Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a marketing strategy that gets your website seen when people use engines like Google to look for what you offer. There are three main components of SEO:

Learn SEO basics and start building your optimization strategy with a practical checklist. Connect your site to Google Search Console and Analytics, follow content SEO best practices, and secure your site with HTTPS.

Keywords

Keywords are terms or phrases that people type into search engines when looking for specific information. They are a fundamental part of any website and are the foundation for SEO (search engine optimization). Understanding how keywords work is essential to creating an effective search engine optimization strategy.

Williams defines a ‘keyword’ as a socially prominent word capable of bearing interlocking yet sometimes contradictory contemporary meanings, which are inevitably difficult to negotiate and frequently remain unresolved. Such words tend to have a ‘popular’ as well as a ‘technical’ distribution, and they typically designate – or ‘lexicalize’ – cultural concepts and practices rather than simply serving as the names of concrete objects or services.

While the importance of keywords has diminished slightly since Google’s BERT algorithms made significant advances in contextual understanding, it remains one of the most important aspects of a successful SEO strategy. Keywords help search engines understand the content of your website and determine its relevance to user queries, which in turn improves your visibility and traffic.

When selecting keywords, it’s important to keep your audience in mind. If you use the wrong keywords, you could miss out on valuable traffic or end up wasting time and resources. To avoid this, use a tool that will help you identify popular keywords and analyze their competition level.

Content

Content is the foundation of every website and an essential component of SEO. It’s all about writing and structuring your web pages to rank well in search engines, and consists of both what visitors see (the copy) and what search engine bots see (the code). This ultimate guide covers all three major aspects of creating quality SEO content:

Keyword research is a necessary first step in any content strategy, as it will help you discover the terms people are searching for and will serve as a roadmap for constructing your pages. The best SEO content will be structured in an ideal pyramid-like way, with the most important articles at the top of your site’s structure (called cornerstone articles). Then you should write other, related content that supports and reinforces those key pieces. By doing so, you’ll build a strong foundation for your site that will lead to increased visibility, clicks, traffic, authority, conversions, and sales. The time invested in mastering content SEO is well worth the effort. This guide is a good place to start your journey to becoming an SEO expert.

Links

Links are what make the Internet a dynamic, interconnected network. They allow users to easily access content, jump from one page to another, and explore different resources. They also play a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO) by enabling websites to optimize their content for specific queries. In addition, they are the main tool that allows website owners to build relationships with other websites and share content.

The structure of a webpage can be defined by the number, type, and location of the links that are embedded in it. Link text can be customized using HTML and CSS styles, which enables them to be distinguished visually from the rest of the Web page. They can be displayed as underlined text, a distinct color, or some other visual indicator. Links can be inserted into any part of the Web page, including images.

Conventional wisdom taught us that outbound links leak PageRank, but these days Google seems smart enough to figure out when a link is a good or bad one on its own and therefore doesn’t seem to penalize sites for using unnatural outbound links. Regardless, it is still recommended to monitor your backlink profile regularly and to disavow toxic links promptly. It is also important to only link out to quality content, as it looks more natural.

Analytics

SEO is a data-driven practice, and it requires an arsenal of tools to collect, manage, and analyze performance metrics. Keywords, backlinks, rankings, and traffic are just a few of the metrics that SEO professionals track to optimize their on-page and off-page strategies for greater visibility and lead generation.

Using the right analytics tools makes it easier to translate SEO data into actionable insights. It’s also important for demonstrating results to clients. For instance, if a client’s organic traffic declines, the right tools allow you to quickly identify the cause. Whether it’s a technical issue, a change in search engine algorithms, or competitor activity, the right tools make SEO management a breeze.

A good business intelligence (BI) platform like Polymer can consolidate, standardize, and visualize your SEO data so you can quickly spot opportunities for improvement. It’s easy to connect your preferred SEO tracking tools with Polymer, and the drag-and-drop dashboard builder makes it simple to turn numbers into interactive visualizations. Plus, Polymer supports a wide range of native integrations so you can pull SEO data from your favorite applications and spreadsheets. With its powerful attribution features, you can even pinpoint the specific pages that are driving sales or subscriptions to evaluate the impact of your SEO strategies on revenue. This way, you can identify keywords that are delivering qualified traffic and reduce costs by focusing on profitable keywords and avoiding dead-ends.