This content isn’t used in ranking algorithms, but is often displayed as the “snippet that appears in the search results. Accurate and engaging descriptions can increase organic click-through rate. A major Google algorithm that launched in April 2012, it was followed by a series of updates and refreshes. The goal of Penguin was to reduce the visibility of overly-optimized sites, or sites that excessively abused certain spammy tactics (e.g., building low-quality links, keyword stuffing).
Keyword optimization
Pay-per-click advertisements that appear above (and often below) the organic results on search engines. Large Language Models, also known as LLMs, are AI algorithms that are capable of understanding, processing, and generating human language. Trained on massive sets of data, LLMs (like GPT) can perform natural language processing (NLP) tasks, from translation to content production. Intentionally provocative content that is meant to grab people’s attention and attract links from other websites. The process of searching for information (e.g., text, images, video) from a large database and then presenting the most relevant information to an end user. An authoritative central resource (e.g., page or article), dedicated to a specific topic (keyword), that is continually updated and linked to, and also links out to topically-relevant webpages.
The earliest use of the phrase “search engine optimization” is still debated, although most popular claims date to the mid- to late 1990s. Nevertheless, the work of gaining search engines’ attention was already known by that time. In the unregulated landscape of SEO’s early years, Web developers were already trading and selling links—often en masse—to fool search engines into increasing their sites’ SERPs.
Keyword
Before you get to content creation, it’s important to get your technical SEO in order. If you know your way around redirects, optimizing page speed, crawlability, security and structured data, make those your first priority. If not, let your site builder help you out or hire someone with a background in technical SEO. When that’s done, you can start looking at site structure and the content on your pages.
- They could be looking for different types of flowers, like the meaning of the word flower or the local flower shop down the street.
- Though the sites may rank more quickly than those that are optimized properly, these sites are often penalized or banned by search engines rather quickly.
- A Google search algorithm that was officially announced in September 2013 after it had been in use for a month.
And more clicks often lead to stronger user engagement, better behavioral signals, and, over time, improved SEO performance. RankBrain and BERT algorithms improve search rankings by thoroughly analyzing structured data, semantic markup, and user engagement patterns. Over time, they adapt to developing search behaviors, thus enhancing accuracy and relevance. AI in marketing statistics shows that machine learning helps improve search rankings by analyzing how users interact with content. Context is a priority in semantic search engines, and internal linking plays a crucial role in signaling content relationships. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the BHS Links strategic process of enhancing a website’s visibility and ranking on search engine results pages to increase organic traffic and online presence.
Once you choose the keywords, you can go ahead and start optimizing your pages for those keywords. From building your strategy to tracking your performance, the best SEO firms work to keep you ahead of the market. That’s why, in 2025, the best-of-the-best SEO companies will help you maximize the value of your organic traffic data. See whether you can improve the page that targets the keyword, or create a new piece of content that would focus on the keyword. Search Console is a free online tool (or a series of tools) by Google that helps webmasters see how their site is performing in Google Search and optimize the visibility of their websites. Website analytics is a crucial part of search engine optimization.
Ahrefs provides fourteen free SEO tools, one for every aspect of SEO, including your central SEO dashboard called Webmaster Tools. To keep things short and simple, we won’t go through those signals here. Since these kinds of links are so valuable, they became sort of the currency of the web. These on-page SEO techniques are easy to use so whenever you need to, just check out our beginner’s guide on-page SEO to get some tips and use our free AI writing tools to streamline the process. For example, most top-ranking pages for “avocado seed” are blog posts serving as how-to guides for planting the seed.