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. In the 2nd chapter of this SEO guide, you will learn what are search engines, how they work and what are the most important SEO ranking factors in Google. White hat SEO, on the other hand, refers to all the regular SEO techniques that stick to the guidelines and rules. It is a long-term strategy in which good rankings are a side-product of good optimization, quality content, and a user-oriented approach. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process of optimizing your website with the goal of improving your rankings in the search results and getting more organic (non-paid) traffic.

Mobile friendliness

• Patrick is a co-founder of Sitebulb, a technical SEO auditing tool.
• You’ll receive position, impressions, and clicks data with Google Search Console.
• For years, Google has said that its algorithms “rely on more than 200 unique signals” to help users find the most relevant webpage or answer.
• Each element on a page should have a purpose within semantic search optimization so that search engines can understand the actual meaning of the content clearly.
• Check that your images are sized appropriately for your website and the space you’ve allotted for it.
• Other tricks to improve readability are using bulleted lists, and creating short paragraphs to avoid a wall of text.

To target featured snippets, it’s essential to optimize your content for the target keyword and provide a clear, concise answer to the user’s query. You can also use schema markup to help search engines understand the content of your page and increase your chances of appearing in featured snippets. This is quite common for small to medium businesses that maybe don’t have the resources to invest in a long-term SEO marketing strategy. It can also be quite difficult to convince stakeholders and decision-makers of the importance of SEO because it is not easily tied to specific financial numbers.

Identify and understand your linking and sharing audience

If you follow those rules closely when doing SEO for a website, you give the site the best chances of showing up among the first results, increasing traffic and possibly revenue (for e-commerce and ads). SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of making a website more visible in search results, also termed improving search rankings. Any methods that exist solely to deceive or manipulate search engine algorithms and/or users. Popular sites that have a lot of social media engagement tend to rank well for other reasons. A way search engines measure how closely connected the content of a webpage is aligned to match the context of a search query. When search engines use search history, web browsing history, location, and relationships to create a set of search results tailored to a specific user.

Websites that implement topic clusters typically have better rankings and more visibility in searches. When content aligns with search intent, users find what they need faster, reducing bounce rates and increasing dwell time. Semantic optimization structures content for logical flow, entity connections, and deep topical coverage, making it easier for users (and search engines) to navigate. In SEO Anomaly summary, SEO is all about optimizing content, building authority, and improving the overall user experience on your site.

Again, because that really allows you to start to unpick like what is actually the problem here. In quarter, often in my experience, not always, it depends, but often in quarter, sometimes it’s more of an immediate thing, like an internal execution issue. Longer-term trends are sometimes more indicative of a longer-term shift in the external market.