SEO best practices are tried-and-tested tactics for improving a website or brand’s visibility in search engine results pages. Without paying for ads.
Following these best practices can help you improve brand awareness. And get more organic traffic (unpaid clicks) from search engines like Google.
Here are the 10 most important SEO best practices you need to know:
Search intent (also called “user intent”) is the purpose behind every search query.
If you’d like to rank on page one of Google, you need to understand search intent and create content that matches it.
For instance, take a look at the search results for “how to make oatmeal cookies.”
The top search results are blog posts or videos. Not ecommerce pages selling oatmeal cookies.
Google understands that people who are searching for this keyword are looking to learn. Not to buy.
On the other hand, the results for a query like “buy oatmeal cookies” are product ads and ecommerce pages.
Like this:
In this case, Google understands that people are looking to buy. Hence, no links to oatmeal cookie recipes.
There are four common types of search intent:
To quickly find a keyword’s intent, head to Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool.
Enter your keyword, choose your target country, and hit “Search.”
Then, refer to the box labeled “Intent.”
Our example shows that “oatmeal cookie” has informational intent. So, people are probably looking for recipes.
You can get more insight into intent by looking at the search engine results page (SERP).
Just scroll down to the “SERP Analysis” section and click “View SERP.”
As you can see, the “oatmeal cookie” SERP is indeed dominated by recipes. So, you probably won’t rank well with a transactional page.
A primary keyword is the main search term you want a page to rank for.
By using the primary keyword strategically, you can optimize your page for search engines. And get better rankings.
We recommend that you include your primary keyword (or something very close to it) in the following locations:
You can also optimize for secondary keywords—particularly in the body content. These represent other ways that people search for pages like yours.
For example, if your primary keyword is “oatmeal cookie” then secondary keywords could include:
To choose the target keywords for a page, you need to perform SEO keyword research.
Try it out with Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.
Enter a main term to base your search around, choose your target country, and click “Search.”
By default, the tool will present “Broad Match” results that include your starting keyword or a close variation. And a variety of useful metrics.
Generally, your primary keyword should be the one that best represents the overall theme of the page and has the highest search volume (average number of monthly searches).
But, you may also want to consider keyword difficulty (KD %). This percentage indicates how hard it’ll be to earn a high organic ranking—one that’s more likely to get views and clicks.
So, an authoritative recipe site might choose “oatmeal cookie recipe” (66% difficulty) as the primary keyword for their oatmeal cookie recipe.
Whereas a new blogger might be better off targeting “coconut oil oatmeal cookies“ (18% difficulty).
(To cater to search intent, the blogger will need to use coconut oil in their recipe.)
To learn more, check out our guide on choosing keywords for SEO.
When optimizing a page for search, you should write a compelling title tag (HTML page title) and meta description (HTML page summary).
Because both elements have the potential to appear in SERPs.
Like this:
Which means they can have a significant impact on clicks.
Plus, Google uses your title tag to better understand what your page is about. If the tag doesn’t include your primary keyword, it may suggest that your page isn’t a relevant result.
Here are some good SEO practices for title tags and meta descriptions:
Image optimization can help to improve your overall rankings and user experience. But it can also help you earn valuable exposure in image results.
Like this:
Here are four best practices for image SEO:
File format is important because it affects the size, quality, and accessibility of your images.
The most commonly used image formats on the web are JPEG and PNG.
Both formats use different compression techniques. Which is why the file sizes between these two can be dramatically different.
Like so:
Looking at the difference in file sizes above, it would be easy to declare JPEG as the winner. But it would be a mistake.
While JPEGs look great for photographs, PNGs are best suited for images that contain text, line drawings, etc.
WebP is another popular option. It’s a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for web images.
WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs and 34% smaller than comparable JPEGs, according to Google.
Learn more about how to use WebP in this Google guide.
Image compression is a process applied to images to minimize their size without degrading quality.
Images are often the largest contributor to overall page size and loading time. And page speed is an important Google ranking factor.
In other words, the larger your image file size, the longer it takes your page to load.
So it’s really important to compress your images before you upload them to your site.
Here are free tools that can help:
Alt text (short for alternative text) is text included in HTML code to describe an image on a webpage.
It provides context for search engine crawlers and those viewing a page with a screen reader.
Like this:
Despite advances in Google’s ability to understand images, adding alt text is still an SEO best practice.
Make sure to:
To find and fix missing alt text, use Semrush’s Site Audit tool.
Start by creating a project and then clicking on the “Issues” tab.
Then, narrow down your results by searching for “alt attributes” only.
Like so:
Click the “# images” link to see all the affected image URLs.
You can then log into your site and add the optimized alt text.
Lazy loading is a technique in app and web development that defers the loading of non-critical resources (images, videos, etc.) at page load time.
Images and videos are loaded only when users need them.
Here’s how Google explains the link between lazy loading and site performance:
“When we lazy load images and video, we reduce initial page load time, initial page weight, and system resource usage, all of which have positive impacts on performance.”
You may be able to use a plugin to enable lazy loading on your site. If you need help, speak to a developer.
Page loading speed is very important for Google. Especially on mobile.
Which is why we recommend making your site load as quickly as possible.
To analyze your site’s speed, use our Site Audit tool.
First, create a new project (if you haven’t already done so). Then, look for “Site Performance” and click on “View details.”
Next, see and address all the errors and warnings under “Performance Issues.”
These are all the issues on your site that are preventing it from loading faster.
You can also click on “# issues” to see more about the issue and how to fix it.
If you do, you’ll see a list of the affected URLs and their load times.
Like this:
Alternatively, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
Start by entering your URL. Then clicking “Analyze.”
You’ll see a dashboard with your site’s overall health. And a detailed report with all the ways you can improve.
Internal links (links between pages on your site) are important because they help users and search engines to navigate your site. And understand how pages relate to each other.
When used correctly, internal links may boost your rankings.
You can check the internal links on your site with the Site Audit tool.
After setting up, look for the “Internal Linking” box. And click on “View details.”
Then, see and address all errors and warnings under “Internal Link Issues.”
Google cares about how users engage with pages. As such, user experience (UX) is a key factor in helping improve search rankings.
Page speed plays a key role in improving UX. But it’s just a starting point.
Here are a few other SEO tips to ensure that users have a good experience when they visit your site:
A good URL structure gives users and search engines an idea of what the destination page is about.
Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically. And in a manner that is intelligible to humans.
With that in mind, here is how you can start creating well-structured URLs:
Google recognizes certain kinds of backlinks (links that point from other sites to yours) as “votes of confidence.”
If your webpages have many authoritative backlinks, they’re more likely to rank well on the SERPs.
That said, not all backlinks are created equal.
Some backlinks can boost your ranking for specific search queries exponentially. While others may be harmful.
You should focus your efforts on building high-quality backlinks that can improve your chances of ranking higher for your target keywords.
One of the most effective ways to obtain authoritative backlinks is by replicating your competitors’ link building strategies.
To start, go to Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.
Enter your competitor’s domain and go to the “Indexed Pages” tab.
You’ll see a table with all of your competitor’s pages sorted by number of referring domains (i.e., websites linking to it).
Look for patterns in the top pages’ topics, style, length, and format.
For example:
The answers to these questions should guide your content strategy. Replicate what’s working in a better or similar way.
Google encourages site owners to publish unique, useful content that’s made for people—not search engines.
This is the type of content that Google strives to rank highest in search results.
So, create content that solves your audiences’ pain points and leaves them feeling satisfied.
Here are some quick tips for success:
You can then apply on-page SEO techniques to make your content search-friendly.
Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant will help keep you on the right track.
Enter your target keywords, choose your target country, and start writing.
Then, the tool will then provide suggestions related to SEO, originality, tone of voice, and readability.
If you get stuck, the built-in AI tools can help you out.
Just head to the “Smart Writer” box. Or click highlighted text to use a shortcut.
Some good SEO practices include the following:
Following SEO best practices alone does not guarantee good SEO results for your website. SEO is a complex and ever-changing field. Ranking well depends on many factors, including the quality of your content, the competitiveness of your industry, and the effectiveness of your overall marketing strategy.
Prioritizing SEO tasks can depend on several factors—the website’s goals, audience, and competition, for example. However, a good starting point is to prioritize tasks based on their potential impact on the website’s overall organic performance.
Some high-priority tasks include improving website speed, optimizing content for target keywords, and ensuring website mobile-friendliness.
The most important organic SEO factors may vary by type of website, industry, and other factors. But they often include keyword research and optimization, creating high-quality content, building backlinks, and ensuring that the website has a user-friendly design and structure.
Some best practices for on-page SEO include optimizing your page titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and content for keywords, using descriptive and SEO-friendly URLs, and optimizing images with descriptive alt text.
While different marketers will have different opinions about off-page SEO tasks, some of the most common best practices include:
Technical SEO best practices include optimizing website speed and performance, using HTTPS encryption, creating an XML sitemap, and ensuring search engines can properly crawl your content.
Some best practices for local SEO include:
Here are some best practices related to international SEO:
Some best practices for SEO content creation include conducting keyword research to target relevant keywords, creating high-quality and original content, incorporating headers and subheaders, optimizing meta descriptions and title tags, including internal and external links, and regularly updating and refreshing content.
Your internal linking strategy will be off to a good start if you keep the following best practices in mind:
Some best practices for writing title tags include the following:
Here are some best practices to keep in mind when you’re writing meta descriptions:
When optimizing for page speed, keep in mind the following best practices:
Semrush tools are designed to help you follow SEO best practices.
We recommend starting out with these two tools:
Create your free account to try them out now.
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