SEO Guide: Everything a Beginner Needs to Know in 2025

You can view the internal links report in Google Search Console and make the necessary adjustments. Besides images, a website may include other multimedia elements such as videos, podcasts, and audio. If you don’t do it, Google will only index one of the versions or get confused, which can negatively affect your rankings.

The challenge is that search engines try to be secretive about how the algorithms work, leading SEOs to rely on trial and error to understand what works best. That said, the SEO community has gleaned many insights, which is why the Google Algorithm Leak of 2024 was not Earth-shattering. If you don’t have access to a keyword research tool, try brainstorming phrases that someone would search to find what you’re offering and look at which terms competitors rank for. If major corporations are taking up most top spots in a SERP, it’s a good sign you might want to look for a less competitive keyword option. Here you can see competitive pages currently ranking in SERP, and get an idea as to whether the content of your page can outrank what is ranking BHS Links currently.

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AI-powered semantic search works by exploring the nuances of search intent. The rise of AI marketing tools has further optimized how brands tailor content to match evolving user search patterns. Semantic keyword research is about mapping the thematic relationships between words, entities, and search intent. Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) models, like BERT and RankBrain, analyze how terms interconnect within a topic. This means that search engines prioritize conceptual coverage over isolated keywords.

It involves optimizing various aspects of a website, including its content, structure, and technical elements, to make it more appealing to search engines and, by extension, to users. The ultimate goal is to improve the ranking of a website for relevant search queries, thereby increasing its visibility and potential for traffic generation. SEO involves optimising a website’s content and structure to improve its visibility on search engines.

Optimization

Because results can take months or years to offer an ROI, SEO has a high upfront cost. The simplest path here is to set up goals or e-commerce tracking in a tool like Google Analytics. What most of your ongoing SEO efforts should be centered around is driving incremental traffic to the site (people who might not have found and engaged with you otherwise). XML sitemaps can help Google and Bing understand your site and find all of its content.

technical SEO

• But, you can increase your chances of improving off-page SEO simply by creating quality content that others will find valuable.
• This then helps your website appear more readable and trustworthy to the search engine algorithms.
• That’s because local listings, like a Google Business Profile with photos, reviews, and address information, build trust and authority by demonstrating that you’re a real company.
• Good alt text is brief and avoids details that are irrelevant to the context an image provides.

It will improve your search rankings on a SERP, and also maintain the integrity of your website. The beauty of SEO is that your marketing efforts allow interested customers to find you online. Most marketing channels require businesses to blast their message out to thousands of customers, with the hope being that a small percentage of them will be qualified prospects. One of the bigger benefits of hiring a top SEO agency is better SEO analytics.

The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your website is likely to rank in search results. Finally, you can use categories and tags to organize your posts so it is easier for visitors and search engines to find your content. Adding images and videos to your posts will make them more engaging, which also helps SEO. You can see our beginner’s guide on how to optimize images for search engines.

Could you replace any links or move a link to help guide someone to the next page? Make sure all pages are linked correctly in your header and footer navigation too. A URL slug is the text that comes after the main domain and slash in a web address, like squarespace.com/blog. Write a slug that incorporates your keyword and identifies your website structure when possible.

SEO has significantly changed over the years, adapting to technological advancements and search engine updates. Understanding what is SEO today involves recognising how its strategies have shifted from keyword stuffing to prioritising user experience and content relevance. This evolution highlights the need for continuous learning and adjustment in SEO practices. Understand what your company’s stakeholders want from search engine optimization and use those as a baseline for creating specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals.

By targeting local searches, your business attracts highly relevant visitors, leading to increased conversions and a more trustworthy local image. Writing a good meta description takes skill, but the right tools make it much easier. Inside Landingi, you can create fully optimized landing pages and easily manage your meta tags without touching a line of HTML code. 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 “…”.