instead, think of it as convincing Google to rank your website by showing the value you provide for users.
• SEO is a long-term game. SEO results usually don’t appear immediately, although there are exceptions—for example, when you fix some serious issue. In general, think in months instead of days.
• SEO is not about hacks. Don’t get caught in a loop of looking for cool new SEO tricks or hacks. Usually, all you need is to do the SEO basics really well really consistently.
• SEO is more than just installing an SEO plugin. SEO plugins are useful tools. But the mere fact that you set one up does not mean your website is suddenly “SEO-friendly.”
• Knowing your audience is key. The more you understand your target audience, the easier it is to create an effective SEO strategy.
• You’re never “done” with SEO. Search engine optimization is a continuous process. Even if you rank No. 1 for all your keywords, you always need to keep improving. The competition never sleeps. 
• SEO is just one part of the puzzle. No amount of optimization will help you if you neglect to work on the core of your business—your product or service.

Get Started With SEO

Now that you know what SEO is, it’s time to take action. 

Execute on the SEO techniques we mentioned earlier, and you’ll be on your way to higher rankings.

And one step ahead of your competitors. 

SEO: FAQs

Finally, here are the answers to some common questions about SEO.

What Is the Role of SEO in Digital Marketing? 

The main objective of SEO is improving the visibility of a website in search engines.

As such, it is a crucial part of every digital marketing strategy. 

SEO creates great synergy with PPC advertising and overlaps with other areas of marketing, such as content marketing and social media marketing.

Do I Need an SEO Tool?

Your SEO actions must be based on accurate data.

If you run a website that makes you money, having a complete SEO toolset that will cover all your SEO needs is a necessity.

And it will pay for itself quickly.

How Do I Start Learning SEO?

This SEO guide is a good stepping stone for your SEO learning journey.

Find dozens of 100% free online courses taught by top industry experts, such as Brian Dean.

Can I Do SEO Myself?

If you’ve ever wondered whether you can learn SEO without the help of a professional or an agency, the answer is definitely yes.

All you need is a willingness to learn new things and a website where you can apply your knowledge.