10 Actionable SEO Tips to Boost Your Rankings in 2023

SEO can seem like a daunting task, especially when you consider that Google’s ranking system takes into account well over 200 factors to determine which pages make it to the top of the search results.

However, as with every big challenge, the best way to approach SEO is by breaking it down into smaller tasks.

In this guide, you’ll learn 10 actionable SEO tips that will help you to boost your website’s visibility in Google’s search engine results pages.

We’ve also included a FREE bonus PDF for you to download – it’s packed with even more useful SEO tips that are specially tailored for ecommerce websites.

01. Utilise the Power of Internal Linking

Internal linking is the process of adding a hyperlink from one page on your website, to another.

This simple enough tactic is extremely powerful in aiding your SEO performance because:

• Google follows hyperlinks to discover (crawl) new pages, making it more likely that your pages will be added to its index.
• It passes PageRank (a formula that measures the perceived “value” of a page by looking at the quantity and quality of other pages that link to it) around your site.
• It allows you to give contextual cues to Google about the structure of your website along with which pages are related to each other.
• It allows you to guide users to important pages on your website and in turn, keep them on your site for longer.

Here are some tips on how to implement a solid internal linking strategy:

• Only Link to Relevant Pages – you don’t want users to leave your website after clicking through because the page that you linked to isn’t actually related to what they were originally looking at. Likewise, Google will struggle to understand your site hierarchy if you don’t add links to relevant pages.

• Use Keyword Rich Anchors – the anchor text is the clickable, textual part of the hyperlink. Using keyword-rich anchors adds an extra layer of information for Google and further cements the relationship between the two pages.

• Don’t Add Too Many – too many internal links on a page can put off users as it disrupts the flow of their experience of your site. Only add internal links that make sense in the context of each page.

• Avoid Internal Redirects – An internal redirect is when a page that you add an internal link to, redirects to another page. This is an issue as it means that the server first has to try to load the first URL, process the redirection, and then try to load the URL that it is redirected to. Having lots of these can significantly bring down your site’s loading times.

02. Optimise the Page Title & Meta Description of Important Pages

The page title and meta description are one of the first things that searchers will see in the search results.

They could be the deciding factor on whether or not a user chooses your website over your competitor – as a result, they need to pack a punch.

Luckily, they’re one of the easiest and quickest opportunities to boost the rankability of a web page.

Your page titles and meta descriptions should be:

• Descriptive – tell the user (and Google) that your page offers what they’re looking for.
• Engaging – compel the user to click through by using power words that grab their attention. In the example below, the site has mentioned that they offer free delivery on orders over £300 and have used enticing language to describe their products i.e. “stylish”.
• Optimised for Your Main Keyword – If the words from a search query are also mentioned in your meta description, Google will highlight them in bold. This grabs the user’s attention and suggests that your page addresses their search intent. Likewise, adding your focus keyword at the start of your page title may grab the user’s attention quicker.

Here’s an example of a well-optimised page title for the keyword “bathroom tiles”:

And its meta description:

03. Update Existing Content

Google’s goal is to “deliver the most relevant and reliable information available”. 

This means that your content needs to be relevant to the user’s search query. However, here’s what tends to happen when new content is published on a website:

1. It starts to rank for a few keywords.
2. At some point, it reaches its peak in the search results
3. Other pages become more relevant or Google no longer sees your page as relevant, so rankings gradually start to drop
4. Traffic drops

All they might need is a little refresh – and it’s very likely that you’re likely already sitting on a gold mine of content that can start to climb the search results for lots of juicy keywords. 

After you’ve published new content, it’s important to revisit it after a few months to ensure you’re still providing content that users are looking for.

Here’s what you need to know when updating existing content:

• Focus on Pages That Have Lost Traffic – you can find which pages need a content refresh via Google Analytics (or your favourite SEO tool) by looking to see which of them have consistently lost organic traffic.

• Look For Content Gaps – look at the top-ranking competing pages of your focus keyword for a page, and identify topics that they have written about or addressed, but you haven’t. For example, you may notice that your competitors have included videos and images to accompany their text, but you haven’t.

• Improve the UX – are there any elements of the page that may hinder the user experience? For example, you may have images that are blurry, you may be missing a table of content to improve navigation, etc.

• Internal Linking – add internal links to and from other relevant pages on your website to help boost rankability.

• Make the Changes Known to Users & Google – add a last modified date to your page to let users and Google know that your content is up to date and share the updates on your social media.

04. Find New Link Building Prospects From Your Competitors

Link building (aka off-page SEO) has been, is, and likely will continue to be one of the most powerful ways to lift a site’s visibility in organic search results.

One way to speed up the process of finding new link-building opportunities is to look at your competition.

Ahrefs has a fantastic tool called Link Intersect which instantly provides a list of such sites by looking at the domains that your biggest competitors have a backlink from, but your site doesn’t.

1. Enter your domain into Ahrefs Site Explorer and click on the Link Intersect report.

2. Enter your top-ranking competitor’s domain at the top (you can list up to 10)

3. Click “Show link opportunities”.

4. You now have a list of all websites that your competitors have a backlink from, but you don’t. The results are set to show opportunities from all intersections by default, which means that even if one of your competitors has a backlink from a particular domain, it’ll show up.

5. You can narrow down the results to see the most relevant opportunities by choosing to see only the domains where more than one of your competitors has a link from the site. Then, click “Apply”.

6. Sort by Domain Rating, which is a metric from Ahrefs that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile, to tell you which websites will be most valuable to get a backlink from.

In the example above, there are 710 domains where at least two of the competitors have a backlink from the Referring domain, but our example website doesn’t.

05. Optimise Your Pages for Featured Snippets

Targeting featured snippets is a surefire way to grow the visibility of pages that might be ranking well outside the first page of Google.

Google displays featured snippets at the top of the search results page with the aim of providing users with an instant answer to their search query. Here’s an example:

Featured snippets are worth going for because they appear ahead of the usual organic search ranking spots and take up more real estate.

Whilst there’s no guarantee that your page will be chosen for a featured snippet, here are some tips on how to increase your chances of ranking in this coveted position:

• Choose the Right Keywords to Target – not all keywords have featured snippets, so you need to make sure that you’re optimising your content for a keyword where Google is already displaying a featured snippet. Below is an example of a keyword that doesn’t have a featured snippet.

• Optimise for Question-Related Keywords – use your favourite keyword research tool (or Google’s People Also Ask section) to identify keywords that are phrased as questions. This is because many featured snippets are displayed for these kinds of queries.

• Look At the Formatting of the Featured Snippet – In addition to textual answers, Google may format featured snippets as numbered or bulleted lists and sometimes even as a table. Identify the formatting and make sure that you stick to the same format when optimising your content.

• Provide Short and Concise Answers – featured snippets tend not to be too long (they’re generally 50 words or less), so make sure that your answers are short and concise.

06. Target Low Hanging, Low Competition Keywords

Some keywords are harder to rank for than others. In general, the higher the search demand for a keyword, the more competitive and more difficult it is to rank for.

So, regardless of whether you have a newly launched or well-established website, optimising your website for low-hanging, low-competition keywords is an effective way of gradually improving your site’s visibility on Google.

Low-hanging keywords are search queries that you’re already ranking for but are just outside of the first page. You can find these keywords via Ahrefs’ Organic keywords report by filtering the “Position” to 11 to 30 and setting the “Keyword Difficulty” (KD is Ahrefs’ metric for measuring how hard it is to rank in the top 10 positions for a keyword) to a maximum of 15.

Once you’ve picked a keyword to target, look at the top-ranking competitors for the term to identify where your content could be improved upon. Look at whether the page title, headings and meta description can also be optimised. Check to see if there are any relevant pages on your website where you can add an internal link with a keyword-rich anchor to build more relevance.

07. Reclaim Your Lost Backlinks

Every website has pages that may have been removed and now return a 404 error.

Any links pointing to such pages are wasted because not only are they not going to rank, they won’t help other pages on your site rank either.

You can find dead pages using your favourite SEO crawling tool, but here’s a quick guide on how to do it using Ahrefs:

1. Enter your domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and click on the Best by links report
2. Set the HTTP code filter to “404 not found” under the “External backlinks” tab.

Once you’ve identified the broken pages, you can either:

1. Implement a 301 redirect from these pages to any other relevant page on your site. 
2. Bring the dead pages back to life so that they maintain their authority and drinkability.

08. Use Your Competitors to Find New Content Ideas 

The more content you create, the more keywords you’re going to rank for.

You can use your competitors’ websites to find new content ideas and topics to target all kinds of new keywords that you aren’t already ranking for.

A quick way to do this is via Ahrefs’ Content gap report – which is similar to the Link Intersect tool, except this time, it’ll tell you all of the keywords that your competitors are ranking for, but you’re not.

1. Enter up to 10 competitors along with your own domain and hit “Show keywords”.

2. Filter the results so that you’re looking at the ones where at least two of the competitors are ranking in the search results. This will help ensure that the keywords you select to target are relevant.

3. You now have a list of relevant keyword opportunities that you can create new content for.

09. Optimise Your URLs

As with page titles and meta descriptions, the URL is also one of the first things that both users and Google in particular will see.

Optimising your URLs can help to improve your on-page SEO with minimal effort. This is especially compelling as clean, well-optimised URLs can make your appearance in Google’s search results more user-friendly.

A well-optimised URL is:

• Easy to Read – users should be able to tell what your page is about from your URL.

• Descriptive, But Concise – shorter URLs are more shareable and easier to remember, so make sure that they’re as concise as possible.

• Optimised for Your Focus Keyword – it’s good practice to include the main keyword that you want to rank for within your URL. But don’t try to keyword stuff, only include it if it naturally makes sense.

10. Showcase Your Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust

Google understands that users want to be presented with information and services from credible sources.

This is something that the search engine has continued to focus on in recent years with the introduction of its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

A key part of this mammoth document, which is used by Google’s search quality evaluators (real humans, as opposed to an algorithm), is about E-E-A-T (formerly E-A-T). It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

In other words, Google asks its evaluators to check for signs on whether your website conveys these four characteristics and importantly, whether the content is coming from someone that users will be able to trust.

Therefore, adding as much information about yourself and your brand to your website will help improve your brand identity and credibility in the eyes of Google and your audience.

Here are some actionable tips on how to do this:

• Add Author Bios to Your Blog Posts – it’s good practice to add an author bio to blog posts as it shows that the content is written by someone trustworthy. You should include the author’s full name, a short bio (50 or so words) about their experience and expertise, a portrait photo and links to their social media profiles.

• Add Information About Your Brand to the About Us Page – your About page is your opportunity to provide details about your brand’s story as well as the experience and expertise of the people behind your brand.

• Provide Contact & Customer Service Information – make it as easy as possible for your users to contact you by ensuring phone numbers and email addresses are easily accessible and clickable. Likewise, add any information that relates to your service such as shipping information, returns policies, etc. 

• Showcase Your Credentials From Credible Sources – online reviews, ratings, certifications and testimonials from credible sources give users more of an incentive to trust your website and gives Google more confidence in ranking your website.

Showcasing your E-E-A-T is increasingly more important as Google has also started to incorporate it into its ranking systems. 

This is reflected in recent Google algorithm updates such as the Helpful Content and Product Reviews updates. 

The Bottom Line

This article has covered actionable tips that you can use to improve the performance of your website for each core component of SEO: On-page SEO (related to optimising content), Off-page SEO (related to link building), and Technical SEO (related to page performance and site structure).

If you have an online store and are struggling to build your organic search presence, enter your email address to download this free PDF from SUSO Digital which contains even more SEO tips that are specifically tailored for eCommerce websites.