In this list you will find a lot of tips and tricks for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). With the use of this tips and tricks you can improve the ranking of your website in the search engine result pages.
1. Domain Length
Use a domain with 16 characters or less. Short domain names are easier for people to remember.
This makes your brand more accessible to users and sticks in their minds. This is good for brand recognition and for increasing brand awareness.
2. Mobile-First
Optimize your website for mobile use. Most of the users will visit your website with mobile devices.
You can check the mobile version of your website with your own mobile device. The provider of your website should give you the chance to change.
3. Compare yourself with your competitors
Find out if there are any missing topics you could add to upgrade your content.
Analyze keywords where your competitors are stronger than you and why. This will help you find new input to optimize your website for search engines.
4. Optimize your meta descriptions
In mobile search results, longer meta descriptions are often cut off. At the same time descriptions getting shorter in desktop results.
To avoid (mobile) users seeing only half of your descriptions, be sure to optimize them.
Precise and short meta descriptions are easier to capture. They’re displayed in full in the SERPs and can thus increase the click-through rate (CTR).
5. Incorporate SEO from the start
Get an SEO expert on board early on when redesigning your website. If search engine optimization is considered from the beginning of the website design, there will be fewer problems later.
This is because website structure and layout as well as usability are important for SEO. Aspects that must be considered early in the website design.
6. Even unpopular keywords are valuable
It is better to be at the top for a keyword with few search queries than to be on page 2 for a keyword with many search queries.
Even if the search volume for the smaller/unpopular keyword is not very high and you rank high for it, more users will find your website this way.
With a keyword with many search queries for which you rank only on page 2, you will not get very much traffic.
7. Work out a SEO-strategy
Don't work on your website without a plan. Analyze your website and set the goals for it. Then you should determine which areas need first and most attention.
With a well-developed strategy and an accompanying plan for implementation, you will save yourself a lot of time and won't forget any important part.
8. Learn as much as you can about SEO
Better know-how can be your key competitive advantage. So learn as much as you can about SEO.
9. SEO is an ongoing game
SEO optimization is never over and evolves rapidly. So it pays to keep your SEO know-how up to date.
10. Fulfill customers expectation’s
It is important to adjust the offer or teaser so that it aligns with the expectations of users.
Be authentic in what you present on your site and align it with your company values. This will keep your company recognizable and look familiar not only on your website, but across all platforms.
If you deliver on what you promise as a company and on your website, you will build trust in the long run.
11. Avoid misleading headlines
With interesting teaser texts and teaser offers you can draw users to your website. The texts and offers should meet the users’ expectations.
It’ll has negative consequences for a top position in SERPs if you don’t meet the expectations. Disappointed users will quickly click back to the search results.
This sends the signal to Google that your website is not relevant.
12. Use appropriate calls to action
Use CTA (Call to Action) to encourage users to take action. To ensure that users respond to your CTA, you need to match it to your intention for the user.
If you want your customer to buy something or subscribe to something, you need to communicate that clearly. So that it's clear where the user will end up when they click the CTA button or what will happen next.
E.g.
"Buy now" "Download it" "Chat with an expert now"
13. Use the Search Console
Use Search Console to see actual search queries. It helps you to better target your content to user intent‘s.
The Search Console is a free service from Google. It allows you to check and manage your website's presence in Google search results and fix any errors.
You don't need to register for Search Console. The Google search results includes your website even without using the Search Console.
Yet, you can use Search Console to better understand how Google sees your website and optimize it if necessary.
14. Avoid thin content
So-called thin content lowers the quality of your website. Thin content is the term for digital content that offers little or no added value to the user.
The term first appeared in 2012 when Google's Quality Rater Guidelines came to light. Since then, the word has stood for website URLs that are devalued by Google due to a clear lack of quality.
Detailed content often achieves higher search results. Long content does not guarantee success.
After reading your content, no questions should remain about the topic. The users should get all the valuable information.
15. Update old content
Often, old content is still valuable. A little update makes it shine again.
Updating old content from time to time and keeping it up to date will have a positive impact on your visibility.
Especially for topics that are constantly evolving, keeping content up to date is especially important.
16. Clean up duplicate content
Search engines have problems indexing duplicate content to the correct page. Thus, the search engine finds the content of the affected page worse or even filtered out.
Each indexed page must have enough unique content. If a website have duplicate content it may have a negative effect on the ranking of that website.
You create unique content only for one page only. The content occurs only on that page.
17. Pay attention to the readability of your texts
This includes grammar and simple sentence structures. Besides that you should focus on the natural inclusion of keywords, from a clean and clear layout too.
This can improve the user experience. All things together can better the ranking of your website.
18. Create FAQ pages
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are easy to read and usually very helpful. This is good for readers and for your search results. FAQs are also good for getting more attention for long-tail keywords.
Use the W-questions to see what questions are commonly associated with your keywords. Then answer them with your content.
19. Write attractive page titles
You will generate more clicks with appealing page titles. You can compare the page title of a page with the packaging of a product.
If the packaging is eye-catching and appealing, people are more likely to buy the product. You will generate high click-through rates with appealing and meaningful page titles.
20. Update your content regularly
Always keep your content up to date. Especially with fast-moving topics, you should make sure to keep them up to date.
This will keep your entire website attractive and relevant for users and also for Google. After all, updating content is also a positive sign to the search engine.
21. Close content gaps on your website
Optimize the content that already ranks well by finding final content gaps. Fill them with high-quality content.
This may give the page a final boost and it will rank higher afterwards.
22. Use HTTPS
In 2014, Google confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal. Google Chrome shows its users that the connection to the website is not secure when using HTTP.
With HTTPS, you show Google and your website users that browsing your site is safe.
23. Use customer reviews
Positive customer reviews have some benefits.
First, the yellow stars are eye-catching. The stars make your website stand out better in search results.
Second, the customers produce free content for you. This increases your visibility in search engine rankings.
Create a plan to ask customers for product reviews or comments about your business. Integrate customer reviews on your website.
Customer reviews build trust with potential new customers. They serve validation for your service, expertise or product.
24. Use regional backlinks
Google (and other search engines) evaluate the regional relevance of a website with external links. Here, the respective links from the target countries are decisive.
If you want to make it in the US market, you should have backlinks on US websites to prove your relevance for the region.
You should build the local link profile on the basis of quality and not quantity.
25. Keep the website loading time short
A short loading time of your website is not only important for Google's ranking. Users prefer websites with short loading times, too.
Long loading times prevent the user from visiting a website. The user has no patience to wait for the clicked page to load.
So, work with a developer and use Core Web Vitals reports to highlight where the page speed issues are.
26. Use breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trails are graphical control elements. You use them as a navigational aid in user interfaces and on web pages. They allow users to keep track and maintain awareness of their locations within programs, documents, or websites. The term is a reference to the trail of bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel in the German fairy tale of the same name.
Breadcrumbs improve the usability of your website. That helps the ranking of the website. Breadcrumbs help users find their way around your website and strengthen internal linking.
27. Test different meta descriptions
Capture individual and relevant meta descriptions for each page. Then check regularly to see if you need to make adjustments.
Meta description tags are important because Google may use them as snippets for your pages in search results. Note, that I write "possibly" because Google might use a relevant section of your page's visible text if it's a good match for a user's search query.
It's always advisable to add meta description tags to individual pages - just in case Google doesn't find a good selection of text to use in the snippet.
If you have many impressions but few clicks, test different meta descriptions to improve the click-through rate.
28. Use rel=canonical
Make sure that all pages have the rel=canonical tag, which directs Google to the main page in question. It's important for websites that can be reached via multiple URLs.
For example: This applies, if users can reach your website with or without entering www or similar scenarios.
This way you avoid Google having difficulties indexing your pages because of duplicate content.
29. Use only one H1-tag per page
The H1-tag is an important element in search engine optimization (SEO). It is the first heading on a web page and should reflect the title of the page. The H1-tag is important because it summarizes the content of the page. It also tells search engines what the page is about.
You should not use multiple H1-tags on a single page. The main headline of the page should have the H1-tag and be the largest and most present on the page.
Additionally, you shouldn’t use heading tags that serve purely as a design element for the text and no structure is clear. This can quickly confuse and distract the reader.
30. Add internal links at meaningful places
When setting internal links, you should pay attention to the appropriate anchor text. Ideally, the anchor text contains a matching keyword. This keyword links to another page.
This way, you ensure that the user also knows what to expect when he clicks on the link. Anchor texts are also important signals to the Google algorithm.
This does not mean that your anchor texts should only consist of keywords. Google penalizes you for this.
31. Include the most important keyword in the page title
The page title is an important signal for users and search engine. The focus keyword of your page should also be present in it.
The page title indicates what the page is about and what the user can expect. It should be concise and precise so that users can see what to expect.
32. Set outbound links to nofollow
Do not use the nofollow attribute for purchased links. You violate Google's webmaster guidelines with that.
So make sure you set the nofollow attribute here. For even more specific information to the Google bot, add the sponsored attribute.
You can also set nofollow for external links that you do not recommend. You should only provide your users with external links that are trustworthy and of high quality.
33. Repair broken backlinks
Damaged links are bad for users and for Google. Ask the website owner to update the links when you make changes that affect your backlinks.
Moreover, don't forget to set up appropriate redirects to ensure that the backlink is redirected to the right page.
34. Ensure link quality (not quantity)
Link building should be very targeted and strategic. Your links should be authentic and high quality.
Make sure you only link to sites that are high quality and do not contain spam. The same goes for backlinks you get from other sites.
Links from spam sites can have a negative impact on your ranking. So it is better to have few high quality backlinks than many spam links.
35. Focus on links that bring users
Links that bring qualified users to your site are valuable. Make sure that you generate backlinks on websites that are relevant to your industry and topics.
Ensure that users with matching interests reach your site. They are more likely to interact with it. These backlinks can increase the trust of your website. Beside that it can also attract genuine new users.
36. Focus on local facts and topics
If you want to land at the front of the SERPs in local search results, your content should also focus on locally relevant topics.
Make sure that your website shows that you have a connection to the region. Besides that you should have local relevance yourself. This helps to know insides about local specialities.
37. Old content can hurt your rankings
Conduct regular audits to determine if you should refresh or disposed old content.
Some content can become irrelevant to users. This happens with trending topics, which lose their relevance over time.
If you find such pages on your website, you should remove them.
38. Control the indexing of your pages
Use Search Console to make sure that search engines index your pages. If Google can’t index your site, they will not appear in Google search results.
Make sure that the Google bot can crawl your pages. The bot indicates them.
The page structure is important that there are no forwarding loops and that the crawler is not blocked.
Pay attention to enough internal links. They influence the indexability of your website. Update the content and optimize the loading time of the page. Submit a sitemap in the Google Search Console. This helps the Google bot index your website.
39. No spam links
If there are many unnatural or even spam links, Google may take action against your site.
This can happen especially with untagged paid links or link exchange programs. These are policy violations.
Stay away from spam links by using the "invalidate links to your site" tool. Another opportunity is that the owner of the other site remove the links.
40. Collect local reviews
If you want to build more relevance locally, local reviews are especially important. These prove that users from the region trust you and use your services or products.
Try to get as many good reviews as possible for your services. They help you with local visibility.
41. Change the internal links for HTTPS
Google treats HTTP and HTTPS URLs as two different domains. You should consider this change as a move of your domain.
Before you migrate from HTTP to HTTPS, you should change the internal links to HTTPS. This will prevent the crawler from still bumping over unsafe links and improve your loading time.
42. Use well readable and meaningful URLs
Simple and meaningful URLs are easy for users to remember, search engine friendly and easy to type.
It is much better for both search engines and users to use speaking URLs. They are easy to read and thematize the content of the website. For search engines it is an additional signal to infer the theme of a website.
Besides, users can also orient themselves by the URL and know where they are on your page.
A meaningful URL has an inviting effect on the user and is easy to remember. Speaking URLs act like a breadcrumb menu and show the user at a glance where he is currently located.
43. Use URL parameters
It is important to handle URL parameters. This avoids clogging the index with irrelevant pages. The work of the crawler would be unnecessary.
Exclude URLs with parameters from crawling using the robot.txt command “Disallow:/**?”. Make sure that no relevant URLs contain a question mark. URLs with question marks will not be crawled anymore.
You should check beforehand whether some parameters are not keyword relevant, especially in the case of filters. If necessary, it makes sense that these are crawled and indexed. In these cases, it can be valuable to make a static URL out of the dynamic URL with parameters.
44. Rewrite the meta descriptions on local pages
Rewrite or add local information to your meta descriptions. This helps if you notice low click-through rates in the Google Search Console.
This often appeals more to users searching for results from your region and builds trust.
45. Content language
Google has its own algorithm to identify the language used on a website. The algorithm assign your website to an appropriate target audience.
You can help the Google algorithm With the hreflang tag. The algorithm understands with the use of local domains even better which audience your website is intended for.
46. Optimize for multiple locations
If you have multiple locations, make sure the name, address, and phone number (NAP) for each location are consistent across all of your local profiles.
Take care that all company addresses are also on your website and that they match those on the local profiles.
47. Create country-specific content
It is important to take the local market into account. If you want to successful with international SEO local specifications are useful. Even if the language is the same in another country, the terms and keywords used daily are not.
It is not only about the terminology and the language styles. The units of measurement and currency can be different. Other different things can be contact addresses and most important grammar.
For example: The US and UK markets both speak English and many expressions differ. The units of measurement and currency are different. You should build separate websites for every single market.
48. Do an SEO Audit
Do an SEO check to find your website's weak spots. Then focus on the issues on your website. First address the ones that will have the most impact on your search engine results first.
Get help from outside experts for problems you can't solve on your own.
49. Add photos to your local pages
Local SEO is an important part of your search engine optimization. Searchers should found you in the local area first.
One of the most effective ways:
Include high-quality location photos on your website + in your Google My Business listing
Professional and appealing photos can help you stand out from the competition. Because of that a professional photographer should take these photos. You should update them on a regular basis. They encourage your customers to come to you. Make sure the images are high quality. Beside that they should look authentic. Customers get more confidence in your business with a professional look.
Photos of your locations are an important part of a successful local SEO strategy. They give your customers an authentic image of your business. Customers feel better at a first physical visit when they saw the interior of your store before.
50. Avoid keyword cannibalization
It can happen, that you have two pages battling for the same keywords. Then neither page may rank well because they are playing off each other. This happens even if both pages offer excellent content.
You should consider combining the content on one page to avoid keyword cannibalization.
51. Use the robots.txt file
With the robots.txt file you manage the crawling traffic on your website. You can prevent that the bot crawls certain pages, media or resources of your website. This influences the crawling budget of your website.
Make sure that your most important websites are not blocked. The bot should only crawl necessary pages. This will help with your website indexing and rankings.
If your website consists of too many individual pages, the Google bot will not be able to crawl all of them. Some significant pages may not be indexed.
52. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to host your images.
It makes sense to use a CDN. Especially when you have a lot of media embedded on your website that has a large file size. This can help speed up your website.
53. Meta Description Tip: Summarize the content of the page correct
When you search for something in search engines, it show you the best results with a meaningful meta description tag as a snippet. The snippet should be informative and interesting. With the snippet you can decide fast if the website is relevant to you. As a website owner you can write a lot into the meta description. There is no limit for the length of the text. The snippet should show the entire text and all relevant information.
Avoid doing this:
Meta description tags with content that is not relevant to the content on the page
General descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards".
Descriptions that only consist of keywords
Copy the entire document content into the meta description tag
54. Meta Description Tip: Use a unique description for each page
Setting a different meta description tag for each page helps users and Google. This is useful for searches when users can access many pages in your domain - for example, with the operator “site:”
It would be a lot of work to create meta description tags for thousand or even millions of pages. In this case, you can generate meta description tags based on the content of each page. Another way is to create sub groups and cluster your pages for different topics.
Avoid doing this:
Using the same meta description tags for all pages of your website or for a large group of pages
55. Meta Description Tip: Use heading tags to highlight important text
Meaningful headings help you to highlight important topics. They help you with a clear structure of your content. This way, users can better find the information they are looking for in your document.
56. Meta Description Tip: Imagine you are writing an outline
Think about the main points and sub-points when creating page content. Focus on what you want to cover. Use headings on fitting points in your texts. This will give you a clear structure for your content. They help readers to find the most important parts.
Avoid doing this:
Placing text in heading tags, which is not helpful in defining the page structure
Using heading tags in places where other tags would be more appropriate and useful
Switching back and forth between different heading tag sizes
57. Meta Description Tip: Do not use too many headlines on your page
Heading tags help you for a better structure of the content on a page. They give users a better overview of the text. But too many headings can make the whole thing confusing again. You should only use them where it makes sense.
Avoid doing so:
Too many heading tags on one page
Very long headings
Heading tags as a pure design element for text, without a recognizable structure
58. Freshness is better than age
The age of a website alone is not a ranking criterion. A website will lose rankings in SERPs when it is no longer relevant and up-to-date. You can drive high-quality traffic to an older website when the content is up-to-date and "fresh". Old websites are still useful and you should not deleted them. Even if they do not receive rankings and thus hardly any organic search traffic.
Even older pages can celebrate again new success in search results with:
SEO facelift
Optimization of web pages
Updated content
59. The SEO facelift checklist
Find outdated pages of your website and update your content
Build new internal links from successful content to those pages
Resubmit the revisions and update the date of republication
Build fresh external links from new, thematically-related web pages
Share the new versions of your web pages on social media and build new social signals
60. Mobile First: Test your website
Test how easy it is for visitors to use your site on a mobile device. Simply enter the URL of a page and see the results for your site: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
61. Invest in visual search
Retailers and e-commerce brands should integrate visual search into their marketing strategy. With visual search, users can upload an image. Then the search engines suggest similar products or even the exact product.
To ensure that your products show up in visual search:
Use high-quality and attractive images
Use meaningful image titles and alt texts
Make sure the images are of high quality
Use these images on your website and on other platforms
Especially in e-commerce, it is a good idea to integrate visual search on your own website as well. Your customers can benefit from it.
62. Focus on the right keywords
Avoid keywords with high search volume at first. These keywords are often very short. They are highly contested and reveal little about the search intention. It’s difficult to hit the searcher’s intention. You may waste your time writing a article because the searcher want something else.
For example: Could you assess what someone searching "social media marketing" would want to see? Is it a scientific literature for a thesis? Is it a job or an apprenticeship? Or the searcher is in need of an agency as a service provider. You don’t know what the real intention is. Do this instead: Pay more attention to long-tail keywords or semantically related terms (LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing). You may reach fewer people, but there’s a higher chance to match the searcher’s intention.
63. Regularly check your internal links
You should check your internal links on a regular basis. Sometimes you optimize a URL of a page. Then an internal link will misguide readers to a 404 page. A 404 page is an error page. Readers don’t like this pages. Those pages show that you don’t have a structured website. Your readers will lose trust and they don’t come back again.
Avoid a broken or misleading internal link. Check them from time to time. There are some tools like SEMrush which help you with the checkups.
64. Check redirects
Avoid long, chained redirects to help Google crawl your site faster. You should link from each old URL to the current URL. That’s important if you have changed a URL several times in a short period of time.
Check whether some of your long-standing redirects are still needed. There is a chance that Google has not already indexed the correct new URL.
This is how you forward correctly:
URL 1 ➔ URL 3 URL 2 ➔ URL 3
Shorter loading times
URL 1 ➔ URL 2 ➔ URL 3
Longer loading times due to chained redirects
64. Use 301 redirects
You should use a server-side 301 redirect when you need to change the URL of a page that appears in search engine results.
This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines arrive on correct page. The 301 status code means that a page moved to a new location forever.
You can find some tips here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=de
65. Use canonical tags for similar products
In online stores it happens that some products have very similar product descriptions. This can happen when there is a new version.
You should use the Canonical tag to signal Google that the product description is not duplicate content. With that you don’t need to redirect old products to the new one.
66. Ensure a clear internal link structure
Navigation is an important part of any website. It should be clear and intuitive. That helps visitors can faster find their way around. At the same time, navigation and text should link to the most important content. This way you can ensure that search engines can index your page and visitors can find it.
A clean and logical link structure is elementary for the web design of a website. It should be clear and intuitive. This helps users to find their way around. The internal links have a great influence on the indexing of your page by search engines. The more internal links a page has, the more important it is for the ranking in the search results. So make sure that internal links connect to your most important pages. Links from footer and header do not have much weight.
67. Structure of keywords
You can devide search queries on the internet into three groups. The three groups are:
Main Terms or “Fat Head”
“Chunky Middle”
The long-tail
In the following you can find a detailed explanation for the three groups.
1. Main Terms or "Fat Head".
The "fat head" accounts for 18.5 % of all search queries on the Internet. They contain only one or two keywords. These head terms have a high search volume. Users search them between thousands and millions times per month. There is a lot of competition for these keywords. The keywords have the potential to deliver a huge volume of data. Head keywords represent a huge search volume. At the same time they imply the lowest consumer intent. Because of that they have lower conversion rates.
2. "Chunky Middle"
The "fat middle" accounts for 11.5 % of all search queries. It consists of a much larger number of potential search queries. The chunky middle has high search volume. The competition for the keywords is high. The search queries have significant traffic of hundreds or even thousands of searches per month. The conversion rate is better than for the “fat head” keywords but not as high as for long-tail terms.
3. The long-tail
Long-tail searches make up the majority of all internet searches. It’s up to 70 % of all search queries. The queries consist of two or more words. Although the monthly search volume is in the tens or below. There are billions of potential long-tail searches. Most of potential traffic for your site can come from those long-tail keywords if you rank well for them. Because these searches are much longer, they tend to be more specific. This can show higher user intent. Conversion rates are about two and a half times higher for long-tail terms than for head and chunky middle terms.
68. Use rel=ugc for forum or comment links
The ugc attribute stands for User Generated Content. You can use it to mark links to websites that users created. This is particularly suitable for forum entries or comment links.
You can add the nofollow attribute to make the crawler clear that you don’t want Google bot to follow it.