The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2024

Increase your site’s visibility and rankings with search engine optimization, content marketing, and link building.

Written by: Rachael Nicholson

FREE DOWNLOAD: THE COMPLETE SEO STARTER PACK

Everything you need to get your website and blog ranking.

When done right, SEO is why you can usually find exactly what you’re looking for from Google and other search engines. Yep, even if you turn to Google search for a step-by-step guide to fixing your unfortunately timed flat tire.

Harsh truth time: When it comes to business, at least in my experience, you face a digital uphill battle without having some presence on Google.

It’s no wonder then, that SEO is one of the main areas marketers are investing in this year. In fact, HubSpot data finds that 32% of marketers plan to leverage websites, blogs, and SEO as part of their overall marketing strategy in 2024.

(For context, that was only beaten by email marketing at 33%.)

Download Free

All fields are required.

You’re all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Keep on reading to understand SEO or jump ahead to the section that interests you most.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. The goal of SEO is to expand a company’s visibility in organic search results. As a result, these efforts drive more visitors to the company’s website, increasing their chances for more conversions which leads to more customers and more revenue.

When asked to explain what SEO is, I often choose to call it a strategy to make sure that when someone Googles your product or service category, they find your website.

But this simplifies the discipline a bit.

In reality, there are a ton of ways to improve the SEO of your site pages. Search engines look for elements, including title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links (also known as backlinks). Search engines also look at site structure and design, visitor behavior, and other external, off-site factors to determine how highly ranked your site should be in their SERPs.

With all of these factors taken into account, SEO primarily drives two things — rankings and visibility.

But before diving deeper, I want to note that many resources make SEO seem complex: they might even scare you away. I promise this guide isn’t like that. I’ll break SEO down into its most basic parts and show you how to use all of its elements to create a successful SEO strategy of your own.

How does SEO work?

SEO works by optimizing a website’s content, conducting keyword research, and earning inbound links to increase that content’s ranking and the website’s visibility. While you can generally see results take effect on the SERP once the webpage has been crawled and indexed by a search engine, SEO efforts can take months to fully materialize.

Rankings

This is what search engines use to determine where to place a particular web page in the SERP. Rankings start at position number zero through the final number of search engine results for the query, and a web page can rank for one position at a time. As time passes, a web page’s ranking might change due to age, competition in the SERP, or algorithm changes by the search engine itself.

Visibility

This term describes how prominent a particular domain is in the search engine results. Lower search visibility occurs when a domain isn’t visible for many relevant search queries, whereas with higher search visibility, the opposite is true.

Both are responsible for delivering the main SEO objectives – relevant traffic and domain authority.

What’s the importance of SEO?

There’s one more important reason why you should invest in and use SEO: The strategy virtually helps you position your brand throughout the entire buying journey.

In turn, SEO can make sure that your marketing strategies match the new buying behavior.

Because, as Google admitted, customer behavior has changed for good.

As of January 2024, Google holds 81.95% of the worldwide search engine market share.

What’s more, customers typically prefer going through the majority of the buying process on their own.

For example, 86% of consumers say search engines are the best way to get information. And, across all generations, people overwhelmingly use search engines to get answers online.

Finally, DemandGen’s 2022 B2B Buyer’s Survey found that 67% of B2B buyers start the buying process with a broad web search.

But how do they use search engines during the process?

Early in the process, they use Google to find information about their problem. Some also inquire about potential solutions.

Then, they evaluate available alternatives based on reviews or social media hype before inquiring with a company directly. But this happens after they’ve exhausted all information sources.

And so, the only chance for customers to notice and consider you is by showing up in their search results.

Featured Resource

How does Google know how to rank a page?

Search engines have a single goal only. They aim to provide users with the most relevant answers or information.

Every time you use them, their algorithms choose pages that are the most relevant to your query. And then rank them, displaying the most authoritative or popular ones first.

To deliver the right information to users, search engines analyze five main factors:

• The meaning behind someone’s query, which is their most likely intent for starting a search, and how that intent matches the most helpful content.
• Relevancy between the search query and the content on a page, and search engines assess it by various factors like topic or keywords.
• Quality of content, which uses the E-E-A-T (we’ll discuss this further below) model to surface content that seems the most helpful based on signals like experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
• The usability of a site, which considers page speed, mobile friendliness, and other factors related to how easy it is to discover content on a site.
• Context, which relies on a searcher’s past behavior and settings like location.

And to analyze all this information they use complex equations called search algorithms.

Search engines keep their algorithms secret. However, over time, SEOs have identified some of the factors they consider when ranking a page. We refer to them as ranking factors, and they are the focus of an SEO strategy.

When determining relevance and authority, following the E-E-A-T framework can help tremendously. E-E-A-T in SEO stands for “expertise,” “experience,” “authoritativeness,“ and ”trustworthiness.” Here’s what each one means:

• Expertise. You’re a subject matter expert.
• Experience. You have personal experience with the content you write about.
• Authoritativeness. Others see you as a source of authority, like other sites linking to your site and vouching for your credibility.
• Trustworthiness. Your website and its content are credible and current.

Professionals who responded to our Web Traffic & Analytics Report ranked trustworthiness and expertise as the most important ranking factors for showing up in SERPs, followed by experience and authoritativeness.

Complete SEO Starter Pack

An introductory kit to optimize your website for search.

• Increase your organic traffic.
• Plan your keyword strategy.
• Debunk SEO myths.
• Build a blog strategy.

Get Your Free Kit Learn more

Download Free

All fields are required.

You’re all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Keyword Research

SEO is not about getting any visitors to the site. You want to attract people who need what you sell and can become leads, and later, customers.

However, that’s possible only if you rank for the keywords those people would use when searching. Otherwise, there’s no chance they’d ever find you. And that’s even if your website appeared at the top of the search results.

That’s why SEO work starts with discovering what phrases potential buyers enter into search engines.

The process typically involves identifying terms and topics relevant to your business. Then, you can convert them into initial keywords. And finally, you can conduct extensive research to uncover related terms your audience would use.

We’ve published a thorough guide to keyword research for beginners. It lays out the keyword research process in detail. Use it to identify search terms you should be targeting.

With a list of keywords at hand, the next step is to optimize your content. SEOs refer to this process as on-page optimization.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization, also called on-page SEO, ensures that search engines a.) understand a page’s topic and keywords and b.) can match it to relevant searches.

Note, I said “page,” not content. That’s because, although the bulk of on-page SEO work focuses on the words you use, it extends to optimizing some elements in the code.

You may have heard about some of them — meta-tags like title or description are the two most popular ones. But there are more. So, here’s a list of the most crucial on-page optimization actions to take.

Note: Since blog content prevails on most websites when speaking of those factors, I’ll focus on blog SEO — optimizing blog posts for relevant keywords. However, all this advice is equally valid for other page types, too.

Featured Resource

a) Keyword Optimization

According to web analysts and SEO experts, optimizing your on-page content around target keywords is the most effective SEO strategy for ranking highly on SERPs.

For keyword optimization, you’ll need to ensure that Google understands what keywords you want this page to rank. To achieve that, make sure you include at least the main keyword in the following:

• Post’s title. Ideally, place it as close to the start of the title as possible. Google is known to put more value on words at the start of the headline.
• URL. Your page’s web address should also include the keyword.Ideally, it would include nothing else. Also, you should remove any stop words.
• H1 Tag. In most content management systems, this tag displays the page’s title by default. However, make sure that your platform doesn’t use a different setting.
• The first 100 words (or the first paragraph) of content. Finding the keyword at the start of your blog post will reassure Google that this is, in fact, the page’s topic.
• Meta-title and meta-description tags. Search engines use these two code elements to display their listings. They display the meta-title as the search listing’s title while the meta-description provides content for the little blurb below it. However, above that, they use both to further understand the page’s topic.
• Image file names and ALT tags. Remember how search engines see graphics on a page? They can only see their file names. So, make sure that at least one of the images contains the keyword in the file name.

The alt tag, on the other hand, is the text browsers will display instead of an image for visually impaired visitors or if the image doesn’t load. However, since ALT tag resides in the image code, search engines use it as a relevancy signal as well.

That said, there’s a delicate balance to be had with ALT tag optimization. And, your main priority should always be to use this element to make your content more accessible for end users rather than more optimized for search.

Also, add semantic keywords — variations or synonyms of your keyword. Google and other search engines use them (and the added context they provide) to better determine a page’s relevancy.

Let me illustrate this with a quick example. Let’s pretend that your main keyword is “Apple.” But do you mean the fruit or the tech giant behind the iPhone?

Now, imagine what happens when Google finds terms like sugar, orchard, or cider in the copy. The choice of what queries to rank it for would immediately become obvious, right?

That’s what semantic keywords do. Add them to make sure your page doesn’t start appearing for irrelevant searches.

Pro tip: If you want to get to grips with how Google categorizes and understands text (and why semantic keywords are so important), try Google’s Natural Language API. It’s free and will give you a first-hand idea of how a few different words can completely change the categorization of your text.

In the above example, I’m writing a quick introduction for an e-commerce product category dedicated to cat-themed designs.

Because the text is so heavily focused on why cats are great (I mean they are, of course) rather than placing the theme of ‘cat’ within the context of the actual product (cat-themed designs), Google interprets this as being more about pets than designs. That might work for a pet shop, but it’s not ideal for a design marketplace.

In the second example, I’ve targeted my primary audience (crafters) first and placed the theme of cats in the right context from the get-go. (The ‘right’ context is to use these cat-themed designs to produce home crafts.) As you can see Google has registered words like “crafters,” “designs,” and “Cricut,” more than others. And those words are driving the broader intent of the text.

As a result, Google is now classifying the text in the “Hobbies & Leisure/Crafts/Other categories” rather than so heavily in “Pets & Animals/Pets/Cats.” And that’s all because of the specificity of both the word choices and the context.

b) Non-Keyword-Related On-Page Optimization Factors

On-page SEO is not just about sprinkling keywords across the page. The factors below help confirm a page’s credibility and authority, too:

• External links. Linking out to other, relevant pages on the topic helps Google determine its topic further. Plus, it provides a good user experience. How? By positioning your content as a valuable resource.
• Internal links. Those links help you boost rankings in two ways. First, they allow search engines to find and crawl other pages on the site. And second, they show semantic relations between various pages, helping to determine relevance to the search query. As a general rule of thumb, you should include at least 2-4 relevant internal links per blog post.
• Content length.This is not always the case, but long content typically ranks better. That’s because, if done well*, a longer blog post will always contain more exhaustive information on the topic, thus keeping a reader on your site longer. That’s called dwell time, and it’s considered by some to be an important ranking factor for search engines.
• Multimedia. Although not a requirement, multimedia elements like videos, diagrams, and audio players can signal a page’s quality. It keeps readers on a page for longer, just like longer content does. And in turn, it signals that they find the content valuable and worth pursuing.

*Note: I’ve been in marketing and SEO for about seven years. But I’m a writer and editor at heart (and by trade), so here’s my heartfelt addendum regarding content length.

Please don’t write long content just for the sake of it.

That’s how you waste your reader’s time and inevitably decrease the value of your content rather than add to it.

When writing or editing, ask yourself, “Does this [section/paragraph/sentence/word/idea] genuinely add value to the piece?” and if it doesn’t, cut it.

The real aim should always be to cover the topic thoroughly without adding filler. Filler is boring to read, and it doesn’t move the piece forward.

3. Links

From what you’ve read in this guide so far, you know that no page will rank without two factors — relevance and authority.

In their quest to provide users with the most accurate answers, Google and other search engines prioritize pages they consider the most relevant but also popular to their queries.

The first two areas — technical setup and content — focused on increasing relevance (though I admit, some of their elements can also help highlight the authority.)

Links, however, are responsible for popularity.

But before we talk more about how they work, here’s what SEOs mean when talking about links.

What is a backlink?

Links, also called backlinks, are references to your content on other websites. Every time another website mentions and points its readers to your content, you gain a backlink to your site.

For example, this article in Entrepreneur mentions our Not Another State of Marketing Report page. It also links to it, allowing their readers to see other stats than the one quoted.

Google uses the quantity and quality of links like this as a signal of a website’s authority. Its logic is that web admins would reference a popular and high-quality website more often than a mediocre one.

But note that I mentioned link quality as well. That’s because not all links are the same. Some — low-quality ones — can impact your rankings negatively.

Links Quality Factors

Low-quality or suspicious links — for example, ones that Google would consider as built deliberately to make it consider a site more authoritative — might reduce your rankings.

That’s why, when building links, SEOs don’t focus on any old links. They aim to generate the highest quality references possible.

Naturally, just like with the search algorithm, we don’t know what factors determine a link’s quality, specifically. However, over time, SEOs discovered some of them:

• The popularity of a linking site. Any link from a domain that search engines consider an authority will naturally have high quality. In other words, links from websites with good-quality links pointing to them will yield better results.
• Topic relevance. Links from domains on a topic similar to yours will carry more authority than those from random websites.
• Trust in a domain. Just like with popularity, search engines also assess a website’s trust. Links from more trustworthy sites will always impact rankings better.

Link Building

In SEO, we refer to the process of acquiring new backlinks as link building. And as many practitioners admit, it can be a challenging activity.

Link building, if you want to do it well, requires creativity, strategic thinking, and patience. To generate quality links, you need to develop a link-building strategy. And that’s no small feat.

Remember, your links must pass various quality criteria. Plus, it can’t be obvious to search engines that you’ve built them deliberately.

Expert Insights

Ranko Media Founder and CEO Nick Rubright has been working on link building for his projects and clients for a decade. He also speaks to website eowners every day looking for backlinging opportunities.

“A common theme I notice among website owners who are less experienced in the world of SEO and link building is that they often want to buy the backlinks, thinking search engines won’t notice, or even not realizing it’s against their spam policies,” Rubright says.

Rubright reminds us that in his experience, paying for backlinks either produces short-term results (so it works until Google finds out) or no results at all (if Google already knows the sellers you’re working with).

So, how does Google know if you’re paying for links? Well, they look for the sellers.

Rubright adds, “See, if someone tries to sell me a backlink, I can just tell Google that they’re selling right here.”

“Eventually, the website you paid for a link on gets caught because someone like me just reports websites that sell backlinks every time they run across that in their outreach. When this happens, and Google knows the outbound links are paid for,” Rubright explains.

Google won’t count the outbound links from the domain as votes anymore, which means these backlinks produce zero ranking value.

“This seems to be true even if the websites that are selling backlinks have Google rankings themselves,” Rubright says.

Yes, this approach (paying for, rather than earning links) might seem like the more cost-effective alternative at first. But Rubright reminds us, “If you’re saving money buying links, and those links don’t do anything for your website, you’re getting zero ROI on your link-building investment.”

Link-building strategies to help you earn links:

• Editorial, organic links. These backlinks come from websites that reference your content on their own.
• Outreach. In this strategy, you contact other websites for links. This can happen in many ways. You could create an amazing piece of content and email them to tell them about it. In turn, if they find it valuable, they’ll reference it. You can also suggest where they could link to it.
• Guest posting. Guest posts are blog articles that you publish on third-party websites. In turn, those companies often allow you to include one or two links to your site in the content and author bio.
• Profile links. Many websites offer an opportunity to create a link. Online profiles are a good example. Often, when setting up such a profile, you can also list your website there as well. Not all such links carry strong authority, but some might. And given the ease of creating them, they’re worth pursuing.
• Competitive analysis. Finally, many SEOs regularly analyze their competitors’ backlinks to identify those they could recreate for their sites, too.

Now, if you’re still here with me, you’ve just discovered what’s responsible for your site’s success in search.

The next step is figuring out whether your efforts are working.

How to Monitor & Track SEO Results

Technical setup, content, and links are critical to getting a website into the search results. Monitoring your efforts helps improve your strategy further.

Measuring SEO success means tracking data about traffic, engagement, and links. And though most companies develop their own sets of SEO KPIs (key performance indicators), here are the most common ones:

• Organic traffic growth
• Keyword rankings (split into branded and non-branded terms)
• Conversions from organic traffic
• Average time on page and the bounce rate
• Top landing pages attracting organic traffic
• Number of indexed pages
• Links growth (including new and lost links)

Local SEO

Up until now, we focused on getting a site rank in search results in general. If you run a local business, however, Google also lets you position it in front of potential customers in your area, specifically. But for that, you use local SEO.

And it’s well worth it.

46% of Google searches are for local businesses. They look for vendor suggestions and even specific business addresses.

But hold on, is local SEO different from what we’ve been discussing all along?

Search engines follow similar principles for both local and global rankings. However, given that they position a site for specific, location-based results, they need to analyze some other ranking factors, too.

Even local search results look different:

• They appear only for searches with a local intent (for example, “restaurant near me” or when a person clearly defined the location.)
• They contain results specific to a relevant location.
• They concentrate on delivering specific information to users that they don’t need to go anywhere else to find.
• They target smartphone users primarily as local searches occur more often on mobile devices.

For example, a localpack, the most prominent element of local results, includes almost all the information a person would need to choose a business. Here are local results Google displays for the phrase “best restaurant in Boston.”

Note that these results contain no links to any content. Instead, they include a list of restaurants in the area, a map to show their locations, and additional information about each:

• Business name.
• Description.
• Image.
• Opening hours.
• Star Reviews.
• Address.

Often, they also include a company’s phone number or website address.

All this information combined helps customers choose which business to engage with. But, it also allows Google to determine how to rank it.

Local Search Ranking Factors

When analyzing local websites, Google looks at the proximity to a searcher’s location. With the rise of local searches containing the phrase “near me,” it’s only fair that Google will try to present the closest businesses first.

Keywords are essential for local SEO, too. However, one additional element of on-page optimization is a company’s name, address, and phone number on a page. In local SEO, we refer to it as the NAP.

Again, it makes sense, as the search engine needs a way to assess the company’s location.

Google assesses authority in local searches, not just by links. Reviews and citations (references of a business’s address or a phone number online) highlight its authority, too.

Finally, the information a business includes in a Google Business Profile — the search engine’s platform for managing local business listings — plays a massive part in its rankings.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg. But they are the ones to get right first if you want your business to rank well in local search.

What is black hat SEO?

The final aspect of SEO I want to highlight is something I also hope you’ll never be tempted to use on anything other than a test site.

For context, some SEO specialists experiment with black hat SEO for their own test websites. Through testing, these SEOs can demonstrate proof of concept and learn how to safeguard their client’s websites based on their experimentations.

But I repeat: Do not use these tactics for your clients or employers because they are not your sites to experiment with.

That said, although it might have its lure and can be used on test sites, black hat SEO typically ends in a penalty from search listings.

Black hat practices aim at manipulating search engine algorithms using strategies against search engine guidelines. The most common black hat techniques include keyword stuffing, cloaking (hiding keywords in code so that users don’t see them, but search engines do), and buying links.

So, why would someone use black hat SEO? Well, ranking a site following Google’s guidelines takes time. In some cases, depending on the budget, a website’s existing authority, and more, it can take a long time.

Black hat strategies let you cut down the complexity of link building, for example. Keyword stuffing helps users to rank one page for many keywords without having to create more content.

But as I said, getting caught often results in a site being completely wiped out from search listings.

The reason I mention it here is because I want you to realize that there are no shortcuts in SEO. And also, be aware and very suspicious of anyone suggesting strategies that might seem too good to be true…

We need only look at Google’s recent 2024 update, which, combined with its previous efforts, aimed to “collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%” as an example.

The 40% in question refers to a large number of websites (many of which received manual actions) that published unhelpful AI-generated content, which Google ultimately viewed as spam.

Any SEO worth their salt would’ve told you to avoid abusing AI-generated content to such a degree. Yes, even when Google announced (and I paraphrase) that it was ok with AI content within reason.

But a lot of the ‘get rich quick with AI’ types sold people some serious SEO strategy snake oil that turned out to be a big serving of scaled content abuse.

Should you outsource SEO or keep it in-house?

Whether you work on SEO yourself, delegate it to another team member, or outsource it completely, you’ll want to make this decision with as much knowledge as possible.

Doing SEO Yourself

Be honest with yourself — are you interested in learning SEO? Do you have time to learn the basics? Do you have the resources to bring in help if you redesign your website and accidentally deindex several pages?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then you might not want to take on the responsibility of SEO yourself.

SEO is a long-term play, and just like a muscle, you have to work at it consistently to see results. That can take a substantial amount of commitment. If you have any doubts, try the next best thing — delegating the work.

That said, learning about the process and becoming an SEO specialist makes you well-equipped to create content because you’ll know exactly what matters most. And there is a wide variety of SEO tools out there that will help you throughout the process.

For example, HubSpot’s SEO Marketing Software includes tools that help you optimize your content and execute your SEO strategy. You’ll get a list of issues to fix ranked based on importance and detailed insight into why those issues matter to prepare you for the future.

Nowadays, 50% of writers also use AI SEO tools to boost content performance, and 65% of web analysts say it helps their pages rank higher in SERPs. Bloggers also say AI tools are highly effective at helping them align their web content with search intent (which hits on two of the four factors used to rank pages.)

Delegate SEO to a Team Member

If you’re not quite sure about taking on SEO yourself, consider delegating the work to a team member. If you have a person interested in growth marketing, development, or even web design, this would be a valuable skill to help grow their career.

Funnily enough, that’s actually how I got started in SEO. I was an office admin for work, but in my spare time, I was building my own website and learning about blogging. As my ‘home’ journey progressed, I realized my employer didn’t cover SEO or blogging nearly as well as they could.

I approached the CEO with a business case on why we should invest time (my time) and resources (me) in these areas. It suited the business objectives and my career goals (I got to do something creative), so it got the green light.

The next thing I knew, I was working through a Google Digital Garage Course on SEO, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Aside from assigning tasks in-house, you could hire a full-time search engine optimization specialist if you have the budget.

The person in this role can report to the marketing team, development team, or even design team. Because SEO touches nearly every function of a business while maintaining a unique set of skill requirements, this position won’t be subject to frequent changes if departments need to be restructured later on. The person you delegate to this job will contribute cross-functionally more often than not.

Expert Insights

“In my experience, text documentation with visuals and video tutorials help a lot. I’m a documentation addict from my past experience as a technical documentation writer. For me, having everything documented is keen, not only for delegating SEO tasks to a peer, but for yourself too,” says Stoica of Wave Live Wallpapers

Stoica provides an example of what this looks like in practice. Stoica delegated keyword research to teammates. They then meet weekly to discuss their progress and bottlenecks.

“After some time, they proposed new ways to conduct their research that proved they understood the assignment and how SEO works in that area,” Stoica says.

Final thoughts: “All in all, my approach to delegating some elements of SEO is by using documentations, video presentations, 1-on-1 discussions, and setting up internal processes for verifications and feedback,” says Stoica.

Outsource SEO to an Agency

You don’t have the interest in SEO, your team’s at full capacity, and you can’t spare the budget to fill a full-time SEO role. Now what? The best bang for your buck is to outsource SEO to a reputable consultant. Why?

First, a well-respected SEO consultant is highly skilled in bringing organic traffic, leads, and conversions to businesses. They do this day in and day out, so they won’t need the ramp-up time that you or a member of your team would need in order to learn the basics.

Second, a consultant can be less expensive than hiring someone full-time for the role because they don’t require insurance benefits, payroll taxes, etc. But how much exactly would you be looking at for outsourcing your SEO?

SEO can cost between $100 and $500 per month if you do it yourself with a keyword research tool. It can cost between $75 and $150 per hour for a consultant and up to $10,000 per month if you hire a full-service marketing agency. Small businesses generally spend less on SEO than big brands, so be sure to take that into account.

Incurring SEO costs can mean one of two things: the investment in your organic search strategy, or how much you pay for paid search engine marketing (SEM) services like Google Ads. If you’re paying for a tool, consultant, or marketing agency to help you optimize your web content, your bill can vary wildly with the depth of the services you’re receiving.

Complete SEO Starter Pack

An introductory kit to optimize your website for search.

• Increase your organic traffic.
• Plan your keyword strategy.
• Debunk SEO myths.
• Build a blog strategy.