Over the past year, Google has pushed out an astounding number of updates. From the Link Spam Update to the Page Experience Update, Google’s on a mission to weed out black hat SEO tactics and improve the SERPs by emphasizing quality content, optimal page speeds, and mobile SEO. What does this mean in terms of your SEO strategy in 2023? Stick to best practices and ensure your SEO foundation remains strong.

If you’re planning to prioritize increasing your site’s search visibility, we’ve put together a plan that will get you through 2023 and have your site sailing through the SERPs for time to come:

2023: Quarter 1

Begin the year with a focus on gaining a clear understanding of where your metrics are at now and where you want to go.

1. Know Your Numbers & Set Goals

When it comes to planning out your SEO strategy for the year, spending time with your metrics is vital. What metrics should you be mindful of going into 2023? 

A great place to start studying your SEO metrics is with your

• Overall organic traffic: the number of people that land on your website via a search engine
• Organic click-through-rate (CTR): the number of times searchers click on links to your page in the SERPs divided by your impressions.
• Keyword rankings: Where your pages appear in the SERPs for keywords you rank for 

Once you feel comfortable with where these numbers are, you will want to examine your domain rating (DR) and page speed analytics.

What SEO Goals Should You Set for 2023?

Not all websites have the same SEO needs. We recommend you aim for a robust and well-rounded balance between all pillars of good SEO for the best results. 

However, if you’re looking for specific numbers to achieve in 2023, consider:

• Increasing your organic traffic by a set percentage: examine last year’s MoM growth and increase the percentage by 5%-10% MoM this year.
• Setting a goal for your Total Keywords or Keyword Positions.
• Increasing your DR and earning high marks in PageSpeed Insights. This is always a great way to boost your rankings, too.

2. Keep Your Competitors’ Metrics in Mind

Ultimately, you want to have a higher DR than your competitors. But knowing where to aim is part of the battle. Use the Bulk DA Checker to compare your domain authority or DR to your competitors’. 

While you’re looking into your competitors’ sites, take note of what keywords they rank for and if they have any keyword gaps.

3. Create a SERP-Winning Blog Content Calendar

Google continues to strive to uphold its core values in order to provide the best results for its users. In regards to your content, this means providing thorough, long-form blogs that demonstrate quality information and increase your site’s topical breadth and relevance.

To establish your content calendar for 2023:

1. Set up pillar topics that relate to your site.
2. Then use the Keyword Researcher to find long-tail keywords that you can potentially rank for. Keep in mind that quality matters when deciding how many blogs to produce each month. Don’t bite off more than you handle.
3. Use the SEO Content Assistant tool to ensure you maximize your blog’s ranking potential with the right keywords, length, and other quality indicators.

4. Audit Your Site Speed

As we saw in 2022, Google will continue to reward sites with fast loading times, stable pages, and responsive design. We anticipate these signals will continue to play a major role in how Google ranks its results. However, it’s important to keep in mind that these also benefit your users, reduce your bounce rate, and can increase your conversion rates.

So, perform a site speed audit and use that information to make a plan to tackle any issues that arise. First, identify your slowest pages. Then focus your efforts on optimizing images and elements above the fold. Finally, work your way through any other content shift issues and loading delays.

2023: Quarter 2

Build on your SEO fundamentals and diversify your approach as the year progresses.

5. Stay Active on Social Media

Voice Search continues to trend upward. What does that have to do with your social media profiles? While Google has never formally released how heavily social media weighs into their PageRank (if at all), Bing factors social signals into their rankings. And the majority of voice searches are performed on Alexa smart speakers… And Alexa uses Bing’s search results. This means that optimizing slightly more for Bing can give your site a bump in traffic.

6. Update or Create a Google Business Profile

Mobile searches continue to outnumber desktop searches, averaging 60% of all searches throughout 2022. And when it comes to finding local businesses, mobile search far surpasses desktop.

If you haven’t created your Google Business Profile, now is the time. Without a business profile, you’re missing out on local search traffic and the opportunity for better reputation management.

For those that already have a Google Business Profile, check your photos, reviews, and questions. Take the time to answer questions potential customers may ask, reply to positive and negative reviews, and update photos of your business.

7. Spring Clean Your Links

Broken internal and external links can disrupt a Google crawl resulting in a negative effect on your SEO.

Perform a Site Audit using the Page Explorer tool. 

1. Using the Inaccessible and Orphaned report to identify broken links and pages that are not loading. 
2. Fix the pages with the highest Search Impressions and Organic Traffic first. 
3. Replace or redirect internal links and replace outbound links with relevant newer links.

8. Increase Backlink Outreach

Backlinks have a direct effect on your site’s domain rating. Poor quality inbound links can have a negative impact on your DR while high-quality links can strengthen your DR. Gaining backlinks can be a time-consuming process, but it pays off.

Begin a link outreach program or use a service to streamline the link building process, targeting websites with high DR scores. Offering quality guest posts can increase the quality of your backlink profile.

2023: Quarter 3

Don’t lose your momentum and keep your eye on the prize of increasing organic traffic.

9. Revise Tired Content

Once your content strategy is running smoothly, you can begin to update your existing content. This signals to Google that your content is still relevant and gives you the opportunity to add depth to your blogs. Use the Top Pages tool in GSC Insights to identify pages that aren’t reaching their SEO Potential.

As you update blogs and landing pages, remember to update meta tags, especially for pages with high impressions and low CTRs.

Adding rich media is another great way to liven up your pages. And don’t forget to make your pages accessible.

10. Check Your SEO Progress

Throughout your SEO journey, it’s important to reflect on what’s working and where you should pivot. The SearchAtlas’s GSC Insights tool makes it easy to compare the most telling metrics like Keyword Rankings. Use these analytics to begin forming an ongoing plan for 2023.

Don’t forget to celebrate your successes.

11. Respond to Google Algorithm Updates

There is no doubt that Google will release several updates in 2023. By focusing on best practices, you’re in a great place to respond to any new updates Google rolls out. However, you will want to tailor your approach to the specifics of the changes. 

If you’re a SearchAtlas user, you will stay in the know throughout the year with our “What’s New in Search” emails. Additionally, our suite of SEO software reflects the latest changes to Google’s PageRank.

2023: Quarter 4

Finish off the year strong. Cut ties from toxic backlinks and prune any pages that don’t reflect the strength of your new content.

12. Remove Toxic Backlinks

Toxic backlinks can wreak havoc on how Google views your site. Eliminating low-quality backlinks is like cutting an anchor when your pages are sinking the SERPs. Gather your backlink information with the Backlink Analyzer. Then, submit disavow files using Google’s disavow tool.

13. Prune Under-Performing Pages

In the spirit of preparing for the new year, prune your pages that don’t perform to your standards or pages that present keyword cannibalization issues. The SearchAtlas Page Pruning tool allows you to easily identify low-performing pages that can bog down the quality of your content and overall site.

14. Set SEO Goals for 2024

As 2023 comes to an end, begin projecting new goals into the upcoming year. Stay current with changes to algorithms and audit how your target audience’s search and what your site’s strengths are.

And enter the new year with confidence by building on your successes in 2024.

Innovative SEO Software, Unbeatable SEO Experts

Planning for record-beating organic traffic in 2023? With SearchAtlas and the LinkGraph team, you can ring in the new year with SEO insight that will make this year the best yet when it comes to your site’s performance. Contact us today to learn more about our SEO services or SEO software.

The post Celebrate the New Year with a New SEO Strategy for 2023 appeared first on LinkGraph.

Meet Marissa Le, Sr. Public Relations Manager at LinkGraph. Marissa relocated from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Las Vegas in search of a new adventure. She is an avid fan of The Bachelor franchise, a foodie, and an overall positive human being. 

Marissa joined our team in January 2021 as a PR expert to secure speaking opportunities and contributor partnerships for our CTO. In her short time at LinkGraph, she’s also helped us take home prestigious awards including U.S. Search Awards’ Best Startup Agency, Nevada Top Workplaces’ #1 Small Business, The Drum Awards for Search’s Best B2B SEO Campaign, and many others. Here’s a look at Marissa’s career journey. 

1. What does your daily routine look like?

My day-to-day is so different, but it usually involves lots of collaboration with our Social Media Manager and Sr. Content Strategist! As you can imagine with any startup, things change frequently at LinkGraph so my workload is very dynamic and can include cold pitching, handling inbound media requests, writing awards entries, etc. 

2. How is working at LinkGraph different than your previous work experiences?

I come from a PR agency background where I managed clients’ integrated marketing campaigns so working at LinkGraph is different because our brand is my client. Plus working at a startup is very fast-paced and energetic. 

 3. What is your favorite part about working at LinkGraph?

We have a spirit of innovation here that’s very exciting to be a part of! Lots of momentum and excitement.

4. What is an important career lesson you’ve learned?

I’ve learned to trust my gut and to be confident in my work! 

5. Share a fun fact about yourself!

I am an identical twin. We are weirded out by the type of twins that do everything together and are exactly alike!

6. What is your favorite tv show?

My favorite show of all time is Shark Tank followed closely by The Bachelor franchise! 

We are always on the lookout for top talent, if you are interested in joining the team, please visit the LinkGraph careers page for current opportunities. If you don’t see anything that fits your skillset, send us an email at hello@linkgraph.io

The post Meet the LinkGraph team | Sr. Public Relations Manager: Marissa Le appeared first on LinkGraph.

We’ve spoken to Sr Customer Sucess Manager, Kenadee Bias, today we’re shining the spotlight on our Director of SEO, Arman Advani. Arman was one of the first hires at LinkGraph and has witnessed how our company has grown from a makeshift workspace in a New York City basement, to a distributed team of almost 100 people. Here’s a look at his career journey.

1. What does your daily routine look like?

Several client-facing strategy consultations, internal team syncs to delegate tasks and assist with technical issues, respond to client emails/questions.

2. How is working at LinkGraph different than your previous work experiences?

LinkGraph is more fast-paced because of start-up culture, that being said, we can get a lot more done than larger companies that have internal red tape to get through.

3. What is your favorite part about working at LinkGraph?

Since we are a close team everyone has a voice. There’s nothing better than pitching an idea on how to improve our products and watching it take effect immediately. I regularly have discussions with our CTO, Manick Bhan, on new features we should add to SearchAtlas that are helpful in solving our clients’ needs, and how we can improve our software to further set ourselves apart from the competition.  

4. What is an important career lesson you’ve learned?

Teamwork makes the dream work.

5. Share a fun fact about yourself

I’m an online poker player and lifelong skateboarder. I actually moved from New York to Las Vegas to be closer to the poker scene. 

6. What is your favorite book//movie//tv show?

GoT and Harry Potter are my favorite book series

The Departed

The Office

We are always on the lookout for top talent, if you are interested in joining the team, please visit the LinkGraph careers page for current opportunities. If you don’t see anything that fits your skillset, send us an email at hello@linkgraph.io

The post Meet the LinkGraph Team | Director of SEO: Arman Advani appeared first on LinkGraph.

As an SEO freelancer, you likely know that search engine optimization is by far one of the most effective digital marketing strategies. You also know that you often rely on software for the insights you need to achieve the results you want for your clients. However, knowing which SEO tools for freelancers to use and which are worth the expense can be tricky.

Whether you already work full time in the field of SEO or a related industry like email marketing, copywriting, web design, or social media marketing, or you’re setting out as a complete beginner, the best SEO tools make it easy to understand all things search engine optimization. 

To help you decide which SEO tools are worthy of your time, we’ve compared a wide array of free and paid options and created a list of tools. We factored in features that increase freelancer productivity and streamline implementing and tracking SEO strategies. Furthermore, we know that as a freelancer you don’t have the budget of an agency, so we accounted for cost and ROI.

Choosing SEO Tools for Now & for Future Freelancing

As a freelance SEO expert, you’re in a unique position. You’re both self-employed and tangentially connected to the success of your clients’ businesses. This often means that you need to prove your worth with your clients to maintain your client relationships and contracts. 

Furthermore, investing in SEO tools is an investment in the future of your business. How so? The more organic traffic you can draw to your clients’ websites, the stronger your portfolio and the better your reputation. And the stronger your reputation, the more business you can attract and the more you can charge and earn. This is even more important as more and more people choose to work for themselves.

What to Look for in Effective SEO Software for Freelancers

Unlike an in-house SEO, you have a lot more juggling to do between various clients, projects, and campaigns. This requires software that can help you stay organized while offering flexibility. 

The best software for SEO freelancers supports the SEO process from research to strategy to implementation and analysis. Furthermore, you want software that makes creating SEO reports for clients easy and professional. 

The Best Tools for SEO Freelancing

1. Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is key to making your client’s website rank as well as possible. With Search Console, you can see your clients’ websites through the eyes of Google’s search engine crawlers.

GSC also provides various graphs, metrics, and features that can start you on your SEO journey and tailor your services to what your client needs. Additionally, GSC is a great tool to provide clients so they can check in on their website’s organic traffic performance from time to time.

Pros:

• General overview of data to get you started with a new client
• This tool is provided by Google free of charge
• Ability to submit a sitemap and request crawls
• Receive keyword data
• Find issues related to the page experience and crawl-ability
• Track SEO progress

Cons:

• Can be un-intuitive for many users
• No metrics for domain authority/domain rating
• No backlinking data
• Toggling between client accounts can be cumbersome

2. GSC Insights

SearchAtlas’s GSC Insights provides SEOs with excellent overviews of a website’s organic traffic metrics. However, this tool can be inadequate for a full-scale SEO freelancer working with a collection of clients.

GSC Insights tool allows you to make the most of a website’s organic traffic data. Additionally, GSC Insights is a great way for SEO pros to track multiple client domains and monitor various projects simultaneously. Furthermore, you can export data, visualizations, and pdf reports for your clients to review.

What Are the Key Features That Freelancers Utilize in GSC Insights?

What makes this SEO a great investment for freelancers? It comes with more bells and whistles than almost any other SEO software. These include:

Real-Time Organic Traffic Metrics

GSC Insights provides real-time data and historical keyword rank tracking. This means you can be instantly ready to begin improving your client’s website and target individual pages.

Page Grouping

The Page Grouping feature is one you will not find on other SEO tools. This feature allows you to group similar types of content and compare the performance of the groups. So, for example, you can track how blog pages are performing compared to major resource pages.

Top Keywords

As for your SEO content strategies, the Top Keywords feature makes quick work of seeing what keywords a website is appearing for as well as their positions. You can easily find and target keywords and pages that are close to ranking on the first page of SERPs.

Top Pages

The Top Pages feature is indispensable when it comes to tracking your SEO progress. Not only will this tool provide you with a site’s cumulative page performance, but it also tracks the rank position of individual pages.

You will also find the traffic value of a website’s organic search visibility throughout the GSC Insights tool. This is a great way to demonstrate the value of SEO to your clients.

When it comes to providing comprehensive SEO reports to your clients, GSC insights has got you covered with just 1-click. Here’s how:

Pros:

• Easier to use than Google Search Console
• Beautiful data visualizations
• Excellent depth of data to use when forming your content strategy
• SEO Potential scores for individual URLs
• Overall organic CTR metrics, impressions, and average page position metrics
• 30-Day trailing data to weed out anomalies
• Keyword cannibalization report

Cons:

• Not all features are currently unlocked

3. SEO Content Assist

With SearchAtlas’s SEO Content Assistant, you can ensure that any landing page, blog post, or other content on your client’s website is optimized for keywords within their niche.

What’s Makes the SEO Content Assistant an SEO Must?

One of the greatest benefits of the SEO Content Assistant is that it integrates all aspects of the content creation process from start to finish. 

The beauty of this tool is that it allows you to improve existing content, check your client’s in-house team, or optimize content from scratch. With built-in keyword research and a URL import option, the SEO Content Assistant is a one-stop shop for any content marketer.

Keyword Research

You can take advantage of the SEO tool’s keyword research capabilities. This lets you plan a content calendar that is backed by data, setting your clients’ sites up to outrank their competitors in the search engine results pages (or SERPs). 

The SEO Content Assistant links each keyword to competitor pages that rank on the first SERP. This allows you to assess your competition, how they’re addressing the topic, and create content that is more topically in-depth and valuable to the reader.

How It Works

The SEO Content Assistant tool scans the first two SERPs for the target keywords you’ve input. Or you can import your client’s existing URLs. The tool generates suggested target keywords along with their search volume, keyword difficulty, and cost-per-click.

Then, it uses the data to recommend content ideas, in addition to Focus Terms and phrases. You will want to incorporate these into that content to make the pieces more likely to rank.

As you smoothly integrate these Focus Terms into the content, including those designated for headings, you will receive an overall content score. This score represents how likely this page is to rank above a competitor’s similar piece of content in the SERPs. 

Additionally, if you’re importing your clients’ web pages, you will receive a technical SEO score in addition to the content score, including meta tags.

Pros:

• Incorporates all aspects of the content creation process
• A keyword research tool that provides hundreds of Focus Terms
• Integrates competitor research into the writing process
• Provides content ideas
• Allows you to measure the rank-ability as assurance for clients
• URL importing makes improving existing content easier
• optimize for up to 5 keywords
• Google Docs extension

Cons:

• No social media marketing options yet
• Does not provide a duplicate content analysis

4. Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a great option for when you do not want to launch into full-fledged SEO research, but you need a quick peek at what questions people ask regarding a topic. This can be a great resource when brainstorming content ideas with clients, discovering FAQs to include in your landing pages, and expanding outward from your pillar pages.

How It Works

This tool works by gathering auto-complete data from search engines. This gives you a clear idea of what people commonly Google, so you can more easily determine search intent and related questions.

All you have to do is start with a few words related to your client’s industry. From there, you can tailor the location to your target audience, select the language, and search.

Answer the Public will give you a well-organized visualization of questions people search for, search queries that build off your initial keyword with prepositions added, and comparisons that include your target keyword. From there, you can download individual visualizations or export all of the data to a spreadsheet.

You can use this tool for free with limited searches (3 per day) and one user, or purchase an upgraded account.

Pros:

• A free tool available to any internet marketer
• Creates beautiful visualizations
• Easy to use, no matter your skill level
• Generates research report assets for your clients
• Pro version will alert you to new search query trends
• Pro version allows you to track analytics over time

Cons: 

• 3 free searches per day
• The Pro versions can be costly
• Can be perceived as a lot of data without competitor analysis

5. Keyword Researcher

It’s impossible to underestimate the importance of keywords in SEO today. Even with years of experience, it’s impossible to predict which keywords your client can rank for without performing research. SearchAtlas has developed a keyword research tool, aptly named the Keyword Researcher, which makes comparing target keywords in order to choose the best keywords for your client simple.

How it Works

With the Keyword Researcher, you’ll be able to figure out which words or phrases to focus on for a client’s SEO campaign. This gives SEO professionals data-backed confidence to move forward with the best keywords for page optimization, no matter their clients’ niches.

How it works is simple, you enter a keyword into the search bar, and the tool then analyzes the keyword for keyword difficulty, search volume, and cost-per-click and pulls a wide array of related queries (including autocomplete phrases), SERP data, and competitor research.

With one simple search, you receive a lot of data related to your seed keyword. And the more data you have, the more informed your expert judgment will be. And the better your results will be, allowing you to smoothly run your SEO freelancing business.

Pros:

• Analysis time is faster than other keyword research software
• Provides hundreds of relevant keywords and keyword ideas
• Comprehensive niche analysis
• Easily transfer keywords into Google Keyword Planner
• Thorough keyword analysis
• Change search location to target local SERPs

Cons:

• Does not have built-in export capabilities yet

6. Backlink Analyzer

For a standard site optimization campaign, link building might not be the first thing that comes to mind. Nevertheless, it’s a vital component of search engine marketing and ensuring your website—or, for a freelance SEO expert, your client’s website—is getting in front of its target audience. This makes the free Backlink Analyzer Tool and paid version indispensable to SEOs.

Link building is not only one of the most critical aspects of an SEO campaign, it’s also one of the more tricky aspects. With the SearchAtlas Backlink tool, you can analyze your clients’ competitors’ backlinks, identify toxic backlinks to your clients’ sites, identity backlink opportunities, and explore topical relevance and anchor texts.

How It Works

SearchAtlas’s Backlink Analyzer goes beyond other SEO tools, including SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs, offering a comprehensive view of the data at hand. Once your client’s site is connected to the SearchAtlas platform, you will receive updated backlink data.

From there, you can filter the data by Domain Rating, URL Rating, Trust flow, Citation Flow, and Categories.

The Suggested Outreach menu makes finding outreach opportunities a breeze.

As a result, both you and your clients can visualize and implement this essential data and use it to drive organic search traffic to their site.

Pros:

• Provides a large amount of data
• Displays outreach opportunities
• Allows you to easily identify toxic backlinks
• Analyzes Topical Relevance and Anchor Text
• Beautiful visualizations

Cons:

• Does not have built-in export capabilities yet

7. Screaming Frog

Despite its unique name, Screaming Frog is a serious contender for site crawling audit tools. In fact, it’s become an industry-standard SEO tool for understanding how Google’s web crawlers will index a website. 

This desktop software has both a free version and paid version. And while the paid version is perfect for agencies, you will likely find the free version is more like freemium software. It has a ton of features, including exporting sitemaps and other technical SEO metrics.

By simply entering a URL, the program crawls the page. Within minutes, you will receive hundreds, even thousands of SEO metrics. 

What Data Does Screaming Frog Provide?

Most importantly, Screaming Frog demonstrates a web page’s indexability. A simple Screaming Frog page audit:

• Collects data from the HTML using CSS Path, Xpath, or regex
• Create an exportable sitemap
• Allows you to compare historic crawls to current crawls
• Provides site speed data
• Crawls JavaScript rich websites
• Analyzes meta tags, including title tags
• Finds broken links (inbound and outbound)

Pros:

• Free version has a lot of capabilities
• Easy to use interface
• Provides a thorough range of technical SEO data

Cons:

• Desktop software that must be downloaded
• Data provided can be obscure for clients to understand

8. Bulk DA Checker

Domain authority (or DA) is often the starting point for any SEO campaign. The Bulk DA Checker gives you insight into your clients’ sites’ DA as well as their competitors’ DA. It also provides insight during the backlink-building process.

You might even use this tool if working with bloggers and influencers is a part of your client’s online marketing strategy. Best of all, there’s a free version as well as a paid version.

How It Works

With the Bulk DA Checker, simply enter up to 10 URLs at a time and you will receive each URL’s:

• Page Authority
• Domain Authority
• External Root Domain Count
• Subdomain Spam Score

Put simply, a site’s DA correlates to its visibility, relevance, and, to a certain degree, its credibility. Thus, a site with a high domain authority will rank higher than one with a low DA. The high DA site, then, will provide a better backlink than the lower domain authority.

These metrics allow you to analyze your client’s online presence in one fell swoop or determine whether a particular contact is a right site or brand to work for in a specific campaign. This tool easily verifies which collaborations will help a site’s rank

Pros:

• Check 10 site’s DAs simultaneously
• Easy to use
• Free version and paid version available
• Receive page authority and other site data

Cons

• Currently no report exporting option

How to Make the Most of these tools as an SEO freelancer

For many freelancers, SEO software can be a massive investment. However, they also offer a greater return on investment for freelancers and the businesses they service. By investing in the best SEO tools, you’re able to charge a premium while providing your clients with the best results.

So, which tools you choose to pay for ultimately depends on your specialty, how established your freelancing business is, and your clients’ needs. For most SEOs, the GSC Insights tool is foundational to their services. For SEO content specialists and copywriters, the SEO Content Assistant will increase productivity. Keep in mind that these tools speak to your SEO strengths.

For SEO experts that are just starting out into the realm of freelancing, taking advantage of a combination of free tools and paid tools can be a smart strategy. The easiest way to determine which tools will work best for you is to try them out.

Invest in the Best Tools as an SEO Freelancer

The digital marketing industry is highly competitive and ever-evolving. In addition to the basic tools used for digital marketing, such as WordPress and Google Analytics, these SEO tools are designed to propel SEO experts’ careers and skills. 

As an SEO freelancer, you wear a lot of hats. You’re seeking out potential clients, staying proficient in various related services, being your own boss, and, of course, acting as a service provider. There’s only so much time in a day. When it comes to search engine optimization, you need the best SEO tools on the market to get a job done right and efficiently.

Develop the skillset you’ll need to meet and please every SEO client. You don’t need to spend a lot of time using an army of SEO tools to optimize a client’s website. All you need is a few great resources.

The post 8 Essential Tools for SEO Freelancers appeared first on LinkGraph.

Optimizing your website to be more easily discoverable on Google is one of the most effective ways to expand your market share and increase conversions. But how can you improve your SEO performance?? The answer is simple: Search engine optimization (SEO)–or the art of refining a website to increase the number of people who see your website in their search engine results. 

While SEO takes time, know-how, and patience, you can begin to climb your way up Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) using a few techniques and the help of user-friendly software.

We’ve designed this article to help you pinpoint where to invest your time, energy, and other resources to improve your website’s performance in the SERPs and rank in 2022 and beyond. Whether you’re a site owner, content marketer, or SEO strategist, these tips will help your web pages get to the top of  Google’s SERPs.

Strategize and Prioritize Your SEO Needs

Before you dive into improving your search engine optimization performance, it’s important to figure out what aspects of your website require the most immediate attention. Otherwise, you could wind up focusing on minor issues while major problems continue to drag down your performance.

1. Use a Software That Simplifies Your SEO Strategy

If you want to improve your SEO ranking, you will need to understand your numbers (or metrics). Deciphering the meaning of these numbers requires analytic skills, but software can make quick work of turning numbers into a strategy you can implement.

A successful SEO campaign requires technical SEO, content SEO, and knowing what Googlebots measure and how they work. Luckily, SEO tools offer a simple solution to understanding search engine algorithms, your SERP positions, and your overall website performance.

SearchAtlas is one of the most helpful SEO software tools that anyone can access and use. Within one login, users have tangible access to Google Search Console data, keyword research, competitor research, SEO content creation assistance, SEO site auditing reports, and more.

2. Target SERP Page 2 KWs

If you have keywords that are ranking on the first page of Google’s results–Congrats! That’s great news! To boost your overall search engine visibility, you want to move more of your pages to the top results page.

Starting with the keywords where your web pages rank on the top of the second page is an easy way to push your overall site visibility higher. To identify the keywords where you’re ranking on page 2, use the GSC Insights’ Top Keywords report.

Identify any keywords that fall into positions 11 to 14. While most SEO software require users to manually assess the potential of a keyword, SearchAtlas’s GSC Insights tool provides an SEO potential score for each. After identifying the keywords with the most potential, begin optimizing your pages with more impressions first. Then move on to those with fewer impressions and less organic traffic.

3. Create A Contact Page

Contact pages are one of the under-utilized forms of web content when it comes to SEO. You don’t have to paste your phone number and email address on a barebones page to qualify. You can use a contact form and provide information regarding when someone should reach out.

Not only does your contact page give users the ability to reach out to you, but it also tells Google you’re a legitimate business–and it gives visitors an opportunity to interact with your page.

4. Perform Competitor Research

Compare your content to your competitors’ to get a sense of why they’re ranking. 

After you find what websites are ranking for keywords your company wants to target, you will want to examine their content to better understand why they’re ranking so well. Then adopt some of their techniques in addition to targeting keywords in your own existing quality content and new content.

Be sure to analyze your competitor’s:

• SERP performance
• Story patterns
• Word count and general page length
• Tone and style
• What they include in headings and subheadings
• How they use anchor text
• How often do they incorporate images and relevant keywords
• Title tags and other meta tags
• Audience
• Sales funnel flow
• Headers and sub-headers

How to Improve Your Website’s Content

5. Optimize for Long-Tail KWs

Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for because they’re often less competitive. A long-tail keyword is a keyword phrase that is more specific than a traditional keyword. They’re usually three or more words linked together to make the search results better tailored to what the searcher has in mind.

For example, “places to camp in Nevada with dogs” would be considered a long-tail keyword phrase. If you offer RV and tent campsites that are dog-friendly in Nevada, you’re more likely to capture more organic traffic by appealing to this phrase rather than more general search terms such as “Nevada camping.”

How Can You Identify Long-Tail Keywords for Your Website?

SearchAtlas’s Keyword Researcher will generate a list of related keyword suggestions along with a SERP overview report. This allows you to gauge the difficulty of ranking for specific keywords and what your competition is like. From there, you will want to select long-tail keywords that are relevant to your business.

6. Include LSI Keywords in Your Content

Like long-tail keywords, Latent Semantic Indexing keywords (or LSI keywords) allow you to increase your search engine visibility by selecting strategic keywords and keyword clusters for your web content.

LSI keywords are words that Google recognizes as being related to a primary keyword. When you include an array of LSI keywords in your content, you are creating more indicators or signals that Google will pick up on related to specific search terms.

Using a variety of LSI terms also helps prevent keyword-stuffing–a huge no-no that Google likes to demote web pages for.

7. Integrate Frequently Asked Question

A frequently asked questions page and highlighted questions on other content pages give you the opportunity to expand your topical depth, include more LSI keywords, and utilize common questions asked in Google searches.

They’re also a great resource for your visitors. Many people utilize FAQs as a way to learn more about what other people want to know regarding a topic. This can improve consumer confidence. For instance, “What size should I order?” is a great way to guide shoppers to the right product for their needs, decrease returns, and improve customer reviews.

8. Check headings, bullets, and lists

One of the easiest tasks you can check off your SEO list is to verify that you have the right keywords in your headings and your headings follow SEO best practices.

Headings serve three primary roles: 

1. They help with reader navigation, making the information they are looking for within the content easy. This increases the length of the user’s scroll and time-on-page.
2. They signal to Google’s web crawlers what your web page is about through javascript.
3. Headings also improve your website’s accessibility.

When formatting your landing pages, product pages, and blogs, only use one Heading 1. Then you will want to move down in a hierarchical structure with subheadings.

Bullet points have a similar effect to headings. They break up the text, so visitors scroll deeper into the page. Of course, they also display information in a way that gets attention. So, if you notice writing a list with 3 or more things, consider changing it to a bulleted list, instead. 

Keep in mind that you do not want to overburden your content with too many headings and too many numbered or bulleted lists. This is distracting and defeats the purpose.

9. Optimize your images

As time goes on, people become more and more visually literate. This adds extensive value to how users will interact with and enjoy using your website. Like headings and lists, images increase time-on-page and scroll distance for visitors. They can also significantly reduce your bounce rate.

Alternate text (or “alt text”) connected to images is one way SEO content creators use keywords in one more way for web crawlers to register. Alt Text is written into a webpage’s HTML and is prompted to appear should the image not be able to load or if the user is using a screen reader. Alt text provides a more accessible experience for all visitors. Many sources suggest that alt text is another form of javascript that Google’s algorithms pick up on. 

Images appear in Google Image searches. This gives you one more way to increase web traffic.

So, audit your website’s photos, graphics, and other rich media. Be sure to:

• Check your image sizes. If images take too long to load, users may exit your page and your page speed score can be negatively affected. Compress your images and be sure they fit into the frame of the web page.
• Fix image orientation. Landscape orientation is more aesthetically appealing and makes scrolling easier.
• Include accurate alt text for every image. When writing alt text, be descriptive and accurate. Adding details of gender and ethnicity can increase your brand’s inclusiveness to those that are visually impaired.
• Name your image files. Naming your images may seem like a small detail, but image file names can be read by web crawlers to help them be selected for image searches.

10. Adjust Your content’s reading level

Very few people want to slog through extremely dense, extremely elevated diction. So, make your homepage, landing pages, and blog posts

easy to read.

Keep in mind that most Americans prefer to read content at about the 8th-grade level. However, if your target audience or niche requires a more technical approach, go for it. Just be mindful of sentence length, section length, and other structural elements that can improve readability.

How can you figure out your company’s target audience’s reading level? One resource is Google Analytics. Google Analytics can give you a snapshot of your audience’s age and interest in existing posts. Looking at your social media followers can also provide insight. Want a more direct tactic? Survey your social media followers.

11. Update content for quality and depth

For pages that aren’t ranking well, re-optimize that content for different keyword targets. If the web page is not getting traffic or under-performing, consider making strategic revisions or deleting it.

You can use a tool like the LinkGraph SEO Content Assistant to improve the topical depth and relevance of your landing pages and web content. Our software scans the top-ranking search results for your target keyword and identifies the relevant keyword phrases and topics that you should include in your site content. Try to get your content score over 80 to get better rankings.

SearchAtlas also allows you to identify keyword cannibalization, so you can merge competing content for more in-depth blog content or landing pages.

12. Improve engagement to increase time on page

In the world of SEO, content quality is everything. Web searchers do not want to waste their time sifting through fluff to find valuable information. We can guarantee if your content doesn’t have value, users will notice and your bounce rate will soar. So, invest time in creating content that matters and provides value.

Writing web content for SEO takes time. However, there are some ways you can add value without excessively doubling or tripling your process time. One way you can expedite the process is to write about what you know. The second is to find gaps in your competitions’ website.

When writing blogs, be sure you provide at least 3 “ah-ha” pieces of information for the reader. And stay on topic throughout the page.

13. Don’t just focus on text-based content

As we have pointed out before, web users tend to favor visual information more and more. Additionally, people can retain visual information longer and more readily. This makes adding and creating visual content vital. Videos, infographics, bespoke graphics, and screenshots can have a powerful effect on your web traffic numbers.

Technical & Web Development SEO Improvements

14. Speed Things Up

Google’s Page Experience Update was no doubt  the biggest change for search in 2021. The page experience provided by a website became an official ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. Factors like page speed, Core Web Vitals, user experience (UX), and load times are now determining factors in whether search engines rank your website over your competitors in the search results.

The performance and usability of your website are key to whether users will find your content valuable. Nobody likes a slow website, and long page load times and slow site speed can leave users feeling frustrated, an experience you don’t want any potential customers to associate with your brand. Slow page loads undercut your SEO efforts, decreasing total sessions, raising bounce rate, and negatively impacting other engagement metrics.

15. Check the load time of your largest contentful paint

Staying current with Google’s algorithm update can be quite the feat. However, if you can update your web pages to reflect highly impactful metrics, then you can stay ahead of your competition. In this case, focusing on your largest contentful paint or LCP can boost your website’s performance.

Your LCP is the most data-dense visual element of a page above the fold (or what is visible to the user before you scroll down). And… it is now a metric Google looks at in regards to the page experience and your ranking. So, taking the time to identify your LCPs and compress them or move them below the fold can improve your site’s SERP position.

How to Find Your LCP:

1. Use Google’s Lighthouse tool in your page information menu to generate a report. Be sure to select mobile or Desktop, depending on what the majority of your traffic uses.
2. If your LCP is too slow, you will want to identify what your LCP is by scrolling down and selecting View Original Trace Map. This will allow you to identify and map the load of your LCP.
3. Once you’ve identified your LCP, you can compress it if needed, move it below the fold, or replace it with something smaller. 

16. Lower Your Cumulative Scroll Shift

Cumulative Scroll Shift is another signal that Google now looks closely at when evaluating your page’s performance, and another chance to upgrade your UX. While most other loading issues center on site speed, this one focuses on a major frustration factor: shifting page features.

Scroll shift occurs when objects on a page move and push other elements around during the loading process. This most often occurs when an ad, image, or video loads at a slower rate than text. This shift can make users lose their place in a blog article or misclick on a button.

To fix this issue, consider where your elements populate and if images are properly compressed. Placing slow-loading elements lower on a page can help.

(See LCP instructions above to measure your cumulative scroll shift).

17. Fix Broken Internal Links

When one of Google’s web crawlers comes across a broken internal link, they will follow the link. But if the link is broken, they register the ‘difficulty’ as an issue with the user experience of your page. Why? Broken links frustrate users. And more often than not, they will decide to go elsewhere for the information they were seeking.

To fix your broken internal links, you will want to audit your site using the Site Audit tool in your SearchAtlas dashboard. Here you will find a list of site issues, including broken links.

Once you’ve identified the broken links, you need to assess if the link is broken because the content has been removed or just moved. If it’s been removed, eliminate the link. If it has been moved, update the link to the new URL.

If you’re not yet incorporating internal linking in your SEO strategy, remember that linking to relevant content on your website can improve your indexing and your overall SEO. Here’s a tutorial on how to find ideal internal links using the SearchAtlas SEO Content Assistant.

18. Audit Your Outbound & Inbound Links

Links leading from your website to another, or outbound links, verify that you are using authoritative sources. However, if these links stop working, they can have a negative effect on your SEO. 

These are labeled as 404 errors. When Googlebots explore your site, they will note broken outbound links. The same is true for your inbound links (link from a 3rd party site to yours).

How to fix your outbound links:

1. Perform a site audit to identify broken links.
2. For outbound links that link to pages that no longer exist, consider removing the link. 
3. Otherwise, if you need to keep a link in that location, you can try to locate the new page for the same information and replace the link. Or you can find a more recent webpage to link to.

How to fix inbound links:

1. Often, the best practice for inbound links is to create 301 redirects when you change a URL path. This allows those inbound links to continue to guide the user to the right information. However, if you did not do so, you will want to begin the process now by performing a site audit.
2. Identify links that need redirects. Ask your web developers to update broken links to redirect users to the correct page.

19. Assess Your Backlinks

A URL’s backlink profile reveals a lot about the site owner’s off-site SEO strategy. A site owner who doesn’t monitor backlinks for linking site quality, anchor text diversity, and relevance will struggle to raise their overall site authority in the eyes of search engines. 

Google ranks websites that are well-trusted by other webmasters and users on the internet. One of the best ways to see quick SEO results is to focus on backlinks.

If you don’t monitor backlinks on a regular basis, it’s possible that your backlink profile has become populated with toxic or spammy links from low-quality sites. 

How to Assess Your Backlinks:

Use an SEO tool like our free backlink analyzer to identify those questionable new links and generate the text for a disavow file. There is no way to remove those hyperlinks to your site, but a Disavow file tells Google not to count them toward their ranking algorithm.

Not all backlinks have the same value. Those from sites with higher Domain Authority and strong SEO metrics themselves will have the biggest impact. Performing a backlink audit every quarter can help you stay on top of your new links and ensure that your links are always working for you, not against you.

How to Improve SEO Performance with Backlink Audits

1. Perform a backlink audit once a quarter to make sure your website isn’t keeping company with questionable web properties. 
2. Use a Backlink Analysis tool to identify toxic or spammy websites that are linking to yours.
3. Generate and submit a Disavow file in your Google Search Console account to reduce the impact of low-quality links

20. Update ineffective anchor text

Anchor text is the text that is associated with a link. For example, in the sentence: LinkGraph offers an industry-leading suite of SEO tools. “Suite of SEO tools” is the anchor text. Not only does this text indicate to your reader what the link will lead to, but it also tells Google’s algorithms what the linked site’s topic is. This helps it become more discoverable via search inquiries.

While it may seem inconsequential, the text that connects to a link matters for your SEO. So, to improve your anchor text, return to your internal links and revise any misleading or vague anchor text to provide more context. Try to include the keyword of the page you’re linking to in the anchor text if it’s syntactically appropriate.

21. Certificates and security credentials

Secure Sockets Layer certificates (or SSL certificates) are designed to keep users’ data secure through encryption. These safety measures are minute and live on your server, but they can have a profound impact on your SEO.

If you’ve ever come across a warning message from your browser that the site you’re going to enter is not secure or private, you experienced the effects of not having an SSL certificate. If you decided to “go back to safety,” you are similar to the majority of users–and you can imagine what effect this has on the traffic to your site.

Secure websites have the protocol HTTPS (not HTTP). With more and more awareness of cybersecurity, users want their information to be protected through encryption. Not having your SSL certificates can be a huge deterrent to web users. So, be sure to update your SLL certificates on your server ASAP.

22. Examine and update your meta tags

When you view Google results, you see a page title with a short description beneath. These are considered meta tags. This text tells searchers and search engines what information can be found on that webpage. They also create an easy tactic to boost your search traffic CTR.

To upgrade your meta tags, you want to follow a few simple steps:

1. Be sure your primary keyword is in the meta title and description.
2. Keep your title between 30 and 60 characters and your meta description under 160 characters. If your title is too short, Google may replace your title tag with a heading from the page.
3. Be clear, concise, and accurate in your meta description.
4. Use a call to action (CTA) in your meta description to encourage people to click on your page, increasing your CTR.

23. Employ Schema Markup

Schema markup is a type of microdata designed to tell search engine algorithms what kind of content users can find on your website or web pages. Schema applies to certain categories of data like restaurants, recipes, and local businesses. Many search engines, like Google, display the information highlighted by the schema as a preview or snippet. This increases your website’s search visibility.

24. Reduce unnecessary code

Your website is powered by coding languages like HTML and javascript. And after Google’s Core Web Vitals update, the complexity of this code gained greater SEO value. 

When your code isn’t clean or has issues, it can stymie the progress of Googlebots that crawl your website. To assess if your code needs work, run your website through PageSpeed Insights. 

If your website isn’t performing as well as it could, fix broken links, eliminate HTML comments, replace any missing graphics. You can also keep CSS code on an external .cs file and javascript in an external .js file. W3C Markup Validation Service can also help you identify HTML and CSS issues.

Engage in off-site SEO

An often-overlooked aspect of SEO is how you market your website and expertise outside of the site itself. By following some of these link building tips, you can draw more traffic to your site and increase your high-value backlinks.

25. Make a guest appearance on a podcast

If you excel in your niche, show off your knowledge on a podcast. Not only does this increase your brand’s reputation, but it can also drive traffic to your e-commerce site through backlinks.

You don’t have to wait for an invitation. Instead, do some research and reach out to a podcast producer in your industry.

26. Interviews and guest posts

Interviews are another great way to show off your expertise and increase brand mentions. Find industry-leading e-magazines and print magazines and offer to be interviewed or offer to submit a guest post. You may be surprised by how many publications will jump at the chance to receive high-quality content from an expert in the field.

27. Forums: Frequent, Engage, and Create

Engaging with people online is a wonderful way to build your brand online and get insight into information gaps in your industry. The biggest bang-for-your-buck when it comes to forums is creating a community forum on your website.

By providing users with a place to ask one another questions, you’re creating a self-service help desk. Which increases traffic…—Forums have even more SEO value such as:

• Forums become a hotbed for content, including hot topic keywords–this allows you to get a jump on the competition in regards to ranking for new search phrases.
• The software you use to set up your forum should create URLs that reflect topics AKA keywords.
• You receive content updates from users automatically, so your website stays fresh in Google’s eyes.

By interacting with people, you can create a positive reputation for your business and establish yourself as an authority on a topic.

28. Create Google Business Profile

Without a Google Business Profile, your website is at a search engine disadvantage. With a Google Business Profile, you can appear at the top of the SERPs for local searches or transaction intent searches. Verified and optimized Google Business Profiles can even get you into the local 3-pack of business that appears in Google’s top of the page snippets.

After creating your Google Business Profile, you can better manage your business reputation by replying to reviews and answering customer questions. Be sure to add photos, so you can appear in image search results.

29. Perform A/B Testing

To truly take your SEO strategy to the next level, you have to take a nuanced approach to the changes you make to your website and how you measure their impact. A/B Testing is a great way to make gradual optimizations to your site and measure whether they have a strong correlation with better impressions, search traffic, keyword rankings, or organic sessions.

There are so many website elements that can be A/B tested, like title tags, meta descriptions, internal links, site structure, CTAs, fonts, and even colors. To perform a successful A/B test, you need to have clearly defined variants and the proper staging environment to test out two separate pages. Make sure to use canonical tags when testing out pages so Google doesn’t see the pages as duplicate content and penalize your website as a result.

SEO A/B testing is a more advanced SEO strategy, so if you are new to SEO, work with skilled SEOs, marketers, or an SEO agency before diving in headfirst. If you use a tool like the LinkGraph GSC dashboard, you will get daily rankings updates to measure which variant of your A/B test produces better SEO results.

How to Improve SEO Performance with A/B Testing

Choose two clearly defined variants that you want to test (e.g. two meta descriptions, two-page titles, two heading tags, etc.)

Add rel=canonical link attributes to avoid a duplicate content penalty

Measure your A/B variants in GSC Insights

30. Track and Measure Your SEO KPIs

When it comes to your SEO performance, you will need to establish your primary key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and measure based on your website’s needs. However, organic traffic, SERP ranking, leads, conversions, bounce rate, session duration, load times, CCP traffic, and crawl errors are all excellent indicators of your SEO strategy’s success.

When selecting your KPIs, keep in mind that conversions are your ultimate goal, but conversions alone can be vague as to their source. Instead, track analytics such as keyword traffic, referral links, impression and CTRs, and traffic to specific pages.

To track your progress, you can log onto Google Search Console, Google Analytics, or an all-in-one platform like SearchAtlas. SearchAtlas makes finding all of the data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics easy to understand. SearchAtlas is the easiest way to see your website’s performance in one place.

With this software, you can easily see which pages receive the highest search traffic, your website’s overall site traffic, individual page SEO and SERPs positions, how much traffic your site and landing pages receive, what organic search terms you should target, top pages for your targeted focus terms, referral traffic, new content creation ideas, your site speed, mobile users data, local SEO tips and data, search traffic trends.

———-

While 30 ways to improve your SEO may seem like a lot to tackle, keep in mind tip #1–strategizing and prioritizing goes a long way. Create a list or schedule and work on what you can when you can. Group tasks that require additional help together, so you can maximize your budget and efforts of an outside party. And don’t forget to track your campaigns in SearchAtlas’s GSC tool.

As you work to improve your website’s SEO performance, keep in mind that your efforts will be rewarded in the long run. SEO often requires momentum to build over time. 

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