Search engine optimization involves strategies to drive organic (non-paid) traffic from search engines to your website. Some basic SEO strategies are simple and can be handled routinely on your own. Others are more complex; highly technical strategies are best handled by a search engine optimization specialist.
For guidance in SEO best practices, we rely on trusted sources including Search Engine Journal, MOZ, SEM Rush, and Neil Patel, among others.
This post focuses on pages and posts (articles) within your site. If you’re just starting out and are pondering your domain name, read our post about the importance of domain names for SEO.
SEO strategies to do on your own
1. Finesse your post titles
When crafting blog content, consider how you can best help potential clients. Specific, well-crafted articles with advice that can be actualized are highly valued.
Your post title should both entice readers and deliver on the implied promise. A study by semrush cited the types of headlines that received the most page views, shares and backlinks:
- Lists that relate to your areas of expertise (like this post)
- How-To posts (see these examples)
- Guides (helpful resources and infographics)
2. Include keywords in your URLs
Like a light in the forest, keywords provide a clear signal to users (and search engines) about the content of a page or post. Routinely include a keyword or keywords within the title (and URL) for each page and post.
While experts waffle somewhat on whether the presence of keywords in URLs helps rankings, users do click more frequently on search results that include their topic of interest. As noted in a Search Engine News article, this human aspect of URL optimization is very important.
3. Craft original meta descriptions
In addition to the URL and page or post title, the Description tag is key element to capture the attention of both users and search engines. If you omit the description tag, Google will extract content from your page or post to display in search results, but it may not be the specific content that will compel searchers to click through — or more importantly, it may not distinguish your post sufficiently to secure a strong placement in search results.
Download our free eBook for step-by-step guidance in Using Metatags to Build Your SEO Rankings.
4. Link to leverage your own content
After you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ll build up a body of work with a lot of complementary or pertinent content. As content creation requires a substantial time investment, leveraging it should be a priority. Strive to include contextual links to your related content each time you publish a blog post. Utilizing internal links that lead to your other website assets or articles to highlight relevant content for readers and search engines.
This blog post focused on the importance of internal links shares 10 recommended ways to increase linking within your website.
5. Use more and better sub-headings
Sub-headings help users scan for the content that is of particular interest. Search engines also have an affinity for well-crafted sub-headings.
In addition to focusing on SEO for a page or post in its entirety, optimizing sub-headings can help an article or page to rank multiple times in “featured snippets,” according to an SEMrush study.
Featured snippets are visual or content elements extracted from a page or post, that closely match a user’s search query. They appear at or near the top of search results and are highly visible, taking up 50% or more of the screen on mobile devices, according to the study.
Some metatags plugins offer “scoring” guidance to help you craft effective metatags (including sub-headings).
6. Eliminate naked links
First … let’s define what a naked link is. It’s a link in the form of a typed URL, like https://www.mysite.com.
Use of naked links in lieu of anchor text is an old-school and undesirable practice which interrupts reader flow and diminishes your credibility. Routine linking practice today is to utilize contextual phrasing and embed descriptive anchor text to the link. This approach is efficient and effective, providing readability and context to both the user and to search engines.
Naked links are not only undesirable from a user experience perspective, they also perform poorly on search rankings. In an interview with Google’s John Mueller, he was asked how Google handles naked links. His response was that Google cannot use the anchor text, because there is no associated context.
7. Answer pressing questions with FAQs
When seeking information online, many user searches involve queries. Consider questions that your target audience would value; then craft and publish frequently asked questions on your website. FAQs provide useful guidance and information by anticipating and responding to a customer’s needs — before they even ask the question.
While you will need to develop the appropriate questions and responses for your business, FAQ plugins can be used to handle the formatting, optimizing the content for search engines and providing a highly navigable experience for users.
8. Drill down on your URL structure
URL optimization factors are present in many of Google’s top 200 ranking factors, such as URL length, path and presence of keywords. SEO expert Neil Patel writes that there’s an entire science around URL optimization, but since length is a big factor, we’ll narrow our focus to a few key points:
- While they can remain in the page title, remove superfluous words from the URL
- Eliminate filler words such as or, but, the — as long as doing so retains readability
- Target URLs of 50-60 characters (metatags plugins help with this … see #3 above)
9. Get creative with your Title tags
Like your meta description, your Title tag provides an opportunity to capture the attention of searchers. Adding “freshness signals” such as dates, year or seasonality references within your title tags can serve as a spotlight in user searches.
Consider your own searches and preference toward more recently published content, year-in-review posts and timely content.
Previously-published content can (and should) be updated with new information. Search engines value content that is as updated as possible.
