There was a time when SEOs focused on keyword stuffing and other tricks that led to websites with useless content topping SERPs. Thankfully, those days are long gone.
Keeping up with SEO best practices can seem daunting, especially to beginners. Here are some tips to help you get started. Order SEO Audit now.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the basis of any successful SEO campaign. It enables you to identify keywords with the highest intent that searchers use to find your content and then optimize around them.
Some of the best tools for conducting keyword research include Google Keyword Planner (free), WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool, Jaaxy, Semrush, and Ahrefs’s Keyword Explorer tool. Keyword Explorer offers a ton of data points on each keyword (like monthly search volume, competitiveness, and potential traffic), as well as granular analysis of current results ranking for the keyword.
Another great tool is Diib, which utilizes predictive AI to track all sorts of SEO vitals for your website, including keyword tracking. It also has a keyword gap analysis that shows you the keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t.
On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization is the basis of best SEO, covering techniques that affect your website content, its performance and user experience. It includes a wide variety of activities, including optimizing meta tags and URLs, using internal links strategically and creating search-engine friendly pages. For example, you may want to optimize the order of your styles and scripts to improve page load speed or you may use a robots meta tag to control which parts of your site are crawled. You may also optimize your site’s meta description tags, which are shown in SERPs and can encourage searchers to click on your listing.
In general, you should aim to create content that is both relevant and provides a good user experience. This means balancing keyword targeting with making sure your content is readable and satisfies the searcher’s intent.
Off-Page Optimization
Having your on-page SEO sorted is the basis of best SEO, but off-page optimization takes it to the next level. It involves actions that happen outside of your website, like getting other websites to link back to you.
The most important off-page factors are backlinks, which provide a “vote of confidence” that search engines look for to determine the credibility and authority of a webpage. Building quality backlinks requires a combination of strategies such as link building, content marketing, and social media promotion.
Other off-page optimization tactics include promoting your business in local listings, responding to online reviews, and encouraging customers to leave feedback and ratings. Additionally, implementing technical SEO – like optimizing images and minimizing HTTP requests – is critical for off-page SEO.
Link Building
The basis of any good SEO is a solid link building strategy. It’s the process of reaching out to other website owners with the intention of securing links (hyperlinks) on their websites that point to your pages.
This can be done in a variety of ways, including guest blogging and resource page link building. But no matter what approach you choose, it’s essential that you never engage in any spammy tactics. Buying links or otherwise using manipulative techniques to manipulate search engine rankings is against Google’s terms of service and can get you penalized.
Ultimately, the best way to build links is to create awesome content that people can’t help but share with their own audiences. This is the only truly sustainable approach to securing high-quality external links.
Content Marketing
The basis of best SEO is content marketing: publishing unique, useful, and engaging content that solves your audiences’ pain points. This is why the best SEO tools are those that help you create and edit content. For example, Grammarly is a must-have for catching spelling, grammar, and scanning errors that can sink a post. And Canva is a great tool for creating beautiful visual assets for your posts and website. Finally, Airtable is a powerful and flexible tool that helps you manage your data, from researching topics to analyzing the performance of each piece of content. This information can then inform your future strategies.