SEO Guide: Everything a Beginner Needs to Know in 2025

The difference is that with broken link building, you’re only looking for pages that have 404 errors. Even though this post hasn’t generated nearly the same amount of links as my Google Ranking Factors post, it’s still racked up quite a few backlinks. When I started writing this post I was starting to have some success with YouTube marketing. So I decided to compile and share what I learned in the form of an ultimate guide. It’s usually better to get 100 links from 100 different websites than 1,000 links from the same website.

There is strong evidence that Google rewards accessibility when ranking websites, and even has its very own Webmaster Guidelines that websites can follow as best practices. By making your website accessible, you are also making sure that everyone on the internet who lands on your website has a decent user experience, including people who may have particular disabilities. This, in turn, can reduce bounce rates, increase user engagement, and boost conversions. To ensure that your website stands out in the sea of millions of others move past the what is SEO stage and get moving on your SEO strategy. Simplilearn’s  Digital Marketing Post Graduate Program will help you turn into an industry-ready SEO professional from day one.

Sitewide Links

One of the most important factors in local SEO is optimizing your Google Business Profile because Google evaluates and ranks profiles (rather than webpages) in map-based results. According to Semrush Sensor data from September 2024, Google displays images in the top 20 results for over half of U.S. Technical SEO involves improving the technical aspects of your website to enhance its search visibility.

What’s important to know for SEO is that having a secure site is in fact a ranking factor. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates are small files installed on a web server which act as a security measure for websites. Check that your images are BHS Links sized appropriately for your website and the space you’ve allotted for it. Poor quality images can make your website look less professional, but large files can slow down page speeds.

Last but not least, you should use the focus keyword in the anchor text of your internal links. Google’s Search Algorithm is used as an umbrella term to refer to all the individual algorithms, machine learning systems and AI technologies Google uses to rank websites. If you’re serious about SEO, you shouldn’t neglect the useful data and insights provided by various SEO tools. They give you a great competitive advantage and save a lot of your time. Off-page SEO is also closely connected to other areas of online marketing, such as social media marketing and branding, which have an indirect impact on building the trust and authority of your website. The goal is to provide both perfect content and UX while showing search engines what the page is about.

How do you find keywords for SEO?

Keep in mind SEO still takes around three to six months — but if you start SEO now vs. later, you’ll see results sooner. That’s because these agencies consider your business’s bigger objectives when creating your strategy. For example, will your business expand into a new area in the next five years? Let your SEO firm know, and they’ll incorporate that goal into your overarching strategy.

This approach helps readers quickly grasp the main points and navigate effortlessly through your content. Some writers used to pack their text with key terms, placing them in headings, paragraphs and footers just to rank higher. Failure to keep pace with developments from AI-powered searches such as RankBrain, BERT, and NLP makes a site not as competitive as it once was. Search engines have shifted from basic keyword detection to AI-powered models that analyze intent, context, and meaning, delivering results that feel more intuitive and humanlike.

The higher the score is, the harder it is to rank on the 1st SERP for the keyword. Once you find keywords you want to rank for, you’ll need to find out how hard it will be by evaluating the competition. It is usually expressed with the metric called keyword difficulty.

• To get started, simply work step-by-step through our guide on WordPress site settings that are critical for SEO success.
• The goal is to optimise elements in all three categories and have them operate harmoniously.
• An inbound link that originates from an authoritative, relevant, or trusted website.
• Beyond just search engine perception, backlinks are also pivotal in driving direct traffic to your site.

Setting meta descriptions, titles, and relevant keywords is simple and built right into the editor. If your meta description exceeds the character limit, Google will truncate it with a “…”. Still, it can make your snippet look incomplete, and unfinished snippets are less attractive to users scanning the search engine result pages. Every page that matters — your homepage, product pages, blog posts, or landing pages — should have its own unique meta description. Reusing the same one across multiple URLs confuses search engine bots and weakens your ability to target specific search intent.

It helps the search engine deliver more relevant and useful search results to its users. The goal of this type of search engine optimization is to produce the best content possible on a site that’s easy to read and navigate. Though the sites may rank more quickly than those that are optimized properly, these sites are often penalized or banned by search engines rather quickly. The more people trust your content, the more the search engines will as well. And it can also give your search engines a better understanding of your content.