29/12/2020
Massive List of 200+ SEO Tips
by Mark Williams-Cook on Linkedin
1: "We'll produce 2 blog posts a week of 500 words". If your SEO strategy sounds similar to that, I can pretty much guarantee you are wasting your money.
2: If someone tells you that Googlebot can process Javascript as it crawls, they're wrong! The rendering of Javascript happens much later (sometimes weeks) and can cause big problems for client-side rendered sites. More info: https://developers.google.com/.../javascript-seo-basics
3: Google's "mobile-first" index means they are looking at your site as if they are on a smartphone. This means if you have a "mobile version" of your site that has less content than your desktop version, it is unlikely to get found. More info: https://developers.google.com/.../mobile-first-indexing
4: Never use automatic Geo-IP redirection to push users to different location versions of your website. It will confuse search engines, it's a bad user experience and it will actually be illegal under EU law from 2nd December! More info: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en
5: Nobody can tell you the keyword a particular user searched for on Google and ended up on your site from organic search, despite what some tools claim to be able to do.
6: Adding new content to be "fresh" is a myth: it does not apply universally. Some queries deserve freshness, others do not. Don't add new content for the sake of it being new.
7: If you want to outrank everyone for seasonal terms, something like "best christmas laptop deals 2018", then keep it on the same URL every year (e.g. best-christmas-laptop-deals) and just change the year in the content. If you want to keep the old content, move *that* to a new URL (e.g. best-christmas-laptop-deals-2017).
8: The words you use on internal links (anchor text) are massively important. Link to internal pages with the terms you want to rank - it can be more important than content on that page(!) Conclusion from a recent experiment: Even a website, where a keyword is neither in the content, nor in the meta title, but is linked with a researched anchor, can easily rank in the search results higher than a website which contains this word but is not linked to a keyword. (Source: https://lnkd.in/dYPXCBg)
9: Any different URL counts as different page to a search engine. For example: If both www and non-www versions are accessible, Google counts these as different pages. In cases where content is identical and accessible through different URLs, you should be using permanent 301 redirects.
10: Even if you're not an e-commerce site or collecting information, all of your site should be https not http. It's good for protecting your users' privacy and as a thank you, Google counts it as a positive ranking signal 🙂
11: Contrary to popular belief, adding pages to robots.txt does _not_ stop them from being indexed. To stop a page being indexed, you need to use the noindex tag. (More info on noindex: https://lnkd.in/dmccdy9)
12: Google completely ignores the meta keyword tag and has done for years. Don't waste your time writing lists of keywords in your CMS!
13: Your meta description does not directly improve how well your page ranks in Google. It does, of course, influence how many people are attracted to click on your result, so focus on that.
14: Google claim to treat subdomains and sub-folders the same in terms of ranking. There are some interesting challenges with subdomains, such as sites like wordpress.com where a subdomain can host content that the domain is "not responsible for" (in this case, random peoples' blogs). Some SEOs have cited examples where they believe subfolders have out-performed subdomains in terms of ranking with other things being apparently. It's worth questioning whether your site really does *need* a subdomain and what the benefits are.
15: Longer content does not necessarily rank better. Some studies may indicate this, but when you look at the source data, it's just because that content is so much better (and there is a higher probability longer content has had more effort invested). The web is not short of quantity of content - it's short of quality. Answer questions and intent as quickly as possible, then get into the detail if needed. More tips on what quality means this week 🙂
16: Content does not just mean text! Sometimes a picture says 1,000 words and a video says even more. Google 'learns' what type of content best answers queries and you can get great clues as to what type of content to create by seeing what is already ranking E.g. "How to change a car battery" is all videos ranking top - after the *short* text content! (See yesterday's tip on content length).
17: Back to basics. If you don't have one, a free Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) account will give you a wealth of diagnostic information directly from Google about your site, alert you to problems, penalties, hacks and give you average rankings and keywords your site is showing for. (https://search.google.com/search-console/about)
18: You can download free browser extensions, such as User-agent Switcher for Chrome (https://chrome.google.com/.../lkmofgnohbedopheiphabfhfjgk...) that will let you identify yourself as Googlebot to the websites you visit. It's really interesting seeing how some websites will deliver you a difference experience when they think you're Google. It's also really useful for uncovering what is going on if you get a "This site may be hacked warning". It's very common for hacked websites to appear "normal" to a regular user, but when they detect Google visiting the site, they'll show lots of hacked content and links to benefit the hacker's sites!
19: You can use search operators to get additional information about your site from Google. For instance, try a search for: site:yourdomain.com and Google will show you how many results it has indexed* for your domain and will list them roughly in order of importance**. You can also use this to see which specific page Google likes on your site for a specific keyword or keyphrase by conducting the search: site:yourdomain.com keyword *It's not 100% accurate, I've actually seen some crazy variances. The only way to be sure is to check in Google Search Console, but this method works with competitors or sites you don't have access to their Search Console. ** This obviously has no keyword context but may have some other context from your personalisation, search history, device etc. It's more a rough guide for interest and is usually expressive of your internal linking.
20: There is almost no case in which you or your agency should be using the Google Disavow Tool. You'll probably do more harm than good. This tool is only for disavowing links when you've had a manual penalty or specifically when you know blackhat/paid links have happened and you want to proactively remove them. In 99% of cases, just 'spammy' links should be left - if Google thinks they're spammy they'll just ignore them. Focus your efforts on creating and positive things, instead.
21: If you are moving your site (full or partial), DO NOT use the Remove URLs tool in GSC on the old site. It won't make the site move go any faster. It only impacts what's visible in Search so it could end up hurting you in the short-term.
22: You can use the service https://lnkd.in/dpbWzSk to automatically monitor things such as Google's Webmaster Guidelines pages to get an email when they have been updated. For instance, Google recently added this to their definition of 'Link schemes'
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23: First words are important words. If you're going to put your brand name in your page title, it usually should come after the description of the page content.
24: If you're having to do redirects, don't do them at "database level" - e.g. in the backend of your CMS. Your site will be faster if you do the redirects "higher up", such as in the htaccess file. Faster sites are good for users and rank better.
25: It's a common mistake to use robots.txt to block access to the CSS / theme files of your site. You should let Google access these, so it can accurately render your site and have a better understanding of the content.
26: "Keywords Everywhere" Chrome plugin is a nice, free way to get search volumes, search value and suggestions overlaid with every search you do. I have it on all of the time and over the months and years, you build a good 'feel' for search competitiveness and how other people search.
27: Pop-ups and interstitials generally annoy users, you too, right? Since Jan 2017, Google has specifically stated that websites that obscure content with them and similar will likely not rank as well. Here are some examples from Google of things to avoid: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/.../helping-users...
28: Competitors copying your content? One of the many things you can do is file a DMCA notice directly with Google. This can remove your competitor's content from search results. Here is the link to do so: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1& N.B. There are consequences for fake DMCA notices.
29: If you're AB testing different page designs on live URLs, make sure you use the canonical tag so you don't confuse search engines with duplicate content while the test is live.
30: Ayima Redirect Path Chrome plugin allows you to live view what redirects (JS/301/302 etc) are happening and if you're getting chains of them. You can get it here: https://chrome.google.com/.../aomidfkchockcldhbkggjokdkke...
31: If your web page URLs work both with and without a trailing slash (/), search engines will think you have two identical copies of your website online. You should pick whether you want a trailing slash or not and setup permanent 301 redirects between each. Failing to do so, can result in the 'two' pages competing against each other in the SERPs and ranking worse than a single one.
32: [Deprecated!] No longer an indexing signal (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/.../pagination-with...) If you have paginated (page 1,2,3,4 etc) content, there is special "Prev" and "Next" markup you can use to help search engines understand what is going on, better.
33: Google has always flatly denied and there is no good evidence whatsoever that social media posts on platforms like Facebook and their associated 'likes' and/or engagements directly impact your rankings in any way. If someone is insistent about this, look closely - you may be dealing with a clown! 🤡
34: How long a domain has been live and receiving links for, building up a reputation plays a part in how well the pages on it can rank. Older is better.
35: Want to know where you rank? Googling it will just frustrate you. Even with incognito mode, you're not going to get a fair representation of the rankings. Google Search Console will give you some average rankings - but only for terms they choose. I'd recommend SEMRush. It's super cheap and will give you loads of keyword ranking data for your site, your competition and specific terms you want to track. You can get a trial here: https://lnkd.in/de7u2BZ (aff)
36: Add a self referential canonical tag to all canonical pages. This means if someone scrapes your content or links to it with query strings, it's still clear to Google which version to give credit to. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
37: You can find easy link opportunities by using tools such as Majestic's Clique Hunter. Specify a few competitor sites and you'll get a list of links that all or most of your competitors have that you do not. This helps close the gap on where all your competitors are being talked about and you're not. More: https://blog.majestic.com/company/clique-hunter/
38: Watch this brilliant video from Lukasz Zelezny on SEO tips you can implement tonight! https://lnkd.in/dgWgKPs
39: Using a VPN is a good idea in general, but it's really helpful for SEO. Use ProtonVPN (https://lnkd.in/dVYiCJh) then you can click to change cities or countries and see what different search results look like.
40: Google can index PDF documents just fine and it actually renders them as HTML. This means links in PDF documents count as normal weblinks - PDFs are pretty easy to share, too....
41: This week, I saw a company that had been told by an agency their site was slow. It really wasn't (consistent ~3.0s TTI). You can test site speed (and more) yourself using Google's PageSpeed / Lighthouse audit tools. I'll do some tips the next few days about these tools, as they are commonly misused and misinterpreted. PageSpeed: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ Lighthouse: https://web.dev/
42: If you use the page speed tools from yesterday, keep in mind that results can vary every test you run, depending on all kinds of factors. If you are going to use these tools, run multiple tests on multiple pages and get some averages.
43: If you have enough traffic, Google's Pagespeed Insight tool will give you "Field data" - this is an amazingly useful average speed, directly from your user's browsers. It will give you a much better idea of how your site is performing outside of the 'spot checks' we spoke about in previous tips. Google Pagespeed Insights tool is here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
44: Have you heard that 50% of searches by 2020 will be voice searches? They won't, it's complete rubbish.
45: 1 in 5 searches in that happen in Google are unique and have never happened before. The vast majority of searches that are conducted are terms that have
