How Search Engines Work: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Local SEO focuses on optimizing your website and online presence to show up in local search results. Especially in the « local pack » (map and local business listings). Google, the leading search engine website, constantly updates its algorithms and indexing processes, so it’s essential to stay updated with current trends. Knowing what Google looks for in indexing and ranking is crucial for keeping your SEO strategies relevant and useful.

Get Backlinks from High-Authority Sites

search engine optimization

To give you an idea of how this works, here’s a quick overview of a few popular backlink building techniques. To find topics that meet both criteria, you need a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. If you’re curious to learn more about Google and its impact on SEO, check out our timeline of Google algorithm updates.

Implement On-Page SEO Best Practices

This is why having a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is paramount for anyone who wants to grow their business online. Schema tags and structured data are also important from an SEO perspective. Hence, you have a quick BHS Links introduction to adding rich schemas and structured data in your website. A strong SEO strategy ensures that your website is easily discoverable by search engines, leading to increased visibility, credibility, and, ultimately, more visitors. However, there is no point in optimizing the title tags of pages that won’t be seen by searchers.

search engine optimization

If you run a WordPress website, there’s an official AMP plugin to help you with implementation. One of the most common “mistakes” I see is that people don’t make their headlines clickable, especially when it comes to blogs. If it contains the focus keyword, you let Google know what the page you’re linking to is about.

  • Sure Oak offers a free audit and consultation to figure out how much your monthly cost will be for its services.
  • You’ll see everyone that links to those sites… but doesn’t link to you.
  • First, find a competing site that’s already ranking well in Google.
  • Also, it’s rare to get a guarantee from any SEO company, so I was a bit surprised when a manager I spoke with said they sort of offer one.
  • You can start building your reputation with Semrush’s Link Building Tool.

Sitemaps & Schema Markup in SEO

search engine optimization

They’re just not as instant as writing spam comments or buying a bunch of links from Fiverr. Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. A sitemap is a structured list of all pages on a website available to be crawled by search engines.

search engine optimization

Implement structured data markup to provide additional context to search engines. Employ strategies like guest posting and influencer outreach to earn high-quality backlinks. Keep your content fresh and relevant, signaling to search engines that your site is active and valuable. Adding them to your page can help you rank higher for long-tail keywords and potentially improve your Google rankings. This opens up the Content Gap report, where you’ll see the common keyword rankings among these pages.