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40 Tips That Help Your SEO Efforts

Here are 40 tips that can help your SEO efforts, even before you start. Some of the tips may not apply to you, as the range of these tips goes from beginner SEO to content writers, local SEO, backlinks, and more.

Table of Contents

SEO Tip #1. Take SEO with a Grain of Salt

A lot of the SEO advice and best practices on the internet are based on 3 things:

  1. Personal experiences and SEO case studies of companies.
  2. SEO specialists, via various social sources, such as Twitter or LinkedIn.
  3. Google or John Mueller (Google’s Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst), via various social sources, such as Twitter or LinkedIn.

And, unfortunately, none of these sources are always accurate.

Personal SEO accounts are simply about what worked for specific companies. Sometimes, what worked for others, won’t work for you.

For example, you might find a company that managed to rank with zero link-building because their website already had a very strong backlink profile. If you’re starting with a fresh website, chances are, you won’t be able to get the same results.

At the same time, information from Google or John Mueller is also not 100% accurate. For example, they’ve said that guest posting is against Google’s guidelines and doesn’t work. But practically, guest posting is a very effective link-building strategy.

So, the takeaway is this:

Take all information you read about SEO with a grain of salt. Analyse the information yourself, and make your conclusions.

SEO Tip #2. SEO Takes Time

On average, it’s going to take you 6 months to 2 years to get SEO results, depending on the following factors:

That said, some marketing agencies can use “SEO takes time” as an excuse for not driving results.

Well, fortunately, there is a way to track SEO results from month #2 – #3 of work.

Simply check if your new content pieces/pages are getting more and more impressions on Google Search Console month-to-month. While your content won’t be driving traffic for a while after being published, they’ll still have a growing number of impressions from month #2 or #3 since publication.

SEO Tip #3. SEO Might Not Be the Best Channel for You

In theory, SEO sounds like the best marketing channel ever.

You manage to rank on Google and your marketing seemingly goes on auto-pilot – you’re driving new leads every day from existing content without having to lift a finger.

And yet, SEO is not for everyone.

Avoid SEO as a marketing channel if:

  1. You’re just getting started with your business and need to start driving revenue tomorrow (and not in 1-2 years). If this is you, try Google Ads, Facebook ads, or organic marketing.
  2. Your target audience is pretty small. If you’re selling enterprise B2B software and have around 2,000 prospects in total worldwide, then it’s simply easier to directly reach out to these prospects.
  3. Your product type is brand-new. If customers don’t know your product exists, they probably won’t be Googling it.

SEO Tip #4. Traffic Can Be a Vanity Metric

I’ve seen hundreds of websites that drive 6-7 digits of traffic but generate only €200-300 per month from those numbers.

“What’s the deal?” You might be thinking.

“How can you fail to monetise that much traffic?”

Well, that brings us to today’s tip: traffic can be a vanity metric.

See, not all traffic is created equal.

Ranking for “hormone balance supplement” is a lot more valuable than ranking for “Madagascar character names.”

The person Googling the first keyword is an adult ready to buy your product. Someone Googling the latter, on the other hand, is a child with zero purchasing power.

So, when deciding on which keywords to pursue, always keep in mind the buyer intent behind and don’t go after rankings or traffic just because 6-digit traffic numbers look good.

SEO Tip #5. Push Content Fast

Whenever you publish a piece of content, you can expect it to rank within 6 months to a year (potentially less if you’re an authority in your niche).

So, the faster you publish your content, the faster they’re going to age, and, as such, the faster they’ll rank on Google.

On average, I recommend you publish a minimum of 10,000 words of content per month and 20,000 to 30,000 optimally.

If you’re not doing link-building for your website, then I’d recommend pushing for even more content. Sometimes, content velocity can compensate for the lack of backlinks.

SEO Tip #6. Use Backlink Data to Prioritise Content

You might be tempted to go for that juicy, 6-digit traffic cornerstone keyword right from the get-go.

But I’d recommend doing the opposite.

More often than not, to rank for more competitive, cornerstone keywords, you’ll need to have a ton of supporting content, high-quality backlinks, website authority, and so on.

Instead, it’s a lot more reasonable to first focus on the less competitive keywords and then, once you’ve covered those, move on to the rest.

Now, as for how to check keyword competitiveness, here are 2 options:

Now, that said, keep in mind that both of these metrics are third-party, and hence not always accurate.

SEO Tip #7. Always Start with Competitive Analysis

When doing keyword research, the easiest way to get started is via competitive analysis.

Chances are, whatever niche you’re in, there’s a competitor that is doing great with SEO.

So, instead of having to do all the work from scratch, run their website through SEMrush or Ahrefs and steal their keyword ideas.

But don’t just stop there – once you’ve borrowed keyword ideas from all your competitors, run the seed keywords through a keyword research tool such as UberSuggest or SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool.

This should give you dozens of new ideas that your competitors might’ve missed.

Finally, don’t just stop at borrowing your competitor’s keyword ideas. You can also borrow some inspiration on:

SEO Tip #8. Source a LOT of Writers

Content writing is one of those professions that has a very low barrier to entry. Anyone can take a writing course, claim to be a writer, and create an UpWork account. This is why 99% of the writers you’ll have to apply for your gigs are going to be, well, horrible.

As such, if you want to produce a lot of content on the reg, you’ll need to source a LOT of writers.

Let’s do the math:

If, by posting a job ad, you source 100 writers, you’ll see that only 5 of them are a good fit. Out of the 5 writers, 1 has a very high rate, so they drop out. Another doesn’t reply back to your communication, which leaves you with 3 writers.

You get the 3 writers to do a trial task, and only one turns out to be a good fit for your team.

Now, since the writer is freelance, the best they can do is 4 articles per month for a total of 5,000-words (which, for most niches, ain’t all that much).

So, what we’re getting at here is, to hire quality writers, you should source a LOT of them.

SEO Tip #9. Create a Process for Filtering Writers

If you follow the previous tip, you’ll end up with a huge database of hundreds of writers.

This creates a whole new problem:

You now have a database of 500+ writers waiting for you to sift through them and decide which ones are worth the hire.

It would take you 2-3 days of intense work to go through all these writers and vet them yourself.

Let’s be real – you don’t have time for that.

Here’s what you can do instead:

  1. When sourcing writers, always get them to fill in a Google form (instead of DMing or emailing you).
  2. In this form, make sure to ask for 3 relevant written samples, a link to the writer’s portfolio page, and the writer’s rate per word.
  3. Create a SOP for evaluating writers. The criteria for evaluation should be:
    1. Level of English. Does the writer’s sample have any English mistakes? If so, they’re not a good fit.
    2. Quality of Samples. Are the samples long-form and engaging content or are they boring 500-word copy-pastes?
    3. Technical Knowledge. Has the writer written about a hard-to-explain topic before? Anyone can write about simple topics like traveling—you want to look for someone who knows how to research a new topic and explain it in a simple and easy-to-read way. If someone’s written about how to create a perfect cover letter, they can probably write about traveling, but the opposite isn’t true.
  4. Get your VA to evaluate the writer’s samples as per the criteria above and short-list writers that seem competent. If you sourced 500 writers, the end result of this process should be around 50 writers.
  5. You or your editor goes through the short-list of 50 writers and invites 5-10 for a (paid) trial task. The trial task is very important – you’ll sometimes find that the samples provided by the writer don’t match their writing level.

SEO Tip #10. Use the Right Websites to Find Writers

Not sure where to source your writers? Here are some ideas:

SEO Tip #11. Always Use Content Outlines

When giving tasks to your writing team, you need to be very specific about the instructions you give them.

Don’t just provide a keyword and tell them to “knock themselves out.” The writer isn’t a SEO expert; chances are, they’re going to mess it up big-time and talk about topics that aren’t related to the keyword you’re targeting.

Instead, when giving tasks to writers, do it through content outlines.

A content outline, in a nutshell, is a skeleton of the article they’re supposed to write. It includes information on:

SEO Tip #12. Focus on One Niche at a Time

When evaluating what to rank, Google considers the authority of your website.

If you have 60 articles about WordPress (most of which link to each other), you’re probably an authority in the niche and are more likely to get good rankings.

If you have 20 WordPress, 20 JavaScript, and 20 SEO articles, though, none of these categories are going to rank as well.

It always makes more sense to first focus on a single niche (the one that generates the best ROI for your business), and then move on to the rest.

This also makes it easier to hire writers – you hire writers specialised in WordPress, instead of having to find writers who can pull off 3 unrelated topics.

SEO Tip #13. Just Hire a VA Already

Since a lot of SEO tasks are very time-consuming, it really helps to have a VA around to take over.

As long as you have solid SOPs in place, you can hire a virtual assistant, train them, and use them to free up your time.

Some SEO tasks virtual assistants can help with are:

SEO Tip #14. Use WordPress (and Make Your Life Easier)

Not sure which CMS platform to use?

99% of the time, you’re better off with WordPress.

It has a TON of plugins that will make your life easier.

No other website builder, page builder or web solution is worth it, long-term.

SEO Tip #15. Use These Nifty WordPress Plugins

There are a lot of really cool WordPress plugins that can make your (SEO) life so much easier. Some of our favorites include:

SEO Tip #16. No, Voice Search is Still Not Relevant

Voice search is not and will not be relevant (no matter what sensationalist articles might say).

Sure, it does have its application (“Alexa, order me toilet paper please”), but it’s pretty niche and not relevant to most SEOs.

After all, you wouldn’t use voice search for bigger purchases (“Alexa, order me a new laptop please”) or informational queries (“Alexa, teach me how to do accounting, thanks”).

SEO Tip #17. SEO Is Obviously Not Dead

I see these articles every year – “SEO is dead because I failed to make it work, or because there are lots of scammers out there”.

SEO is not dead and as long as there are people looking up for information/things online, it never will be.

And no, SEO is not just for large corporations with huge budgets, either. Some niches are hypercompetitive and require a huge link-building budget (CBD, fitness, VPN, etc.), but they’re more of an exception instead of the rule.

SEO Tip #18. Doing Local SEO? Focus on Service Pages

If you’re doing local SEO, you’re better off focusing on local service pages than blog content.

E.g. if you’re an accounting firm based in Dublin, you can make a landing page about /accounting-firm-dublin/, /tax-accounting-dublin/, /cpa-dublin/, and so on.

Or alternatively, if you’re a personal injury law firm, you’d want to create pages like /car-accident-law-firm/, /truck-accident-law-firm/, /wrongful-death-law-firm/, and the like.

Thing is, you don’t really need to rank on global search terms — you just won’t get leads from there. Even if you ranked on the term “financial accounting,” it wouldn’t really matter for your bottom line that much.

SEO Tip #19. Engage with the SEO Community

The SEO community is (for the most part) composed of extremely helpful and friendly people. There are a lot of online communities where you can ask for help, tips, case studies, and so on.

You can find lots of SEO specialists on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Reddit.

SEO Tip #20. Test Keywords Before Pursuing Them

You can use Google Ads to test how profitable any given keyword is before you start trying to rank for it.

The process here is:

  1. Create a Google Ads account.
  2. Pick a keyword you want to test.
  3. Create a landing page that corresponds to the search intent behind the keyword.
  4. Allocate an appropriate budget. E.g. if you assume a conversion rate of 2%, you’d want to buy 100+ clicks. If the CPC is €2, then the right budget would be €200+.
  5. Run the ads!

If you don’t have the budget for this, you can still use the average CPC for the keyword to estimate how well it’s going to convert. If someone is willing to bid €10 to rank for a certain keyword, it means that the keyword is most probably generating pretty good revenue/conversions.

SEO Tip #21. Test & Improve SEO Headlines

Sometimes, you’ll see that you’re ranking in the top 3 positions for your search query, but you’re still not driving that much traffic.

“What’s the deal?” you might be asking.

Chances are, your headline is not clickable enough.

Every 3-4 months, go through your Google Search Console and check for articles that are ranking well but not driving enough traffic.

Then, create a Google sheet and include the following data:

From then on, implement the new headline and track changes in the CTR. If you don’t reach your desired result, you can always test another headline.

SEO Tip #22. Longer Content isn’t Always Better Content

You’ve probably heard that long-form content is where it’s at. Well, this isn’t always the case.

Rather, this mostly depends on the keyword you’re targeting.

If, for example, you’re targeting the keyword “how to tie a tie,” you don’t need a long 5,000-word mega-guide.

In such a case, the reader is looking for something that can be explained in 200-300 words and if your article fails to do this, the reader will bounce off and open a different page.

On the other hand, if you’re targeting the keyword “how to write a CV”, you’ll need around 4,000 to 5,000 words to adequately explain the topic and, chances are, you won’t rank with less.

SEO Tip #23. SEO is Not All About Written Content

More often than not, when people talk about SEO they talk about written blog content creation.

It’s very important not to forget, though, that blog content is not end-all-be-all for SEO.

Certain keywords do significantly better with video content. For example, if the keyword is “how to do a deadlift”, video content is going to perform significantly better than blog content.

Or, if the keyword is “CV template”, you’ll see that a big chunk of the rankings are images of the templates.

So, the lesson here is, don’t laser-focus on written content — keep other content mediums in mind, too.

SEO Tip #24. Write For Your Audience

It’s very important that your content resonates well with your target audience.

If, for example, you’re covering the keyword “skateboard tricks”, you can be very casual with your language. Heck, it’s even encouraged!

Your readers are Googling the keyword in their free time and are most likely teens or in their early 20s.

Meaning, you can use informal language, include pop culture references, and avoid complicated language.

Now, on the other hand, if you’re writing about high-level investment advice, your audience probably consists of 40-something suit-and-ties. If you include Rick & Morty references in your article, you’ll most likely lose credibility and the Googler, who will go to another website.

Some of our best tips on writing for your audience include:

SEO Tip #25. Create Compelling Headlines

Want to drive clicks to your articles? You’ll need compelling headlines.

Compare the following headline:

101 Productivity Tips [To Get Things Done in {YYYY}]

With this one:

Productivity Tips Guide

Which one would you click? Data says it’s the first!

To create clickable headlines, I recommend you include the following elements:

SEO Tip #26. Make Your Content Visual

How good your content looks matters, especially if you’re in a competitive niche.

Here are some tips on how to make your content as visual as possible:

SEO Tip #27. Ditch the Skyscraper Technique Already

Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique is awesome and all, but the following bit really got old:

“Hey [name], I saw you wrote an article. I, too, wrote an article. Please link to you?”

The theory here is, if your content is good, the person will be compelled to link to it.

In practice, though, the person really, really doesn’t care. I, personally, am getting these types of emails and, honestly, I’m ignoring all of them.

At the end of the day, there’s no real incentive for the person to link to your content. They have to take time out of their day to head over to their website, log in to WordPress, find the article you mentioned, and add a link.

Just because some stranger on the internet asked them to.

Here’s something that works much better:

Instead of fake compliments, be very straightforward about what you can offer them in exchange for that link.

Some things you can offer are:

SEO Tip #28. Get the URL Slug Right for Seasonal Content

If you want to rank on a seasonal keyword, there are 2 ways to do this.

If you want your article to be evergreen (i.e. you update it every year with new information), then your URL should not contain the year.

E.g. your URL would be /saas-trends/, and you simply update the article’s contents+headline each year to keep it timely.

If you’re planning on publishing a new trends report annually, though, then you can add a year to the URL (e.g. /saas-trends-2024/ instead of /saas-trends/).

SEO Tip #29. AI Content Tools Are a Mixed Bag

Lots of people are talking about AI content tools these days. Usually, they’re either saying:

“AI content tools are garbage and the output is horrible,”

Or:

“AI content tools are a game-changer!”

So which one is it?

The truth is somewhere in-between.

Right now, AI content writing tools are pretty bad. The output you’re going to get is far from something you can publish on your website. Even if it sounds good to you at first sight, give it 3-6 months and then read it again. You’ll want to remove it from the website ASAP.

That said, some SEOs use such tools to get a very, very rough draft of the article written, and then they do intense surgery on it to make it usable.

Should you use AI content writing tools? If you ask me, no – it’s easier to hire a proficient content writer than spend hours salvaging AI-written content. That said, I do believe that such tools are going to get much better years down the line.

Still, you need to write for humans.

SEO Tip #30. Don’t Overdo it with SEO Tools

There are a lot of SEO tools out there for pretty much any SEO function. Keyword research, link-building, on-page, outreach, technical SEO, you name it!

If you were to buy most of these tools for your business, you’d easily spend 4-figures on SEO tools per month.

Luckily, though, you don’t actually need most of them. At the end of the day, the only must-have SEO tools are:

Most of the tools that don’t fit into these categories are 100% optional.

SEO Tip #31. Hiring an SEO? Here’s How to Vet Them

Unless you’re an SEO pro yourself, hiring one is going to be far from easy.

There’s a reason there are so many “SEO experts” out there – for the layman, it’s very hard to differentiate between someone who knows their salt and a newbie who took an SEO course, like, last week.

Here’s how you can vet both freelance and full-time SEOs:

  1. Ask for concrete traffic numbers. The SEO pro should give you the exact numbers on how they’ve grown a website in the past – “100% SEO growth in 1 year” doesn’t mean much if the growth is from 10 monthly traffic to 20. “1,000 to 30,000” traffic, on the other hand, is much better.
  2. Ask for client names. While some clients ask their SEOs to sign an NDA and not disclose their collaboration, most don’t. If an SEO can’t name a single client they’ve worked with in the past, that’s a red flag.
  3. Make sure they have the right experience. Global and local SEO have very different processes. Make sure that the SEO has experience with the type of SEO you need.
  4. Make sure you’re looking for the right candidate. SEO pros can be content writers, link-builders, web developers, or all of the above simultaneously. Make sure you understand which one you need before making the hire. If you’re looking for someone to oversee your content ops, you shouldn’t hire a technical SEO expert.
  5. Look for SEO pros in the right places. Conventional job boards are overrated. Post your job ads on SEO communities instead.

SEO Tip #32. Blog Post Not Ranking? Follow This Checklist

The checklist covers every reason your post might not be ranking:

SEO Tip #33. Avoid Low-Quality Link-Building Tactics

The only type of link-building that works is building proper, quality links from websites with a good backlink profile and decent organic traffic.

Here’s what DOESN’T work:

If your “SEO agency” says they’re doing any of the above instead of actually trying to build you links from quality websites, you’re being scammed.

SEO Tip #34. Know When to Use 301 and 302 Redirects

When doing redirects, it’s very important to know the distinction between these two.

301 is a permanent page redirect and passes on link juice. If you’re killing off a page that has backlinks, it’s better to 301 it to your homepage so that you don’t lose the link juice. If you simply delete a page, it’s going to be a 404, and the backlink juice is lost forever.

302 is a temporary page redirect and doesn’t pass on link juice. If the redirect is temporary, you do a 302. E.g. you want to test how well a new page is going to perform w/ your audience.

SEO Tip #35. Social Signals Matter (But Not How You Think)

Social signals are NOT a ranking factor. And yet, they can help your content rank on Google’s front page.

Wondering what am I talking about? Here’s what’s up:

As I said, social signals are not a ranking factor. It’s not something Google takes into consideration to decide whether your article should rank or not.

That said, social signals CAN lead to your article ranking better. Let’s say your article goes viral and gets around 20k views within a week.

A chunk of these viewers are going to forget your domain/link and they’re going to look up the topic on Google via your chosen keyword + your brand name.

The amount of people looking for YOUR keyword and exclusively picking your result over others is going to make Google think that your content is satisfying search intent better than the rest, and thus, reward you with better ranking.

SEO Tip #36. Run Remarketing Ads to Lift Organic Traffic Conversions

Not satisfied with your conversion rates?

You can use Facebook ads to help increase them.

Facebook allows you to do something called “remarketing”. This means you can target anyone that visited a certain page (or multiple pages) on your website and serve them ads on Facebook.

There are a TON of ways you can take advantage of this.

For example, you can target anyone that landed on a high buyer intent page and serve them ads pitching your product or a special offer.

Alternatively, you can target people who landed on an educational blog post and offer them something to drive them down the funnel. E.g. free e-book or white paper to teach them more about your product or service.

SEO Tip #37. Doing Local SEO? Follow These Tips

Local SEO is significantly different from global SEO. Here’s how the two differ (and what you need to do to drive local SEO results):

Got a ton of people emailing you asking for links?

You might be tempted to just send them all straight to spam, and I don’t blame you.

Outreach messages like “Hey Dr Jigsaw, your article is A+++ amazing! …can I get a backlink?” can get hella annoying.

That said, there IS a better way to deal with these emails:

Reply and ask for a link back. Most of the time, people who send such outreach emails are also doing heavy guest posting. So, you can ask for a backlink from a 3rd-party website in exchange for you mentioning their link in your article.

Win-win!

SEO Tip #39. Doing Internal Linking for a Large Website? This will Help

Internal linking can get super grueling once you have hundreds of articles on your website.

Want to make the process easier? Do this:

Pick an article you want to interlink on your website. For the sake of the example, let’s say it’s about “business process improvement”.

Go on Google and look up variations of this keyword mentioned on your website. For example:

The above queries will find you the EXACT articles where these keywords are mentioned. Then, all you have to do is go through them and include the links.

SEO Tip #40. Got a Competitor Copying Your Content? File a DMCA Notice

Fun fact – if your competitors are copying your website, you can file a DMCA notice with Google.

That said, keep in mind that there are consequences for filing a fake notice.