A primer for content marketers

Search engine optimization — three words you’ve probably heard a lot when running your business. But what is it? How does it work? And, most importantly, how do you achieve SEO success?

Stay tuned as I take you on a journey from the SEO fundamentals to must-know SEO strategies and tools to elevate the organic success of your business.

Part 1: SEO Fundamentals

What is SEO?

Before we dive in, let’s get up to speed on SEO’s definition.

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” At its most rudimentary level, SEO is the process of structuring and formatting your website to appear in search engine result pages (SERPs). Note, “search engine result pages” refers to organic (not paid) results.

The ultimate goal is to improve your website’s position in relevant SERPs and, ideally, reach that coveted number-one spot on the first page. The higher your site appears in search results, the more likely people are to see and visit it.

That’s the basic explanation of SEO. How it works is more complex.

How does SEO work?

When we talk about SEO, it’s often in the context of Google — mainly because Google is the leading search engine and has been for a long time. But SEO can refer to any search engine such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, as well as less conventional options like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where we see the line blur between search engine and social media platform.

Using Google as an example, here’s how SEO works from the search engine’s perspective:

Google’s algorithm for measuring SEO remains shrouded in mystery and, frustratingly, changes constantly. However, those in the SEO and content marketing industry have a thorough understanding of how it works.

Google’s algorithm crawls websites for content, indexes content it deems relevant, and then ranks its selections based on relevance and value.

The search engine uses over 200 factors to decide how to rank content. Most of those factors remain a secret, but we do know Google employs the following ranking factors:

• Query meaning
• Content relevance
• Content quality
• Topic expertise
• Web page usability
• Context (e.g., location)
• Content freshness

It’s assumed Google looks at your domain age, history, and owner when determining the quality of your site. In terms of page ranking, keywords are a strong indicator of content relevance and can influence organic performance, so make sure they appear in titles, subheadings, and throughout the content. Latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords, which are keywords semantically related to a topic, can also help search engines better understand what your content covers.

Additionally, longer content may perform better in organic search results: A study from Backlinko found the average first page result on Google contained 1,447 words. They also discovered the web pages that appeared in the number-one spot in SERPs received 3.8 times more backlinks than those in positions two through 10.

On a technical level, factors such as image optimization, canonical content, mobile-friendliness, content syndication, and user experience signals also impact your content’s ability to rank well in search results.

To understand how to create content that Google loves, I recommend reading Google Search Essentials. Ultimately, focus on crafting helpful, reliable, people-first content that’s crawlable, optimized, and in line with Google’s best practices.

Why does SEO matter?

SEO makes your site more visible in organic search results. In turn, greater visibility yields more opportunities to reach your target audience and convert them into customers and users.

Develop a strong SEO strategy to:

• Have your target audience discover your products/services
• Drive business growth
• Help your brand stand out from competitors
• Nurture leads throughout the customer journey
• Support other marketing channels and efforts

Search engine optimization is valuable for building brand awareness, nurturing relationships with prospects, and positioning your brand (or yourself) as an authority in your field. Organic search is how people find answers to their questions, so your brand needs to be visible in SERPs — otherwise, your target audience could miss you.

Different types of SEO

There are five types of SEO: The major three are on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. The remaining two are local SEO and, more recently, voice SEO.

On-page SEO

As the name suggests, on-page SEO focuses on the search engine optimization efforts on your site. You can optimize each page of your website for organic search to increase its ranking potential in SERPs.

Common on-page SEO tactics include optimizing keywords, titles, content, internal links, and formatting. Most content marketing best practices include on-page SEO strategies. This type also covers technical SEO, which I’ll dive into separately.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to any optimization efforts made outside your website. Optimizing for off-page ranking factors improves how people perceive your business’ trustworthiness, authority, and relevance.

This type of SEO can be harder to implement because it often involves channels and platforms that you have no control over, like social media.

Methods of off-page optimization include building reputable links to your website (backlink building), social media marketing, guest posts and guest blogging, and increasing brand mentions online.

Any online brand activity that isn’t on your website has the potential to benefit your off-page SEO. What’s more, on-page and off-page SEO tactics can complement each other to boost your organic performance.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is a subset of on-page SEO that focuses on improving the technical aspects of your website. You should direct your efforts toward strengthening site performance and making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.

Any technical SEO activity will usually begin with an audit. Then, you can identify which technical elements of your site or page need improvement. Aspects of technical SEO may include:

• Refining the sitemap and site architecture
• Fixing crawl errors
• Optimizing page speed
• Ensuring the site is mobile-friendly
• Adding structured data markup
• Resolving duplicate content issues

The specific tasks that’ll improve organic success will vary between sites and pages, which is why it’s best to start with a technical SEO audit.

Local SEO

Local SEO captures search engine optimization strategies that increase your business’s visibility in local search results. Any business that has a physical presence in or serves a specific geographic area should prioritize local SEO.

Google has several local search features such as the map pack and local news featured snippets. When optimizing the local presence of your website, focus on local SEO tactics such as:

• Claiming and optimizing your Google My Business listing
• Collecting customer reviews
• Ensuring NAP (name, address, and phone number) is consistent across the internet
• Listing your business in local directories
• Optimizing your site for localized queries and keywords

Everything you do for local SEO should focus on expanding visibility for your business in a particular geographic area.

Voice SEO

Voice search is the latest addition to the SEO family. Voice SEO refers to the optimization of keywords and queries for searches done using a voice assistant (such as Amazon Alexa).

Some ways you can adapt your site to accommodate voice search include:

• Adding up-to-date FAQs to your site
• Ensuring your site is mobile-friendly
• Using schema markup
• Creating content for conversational keywords and search queries
• Optimizing your site for local SEO

People typically use voice search to find information or products. As such, optimizing your site for voice search can drive sales for local businesses and augment your business’s visibility for informational content.

What is black hat and white hat SEO?

You might also hear people refer to “black hat” or “white hat” SEO. These are neither technical terms nor actual types of SEO. They relate to the method of SEO someone is using and whether it adheres to SEO best practices or employs underhanded tactics.

White hat SEO

White hat SEO means you only use ethical tactics and strategies. White hat SEO encompasses strategies that follow the understood search optimization best practices.

All of the SEO strategies we’ll talk about in this article are examples of white hat SEO tactics.

Black hat SEO

Black hat SEO refers to methods or strategies that are risky. While black hat SEO tactics might work, they often go against search engine guidelines and can hurt your business.

If you manipulate the search engine algorithm to improve your brand’s ranking, this is deceptive activity deemed black hat SEO. Other examples of black hat SEO tactics include:

• Link farms – A collection of sites that link to a target page for the sole purpose of improving SEO
• Cloaking – Presenting content to search engines that’s different from the content presented to users
• Doorway pages – Pages that only exist to improve rankings for specific keywords and that send visitors to another page
• Hidden text – Text or links in content that search engines can read, but site visitors can’t see
• Blog comment spam – Including links to your website in blog comments on other sites
• Fake reviews – Adding fake reviews to your site to mislead buyers and inflate your brand’s reputation and search visibility

Black hat SEO isn’t illegal but it is discouraged. Engaging in it could result in penalties against your site, which, in turn, would significantly lower your ranking. In the worst case scenario, search engines could delist your site or place it at a higher cybersecurity risk.

Gray hat SEO

Gray hat SEO sits between white and black hat SEO. It either uses a combination of white and black hat SEO strategies or SEO tactics that aren’t strictly against search engine guidelines but may fall outside of what’s considered best practice.

For example, if you published high-quality content (white hat SEO), then bought backlinks to that content (black hat SEO), that could be deemed a gray hat SEO strategy.

The following SEO tactics are also considered to be gray hat:

• Paid links
• Mass cold outreach for link building
• Paid reviews
• SEO squatting

To optimize your site for organic search, steer clear of black and gray hat SEO, as these methods will come back to bite you. Stick with white hat SEO strategies to drive results without engaging in deceptive or malicious activity.

There’s no such thing as a “quick win” in SEO. Just focus on the right tactics to succeed organically.

Part 2: How to build SEO into your content strategy

Now, let’s turn to how you can effectively build SEO into your content strategy.

In its simplest form, content marketing is the creation and distribution of useful, relevant, and engaging content for your audience without explicitly promoting your products or services. Think blog articles, podcasts, videos, social media posts, and online events, to name but a few popular content formats. Through content marketing, you can generate brand awareness, nurture stronger customer and stakeholder relationships, and ensure your brand is top of mind when shoppers are ready to buy.

Content marketing is powerful on its own, but add SEO into the mix, and your results can increase exponentially. With an SEO-led content strategy, you can craft content that both your audience and Google love.

Let’s dive into the steps of building a high-yield SEO content strategy.

The main stages of SEO

You can’t write a blog post and then optimize it for SEO later; you need to incorporate SEO into your content strategy from the beginning. The best way to do that is to lead with keyword research.

Once you’ve conducted this research, you can start creating content. Then, it’s time to tighten all aspects of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO to ensure your content truly shines.

Start with keywords

Google (and other search engines) crawl your site for keywords. They allow search engines to understand your content — what it’s about and who to serve it to.

Google’s “How Search Works” report highlights the importance of keywords for SEO:

If you want to produce content that Google and your audience love, start with keywords.

Keywords are the words and phrases people use when searching for things online. Because they’re derived from search queries, inserting them into your content can improve its chances of appearing in relevant search results.

However, there are a few concepts to cover before you begin to craft content around them.

Long-tail versus short-tail keywords

First, you should be able to recognize the difference between long- and short-tail keywords.

Short-tail keywords, also known as seed keywords or head terms, are broad search queries that usually consist of one or two words. “Cake,” “eCommerce,” and “running shoes” are all examples of short-tail keywords. 

Alone, these search queries are vague; they tell us nothing about the intent behind the search. They do, however, have a high number of monthly searches and competition, which suggests they’re popular search queries.

Meanwhile, long-tail keywords are more specific, so they also tend to be longer. Some long-tail keywords using the examples above could be:

• “Chocolate fudge cake recipe”
• “Best eCommerce platform”
• “Running shoes for overpronation”

With long-tail keywords, it’s easier to detect the intent behind the keyword, meaning you have a better idea of what the user is searching for. As they’re more specific, long-tail keywords typically have fewer monthly searches than their short-tail counterparts. Additionally, long-tail keywords may be less competitive, making them easier to rank for.

Take “running shoes for overpronation” for example: This keyword has 2,400 monthly searches, much lower than “running shoes” alone, which has a monthly search volume of 246,000.

The “overpronation” qualifier makes it clear that search results for this query are designed to solve a particular problem. As such, search results for “running shoes for overpronation” include detailed guides highlighting the best shoes for people struggling with overpronation.

Whereas, the search query “running shoes” tends to return product listing pages for running shoes. The long-tail keyword is more informational, which lends itself well to blog content.

Focus on identifying valuable long-tail keywords for your niche, as you’ll likely achieve greater success ranking for these keywords.

Zero search volume keywords

Along with short- and long-tail keywords, there are zero search volume keywords.

Search volume indicates the number of monthly searches a query earns. So, it’s understandable to think a keyword with a search volume of zero is worthless. But that’s not the case — zero search volume keywords present an invaluable opportunity for your brand.

These keywords are hyper-focused long-tail search queries. Because zero search volume keywords are so specific and infrequently searched, SEO tools have a hard time collecting data on their search history. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t searching; on the contrary, the people searching for those keywords know exactly what they’re looking for.

As a result, zero search volume keywords can give your brand a unique advantage by answering your audience’s hyper-focused queries.

So, when conducting keyword research, implement zero search volume keywords as your brand’s secret ingredient for surpassing the competition.

How to find keywords

All good keyword research begins with a topic. Study your niche to determine which topics are highly valuable and relevant to both your brand and your customers.

Once you’ve made a list, adopt a keyword research tool.

SEMRush and Ahrefs both include intuitive keyword research tools in their SEO software.

Head to your preferred tool and input your topics as the seed keywords.

From there, you’ll be presented with an array of related keywords. Sift through the results and extract any keywords that seem relevant to your brand and audience.

Be sure to note the keyword search volume and difficulty score to help you determine:

1. How often the keyword is searched for (and whether it’s short or long tail)
2. How competitive the keyword is (and how hard it’ll be to rank for)

Repeat the exercise including words such as “how,” “why,” and “guide” with your keyword to discover more ideas for your brand. The deeper you dig into your chosen topics, the more keyword ideas you’ll find.

Tip: Reverse-engineer competitor sites to uncover even more keyword opportunities.

Create SEO content

Once you have your keywords, you’re ready to move on to content creation.

Go through your refined keyword list and review the search results for each keyword. When checking SERPs in real time, use an incognito browser to prevent your personal activity from interfering with the results.

Analyze the results for each keyword to determine what type of content ranks well and whether your brand could compete in that topic.

Look at the search intent of your chosen keywords too. Search intent tells you the purpose of an online search and falls into one of four categories:

1. Informational intent – Someone wants to find out more about a particular topic (e.g., “how to run”)
2. Navigational intent – Someone is searching for something from a specific site or brand (e.g., “brandname.com”)
3. Commercial intent – Someone who knows what they want but is still researching (e.g., “best running shoes”)
4. Transactional intent – Someone who knows what they want and is ready to purchase (e.g., “nike pegasus running shoes”)

The search intent informs you what type of content you should create when targeting that keyword.

Take note of competitor performance too: Where do your competitors appear in search results? What type of content do they share? Could you do better?

Pick out keywords where you see potential to produce high-quality content and work these into your content strategy. Then, write a content brief for the chosen keyword, outlining:

• Suggested title
• Primary keyword
• Any related or secondary keywords
• Internal or external links that should be included
• Target audience
• Estimated word count
• Similar content that ranks well for your targeted keywords
• Outline of the content structure and format
• Any topics or subtopics to be covered

A writer should be able to take your brief and write unique, high-quality content that has the potential to perform well organically.

Bonus: Check expertise for YMYL content

Depending on the industry you’re in, you should also be aware of YMYL content, which stands for “Your Money or Your Life.” Despite the slightly sinister undertone, this is simply Google’s way of defining pages or topics that could “significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people, or the welfare or well-being of society.”

Content that deals with these topics can have serious implications on a searcher’s life, so it should be expertly crafted. Demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) when writing for these topics. While E-A-T may not be a direct SEO ranking factor, Google highlights it as an important element in evaluating the quality of search results, especially for YMYL topics.

Follow on-page SEO best practices

The content brief should enable the writer to produce a strong, SEO-informed piece — as long as you’ve included the relevant information to guide their writing.

But it involves more than producing a block of text on a chosen topic; you also need to consider the different types of SEO. On-page SEO is crucial when writing SEO-led content.

Implement keywords appropriately

Make sure your chosen keywords are incorporated correctly while staying mindful of keyword density. Use too many keywords and you could fall into the trap of “keyword stuffing”; use too few, and Google might struggle to see the relevancy of your content.

You need to find the sweet spot. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to apply keywords as naturally as possible throughout your content. If you’re writing on a hyper-focused topic, you should have no problem having keywords appear organically in your content.

Then, comb over your content and make sure the keyword, or semantically related keywords, appears in the title, heading and subheadings, throughout the content, in the meta description, and any media ALT text (where relevant, of course).

Write compelling meta descriptions

A meta description is the snippet of text, up to 160 characters long, that appears under your result in SERPs.

Compelling meta descriptions have the power to increase the click-through rate of your organic search results by encouraging people to click on your result over competitors’. When writing new content for your site, take time to craft the description carefully. Make it unique and be sure to include your focus keyword.

Use headings and subheadings correctly

Headings help people and search engines read and understand your content. Poor headings and subheadings could indirectly damage your content’s SEO.

There are six types of headings, H1 through H6. H1 is the main heading, or headline, of the content and is typically your page title. Any subtopics underneath this will fall into subheadings, ranging from H2 to H6. Both Google and real users read subheadings to understand the content that follows, so make sure yours are representative of the ensuing information.

Create SEO-friendly URLs

URLs optimized for SEO tend to be short but rich in keywords. People should be able to glance at the URL and quickly understand what the content is about. Although you’re unable to change the domain of the URL, you can change the URL slug, which is the last part of the string used to represent the website page.

For example, the URL slug for a 5K running guide could simply be “/5k-running-guide.” Anyone who sees that URL could hazard a good guess at what they’ll discover if they click on the link.

In their SEO Starter Guide, Google states the importance of URLs to ensure search engines find your content.

When writing SEO-led content, remember to check and optimize the URL as well.

Optimize images

Improving on-page SEO isn’t restricted to text-based content; you should also optimize any images that appear. Images are a great way to break up text and make long-form content more engaging and easier to read. 

They also present rich SEO opportunities: Optimize images for organic search by choosing smaller file sizes, such as opting for the JPG format over PNG. Make sure you apply the best image size for your intended use as well.

Fine-tune your technical SEO

Besides on-page elements, there’s plenty of work to be done behind the scenes to improve your organic performance.

Before publishing your content, make sure you fine-tune any technical SEO elements. Additionally, you should look for opportunities to:

• Use structured data for rich snippets – Help Google better understand your content and increase your chances of securing featured snippets by using structured data.

• Be mindful of canonicalization – Use canonicals appropriately to prevent duplicate content issues and help search engines identify the original content. This is especially important if you plan to reuse existing content for guest posts.

• Improve the page experience – Make sure content loads quickly and is user-friendly by improving the page experience (i.e., responsive, visually stable, adheres to mental models, etc.).

• Make your content mobile-friendly – Adapt your content to mobile devices to improve the page experience and increase its ranking potential.

• Clean up your content – Improve the technical quality of your content by fixing broken links, minimizing redirect chains, removing slow-loading elements, etc.

Technical SEO is no easy feat but it plays a crucial role in your overall organic performance. Prioritize technical SEO to increase the chances of your content ranking well organically.

Think about off-page SEO

Some SEO opportunities can only be secured when you move beyond your site. So, incorporate off-page SEO improvements into your content strategy. Backlinks, guest blogging, social media activity, and influencer marketing all contribute to your off-page SEO success.

Add internal and external links to on-site content

When creating content to publish on your site, incorporate both internal and external links. Internal links connect related content and build a hub-and-spoke model.

As for external links, use them to connect your content to other relevant and authoritative sources. If you reference any statistics or research in your content, find the original source and make sure you link to it. Any external links added will help search engines determine your content’s quality, usefulness, and relevance. Linking to reputable sites will also make your site appear more credible than if you link to low-quality content.

Build backlinks to your content

Backlinks, also known as inbound links or incoming links, refer to any external links that point to your site. Building backlinks should be at the core of any off-page SEO strategy.

Search engines see backlinks as votes of confidence for the page they link to. If another site links to your page, that tells Google they deem your site to be trustworthy. Google cares about your off-site reputation, so make sure you construct quality links to your site from reputable sources.

Look for opportunities to share your opinion, experience, or thoughts on other websites. Platforms such as HARO (Help a Reporter Out) provide opportunities for you to be featured in other people’s content. In return for your expertise and insights, you’ll be mentioned in an external article and often receive a backlink to your site. Including original research in your content will also increase shareability, encouraging people to link back to your research in their articles and posts.

If you write guest posts to be published on other platforms include links that lead back to your website. Rather than sending people to your home page, try to insert URLs that direct people to related content they may find interesting. 

Alternatively, you could analyze your competitor’s backlink profiles to see which publications you might be able to gain backlinks from too.

The best way to build backlinks, however, is simply to write high-quality content worth sharing. Focus on creating the best content for your chosen topic. Make it so good that people can’t help but share it far and wide.

Distribute content on social media

When building a strong off-page SEO strategy, don’t neglect social media. Distributing your content across social media encourages engagement and shares and could work wonders for its organic performance.

Much like backlinks, social media reshares aid your content’s credibility. With that said, Google explicitly states social signals do not influence organic rankings. However, those social shares could indirectly improve off-page SEO by attracting more eyes to your content and increasing branded mentions on external sites.

Note that publishing content can’t happen in silos. Whenever you create new content for your brand, prioritize the on-page, off-page, and technical SEO activity to emphasize your content’s ranking potential.

Part 3: How to measure SEO performance

Strong SEO is methodical and based on data and analysis. Any action you take should have thorough research behind it. Determine your goals and what value the planned SEO activity will bring.

The same practice applies to your content too. After you’ve published SEO-led content, measure its performance and identify any opportunities for improvement. Setting measurable goals and KPIs will produce a detailed review of the success of your SEO activity.

Below are some ways you can measure your content’s SEO performance.

Check keyword rankings in SERPs

Where your content ranks in SERPs for relevant keywords is an obvious indicator of its performance. Use a keyword monitoring tool to keep tabs on your keyword rankings and how these fluctuate over time. Be sure to monitor competitor activity as well to learn from their successes and failures.

Monitor impressions in Google Search Console

Every time your content shows up in search results, it counts as an impression in Google Search Console. The higher your page ranks in search results, the higher your impressions are likely to be. Monitoring impressions is a great way to check the effectiveness of the keywords you’re trying to rank for and determine which ones are most valuable for drawing the right eyes to your content.

Analyze organic search traffic

Use a website analytics tool like Google Analytics to analyze incoming organic search traffic. Keep a close eye on your organic search traffic to help you spot any issues with your search presence (such as a sudden drop in activity), recognize opportunities to improve underperforming content, and identify the strongest pages in your content strategy.

Track click-through rates

Measure how many people click through to your website after discovering your content in search results. Tracking click-through rates (CTRs) will help determine how relevant your content is to searchers. If people aren’t clicking through, it could be a sign your result in SERPs fails to meet people’s expectations for that search query, or that there are other factors preventing people from clicking through to your site (e.g., they can find their answer in featured snippets or your result ranks low for that keyword).

Review your bounce rate

Bounce rate measures the percentage of single-engagement visits to your site. A bounce rate of 100%, for example, would mean everyone who visits your site leaves without viewing any more pages. A high bounce rate indicates a possible issue with your content. Perhaps people land on your page but don’t find what they wanted, which suggests your content isn’t relevant to the targeted search query. 

Alternatively, a high bounce rate could be a sign your content has a poor user experience, causing people to leave without interacting further, or that you’re falling victim to bot spam. Any case of a high bounce rate should be investigated to understand why it’s occurring and fix the problem.

Monitor domain authority

Domain authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz to determine how likely a site is to rank in SERPs. High-quality and reputable sites have a higher DA score. A website’s backlink profile most significantly impacts DA, so tracking your DA score over time can be a good indication of your link-building activity and whether it has positively affected your organic performance.

Diagnose site health

Site health refers to your site’s performance across the structure, speed, security, and technical SEO elements. You can measure site health using Google Lighthouse or an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. Check site health to understand your site’s technical performance and spot any potential concerns or identify technical aspects that need fine-tuning. 

You have a variety of metrics to choose from to measure SEO performance. The ones you choose will depend on your goals, priorities, and strategy. However, the above metrics are a good starting point to gain a basic understanding of your SEO performance.

Part 4: Popular SEO tools

To obtain the best results from your SEO activity, equip yourself with a stack of reliable SEO tools. Here are some popular options I recommend exploring.

Google Search Console – Part of the Google product suite, Google Search Console is a free tool that lets you monitor your site’s search traffic and performance and identify any issues.

Semrush – Semrush is an SEO platform for conducting keyword research, measuring performance, and analyzing competitor activity, among other uses.

Ahrefs – Similar to Semrush, Ahrefs is an SEO tool that analyzes websites’ keyword rankings, SEO health, and link profiles.

Moz – Moz is a great SEO tool for smaller businesses that want to monitor their SEO performance across their link profile and technical SEO activity.

ContentKing – ContentKing is a real-time SEO auditing tool that lets you track your website performance 24/7 so you can catch any changes or issues as soon as they happen.

AnswerThePublic – AnswerThePublic is a search listening tool with a free tier that helps you identify new content opportunities based on popular search queries related to your chosen keyword.

Sitebulb – Sitebulb is an intuitive website crawler with an impressive free version that can provide deep SEO data insights. Use Sitebulb to audit your site’s current SEO performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

Google Trends – Google Trends is a free tool that uses Google search insights to showcase the popularity of search queries. Employ Google Trends to understand keyword popularity over time.

Keywords Everywhere – Keywords Everywhere is a freemium Chrome browser extension that lets you see keyword metrics such as monthly search volume, competition, and 12-month trend data directly in SERPs.

Screaming Frog – Similar to Sitebulb, Screaming Frog is a desktop website crawler that can help you conduct an SEO audit on small or large websites to identify technical SEO opportunities easily.

PageSpeed Insights – PageSpeed Insights is a free Google Developers tool that reports on a page’s user experience across both mobile and desktop devices. Leverage PageSpeed Insights to measure site performance and identify elements that impact the page experience for users.

Wrapping up —  Put your SEO knowledge into action

SEO is a continuous learning experience. From Google algorithm changes to shifting markets and competitor landscapes, it requires constant attention to maintain top-notch performance.

Keep a curious mind and question every metric. Any SEO activity you undertake should be data-backed or, at the very least, tested so you can be confident in the impact it’ll have.

Whether you’re just beginning your SEO journey or you’ve been on it for a while, make sure you stay up to date with the latest developments while heeding the fundamentals of SEO best practices. This balance will give your content the greatest chances of ranking well.

Published May 4, 2015
Updated December 8, 2022