What is SEO - Step by step guideline
Introduction
People publish blog post everyday
In fact, WordPress users alone publish over 2 million posts every day. That comes out to 24 blog posts every second.
While you were reading these five sentences, users have published around 216 blog posts.
If we were to count all blog posts, that number would surely be higher and that’s only counting WordPress users.
This makes it kind of tough to stand out. But you have to if you want to make your blog a successful one.
While writing a blog post, it’s very important to optimize each post that you wrote. No wonder millions of people Google the term “SEO” each month.
On any given day, people conduct more than 2.2 million searches. And that’s just on Google — to say nothing of the other search engines.
This is why showing up on the front page of Google can be the deciding factor between a business that’s thriving and one that’s, well, bankrupt.
But what does SEO even mean?
You probably know that it stands for search engine optimization, but what do you need to optimize?
Is it the design? Or is it the writing? Or maybe it’s the links.
Yes, yes, and yes — it’s all of that and more.
But let’s start this SEO guide at the beginning.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
SEO is the magic you have to work on your article in order to make Google very likely to include your post as one of the top results whenever someone searches for that keyword.
To understand the true meaning of SEO, let's break that definition down and look at the parts:
Quality of traffic. If you want to attract visitors, it’s best to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in the products that you offer. Even if you can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they're coming to your site because Google tells them you're a resource for Apple computers when really you're a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic.
Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don't have to pay for.
How SEO works
You might think of a search engine as a website you visit to type (or speak) a question into a box and Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or whatever search engine you're using magically replies with a long list of links to webpages that could potentially answer your question.
That’s true. However, have you ever stopped to consider what's behind those magical lists of links?
Here’s exactly how it works: Google (or any search engine you're using) has a crawler that goes out and gathers information about all the content they can find on the Internet. The crawlers bring all those 1s and 0s back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all that data with your query.
There are a lot of factors that go into a search engine's algorithm, and here's how a group of experts ranked their importance:
That's all the SE (search engine) of SEO.
The people who write all that content and put it on their sites are guessing that content and those sites up so search engines will be able to understand what they're seeing, and the users who arrive via search will like what they see. This is the O part of SEO which is optimization.
It's everything from making sure the title tags and meta descriptions are both informative and the right length to pointing internal links at pages you're proud of as optimization can take many forms.
We’re going to dig deep into SEO, this is the list of the topics that we will cover.
Overview
White hat vs. black hat
On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
Overview
The vast majority of online experiences begin with a search engine, and nearly 75% of searchers start their searches on Google.
You get an idea of why search engine optimization is so important when you know the fact that the first five results on Google get 67% of all clicks.
There’s a joke going around the web that highlights how crucial it is to hit the first page of Google.
It’s the equivalent of it not ranking at all If your blog post, article, or product is on any other page of the Google search results than the first.
You first need to know how search even works to understand how to show up first in the search engine results.
So how does the search work?
Now that you have an idea of the basics of SEO, you can take a look at some of its components in detail.
The company Backlinko did a great job of compiling as many of them as possible into one big list even though Google guards their search algorithm pretty well and not all of the over 200 determining factors are public.
But first, you need to get one thing straight. There are two sides of the SEO that you need to know.
White hat vs. black hat
As you know, it’s important to look at SEO as a long term marketing goal instead of just trying to get a quick buck out of it.
This is why in search engine optimization. Some people are in it to make a few grand really quickly while others are in it for the long haul.
You’ll probably end up doing black hat SEO if you want to work SEO like a get-rich-quick scheme.
These are a prime way for black hat SEOs to make a few thousand dollars fast since there are lots of ways to bend and break the rules to get your sites to rank high. This type of SEO usually focuses on optimizing your content only for the search engine, not considering humans at all.
It will often lead to severe punishment for the marketer, ruining their chance of building something sustainable in the future which ultimately leads to spammy, crappy pages that often get banned very fast.
You might make a few grand this way, but you’ll continuously have to be on the lookout for search engine updates and come up with new ways to dodge the rules.
White hat SEO, on the other hand, is the way to build a sustainable online business because if you do SEO this way, you’ll focus on your human audience.
You’ll try to give them the best content possible and make it easily accessible to them by playing according to the search engine’s rules.
The company Inbound Marketing Inc. does a great job of explaining the difference.
Needless to say, you’ll only hear and see me talking about white hat SEO.
Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.
As you know, life’s not always black or white.
The same holds true for SEO. There’s actually something in the middle of the ‘white vs. black hat debate’ that I need to address.
Gray hat SEO, like its name implies, is a little white and a little black.
That means it’s not quite as pure or innocent as the whitest of white hats. But it isn’t quite as egregiously manipulative as black hat can be.
You’re not trying to trick anyone or intentionally game the system with gray hat. However, you are trying to get a distinct advantage.
See, Google’s standards aren’t as clear-cut as they’d like you to believe. Many times, they might even say contradictory things.
For example, Google has said they’re not a fan of guest blogging to build links.
But what about guest blogging to grow your brand? What if you do it to build awareness, generate high-quality traffic back to your site, and become a household name in the industry?
Those are all legitimate reasons to guest post and why I still recommend it.
Other people might disagree with me on this point, and that’s OK.
That’s what makes online marketing, and SEO in particular, so fun. It’s a game. And two opponents can try different methods to win.
SEO changes all the time. The rules are often ill-defined.
‘The rules’ are simply just SEOs making predictions or looking at correlating data trends.
That’s why there’s so much room for gray hat SEO to sneak in.
Many classic link building techniques can also go either way like using scholarships to build links.
Some people say it still works. Others say it’s dead.
It often depends a lot on how you do it.
Ross Hudgens of Siege Media, talks a lot about scalable link building tactics. If they’re going to generate any ROI, all marketing tactics need to be scalable at the end of the day.
But here’s the problem with that notion.
Depending on how you do it, almost every ‘scalable link building tactic’ is a borderline black hat.
You could technically consider that this goes against Google’s rules when Ross shows examples of this time and time again where even massive brands you visit daily, like The New York Times, have built links.
Now, it might be easy to build links in some industries, like technology or nutrition. There are thousands of blogs online that talk about this stuff daily.
But what if you work for a supplement company?
Did you know MailChimp which is a popular email marketing software won’t even let supplement companies use their email marketing service at all?
How are they supposed to create connections, reach out to customers, and increase revenue (let alone build a few links)?
The same holds true in other less savory industries, like gambling for instance.
The chances of a journalist linking to your site in a flattering way are slim to none.
So many times, you’re going to have to take your chances.
Law firms also find trouble with building high-quality links. That’s why they often use scholarship link building tactics like we addressed earlier.
Search engine rankings still aren’t as good as they should be which is also a problem.
Sure, new algorithm evolutions like RankBrain help dramatically.
But we’re not out of the woods just yet.
So what’s happening here? What could possibly be the explanation?
Google generally admits that those three indicators are the most important. SEOs all agree on that, too.
And yet that’s not happening in real life.
You can still game or manipulate the system to a certain degree.
It’s not as bad as it used to be, but the problem still exists.
Last year, WordStream founder Larry Kim gave a few unique SEO predictions for this year.
Increasing search engine result page (SERP) click-through rates (CTR) to get more traffic is one of them.
He predicts that ‘engagement hacks’ like this one will become a new gray hat tactic.
Driving up your Facebook engagement to help give your organic reach a little boost is also another good example of this.
I’m not saying gray hats are good or bad. That’s for you to decide.
But I am shining a light on something you rarely hear people discuss in public:
SEO is a zero-sum game.
Many of your competitors will do whatever it takes to reach the top. That displaces you, pushing you further down into obscurity.
So you need to decide which path you’re going to take and what degree of risk you’re comfortable accepting.
On-page SEO
Chapter 1: On-Page SEO Basics
1) What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO (also known as “on-site SEO”) is the practice of optimizing web page content for search engines and users. Common on-page SEO practices include optimizing title tags, content, internal links and URLs.
This is different from off-page SEO, which is optimizing for signals that happen off of your website (for example, backlinks).
Does traditional on-page SEO still make a difference in 2021?
Yup!
In fact, Google’s own “How Search Works” report states that:
They still use old school stuff (like looking for a specific keyword on your page) even though Google is MUCH smarter than it was back in the day.
And there’s data to back this up.
According to the company Backlinko, their analysis of 11M Google search results found a correlation between keyword-rich title tags and first page rankings.
And if you search for any competitive keyword, you’ll notice that the top ranking pages almost all use that exact keyword in their title tag.
That said:
There’s more to on-page SEO than cramming keywords into your page’s HTML.
To rank your content in 2021, you also need to optimize your content for:
User experience
Bounce Rate and Dwell Time
Search Intent
Page loading speed
Click-through-rate
Chapter 2: Optimize Your Content for SEO
It’s time to start optimizing your content since now that you’ve seen why on-page SEO still matters.
I’m going to show you how to keyword-optimize every page on your website which you can take actionable steps to do in this chapter.
2.1) Use Your Target Keyword In The First 100 Words
This is an old school on-page SEO tactic that still makes a difference.
Once in the first 100-150 words of your article, all you need to do is use your main keyword.
For example, in my article optimized around the keyword “email marketing”, I mentioned that keyword right off the bat.
Why is this important?
Google puts more weight on terms that show up early in your page.
Which makes sense. Imagine that you just published an article about The Keto Diet. Would it make sense to first use the term “keto diet” halfway down the page if your article really was about The Keto Diet.
Of course not.
This is one of those little things that helps Google understand what your page is all about which is why you want to drop your keyword somewhere in the first 100 words or so.
2.2) Wrap Your Blog Post Title in an H1 Tag
The H1 tag is like a mini title tag.
In fact, Google has stated that using an H1 tag “helps Google understand the structure of the page”.
Most platforms (like WordPress) automatically add the H1 tag to your blog post title. If that’s the case, you’re all set.
But that’s not always the case. You want to check your site’s code to make sure your title is wrapped in an H1. And that your keyword is inside of that H1 tag.
2.3) Wrap Subheadings in H2 Tags
Include your target keyword in at least one subheading. And wrap that subheading in an H2 tag.
Will an H2 tag make or break your on-page SEO?
Nope. But it can’t hurt. The company Backlinko has done their own SEO experiments which have shown me that wrapping your target keyword in an H2 tag can make a dent.
Here’s an example of this strategy in action (target keyword=”content marketing tools”):
2.4) Keyword Frequency
The meaning of Keyword Frequency how many times your keyword appears in your content.
SEO pros with experience will tell you that it definitely works even though Google may deny that using the same keyword multiple times helps.
Think about it this way:
Imagine that you have a page that Google THINKS is about a specific keyword. But that keyword only appears once on the page.
How confident can they be that the page is about that keyword? Not very.
On the other hand, Google can be more confident about that page’s topic if the page mentions the keyword 10 times.
To be clear:
This isn’t about keyword stuffing or anything like that.
It’s simply mentioning your target keyword a few times to confirm to Google that your page really is about that topic.
For example, one of our posts ranks in the top 3 in Google for the keyword “YouTube SEO”.
How many times do you think I used the exact term “YouTube SEO” in that 3,200-word post?
6 times.
As long as you use your keyword naturally a few times, you’re good so there’s no need to go overboard here.
2.5) Use External (Outbound) Links
It also shows Google that your page is a hub of quality info because external links to related pages helps Google figure out your page’s topic.
The folks at Reboot Online ran an experiment to see if external links helped improve rankings and this isn’t just a theory.
They created 10 new websites. Half of the websites linked out to authority sites (like Oxford University). The other half had no external links.
And the websites with external links outranked the sites without them.
2.6) Optimize Your URLs for SEO
Your URL structure is an underrated part of on-page SEO.
Yes, Google recently started to use weird versions of URLs in the search results.
But even then, the terms that you use in your URL show up here. Plus, URLs in the mobile and desktop SERPs are now above the title tag.
So I’d say that your URL is actually more important now than before.
With that, here’s how to create SEO-friendly URLs:
Make your URLs short
Include a keyword in every URL
Seriously. That’s it.
For example, Baclinko’s guide to link building is optimized around the keyword “link building”. So I used that keyword in my URL.
That’s not to say that your URL should ONLY have your keyword. It’s perfectly fine to add an extra word or two to your URL…
…or to have your keyword come after a subfolder.
Chapter 3: Optimize Title and Description Tags
You’ll learn how to optimize your title and meta descriptions for SEO in this chapter.
According to Google, title tags still “help a lot” with your rankings.
So they’re worth optimizing.
And it’s the same story with your description.
Searchers use it to figure out which result to click on as Google may not use your description to understand the content on your page.
So if you want to write SEO-friendly title tags and descriptions, this chapter is for you.
3.1) Front-load Your Title tag
In my opinion, your title tag is the most important on-page SEO factor.
That’s because your title tag gives search engines a high-level overview of what your page is all about.
In my experience, the closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title tag, the more weight it has with search engines.
Here’s an example from Backlinko’s big list of SEO tools.
Your keyword doesn’t necessarily have to be in the very beginning of your title. It doesn’t always make sense to do that.
But the closer your title is to the front of your title tag, the better.
3.2) Use Unique, Keyword-Rich Meta Descriptions
Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide states that:
And Google recently recommended that you write your own meta descriptions.
(Even though Google can override them with their own snippet)
That’s because a good meta description helps your result stand out, which can boost your organic CTR.
Here’s a description template that Backlinko uses and recommends.
You also want to include your keyword once in your description.
Why?
Because Google bolds terms that match the person’s query.
Again, this can give you a nice little CTR bump.
Chapter 4: Write SEO Content
Now it’s time to publish content that deserves to rank #1.
This process goes well beyond using keywords on your page.
To rank your content in 2021, your content needs to be:
Unique
Super valuable
Optimized for search intent
I’ll show you how to make sure that your SEO content checks all of these 3 boxes in this chapter.
I’m not just talking about duplicate content when I say “unique”.
I mean publishing something that doesn’t just regurgitate the same stuff that’s already out there.
In other words: content that brings something new to the table.
That something new can be:
A new tip or strategy
A better list of curated resources
Strong design and UX
New case study
Streamlined step-by-step process
For example, this SEO checklist post ranks in the top 3 for the keyword “SEO checklist”.
It rank not because it used my keyword a bunch of times.
That definitely helped. But for a competitive term like this, using keywords isn’t enough.
This page ranks in the top 3 because it’s unique.
Sure, it has tips and strategies that you can find anywhere:
But it also has lots of tips and examples that you can only find in their post.
4.1) Valuable Content
Publishing something that’s unique is a good starting point.
But it’s not enough.
(After all, literally millions of blog posts come out every single day.)
It needs to be SUPER valuable for your content to stand out and get noticed.
Here are a few ways that you can make your SEO content insanely valuable:
Add details: Images, screenshots, and steps makes it easy for someone to put your content into practice.
Crisp writing: Strong copywriting will make your content more engaging.
Updated material: Brand new strategies, steps and examples go a long way.
Expert authors: Most content is written by people that have never done the thing they’re telling you to do. Content from someone with first-hand experience is almost always more valuable than something written by a random freelance writer.
4.2) Content That Satisfies Search Intent
Unique, valuable content can get you to the first page of Google.
But if you want to stay there, your page has to satisfy Search Intent.
In other words:
Your page has to be EXACTLY what a Google searcher wants.
Otherwise, your page will likely be buried on the 3rd page.
Chapter 5: Optimize for CTR
Your organic click through rate is important for two reasons:
First, CTR is (probably) a Google ranking factor.
Second, increasing your CTR can drive more traffic to your site.
We’ll show you four practical ways that you can improve your organic CTR in this chapter.
5.1) Use “Question Title Tags”
Last year Backlinko analyzed 5 million Google search results to figure out why certain pages get clicked on over others.
Surprisingly, their findings shows that question-based title tags have an above-average CTR.
I recommend testing titles tags that have a question whenever it makes sense.
5.2) Fill In Missing Meta Descriptions
I talked about meta descriptions way back in Chapter 1.
Specifically, I pointed out that you want your descriptions to be super compelling.
Just HAVING a meta description might be enough as you don’t need to write an amazing description 100% of the time.
In fact, Backlinko found that pages with a meta description got approximately 6% more clicks vs. pages with a missing meta description.
They recommend adding descriptions for pages that need them doing an SEO audit on your site to find pages that don’t have a meta description.
5.3) Add Some Emotion to Your Title Tags
A study shows that CTR study found that emotional titles got clicked on 7% more often vs. titles that didn’t have a strong emotional sentiment.
They also discovered that emotionally-charged “Power Words” decreased click through rate by 12%.
What gives?
Well, people are attracted to titles that pack an emotional punch… to a point.
If a title goes overboard, it looks like clickbait.
And they’ll click on another result that looks less spammy.
Bottom Line: Avoid terms like “insane” and “powerful” that can make your title look like clickbait when writing title tags with some emotion.
Chapter 6: On-Page UX Signals
We will show you how to optimize your content for “UX Signals” in this chapter.
(In other words, how Google searchers interact with your content).
Does Google really pay attention to Dwell Time, Bounce Rate and other user interaction signals?
Yes.
In fact, Google’s “How Search Works” says that, to help them rank the best results, they “use aggregated and anonymized interaction data to assess whether search results are relevant to queries”.
Now it’s time to show you how to make sure that your content keeps Google searchers on your page.
6.1) Push Content Above the Fold
They want their answer FAST when they land on your site from Google.
Which is why you want to avoid massive images above the fold, like this:
Instead put your headline and introduction front-and-center.
Hint: If the image pushes your content down the page, that’s bad. However, it’s OK to have an image at the top of your post if that’s not a problem.
6.2) Chunk Your Content
Visitors would read every word on your page In a perfect world.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.
Which is why it’s very important to make your content super easy to skim.
Chapter 7: Advanced On-Page SEO Tips
This last chapter will be some of the crucial on-page seo techniques.
Here are a handful of tips that will help take your on-page SEO to the next level once you’ve optimized your page’s title and H1 tags.
Let’s get right into the strategies.
7.1) Internal Linking
Internal linking is a great way for SEO.
Specifically, you want to link from high-authority pages on your site to pages that need a boost.
When you do, make sure to use keyword-rich anchor text. Here’s an example:
Firstly, SEO tools like Ahrefs can bring up the pages on your site with the most link authority.
Then, add a few internal links from those pages to a high-priority page on your site.
Also, you can check out Wikipedia if you want to see a great example of how to internal link on your site.
They add LOTS of keyword-rich internal links to every page:
7.2) Write Comprehensive Content
Google wants to show their users content that gives them EVERYTHING they want on a single page. This is why writing a comprehensive content is a must.
And if your post covers an entire topic, it has a higher chance of ranking.
LSI keywords is one of the easiest ways to make sure that Google sees your content as complete.
Google uses LSI keywords to determine a page’s relevancy.
Usually if you write long content, it will increase the odds that you’ll naturally use LSI keywords.
Moreover, search for your keyword in Google and scroll down to the “Searches Related to…” area at the bottom of the page if you want to make 100% sure that you’re using LSI keywords.
And toss any that make sense into your post.
7.3) Boost Your Page Speed
Google has recently made PageSpeed even MORE important because page loading speed is an SEO ranking signal.
According to Baclinko’s analysis of 5.2 million websites, you can improve your site’s loading speed by moving to a faster host.
Removing as many third party scripts as you can.
And reducing your page’s total size.
Off-page seo
What is off-page seo?
Off-page SEO embodies any efforts taken outside of a website to improve its search engine rankings.
Link building is a big part of this, but it goes way beyond that.
Why is off-page SEO important?
Links are one of those factors, but there are many others since Google takes into account many off-page factors when deciding if and where to rank web pages.
It’s challenging to rank on the merit of your content alone because of that.
Here’s a good example that proves this:
At the time of writing, this page from The Times ranks #1 in the UK for “best places to live”:
So it wouldn’t be crazy to assume that it ranks high for that very reason as it looks like an entirely worthy piece of content at first glance. However, as soon as you click on any of the places, you hit a content gate.
This is why it certainly doesn’t deserve to rank in the top spot since the page has no real value to most who land on it.
A much more deserving page would be this one, which showcases the results of polling 1,000 people about the best places to live.
The reason the former outranks the latter is not that the content is better but most likely due to off-page factors by bringing this back to off-page SEO.
1) Number of referring domains
Not only does having more links from unique websites (referring domains) equate to higher rankings, but also more organic search traffic.
You can check how many backlinks your website has by pasting your domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer or our free backlink checker.
You can see that ahrefs.com has 4.11M backlinks from 31.2K referring domains.
Building them directly to the pages you want to rank in search engines is crucial as the aim isn’t so much to build more backlinks to your website overall.
2. Link authority
Quality matters as not all links are created equal.
The higher the “authority” of the linking page, the more authority it passes onto the pages to which it links because it is built into the way PageRank works.
In other words, a link from a high-authority page is worth more than one from a low-authority page.
So the question is, how do you judge the “authority” of a web page?
Google used to have public PageRank scores, but they discontinued those in 2016. While no exact replica of PageRank exists, there are a few similar metrics around, one of which is Ahrefs’ URL Rating (UR).
UR shows the strength of a target URLs backlink profile on a scale from 0 to 100.
You can paste the URL into Ahrefs Site Explorer to see the UR score for any web page.
You can also see the URL Rating of all referring pages in the “Backlinks” report.
This helps judge the quality and authority of a linking page when researching backlink opportunities.
Plus, according to a study conducted by Ahref, around 14 million web pages, UR correlates nicely with organic traffic.
3) Traffic
Ahref studied the top 10 rankings for 44,589 non-branded keywords and found a clear correlation between the top-ranking pages and the sum of organic traffic to their referring pages.
This suggests that links from pages with lots of organic traffic have more weight than links from pages with little or no organic traffic.
You can see the estimated organic traffic to any webpage in Ahrefs Site Explorer.
You can quickly sort the report by organic traffic to prioritize and pursue links from the most high-value pages if you’re looking to replicate your competitors’ backlinks, or are pursuing a link building tactic like the Skyscraper Technique.
There’s no evidence to suggest that links from pages with little or no traffic are worthless even though it makes sense to prioritize links from pages with traffic. You should absolutely still pursue them If the linking pages are relevant and have some level of “authority”.
Why are links still a ranking factor?
You might be wondering why links are still such a critical ranking factor in 2021 given that PageRank is around more than two decades old.
The reason is simple: They remain one of the most difficult to manipulate.
While there are some shady ways to acquire backlinks (e.g., buying them), earning high-quality links is generally quite difficult. People don’t usually link to content unless it’s of some value to their visitors.
Non-link-related off-page factors
Building links is the most obvious example of that, but there are many other off-page factors besides links. This is because Off-page SEO refers to anything done outside of your website with the potential to affect search engine rankings.
You should pay particular attention to this section as many of the factors below are specific to local SEO if you’re a local business that wants to rank locally. Those factors are marked with a (*).
1) Brand mentions
Brand mentions can be either linked or unlinked.
Linked mentions have SEO value for obvious reasons, but what about unlinked brand mentions?
Google talks indirectly about unlinked brand mentions in one of its patents, which references a system for effectively tallying up express links (linked mentions) and implied links (linkless mentions).
Here’s an excerpt from that patent:
“An express link, e.g., a hyperlink, is a link that is included in a source resource that a user can follow to navigate to a target resource. An implied link is a reference to a target resource, e.g., a citation to the target resource, which is included in a source resource but is not an express link to the target resource”.
Here, Google is effectively saying, “Hey, we know that people often cite brands and content without linking, and we think that such mentions deserve to factoring into our ranking algorithm along with linked mentions.”
Logically, this makes sense. The only real difference between an unlinked and linked mention is that one is clickable and thus may result in more referral traffic.
So, if brand mentions are likely an off-page ranking factor, how do you get more of them?
Here are a few ways:
Write guest posts
Be a guest on podcasts
Do blogger outreach
Go viral (easier said than done)
Tools like Google Alerts or Ahrefs Alerts can help you to track new competitor mentions, then you can jump in on the conversion where appropriate. For example, if you were working for MailChimp, you could set up alerts for new mentions of competitors like ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.
2) Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a free business profile from Google.
It’s these profiles that rank in Google’s “snack pack” results that you see at the top of the search results for queries with local search intent.
However, merely claiming your GMB profile isn’t enough.
According to Moz, an optimized Google My Business profile is the most important ranking factor for ranking in “snack pack” results, and the fourth most important factor for regular local organic search.
Which means that claiming and optimizing your GMB profile is the most critical component of your off-page SEO efforts if you want to rank for queries with local intent (e.g., “plumber near me”).
3) Reviews
Moz found that review signals are the third most important factor for ranking in Google’s “snack pack” results, and the fifth most important factor for ranking in regular local organic search.
Generally speaking, the more positive and genuine reviews you have on your Google My Business profile and on trusted third-party sites, the higher you’re likely to rank in the “snack pack.” Negative reviews have the opposite effect.
The same study also found the “authority of third-party sites on which reviews are present” to influence regular local organic rankings.
Source:
https://neilpatel.com/what-is-seo/
https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo
On-page SEO:
https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo