SEO Guide

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Source: Ahrefs blog — ahrefs.com/blog. Fetched June 2026.

SEO is the process of optimising your website and content to increase its visibility across search engines and AI assistants — appearing in results, snippets, and AI summaries.

The economics: Ahrefs gets ~5.6M monthly visits from organic search. Replicating that with paid ads would cost ~$4.2M/month. That gap is what SEO does.

The five pillars

Every SEO campaign is built on five things, in order of dependency:

Keyword research — find what people search for
Content creation — build helpful, trustworthy content for those searches
On-page SEO — format content so search engines understand it
Links and mentions — earn authority from other sites
Technical SEO — make sure Google can find and index everything

Technical SEO is the non-negotiable floor. Pages that can’t be crawled or indexed can’t rank, regardless of content quality. Once the technical foundation is solid, content and links do the actual heavy lifting.

Keyword research

What it is

Keyword research is finding the search queries your target customers type into Google when looking for your products or services.

The brutal reality: 90.63% of pages on the internet receive zero organic traffic from Google. Keyword research is how you target the 9.37% that get traffic.

The process

1. **List seed keywords** — words your customers use to describe what you do ("web design pune", "hotel website india", "seo for restaurant") 2. **Expand with a tool** — put seeds into Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator or Google Keyword Planner; each seed generates 40+ related ideas 3. **Study competitors** — use Ahrefs Site Explorer on a competitor's domain to see every keyword they rank for 4. **Mine communities** — check Reddit, IndiaMART forums, JustDial Q&A sections for the language your customers actually use 5. **Cluster by intent** — group keywords that should go on the same page vs. separate pages

The six metrics that matter

1. Search Volume Monthly average searches for a keyword. Important caveat: this counts occurrences, not unique people — the same person searching multiple times inflates the number. Treat volume as directional, not precise.

2. Traffic Potential More useful than search volume alone. The average top-ranking page ranks for ~1,000 similar keyword variations. Traffic potential estimates how much traffic the top-ranking page actually gets across all its keyword variations — the real prize for winning that topic.

3. Keyword Difficulty (KD) Based on how many unique websites link to the top 10 ranking pages. Four tiers: Easy / Medium / Hard / Super Hard. KD estimates how many linking domains you’d need to rank in the top 10 — not necessarily #1.

Key insight: High-KD keywords are worth targeting early, not deferring — link building takes months, and the sooner you start, the sooner you rank.

4. Cost Per Click (CPC) What advertisers pay per click. A useful proxy for commercial value — high CPC = advertisers believe this traffic converts to revenue.

5. Growth Percentage change in search volume over time. Use this to spot rising topics early and avoid investing heavily in declining ones.

6. Business Potential Ahrefs uses a 0–3 score:

3 — your product is the irreplaceable solution (e.g., “web design agency maharashtra”)
2 — your product helps significantly but isn’t the only solution
1 — you could mention your product but it’s a stretch
0 — no business relevance

77% of Ahrefs’ own blog articles score 2–3. Prioritise accordingly.

How to prioritise

Balance all four:

High traffic potential
Achievable difficulty given your current domain authority
High business potential (score 2–3)
Intent that matches what you’re offering

Build a mix: some quick wins (lower difficulty, immediate traffic) and some long-term targets (high difficulty, high value) started early so link-building has time to compound.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is optimising individual pages to rank for their target keyword and match what the searcher actually wants.

The 13-point checklist

1. Target keyword placement Include the keyword in: page title, URL slug, H1, at least one H2, and the opening paragraph. Modern SEO rewards comprehensive topic coverage, not keyword repetition.

2. Header structure

One H1 per page (the main topic)
H2 for major sections
H3+ for supporting points Clean hierarchy helps crawlers understand page structure.

3. Title tag

Under 70 characters (longer gets truncated in results)
Include the target keyword or close variation
Match what the searcher is looking for
Add the year for time-sensitive content (“Best Hotel Websites 2026”)

Note: Google rewrites title tags 61.6% of the time — but your original title is still used during ranking, so write it well regardless.

4. Meta description

Under 160 characters
Active voice, addressing the searcher directly
Google shows your meta description only 37.22% of the time — but it matters for click-through rate when it does appear
Focus effort on high-traffic pages

5. URL structure

Short, descriptive, keyword-included
No dates unless essential
Readable at a glance: /services/web-design/ not /page?id=4782

6. Internal linking Link between related pages using natural anchor text. Passes authority from strong pages to weaker ones. Use a hub-and-spoke model: a main service page links out to supporting blog posts; blog posts link back to the service page. This is how you rank a service page for competitive terms.

7. External linking Cite authoritative sources (official data, studies, known publications). Builds trust signals and helps crawlers understand the topic. Audit periodically for broken external links.

8. Image optimisation

Compress to under 150KB (use WebP or AVIF format)
Descriptive filenames: hotel-website-maharashtra.webp not IMG_0042.jpg
Alt text describing what’s in the image (also serves accessibility)

9. Content gaps Study the top-ranking pages for your keyword. What do they cover that you don’t? AI systems use “query fan-out” — they generate related questions when processing a query, and your content needs to cover those related angles. Add sections for commonly asked related questions.

10. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) Show who wrote the content and why they’re credible. For service pages: team bios, years of experience, specific client results. For blog posts: author bio, links to credentials, first-hand experience described in the writing.

11. Zero-click and AI optimisation

Use declarative sentences that directly answer questions (“The cost of a business website in Maharashtra starts at ₹15,000”)
Front-load key points — don’t bury the answer
Implement FAQPage schema (covered below) — AI systems read structured data

12. Schema markup Structured data tells search engines exactly what a page is about and enables rich results. Priority schemas:

FAQPage — enables accordion in search results; add to any page with Q&A content
LocalBusiness — for the homepage; includes address, hours, phone, reviews
Article — for blog posts
Service — for service pages

13. Core Web Vitals Three metrics Google uses to assess page experience:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — how fast the main content loads. Target: under 2.5s
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — how much the page jumps around while loading. Target: under 0.1
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — how quickly the page responds to user input. Target: under 200ms

Technical SEO

Technical SEO ensures search engines can find, crawl, understand, and index your pages. It’s the floor — nothing else matters if crawling or indexing is broken.

Crawling vs. indexing

Crawling: Googlebot visits your URL, reads the HTML, and follows links to find more pages.

Indexing: After crawling and rendering, Google decides whether to add the page to its index (the database it serves results from). A crawled page is not automatically indexed.

Control crawling with robots.txt. Control indexing with robots meta tags (<meta name="robots" content="noindex">). Use canonical tags to tell Google which version of a URL is the “real” one when duplicates exist.

Four high-impact technical wins

1. Fix crawlability and indexability Check Google Search Console → Coverage report for pages with errors, “Excluded” status, or indexing warnings. Every page that should rank needs to be indexed. Every page that shouldn’t (checkout, thank-you, admin) needs to be excluded.

2. Reclaim broken backlinks Use Ahrefs Site Explorer → Best by Links → filter for 404 status. Any 404 page that has backlinks is leaking link equity. Set up a 301 redirect from the dead URL to the nearest live equivalent.

3. Add internal links Crawl your site with Screaming Frog or Ahrefs Site Audit. Find important pages with few or no internal links pointing to them. Add contextual links from related pages. Pages with no internal links (orphan pages) are hard for Google to discover and rank.

4. Add schema markup Structured data is the most underutilised technical win for small business sites. FAQPage schema alone can earn rich result accordions in Google for service and blog pages.

Technical SEO for AI search

AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) still depends on crawlable, well-structured web pages. Additional considerations:

Avoid JavaScript for core content — many LLMs don’t fully render JavaScript; key text should be in the HTML source
Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt — GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, etc. must be explicitly allowed
Check third-party scripts — some analytics or chat widgets block AI crawlers as a side effect
Create llms.txt — a plain-text file at the domain root describing what your site is about; AI crawlers read this
Monitor for hallucinated URLs — AI sometimes cites non-existent page URLs; add 301 redirects from those to live pages

Page speed quick wins

Enable GZIP or Brotli compression (Cloudflare does this automatically)
Serve images in AVIF or WebP format
Use loading="lazy" on below-fold images; loading="eager" fetchpriority="high" on the LCP image
Preconnect to third-party origins: <link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
Remove unused CSS and JavaScript

Link building

Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals. A link from another site to yours is a vote of confidence — and Google’s ranking algorithm was built on that idea from the start.

The four methods

1. Adding links — manually placing your link somewhere (business directories, Google Business Profile, social profiles, industry association sites). Low effort, low impact individually, but important for new sites establishing baseline authority (called “foundational links”).

2. Asking for links — sending outreach emails requesting a link. Medium effort, higher impact when targeted.

3. Buying links — paying for links. Google explicitly penalises this. Do not do it. The ₹10,000/500-links packages you’ll see advertised are PBN spam that can tank your rankings permanently.

4. Earning links — creating content so good that people link to it without being asked. High effort to set up, then compounds over time. This is the only scalable long-term strategy.

Five quality factors

What makes a backlink valuable:

Factor	What matters
Authority	Links from established, high-DR sites carry more weight
Relevance	A link from a web design blog > a link from a food blog (for a web agency)
Anchor text	The clickable text of the link; natural variation is healthy; over-optimising one exact phrase raises red flags
Placement	Link in the main body content > link in the sidebar or footer
Destination	Homepage links build overall authority; links to specific pages help those pages rank

Best strategies for small businesses

Replicate competitor backlinks Use Ahrefs Site Explorer → enter a competitor’s domain → Backlinks. Study where they get links. Look for patterns — trade associations, industry directories, local news sites, guest posts. If a site links to your competitor, there’s a reason to link to you too.

Local foundational links

Google Business Profile (most important)
IndiaMART business listing
JustDial listing
Sulekha listing
IndiaBizForSale (for B2B)
Local chamber of commerce directory
Industry association membership pages

Create one linkable asset A study, survey, or data piece specific to your niche that journalists and bloggers cite. Examples: “Website costs for small businesses in Maharashtra 2026” (a detailed, researched post — exactly what we’ve built). When this ranks, it earns links passively.

Guest posting Write a genuinely useful article for an industry blog in exchange for an author bio link. Pitch a specific article idea, not a generic “I’d like to guest post.” Offer to update an existing outdated post — easier sell, same result.

Unlinked mention reclamation Search for your brand name + site name. Find pages that mention you without linking. Email to request they add a link. High conversion rate because they already know and reference you.

Local SEO

Local SEO helps Google understand where your business is, what you offer, and how trustworthy you are — so you appear in the map pack and local organic results.

Why it matters:

30% of mobile searches are location-related
78% of nearby searches result in a store visit within a day
28% of nearby searches lead to a purchase

The six-step process

Step 1: Google Business Profile (highest impact)

36% of SEOs rank GBP optimisation as the #1 map pack ranking factor. Customers are 70% more likely to visit businesses with complete profiles.

What to complete:

Most specific business category possible
Full address or service area
Business hours (keep updated)
All services/products listed
10+ photos (interior, exterior, team, work samples)
Regular posts (monthly at minimum)

Step 2: Reviews

17% of SEOs consider reviews the top map pack factor.

Ask every satisfied client for a Google review — do it verbally right after they express satisfaction, then follow up with a direct link to your GBP review page
Respond to every review (positive and negative) within 48 hours
Never pay for reviews or incentivise them — violates Google’s terms, risks removal

Step 3: NAP citations

NAP = Name, Address, Phone. Consistency across directories signals legitimacy.

Must-have India directories:

JustDial
Sulekha
IndiaBizForSale
IndiaMART (B2B)
Bing Places
Apple Maps
Facebook Business page

Ensure your business name, address, and phone number are identical across all listings — including formatting (“+91 98765 43210” vs “9876543210” are inconsistencies).

Step 4: Local keyword research

Target service + location combinations:

“web design agency satara”
“hotel website designer maharashtra”
“seo services pune small business”

Use Google Keyword Planner for location-specific volume data. Verify local intent by checking if Google shows a map pack for the query — if it does, local ranking signals matter for that keyword.

Step 5: Local backlinks

Links from local and regional sites carry strong local ranking signals:

Local newspaper or news site (get a feature or quote)
Local business association membership
Chamber of Commerce listings
Sponsor a local event — usually includes a website link in the event listing
Partner with complementary businesses (a web agency linked from a photography studio, etc.)

Step 6: On-page local signals

Include your full NAP (name, address, phone) in the footer of every page
Create a dedicated Contact page with address, embedded Google Maps, and local phone number
Use LocalBusiness schema markup with accurate address and coordinates
Individual city or region pages if you serve multiple areas (“Web Design Services in Nashik”)

AI search visibility

AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot) is a new surface to optimise for, not a replacement for Google SEO. “66% of people intentionally use AI on a regular basis” and “73% of websites in Google’s AI Overviews also rank in the top 10” — meaning good traditional SEO is still the foundation.

How AI systems surface your content

AI crawlers fetch your pages and extract content
Your page’s URL, title, meta description, and ranking position all influence whether AI cites you
Structured data (schema markup) helps AI systems understand what your content is about
Being cited in an AI answer requires being in the index and being trustworthy

Six things to do

Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt — explicitly allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, GoogleExtendedBot, meta-externalagent, Amazonbot, YouBot
Create llms.txt — plain-text file at the root describing your services, pricing, contact info, and key page URLs
Use declarative sentences — “Juju Alpha builds websites for small businesses in Maharashtra. Projects start at ₹15,000.” AI systems prefer direct statements to marketing copy
Add FAQPage schema — AI systems extract structured Q&A when generating answers
Submit sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools — Perplexity and ChatGPT use Bing’s index as one of their data sources
Avoid JavaScript for core content — key information should be in the HTML source, not rendered by JavaScript

Measuring results

What to track and where to find it:

Metric	Where to find it	What it tells you
Organic traffic	Google Search Console → Performance	Total clicks from Google search
Impressions	Google Search Console → Performance	How often your pages appear in results
Average position	Google Search Console → Performance	Where you rank on average for your queries
Keyword rankings	Ahrefs Rank Tracker	Rankings for specific target keywords over time
Backlinks	Ahrefs Site Explorer	Who’s linking to you and the quality of those links
Core Web Vitals	Google Search Console → Core Web Vitals	LCP, CLS, INP scores from real user data
Indexed pages	Google Search Console → Coverage	How many pages Google has indexed vs. rejected
Local map pack position	Grid My Business (freemium)	Where you rank in the map pack across a geographic area

The realistic SEO timeline

SEO compounds over time. Don’t evaluate it month-to-month in the first six months.

Timeframe	What to expect
0–3 months	Technical fixes indexed, site crawled properly, foundational links built
3–6 months	First keyword movements, long-tail traffic starting
6–12 months	Target keywords moving into page 2–1, traffic growing
12–24 months	Compounding — existing content keeps ranking, new content ranks faster

The compounding effect: Once a page ranks, it continues to attract backlinks and traffic passively. Ahrefs’ research post on “how long does it take to rank” generated ~3,000 backlinks from ~1,700 sites over six years — entirely from one piece of content that earned links without active promotion.

Recommended free tools

Tool	What it’s for
Google Search Console	Indexing, coverage, performance, Core Web Vitals
Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator	20 keyword ideas + 20 questions per seed, no account required
Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker	Top 100 backlinks to any domain, no account required
Google PageSpeed Insights	Core Web Vitals scores and specific fix recommendations
Screaming Frog	Full site crawl, find broken links, missing meta, redirect chains (free up to 500 URLs)
Google Keyword Planner	Location-specific keyword volume data (free with Google Ads account)
Rich Results Test	Validate schema markup
Bing Webmaster Tools	Submit sitemap for Perplexity/ChatGPT indexing