12 SEO Best Practices to Improve Rankings in 2023. To make your website more popular on the internet, you should follow some smart rules that help it show up better on search engines like Google. Here are 12 important rules to make your website better:
SEO Tips: What’s Important and Not Too Hard
1. Match your content with what people are searching for: When people look on Google, they want answers. Make sure your website has what they’re looking for.
2. Create catchy titles and descriptions: The titles and short descriptions you use for your web pages should make people want to click and learn more.
3. Make your website easy to use: If your site is easy to navigate and looks good, people will stay longer and come back.
SEO Tips: Important but Can Be a Bit Tricky
- Talk about topics people care about: Write about stuff that lots of people are interested in.
- Use your main keyword in a few places: Include the main word people are searching for in your content, but don’t use it too much.
- Keep your web address short and clear: Simple website addresses are easier to remember.
- Make your images friendly to search engines: Optimize your pictures so search engines like Google can understand them better.
SEO Tips: Super Important but a Bit Tricky
- Link to other pages on your website: Connect different parts of your website to help people find what they need.
- Cover everything people want to know: If you provide all the information people are looking for, they’ll stay on your site longer.
- Get other websites to link to yours: When other sites link to your site, it makes you look more important to search engines.
SEO Tips: Kind of Important and Not Too Hard
- Make sure your website is fast and works well: If your site loads quickly and works smoothly, people are happier.
- Keep your website secure with HTTPS: A secure website is good for you and your visitors.
So, when you’re working on your website, make sure it’s what people want, and you’ll have a better chance of showing up on Google. For example, if someone searches for “how to make a protein shake,” make sure your page is all about that topic.
1. Make Sure Your Content Matches What People Are Looking For
When someone searches on Google, they have a specific reason in mind. It’s like they’re on a mission to find something. Google’s main job is to help them find exactly what they’re looking for.
To boost your chances of showing up on Google, make sure your webpage gives people what they want. So, if someone is searching for “how to make a protein shake,” make sure your page has all the details on making one. This way, you’re more likely to pop up in the search results and help people find the info they need.
In this search result, you won’t find any products to buy. That’s because people who are searching here are trying to find information, not stuff to purchase.
Now, if you search for something like “buy protein powder,” it’s a different story. People in this case aren’t looking for a recipe; they want to purchase some protein powder. That’s why most of the top results you’ll see are online stores where you can buy protein powder, not articles or blog posts.
Checking out the top results on Google can give you some big hints about what people are really looking for when they type something in. This helps you figure out what kind of stuff to make on your own website if you want it to show up high in the search results.
Now, let’s take a less clear keyword like “best eye cream.” This one gets searched about 31,000 times a month in the U.S.
If you’re selling eye cream, it might sound like a good idea to make sure your product page appears when people search for this keyword. But, guess what? The search results have a different story to tell:
Pretty much all the stuff that shows up when you search for “best eye cream” are blog articles that list the top eye creams. There are hardly any product pages.
So, if you want any chance of showing up when people search for this, you should do the same thing.
But it’s not just about making the same kind of content. You also need to think about how you present it and what angle you take.
You can learn more about this in our guide about making content that matches what people are looking for.
2. Create Attractive Titles and Descriptions
Your titles and little descriptions on Google’s search results are like the front of a store. They look like this:
People are less likely to click on your search result if it doesn’t look interesting.
By the way, Google sometimes changes what it shows for your result. It might not use the title and description you picked; it could choose something else from your page.
So, how do you get more people to click on your link?
First, make sure your title is less than 60 characters long, and your description is under 150 characters. This way, Google won’t cut them off.
Second, make sure your title and description match what people are searching for. For example, when you look up “best headphones,” most of the results mention the year in their titles and descriptions.
That’s because folks want lists of the latest recommendations, and new headphones come out all the time.
Also, use strong words to make people want to click, but don’t make it look like a clickbait.
3. Make Your Website Easy to Use
User experience (UX) is all about how easy and enjoyable it is for people to use your website.
Good UX matters for SEO because if your website is frustrating or confusing, visitors will leave.
If lots of people leave your site quickly, it’ll give you a high bounce rate.
To make your website better and keep people from leaving fast, check out these things:
- Looks Nice: Does your website look good? Can it be prettier?
- Easy to Get Around: Is your website set up well, so people can find what they want easily?
- Annoying Pop-ups: Are there annoying pop-up ads that mess with the experience?
- Too Many Ads: Do ads take over and distract from the main stuff people came for?
- Mobile-Friendly: Is your website easy to use on a phone?
To make your UX better, think about what your visitors expect. What do they want from your site?
4. Write About Stuff People Are Looking For
Trying to get to the top of Google for things nobody’s searching for is a waste of time. Even if you’re the number one result, you won’t get much traffic.
For example, let’s say you’re selling tutorials for software. It wouldn’t make sense to target something like “how to make font bigger in coffee cup HTML editor” because nobody’s looking that up.
The page that’s at the very top doesn’t get any natural visitors:
To discover what topics people are looking up, you can use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Start by typing in a broad topic as your starting point, which we call the “seed” keyword. Then, check out the list of related terms in the Matching terms report.
For instance, if you run a website about coffee products, you could begin with “coffee” as your seed keyword. This tool will then show you a bunch of related topics and keywords that people are searching for.
You’ll see that the keyword suggestions are organized by how many times people search for them each month. This helps you find the ones that lots of people are looking up.
But, there are a ton of ideas here (more than 3.7 million), and not all of them will fit with what your website is about.
For instance, if you have a website that’s all about coffee products, it doesn’t really make sense to try to rank for “coffee cake recipe.” Even if lots of people search for it (around 60,000 times a month), it won’t help your website because it’s not related to what you do, and you can’t make money from it.
This is where the filters are super useful.
Let’s say you want to discover popular “best [something]” keywords for your affiliate website. You can simply add the word “best” to the “Include” filter:
Next, you can filter for keywords with low Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores to find keywords that are easier to rank for:
In simple terms, you’re searching for keywords that matter and can actually help your website get more visitors. These are keywords that are related to your topic and are not too hard to rank for.
If you want to find a bunch of these easy-to-rank keywords all at once, you can use a tool called Keywords Explorer.
Here’s what you do:
- Type a broad topic into Keywords Explorer’s search bar.
- Go to the Matching terms report.
- Toggle on “Phrase match.”
- Filter the results to show only keywords with a Keyword Difficulty score under 20.
This way, you can find lots of good keywords that are a good fit for your website.
If the suggestions you see don’t really fit what you’re looking for, you can make it easier by using an “Include” filter. For instance, you can choose to show only keywords that have the word “best” in them. This helps you get more relevant keyword ideas.
After that, you can look at the search results page (SERP) to get a better idea of how hard it might be to rank for those keywords and how many other websites are competing for the same spot.
Then, take a peek at the search results page (we call it SERP). This will help you figure out how tough it could be to get your website to show up for those keywords and how many other websites are trying to do the same thing.
Just don’t shoehorn the keyword in if it doesn’t make sense. Readability always comes first.
For example, if your target keyword is “kitchen cabinets cheap,” that doesn’t make sense as a title tag. Don’t be afraid to rearrange things or add in stop words so it makes sense—Google is smart enough to understand what you mean.
B. Main Heading (H1)
Every webpage should have a main heading, usually marked as an H1 tag. Make sure to include your main keyword in this heading where it fits naturally.
C. Web Address (URL)
Google recommends using words in web addresses (URLs) that match what your page is about.
Unless your target keyword is really long, using it in the web address is usually the best way to go.
6. Use a short and descriptive URL
URLs in SEO play a crucial role in informing users and search engines about the content and structure of a webpage.
Google says to avoid using long URLs because they may intimidate searchers.
Therefore, using the exact target query as the URL isn’t always best practice.
Just imagine your target keyword is “how to get rid of a tooth abscess without going to the dentist.” Not only is that a mouthful (no pun intended), but it’s also going to get truncated in the search results:
Getting rid of words like “and,” “the,” and other extra stuff will make your web address shorter and neater, while still keeping the important words.
However, it’s okay to provide a concise description of your page when necessary.
Keep in mind that if your website system already gives you weird-looking web addresses, it’s not a big problem. You don’t need to go through a ton of trouble to fix it. These days, Google is showing full web addresses for fewer results anyway.
7. Make Images SEO-Friendly for More Visitors
Optimizing images for SEO means getting your pictures ready for search engines. Why? Because your images can pop up in Google Images and bring even more people to your website. That’s why it’s important to do this.
Don’t forget how valuable Google Images can be. In the last three months alone, it sent us more than 5,500 clicks.
Making file names better for SEO is easy. Just use words to describe your image and put hyphens between those words.
Here’s an example:
File Name: number-one-handsome-man.jpg
When it comes to alt tags, do the same thing, but instead of hyphens, use spaces.
For example:
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<img src=".../number-one-handsome-man.jpg" alt="the world's most handsome man">
Alt text matters not just to Google but also to your website visitors. If a picture can’t load for some reason, the browser shows the alt tag to tell people what the picture was supposed to be.
Moreover, about 8.1 million people in the United States have vision problems and might use a screen reader. These devices read out the alt tags to them.
8. Connect Pages Within Your Website
Internal links are links that connect one page to another on your own website. They’re like signposts that help visitors move around from one place to another.
These links matter for SEO because they play a special role. In simple terms, the more links a page has—whether from other websites or within your own—the higher its PageRank. This PageRank thing is at the core of how Google decides what to show at the top of search results. It’s been a big deal for a long time, and it still is today.
Internal links also help Google figure out what a page is all about.
Fortunately, most website systems automatically put links to new pages from at least one other page. You’ll usually see this in the menu, on the blog’s main page, or somewhere else.
But it’s also a good idea to add links from other pages that make sense whenever you post something new.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Use Site Audit’s Page Explorer to look for the topic you’re writing about.
- For instance, I searched for “lsi” in this example and set it to “Page text.”
Please rewrite this with easy language for people age 20 to 30 years old
9. Answer All the Questions People Have
Google wants to show the best content to people searching, and that means having all the answers they need.
Here are two ways to figure out what those answers are:
A. Check What the Top Pages Cover
You can find out by looking at what the top-ranking pages talk about. Open up two or three of them, and use a tool like Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar. Click on the “Content” tab.
For example, I searched for “things to do in London,” and I see that both the Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet pages mention the Tower of London as a must-visit attraction.
Here’s what the Tripadvisor page covers:
Here’s what the Lonely Planet page talks about:
We can see that both pages talk a lot about the “Tower of London.”
This is probably something people who are searching for things to do in London really want to know about because multiple top pages mention it.
B. Dig Deeper with a Content Gap Analysis. 12 SEO Best Practices to Improve Rankings in 2023.
If you want to go even deeper, you can do a content gap analysis. Here’s how:
- Copy and paste the web addresses of three top-ranking pages into Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool. Leave the lower field empty and click “Show keywords.”
Now, if you set the “Intersect” option to “2,” it will show you the topics that at least two of those top pages are ranking for. These topics are likely really important because more than one page is already talking about them.
There are 222 different interesting versions of “things to do in London,” like “things to see in London,” “what to see in London,” and “must see in London.”
This tells us that people searching for info about London are really into sightseeing, and they want suggestions.
These are just a few extra things you can include to make your content super detailed.
10. Get More Websites to Link to Yours for More Authority
Backlinks are like votes of confidence in your website. They’re like the building blocks of Google’s algorithm, and they’re still one of the most important factors that decide how high your website shows up in Google’s search results.
Google itself says this on its “How Search Works” page:
“If other important websites on the same topic link to the page, that’s a sign that the information is top-notch.”
But you don’t have to just take Google’s word for it. Our research, which looked at more than a billion webpages, proves that the more websites link to a page, the more people find it in Google search results.
But keep in mind that it’s not just about how many links you get, it’s about how good those links are.
Try to get links from websites that are respected and have something to do with your topic.
11. Make Sure Your Website Scores Well in Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are like report cards for your website’s performance. Google came up with these to see how good or bad a website is for users.
Here are the main things they check:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This looks at how fast your main content loads.
- First Input Delay (this will change to “Interaction to Next Paint” in March 2024): It checks how quickly your website responds when someone tries to do something, like click a button.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This sees if your page layout shifts around while someone is trying to use your website, which can be annoying.
To keep tabs on how your website is doing with these, start by using Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report.
If you want more details, you can also look at the Performance report in Ahrefs’ Site Audit tool.
Fixing these problems might seem tough, but you can ask a tech-savvy person or an SEO expert for help.
Here are some simple tips to make your website faster and more user-friendly:
- Use a CDN: Most websites are stored on one server in one place. That means when people visit your site, it might take a while for the data to travel from that one spot to their computer. CDNs are like a team of servers spread around the world. They store copies of your important stuff, like images, so they load faster for everyone.
- Compress Images: Big image files can slow down your website. By making them smaller (but not too small), they’ll load faster without losing quality.
- Lazy-Loading: This fancy term means your website only loads things when you actually need them. So, the browser doesn’t have to load all the images on a page right away.
- Pick a Fast Theme: When you’re setting up your website, choose a theme that’s designed to be fast. You can check this by running a demo of the theme through Google’s Pagespeed Insights tool.
12. Secure Your Site with HTTPS.
HTTPS is like a digital padlock for your website. It makes sure your data is safe when it travels between your computer and the website’s server. Google has cared about this since 2014 when it ranks websites, so it’s still important.
You can check if your website is using HTTPS by looking at the web address in your browser. If you see a little “lock” icon, you’re all set.
If your website doesn’t have that little “lock” icon in the web address, you need to add something called an SSL certificate to make it secure.
Many web hosting services include this certificate, or you can get one for free from Let’s Encrypt.
Once you’ve set up HTTPS, your whole website, including future pages, will be safe.
Now, to make all these SEO improvements work, remember to keep an eye on how things are going, keep doing them regularly, and be patient. Sometimes, you won’t see results right away, but if you stick with it, your website will get better over time.
Read More: SEO Monitoring Explained and The Best Tools to Use
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