Practical SEO Tips for your website

Best SEO Tips

How to leverage your SEO strategy and achieve better search engine rankings? We’ll show you 39 quick and simple SEO tips to get you up and running right now!

Ranking on Google is not such a simple task, is it? Most of the time it requires knowledge, some resources and a lot of time.

This content is here to show you practical, easy-to-follow tips that can bring fast and promising results to your strategy!

How about putting them into practice right now?

Check out the 39 best SEO tips for your website or blog!

1. Choose the right keyword

It may sound basic (and it is), but this is a very important detail that many overlooks.

Search for the right keyword! And no, the right one is not the one with the highest search volume, nor the one with the lowest ranking difficulty. She is the one that is related to your persona, will solve her problem and has real chances of ranking.

But how to find this keyword? Good advice is:

  • use long-tail keywords (see tip 15 of this content);
  • choose niche words, that is, more specific;
  • Search and analyze the SERP. Do the results fall short? Is Yahoo Answers One of the First Results? Are the pages found bad? You can start producing your content now;
  • If you use a keyword tool, compare different terms and choose the one with a medium to low search volume and lower competition.

Also, choose a keyword to devote to optimizing your content. It is better to focus your efforts on one than on several.

Ok, you chose your keyword. But and now?

The truth is that there is no point in writing “random content on the topic”. You can write the largest and most complete content on a topic, but it ‘s no use if it doesn’t respond to the user’s search intent.

Want an example?

Let’s say your persona searched Google for “what material should I use on my doorstep?”.

You can write everything about doors: you can talk about door handles, you can name 20 different materials and even address dimensions. But is that the answer your persona wants?

In fact, it makes a lot more sense to get to the point, doesn’t it? And getting to the point doesn’t mean your content needs to be short or shallow. On the contrary: the persona must leave without a doubt.

Persona satisfaction is critical, both for her and her site, but especially for Google.

The search engine has ways to identify who is delivering the expected content (or even exceeding those expectations).

But how can we really accomplish the goal of the search?

3. Observe the first search results before writing your content.

It is a good idea to understand what people are looking for and what their doubts are to look carefully at the first search results (both in Portuguese and English, as it is very interesting to understand the market trends also abroad).

From this observation, you can find common ground and even unanswered questions to structure even more complete content.

Understand what this content offers and get ideas. Put yourself in your persona’s place: is something missing there? Is there any point that is too much?

If you use any keyword tools, note which keywords are related or which terms users are searching for the selected result.

Finally, when writing your content, be clear, objective and complete! This will ensure that you find what you need in the best content on the topic.

4. Make Friendly URLs

URLs act as a web page address. Make sure they are friendly, that is, easy to read and memorize.

It is also important that URLs are timeless, which allows content to be updated without changing URLs.

Remember: A URL should never be changed as you would lose all authority already gained on that page. (If you need to change URLs, you must redirect the content.)

And rest easy! Making friendly URLs is quite simple. Avoid long URLs with many subdomains, hashtags (or other characters), and numbers. Be simple and clear in your URL.

Want an example? Let’s say you made a post with the title: “Top 10 Destinations to See in 2018”. Your URL might even have this structure, but look at how it would look:

  • www . your site . with / the – 10 – best – destinations – to – know – in – 2018

Notice how it does not allow content updates, either because it is 10 destinations (and if you want to put one more?) And because it is temporal (and if you want to update the post in 2019 and redivulgate it).

Unless you want to create a post for each year (which may be interesting, but it will require you to gain authority for that page every time), good URL options would be:

  • www . your site . with / best – destinations
  • www . your site . com / destinations – to – know

See how that makes a difference? And now you can update content without fear, you still have a short URL with no numbers!

5. Update your content

Have you heard of the content update? It is an important strategy in SEO.

That’s because it’s no use just publishing a large volume of content if your previous posts become outdated and obsolete.

Just because your content is evergreen doesn’t mean it will last forever. On the contrary: to be evergreen, it needs to be updated!

Users interpret content updates positively – and so does Google (which directly impacts rankings)!

The reason is simple: up-to-date content always provides relevant information and will therefore always be useful in keeping with current trends and changes.

  • Content in 1st position: If you have a first position, congratulations! You are doing a great job. But that doesn’t mean you can relax: always be aware of the following results and the Search Console (track CTR and position variation) so you don’t lose your position;
  • Contents between 2nd and 5th positions: you are already in the most privileged part of SERP! Do not waste it. You probably will not need to make major changes to this content, but rather timely updates (such as adding or updating information) and changes to the Title Tag and Meta Description (which may ensure higher CTR). To understand what to change in your content, it is a good idea to review the results before you;
  • 6th to 20th positions: Here’s the gold of content updating! These contents have high potential to achieve higher positions. Think about it: they are “ok” content and are already in these positions. Imagine if you optimize them to the fullest? Here, it is worth doing a whole restructuring of the content, making it better than all the first results. That done, also update the Title Tag and Meta Description and spread it on social networks;
  • Temporal contents: these contents, regardless of position, should always be the focus of updating, by the existing temporal relation. For example, our content about the most used social networks in Brazil needs to be updated every year, as this is a temporal data and always changes according to new reports that appear every year.

In addition, always pay attention to content that is critical to your business and that brings more customers and users to your strategy. Losing positions on them would be too big a threat to your company’s content marketing tactics.

6. Delete content that is driving your site down

Let’s be honest: the content you posted 3 years ago is certainly not as good as what you post today.

And over time, it’s normal that there are inconsistent posts with very similar themes or even no longer relevant to your blog.

When updating content isn’t enough, it’s time to detach and eliminate that content that drives your site down!

Duplicate content with very similar URLs that are not relevant at all or even content that is no longer accessed is not of interest to the health of your blog!

We did that with our blog, Contact Helpline, in 2016. The blog was purchased and had a lot of bad and unoptimized content that hurt it as a whole.

In November 2016, the site was cleaned: updated, deleted and redirected content. 

But beware: it is no use just deleting the content. You need to redirect 301 for related and relevant posts.

7. Use the Search Console to bring faster indexing

Ok, you updated the content, great job. But it takes a while for Google to understand this.

If you want to speed up the process, use Search Console!

Just click “Search with Google” in the “Tracking” part. Enter the URL of the post in the available field and click “Search.” Then simply click on “Request Indexing”.

(Check out how this tip helped us get several featured snippets overnight in the second hack of this content.)

Ready! Google will accomplish the process faster, taking a few hours (in some cases even minutes).

8. Be mobile-friendly

According to the Digital in 2017 report, internet traffic coming from smartphones already accounts for 50% of the total, with the growth of over 30%.

Mobile is no longer a trend and is an increasingly urgent reality for online marketers, including those using SEO strategies.

Google announced last year that its indexing will prioritize mobile-optimized pages, including elements such as AMPs, responsive design and load speed.

9. Make Amazing Titles and Descriptions

When you search for a term on Google, several results appear as usual. Two things directly influence the decision of what to click: the page title and description.

Usually, we quickly scan them to find out if that page will give us what we want. And from that, we click or not.

Good headlines and descriptions directly influence clickthrough rate (CTR), an important metric for Google to rank content.

So invest your time thinking about the title and description of each page. Try to be objective and clearly demonstrate the content of the page and the benefits it has. In your description, remember to arouse the curiosity and interest of the user.

With more clicks, your content will be more accessed and this is one of the factors that influence SEO.

10. Invest in buzz content

Buzz content is content devoted to hot topics, trends at the time, such as news and top topics.

These are content with high engagement potential and generate many discussions around them, performing especially well in social networks. This in itself is an important point, as we know that social media performance benefits SEO.

In fact, we have invested a lot in buzz content around here and we have seen incredible results in recent months.

Over time, this has brought all engagement up, as well as benefiting dominance authority and our searcher positions.

In addition, the content of this type has one more strategic benefit: it can become evergreen content.

Making news, for example, before your competitors puts you in the top spot of search engines. Over time, and as that theme becomes common in everyday life, more people will look for it, and its result will be performing better than those who didn’t start before.

11. Be visual

Videos, images, infographics… Being visual is an increasing urgency.

Visual content is more shareable, memorable and can still be great ways to get backlinks and appear in other search engines “sectors” such as higher ranked images and videos.

Invest in it! Your users will like it, you will reach more people and, moreover, you will have much more chances to win positions.

12. Satellite Posts

Satellite posts are a way to use the content on your site to strengthen each other.

They work as follows:

  • It has a pillar content, which is the center of the strategy. It is often based on a head-tail keyword and is critical to blogging;
  • various content related to the pillar content is published: it is the satellite content. They are usually based on long tails and should always link to the main one.

So, for example, suppose you have a blog about clothes. A pillar post could be “Women’s Shirts”, and satellites could be, for example: “Women’s Floral Shirts”, “Women’s Cotton Shirts”, “Women’s Shirt Prints”, “Women’s Shirt Modeling” and by Here it goes.

The idea is that this content generates authority for the principal through consistent linking and total domain relevance.

We use this strategy in a number of our posts to make us want to strengthen and rank. A good example is one of the most important keywords for the future: Digital Transformation.

These posts strengthen the core content, and the result you see in SERP’s first organic result:

ImageURL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/serp-transformacao-digital.jpg

13. Find snippets and optimize for them

The rich snippets are pieces of information made available by Google for the user to find the information you search more easily without the need to actually enter the sites.

But calm down! It’s important to optimize for them as this will have positive impacts on their SEO, especially when it comes to featured snippets.

Featured snippets are Google’s zero position. They are answer boxes that appear even before the first result.

ImageURL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/featured-snippet-para-marketing-de-conte%C3%BAdo.jpg

Plus, they are great ways to appear twice on the first page of results. This is because a snippet is only produced from the first 10 results. Which is another advantage, isn’t it?

Suppose your post is in seventh place in a SERP. Imagine getting a snippet and getting ahead of first place?

Promising results, no?

Discover how to find and optimize for featured snippets in our complete guide to them!

Backlinks are the eye girls of any SEO professional but don’t get attached to them. The sad truth is that they will not always be positive for your site.

But how can a backlink be bad?

Well, first of all: don’t throw your link as spam everywhere possible. This is unhealthy and can hurt your SEO.

Second, bad sites with duplicate content, very low authority, or even inappropriate content can lead to bad links to your domain.

Finally, your own link may be old and referencing broken or weak links.

Check out the internal and external links and remove this type of link. You can do this by using tools like Search Console, under “Search Traffic” and going to “Links to your site.”

ImageURL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/image3.jpg

15. Invest In Long Tails

We have already talked about the importance of good keyword choice and satellite posting strategy. Both involve long tail keywords, which are very important for both beginners and those already investing in SEO.

Long tails are less popular keywords, so it’s easier to rank for them.

It’s a great way to invest in that kind of word to start placing your site on search engines and strengthening your domain and then investing on very competitive terms.

Many people, when starting an SEO strategy, think about linking to their posts only to the content of their own blog or website.

Don’t be one of those people.

External links are key to your content. They bring different points of view, direct you to referral sites, are fundamental to the user experience, and are highly regarded by Google.

Of course, you should link quality to relevant and authoritative sites.

This builds authority for your own content and builds bridges between your blog and other niche blogs and could be partnership points to explore in the future.

An important tip that many people overlook: every link you make to your content should open on a new page, whether internal or external.

There are two main and very simple reasons to do this:

  1. Improve user experience, especially on mobile. This way, it does not “lose” its initial content, nor does it always have to click back to access it.
  2. Don’t hurt time on page or increase bounce rate: If a user clicks on a link early in your text, it can be extremely detrimental to both of these metrics.

18. Submit guest posts with the right anchor

Great: You got a guest blog partnership! This is really cool. So make the most of this opportunity!

The most important factor for guest post exchange is the backlinks generated for your domain. And the secret to well-made backlinks is anchor texts!

Whenever you submit a guest, link exactly to the word you want to rank. If you want, for example, to rank for “Strawberry Ice Cream”, choose your main post regarding this theme and link to that anchor.

Never insert links, in guest posts, in terms such as “click here” or “learn more”. This will make Google understand that your content is relevant to these terms.

19. Fix your blog errors

Just like old content (which you need to update or redirect), there are errors in your blog that may be driving your SEO down.

Broken links, 404 errors, non-optimized content, duplicate descriptions and titles… There are several errors that can hurt your blog or website.

Use Search Console to search for these errors. Go to “Tracking Errors” and identify the errors pointed out to draw up a remediation plan.

20. Discover questions that are being asked that you can answer in your content (but haven’t asked yet)

Sites like Quora are great for understanding what users want to know, reading about, and even understanding search intentions.

A multi-question theme is worth your investment, as well as topics with little competitiveness. An indicator of this is when Yahoo Answers, Quora or similar sites appear in the top ranks.

Key themes to investigate in relation to “doubt” research are topics such as “what is” or “how to”. In addition to being extremely useful and straightforward tutorials, you have a high chance of getting a featured snippet.

21. View paid search engine results to create your SEO title

Have you ever stopped to think that many people invest in search engine ads? That is, instead of SEO, they are paying to be in the first results.

And whoever invests that way in a strategy can’t waste resources, can they?

That’s why Google paid results are a great source of inspiration for creating your titles and descriptions.

Notice in what terms they are investing, what they use in the headline and how they arouse the interest of the user and apply to their headlines and, as we have said, increase CTR.

This tip doesn’t mean you should go around asking for links to all people, calm down.

In fact, the idea is that you identify some opportunities that already exist but are not being explored, like:

  • Mentions of your brand on other unlinked sites:

Please email the blog owner requesting that your domain be linked to the quote.

  • Uncredited site images:

Same as the previous topic, but now it’s about referencing the credit of the material used.

  • Sites citing business listings in your niche (and you aren’t in them yet):

Suppose your company specializes in craft beers and you find content titled “13 Brazilian craft beer brands you need to know about,” and your brand is not among them.

Contact the blog owner and ask them if they identify with your product to include in the content. It’s interesting that you already take this approach by pointing out some qualities of your product and stressing that it would be very meaningful to be on that list for you and your business.

  • Broken (or broken) links on other sites that you have the perfect link to offer instead:

Let’s say you’re reading content on some site in your niche and you’ve identified a broken or broken link, and you have the exact content that link refers to.

Please email us that you have identified this error and already offer your content in place as a solution!

See how you can get links to what you already have?

Get inspired by paid ads on social networks to create your meta description.

As with search engine ads, people who make social ads need to optimize a lot to justify their investment.

So taking inspiration from the content of these ads is a good tip for improving your descriptions. Identify the strategies they use to invite the user to read and arouse their curiosity, as well as the terms used to write their meta descriptions.

Linking is good, but don’t overdo it. Although there is not the right amount, do not fill your text with links more than necessary.

Link to strategic content (the most important content on your blog), select your anchors well, choose links that are really useful for that moment of reading.

Always think about the user experience! Will that link add something to it or is it just another randomly made link?

The chance of content with fewer but quality links getting clicks on those links is much greater!

25. Switch to HTTPS

This tip is for yesterday! Securing your site is paramount, and switching to HTTPS is a fundamental part of it.

Google understands that HTTPS sites that link to this type of link value good navigability and user experience, as this is related to your online experience.

To learn how to make these changes, read our full post on this subject !

26. Do not create duplicate content

Remember we talked about one of the main mistakes of your blog being duplicate content? Yeah, that’s very serious.

Whether internally or externally, Google identifies duplicate content and will penalize your blog for it.

So be very careful when creating descriptions, titles, text snippets and other content within your blog. It’s not just changing the word order: it’s actually doing something new.

Also, whenever you repost content (on your blog or on other platforms) use canonical tags, signalling to Google for playback. If you’re afraid of reposting content, read the next topic:

27. Reply Content

Reposting content is a strategy that, when properly applied, can bring benefits to your strategy.

It engages new audiences, positions you as an authority on other channels, and increases your reach.

But everything must be done very carefully. Learn best practices here!

28. Encourage Comments on Your Page

Comments are very positive: They show engagement with your content, show that you are influential and can still be an important aspect of SEO.

When comments have additional questions, answers, or even reflections, they can make Google interpret your site as a whole and even rank your content based on (also) the comments.

Want an example?

If you type “main SEO factor on page” into Google, the first (organic) result is your one blog post here:

ImageURL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SERP-para-a-busca-principal-fator-de-seo-on-page.jpg

But if you enter this content you will realize that his proposal is different. First, we write this content to challenge our users to give the best answer. So we had a lot of comments and we have already started ranking.

After a while, we chose the best answer and André, our Content Marketing expert, gave his own point of view.

See how you can be creative and still rank?

29. Identify exit points for your site and improve them

You can identify the top exit pages for your blog or site (Google Analytics) or points where the user has left the content (heat map) to identify what needs to be improved for people to stay on your domain.

This is critical to page time, which, as we have said, is a key point in SEO.

30. Remember to use heading tags correctly

Heading tags guide Google to “read” your content and make it scanned for user reading. Therefore, using them correctly is essential.

A page should have only one H1, which is its title. Do not use other H1 in your content!

From there, just use the logic of hierarchy to structure the topics of your content. Each topic is an H2, and if you need to put a subtopic inside the main topic, use H3 (and so on, with H4, H5…).

Remember: bold, italics and underlines are not heading tags. They make your content more scannable, but they are not enough to guide the indexing of bots, which is critical to their ranking.

If you want to understand more about heading tags, read our content on the subject.

31. Write good content

Yes, it matters a lot. Content is the most important part of SEO, after all, and if you have half-hearted content, people will drop out and the searcher will understand that your content is not good.

It’s no use making all the optimizations for bots if you write content with a lot of grammatical errors, cluttered ideas, and confusing structures. People will not like it.

And if they don’t like it, neither does Google.

Organize your ideas, plan well, and review content.

32. LSI: Be Significant

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing, meaning Google’s semantic indexing.

It turns out that some time ago, many people believed that to rank, it was enough to repeat the keyword relentlessly in the post.

If it worked at some point in the past, it doesn’t work anymore. Google can interpret the quality and relevance of your text by the semantic field used, meaning the relationship of signs present in the content of your text.

To be clear, let’s take a practical example: the sleeve!

ImageURL: https://www.bloggercage.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Hacks-avan%C3%A7ados-de-conteudo-1.png

Are we talking about the fruit or the shirt part? How will Google understand this?

Well, if you use words like tree, fruit, flavour, he’ll understand that is the first case. If you write shop, clothes, shirt, it will be clear that we are talking about a blouse.

See how the word group used makes all the difference?

That’s why it’s important to explore your content, making it rich and informative for the user. But do not worry! Quality content will probably do it naturally.

Understand how and further explore the possibilities of semantics in this full post on the subject.

33. Lock the reader in your content: invest in the introduction

Having a reader that stays in your content is important. This shows that he is interesting and has quality, otherwise who would be there?

This is the logic Google uses to consider time spend on the page, a ranking factor. So investing in a good introduction is critical as it will delight your reader right away, making them understand that your content will be as good as the first few lines.

Win over your reader, generate a sense of closeness and show that your content is worth reading.

34. Determine a posting frequency

You don’t have to post to your blog every day, relax. But you do need to set a posting frequency and commit to it.

Will you post three times a week? Great. Make the posts and follow your editorial calendar.

Of course, some unforeseen happen and you may not always be able to meet the proposed frequency. Some weeks you will post 5 times, sometimes only 2 times.

But overall, be frequent and don’t stop posting.

Failure to post to your blog can cause immense damage, such as loss of overall domain authority and loss of SERP positions, slowing your overall traffic and undermining your strategy.

35. Get traffic from Google Images

Google Images has a lot of potential to drive traffic to your site or blog, especially in cases of “visual business” (such as architectural offices and clothing and accessory e-commerce).

In order for your image to rank among the first image search results, it is important to make optimizations such as naming the file with the keyword (do not use randomly named files such as JPEG.00718), using it in the alt text, and including a description of the image content in that same field. Otherwise, how could Google identify visual content, right?

36. Moz Bar: Keep an eye on your competitors – as well as your partners

Moz Bar is a key resource for those who invest in SEO. The cool thing is that it’s free (with some limitations, of course) and lets you see the domain and page authority of any site.

How to use it in practice?

There are several lessons and inspirations you can learn from Moz Bar. Among the main ones, I quote:

  • identify sites with high DA and PA and understand what they do to achieve this;
  • spy on your competitors by tracking these indicators against yours and taking steps to always have higher rates;
  • Find potential partners for guest posts and co-marketings that have good and healthy DA and PA, generating authoritative links to your blog.

37. Invest in Ads Wisely

Oops, but we’re not talking about SEO and therefore focusing on organic improvements? Yes, but if you use Google Ads wisely, it can have positive results for your site.

No one (ok, maybe two people) goes to the second page of the search engine for a result. So if you’re there, test your headlines and descriptions of your content with ads, and then choose the ones that perform best.

Ready! Invest in them and watch their rankings go up!

38. Do not use different pages to compete for the same keyword.

There is a huge world of keywords.

Just as you should not try to optimize your content for multiple keywords, do not make different content to compete for the same term.

The logic is simple: It is much more interesting to invest your efforts in optimizing content so that it reaches better positions than to make several contents without so much quality on the same subject, but that will not rank well.

39. Identify sudden drops in traffic and solve the problem

Did you find that content is falling sharply in organic search? Understand what is happening!

Identify if that page has any errors that disrupt navigation. Go to SERP, see who passed in front of you and what they improved, but you don’t.

Sometimes a content update or even a change in the meta description is enough to see the rankings increase.

If the traffic drop was not just one content but several, go deeper. Maybe your blog has been penalized by Google in some way or you have lost a lot of keywords.

Regardless of the problem, the important thing is to find ways to solve it and regain its authority and rankings.

While SEO is not the easiest thing in the world, I hope these tips help you in your daily practice and show that it is possible, with small changes and practices, to get better and better results – and to specialize more and more.

And you, do you have any SEO tips to share with us? Leave it in the comments!

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