SEO is a system and a broad description of a colleciton of activities that depend on the strategy – its not a list of to-dos that get you a better score for doing more. In other words, you can’t shoe-horn a system into a binary checklist. For example, people who search “best PRODUCT TYPE” are typically looking for product recommendations, reviews, and comparisons to help them decide which specific product to purchase. With a Semrush subscription or trial, you can get a personal keyword difficulty score (PKD%) for each keyword. This measures ranking difficulty for your domain in particular. The lower the KD%, the weaker the competition from other sites.
Step #5: Add a Hook
- Topic clusters are a strategic content organization model that structures website content around core subjects relevant to your business.
- Search engines prioritize pages that provide real value to users, so aligning your content with what your audience wants increases engagement, reduces bounce rates, and improves rankings.
- Having a strong SEO strategy is essential in today’s competitive digital world to stand out and give yourself an advantage over competitors.
- So to get more traffic from those search queries, I’d just need to sprinkle those terms into my post.
- What tool subscriptions already exist, and how much budget is available to add to your tool kit?
Below, we address some of the most frequently asked questions about SEO. When compared to print advertising, the differences are striking. SEO offers a global, 24/7 presence, driving free, organic traffic to your website. The reach is virtually unlimited, and your content is available around the clock. Compared to SEO, social media is more immediate and dynamic, requiring constant effort to stay relevant. Content posted on social media is quickly overshadowed by new posts, making it necessary to maintain a continual stream of updates to keep your audience engaged.
You need to figure out where you’re being outranked and find ways to turn the tables. These pages are also likely MVPs for ecommerce sites, but will also be joined by category and/or product-level pages. You may find you have decent and highly targeted traffic that converts. An example of this would be vegetarian restaurants in San Antonio, which would most likely be used by someone with a craving for a plant-based meal. This is yet another area of life where you get what you pay for.
Refer back to this sheet when you’re monitoring BHS Links performance or for internal linking,” she says. Your blog should be a trove of information for your prospective customers. That means not every blog post or web page you create needs to belong to a topic cluster. There’s also value in writing about tangential topics your customers care about.
Get Started with SEO for Your New Website
Topic clusters are an excellent way to leverage very broad themes through pillar pages such as this blog post. Read one of our most recent case studies to see the real value of organic search. Put simply, SEO is about delivering an unparalleled search experience for your audience. Because of the value they provide, many websites link to them naturally. Link-worthy content is any content that provides a lot of value to users. Each additional request adds to the loading time of your page.
Find and Fix Technical SEO Issues
Check the box next to the keywords you want to add and click “+ Add to keyword list.” Then select a list from the box that appears, or create one with the “Create new empty list” button. Set up Google Analytics 4 (or an alternative analytics tool) to track SEO metrics like organic traffic and conversions. One way to find keywords is with Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. Enter a broad starting term related to your business, choose your country, and click “Search.”
Using structured data can help boost the chances of your pages on your site being used to answer a voice query over a competitor’s on search engine results. To stand any chance at increasing your organic rankings, you need to optimize content for readability. Ranking in 2025 means aligning content with user intent, optimizing every technical detail, and earning trust through authority, accuracy, and real expertise. According to a BrightLocal study, 74% of consumers read at least two local reviews online, and 89% expect businesses to respond to all types of reviews (including criticism!). Sterling Star Inc., in turn, determined that local businesses with 10+ 5-star reviews on their Google Business Profile get a ranking boost. They help your business show up in local search results where intent to visit or buy is high.