How To Optimize For SEO? Survey Results And 30+ Experts Tips

Did you know that there are nearly 2 billion websites registered and less than 200 million active websites? It is even estimated that there are around 600 million blogs, and most of them are hosted on a shared blogging platform.

While some bloggers might run several ones, it still shows the size of the competition: there are most likely millions of independent bloggers worldwide.

In January 2022, for the first time ever, a competition was launched: 35 bloggers, also called independent Web publishers, were chosen based on their tremendous traffic increase in 2021.

Yoann, a Premium Web Publisher, was one of them, and, at the end of the vote, he ended runner-up: elected World Wide Web's second-best blogger in the world out of a hundred thousand potential participants and hundred million peers.

But how did he get there? Read some tips that got his website network to thrive, with more than 400,000 unique visitors per month, turning his passion for blogging into a full-time occupation with 25 active websites:

• Share What You Know
  
• Be consistent and persistent
  
• Find the best partners
  
• Set boundaries and goals
  
• Mind the long term to become a good blogger
  

How are webmasters optimizing for SEO?

We asked various questions to a panel of industry experts to learn more about their SEO efforts. The results are displayed below, scroll down to learn more and read their great advice.

Title Tag Optimization

• 14.9% - We do not optimize page titles / We rely on educated guesses
• 29.9% - We run split tests ourselves, e.g. with SEO Scout
• 13.4% - A bot runs split tests for us, e.g. with SEO Tag Tester
• 41.8% - We have another solution

Video SEO Optimization

• 28.8% - Yes, externally-hosted like youtube.com, trying hard to compete and convert views
• 24.2% - Yes, self-hosted so we can optimize the whole traffic chain with an SEO video player
• 37.9% - No, we are not creating videos
• 9.1% - Our videos are not optimized for SEO

Lighthouse score Optimization

• 9.1% - What's a CDN? What's a Lighthouse score?
• 40.9% - Yes, it caches and also optimizes our pages like Ezoic Cloud CDN
• 25.8% - Yes, it delivers locally cached copies faster
• 24.2% - No, we only rely on our server's location

Core Web Vitals Optimization

• 16.2% - No, we're fine like that / What are Core Web Vitals?
• 44.1% - Yes, we optimize our code ourselves
• 29.4% - Yes, we implemented plugins / libraries to optimize our sites
• 5.9% - Yes, an advanced CDN-based optimization does it all for us like LEAP

Analytics Reports Optimization

• We don't use analytics / Don't know what it is
• We rarely check our Google Analytics or Search Console / Don't know how to read reports
• We get good insights from Analytics or Search Console and act on them

We know exactly which author / category / page length / weather... works best with Big Data Analytics

Industry expert quotes

To go even further, below quotes from other industry experts will help you take your website SEO optimization to the next level!

Update articles regularly

By updating content regularly, not only will you make sure it is staying up to date and relevant to your audience, but you will also let search engines know that they should reconsider ranking over competition.

Focus on the technicals first

Get your website working and preforming technically well before worrying about traffic and SERP rankings. A site that doesn't solve answers quickly enough won't rank well.

Purge old content, update current content, publish new content

Blog posts should not sit on your website collecting dust! If they are not performing well, remove/update them. Google doesn't like sites with a lot of dead content as it weighs the website down. Once a year, audit your site and purge, update or publish fresh content based on keyword gaps. Good luck!

On-page SEO Optimization By SEO Proactive

Technical and On-page SEO totally depends on your understanding of the data you pull from Analytics, Search Console and other tracking tools. You should use every weapon in your armory to give better solution for every keyword you want your website to rank in the SERP's

Use numbers in titles to increase CTR

The title is the most important element in any SEO campaign. It is what people are going to see when they are searching and decide whether or not they should click on your website. It is therefore important that the title of your SEO campaign is catchy and easy to remember. It is best to use numbers in your title, as it can help to increase your click-through rate. For example, which search result will you click on: How to Increase Traffic to Your Website With SEO or How to 10x your website traffic with SEO. See the difference? By using numbers in your title, you grab people's attention and stand out from rest of the search results.

Link Internal Pages

Make sure all the internal pages on your website are linked. You'll be amazed at how quickly your rankings will rise in Google!

Develop a writing habit

I interviewed all of the Plutus Award (a personal finance blogging award) finalists about how they create content for their blog. Nearly all of the top personal finance bloggers have a writing habit. Writing content for SEO on a consistent basis can help them find what works and what doesn't.

Local SEO for Business

The local SEO enables the company to be found in geo localized research. The essentials concern the creation of the Google My Business card with its optimization and site improvement to ensure that it ranks for specific queries.

SWOT Analysis

When it comes to SEO optimization for Leena, we use SWOT Analysis to understand the SEO metrics in detail.

Prioritizing Quality Content For Your Site

You should always prioritize creating and publishing quality content. Having the right keywords will allow your target market to find you but they will stay if they see that you offer relevant content. They will also come back for more and you have a higher chance of becoming recognized for quality. It's essential that you also focus on the content itself. Find relative topics to write about, search various platforms and learn about the current trends and issues. Be accurate and informative.

Take the time to understand your niche

Make sure you understand your competitors and the keywords you are trying to target. Develop high quality content around these keywords to help increase your search engine traffic.

Beware text optimization

Driving readers to your CTA trumps SEO.

Header Tags that aim to include Google featured snippets

Make sure the most important information is included at the top of your page, while making sure your page is structured to optimize for SEO. Your content must me comprehensive and relevant to the title of the page.

Focus on a Specific Topic

Search engines want to point people toward the most authoritative and correct results. So, if you're an expert in a particular topic that you wish to explore, your website's content should reflect that. Want to share your recipes with the world? Then food should be your site's focus. Don't blend pancake content with, say, metalworking. After all, it's unlikely that your website is a massive multinational corporation or a large news organization that needs to be all things to all people. Specificity is also key. If you’re a fisherman with an excellent perspective on fly fishing, as opposed to deep-sea angling, that’s what your website should be about. Lean into what you bring to the table; it'll help your web presence.

Optimise your SEO article title

Add secondary keywords in your SEO article title where space permits.

Link Building Remains Top Priority

Many individuals believe that linking to important and authoritative content pages is detrimental since it redirects visitors away from your website. This, however, does not sit well with me. Link building is still an important component of an effective search engine optimization strategy. I link out to a plethora of high-quality sites and sources, including my direct competitors. Linking out delivers trackable traffic, which increases the value and scalability of your site. Focus on q uality, not quantit of linksy, that is is equally important in link development. It's better you have only a few authoritative links rather than a dozen low-quality backlinks, you will create greater trust in your niche.

Building backlinks.

Links are a huge ranking factor and have helped us grow our organic traffic 700% in 2021.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Using tools like Surfer SEO allow you to really optimize your content using natural language processing. This allows you to rank and write for both algorithms and humans effectively.

Optimise your images for SEO

There are many SEO optimisation tips, but I feel this one gets overlooked most. It's essential to your SEO to rename your images with the keyword phrase before uploading them to your website. There are so many SEO marketers not following this practice. It takes just seconds. Google can't analyse the content of your image. The filename helps provide relevant information about your image and ensures that it's exposed on Google. Also, don't forget to copy and paste your keyword phrase as the Alt Text of your image once uploaded.

Never repeat non-branded anchor text

When people are purposely building links it can be tempting to repeat anchor text to push Google a bit harder on that term. However, this clearly shows manipulation and is easy for algorithms to pick up on. Instead you should have a hard rule to never exactly repeat non-branded anchors, to keep adding value but reduce your footprint.

Geotag Your Images

For local businesses, geotagging images to include the coordinates can be beneficial for local SEO.

You do not exist if you cannot be found online

Google is now considering the mobile-first design as a ranking factor for websites to improve performance.

The importance of content marketing

I wish I knew not to slack when it comes to content because that is essential what drives traffic to your site. I started off thinking content marketing is simply publishing blogs but came to learn its so much more like videos, podcasts, site content, and copy. Content marketing promotes brand awareness and if I knew this beforehand I feel as if I would've gone about it differently. For example I would've considered to put more thought into pitching reporters and inputting relevant keywords.

Optimize your content to rank for popular questions

Take the time to find the most popular questions that are searched within your industry. Spend the time to create the best content that answers that question and optimize the url, title tags and content to rank for that question.

Consistency is Key

Consistency is key because it helps with branding. When you implement new campaigns and strategies throughout a variety of channels, it’s easy for them to start lacking consistency in things like tone, color, message, and overall appearance. People will start to see all of these different marketing efforts and become confused about what your company is actually all about - or they may not even make the connection to your company.

Play the Numbers

Marketing is a numbers game in a couple of different respects, and playing those numbers is the core of any successful marketing campaign. First, activating customers rarely happens on the first, second, third, or tenth exposure to your campaign. Repeated exposures are absolutely key, meaning that you should be sustaining your efforts and putting out on multiple platforms. Second, digital marketing makes it easier than ever to try different approaches for different demographics, and to frequently tweak your ads based on feedback Taking advantage of this flexibility and data are essential.

Start Local

Start by traveling to locations not too far from your current residence. If you just up and decide to move across the globe after having never worked from another location before, it can be really overwhelming. So, start by sticking close by in order to get used to the concept while having that safety net of proximity. I would also recommend waiting to sell your home or end your lease until after you’ve tried out the concept a little bit so that you can be certain that you want to fully commit. Begin by staying in AirBnb’s for a temporary amount of time.

Avoid Commitments

1) Get into a field where remote work is standard or at least technically feasible. Even if you end up having to start work at an office, you can eventually build your skills and reputation to the point where you can shop around and find the remote gig of your dreams.

2) Avoid major commitments. This can mean housing, relationships, or local community activities, but if your goal is to be able to work remotely and travel widely, all of these things are going to hold you back.

Publishing Interval

Selecting a specific time to publish your content on regular interval gives a boost to SEO efforts and helps in indexing because this practice helps bots identify quickly

Use the Right Tool for the Job

Digital marketing is a broad term that covers a lot of different marketing strategies, and it's essential to use the correct strategies for the correct purposes. Social media can be a good way to build brand recognition and activate loyal customers. Traditional ad buys are all about getting exposure to new markets. SMS and Email marketing are best used on established customers as a way to reward their loyalty and activate them for major sale events. There is no single unified digital marketing theory.

SEO is definitely a part or is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy

In a simple term, search engine optimization is the process of improving your website to increase the chances of its visibility to your target market. So that when people search for your products or services, your brand or even just products or services that’s related to your business in any search engines like Google, you’ll be visible together with the top searches online. This process will more likely catch the attention and attract potential customers. In strategizing, SEO is always a part of it, especially now that everything has gone online and people spend more hours searching and surfing online.

Seeing It From Your Audience's POV

It's important to construct your website in a way that is user-friendly. That means it can be accessed and navigated using different devices. There's a difference in how a website looks when it's viewed from a desktop and when it's viewed from a mobile phone. Adjust your website according to the device so that there is a higher chance your audience will stay and browse your content. Make sure that it is not confusing and that your content contains the right keywords. Include them, if you can, in the titles so that they would come up more easily. When you’re optimizing, place yourself in the shoes of your target audience and you’ll be able to come up with solutions and strategies.

Use related keyword in your content at right place

We all know we should add keywords in the pages which we want to rank but where to add those keyword is as important as how many times we should use it. Do some research and understand what keyword will help you rank in front of your target audience.

Build site authority the medium tail way

One of the best way to get backlinks is by focussing on handful medium tail keywords that give the best opportunity to create power pages (These are indepth pages that are packed with loads of actionable insight for the reader)

Long-Tail Keywords

If you want to improve your site's optimisation, my advice is that you use long-tail keywords. Unlike short-tail keywords which are usually quite general and used more frequently, long-tail keywords will target a niche audience. Sure, you won't reach as large of an audience as you might with short-tail keywords, but the audience you do reach will be much more valuable. This means you'll improve the quality of the leads you bring to your website and therefore improve retention and conversion rates.

Invest In Voice Search Optimization

Voice search optimization is starting to become an important consideration for many small businesses, as the continued development of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, are now beginning to become more advanced, more accurate, and more popular than ever. In fact, more and more households are now starting to own smart speakers, as users now opt to use voice search to find local businesses “near me” on a daily basis. As a result, more brands and businesses should now start to fine-tune their SEO strategies and optimize their online presences for voice search. For instance, this will mean updating Google My Business listings, which often helps to make a website easy to interpret and locate by the AI algorithms that are used by such devices.

Hunt quality backlinks

We focus on getting quality backlinks within publications which have a strong domain authority and are relevant to our niche. We tend to find this is the most effective way to keep ourselves visible within the niches that matter to us. Using tools like HARO and checking #JournoRequest on Twitter you can find top publications that are looking for quotes.

Target Keywords

Target your keywords in your title and focus keyphrases all throughout your articles and you will never go wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it important to build quality backlinks on your blog?

Seo-expert is that links are a huge ranking factor and they help to increase organic traffic a lot, so it's worth working on it.