SEO Basics: Your Guide to Ranking #1 on Google

Use the meta to encourage clicks, which will drive traffic and lead to more business. Metadata is the title and lines of text on the search results page. Those details matter, but the backbone of SEO is high-quality content. There are many sites, books, and guides (we even wrote one here at Search Engine Journal) to help you get started. But you might find that many resources offer conflicting information.

SEO optimization

There is also a diagnostics section, which gives additional information about the performance of the page. First on our list of SEO management tools is the WebFX SEO Checker. Whenever you’re starting with SEO, you should always do an SEO audit of BHS Links your website. The SEO software market is expect to reach $84 billion by the end of 2025. This industry is continually growing, which means there’s more SEO tools than ever to help you manage your search strategy.

SEO optimization

Common SEO Issues and Solutions

SEO optimization

Whether you have mobility issues or you’re in the dark about your off-page SEO, Raven Tools is an incredible time-saver. A long-time favorite, Ahrefs is widely used for SEO, and even in 2025 it continues to show up in experienced marketers’ toolkits. The Screaming Frog SEO Spider brings to light plenty of weak spots that need TLC. If you have empty or repetitive meta descriptions, it calls your attention to these mishaps.

SEO optimization

How to Use PageSpeed Insights

Key elements of on-page SEO include optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, content (including keyword usage), internal links, URLs, images, and ensuring a positive user experience. These elements collectively contribute to improved search engine rankings and user engagement. By understanding and catering to the search intent of your target keywords, you align your content with the needs and expectations of your audience.

  • Google Analytics is a free tool that provides detailed information about who visits your website, how they use it, and how well it performs.
  • Google reads this description when crawling the page to understand what it’s about.
  • Technical SEO involves optimizing the technical aspects of your entire website.

An important element in gaining trust from both people and Google alike is proving your authority. We tend to trust the experts and seek out advice from people who are particularly knowledgeable in their field. It determines what sites have the most information and qualifications to report on a given topic, then prioritizes them by presenting them to searchers. Google refers to this as E-A-T or Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Together, these elements make up what Google considers important when it comes to loading times. Some of the easiest ways to ensure that your site loads quickly include not overloading it with media or features, optimizing image sizes and sticking to one or two fonts throughout.

Content marketing is not a quick fix for SEO, but rather a long-term strategy. The Reviews Management feature aggregates online reviews from platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, and Tripadvisor. You can monitor what people are saying about your business, and the AI-powered semantic analysis helps identify common topics and sentiment patterns in customer feedback.

SEO optimization

Wrap Your Keywords into Headings

This matters because higher rankings often lead to more clicks and visits. While ads are a part of the internet and are meant to be seen by users, don’t let them become overly distracting or prevent your users from reading your content. For example, advertisements, or interstitial pages (pages displayed before or after the content you’re expecting) that make it difficult to use the website. Learn what an SEO freelancer does, how to get clients, and the skills and tools you need to be successful. Although a light SEO website audit cannot replace a full SEO audit, it shows how the candidate thinks and works, so you’ll get an idea of how they’ll work with you.

For example, the Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD %) metric indicates how hard it’ll be for your website to rank in Google’s top 10 results for a given keyword. If you’re using SEO to drive traffic to your site for the purpose of conversions, we hope you’d pick the latter! Before embarking on SEO, make sure you’ve laid out your business goals, then use SEO to help you accomplish them — not the other way around. It’s just another reason to be very careful when choosing an SEO expert or agency. Organic search results cover more digital real estate, appear more credible to savvy searchers, and receive way more clicks than paid advertisements. For example, of all US searches, only ~2.8% of people click on paid advertisements.