10 Actionable SEO Tips to Boost Rankings & Traffic

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s results pages (SERPs).

It is a process that involves researching, analyzing and understanding the behavior of search engines, and modifying a website to improve its visibility in the SERPs. SEO is an essential part of any online marketing strategy, as it helps businesses attract organic website traffic and generate leads.

In this article, we will explore the importance of SEO, its different strategies and the statistics that demonstrate the effectiveness of the process. We will also discuss the latest SEO trends and most actionable SEO tips in the current year to help businesses stay ahead of the curve.

The Importance of SEO in 2023

In 2023, it’s expected that the importance of SEO will only continue to grow as more and more people turn to search engines to find the products and services they need.

One of the main reasons SEO is important is that it helps to increase the visibility of a website or webpage in search engine results pages (SERPs). When a website appears at the top of SERPs, it’s more likely to be seen and visited by potential customers. This can lead to more traffic, more conversions, and ultimately more revenue for a business.

Another important aspect of SEO is that it helps to improve the user experience. When a website is optimized for search engines, it’s also optimized for users. This means that it’s faster, easier to navigate, and more user-friendly. By improving the user experience, a website can reduce its bounce rate, increase its conversion rate, and ultimately lead to more satisfied customers.

SEO is also important for the brand awareness. When a website is visible in SERPs, it helps to increase the visibility of the brand. As a website appears at the top of SERPs, more and more people will come to know about the brand. This can help to increase brand recognition and brand loyalty, leading to more sales and revenue in the long run.

Lastly, SEO is important in terms of cost-effectiveness. Compared to traditional marketing methods such as television, radio or print ads, SEO is relatively less expensive. By investing in SEO, a business can reach a large audience with little to no cost, since search engines are already being used by billions of people worldwide. This is why SEO is such a cost-effective way for businesses to reach new customers and increase their revenue.

What are the Basic Principles of SEO

Before diving into advanced SEO tips for 2023, it’s important to first ensure that the basic principles of SEO are properly implemented on your website.

By ensuring that the SEO basics are properly applied to your website, it lays a solid foundation for your SEO efforts in 2023. From there, you can start to implement more advanced SEO techniques which will help you to improve your website’s ranking and visibility in search engine results pages. Remember that, SEO is an ongoing process, so it’s important to continuously learn and make adjustments as needed to ensure that it is always optimized for search engines.

1. Conduct Keyword Research

First and foremost, an effective SEO strategy must have a solid keyword research. Keyword research is the process of identifying keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and target audience. Without proper keyword research, it’s impossible to optimize a website for search engines. Keyword research tools like Google’s Keyword Planner can help you identify and understand which keywords to target.

2. Optimize Meta Tags

Meta tags provide information about your website to search engines. These tags include the title tag, meta description and header tags (H1, H2, H3). Optimize these tags by including your target keywords, and ensure that they’re concise and compelling to encourage people to click through to your website.

3. Create Quality Content

Content is a crucial part of SEO. Search engines favor websites that have high-quality, informative content that is regularly updated. Make sure to create content that is relevant to your target audience and includes your target keywords.

4. Build Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. The more backlinks your website has, the higher it will rank in SERPs. Reach out to other website owners and ask them to link to your website. Additionally, you can create valuable content, infographics, videos or other digital assets to attract backlinks.

5. Use Internal Linking

Internal linking is the process of linking to other pages on your website. This helps in improving the visibility of your website’s pages and makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. Use descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text for your internal links.

6. Optimize Your Images

Images play an important role in SEO. Use descriptive, keyword-rich file names for your images and include alt tags that describe the images. Optimize the images by compressing them, as it can reduce the page load time of your website, which can improve its ranking.

7. Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

More and more people access the internet on their mobile devices, so it’s crucial to make sure your website is optimized for mobile. Google has a mobile-first indexing, it means they index mobile version of a website before desktop version. This means if your website is not mobile-friendly, it will likely have a lower ranking in SERPs.

8. Improve Website Load Time

Faster website load time is preferred by search engines as it provides a better user experience. Use techniques like minifying code, optimizing images and using a content delivery network (CDN) to improve the website’s load time.

9. Monitor Website’s Performance

Keep track of your website’s performance using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These tools provide valuable insights into how your website is performing, including which pages are getting the most traffic and where your website’s visitors are coming from. Use these insights to optimize your website and improve your rankings over time.

If you want to be ahead of the competition in 2023, then you need to start focusing on the right SEO tactics. Here are some actionable SEO tips to help you get started:

1. Incorporate Google’s E.A.T Principles

Incorporating Google’s E.A.T principles (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) into your website’s content and design can greatly improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. E.A.T is a ranking factor used by Google’s search algorithm to evaluate the quality and credibility of a website, and by adhering to these guidelines, you can signal to the search engine that your site is a valuable and trustworthy resource for users.

• Expertise refers to the level of knowledge and skill that the author of the content has on the topic they are writing about.
• Authoritativeness refers to the reputation of the author, the website, and the company behind the website.
• Trustworthiness refers to the reliability and trustworthiness of the website and its content. This includes ensuring that the website does not contain any malicious content, such as malware or phishing scams.

By demonstrating these attributes on your website, you can increase your visibility and credibility in the eyes of both the search engine and your target audience.

To implement E.A.T, consider creating high-quality, informative content that is written by subject matter experts. Use structured data to establish your website as an authority on a particular topic, and ensure that all information on your site is accurate and up-to-date. Additionally, implement security measures like HTTPS encryption and display third-party reviews or testimonials to enhance the trustworthiness of your website.

By following these best practices, you can boost your SEO and establish your website as a valuable resource for users. By demonstrating Google’s E.A.T principles, you will be able to increase your website’s visibility and build a strong, credible online presence that drives traffic and engagement.

2. Improve Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the loading performance and visual stability of a webpage. They were introduced by Google as a way to help website owners understand the user experience and speed of their webpage and identify areas that need improvement.

Core Web Vitals are made up of three main metrics:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – measures loading performance by tracking the time it takes for the largest content element on the webpage (e.g. an image or text block) to load.
2. First Input Delay (FID) – measures interactivity by tracking the time it takes for a webpage to respond to a user’s first interaction (e.g. clicking a button or link).
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – measures visual stability by tracking the movement of elements on a webpage as they load.

These metrics are used to determine the quality of user experience on the website and helps to identify the areas that need improvement. Website owners can use web vitals data and diagnostic tools provided by Google such as Google Search Console, Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights to check and analyze their website’s performance and make necessary adjustments to improve the user experience of their website.

Here is a video showcasing how to check your website core web vitals:

Improving your website’s Core Web Vitals is an essential SEO tip for maximizing your search engine visibility and user experience. Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the loading speed, interactivity, and stability of your website, and are used by Google’s algorithm to evaluate the quality of a user’s experience on a web page.

3. Utilize Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a powerful tool that can help improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. By utilizing NLP techniques, you can optimize your website’s content for search engines and improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

One way to use NLP in SEO is to identify and target specific keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business. These keywords can be found by analyzing the language used by your target audience and the language used by your competitors. Once you have identified these keywords, you can include them in your website’s content and meta tags, such as title tags and meta descriptions, to improve your chances of ranking for those keywords.

Another NLP technique that can be used in SEO is sentiment analysis. This involves analyzing the emotions and opinions expressed in reviews, social media posts, and other user-generated content to identify positive or negative sentiments. By understanding the sentiment around your brand and products, you can adjust your marketing efforts to better appeal to your target audience.

Another aspect of NLP in SEO is text summarization. By using advanced algorithms, you can summarize long form of content into shorter version and make it more consumable for the users and also search engines. Search engines love summarization as it makes the content more scannable and easy to understand for the users.

NLP also plays an important role in language translation and multilingual SEO. By using NLP techniques, you can accurately translate your website’s content into multiple languages, making it more accessible to a global audience. Multilingual SEO enables you to tap a much wider pool of potential customers.

4. Create People First Content

Creating content that prioritizes the needs and interests of your audience, rather than just focusing on search engine optimization, is essential for achieving long-term success in the online space. This is why “People First Content” should be at the forefront of your SEO strategy.

To create content that puts people first, it’s important to understand your target audience and their pain points, and create content that addresses those issues. Conducting keyword research can also be helpful in identifying the language and phrases that your target audience is using. By incorporating these keywords and phrases in your content in a natural and organic way, you’ll increase the chances of your content being found by those who are searching for information related to your topic.

One important aspect to consider while creating content is ensuring that it is valuable, engaging and relevant. Use a mix of different formats such as videos, images and infographics to make your content more engaging, and utilize schema markup to enhance the visibility of your website. By creating high-quality content that is tailored to the needs of your target audience, you will increase the likelihood of people staying on your website longer, and the likelihood of them sharing your content, which in turn will lead to more backlinks and higher search engine rankings.

In summary, creating “People First Content” is a crucial aspect of your SEO strategy. To achieve this, it’s important to understand your target audience, and create content that addresses their pain points, uses relevant keywords and phrases, and is valuable, engaging and relevant to them. Additionally, make use of schema markup and mix formats to make your content more engaging, this will ultimately lead to higher search engine rankings and more organic traffic to your website.

5. Keep an Eye Out for Google Search Ranking Updates

Keeping an eye on the latest Google search ranking updates is an essential SEO tip for any website owner looking to improve their visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Google algorithm changes can have a major impact on how well a website performs, so it’s important to stay informed about any updates and take appropriate action.

Following the official Google Webmaster Blog is one of the best ways to stay up-to-date on any changes to the algorithms.

Additionally, industry publications such as Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal also regularly report on Google updates. By following these sources, you will get an insight of any major changes like Core algorithm update, Panda and Penguin update, which can have a significant impact on your website’s search traffic.

Keeping an eye on the latest Google search ranking updates you can stay ahead of the curve and make the necessary adjustments to your SEO strategy to improve your website’s search rankings.

6. Optimize Titles, Descriptions, and URLs

Optimizing website’s titles, descriptions and URLs is an essential SEO tip for website owners who want to improve their visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs). These elements are crucial for both users and search engines as they provide a quick snapshot of what the webpage is all about, and also create a good user experience.

• Titles, also known as title tags, are displayed on the search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a webpage, and often appear on the browser tab. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that the title is clear, concise and includes relevant keywords to help the website rank well in search engine results pages.
• Descriptions, also known as meta description, are a summary of what the webpage is about. They are often displayed under the title tags on SERPs. A clear and concise meta description that includes relevant keywords can entice users to click on the link and visit the website, which can improve the website’s click-through rate (CTR) and ultimately its search engine rankings.
• URLs, also known as uniform resource locators, are the addresses of webpages on the internet. A well-structured URL that includes relevant keywords can help users and search engines understand the content of the webpage. Utilizing a clear and clean URL structure can make it easier for search engines to crawl and index the webpage.

By making sure that these elements are clear, concise, and include relevant keywords, website owners can improve their visibility in the search engine results pages, and create a better user experience. By maintaining a high entity density score and using relevant entities in the titles, descriptions, and URLs, website owners can increase their chances of ranking well in SERPs.

7. Optimize for Voice Search

Optimizing your website for voice search is crucial to stay competitive in SEO. This can be achieved by including natural language phrases and questions in your content, as well as in meta tags such as page titles and descriptions. This makes it easier for search engines to understand your content and increase the chances of it being found through voice search.

Statistics that prove voice search needs to be taken seriously:

• 135.6 million people in the US use voice search features – a 2.7 percent increase from the previous year.
• Approximately seven out of ten consumers (71%) prefer to use voice searches to conduct a query.
• Nearly one in three (32%) US consumers possess smart speakers (Statista, 2021).
• 33.2 million consumers in the US are expected to shop using the voice search feature on their smart speakers in 2022.
• 72 percent of US consumers are engaging with voice search through digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana.

Additionally, ensure your website is mobile-friendly and has a fast page loading speed, as most voice searches are conducted on mobile devices. Make sure to include long-tail keywords that match the natural language and tone of voice of your target audience.

Optimizing for voice search is an important aspect of your SEO strategy.

8. Leverage Schema Markup

Leveraging Schema Markup is an effective SEO tip that can help website owners improve their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) by providing structured data to help search engines understand the context and meaning of the content on a webpage. Here are some key benefits and ways to implement it:

• Schema Markup can help search engines understand the context and meaning of the content on a webpage.
• There are many different types of Schema Markup available, including for organizations, local businesses, events, products, recipes, articles, and more. By using the relevant schema markup, you can make sure that your website is giving the search engine all the information it needs to display your content in the most relevant way possible.
• Schema Markup can help you get rich snippets, also known as enhanced search listings, which are the additional information that appears on SERPs alongside the link. Examples include reviews, star ratings, images and prices.
• To implement Schema Markup on your website, you can use the structured data markup helper, a tool provided by Google, to generate the schema code. You can then add this code to your website’s HTML code. Additionally, there are also various WordPress and other CMS plugins that can help you add schema markup easily to your website.

In summary, by leveraging Schema Markup, you can provide search engines with more information about your website, making it more likely to be displayed in the most relevant way possible, and ultimately driving more traffic and revenue to your business.

9. Target Featured Snippets

Featured snippets, also known as position zero, are a highly coveted spot in Google’s search results. These snippets are a summary of the answer to a user’s query, displayed at the top of the search results page above all other organic results.

Not only do featured snippets receive more visibility and clicks, but they can also increase the chances of a website ranking for other keywords. Securing a featured snippet for a target keyword can give your website a significant boost in organic traffic and search engine visibility.

So, how can you target featured snippets as an SEO tip? Here is a proven actionable strategy:

1. Research target keywords: The first step in targeting featured snippets is to research the keywords you want to rank for. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs to identify the keywords that have the highest search volume and the lowest competition.
2. Optimize content for the keywords: Once you have identified the target keywords, optimize your content for them. This means including the keywords in the title, meta description, and throughout the content in a natural and relevant way. Also, focus on providing the most comprehensive and helpful answer to the user’s query.
3. Format content for featured snippets: Featured snippets usually include a summary of the answer in the form of a list, table, or paragraph. Therefore, format your content in a way that it can be easily extracted for a featured snippet. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to break up the content and make it easy to skim.
4. Use schema markup: Schema markup is a code that you can add to your website to provide additional information to search engines. This can help Google understand the context of your content and increase the chances of it being featured in a snippet.
5. Monitor and track your progress: Once you have implemented these strategies, monitor your progress and track your website’s visibility in the search results. Use tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs to track your rankings, click-through rates, and overall organic traffic.

Targeting featured snippets is a powerful SEO tip that can help increase organic traffic, search engine visibility, and lead to better rankings for other keywords. By researching target keywords, optimizing content, formatting it for featured snippets, using schema markup, and monitoring and tracking your progress, you can increase your chances of securing a position zero.

10. Delete or Rewrite Low-Performing Web Pages

When it comes to improving your website’s search engine optimization (SEO), it’s important to take a close look at all of your web pages. While some pages may be performing well and helping to boost your overall search engine performance, others may be hurting your efforts.

In particular, low-performing web pages can be a significant drag on your SEO efforts. Fortunately, there are things you can do to improve the performance of these pages, and in turn, boost your SEO.

One of the most legitimate ways to do this is called content pruning, it refers to the process of removing or editing irrelevant, outdated, or duplicate content from a website. This can be done for a variety of reasons, such as improving the user experience, increasing search engine visibility, or reducing the overall maintenance and management of the website.

• Deleting pages that are low-performing or duplicate content can help prevent those pages from hurting your overall search engine performance.
• Rewriting low-performing pages to improve their relevance and usefulness to users can help them rank higher in search engine results.
• Also, keep in mind that optimizing your website’s content and structure can have a positive impact on search engine performance, and can improve the relevance of your pages for specific keywords.

It’s worth noting that changes you make to your website take some time to be reflected in search engine results. So, it’s important to be patient and consistent in your efforts to improve your website’s SEO. It’s also important to monitor your website’s performance to see if the changes you make are having the desired effect.

Achieve SEO Success in 2023

SEO is a vital aspect of online marketing that can help businesses attract organic website traffic and generate leads. The tips we’ve discussed in this article can help businesses improve their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and boost their rankings and traffic.

From optimizing meta tags and creating people-first content to leveraging schema markup and targeting featured snippets, there are many different strategies that businesses can use to improve their SEO. By keeping up with the latest trends and best practices, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and achieve SEO success in 2023.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process, and businesses should continually monitor their performance and make adjustments as needed. By implementing these tips and continuously monitoring your progress, you can boost your visibility in SERPs, drive more organic traffic to your website and generate more leads for your business.