What is SEO? A Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Anyone who has ever created a new website has probably experienced it. When you search for your website’s main keyword on Google, you’ll find the big, well-known websites on the first page of the results, but your own is listed somewhere on page 10. Practically no one clicks through to page 10 and so you don’t get any visitors to your own site via Google. So somehow you would have to make sure that your own website appears further ahead in Google’s results. And that’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play. With this you can achieve exactly that, to improve the ranking of your own website in the search results to get more visibility and website traffic. In this guide to SEO, you’ll learn exactly how this works.

What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is a subarea of search engine marketing and it is used to improve the ranking and organic traffic of a website in search engines such as Google and Co.

This is achieved through various measures, such as creating high-quality content, gaining backlinks, that are links that point from other websites to one’s own, technical optimization for Google, monitoring one’s own website, building visibility in social media and much more.

Google is the number 1 search engine, with a worldwide share of about 84%. In addition to Google, there are other search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo or Yahoo! And some countries are also dominated by their own country-specific search engines, such as Baidu in China or Yandex in Russia.

Global Market Shares of Search Engines on the Desktop

Market Share Search Engines — Source: Statista

Learn SEO For Organic Traffic And SEA For Paid Search

In addition to SEO, search engine marketing also includes search engine advertising (SEA). This is the placement of paid ads in the search engine results. Due to Google’s high market share, Google Ads is the most relevant.

The search engine ads are usually displayed prominently above the first Google results for a matching search term. Search marketing such as Google Ads is therefore a classic pull advertising, since the user actively searches for something and matching ads are shown to him.

The traffic received with SEA has a high conversion rate. Therefore, ads in search engines are particularly relevant for marketing.

SEO Basics: How Search Engines Work

Search engines like Google use rather complicated algorithms internally to provide the appropriate results for a search and to display them in an ideal order based on their relevance. In order to decide what quality a web page has and in which position it is displayed in Google’s search results, these search engine algorithms use a large number of ranking factors.

The aim is to provide the searcher with the links in the search results (SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages) that best match his search.

The search terms that a user enters into a search engine are also known as keywords. These can consist of one or more words. If such a keyword appears on a web page, e. g. in the title, in the headings or in the body text, this page is classified by the search engine as relevant for the search keyword and can therefore be displayed in the SERPs.

The keywords used in the content of a web page on your site should match the topic of the page. For example, if a text is about running shoes, this term will usually appear in the title, in some headings and several times in the text of the page. The search engine analyzing the text will conclude that the main keyword of the page is ‘running shoes’. If a user then enters the search phrase, i. e. the keyword running shoes, in the search engine, the search engine can display this web page in the organic search results since it has the same keyword.

In addition to keywords, search engines evaluate many other factors, all of which are taken into account when deciding which pages to display in the SERPs.

Website operators should therefore consider the use of relevant keywords when creating texts. There is special software available for this purpose, which supports keyword research or the optimal use of keywords in the text.

The Individual Steps Of Search Engines

There are three different steps in the work of search engines, crawling, indexing and displaying search results. In detail, these steps are:

Crawling: Search engines use so-called bots that continuously search the Internet to find new web pages and take updates from existing pages. If links point to a page, it can be found much easier by a search engine. The more links pointing to a page, the easier it will be found by the search engine.
Indexing: In the second step, the search engine processes and analyzes the data from the previously found web pages. The intelligent algorithms try to understand, classify and evaluate the content. The data is then stored in a large database in the so-called index. Thereby all data of a page is saved to the URL. Indexing for your website or for individual pages can also be triggered manually in the Google Search Console.
Display of search results: Based on the search phrase entered by the user and the respective ratings of the web pages in the index, the search engine finally decides which pages are most relevant and then creates the list of results that is displayed to the user.

The Algorithm Of Google

Search engines like Google use a complex algorithm internally. The Google search algorithm is the processing step with which Google evaluates and classifies the content of web pages in order to be able to decide on the basis of this in which order web pages are displayed in the SERPs. A large number of factors play a role in the ranking.

The Google algorithm also tries to understand the user’s intention in order to display results that match the query. This intention, which the user pursues with his search query, is in some cases not as obvious as one might think.

Exact knowledge about the ranking factors of the search engine has of course only Google itself. Outside of Google, there are only rough clues about these factors and their importance. But it is of course understandable that Google does not reveal the exact functioning of its algorithm.

Google does, however, disclose a lot of information in its search documentation, which contains a lot of useful information regarding the ranking factors and the basics of search engine optimization.

The Google Ranking Factors For Search Engine Optimization

Some of the important ranking factors are:

Content quality: The quality of the content is a very crucial factor. If you want to rank higher in the search results, you have to have quality content that is at least as good as the others, and if you want to be ranked first, you have to be better than the competition and convince with unique content that offers real added value.
Keyword optimization: It is important to determine the search terms that match a topic through keyword research and to align one’s own texts accordingly. To optimize the content, relevant keywords should be included in the text to improve the ranking. For keyword research and content optimization, there is specialized software that supports you.
Backlinks: An important ranking factor is backlinks, i. e. links that point from other websites to your own. The backlinks should preferably come from websites that fit thematically to your own and have a high profile and quality.
Internal linking: Internal links between individual pages are not only helpful for the readers, as they point to other articles relevant to the topic, but also for the search engine, which can thus better analyze the structure of the website. So set appropriate links for content that is thematically related to each other.
E-E-A-T: The ranking factor E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. It is about having experience, expertise, authority and trust from Google’s point of view and making this plausible. Backlinks from well-known websites with a high reputation, for example, help to confirm one’s own expertise and trustworthiness.
Topicality of the content: Nobody wants to read outdated content. Therefore, you should always keep the texts on your website up to date. Especially topics that change again and again should be regularly checked for topicality and adapted. Use the occasion right away to further improve the content.
Optimization for mobile devices: A website should not only look good on the desktop computer, but also on smartphones and tablets. That a website has a responsive design is therefore a basic requirement nowadays. For mobile devices, you should make sure, among other things, that font sizes are adapted and that navigation is easy to use.
Loading time: Users don’t like it when a website takes a long time to load. A short loading time is also a ranking factor for Google. There are various influencing factors to improve the loading speed. With appropriate analysis tools, you can determine the potential for improvement.
Connect securely with HTTPS: HTTPS is a protocol that encrypts communication between the user’s browser and the server hosting the website. Since Google rates websites without encryption negatively, you should use HTTPS and install an appropriate SSL certificate.
User experience: The user-friendliness of a website has an influence on how long a reader stays on the page, and this in turn is a sign for Google of the quality of a website. A website should be clear and a user should find his way around easily.
User signals: Various parameters of user behavior are a factor for ranking. Significant are, for example, the dwell time, the bounce rate, the pages per session and the click-through rate (CTR). With Google Analytics, you can evaluate these parameters and use them to draw conclusions about possible improvements.

Why Is SEO So Important?

Search engine optimization is important to improve the ranking of your own website and thus be listed higher in the SERPs. This brings more visitors to your website and significantly increases the visibility for your online presence and your business.

Visibility is crucial to attract new users and therefore potential customers and increase online traffic to your website. A good SEO strategy will reach your target audience and increase the likelihood that users will stay on your website and eventually become customers.

If you do SEO correctly, this can lead to a high organic search traffic on your own website permanently. Unlike paid online advertising, there are no direct costs involved.

By creating high-quality content that offers users added value, one’s own pages can be listed in the top positions of the SERPs with good search engine optimization. This not only brings continuous traffic to your website but can also help generate more leads, bring conversions and increase sales.

The Individual Areas Of Search Engine Optimization

With SEO, one tries to improve the quality of one’s own website from the search engines’ point of view by optimizing various parameters in order to make them list one’s own content as high as possible in the results.

In search engine optimization, a distinction is made between onpage SEO and offpage SEO. Onpage-SEO includes measures that are implemented on one’s own website and its individual pages. This concerns, for example, the design of the content, the keywords, the internal linking or the loading time.

Offpage SEO, on the other hand, is about the measures that are implemented outside of one’s own website. Of particular importance here are backlinks from other high-quality websites. In addition, the use of social media or influencer marketing play a role.

Types Of SEO

SEO can be categorized into several types, each with its own focus and strategies. The main types of SEO are On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Mobile SEO, Local SEO, Content SEO, Video SEO, E-commerce SEO and International SEO.

Each part of SEO has its unique strategies and considerations, and the choice of which types to focus on depends on your website’s goals, target audience, and niche. In many cases, a holistic SEO strategy will involve a combination of these types to maximize online visibility and traffic.

On-Page SEO

Onpage SEO measures can be performed directly on your website and its individual pages to improve search engine rankings. It is about optimizing the content, structure and design of the website so that it becomes more user-friendly and more relevant to search engines. In the following we will look at important measures of on-page optimization.

Content

When creating content, consider the keywords that match the topic and the user intent. Try to think about what those who type a particular keyword into the search engine are really looking for, and then target your content accordingly.

Content should be of high quality and useful to the reader. Try to create better content than your competitors. With outstanding articles, you can be listed high in the search results.

Keywords

With the help of keword research and corresponding software, you can determine suitable keywords for your strategy. You evaluate the existing keyword data and decide which keywords are most suitable based on the number of searches for this keyword and its difficulty for a high ranking, among other things. These keywords are finally used in the creation of the content.

Internal Links

When crawling websites, search engines evaluate the hyperlinks that internally link the individual pages to each other. This facilitates the detection of the website and the thematic relationships of the individual pages to each other. Internal links also help search engines distribute link power from the main page and parent pages to other pages.

For users, the internal links are also very helpful, as they make it easier for them to get to other pages that thematically match the text they are currently reading.

Loading Time

If a page does not load fast enough, many users simply leave the page again. You should therefore pay attention to the speed of your website. An analysis tool such as PageSpeed Insights from Google can help determine the current loading time. It also makes suggestions for improving the loading speed in relevant categories.

Off-Page SEO

Offpage SEO is about the optimization measures that take place outside of one’s own website. The search engines use these external signals to decide whether a website has authority, relevance and trustworthiness.

An important part of offpage SEO is link building. This involves trying to get other websites to link to one’s own web pages. The links are interpreted as a sign of trust. Getting a backlink from a well-known website with high authority can improve the ranking of your own website, increase your authority and thus increase traffic.

However, the pure number of backlinks is not the only decisive factor. If you have many backlinks from websites that are not very good, this can also be interpreted as backlink spam and, in the worst case, have a negative effect on your ranking. Therefore, always make sure that the links are of high quality. The linking website should have a high authority and trustworthiness and be thematically suitable to your own content.

Offpage SEO also includes other measures, such as the use of social media or influencer marketing.

In the following, we will go into more detail about important SEO measures.

SEO To Optimize The Page Content

The content of the pages is quite crucial for a good ranking in Google. The better the quality of the content, the higher positions you can achieve in the SERPs.

Of course, the question arises what makes particularly good content and what distinguishes it from rather bad. We will explore this question and also look at what all belongs to the content.

Analyse The Search Results To Understand The Search Intent

Search intent, also known as user intent or query intent, refers to the specific purpose or goal that a user has when entering a search query into a search engine like Google. Understanding search intent is important for search engines to deliver the most relevant and valuable search results to users. It’s also important for website owners and SEO professionals to align their content with the intent behind common searches. Otherwise, the user may not get exactly what he expected when he opens a web page in the SERPs.

Keyword Research To Find Relevant Terms For Organic Search

Keyword research is an important part of search engine optimization and serves to find the right keywords for the respective pages. By choosing the most suitable keywords, the ranking in the search engine results can be improved and thus the target group can be reached better. The organic traffic of a website is also increased by this.

First, you can come up with keyword ideas that fit the topic at hand. By analyzing competitors’ websites, you can also see what keywords they use and get more ideas.

With the help of tools such as ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest or the Google Keyword Planner you can then examine the keywords in more detail and evaluate the difficulty of the keyword, the search volume and the best ranking websites for it. This will give you an idea if the keyword is well suited for your website or possibly too difficult. You can also query related terms to get more keyword suggestions.

Finally, you can select the most relevant of these keywords for your website and use them when creating pages and content. Through the other optimizations, your website will then ideally rank high in the search results.

Optimize Headlines

The headlines should be well chosen and make clear what the section is about. Important keywords should appear in the headings, because this is good for ranking.

Especially the first headline a reader sees on the page is important. It should be clear and unambiguous and contain the user’s keywords. After all, it should be clear to the reader right at the beginning that he will find what he is looking for on the page.

Title And Meta Description Increase Visibility

The meta title and meta description are displayed by the search engine in the search results together with the URL. This short summary of a web page is also called a snippet. Having good snippets is important for the click-through rate.

The title of the page is therefore particularly important, as it plays a significant role in determining whether a page is clicked on in the results list. The title should make it clear what the page offers the reader and, if possible, contain the main keyword.

The meta description is slightly longer than the title and should not exceed 160 characters. It describes in a little more detail what the reader can expect, and is in a way a sales text for the page. It should make the reader want to visit the page. The meta description should also include the main keyword.

Google evaluates the title and meta description to assess the content and purpose of the page.

Images And Media

To lighten up the texts and increase the user experience, it is beneficial to include images and other media such as videos or audios at appropriate places in the text. However, you should keep in mind that a search engine cannot read the content of images and other media.

So, if you use different media formats in your pages, you should use the descriptive tags like the alt tag for images so that Google can better understand what exactly they are. You may also be able to add a description in the text about the media you are using.

Hyperlinks

It is beneficial if the individual pages also contain hyperlinks. These can be internal links to pages with content or external links. These lead to other websites that serve, for example, as a source to clarify the accuracy of one’s own information. They can also encourage further study of a particular topic.

Quality And Volume

It is important to pay attention to the high quality of your own content. The choice of the topic is already important. A competitor analysis can help here, determining which topics the direct competitors have covered and which keywords they have used in the process.

You should then cover these topics in more detail and strive for a very high quality of the article. This will help you stand out from the competition. Another option is to identify content gaps among your competitors and then fill these gaps yourself.

The length of a text depends on the chosen topic and also on how detailed you cover the topic. A more detailed text can often stand out. However, it is also not a good idea to simply artificially expand the text length with unnecessary filler. The text should always be focused and provide the best benefit to the reader.

Writing Style

When writing, it is generally best to write in a way that is easy to understand and in simple, short sentences. The text sections should be kept short. Ideally, the content should be divided into coherent, logical sections and the individual sub-topics should be separated by appropriate headings. The text areas between 2 headings should not be too long.

When writing, you should not digress and always stay on topic. There should be a common thread running through the entire text so that the reader can better grasp the content.

Author Details

In many cases it is beneficial to name the author of the article. It is good to create a short author biography for this purpose. This can then be inserted at the end of an article.

Especially if an author has expertise and authority in the subject area of the article, stating the author can help to make the content appear particularly credible.

Different Types Of High-Quality Content

If a website consists entirely of pure text, you are not exploiting the possible potential. It is always good to offer different types of content. The following formats are suitable for this:

Images: Photos, graphics or illustrations are an excellent way to provide additional information, break up the text and enhance the user experience.
Videos: Videos can also enhance the user experience and increase the time spent on the website, which is a positive sign for Google. In particular, videos with instructions are very helpful for the user, as the visual presentation allows a lot to be grasped much better.
Tables: Tables can help make data easier to understand and absorb. Therefore, they are beneficial for users and Google also understands tabular data particularly well.
Lists: Enumerations of things can be displayed as lists. These are particularly easy to grasp, which promotes the absorption of the information.
Instructions: If it fits the topic, step-by-step instructions can be excellent for answering the user’s question. Often this is the case with specific questions as search input.
Detailed guides: A guide is often a good choise for more detailed topics. Therefore, it usually requires some work to create. However, readers will appreciate getting a better understanding of a topic.
Webinars: Webinars are online presentations that are generally broadcast live. Viewers register for the event in advance and can then usually attend free of charge. Webinars are excellent for building a bond with the audience and also for offering a thematically appropriate product.
Podcasts: Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular, especially in certain subject areas. You can create them with relatively little effort and reach a large audience.
E-books: E-books are digital books in PDF file format or a special format for e-books like EPUB. If you want to cover a very extensive topic that is too long for an article, you can create and offer an e-book from it. An e-book also works well as a lead magnet to give away for free when the reader signs up for an email newsletter.

SEO Tools For Better Search Ranking And Technical Optimization

Special tools for SEO play an important role in helping website owners and SEO professionals enhance their online visibility, organic traffic, and achieve better search engine rankings. There are different types of tools that are used for SEO:

Keyword Research Tools: These tools help users discover relevant keywords and phrases that people search for on search engines. Examples include Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, and Moz Keyword Explorer.
On-Page SEO Tools: On-page tools for SEO assist in optimizing individual web pages. They often provide recommendations for optimizing meta tags, content, headers, and images. A popular tool is e. g. Yoast SEO (for WordPress).
Backlink Analysis Tools: These tools help users analyze their backlink profiles, monitor new and lost backlinks, and identify potential opportunities for building high-quality links. Ahrefs and Moz are commonly used backlink analysis tools.
Technical SEO Tools: Tools for technical SEO focus on improving a website’s technical aspects, such as site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability. Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and GTmetrix fall into this category.
Rank Tracking Tools: Rank tracking tools allow users to monitor the positions of their web pages in search engine results for specific keywords over time.
Competitor Analysis Tools: These tools help users analyze the SEO strategies of their competitors, including their keywords, backlinks, and content strategies.
Content Optimization Tools: Content optimization tools assist in creating high-quality, SEO-friendly content by providing keyword suggestions, content scoring, and optimization tips. SurferSEO and Frase.io are examples.
Local SEO Tools: Designed for businesses with physical locations, these tools aid in managing online listings, monitoring reviews, and improving local search visibility.

Authority And Trustworthiness As Ranking Factor

Google wants to list websites with high authority and trustworthiness further up in the results. Therefore, the Google algorithm also evaluates a website according to these criteria.

Especially in topics related to money and health, Google pays particular attention to the presence of appropriate expertise, because these topics can have a special impact on people (with bad recommendations, they can lose their money or risk health problems).

Why Is E-E-A-T For SEO Important?

E-E-A-T is the abbreviation for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Google uses this abbreviation to evaluate the quality and credibility of a website. These factors are assessed for three levels: for the entire website, for the author and for an individual page.

The individual factors of E-E-A-T mean:

Experience: The author should have sufficient experience with the topic or product they are writing about.
Expertise: The author should be qualified to write about the relevant topic. This qualification should be recognizable on the website.
Authoritativeness: The author should be a respected authority in their field. Other trusted websites and individuals should link to the content.
Trustworthiness: The author should have a good reputation and you should be able to rely on his content.

To make a plausible case to Google that you meet the E-E-A-T factors, several things can be helpful:

An “About Us” page can be used to introduce the company and brand, and discuss experience and expertise.
An author biography page can be created for an author, listing the author and their qualifications, expertise and experience.
If you have positive customer reviews, you can post them on your website.
If your company or website has been covered in media, you can mention this on your website.
Backlinks from well-known, reputable websites with high authority are a sign of trust for Google.

YMYL – A Factor In The SEO Work

YMYL stands for Your Money Your Life. It is one of Google’s guidelines for websites whose content can affect people’s health or financial situation.

In these subject areas, bad recommendations can have a particularly big impact. For example, a wrong financial tip can cause people to lose a lot of money, and bad health recommendations can cause people to suffer health damage.

Therefore, experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness in these subject areas are particularly important to Google. Anyone providing information on a YMYL topic should be aware that they will only rank well if they can plausibly demonstrate excellent E-E-A-T factors.

Link Building

Link building describes the process of gaining hyperlinks from other websites that refer to content on one’s own website. These so-called backlinks are seen by search engines as a sign of trust from linking websites and thus raise your own authority.

The more domains link to your own website and the higher the quality of the respective linking domain, the better Google estimates your website. Therefore, backlinks from reputable domains are very important to achieve a good ranking in the search results.

Besides backlinks, internal links on your own website are also important. They forward the authority and give the linked pages a higher importance. However, since you set the internal links yourself, they do not reflect how other people evaluate your own content. For this evaluation, the backlinks from other websites are very important.

Backlinks from bad websites do not help. Google recognizes the quality of websites and ignores them in the ranking if they are not of good quality. Therefore, you should pay attention to quality rather than quantity when it comes to backlinks.

SEO Strategies And Best Practices To Build Backlinks

A great way to build backlinks is to create content that attracts links naturally. One of the best ways to do this is to create useful and outstanding content. Then there is also a very high probability that others will link to it. You should also use the most relevant keywords, as this will make it easier for your content to be found.

Another option is to create targeted resources with the aim that people can link to them. These can be interesting statistics, infographics, useful tools and the like.

Unfortunately, good backlinks don’t always just fall to you. Most of the time, you have to do active link building to support this process.

To do this, it makes sense to first identify people and websites that could potentially link to your own content. These can be bloggers, website operators or journalists, for example. Then you can contact these people, introduce your own website, offer cooperation, and this can then result in the possibility of a backlink.

With some websites there is also the possibility to write a guest article and then link from this article to your own website.

There are a few more ways for link building. Some strategies are:

Outreach to other relevant sites
Write guest posts for other websites
Create useful resources that others link to
Use social media
Replicate competitor backlinks
Identify and redirect broken links
Get lost backlinks back

The influence Of The Architecture Of The Website

The architecture of a website is the structure in which the individual pages are organized and grouped. Navigation on a website should be simple and the user should be able to easily get to the individual topics and subtopics. User-friendliness should always be in the foreground. If the website is solidly built, users are also willing to spend more time on it.

To make it easy for visitors to find their way around the website, they should be able to reach their destination in as few clicks as possible. A good website structure is also helpful for Google when crawling and analyzing the website.

You should provide a sitemap for your website. This allows Google to determine the structure of the website more easily. The sitemaps usually describe the individual web pages in XML format.

The URLs of the individual pages should not be particularly complex. They should use simple words to describe the subject of the page. It is common to use only lowercase letters and separate the individual words with hyphens.

The keywords of the pages should be unique and not compete with each other. Keyword cannibalism is not good for the ranking of the pages.

Technical SEO

The technical SEO refers to the quality of the infrastructure (e. g. in terms of loading speed) and the usability of a website. It also helps Google to find the content easily and to analyze and index it easily.

Important factors here are:

Loading speed: It is important for the user experience that pages load quickly. Therefore, Google rates fast pages higher. With the PageSpeed Insights tool, you can analyze the speed of your website.
User interface: Google prioritizes websites that have an appealing design and are particularly user-friendly. You should make sure when creating the website layout that the navigation is easy to understand and use, and that users find the pages attractive and the content understandable.
Mobile-friendly: The website content must also be able to be displayed smoothly and without errors on mobile devices. Since a lot of people now use the Internet via smartphones and tablets, Google also attaches great importance to good performance on these devices.
Schema markup: So-called schema markup makes it easier for Google to understand the content of a website and display it better in the SERPs.

Technical SEO And The Core Web Vitals

The Core Web Vitals belong to a set of metrics that evaluate the user experience of a website. The Core Web Vitals are the following parameters:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
First Input Delay (FID)

These three factors are likely to be the largest contributors to page experience scores and are therefore ranking factors.

The Larget Contentful Paint measures how long a page takes to load from the user’s perspective. This is the time from clicking on the link until the largest content element is displayed in the visible area.

A better LCP value can be achieved by, for example, reducing the file size of images, using lazy loading, or minimizing scripts.

The Cumulative Layout Shift represents the layout stability during the loading of a web page. When layout elements change position or the layout changes during loading, the CLS value increases.

First Input Delay is a performance factor that includes the amount of time from when a user first interacts with a web page to when the browser begins to process the interaction. This is also called input delay.

Social Media

Social Media Marketing can increase your SEO efforts. The use of social media is also recommended in terms of SEO. While it does not directly affect the rating of the search engines, it is well suited for getting attention and a wider reach for your own content.

Through the high distribution of the posts, one can then also get backlinks from the readers and thus indirectly contribute to a higher ranking. Due to the fact that sometimes very many users of social media share a post, the traffic is also increased.

The many additional users also increase the awareness of their own brand. As a result, the company then also gets additional customers, which has a positive financial impact.

Social media profiles such as Facebook or Twitter are also displayed in the SERPs and often rank well. This in turn affects brand awareness and increases traffic.

When you integrate social media share buttons on your website, users can share content more easily. This also increases the likelihood of getting backlinks this way.

There are now a large number of social media. Among the better known ones are:

Facebook
YouTube
Twitter / X
Instagram
Pinterest
TikTok
LinkedIn

The individual social media have partially different user groups. It therefore makes sense to select the ones that best suit your own target group.

Local SEO

Some searches have a local reference. This can be, for example, if you are looking for something in the area around your own location. If you are in another city, you can search for “restaurants nearby” or for “hotels in New York”, for example. Then it’s helpful to have results displayed on a map as well, so that you can easily get to the location in question.

On the other hand, companies want to be listed in the results for such local searches so that potential customers can find their way to them.

Local SEO is used to place a local business as high as possible in the results of searches. Especially for companies that mainly have customers from the local area, it can be helpful to increase their own visibility through appropriate measures.

For example, when someone searches for “restaurant near me”, they are performing a local search query. Unlike normal searches, local searches contain results from three areas. One is a result in a map like Google Maps, then the local businesses in the area, and finally the normal search results.

So the search results page is structured something like this:

Set Up A Google Business Profile

Some of the information on local searches comes from Google business profiles. With Google business profiles, it is possible for businesses to increase their visibility and be listed in search results.

It makes sense for businesses to set up a profile on Google in order to be found in local searches. Potential customers can then contact the company through various methods.

Ranking in local search results depends on the following factors, among others:

Distance: The distance from each of the search results to the location specified in the search is calculated and the closer ones are listed higher up in the order.
Publicity: If a company is particularly well known and there is a lot of information about it on the Internet, it is given priority in the search.
Relevance: Does the company have a high relevance to the search query?