The 17 Most Important SEO Tips for Higher Rankings
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The 17 Most Important SEO Tips for Higher Rankings

Brian Dean

Written by Brian Dean

The 17 Most Important SEO Tips for Higher Rankings

Today youโ€™re going to see the 17 most important SEO tips that you need to know.

And these tips actually work.

In fact:

These SEO tips have helped me get #1 ranking for keywords like โ€œbest keyword research toolsโ€:

And โ€œoff page seoโ€:

So whether youโ€™re new to SEO, or a seasoned veteran, I hope you get a lot of value from the techniques in this post.

Here are the 17 most important SEO tips to follow when optimizing your website:

1. Use Keywords In The Right Places

You probably already know that you should add keywords to pages that you want to rank.

Use your target keyword in your content

But where you use your keywords is just as important as how many times you use them.

Specifically, you want to make sure that your keyword appears at least once in your pageโ€™s title tag.

Include your keyword in your title tag

Webpage URL:

Include your keyword once in your URL

And in the first 100 words of your content.

Include your keyword in the first 100 words of your page

For example, I have a page on my site thatโ€™s optimized around the keyword: โ€œcopywritingโ€.

And I made sure to add that exact term in those key places.

Keyword in URL, title and intro

If you want to get more advanced with your on-page SEO, I recommend checking out this video.

And once you finished with the video, check out the rest of the SEO tips in this post…

2. Keep Users On Your Site Longer

Hereโ€™s the truth:

Pogostickingย can make or break your Google rankings.

So: what is pogosticking exactly?

Pogosticking is when a Google user clicks on your siteโ€ฆ

…then โ€œpogosticksโ€ back to the search results to find something that actually helps them.

Pogosticking

And when someone pogosticks, it sends a strong message to Google: โ€œI didnโ€™t like that result.โ€

Needless to say: if your site doesnโ€™t make users happy, Google will downrank you.

Downranking

The question is:

How do you keep users on your site longer?

Use lots of bullets and subheadings.

When your content is easy to read, people will spend more time on your site.

(It also stops them from hitting their โ€œbackโ€ button.)

As it turns out, bullets and subheadings make your content MUCH easier to read:

Bullets and subheadings in post

This leads us to our next tip…

3. Find โ€œSuggestโ€ Keywords

You probably already know that you can use Google Suggest to find long tail keywords:

Google search – Link building – Suggestions

But what you may not know is that you can use this same approach with OTHER search engines.

Like Wikipedia:

Wikipedia Suggest

YouTube:

YouTube suggest

And yes, even Bing:

Bing Suggest

4. Delete Zombie Pages

Zombie pages are pages on your site that donโ€™t bring in any traffic.

Theyโ€™re just sorta…there.

And when you delete Zombie Pages, you can get higher rankings and more Google traffic.

In fact:

One ecommerce site saw a 31% boost in search engine traffic (not to mention a 28% increase in revenue) when they โ€œprunedโ€ 11k product pages.

Google Analytics – Screenshot of traffic

And theyโ€™re not alone.

Proven.com saw their organic search traffic increase by 88.3% after deleting 40 thousand Zombie Pages from their site:

Proven.com – Traffic Increase

Why does this strategy work?

Well, Google doesnโ€™t want to rank sites that are bloated with thin, low-quality content.

In fact:

Google stated that they prefer โ€œone stronger page versus many smaller pagesโ€:

Google prefers one stronger page

This is something I pay A LOT of attention to here at Backlinko.

To date, Iโ€™ve published 196 posts on this blog.

Backlinko – Published posts

And those 196 posts generate 360k+ search engine visits per month.

Backlinko – Organic traffic

5. Do An Industry Study

Whatโ€™s the best way to get backlinks from authority blogs and news sites in your niche?

An industry study.

In fact, BuzzSumo found that publishing an industry study can bring you a ton of traffic, social media shares, and mentions in the press.

BuzzSumo – Industry study benefits

A while ago I noticed that lots of SEO blogs were talking about voice search.

Voice search is a popular topic

But I also noticed that these posts gave out SEO tips for voice searchโ€ฆ without any data or research to back them up.

So we decided to do the first large-scale voice search SEO study.

Backlinko – Voice search SEO study

How did this content do?

This post has generated 5.6K backlinks.

Voice search SEO study – Backlinks

The best part?

I didn’t need to do a ton of outreach to get these links.

Because my content provides bloggers and journalists with dataโ€ฆ

Voice search data

…they reference (and link to) my content automatically.

Voice search study – Referenced

Sweet!

Thereโ€™s a lot more to on-page SEO than: โ€œmake sure to include your keyword a few times on your page.โ€

(Although thatโ€™s important too.)

To rank in Google today, you also need to add synonyms and other related keywords to your content.

Why?

Something called Google Hummingbird.

Search Engine Land – Google Hummingbird FAQ

Googleโ€™s Hummingbird update allows Google to go beyond simple keywords. Instead, they try to understand the topic of your page.

Keyword bubble

(Kind of like how a human would.)

So:

How do you optimize your content for Hummingbird?

Include variations of your main keyword in your content.

To do that, just search for your target keyword in Google…

Google search – "content marketing"

…and scroll down to the bottom of the search results.

Add a few โ€œSearches related to…โ€ terms to your content.

Google SERP – Related searches

7. Add Text to Infographics, Podcasts and Videos

Yes, visual content (like infographics and podcasts) is an awesome way to get traffic and backlinks.

But they have one big problem:

Google canโ€™t understand โ€™em!

Thatโ€™s why I recommend adding plenty of text to go along with your infographic, podcast or video.

For example, hereโ€™s an infographic that I published on my site some time ago:

On-page SEO – Infographic

But I didnโ€™t stop there.

As you can see, I also added lots of high-quality content underneath my infographic.

On-page SEO – Content under infographic

And this text content helped search engines understand what my infographic was all about.

8. Update Old Pages

Do you have a bunch of blog posts on your site collecting dust?

If so, you can probably improve your rankings by updating that post.

Let me show you how this works with a real-life exampleโ€ฆ

Few years ago, I noticed that this post from my blog wasnโ€™t performing as well as Iโ€™d hoped.

SEO Checklist – Old

Despite the fact that the content was really good…

…my page was bouncing between the first and second page for my target keyword: โ€œSEO Checklistโ€.

SEO Checklist – SERPs change

Not good.

So I decided to give this post a major update and upgrade.

Specifically, I added more external links to authority sites:

SEO checklist – External links

I also organized the content into sections to make the steps easier to follow:

SEO checklist – Post sections

And wrote a new title and description:

SEO checklist – New title and description

(Note: As long as you publish your updated content on the same URL, you donโ€™t need to worry about duplicate content.)

And those 3 simple changes quickly shot my page up to the top of Google for my target keyword:

Google SERP – SEO checklist

Which led to a BIG bump in that pageโ€™s search engine traffic:

SEO checklist – Traffic jump

9. Speed Up Your Website

Having a slow website can hurt your Google rankings. Googleโ€™s โ€œSpeed Updateโ€ specifically downranks pages that load slowly on mobile devices.

Page speed in mobile search

This is why you want to eliminate anything that slows down your page speed.

Well, we ran a large-scale page speed study.

Backlinko – Page speed stats

And we found that, in many cases, using a CDN actually hurts loading speed.

Use of CDN correlates with worse desktop page speed

So if you do use a CDN, I recommend testing your website speed with it turned on and off.

We also discovered that 3rd party scripts (like Facebookโ€™s pixel) slow things down significantly.

Third-party scripts negatively impact page load times

You can see all of the 3rd party scripts on your site using a tool like BuiltWith.com.

Builtwith report for Backlinko

And if you find any scripts that arenโ€™t super important, delete them.

10. Use the Google Search Console

This is one of my favorite SEO tips to improve SEO.

Hereโ€™s how it works:

First, login to the Google Search Console.

And head over to the Performance Report:

Google Search Console – Search performance report

Next, hit โ€œPagesโ€.

This will show you which pages bring you the most traffic.

Google Search Console – Performance – Pages

Hereโ€™s where things get interesting:

If you click on one of the pages, you can see all of the keywords that page already ranks for.

Google Search Console – Page queries

And if you dig deep, youโ€™ll find LOTS of keywords that you didnโ€™t even know you were ranking for.

For example, when I ran this report on this page from my site, I found 3 keywords that I had no clue I was ranking for.

Three surprise keywords

Why is this important?

Well, if Iโ€™m ranking for these 3 keywords by accident, imagine if I actually tried!

So to get more traffic from those search queries, Iโ€™d just need to sprinkle those terms into my post.

And now that Google sees those keywords in my content, theyโ€™re probably going to boost my rankings for those search terms.

Sprinkled keywords

Easy peasy.

11. Create Content Around Shoulder Niches

Publishing high-quality content is one of the most important SEO tips.

But what if youโ€™re in a so-called โ€œboringโ€ niche? Isnโ€™t it impossible to create content that people will link to or share on social media?

Fortunately not.

All you need to do is create content around โ€œShoulder Nichesโ€.

Shoulder Niches are closely-related topics that you can easily create awesome content around.

For example, Mike Bonadio used Shoulder Niches to boost his clientโ€™s organic traffic by 15%:

Mike Bonadio client traffic increase

How did he do it?

Well, Mike was in a niche that couldnโ€™t be more boring: pest control.

Now, you might be wondering:

โ€œHow do you create an interesting piece of content about pest control?โ€

You donโ€™t.

Instead, go after closely-related niches that are actually interesting.

(In other words: โ€œShoulder Nichesโ€.)

In fact, thatโ€™s what Mike did:

Mike Bonadio shoulder niches

And this ultimately led him to create an excellent infographic on the related topic of: โ€œpest control for gardenersโ€.

infographic animated gif

Because Mikeโ€™s infographic got featured on a handful of authority blogsโ€ฆ

descriptive anchor text

…his clientโ€™s traffic skyrocketed:

Google Analytics referral traffic

12. Get Backlinks From Your Visual Assets

In a perfect world, website owners would link back to you when they use your chart, visualization, or infographic.

But we donโ€™t live in a perfect world.

On the bright side, Iโ€™ve found that most people are happy to link to you when given a friendly nudge.

So if you tend to publish a lot of visual content, spend an afternoon executing this technique.

And I can almost guarantee that youโ€™ll come away with a handful of backlinks.

Here are the exact steps:

First, find a visual asset on your site.

For example, hereโ€™s the on-page SEO infographic that I mentioned earlier:

On-page SEO – Infographic

Then, right click and โ€œcopy image addressโ€…

Copy image address

…and paste the filename into Google โ€œSearch by imageโ€.

Google – Search by image URL

And youโ€™ll get a complete list of sites that use your image.

Google SERP – Pages that include image

Now itโ€™s a matter of finding pages that used your image on their contentโ€ฆ but didnโ€™t link to you:

Infographic without link

Finally, send them a friendly email asking them to add a link to the original source (you).

Brian's outreach email – Infographics

13. Create Branded Keywords

Guestographics.

The Skyscraper Technique.

The Content Upgrade.

These are all terms that I coined.

And because of that fact, I rank on the first page of Google for all of them.

Google SERP – Branded keywords

Thatโ€™s why I highly recommend creating your own terms.

How?

First, develop a strategy, technique, process or concept thatโ€™s unique to you.

This sounds hard.

But it really isnโ€™t.

All you need to do is take something that already existsโ€ฆ and add a twist.

For example, a while back I noticed that lots of people were building links from guest posting.

So I simply added a twist where you pitch an infographic instead of a traditional guest post.

Brian's infographics pitch

Next, give it a name.

This is more of an art than a science.

But in general, you want the name to be:

  • Short
  • Easy to pronounce
  • Easy to remember
  • Unique
  • Descriptive

For example, when I started guest posting with infographics, I combined โ€œguest postingโ€ and โ€œinfographicsโ€ into one term: Guestographics.

Finally, get the word out.

This is key.

For your term to catch on, you need to promote it like crazy.

In my case, I published a case study of Guestographics in action.

Backlinko – How to get backlinks

Then, a few months later, I published ANOTHER case study:

SEO Strategy – Post

I also made sure to mention โ€œGuestographicsโ€ in interviews:

Guestographics mention

It took a few months to catch on.

But before I knew it, LOTS of people were writing about Guestographics.

Guestographics examples

And whenever someone talks about that technique, they link to me. ๐Ÿ™‚

Ninja Outreach – Infographics and guestographics

14. Add โ€œWhat is Xโ€ Definitions to Blog Content

This is one of the most important SEO tips that people tend to overlook.

Hereโ€™s how it works:

When someone searches for a high-level term (like โ€œsearch engine optimizationโ€), theyโ€™re usually looking for a definition.

And as Ross Hudgens points out, results on the first page of Google for definition terms tend to answer the question: โ€œWhat is X?โ€.

For example:

If you do a search for โ€œinbound marketingโ€, 2 of the top 3 results answer the question: โ€œWhat is inbound marketing?:

Google SERP – Inbound marketing

So if youโ€™re gunning for a definition keyword, make at least some of your content focused on answering the question: โ€œWhat is X?โ€.

Thatโ€™s why I always include a โ€œWhat is Xโ€ section whenever I target definition keywords:

What are backlinks

Youโ€™ve probably noticed more and more Featured Snippets in the SERPs:

Featured Snippets in the SERPs

And if youโ€™re like me, youโ€™re asking yourself: โ€œHow can I get my content in the Featured Snippet?โ€

Fortunately, thereโ€™s no need to guess.

SEMrush did a massive Featured Snippet study (they analyzed a whopping 80 million keywords).

Featured Snippet study

And they found that adding a Q&A section to your content works really well for grabbing the Featured Snippet spot.

For example:

This page on my site is optimized around the keyword โ€œChannel Descriptionโ€.

Channel Description – YouTube Marketing Hub

Like any good piece of content on this topic, it has lots of helpful tips on writing a YouTube channel description:

Channel Description – Helpful tips

But I also made sure to include โ€œSnippet Baitโ€ in the form of a short Q&A section:

Q & A section

And it worked!

Google SERP – Channel description – Featured snippet

Bottom line?

If you want to get your content to show up in the Featured Snippet spot, try โ€œSnippet Baitโ€.

16. Find More Guest Post Opportunities

Hereโ€™s a simple SEO tip that will help you find sites to guest post on.

First, find someone in your niche that tends to guest post a lot.

Larry Kim guest posting on Inc.

Second, grab their headshot (you can usually find this on their LinkedIn profile) and pop it into Googleโ€™s reverse image search.

Voila! You can see everywhere theyโ€™ve guest posted:

Larry Kim – Reverse Image Search Page Results

And you can use the same process to find interview opportunities (like podcasts).

In fact, podcasts might be the most underrated link building strategy on the planet.

Why?

Well, itโ€™s 10x easier to hop on a podcast than pitch, write, edit and publish a guest post.

And just like with a guest post, you get a sweet link back to your site (in the show notes):

Interviewed On Podcast

Unfortunately, finding podcasts can be a chore.

That is unless you use Google reverse image search:

Google SERP – Rand Fishkin podcasts

Bingo!

17. Improve Your Organic CTR

When you improve your organic click-through rate more people will click on your site in the search results.

Clicking in SERPs

This means you can get more traffic… without needing higher rankings.

When we analyzed millions of Google search results to learn more about Googleโ€™s CTR, we found that using question title tags significantly boosted CTR.

Organic CTR of question titles .vs. Non-question titles

So whenever it makes sense, I recommend using a question in your pageโ€™s title.

Hereโ€™s a real-life example:

Question in title tag

Did I Miss Anything?

Now Iโ€™d like to hear from you:

Which strategy from todayโ€™s post are you going to try first?

Or maybe I didnโ€™t mention one of your favorite SEO tips.

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

573 Comments

  1. This is simply the best list I have ever seen, Great work Brian!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Paul

  2. Hi Brian,

    These are amazing tips. I am going to try all of them next month and will see how much success I get.

    Thanks for your insight. You always amaze me and keep me coming back for more. ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Tim. Keep me posted.

  3. Andrew Avatar Andrewsays:

    Awesome work Brian! I’m going to be implementing these tips wherever I can.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Andrew. Keep me posted on how they work out for you.

  4. Brian, this is a hell of a content!

    Congrats!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Nacho. That’s what I was going for.

  5. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

    Very cool, Asher.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      100 hours?! That’s no joke. This one took “only” 25.

      Does that 100 hour count also include promotion? Or just writing the post?

      1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

        It definitely has, Asher. Nice job.

    1. Awesome Asher, about to dive into your piece to check it out! Very impressive from first impressions. Quick question, where does most of the readership come from for the article (country)? Cheers

      1. Great piece, Asher! I work for a travel marketing company and just shared your piece with a bunch of my colleagues.

        Brian, I’ve been sharing your work around the office for a while now.

      1. Hey Asher, just published a piece thanks to your travel guide. It’s not as good as yours and got a lot of ideas from yours, but of course it’s not in direct competition ๐Ÿ™‚

        About to get started on the out reach part, wholly smokes it’s a big job.
        Brian, time to get all them backlinks thanks to you!

  6. This is why you are the boss, Brian. Bookmarked this post. I know for sure that I’ll be playing around here often ๐Ÿ˜€

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Raul. Let me know if you notice any tips that I forgot about.

      1. I would say you could add the following on your ‘on-page optimization’:
        Speed up your website by compressing your images, HTML, Javascript and CSS.

        I ‘always’ do this. It takes just a few minutes and it makes your website so much faster.

        Some tools you could use:
        Kraken.io for image compressing (I find this one the best by far). For compressing HTML, Javascript and CSS, just search for “HTML compressor”. They’re all pretty much equally efficient.

        I hope this helps ๐Ÿ™‚

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Thanks Raul. I actually have Kraken on there. But I’ll look into HTML compression. Great suggestion.

  7. Amazing. Well organizde and very practical. Thank you Brian.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Heidi. Glad you liked it.

  8. Brian, it is always a pleasure to read your posts. If there is a source to a huge number of information, its Backlinko. Congrats on that post. Its realy huge but it is still readable. Good work.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Ralf

  9. Massive dude. Will take a while to get through it all ๐Ÿ˜‰

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Glen. That it will. It’s 4k+ words. Even longer than a viperchill post ๐Ÿ™‚

      Would love to know what you think or if I missed anything. You’re one of the few peeps in SEO that I know and respect.

  10. Andy Drinkwater Avatar Andy Drinkwatersays:

    *insert expletive here* me, that is one HUGE post Brian!

    As you can imagine, not been through these as yet but know it will be sterling work ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      HA! Thanks Andy. No rush. The post isn’t going anywhere

  11. Daniel Ndukwu Avatar Daniel Ndukwusays:

    Thanks Brian, great post as always. I’ve taken to short URLs in my posts as well (think I copied on that one middle of last year).
    Anyways, what do you say about using stop phrases in URLS like “an” and “your.” Would it negatively impact SEO or doesn’t really matter?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Daniel. I’d say that stop words don’t help…and might hurt (a little). But we’re talking <0.01% or something.

      I actually use short URLs mostly for UX...not SEO. It makes your content easier to share

      1. Daniel Ndukwu Avatar Daniel Ndukwusays:

        really now? Thanks for that. I’ll keep it in mind. I think I have a few stop words that need changing.

        Stay awesome

  12. Amazing, once again Brian Dean. I’ve been using all of your tips, especially your 17 Backlinking tips and I’ve seen huge success. You’re the man, and I’m a huge fan. Thanks for this awesome content. This must have taken a long time to make and I really appreciate it.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Jesse. You’re right: this was a monster post that took a while. But hopefully it will help lots of people get higher rankings. So it’s worth it!

  13. Vishal Avatar Vishalsays:

    Wow Brian. Just, f**king.. WOW!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Vishal, you’re the third person that swore already. I must have done something right with this post ๐Ÿ˜€

  14. Definitely the greatest and most up to date SEO guide for this year. Thanks Brian.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      So far ๐Ÿ˜‰

  15. Thanks Brian for updating an historic post.

    Iยดm looking forward to more on this!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Miguel. Glad you liked it.

  16. Thanks for the fantastic list and organization. Excited to implement these!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, David. Let me know how it goes.

  17. Bill Avatar Billsays:

    Brilliant article Brian, for sure it’s an ultimate resource. Thanks for the guide.

    Best
    Bill

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Bill. I’d agree: this is the ultimate list of SEO tips (at least from what I’ve seen)

  18. This is amazing, Thank you again Brian. I do have one question. In your 1M page study, you talked about words lenght. Does more than 2000 hurts SEO?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Johann. No, that doesn’t hurt. I have pages with 5k words that rank well. It’s all about providing value to that searcher. If it takes 5k words, great. If it takes 50, so be it.

  19. Abdul Avatar Abdulsays:

    This isn’t a blog post – it’s an encyclopedia!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      HA! That’s true, Abdul

  20. Eric Nguyen Avatar Eric Nguyensays:

    You are the only one who make me open my email no-brainer. Great link building guide as always!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Eric. I aim to please ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Jason. Glad you liked it.

  21. Muaz Avatar Muazsays:

    Hey brian, I love your posts!
    but I’m confused, every now and then you post an article talking about the same thing complete list of seo tips, strategies etc.. that can be implemented to boost rankings.
    What are the differences between these posts? are the newer ones “updated” or you are just increasing the authority of your site by publishing more?

  22. Killer post, Brian. Really want to know how to create those charts you keep using throughout your posts. I searched Google for them but couldn’t find them so I’m guessing they’re custom designed but with what tool is the question… Would love to see a flat architecture diagram for blogs and non-ecommerce sites. Look forward to your upcoming Blab with Dmitry.

      1. ๐Ÿ™‚

        Yes, those charts. They look outstanding. I haven’t found a good way to make consistent and aesthetically appealing charts to include in posts. With Excel, I find the charts are all over the place and other tools I’ve used don’t make charts that come out nearly as well as yours.

        Promise not to replicate your color scheme, but would love to know how to create charts of that caliber. Mind sharing your secret?

        Thanks!

        Cody

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Yup, Excel charts look terrible. I hired a pro graphic designer to make these. That’s why they look so good!

  23. Andrew Avatar Andrewsays:

    God Daaaaaaamn!!!!!!!!!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Yup. It’s that kind of post ๐Ÿ™‚

  24. Madhuri SenGupta Avatar Madhuri SenGuptasays:

    Hey Brian,
    Awesome work man. I am going to start my blog soon. And your blog is the only blog,I’m following day and night. Who says your blog is for advance seo techniques? You are just amazing for absolute beginners like me also. Though am pretty confused about how link building works in beauty blogosphere, still you always give me the courage to make this type of huge giantic list posts.
    Keep the great work “Inspiration”
    Madhuri.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Madhuri. Best of luck with your new blog.

      1. Madhuri SenGupta Avatar Madhuri SenGuptasays:

        Thanks a ton Brian. Means a lot.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      That’s a good thing, right? ๐Ÿ˜‰

  25. Hey Brian,
    Fantastic collection of SEO Tips! Bookmarked, shared and printed!
    Maybe I missed where you mentioned about related posts on onpage SEO. If not, what is your take on having related links at the bottom of articles?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks for spreading the word, Marcelo.

      Good question. I’d say “related posts” are similar to any internal links. I don’t think Google necessarily treats them differently.

      1. Hey Brian,

        Your recommendation on that is to link from high-authority pages. Should I keep at least the same topics or that won’t matter in your opinion?

        Thanks again for sharing!

        1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

          Hi Marcelo, it should at least be semi-related.

  26. The tip that resonates with me the most is to publish studies, which you back up by linking to the study you collaborated on. That is spot on. It feels like having genuinely useful in depth content is THE strategy that will not be “Google updated” at any point. (Because if you were building a search engine, that’s the content you’d want to serve your users when they search for a topic.)

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Devesh.

      That’s a great point. At some level the key to SEO today and in the future is creating the best result. And for most queries, that’s in-depth content.

  27. Stefano Avatar Stefanosays:

    Amazing post! 100% golden content! Keep doing this!!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I’ll do that, Stefano ๐Ÿ™‚

  28. Dany Santos Avatar Dany Santossays:

    Hello Brian,

    This post is just awesome!

    You could also add this tip : adding “.html” at the end of blog posts URL, I noticed that these URLs ranked better as Google really takes it as content.

    Thanks and keep up this really good work!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Dany. I’ve never heard that before.

    1. Dany, that does sound interesting. Have you seen results on your own for numerous sites or come across an article with information showing how this works out? Love to learn more, every little helps me!

      1. Dany Santos Avatar Dany Santossays:

        Well, I don’t remember where I exactly read that but I think it was on a forum and I also have a coach that told me that it was better to put “.html” at the end of blog posts URLs.

        Actually, I’ve just done some research and you can also add “.php”, “.htm”. The main point here is to show to Google that the page is a page.

        I have some sources in french but not in english. Try to search someting like “.html at the end of URL seo” on Google you may find something.

        1. Dany Santos Avatar Dany Santossays:

          Another advice :

          Let’s imagine you want to rank for the keyword “Low cost computer”

          Instead of putting this one keyword in one sentence like :
          “Sometimes, it’s hard to find a low cost computer”.

          You should put one word in a sentence and the other in another sentence, etc.

          Example :

          1st sentence : blablabla blablabla blabla low blablabla
          2d sentence : blablablabla cost blabla blablabla
          3d sentence : blla bla bla blablabla computer blabla blabla

          I hope my explanation was somewhat understandable :).

  29. Thanks Brian for these unique tips on SEO. I am following your blog for 4 months now. I have applied some of your tips to grow my sites traffic and surprisingly there is a huge increase in my traffic now!

    Now, its time to follow your “Video SEO techniques”.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Nice Hussain. These tips should help you continue your success.

  30. Brian Lund Avatar Brian Lundsays:

    Wow so much fantastic and actionable content here Brian. Thanks man! Funny… I just finished a monster post about ‘actionable’ ways for saving money (I write in the personal finance space).

    Anyway, I think I may be able to take action on a good handful of your tips right now, and I’m definitely bookmarking this post. Thanks again.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Brian. Yup, it’s all about the actionable tips. It doesn’t even matter what industry you’re in. People want golden nuggets that they can apply right away.

  31. Awesome post!!! thank you, Brian! A lot of powerful tips!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Alona.

  32. Hey There,

    Quick question on “Give Old Content New Life”. Are you updating the published date too when you do this?

    Or, leaving that alone and depending on the last update date

    Thanks,

    Chris Pontine

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      In order to get the post back at the top of your blog feed you need to change the published date. There may be another way to do it but not sure.

      1. Thanks kind sir!!! I was thinking the same thing.

        My main thought is it would hurt my rankings by changing the published date.

  33. Thanks Brian, I was running out of ideas what and how to improve and was about to do a search on some tips, when I checked my email and found this in my inbox. Great timing ๐Ÿ™‚ I’m glad I subscribed. A few of them are already on to-do list for tomorrow with more in the following days.
    Thanks again, keep up with awesome stuff.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Jure. That’s perfect timing, right?

  34. Ben Avatar Bensays:

    Hey Brian,

    Many thanks for the fifty hours (and the rest I suspect…!) that you spent putting this together. A fantastic resource that I will be revisiting constantly in the weeks and months ahead. As a relative newbie, I found it to be very accessible despite covering an incredible amount of topics (well, 201 to be precise ;-).

    I did want to ask you about the section on “Don’t Focus on Long Tail Keywords”. This is topical for me as I actually have a tab opened from a recent post on the MOZ blog from Rand Fishkin that details reasons why you should focus on long tail keywords. I know you have said that “they have their place”, but as I say as a newbie to all of this, ever so slightly differing opinions from two authoritative people in the industry (that’s you and Rand of course ๐Ÿ™‚ frazzles my brain somewhat and I’m not sure whether to turn left or right!

    https://moz.com/blog/long-tail-seo-target-low-volume-keywords-whiteboard-friday

    Specifically the section entitled: “Niche + specific long tail SEO”

    The great thing about the long tail for new sites that have no backlinks and no authority, is that it is possible to rank for these terms, assuming great on-page SEO, quality content etc.. So therefore focusing on the long tail is a strategy that is often recommended and in fact Rand himself (and indeed others of good repute) have cited 4+ words and lower LMS to avoid the med-high volume kws due to their kw difficulty. Have I completely missed the point in your guide or do you indeed have a slightly different view on the long tail?

    Many thanks for input you can offer on this.

    Best,
    Ben

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Ben, Great question. The way I saw that video, Rand is saying the two cases to target long tails are 1) hyper-specific product + service terms (like “voice over actor NYC”) or 2) user generated content long tails that happen automatically.

      I agree 100%. But for content, I don’t recommend focusing on long tails. Although for new sites it may make more sense to target those vs. those than super-competitive terms. Even then I wouldn’t put too much effort into long tails.

  35. Annie Avatar Anniesays:

    This is great, Brian!
    The tip that really strikes me is consolidating similar posts into one. The site I work with has around 150 informational pages, usually with 2-3 pages on each topic – and they are all mediocrely written. I’ve been working to get them updated, accurate, and a little more helpful, but I think consolidating would be a really good idea.

    If I have 2 pages that are on the same topic and basically the same info re-written with the same image, but both are very popular pages, what is your advice? Over the last 9 years the 2 pages have gotten more than a million pageviews combined, almost equally between them. Should I permanently redirect one to the other, or try to improve them each and distinguish them slightly more so that they cover a different angle of the same topic?

    Love to hear your thoughts!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Annie. In some cases you can just fix most of the pages and make them so you wouldn’t want to delete them.

      That said, for a page that’s doing well, I’d be reluctant to change it. Even though you and I may see the two pages that are super similar, it looks
      like Google may not agree. So I’d only combine them if organic traffic starts to dip for one or the other.

      1. Annie Avatar Anniesays:

        Thanks Brian! I’m always a bit scared to make big changes to pages that rank well.
        It’s a weird niche because there is really VERY little good info on a topic that is searched for hundreds of thousands of times every month – it’s also remarkably hard to build links.

        Since taking over in January we’ve seen a 96% increase in monthly organic traffic (May vs Jan), so I must be doing something right, but my biggest challenge now is getting the traffic to convert more without dev/design work.

  36. Very Powerful tips brian. Thanks for the email notification.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries, James.

  37. Awesome! Massive list of smart tips Brian! Love it.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Chris. Massive is right. This clocks in at 4k+ words! ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Jeroen.

  38. That’s huge Brian.

    Do you sleep at all?

    Thanks to you, your posts have helped me do things on my own, especially, SEO.

    Francis

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      HA! I actually get 9 hours per night. How else could I write insane posts like this?

  39. Thank you Brian you’re the best of SEO. GJ man..

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Bilal

  40. Thanks, Brian. Always find your posts incredibly helpful.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Marc.

  41. Dean Davis Avatar Dean Davissays:

    Love how Brian says at the end…”Did I Miss Anything?”

    Nah mate, after this behemoth of awesome content and SEO tips, I think you’ve covered a fair bit! ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      LOL. Well I guess it’s possible I missed something. So far it doesn’t look like it ๐Ÿ™‚

  42. Tarquin Avatar Tarquinsays:

    This is awesome. Thanks Brian

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No problem, Tarquin

  43. Nitin Jain Avatar Nitin Jainsays:

    And that’s Brian Dean for you!
    Wow! Blown away!! This post proves why Brian is the go-to man when it comes to SEO advice. Time to do wonders to my website!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Nice!

  44. This is awesome Brian, thanks for sharing! Definitely saving this list to my Pocket for future references ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Craig. Yup, this is a good one to save as a reference.

  45. Chris Avatar Chrissays:

    Thank you Brian. This is SOLID stuff. I appreciate your mindset for SEO and SEM. What’s the use of SEO and all of this backlinking effort if it can’t stand the test of time? Plus these back links are like little promotions, little ads throughout the internet vs. just a backlink. Plus it makes a lot of sense to maximize promotion efforts to have our on page stuff liked by search engines but also have our on page stuff maximize clarity to what the user is looking for getting them excited to share and link back. Man I’ve got a lot of work to do! Thank you!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Chris. Well said. That’s why all of these SEO tips are white hat. There’s no reason to waste time with black hat anymore. The results (if any) are short lived.

  46. How do you change it to “last updated”? Do you manually do it or did you change the published button? Does it mean it’s ok to change the published date?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      We worked out a custom coded solution. That way, we can update “last updated” without needing to change the publish date.

  47. Edgar Avatar Edgarsays:

    Just PURE SOLID GOLD… !

    Thxs

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      ๐Ÿ™‚

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