Published: November 17, 2025
by Justin Difazzio
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of tailoring your website to make it appear higher in search results of search engines like Google or Bing. While the inner workings of these rankings can seem like a mysterious and ever changing practice, holistic SEO will ensure that you’re doing everything you can to appear as high as possible on those ever-important search results. Pay attention to these eight elements of your website and marketing strategy to maximize your potential.
1. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the practice of making sure everything on your website works. Visitors shouldn’t encounter slow loading times, broken links, missing images, and other roadblocks to your content. (See our blog on image optimization if your site needs a speed boost) If the crawlers find broken elements on your site, you could get dinged for it in search results, so fix those things quickly.
2. Accessibility
We list accessibility second because it’s that important. Everyone deserves easy access to your content, including those who are visually impaired or can’t use a mouse. Laws about ADA compliance are on the horizon, and search engines are ahead of the curve on that. If you want to see how to make your website more accessible, the main standard for website accessibility is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provide technical standards and success criteria for making web content accessible to people with disabilities. Building an accessible website is important for many reasons, the least of which is probably appearing on search results.
3. Mobile Optimization
By now we shouldn’t have to say this, but most visitors to your website do so on their mobile devices. If your site isn’t responsive, meaning it’s optimized for desktop screens and mobile devices, then that’s priority number one for you. Google uses “mobile-first indexing,” putting responsive sites further up in search results. Get with the times—we can help!
4. Scannability
To please visitors and web crawlers, your site’s content should have a clear hierarchy. We’re talking titles, subtitles, headlines, transition words, and all those great things you were taught in high school writing classes. A clear structure can tell search engines at a glance what your website contains, which can rank you higher for relevance. If a human can’t find something like an important button or vital information, a web crawler will be similarly confused by your content and rank you lower.
5. Quality Content
Speaking of web content, you should probably have something on your page that tells the world (and search engines) who you are, what you’re doing, and how you do it. Clear information will answer visitors’ questions before they have to ask, whether warm blooded or bot. Anticipate what people may wonder about you and include that content, perhaps in a helpful FAQ page. Just keep it original, concise, and organized.
6. Security
Does your website have an SSL certificate? You can tell by looking at the URL. If it starts with “https” then the answer is yes. If that “s” is missing, it’s way past time to make sure your site has an SSL certificate. Most modern browsers will block sites without this important piece of security. If you’ve ever tried to go to a site and gotten an error such as “Your connection is not private” or “This site can’t provide a secure connection,” it’s likely because the site doesn’t use HTTPS. Many web hosts provide SSL certificates for free via Let’s Encrypt. There are other certificate options, but for most sites the free option will satisfy the Google gods and not exclude you from search results.
7. Keyword Research
Do you know how people find your website? Keyword research is maybe the most ethereal element and involves the most work. Taking a look into how people find you can give you insight into what terms, content, and questions are directing people to you. By tailoring parts of your content like headlines and key text to reflect those keywords or contain new keywords, you can attract a different, expanded, or more loyal audience.
8. Social Media Strategy
The last element of holistic SEO optimization is more of an external than an internal practice—your social media strategy. This one is maybe the least controllable, as it relies on help from others to create partnerships with others, to generate links to your website, and to direct traffic toward your online home. Having more external links to your site means you could rank higher on search engines. They trust the input of people who aren’t you, and external links prove that sort of relationship exists.
So Why Bother?
The benefits of prioritizing holistic SEO include more traffic, more engagement, and more exposure. Visitors are more likely to stick around and explore your services if your information is clear, loads quickly, and works reliably without security risks. And we shouldn’t have to tell you why that’s important.
We’ll be back next month with more SEO tips, this time about avoiding SEO pitfalls, those actions which can get you put into search engine jail, so to speak. Together with these tips, they’ll form a useful toolkit for finding SEO success. If you have more questions about SEO, get in touch!