It seems like SEO is getting more and more complicated by the minute. Unfortunately, more complications mean more resources, which in turn makes optimizing websites for search engines a costly activity.
But good news — it doesn’t have to be that way. This guide provides you with a list of 15 SEO tips that will help you win in 2021 and give your wallet a little break.
Article Contents
1. Title Tag Optimization
Our first SEO tip is Title Tag Optimization — A title tag briefly describes the content of a webpage for search engines and searchers. Title tags are one of the most important, if not the most important, ranking factor for Google and the most crucial aspect of SEO. It’s essential that you include your main keywords here.
When optimizing title tags, we have to view them from two different angles:
- What will give me the most significant benefit for my rankings?
- What will be best in terms of user experience and click-through rates (CTRs)?
According to Moz, adding your most important keyword(s) at the beginning of a title tag is the best SEO practice, and it helps increase your click-through-rate. Many users prefer to quickly scan the search engine results page (SERP), only taking in the first couple of words of a page title instead of reading it in its entirety, so having these keywords at the forefront is crucial.
2. Internal Linking
From a user standpoint, internal linking allows you to navigate through a website. So it’s important to increase links to your important pages while decreasing links to less important pages. If a site had no internal links at all, that would obviously ruin the user experience, while too many links can lead to confusion and information overload. This is a common mistake and an important SEO tip.
Internal links also provide search engines with more information about the structure of a website. In this case, “structure” refers to how content relates to other content and what the hierarchy of the different pages are.
When you place an internal link, make sure you haven’t linked between pages that are totally unrelated in subject. It doesn’t make sense to link from a page about vegan dog food to a page about how to saddle a horse, right?
At the same time, internal links help to distribute incoming link juice throughout your website. Pages that have more links pointing to them get a bigger ranking boost in search engines.
And if you think about it, it only makes sense to point more links to the most important pages that are essential for a site’s overall goal (such as a product page or a page with a sign-up form) while decreasing the number of links pointing to less important pages (like contact or about pages).
3. Content-Length and Re-Crawls
Don’t get me wrong — longer content doesn’t mean better. However, as you can see here and here, the numbers clearly indicate that the total word count of a page has a direct impact on how well it ranks in Google and other search engines.
The optimum word count seems to go far beyond the average 500-word post and ranges between 2,000 and 2,500 words.
In terms of social media, content with 3,000–10,000 words gets the highest number of shares — almost twice as many shares as content with 1,000 words or less.
And let’s not forget that typically, the more content a page has, the more keywords it will rank for, which means more traffic coming to your site so this is a key SEO tip.
From a user perspective, it’s important to remove all fluff; don’t make the article longer than it needs to be for the sake of a higher word count. Simply put, focus on providing just enough detailed information to answer all of the questions on any given topic that a reader might have, but not more. We’re looking for value only.
A best practice and SEO tip for if you decide to revise some of your existing content, is don’t forget to have it re-crawled by Google using the Fetch as Google tool in your Google Webmaster dashboard. Although the re-crawl won’t happen immediately, it usually shortens the time period that Google needs to revisit your site and index the changes you’ve made.
4. Technical Issues
When you run a simple site audit, chances are that you stumbled upon a handful of technical SEO issues that might have a negative impact on your site’s rankings. Some of these issues you will be able to resolve on your own in under five minutes. For others, you may need an experienced developer to get to the bottom of things.
The great benefit of running a technical site audit is that you often find low-hanging fruit. One example of this might be an immediate 20% increase in conversions for your e-commerce store — simply because you reduced page load times by half.
Addressing all of the technical issues a website can have would go too far for the scope of this guide, but if you want to run a simple site audit yourself, here is what you can check:
- Robots.txt: Your robots.txt might prevent the Googlebot from properly crawling your website
- Broken backlinks: Broken links pointing to your site lose their link power
- Page load times: Long page load times are bad for SEO and UX
- Mobile responsiveness: Again, it’s bad for your rankings and the user experience if your website can’t be properly viewed on a smartphone or tablet
- Duplicate content: If two nearly identical versions of the same webpage exist, they can create duplicate content issues
- Redirects: Redirects are important when reclaiming broken links or preventing duplicate content issues
- Sitemaps: A broken sitemap can lead to indexation errors
5. NAP
In SEO, NAP stands for “Name, Address, Phone Number.” When the name, address, phone number, or other information (such as an email address and the website URL of your business) are mentioned somewhere on the web — let’s say on yellowpages.com — it’s called a “local business citation” or just “citation.”
The number of citations that can be found, their quality, and their consistency are critical when it comes to local SEO — especially when you want to rank in the Google Snack Pack to be found in Google Maps.
What you have to know is that for local search results, Google browses the web collecting all the data that it can find about your business. For verification purposes, it compares the data to information from other sources like telephone or post office records.
If the information that Google has found is inconsistent, meaning there could be two different phone numbers or two entirely different addresses, it will almost guarantee a negative influence on your rankings.
The reason? Google doesn’t know which data is most appropriate to display. So for this SEO tip, it’s essential that you find all of your business’ citations on the web and double-check that they are consistent and up-to-date.
By the way, consistency also means that you have to use the same format in each citation. For example, if you register your business with Yelp entering “105 Main Street” as the street address, make sure to keep that format; don’t enter “105 Main St.” when you register your business with Yellow Pages.
6. Google My Business
A Google My Business (GMB) listing helps you rank in the local search results of Google and is therefore crucial for business’ local SEO.
In the GMB dashboard, you can add photos to your listing to give your business a “face.” You can add hours of operation so customers know when you are open for business. You can also collect and showcase customer reviews — and so much more.
Here is how you can create a new GMB listing or claim one that already exists:
- Visit https://www.google.com/business/
- Click the green “START NOW” button.
- Sign in with your already existing Google account or create a new one if need be.
- Type in the name of your business. If it shows up in the results, that’s great. Click on the name of your business and hit “NEXT.” If it doesn’t show up, that’s not a problem — click “NEXT” to continue anyway.
- Now it’s time to add your business’ information — most importantly, the correct address and phone number. As already mentioned in the NAP section above, it’s important to make your business listings consistent.
- Last but not least, you have to verify your new or claimed business listing by having a postcard sent to the registered address via snail mail. Once that’s done, you’ll get full access to your GMB dashboard and you can use all the awesome features, such as the new video upload function.
Categories
GMB allows you to choose one or multiple categories for your business from a predefined list. Choosing the right category (or categories) is key and has a big influence on your listing’s rankability.
The maximum number of categories you can choose is 10, but Google recommends that you choose as few categories as possible. Categories are not supposed to be used to target keywords or describe different attributes of your business.
Try to focus on choosing one specific category instead. If no specific category exists, don’t worry and simply go a little broader.
Labels
Labels in Google My Business are optional and only needed if you manage more than one location. If that’s the case, the labels help you better organize your locations and divide them into groups.
You can assign up to 10 different labels to each location and use them to filter the different locations in both your GMB dashboard and AdWords.
Links
You can create and share a direct link pointing to your GMB listing. By clicking on the link, your customers can view your business on Google Maps. This is great if they are trying to find out where your business is located and how to get there.
You can also create a link for your customers to rate and leave a review of your business. These types of links make it much easier to bring in more positive business reviews, which also helps your SEO.
7. SSL Certificate
SSL stands for “secure sockets layer.” An SSL certificate is used to create an encrypted connection between the server your website is hosted on and a user’s web browser.
A website that is secured with an SSL certificate uses an HTTPS instead of the regular HTTP protocol.
This is a SEO tip we wanted to make you aware of, because adding SSL to your website has the following benefits:
- Google has stated that it’s “working towards a web that’s secure by default.” Although that doesn’t prove anything, it’s a broad hint that secure connections are the future and an important part of SEO. Also, multiple case studies have proven that switching to SSL can have a positive impact on rankings.
- When set up correctly, websites running on HTTPS have faster loading times than HTTP sites.
Secure websites also have the advantage of being displayed with a lock icon in browsers, which the majority of users today (especially those purchasing products online) look out for. What’s more, Chrome even labels HTTP websites “insecure.”
8. Images — EXIF Data and Alt Text
Alt Text
Alt text or alt tags are used by the screen readers of visually impaired people to find out more about the content of an image.
Alt text also tells the Googlebot and other crawlers what an image on your website is all about and helps search engines understand the context of an image.
Will adding proper alt text to each image on your site have a measurable impact on rankings? Probably not. But it’s one more step in the right direction — a step you should incorporate in your SEO from now on! Adding alt text to your images is also a great way to include additional keywords on your site.
EXIF Data
Exchangeable Image File format (EXIF) is a format that allows you to add metadata tags to image and sound files. These metadata tags cover:
- A description
- Information on copyright
- A thumbnail preview for images
- Camera model and settings (e.g. focal length, ISO speed)
- And most importantly: date, time, and geolocation information
With the help of EXIF data, you can store geolocation information in an image file — which tells search engines where a photo was taken.
Even though this technique is quite advanced, it’s an important SEO tip — It can be used as one measure in your local SEO campaign. You give crawlers another hint that your website is highly relevant for a specific local search query.
What’s more, images containing geolocation information are more likely to be displayed prominently in the local image search results.
9. Authority Outbound Links
An authority outbound link is one that points from your website to an external domain and is highly trusted by search engines. Two examples for high authority sites are Wikipedia and the web presence of your local city hall.
The benefits of adding authority outbound links are that:
- You increase the trustworthiness of your own site
- Search engines can better determine your niche since you show what kind of content your own content is related to
- You refer your readers to other sources for high-quality information
For local SEO, linking out to the official site of your local government is one more indicator for search engines that your business is highly relevant for that particular location.
Want to find out whether or not a site is authoritative?
Simply use Moz’s Open Site Explorer and look out for sites with a domain authority (DA) above 60 (please note that DA is a metric made up by Moz, not Google, but it’s still a good indicator of authority).
Lastly, here are a couple of best practices for placing authority outbound links:
- Only link to topically relevant content
- Don’t insert too many outbound links for better readability
- Link out with do-follow links — don’t worry, this won’t harm your site’s rankings unless you link out to dozens of external sites
10. Keyword Synonyms for Semantic Search
Our 10th SEO tip is keyword synonyms for semantic search — Google and other search engines incorporated semantic signals into their search results long ago. Looking into the future, semantic search will become more and more important now that voice search is on the rise.
The concept behind semantic search is to personalize and improve the accuracy of the search results by trying to understand the true intent of a search query.
This way, search engines not only get a better idea of what words are likely to appear together on the same page and in what frequency, but they also get a lot better at recognizing natural language patterns and detecting spam.
So if your SEO goal is to create content that matches today’s requirements — and to be honest, it should be — remember this:
- Write in a natural voice; your content will automatically include lots of synonyms of the keywords you are trying to rank for. Writing naturally also means you don’t have to pay attention to keyword density anymore (what a relief!)
- Give your sentences a clear structure so they are easy to understand for both search engines and users
- Focus on providing real value; answer the most common questions on a topic
- Read your content out loud before publishing it. This helps you to identify passages that may sound a little strange
11. Schema Markup
Schema markup allows you to display specific information in the form of rich snippets in the SERPs, such as product or service ratings, reviews, and operating hours of your business.
Here is an example markup that you would have to add to the HTML code of your website:
<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/Dentist”>
<span itemprop=”name”>Mr. Dental</span>
<div itemprop=”address” itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/PostalAddress”>
<span itemprop=”streetAddress”>1 Main Street</span>
<span itemprop=”addressLocality”>Los Angeles</span>
<span itemprop=”addressRegion”>CA</span>
<span itemprop=”postalCode”>90001</span>
</div>
Web: <span itemprop=”url” href=”https://www.mrdental.com/”>mrdental.com</span>
Phone: <span itemprop=”telephone”>+1(123)456-7890</span>
Email: <span itemprop=”email”>tim@mrdental.com</span>
</div>
The Benefits of Adding Schema
To be clear, there is no direct proof that schema benefits your SEO in any way. In fact, Backlinko has found that “Schema markup doesn’t correlate with higher rankings” — at least at this point.
Still, rich snippets are great to attract the eyes of searchers and almost always lead to an increase in click-through rates, which means more traffic (and ultimately, leads) for your business.
For local businesses, schema comes in handy when you want to tell search engines, “Hey, here is my NAP information, so you don’t need to go looking for it somewhere else.” This helps to prevent the bots crawling your site from getting confused.
By the way, you can find a full list of all available markup types on this page.
12. Blogging
Starting a blog as a business or brand has many benefits for SEO. Here are a few important ones:
- Show personality: By telling engaging stories and sharing your thoughts, you can give your business or brand a unique voice and create a strong connection to your readers. Write about your mission, your values, and also about your vision and goals for the future.
- Become an industry leader: Use your blog to demonstrate your industry expertise and set yourself apart from the competition.
- Create opportunities: The more engaging content you create, the more content your followers can share, like, and comment on.
- Build relationships: Blogging is a great tool for building relationships. At the end of each post, remember to add a call to action (CTA) and invite people to interact with your content.
- Higher visibility: Google and its competitors love fresh content. Plus, the more content you create, the more keywords you will rank for.
- Links: Create high-quality content and you will earn natural links. This is also a great opportunity to build more internal links to your money pages.
13. Google Reviews
Google reviews appear right next to your GMB listing in Google Maps and the local search results. They draw attention and make your business stand out, making this one of our SEO tips.
They also provide additional information about your products and services and build lots of trust with potential customers or clients. Did you know that 93% of consumers say reviews have a direct influence on their buying decision when they purchase something online?
According to searchenginewatch.com, review signals make up roughly 10% of all ranking factors — something that should not be taken lightly.
Of course, only a happy client will leave a positive review for your business. So apart from doing everything that you can to satisfy your clients, here are three strategies that should help you get more four- and five-star reviews:
- Go out and ask for reviews. Depending on the nature of your business, this can happen in a face-to-face meeting, via automatic emails, or on the phone
- As mentioned earlier, with Google My Business, you can create a direct link for your customers to review and rate your business
- Don’t forget to respond to negative reviews
14. Facebook Ad Boost
Backlinks are what make our pages jump higher in the SERP, which is why we all want tons of links pointing to our site, right? One way to achieve this is by establishing a blog where you publish informative, yet engaging content on a regular basis.
But what can you do to make your link-building efforts more effective? It’s quite simple: boost your most popular and valuable posts on social media — first and foremost on Facebook.
By “boost” I mean set up a sponsored ad campaign and pay small amounts of money to get more engagement for your posts — and more importantly, traffic to your website.
If the content you are promoting is good enough, it will generate lots of natural inbound links from trustworthy sources, which is the most valuable type of link out there.
What’s great about Facebook ad campaigns is that you can set them up within minutes. All you need is an ad account to get started. Then you create one or more ads, define your target audience, and set a daily or lifetime budget — and that’s it. Time to get some links!
15. Get a Professional SEO Audit
There are many tools on the internet that can provide a technical SEO audit. Some tools are better than others when it comes to providing great insight into the issues your site is facing. These tools will reveal issues with things like robot.txt, broken links, WWW-resolve issues, 300/400/500 errors, and many more.
On the other hand, data without interpretation is useless, right? A professional audit can give you clear direction based on your unique goals and selling propositions. A good, professional audit will consist of analyzing the content on the site using keyword research to make sure the on-page optimization is right — This is a SEO tip we highly recommend.
Auditing backlink profiles can be a challenge if you’re only using tools like Ahref or SEMRush. We suggest getting a professional audit if you’re trying to take your SEO seriously. If you’re ready to get started, don’t hesitate to reach out, we offer complimentary SEO audits to help you start reaching your SEO goals!
BONUS:
CTAs
Adding a call to action, or CTA, to a page that gets a considerable amount of traffic doesn’t have a direct impact on SEO. But not including at least one CTA on that page is a waste of resources. Without it, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to win more customers.
Each site that already ranks in Google and each site that you want to rank in the future should contain a clear CTA or a “next step” to direct your visitors through your site.
Does this mean that you always have to add a button that points to the description page of a product in your e-commerce store? Should you always link to your SaaS subscription page? Of course not!
You could, for example, link to your newsletter signup form. You could encourage your readers to share your content on social media. You could ask for a review on Yelp or promote an upcoming event — just to name a few.
Be creative and try to imagine what could be the next step in your visitor’s journey. Then, take it a step further and start optimizing your content using keyword research. Learn how in this article.
