SEO best practices

SEO do’s and don’ts

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are things that can both help and hinder how well your site’s content is served to people on SERPs. It goes without saying that if your goal is for your site to rank more highly, you’ll want to do more of the good things and try to avoid the bad tactics altogether. The trick, however, is understanding that search engine algorithms are constantly changing. So, what was perhaps considered best practice in the past may very well be an old tactic that can hurt your SEO rating today. 

With that being said, here are some evergreen ways to optimize your site for search engines:

• Publish and/or update content consistently. It is much better to get into a cadence of publishing one blog post per month than it is to publish 6 posts in one month and then nothing for the next half-year.
• Write content that is relevant and engaging for your human audience. Search engines take into account how long visitors stay on your site, whether they like and/or comment on your posts, and if your content is shared on social media. If people like your content, search engines see that as a positive thing.
• Aim for your page or post to be at least 300 words. Some posts can certainly be shorter, and some may be much longer, but it’s more difficult for search engines to get a good understanding of your content if it’s short.
• Optimize your important pages and/or posts by trying to include your ideal keyword(s) in the title, the page URL (which is determined by the permalink slug in the page/post settings), the first paragraph, within a heading, and 1-2 times in the remaining body of text.
• If your page or post content includes images, make sure the uploaded filenames of the images include your ideal keyword(s).

These are great ways to ensure your content is working towards a stronger SEO rating. At the same time, you’ll want to make sure you’re not doing anything that can penalize that rating. Here are some outdated and/or detrimental SEO tactics:

• Writing content only for search engines. As we’ve already mentioned, it’s important to write for your human audience first.
• Keyword Stuffing. This is the practice of adding your ideal keyword(s) way too much in the body paragraphs of your page’s content. For example, instead of using the keyword(s) 1-2 times, a page using keyword stuffing would have it appear 10+ times.
• Keyword Cannibalization. This occurs when you have too many identical or similar keywords spread throughout the content on your site. As a result, search engines aren’t able to determine which page or post to rank more highly. This confusion can result in a decreased SEO rating.
• Bad Backlinks. Although legitimate backlinks from external sites with good authority can help your SEO ranking, unethical means of attaining backlinks (e.g. buying or exchanging them, guest posting on irrelevant sites, spam comments in forums/directories, etc) will not have a positive impact.
• Article Spinning. This is when popular content is essentially duplicated (it doesn’t have to be an exact copy, but the content and intent are highly similar to the original) and published on the same site or another one. 
• Duplicate Content. This is when people copy content from other sites and publish the same content on their site. Search engines can recognize where the original content is published, and duplicate posts/pages could be seen as spammy. Also, when the same content exists in multiple places online, that only serves to increase competition, and likely doesn’t help the SEO rating.

Doing the good and avoiding the bad, as it relates to SEO practices, will go a long way over time to increase your site’s SEO rating. The field of search engine optimization is always changing, because companies like Google are constantly trying to improve their algorithms to present the most relevant results to the searches that people conduct. However, long-term, consistent publishing of quality content will always remain a key component for bettering your SEO ranking. 

It’s also important to know that improving your site’s search ranking on SERPs can take weeks, or even months, to achieve. It’s not a fast or overnight process, so be skeptical of anyone promising such results. Again, search engines will prioritize relevant, quality content over everything else.