The quickest and most effective way to start improving your success with SEO is to change the way that you’re thinking about it. This ultimately comes down to a cognitive shift, which will improve the way that you approach your on and off-page changes and simultaneously give you a big boost in performance.
By focussing on the underlying philosophy of your SEO, rather than individual principles, you will be able to keep your strategies changing and adapting to those that Google introduces.
So, what does this entail? Where have you been going wrong with your SEO? And what do you need to change about your approach to start seeing positive improvements for the long term?
The first and most important thing to change about your approach is to stop looking at SEO as a bid to trick Google as many people do.
It’s this mentality that causes people to spend a lot of time and effort spamming the web to build links, to steal content and spin it in order to change it sufficiently for Google to view it as unique, to keyword stuff and more. It’s about working out Google’s algorithm and then employing that knowledge in order to try and get your content to jump straight to the top of the SERPs right?
Wrong!
Google, as you might imagine, does not like being gamed. It did not design its algorithms in order to create a convenient way for site owners to get to the top of their search terms and it doesn’t want to see people using spam as a way to thrive online.
As such, the more you take part in these kinds of practices, the closer you will come to getting penalized by Google and completely removed from the index!
Even if you can find a private blog network and get to the top of Google in the short term, in the long term Google is bound to evolve and to find ways to remove cheaters.
So what do you do instead?
Simple: you focus on delivering amazing quality content for your visitors and partnering with other high-quality sites. You make yourself a trusted brand and you help to properly answer the questions that Google’s users want answered.
Google’s job is to make sure that when someone searches for a particular subject, they are provided with a useful, relevant and well-written response. Google needs to keep doing that in order to keep one step ahead of Bing and Yahoo!.
By creating high-quality content, you are aligning your goals with Google. By showing Google that you work with trusted brands, you are suggesting that your content is trustworthy and high quality.
And when you do that, Google will want to try and pair your site to the right search terms. Make it so that visitors will be glad they found your site and Google will be glad to show it to them!
SEO is simply:
Doing anything that will help you to rank higher in Google. And right now, that just means creating great quality content and links.
So how do you improve your SEO?
Here are my top tools that can help improve your rankings on all the popular search engines!
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a collection of services you can use to figure out how search engines view your website. It provides you with tons of tools to use, covering many different aspects of SEO.
There’s a clear focus on Google results here, but don’t worry. If you can rank well on Google, the chances are high that you’ll also do OK in other search engines. As far as actually using the service goes, Google Search Console is very simple to understand. It’s also easy to add your website and get started!
SEMrush
SEMrush is a research tool that gives data about how many people are looking for certain keywords. It also gives you info on similar keywords, related ads, product listings, and a lot more.
You can get up to 10 results for free per day or sign up for a premium account starting at $99.95 per month.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Enter a URL, and this tool will test the loading time and performance for desktop and for mobile, plus identify opportunities to improve (and pat you on the back for what you’re doing well). The mobile results also come with a user experience score, grading areas like tap targets and font sizes.
Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker
The free version of Ahrefs’ Backlink Checker shows the top 100 backlinks to any website or URL, along with the total number of backlinks and referring domains (links from unique sites), Domain Rating (DR), and URL Rating (UR) where applicable.
Google Keyword Planner
Enter a keyword or group of keywords into the tool, and Google will return all sorts of helpful stats to guide your keyword strategy: monthly search volume, competition, and even suggested terms you might not have considered.
Answer the Public
Answer the Public fetches Google autocomplete queries in bulk and divides them into various lists. That’s very useful for uncovering the questions people are asking in Google.
Yoast SEO
Do you use WordPress? Yoast is the only SEO plugin you’ll ever need.
Use it to optimize meta tags and content, generate instant sitemaps, and much more.
Hunter.io
Hunter.io finds all email addresses related to a website in seconds.
(*It’s free up to 100 requests per month)
Each email address also has a confidence score. Some even have a “verified” icon, meaning that you can use the email address with total confidence.
You can also use the tool to find the email address of a specific person. Just enter the domain and the person’s name.
Responsive Design Checker
Responsive Design Checker does what it says on the tin: it checks the responsiveness of a website. Just enter any URL to see how it looks on desktop, tablet, and mobile.
You can even see how it looks on specific devices (e.g., iPhone X) and various popular desktop resolutions.
Smush Image Compression and Optimisation
Smush Image Compression and Optimisation is a free* WordPress plugin for compressing, optimizing, and resizing images on your site.
Use this plugin to ensure that your web pages load lightning fast.
Whitespark’s Google Business Review Link Generator
Getting reviews on your Google My Business profile is crucial for local SEO.
This tool generates a shareable link that lets customers review your business with one click. Share it via email, on social media, and elsewhere to make the reviewing process as easy as possible for your customers.
Mobile-Friendly Test
Search queries on mobile devices are increasing day by day and therefore it’s important to optimize your site for mobile devices.
Mobile-Friendly Test is a free tool that lets you check the responsiveness of your website on a mobile device.
