Your ideal customer is somewhere searching for products to buy on Google. That new piece of clothing, a new pair of jewelry, and a new collection of stationery – people are frantically searching for the best options on Google. How do you position your online store to appear in the top search results and attract these people? This guide is your answer. Ahead lies a detailed guide on optimising e-commerce sites for high search rankings and increased organic traffic.

What is e-commerce SEO?

E-commerce SEO refers to the steps taken to optimise your online store for higher search rankings. When people search for the latest boots, bags, accessories, and more, e-commerce SEO helps your chances of appearing in the top three search results. 

How e-commerce SEO differs from traditional SEO

E-commerce SEO	Traditional SEO
SEO for e-commerce focuses on transactional, long-tail keywords.	Traditional SEO often focuses on broad, short-tail keywords.
Prioritises product descriptions, category pages, and user-generated content (e.g., product reviews).	Prioritises blog posts and articles for content.
Effectiveness is measured directly by product sales.	Effectiveness is evaluated by page views, conversions, and engagement.

Why SEO is important for e-commerce websites

SEO drives organic traffic for retail websites. It boosts your site’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), attracting customers searching for your products. 

SEO is cost-effective compared to paid search and social media ads. You may spend initially, but you won’t have to run recurring ad campaigns to maintain your traffic levels over time. 

Although paid ads still work, SEO efforts can be relied on when you’re not running ad campaigns. By targeting the right keywords, using schema markup, having in-depth content, and following other recommended e-commerce SEO practices, you can attract high-intent visitors at lower costs. 

How SEO helps increase sales and conversions

An effective e-commerce SEO strategy drives high-intent traffic to your site. It links customers seeking exactly what you offer to your site, and they’ll often proceed to checkout. For instance, Company A sells training shoes, but not other shoe types. With the right SEO strategy, they’ll attract customers seeking exactly training shoes, not those seeking generic shoes that’ll end up leaving the website.

Technical SEO involves optimising site speed, mobile-friendliness, and visual cohesion. These factors keep users on a site longer, and they’ll somehow find new products to add to their carts.

How e-commerce SEO works

SEO for e-commerce websites revolves around key components like:

• Keyword research. Identifying the high-intent, long-tail keywords to focus on (e.g., “comfortable hiking shoes for women”). Long-tail keywords signify searchers with high intent to purchase an item.
• On-page optimisation. Adding meta description and title tags on each page. It also includes adding descriptive alternative text for every product image.
• Technical SEO. Optimising sites to load fast and adjust seamlessly to smaller mobile screens.
• Navigation. Making your product catalog easy to navigate, with clear menus and submenus for different product categories.
• Schema markup. Inserting schema markup code to define specific entities on your site, e.g., to define a product and its price tag, for search engine crawlers.
• Content marketing. Creating buying guides, blog posts, how-tos, and product-related content to attract visitors.
• Link-building. Amassing backlinks from blogs, product review platforms, and similar online stores to build search authority.

Understanding search intent for product searches

E-commerce search engine optimisation relies on understanding intent. Searchers usually have these types of intent:

• Transactional (ready to buy). Here, they are ready to buy a product immediately and search for the best option. “Buy,” “Discount,” and specific product names are often present in their search queries.
• Commercial (researching). Here, the searcher is in the evaluation stage, where they compare different products before making their final decision. Examples are “best gym shoes of 2026” or “Best MagSafe iPhone 17 Pro pouches.”
• Informational (learning). In this case, users mainly seek information, rather than a direct purchase, e.g., “How to change my iPhone screen guard.” However, your content can still convince them to buy a product.

E-commerce stores need content that resonates with these types of search intent. This way, your brand can attract customers, including those who were just comparing options or seeking information.

Key ranking factors for e-commerce stores

Outranking competitors on search results is always the goal for e-commerce businesses. But you’re probably wondering how to do this. What even determines search rankings in the first place? Here are the key factors:

• Informative content. Creating content that aligns with search intent. 
• Page speed & mobile-responsiveness. 60% of online traffic originates from mobile devices, so search engine algorithms prefer sites that are highly optimised for mobile devices. Algorithms also value sites that load fast, so you don’t want to be that site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. 
• On-page optimisation. Sites with clear meta descriptions, title tags, schema markup, internal linking, and short URL structures are search engine darlings.
• Backlinks. Getting backlinks acts as a ‘vote of confidence’ for your e-commerce site. It’s like other sites introducing you to search engine algorithms and verifying your legitimacy. Sites with backlinks enjoy a competitive advantage on search results pages.
• High-quality visuals. Use high-quality product images and videos to gain a competitive advantage. Visuals should look like they were shot on high-definition cameras, not blurry like those taken with 2000s smartphone cameras.

5 tips for successful SEO in e-commerce

Want to make the best of your e-commerce SEO strategy? Here are some tips to note:

1. Conduct thorough keyword research

Optimisation starts with researching the right keywords to create content for. These keywords signify the search intent your content will respond to. 

SEO tools like Semrush and Google Keyword Planner have made keyword research easier. They let you find trending keywords to target or unique long-tail keywords based on your ‘seed’ word and audience location. 

Identify commercial and transactional keywords

• Commercial keywords are used by searchers evaluating product options, such as “best Android phones with sharp cameras” and “best Bluetooth speakers with long battery life.”
• Transactional keywords are used by searchers who have researched, settled on a product, and are willing to buy immediately, such as “buy Samsung Galaxy Fold” or “buy JBL Bluetooth speakers.”

With SEO tools like Semrush, identify the top commercial and transactional keywords in your niche. These tools let you filter trending keywords by location, ranking difficulty, and search volume, so you can find the exact keywords used by your target audience.

Analyse competitor keywords

Imitating your competitors might feel like hacking the system, but it’s an effective strategy. Your top competitors dominate search rankings because they target the right keywords, so copying from their strategy helps a lot. Of course, you don’t have to copy them verbatim. It’s more like, use them as an inspiration.

SEO tools can automatically identify your competitors’ top keywords. Simply enter a competitor’s URL, wait for the scan to complete, and you’ll see a detailed list of the keywords incorporated into your rival website’s content.

Optimise for conversational and long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are highly specific phrases (of 3+ words) that buyers search for. They’re characterised by very high intent, with searchers often ready to buy a product on the spot. Use SEO tools to identify the long-tail keywords in your niche.

With tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, simply enter a seed word and a location, and you’ll see the top long-tail keywords related to that seed word that people in your selected location search for. For example, if “TVs” is your seed word and the U.K. is the chosen location, the results can be:

• Best 32-inch OLED TVs for gaming.
• Refurbished 4K smart TVs with a U.K. warranty.
• Best TVs for PS5 in the U.K.

2. Improve on-page SEO

On-page SEO entails optimising individual web pages to get higher search rankings. It’s a bit technical, but it isn’t complicated. Each page should have the following:

• Alt text for images.
• Short and user-friendly URLs.
• Precise product descriptions.
• Title and meta description tags.
• Headers (H1, H2, H3…) to structure the content logically.
• Internal links.
• Fast loading speed and mobile-responsiveness.

Let’s explore these components in more detail:

Write SEO-friendly product descriptions

Product descriptions should be brief yet engaging. Instead of just listing specifications, describe the product and position it as a solution to a key problem. For example, an eco-friendly iPhone pouch can be described as:

• Protect both your iPhone and the planet with the [brand name] sustainable pouch. Created from 100% natural, ethically sourced wood, this iPhone 16 Pro Max pouch offers a durable alternative to plastic cases. It protects your phone from drops and heavy falls, and the water-resistant exterior helps keep your phone safe on any adventure.

In the above description, the position has been marketed both for its specifications (eco-friendliness) and as a key problem solver (protecting iPhones from drops and falls).

Optimise category pages

Products should be grouped into categories to make them easy to find. For example, if you sell smartphone pouches, have different categories for iPhones, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and other smartphone brands. This categorisation makes it easier for search crawlers to index your content and for customers to quickly find what they want. The faster users navigate your site, the higher the chances of proceeding to the checkout page.

Use structured data for products

Use product structured data (schema markup code) to define a product’s

• Name
• Image
• Price
• Description and
• Customer reviews for search engines.

Structured data ensures Google indexes the correct data, not any random bits of information present on the product page. This way, intending buyers can see your product’s precise name, image, price, description, and review ratings right on Google, then make a quick decision.

Optimise images and alt text

• Add alternative “alt” text to every image, with the text describing exactly what the product image is about. For example, a picture of an eco-friendly iPhone 17 pouch should have “Eco-friendly iPhone 17 pouch from [brand name]” as its alt text.
• Images should also have descriptive filenames, like sustainable-iPhone-17-pouch.jpg.
• Compress images to their smallest possible sizes (without sacrificing quality). Smaller-sized images help websites load faster.
• Use high-quality images, ideally those illustrating the product’s use case. For example, a piece of clothing can include model photos. If you can’t afford professional model photoshoots, AI tools like Claid can do the trick.

Create SEO-friendly URLs and title tags

Your URLs should be short, descriptive, and separated by hyphens. Example.com/seo-friendly-url is a sample SEO-friendly URL, not Example.com/these-are-the-seo-friendly-urls-you-can-choose-from-for-your-website. The latter is much longer and overstretches what can be described in a few words. 

Ideally, URLs should be under 60 characters without spaces and should include relevant keywords.

3. Build an SEO-friendly architecture

SEO-friendly online stores are structured with a clear hierarchy that search crawlers can easily understand. They are also optimised for speed, mobile-friendliness, and security. Let’s explore these factors more:

Create a logical site structure

Use a logical structure to organise content hierarchically. Create a pyramid-like structure to group webpages into categories and subcategories. Suppose you sell shoes: you can have main categories like men and women. Then, each category will have subcategories like boots, loafers, heels, and sneakers. These subcategories can also have their own subcategories, creating a clear hierarchy for users to navigate.

Internal linking for e-commerce

On product pages, insert links to related products to improve discoverability. For example, a “users also purchase” section can show related accessories that people often buy along with a piece of clothing. This internal linking allows cross-selling opportunities. You’d be surprised how many people would buy a relevant product suggested to them.

Internal linking also helps search crawlers discover pages faster. Think of the links like pointers on a map, telling search crawlers which pages to index on your website. 

Improve page speed and Core Web Vitals

Google uses three key metrics, called Core Web Vitals, to measure a webpage’s technical performance. Pages with higher scores get better rankings. They are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). The time it takes for the largest image or text block on a page to load completely. 2.5 seconds or less is the ideal score.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP). The latency (delay) between a user interacting with a page element and the response. For example, when someone clicks on a button or taps on a link, how long does it take to get a response? 200 milliseconds or less is ideal.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). How often does page content shift unexpectedly while loading? Such shifts can disrupt the user experience, so the fewer, the better. 0.1 or less is the ideal CLS score.

With Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool, you can measure the Core Web Vitals of any webpage. You’ll quickly know if any webpage needs adjustments to get better search rankings.

Ensure HTTPS security

Your website needs an HTTPS certificate: it’s kinda non-negotiable in online store SEO. Websites without HTTPS protection face all possible disadvantages for ranking on Google. You’ll hardly find them on the first, second, or even third pages.

HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a protocol that protects data in transit between your website server and a user’s browser. Remember that customers enter their card details, house address, and other personal details on your e-commerce site. If these details are insecure, there’s a big problem.

Maintain XML sitemap and indexing

Imagine visiting a new city with endless things to explore, then wondering where in the world to start from. Then, you get a tourist map pointing you to the top destinations in the city, and your trip gets easier. Flip the script and imagine that person is a search crawler, and the city is your website. An XML sitemap helps crawlers navigate your website and index the right pages.

You can generate an XML sitemap with free tools like XML Sitemaps Generator or MySitemapGenerator. Then, upload this sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Sitemaps can be reuploaded whenever you change your website’s structure.

4. Leverage content marketing

Creating in-depth content helps attract visitors from search engines. Someone could search for something related to your product, read your blog post, and begin browsing your catalog. Next thing, they’ve added a few products to their cart and proceeded to checkout. Let’s explore effective content marketing strategies:

Create blog content and guides

Add a blog section to your e-commerce site, then post content related to your products. For example, a site selling gaming accessories can write posts like “5 best gaming headsets with surround sound,” “Is an ergonomic keyboard worth it?” and “The ultimate gaming setup: what accessories do you need for a clean look?”

Remember the long-tail keywords we advised targeting earlier. You can write how-tos, listicles, and informative guides based on these keywords. Quietly insert your products into these guides, and some visitors will eventually buy them.

Focus on search intent

Content should revolve around search intent, like the long-tail keywords we mentioned just above. Create guides that respond to what people are searching for, not just any topic you like. Use SEO tools like Semrush to identify the top keywords and create content for them. SEO is data-driven, not instinct-driven. Patterns change rapidly, so always check the data to observe the latest trends.

Promote content

After publishing blog posts, promote them on social media to drum up attention. A post could go viral on social media, draw people to your blog, and some visitors will convert into customers. Other customers can reshare posts, and soon enough, trending blog posts become a hit on search results pages.

Enhance E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s Google’s framework for evaluating content quality.

• Experience demonstrates having first-hand, personal experience with the topic. Provide first-hand opinions and original insights to generate this. It should be more of “I tested this product and found it this way,” not “This product is known to be this way.” The former signifies an active voice gained from first-hand experience.
• Expertise highlights your credentials, e.g., author bios and links to published works.
• Authoritativeness refers to your site’s reputation, which can be developed by getting positive reviews.
• Trustworthiness focuses on the content accuracy (with respect to industry consensus). You can get high scores by creating content that precisely answers user queries and cites credible external sources.

5. Build backlinks and brand authority

Have you ever introduced a buddy to your group, telling them that he’s the real deal? That’s how it feels when other websites place links to your site – they’re telling search engines that you’re the real deal. 

Amassing backlinks from relevant, high-quality sources boosts search rankings. Search engine algorithms consider sites with quality backlinks more important, so you should put much effort into getting them.

• First, create informative guides, filled with infographics and original insights, that people will naturally want to link to.
• Find related websites, check their contact information, and politely ask for a backlink exchange. It doesn’t hurt even if your website is just a few weeks old.
• Offer free tools (like calculators and file converters) that people direct others to.

E-commerce SEO tools

We’ve mentioned several tools that help with SEO for e-commerce websites, namely Google Search Console (GSC), Semrush, and Ahrefs. Let’s learn more about these tools:

Google Search Console (GSC)

Google offers a free Search Console tool to help website owners monitor their search performance. It shows

• Which pages are indexed, which are not, and the reasons for some pages not being indexed. You can then correct these errors and ask Google to reindex your site.
• Total clicks, impressions, and click-through rates (CTRs) for specific queries.
• Your site’s loading speed, visual stability, and interactivity.
• The number of backlinks and all the webpages from which the backlinks come.

You can also upload sitemaps to Search Console, helping Google’s crawlers to index your content quickly. 

Semrush

Semrush is a comprehensive SEO tool with various features:

• Keyword research. You can find trending short-tail and long-tail keywords based on a seed word, location, and niche.
• Technical audit. Scan your website to discover technical errors holding back search rankings. It could be something as little as a missing meta description tag.
• Competitive analysis. Enter your competitor’s web address and analyse their targeted keywords, backlinks, and content strategy. Don’t hesitate to learn from a rival’s SEO strategy– it isn’t copyrighted material.
• AI visibility. Track mentions of your website on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI chatbots.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers similar features to Semrush. Word on the street is that Ahrefs excels more at backlink analysis, while Semrush excels more at comprehensive keyword research. Key Ahrefs features include:

• Backlink monitoring. Get a detailed list of all sites linking to yours. You can also run the same analysis for your competitors’ websites.
• Site audit. Scan your whole site to detect technical errors affecting SEO rankings.
• Content Explorer. Find content ideas based on social trends.
• Rank Tracker. Monitor your site’s rankings for specific long-tail keywords. That’s how you know whether you’re outranking or trailing the competition.

How to measure e-commerce SEO performance

So you’ve implemented the recommended steps above. How then do you measure if you’re getting the desired results? It all boils down to looking at some key metrics, described below:

Tracking keyword rankings

Track your rankings for the short-tail and long-tail keywords you create content around. With Google Search Console (GSC), you can track your website’s rank for specific keywords over time. The aim is to get better rankings as time goes on.

Semrush allows in-depth competitive tracking, unlike GSC, which mostly tracks your own rankings. You can compare rankings head-to-head with top competitors, with the ultimate aim of climbing the leaderboard.

Monitoring organic traffic

Increased organic traffic is a sign of an effective SEO strategy. Monitor your organic traffic and compare it to past results and also your competitors. The aim is always to see improved traffic over time.

With the free Google Analytics platform, you don’t need to worry about monitoring traffic. It shows your traffic stats in detail, including the location, referral source, and average time spent on page. You’ll know exactly which traffic came from search engines and which came from other sources.

Measuring e-commerce conversions

Many people may visit your website, but what matters is how many of them eventually buy products from your store. The percentage of buyers vs. visitors represents your sales conversion rate. 

Closely watch your conversion rates, as an effective SEO strategy always increases this metric. It may take 3 to 12 months to see optimal results, so monitor conversions in the long-term. Google Analytics is a good tool for monitoring conversions, and you can also do that from your e-commerce provider’s backend.

Common e-commerce SEO mistakes

People aren’t perfect, so they often make mistakes when implementing SEO for e-commerce websites. You can learn from these mistakes so that you don’t have to spend valuable time redrawing your SEO strategy. Common mistakes to avoid include:

Duplicate product content

E-commerce sites can unintentionally include duplicate product descriptions. For example, copying the exact description from a manufacturer and placing it in your website causes this mistake. With the same description on your website and that of the manufacturer, search engines could flag them as duplicate content, which reduces rankings.

To avoid this issue, create unique descriptions for every product. The description should position the product as a problem-solver. We’ve advised imitating a bit, but it applies to SEO strategies, not product descriptions. 

Poor site structure

We’ve advised structuring products into categories and subcategories to enable easy navigation. However, we’ve visited some sites that put all products in a “Shop All” section, with no categories or hierarchy. This mistake can bury products too deep for customers and search crawlers to find them. 

Always have product categories and subcategories, with a navigation menu that leads to all available categories. Also, place internal links around your website to point customers to other products.

Slow website speed

Have you waited more than 5 seconds for a web page to load? Maybe. How about more than 10 seconds? At this point, you quickly reach for the X button. That’s how visitors feel if your web page takes too long to load. To get the best results, pages should load completely within seconds. 

Earlier, we mentioned compressing visuals to their smallest possible sizes to make them load faster. Other tips include

• Using a content delivery network (CDN) that loads content from servers closest to the visitor’s location.
• Minimising usage of CSS and JavaScript code.
• Removing unnecessary URL redirects.

Missing structured data

You can have all the right product data, but search crawlers struggle to find it if it isn’t indicated by schema markup code. From prices to descriptions, reviews, and product images, schema markup indicates exactly what search crawlers should index and display to users. Otherwise, they might somehow take pricing information from another product displayed on the same page.

Schema markup lets search engines capture your product information and display it word-for-word in search results. This way, customers get the full information to quickly make their decision. There’ll be no second-guessing on their part.

Conclusion

E-commerce SEO isn’t a “set-it-and-forget-it” project. It’s a long-term process that takes longer than a computer running Windows 95, but the patience eventually pays. Yet, if patient waiting isn’t your thing, you can offload e-commerce SEO to professional agencies, like Why SEO Serious. We’ll take care of the strategy and implementation, while you sit back and relax.

At Why SEO Serious, we offer comprehensive SEO services for e-commerce businesses, helping your products climb to the top of search results pages. Contact us today to see how we can help your online business grow.

E-commerce SEO FAQs

• What is e-commerce SEO?

  E-commerce SEO refers to the strategies you apply to improve your online store’s search visibility. It’s what you do to help your store appear on the first page when customers search for what you sell.

• How long does e-commerce SEO take?

  It can take 3 to 12 months to get the maximum results from your SEO efforts. That’s longer than you may expect, but SEO is a long-term process, not a quick-win strategy. Exercise some patience as you implement the recommended SEO steps.

• What are the most important e-commerce SEO factors?

  They range from keyword research to internal linking, structured data (schema markup), optimising site speed & mobile-responsiveness, XML sitemaps, competitive analysis, and more.

• Is SEO better than paid ads for e-commerce?

  SEO takes longer to achieve results than paid ads. However, with SEO, you can achieve more with less spending than paid ads. After your initial SEO efforts, you don’t have to spend money to maintain higher traffic levels, unlike paid ads. SEO builds long-term search authority, while paid ads achieve quick results, but with no guarantee of the results holding on when you stop paying for ads.

You’ve always heard of keyword research being core to search engine optimisation (SEO), so much so that it has become etched into your mind. Look for SEO advice anywhere, and it’s always recommended to find and incorporate relevant keywords into your site. However, are you aware that there are two types of keywords: short-tail and long-tail? 

The summary is that short-tail keywords are broad and contain 1 to 3 words, while long-tail keywords are specific and comprise 3+ words. Think of something like “Best sneakers” vs. “Best waterproof sneakers for winter.” In this guide, we’re diving deep into long-tail keywords, why they matter, and their best practices. 

What are long-tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are highly specific phrases that people search for. They don’t have the largest search volumes, but they have high search intent, with audiences ready to purchase an item. For example, someone who searches for “the best waterproof sneakers in winter” likely wants to buy a waterproof sneaker for themselves. By targeting long-tail keywords, you can attract higher-converting visitors compared to broad short-tail keywords.

Difference between short-tail and long-tail keywords

• Short-tail keywords comprise 1 to 3 words with broad terms. On the other hand, long-tail keywords comprise over 3 words with a very specific purpose. 
• Short-tail keywords have higher search volumes, but there’s intense competition for them. In contrast, long-tail keywords have low search volumes, but with less competition, making it easier to rank for them with the right content.
• Long-tail keywords have higher conversion rates because they indicate specific user intent (e.g., buying a product), while short-tail keywords are often too broad to know exactly what the searcher needs.

Examples of long-tail search queries

Here are a few long-tail keyword examples:

• The best blenders for minimalistic kitchens.
• Affordable spas near Brooklyn, NYC.
• Gardening tips for beginners during winter.
• Why are my palm tree leaves turning yellow?

SEO benefits of long-tail keywords

Targeting long-tail keywords has several benefits. For one, there’s lower competition, so you have better chances of hitting the top search results after publishing in-depth content. You don’t have to fight with every website out there seeking to rank for broad keywords. It’s less battle royale and more of a scuffle.

Lower competition and easier rankings

As we’ve said, long-tail keywords have less competition. They are highly specific, so many websites don’t battle for them as they do for broad short-tail keywords. By targeting long-tail keywords, your new website can become a “big fish in a small pond” instead of a “small fish in a big pond” with little chances of rising to the top.

More targeted organic traffic

With long-tail search phrases, your website attracts users seeking exactly what you offer. This translates into better engagement and lower bounce rates. You’ll get those users willing to spend minutes on your content, not those who leave after a few seconds.

Higher conversion potential

To continue our earlier point, long-tail keywords attract visitors who need exactly what you offer. These visitors have high intent, so they’re more likely to purchase your product, click on an affiliate link, or interact with an ad. 

For example, someone searching for “late-night taco delivery near me” is likely hungry for some tacos and willing to place an immediate order. Wouldn’t you want to be the top-ranking result so that this customer can order from you?

How to find long-tail keywords

You can find long-tail keywords through manual research or rely on SEO tools like Google’s Search Console and Keyword Planner. For instance, from your Search Console dashboard, you can quickly find low-competition keywords to target in various niches. Let’s explore the methods below.

Using keyword research tools

Given that many of us dread the process of manually researching keywords, people naturally built software that automates the process. You can use keyword research software to automatically find long-tail keywords based on your requirements. 

For example, you can enter one word (e.g., “shoes”) and a location (e.g., “U.K.), then automatically find the best long-tail keywords related to shoes for a U.K. audience. Expect results like:

• Waterproof hiking shoes.
• Comfortable work shoes for nurses.
• Stylish Dr Martens shoes.

Many research tools exist, but we’ve curated the best ones for you below.

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner is a free tool offered for Google Ads users. It’s designed to find long-tail keywords for Google ad campaigns. However, you don’t have to run ad campaigns to use the tool. Simply find the long-tail keywords, then use them to optimise your content. 

We like the ease of using Keyword Planner: users simply enter their website URL, and Google automatically finds long-tail keywords related to the website’s content. Alternatively, enter a word, and Google identifies long-tail keywords related to it.

Semrush

Semrush offers a Keyword Magic tool that kind of works like magic. You’ll enter a broad ‘seed’ keyword and choose a location. Then, Semrush immediately lists the long-tail keywords related to that seed word and relevant to your selected location. 

If you’re a paid Semrush user, you get to filter the keyword results by difficulty and the number of words (e.g., “3 to 5”), but free users don’t have this privilege. Regardless of your tier, Semrush still helps identify the most relevant long-tail keywords to target.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers a free Keyword Generator that works just like Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool. You’ll enter a seed word, choose a location, and hit the Find Keywords button. You’ll immediately see a list of long-tail keywords relevant to your seed word and desired location. Paid users can further filter the results by ranking difficulty, word count, traffic potential, global volume, etc. 

Analysing competitor keywords

Emulating competitors is an effective way of discovering long-tail keywords. After all, your top competitors got to their level by applying the right keyword strategies. Following their long-tail keywords gives you a good shot of getting higher search rankings.

You can check your competitors’ content manually to figure out their long-tail keywords, but that’ll be too hectic. The convenient way is to use Semrush, Ahrefs, or other SEO tools to analyse your competitors’ sites. These tools sift through your competitors to pinpoint their top long-tail keywords. Then, you can target similar keywords on your site.

Using search suggestions and autocomplete

Google search suggestions give a good hint of long-tail keywords to target. Type something like “Best shoes for…” on Google, and you’ll see autocomplete suggestions like:

• Best shoes for baggy jeans.
• Best shoes for working out.
• Best shoes for flat feet.

Google suggests these long-tail phrases because they are what many people search for. That tells you something important: target these long-tail keywords when creating content, and you can get significant high-intent traffic.

How to rank for long-tail keywords

We’ve discussed the best tools to find long-tail keywords. Now, it’s time to learn how to rank high for the keywords you discovered. Let’s dive deeper below:

Match content to search intent

Match your content exactly to the search intent indicated by a long-tail keyword. For example, someone searching for “best historical romance novels set in London” should get a detailed guide on some of the best romance novels in this setting. List several options, describe what they’re about, and why they qualify as one of the best books in this genre. Users should have their curiosities satisfied after reading your content.

Matching content to search intent not only helps you rank high for long-tail keywords. It also helps your website appear on search engine snippets and voice queries, translating to higher organic traffic. 

Use long-tail keywords in on-page SEO

In SEO, long-tail keywords aren’t only incorporated into content bodies. You can insert them in on-page SEO elements like headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.), meta description tags, and alternative text for images. These on-page elements are major contributors to search rankings, so incorporating long-tail keywords raises your chances of hitting the top results.

Natural keyword placement in content

Keywords should be placed naturally and not feel stuffed. Consider these examples:

• Looking for the best historical romance novels set in London? Here’s a list of the best romance novels set in London. We hope you enjoy these fascinating romance novels set in London, a magical, bustling city.

Above, the long-tail keyword is repeated so much that it feels forced. Then, consider this:

• Looking for the best historical romance novels set in London? We’ve curated a list of these novels that take you virtually into the heart of London, a bustling, artistic city. We hope you enjoy these fascinating novels.

Above, the long-tail keyword is mentioned just once and looks naturally inserted. It’s the best option for both readers, who don’t like reading the same phrases over and over again, and search engines, which penalise keyword stuffing.

Create content around specific topics

Create content clusters centered around specific topics. There’ll be a central “pillar topic,” multiple subtopic pages, and internal linking between them to establish topical authority.

For example, your central topic can be The best romance novels of all time. Then, subtopics can be:

• The best historical romance novels set in London.
• The best romance novels set in Paris.
• Must-read classic romance novels.
• Contemporary romance novels set in Singapore.

Each subtopic will have an internal link pointing to the pillar page: The best romance novels of all time. The subtopics will also link to each other. This internal linking indicates your site’s expertise in the topic of romance novels, making search engines more likely to suggest it.

Use internal linking to support rankings

Just above, we illustrated how internal linking helps establish topical authority. It also helps search crawlers index your site properly, as the internal links act like a map pointing crawlers to your in-depth content. Likewise, it encourages users to stay on your site longer. With enough informative content and internal linking pointing to them, a reader might just fall down a rabbit hole on that topic they’re curious about.

Common mistakes when targeting long-tail keywords

No one is perfect, not even the most experienced SEO agency (although hiring one can help significantly). People make mistakes when targeting long-tail keywords, and these mistakes can negatively affect search rankings. Let’s explore the most common mistakes to avoid:

Keyword stuffing

When discussing “natural keyword placement in content” earlier, we illustrated keyword stuffing and why it should be avoided. Firstly, readers can notice keyword stuffing and consider such content not worth scrolling through further. Secondly, search engine algorithms can detect keyword stuffing, and sites found wanting are penalised with lower rankings. Place keywords naturally and avoid the mistake of stuffing them into your content.

Ignoring search intent

Search intent is the crux of creating content. Targeting a long-tail keyword is mostly about creating content that matches the keyword’s intent. For example, a guide on “Why are my plants turning yellow?” should dive deep into the possible reasons for plants turning yellow and provide remedies. This content answers exactly what the user searched for, and it should be so for all topics.

Targeting keywords with too little search demand

We’ve said that long-tail keywords have naturally lower search volumes. Yet, some low-volume keywords may not be worth the effort. If you need to target low-volume keywords, focus on those with high intent, like “buy wheat-free bread with no added sugar” or “best organic food for small puppies with sensitive stomachs.”

How to measure the performance of long-tail keywords

After learning the best long-tail keyword practices and the common mistakes to avoid, it’s time to know how to measure the performance of your long-tail keyword targeting. After all, if you can’t evaluate something accurately, there’s little use putting much effort into it. These are the key metrics to measure:

Tracking keyword rankings

Track your rankings for the long-tail keywords you target. The aim is to rank on the top three results or at least on the front page. How many times have you clicked on the second or third page of Google? That tells you that not ranking in the first page is a major disadvantage.

Semrush and Ahrefs can show your website’s rank for specific keywords. You can monitor rankings daily and compare them with competitors. Outdoing competitors should be the main goal.

Monitoring organic traffic

Monitoring your organic traffic says a lot about the effectiveness of your long-tail keyword targeting efforts. Higher traffic indicates that you’re getting new readers from search engines. 

Google Analytics is a free traffic monitoring tool you can use. It displays your organic traffic by source (search engines, social media, etc.), so you’ll always know which traffic originates from Google search and which comes from other sources. 

Measuring conversions and engagement

Closely watch your conversions, which represent the percentage of visitors that take a suggested action. It could be the percentage of visitors who:

• Buy a product.
• Click on an ad.
• Click on an affiliate link.
• Subscribe to your email newsletter.

Long-tail keywords are known for their high intent, as people searching for them have specific needs and are willing to take action. An effective long-tail keyword strategy always leads to higher conversion rates.

Conclusion

With what you’ve learned, you should be ready to begin targeting long-tail keywords and boosting search rankings. Every SEO strategy is a long-term process, so expect slower and steady results, not quick-wins. If handling long-tail keywords and other SEO aspects feels strenuous, you can offload it to the experts, like us. At Why SEO Serious, we offer full-stack SEO services, including keyword research and optimisation, for businesses. Contact us today to see how we can help.

Long-tail keywords FAQs

• What are long-tail keywords?

  Long-tail keywords are highly specific phrases (of 3+ words) that people search for. These keywords have lower search volumes than broad, short-tail keywords, but they have higher conversion rates because they reflect specific user intent. There’s also less competition for long-tail keywords, making it easier for new publishers to compete for eyeballs.

• Are long-tail keywords good for SEO?

  Yes, long-tail keywords are good for SEO. With the right content, you have better chances of ranking high for less-competitive long-tail keywords than for intensely competitive short-tail keywords.

• How many long-tail keywords should you target?

  There’s no exact range of long-tail keywords to target. For each page, you can target anywhere from 5 to 50 of them, depending on the page length. Each page should be centered on one primary long-tail keyword, then with secondary long-tail keywords that supplement the primary one.

• Can long-tail keywords increase conversions?

  Yes, implementing the recommended long-tail keyword practices always leads to increased conversions. It attracts a high-intent audience that is more willing to take suggested actions, compared to people searching for short-tail keywords.

The H1 tag is often overlooked, maybe because it’s so short and feels insignificant. However, this short tag is the most important heading on a page. It defines the page’s primary topic, enabling search algorithms to understand what it’s about and suggest it to the right audience. In this guide, we’ll explore the H1 tag, why it matters for SEO, and the best H1 practices.

What is an H1 tag?

An H1 tag is an HTML element that defines the main heading of a webpage. It tells users and search engines what a webpage is about and is an essential part of SEO. Each page needs one unique H1 tag.

Difference between H1 and the page title

An H1 tag is visible on a webpage itself, while the title tag is visible only on browser tabs and search engine results pages (SERPs). They are both header tags, but serve different purposes.

• The title tag is a short description of the webpage, written in a compelling way to make people click on it.
• The H1 is a precise description of the webpage, written in a straightforward tone.

Suppose an author posts a tutorial about changing an iPhone’s screen protector. The H1 would be an apt description of the article:

• How to change your iPhone’s screen protector.

But, for the title, the author can adjust their tone to make it sound compelling:

• A step-by-step guide on changing your iPhone’s screen protector.

Search engines rely on the title tag to know if a page is relevant to a specific search query, while the H1 tag helps search engines understand the content itself.

Example of H1 usage in HTML

An H1 tag is defined by <h1> in HTML code. It looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang=”en”> <head> <title>Заголовок вкладки</title> </head> <body> <h1>Main Page Header is Written Here</h1> </body> </html>

When using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Wix, you don’t have to edit code directly. Rather, a box is provided to write the page’s primary heading, and this heading is automatically inserted into the h1 tag.

Best practices for H1 tags

You’ve understood what an H1 tag is. Now, it’s time to know the tips for using H1 tags effectively. Let’s explore the best practices below:

Use a single H1 per page

A webpage should have only one H1 tag. This single tag provides a clear path for search crawlers to understand what the webpage is about. If there are multiple tags, crawlers may get confused and index the wrong information. Imagine walking into a bookstore and noticing a single book with multiple titles– that’s how multiple H1 tags can look to a search crawler, although there are exceptions to this rule.

Include the primary keyword naturally

The main target keyword should be naturally included in the H1. Keyword-optimised H1 tags help search engines understand the content and match it with search intent. It boosts visibility and helps a page rank higher in search results.

For example, if you write an article targeting the keyword “Best Shoes to Buy,” the H1 can be “The Best Shoes to Buy in 2026.” The natural inclusion of the primary keyword makes search engine crawlers understand the page at first glance.

Keep H1 tags concise (around 60 characters)

Try to keep H1 short and succinct (up to 60-70 characters) so that it is fully readable on mobile devices. It should be a brief description that reflects what the page is about. A straight-to-the-point H1 tag is a clear pointer to both search crawlers and readers, helping the latter confirm that they’ve arrived at the right content. It reduces bounce rates in the long term.

Long H1 headings can also look awkward on small mobile screens, occupying excessive space and creating an unideal user experience. The shorter, the better. 

Align H1 with the title tag strategically

Incorporate the primary keyword into both the H1 and title tag. This alignment helps search algorithms understand the content and confirm search intent. It also avoids confusing users who view the title tag on a search engine, then click on a site and see the H1 afterward – when both tags are aligned, it creates a consistent experience.

However, the title tag can incorporate language to make it sound more compelling, while the H1 tag is a precise, straight-to-the-point description. Take, for example:

• H1: The best 3D printers of 2026.
• Title: Best 3D printers to choose from: First-hand reviews & buying guide.

Above, the title tag is more compelling, while the H1 is very precise, and both incorporate the primary keyword, “Best 3D printers.”

How about this example?

• H1: The best 3D printers of 2026.
• Title: 3D printers to buy in 2026.

Above, the title tag doesn’t sound compelling, and it doesn’t share a primary keyword with the H1. Both tags are unaligned, so this structure won’t deliver good results. 

Write H1 for readability and engagement

An H1 tag isn’t for search crawlers alone. It acts as a signal to both crawlers and human readers, so don’t forget to prioritise readability when writing one. Use descriptive language like “How To,” “A Guide To,” “10 Steps For,” etc. Avoid vague language like “Announcement” or “Important Info.”

Frame the H1 as a solution to the reader’s problem, as it’s the first thing the reader encounters on a page. With this framing, the reader gets encouraged to scroll for more content.

Avoid keyword stuffing or generic phrasing

Just above, we advised incorporating the primary keyword into an H1 tag for better visibility. We should also emphasize the need to avoid keyword stuffing, which is when keywords are inserted in a way that sounds unnatural. Also, avoid generic phrasing, which entails using vague phrases like “Welcome,” “Our Products,” and “Homepage.”

If the tag sounds robotic, clunky, and forced, it likely isn’t a good one. Consider this H1 tag example:

• SEO services to grow your organic traffic.

It sounds straightforward and descriptive.

Now, consider this example:

• SEO services, content creation, SEO optimisation.

It feels stuffed and sounds unnatural, and search crawlers penalise pages with stuffed keywords, so it should be avoided. 

Common myths about H1 and SEO

Let’s explore some common myths people have about H1 tags and why these myths are wrong:

Myth 1: H1 directly improves rankings

Proper H1 tags are a fundamental part of your SEO strategy. However, an H1 tag doesn’t directly affect search rankings. Instead, it helps search engines understand content better and recommend it to the right users. Having in-depth, high-quality content is the main contributor to high search rankings, not meta tags.

Myth 2: Multiple H1 tags are harmful

Multiple H1 tags aren’t inherently harmful to search rankings. For example, an author can create separate H1s for different sections of a long article. However, multiple H1 tags can lead to a less clear hierarchy, confusing both search crawlers and readers.

In most cases, a single H1 tag on a webpage is the best option. The exception is when using multiple H1s to define clearly distinct sections of a webpage.

Myth 3: H1 must exactly match the title tag

H1 and title tags should be aligned, which we’ve discussed above. However, they don’t need to be an exact match. Making them slightly different is the best practice, with the H1 tag sounding straightforward and the title tag sounding persuasive. Both should incorporate the primary keyword, but they shouldn’t be the same thing. 

Myth 4: Styling alone is sufficient for headings

Some site owners assume styling, like making a text bold or increasing its font size, is sufficient for creating headings, but this isn’t true. Headings must be clearly defined with HTML tags (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.). 

If using a content management system like WordPress, you can create headings on the visual interface, and HTML tags will automatically be created for them. However, visual cues are not enough for specifying headings– an H1 tag is precisely defined by an HTML code snippet.

Myth 5: H1 is irrelevant in modern SEO

As search engines have advanced, thanks mostly to artificial intelligence (AI), some publishers feel that H1s are increasingly irrelevant. “After all, search engines have become sophisticated enough to understand a page’s content without resorting to H1 tags…” is the rationale, but this isn’t true. 

H1 tags remain a key part of on-page SEO, and Google hasn’t indicated otherwise. An H1 tells search crawlers exactly what a page is about. For readers, it indicates if they’ve found exactly what they seek. A clear H1 hooks readers immediately when they enter a page.

How to audit H1 tags on your site

Now that you’ve learned the best practices for using H1 tags and myths to be dispelled about them, the next essential step is learning how to audit H1 tags on your site and ensuring they’re properly placed. Let’s explore H1 auditing methods below:

Manual HTML inspection

You can view the H1 tags for any web page via your browser. Follow these steps:

1. Right-click on a webpage opened on your browser. 
2. Click View Page Source. Alternatively, press Ctrl+U (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Option+U (Mac PCs) to view the page source on any opened browser page.
3. Inspect the page source code and ensure the primary heading is wrapped in <h1> tags, such as <h1>Main Page Header is Written Here</h1>.

4. If there’s no heading wrapped in H1 tags, it indicates the lack of the tag, and it should be added.

Using SEO audit tools

Various SEO software tools offer a H1 checker, often for free. This checker scans a webpage to confirm if a H1 tag is present. If absent, you’ll be notified to include the tag in the webpage. Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider, Semrush, and Ahrefs are examples of such tools. Simply enter the webpage address, wait for the scan to complete, and you’ll be notified if a H1 tag is present or absent. 

Checking for keyword relevance and length

Relevant H1 tags incorporate a page’s primary target keyword, and the ideal H1 length is around 60 characters. Thus, before publishing a page, confirm that the H1 naturally includes the primary keyword and is concise.

Ensure H1 matches page intent

A proper H1 tag should be descriptive and match the page’s search intent. Picture what brings a user to your page – to learn (informational), compare options (commercial), or buy an item (transactional). The H1 should exactly match their intent.

For example, an informational H1 tag can be How to Choose the Best Dress Shoes of 2026. For commercial intent, it can be 10 Best Dress Shoes To Buy in 2026, and the transactional option can be Save 50% on these Dress Shoes Under $100.

Conclusion

H1 tags may not influence rankings directly, but they’re a key part of SEO. A concise H1 heading, clear content structure, and in-depth information contribute to a page’s SEO standing. We’ve explained why H1 tags are important and the best practices for them, so incorporate these practices to get optimal results. At Why Seo Serious, we offer full-stack SEO services for businesses seeking to grow their online presence and boost organic traffic. Contact us today to see how we can increase your site’s search engine authority.

FAQs

• Can you use multiple H1 tags?

  Yes, you can use multiple H1 tags in some cases, like specifying distinct H1s for different sections of a webpage. However, a single H1 tag is the best option to provide clarity for readers and search engines.

• Should H1 and title tags match?

  The H1 and title tags of a webpage should be aligned, particularly incorporating the primary keyword, but they shouldn’t be exactly the same.

• Does H1 directly impact search rankings?

  H1 tags don’t directly impact search rankings, but they help search crawlers understand content and recommend it to the right audience. 

Have you ever wondered how Google displays rich results like product prices, images, and reviews? You search for a product and see exactly what you want, complete with prices, reviews, and images from different retailers. This may seem mundane to you, but something technical goes behind the scenes – schema markup.

Schema markup is a structured data code added to a website to help Google understand its content. It’s how Google picks up the accurate information to display on rich snippets. Schema markup is an essential part of search engine optimisation (SEO), so let’s dive deep into it and how to apply it to boost search rankings.

What is schema markup?

Schema markup is semantic code added to a website’s HTML backend to help search engines understand its content. Think of it like writing instructions on a map to highlight specific landmarks. In this case, you’re adding code to highlight specific content types (e.g., prices, event dates, and customer reviews) for search engines.

There are over 800 types of schema markup code, each to highlight a specific type of content. All of them are publicly documented on the Schema.org website.

How schema helps search engines understand content

A schema is specialised code you add to your website. You can add it manually to your website’s codebase. Alternatively, if you use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Shopify, basic schema code is automatically added when you enter product details. 

Schema code ensures search engines understand exactly what a piece of content is, instead of relying on algorithms. It’s like an item labeled clearly on a map so that you don’t have to guess what it is based on the shape.

Types of schema markup

As of writing, there are 823 types of schema markup code. If we decide to describe them all, you’ll spend too much time in this section and get bored, so we’ll rather describe just some of the most important ones. 

LocalBusiness

This type denotes a physical business, like a restaurant or cinema, and its associated properties. Let’s see some LocalBusiness schema markup examples:

currenciesAccepted	It lists the currencies accepted at the business location.
openingHours	Highlights the general opening hours of the business.
paymentAccepted	Denotes the payment methods accepted at the location.
address	The physical/postal address listed on Google.
aggregateRating	The location’s overall rating, based on customer reviews.

IndividualProduct

This schema type represents a single, identifiable product and its properties. 

serialNumber	The product’s unique alphanumeric identifier.
countryOfAssembly	The country where the product was assembled.
displayLocation	The physical location where someone can view the product in person.

NewsArticle

This schema type represents content that reports news. Some examples are:

dateline	A piece of text indicating where and when the news article was written.
wordCount	The number of words in the article.
author	The author of the news piece.

If you’re as curious as a cat and want to know all the schema types, the full list is accessible on Schema.org.

The above examples illustrate what we’ve said: schema is just simple code that indicates what a piece of content is about. 

Why schema markup matters for SEO

We’ve emphasized that schema markup code defines what different parts of a webpage are about. It tells search engines exactly what a piece of content is and when to display it. This process translates into benefits like:

Improving click-through rates in SERPs

When search algorithms know exactly what your content is about, they suggest it to the right users on search engine results pages (SERPs). Your content will be paired with the exact search intent it’s meant to serve. 

For example, if someone searches for “shoes under $50,” and schema markup code indicates your online store has shoes under this price range, your products can be suggested to the person. This accurate pairing encourages the searcher to click on your content.

Enhancing rich snippets and search appearance

Have you ever searched for something on Google and seen rich snippets like these:

In the above example, we searched for “steak recipes,” and Google highlighted reader reviews and preparation times for specific recipes. It demonstrates something: these websites used schema markup code to denote review and time preparation data, and Google displayed the exact results.

Seeing rich snippets makes people want to click on a webpage for more information. When you use schema markup, your webpage gets similar rich snippets, encouraging searchers to click on it.

Supporting voice search 

Many people use Google Assistant or Siri to search for information. These voice assistants rely on schema markup to identify the exact content to play back to users.

• For example, the openingHours schema indicates when your restaurant is open, and someone asking for “restaurants open near me” can be suggested to visit your location.

With proper schema markup code, voice search users get accurate results that draw traffic to your webpage or physical business.  

How to implement schema markup

Schema markup can be implemented manually or automatically. You can add it directly into your website’s backend or use plugins/content management systems that generate schema markup code automatically for webpage content.

Manual implementation vs. Plugins

If adding code manually, Google’s free Structured Data Markup Helper is a great companion. You can paste your webpage URL, then select a page element you want to add schema markup code for. Then, the Structured Data Markup Helper will automatically generate schema code for that element, and you’ll manually add the code to your website.

To demonstrate how to add schema markup to a website, we’ve chosen to add it for an image on one of our blog posts:

After selecting the image and clicking on Create HTML (the button pointed with a green arrow), Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper automatically generated the code for the image:

All we had to do was add the schema code (highlighted in the red box) to our blog post’s backend, and everything was set! We expect to see this image on a search results page soon.

If using a plugin, you don’t have to go through the above process. Just publish your content, and the plugin automatically generates and adds schema code to the backend. These plugins, such as Yoast SEO, can be easily installed on content management systems like WordPress. Better off, some content management systems have built-in plugins.

Testing and validating your schema

You’ve added schema, either manually or automatically, but don’t rest just yet. You need to validate the schema code, ensuring that it’s present for search engine algorithms to read. 

The Schema.org Markup Validator is a free, simple tool that fulfills this function. Just visit the page, paste in your webpage URL, and you’ll see all structured data detected on the webpage, like in the example below:

If there are schema SEO errors on your webpage, the Markup Validator will highlight them:

Given we used our official blog in the above example, we’re pleased to know that no schema errors were found. It should be the same for your website.

Using schema markup generators

Just earlier, we detailed how to use Google’s free Structured Data Markup Helper to generate schema markup code. You’ll be happy to know about other free tools available for the same function. 

For example, there’s the Dentsu Schema Markup Generator. On this tool, you can choose any type of schema, specify its details, and have code automatically generated.

There’s also Schema.dev’s Schema Builder, which functions differently. This tool is first installed as a Chrome extension. Then, when browsing your webpage, you can simply click on the element you want to add schema for, and the code will be quickly generated.

With various markup generators freely accessible, you don’t have to stress about adding proper schema code to your website.

Leveraging AI for schema markup

If you’ve been online lately, you’ve likely heard a lot about the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Even if someone lived under a cave, AI tools have become so trendy that the news somehow reached the cave. These tools help considerably with content creation and optimisation, and schema markup management is a major use case.

AI tools help generate, add, validate, and update schema markup code faster. Schema-related tasks that usually take a long time now take much less because of these tools. Let’s explore some ways of leveraging AI for schema markup:

Using AI tools to generate and optimise schema

Remember when we selected a piece of content on Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, and schema code was automatically generated for it? AI tools can do the same. 

For example, you can ask ChatGPT or Claude to generate schema code for a webpage element. These chatbots can also help generate meta descriptions, alt text, titles, and other on-page SEO properties. 

Plugins like Yoast SEO now incorporate AI to automatically generate schema code for webpages. In summary, generating schema code has become much easier and accessible to website owners.

Automating schema updates for large sites

Picture this situation: you conduct the usual annual content updates for your website, modifying dates, adding new trending content, removing outdated content, and more. You don’t want to start thinking about manually updating the schema code for each updated page, as that’s too much to bear. That’s where AI comes in.

AI tools can generate the raw code for you, and some modern SEO plugins use AI to suggest or update schema based on your page content. However, you still need to copy-paste the code or approve the changes manually. AI handles the grunt work, while you validate the schema updates and spend more time honing your content strategy.

Enhancing schema accuracy and relevance with AI

If you begin to add schema code manually to each webpage, you’ll get tired at some point and become prone to making mistakes. A tired person could mistake CurrenciesAccepted for PaymentAccepted and feed the wrong data to search engines. AI systems help you avoid such mistakes. They automatically generate code based on official Schema.org documentation, and you won’t worry about making mistakes. Yet, it’s still necessary to confirm using official documentation instead of putting everything “in the hands” of AI.

Schema markup tools and resources

We’ve already mentioned several tools that help you generate, add, and manage schema markup code. Learning how to use schema markup for SEO isn’t complete without diving deeper into some of these tools, so let’s do that below:

Google Structured Data Markup Helper

You’ve heard this name several times in this article. As a reminder, it’s that tool where you enter your website URL, choose a visual or text element, and have schema code automatically generated for that element. You can then add the code to your website.

Google is the most widely used search engine, and it offers various free SEO optimisation tools. Apart from the Structured Data Markup Helper, there’s also 

• Google Analytics, for monitoring online traffic.
• Google Search Console, for monitoring search performance.
• PageSpeed Insights, for evaluating page speed and other technical SEO elements.
• Google Trends, for identifying popular search topics to write content about. 
• Keyword Planner, for finding trending keywords to create content about.

For all these free tools, we think we owe Google a bottle of beer.

Schema.org documentation

In case you’re wondering who created the schema markup system, here’s the answer: it was launched in 2011 as a collaborative project between Google, Bing, and Yahoo, the world’s leading search engines. Yandex, another prominent search engine, later joined the coalition. 

In 2011, Schema became a collaborative vocabulary for search engine algorithms, and all documents related to it were released for free on Schema.org. You can find all types of schemas (and specific codes) duly documented on this website. All naming conventions, developer-related information, extension mechanisms, and release notes of the schema markup system are also documented. In summary, if you want to discover anything technical about schema markup code, the website is your go-to place.

Rich Results test, validator, and other tools

Remember those rich snippets we showed you earlier? We explained how adding schema markup code helps Google identify the correct information to display in rich snippets. If you need to test whether your website supports rich snippets, say no more. Google offers a free Rich Results Test tool for this purpose.

Just enter your URL, wait for the test to complete, and you’ll get your results. Once again, we tested our blog and are proud that it got excellent results.

Conclusion

With all you’ve learned about schema markup, we await your website’s rich snippets on Google search results. Schema markup is one of the most subtle yet effective SEO tools you can leverage to build traffic. 

If implementing schema markup sounds too technical, why not hand it over to the professionals, like us? Why SEO Serious is a professional agency that handles your technical and on-page SEO elements. Staffed with experienced professionals, we provide full-stack SEO services to elevate your website’s search rankings. Contact us today to see how we can help.

Schema markup FAQs

You’ve followed the SEO recommendations and taken active steps to grow your search rankings, but measuring the effectiveness of your strategies seems difficult. It’s one thing to have a good SEO strategy and another to observe if it’s providing the desired results. Worry no more, as you’ve arrived at the right place to learn SEO performance measurement. This guide explains how to evaluate SEO results accurately and focus on the key metrics that drive organic traffic growth.

Key SEO metrics to track

SEO performance measurement is all about keeping tabs on the right metrics. These metrics indicate whether your SEO efforts are productive or if you need adjustments to get better results. Let’s explore them below.

Organic traffic

Organic traffic represents visitors who arrive at your site from unpaid sources, and search engine results pages (SERPs) represent the largest unpaid traffic source. Hence, the leading SEO performance metric to track is the volume of organic traffic. How many visitors arrive at your website via search engines compared to previous periods? What are the organic traffic trends compared week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year?

For example, if you observe a 15% increase in monthly organic traffic after optimising meta tags (descriptions, alt texts, and titles), it shows that the optimisation is yielding productive results. The content may not have changed, but optimised meta tags help search crawlers understand it better and suggest it to the right users, drawing more organic traffic.

Google provides a free analytics tool for tracking website traffic. This tool, aptly named Google Analytics, displays the traffic source and visitors’ location, and you can compare stats for different periods in an interactive dashboard.

Keyword rankings

A major goal of optimisation is to improve a site’s ranking for specific keywords, so tracking SEO results always involves keyword rank monitoring. With the help of SEO measuring tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, site owners can conveniently track their site’s ranking for relevant keywords, then compare it to competitors’ rankings.

For example, a gaming website can seek to rank high for keywords like “Best PS5 games,” “Best Xbox games,” and “Top role-playing games.” To do that, the site owner creates content incorporating these keywords and providing in-depth information about the best games for each category. With this high-quality, keyword-optimised content, the site can improve its rankings over time for the specified keywords, and this improvement can be measured on Semrush or Ahrefs.

Google Search Console (GSC), a free tool, also helps site owners measure keyword ranking. It shows your site’s average position for any specified keyword. However, unlike paid tools like Semrush, GSC doesn’t analyse search trends to find the best keywords to target, and it doesn’t offer as much competitive intelligence. 

Visibility/impressions

Although clicks matter more, impressions are also important SEO metrics to track. The more people who view a website on a search engine results page, the better. All viewers may not click on the page, but higher impressions mean better chances of getting clicks after all.

Site owners can track their search impressions through Google Search Console. This platform shows how many times a site appeared for specific search queries. For example, if you write a blog post about “The best smartphones of 2026,” you can view how many impressions the post got from search engine queries like “smartphones to buy,” “best smartphones,” and “top smartphones to get.”

The key is to measure visibility for the most relevant keywords in your niche, not just general visibility. Compare the results over time and to your competitors. Outranking competitors’ visibility is the main goal.

Click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate, a key KPI in SEO marketing, is the percentage of people who click on a website after seeing it on a search results page. It’s the ratio of visits to impressions, and can be easily measured with an analytics tool. For example, if a link gets 50 impressions and 5 clicks, the CTR is 5/50, or 0.1, expressed as a percentage, making 10%.

A good CTR depends heavily on your ranking position. For a page ranking #1, a CTR above 25% is typical, while a 3-5% CTR might be decent for positions #4-5. Always benchmark CTR against your average position in Google Search Console. 

Conversions from organic search

This SEO metric represents the percentage of organic visitors who complete a suggested action on your website. For example, for an e-commerce website, it can be the percentage of visitors to a product page who clicked on the Add to Cart button. For a blog, it can be the percentage of visitors who clicked on an affiliate link. 2% to 5% is a decent conversion rate, but highly optimised sites can get more than 5%.

How to measure conversion with goals in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google Analytics is a free tool for measuring conversions on your website. GA4, the latest version, lets you track detailed actions like button clicks, video plays, first visits, and downloads. It records details about each visitor, including their location, browser, operating system, and device type. This detailed information is presented in an intuitive dashboard where you can analyze it in real-time. 

To use Google Analytics (GA4), you first need to connect it to your website’s backend by installing a simple tracking code. Alternatively, for websites hosted on WordPress, you can simply install the Google Analytics plugin to begin measuring conversions.  

Follow these tips to maximise conversions:

• Use detailed product descriptions in e-commerce sites, describing a product’s characteristics and the problems it solves.
• Create in-depth, targeted content that answers specific questions.
• Insert compelling calls to action (CTAs) in your article, such as Claim your Freebie or Sign Up Now. These CTAs should have bold, contrasting colors to make them easy to spot.
• Create a sense of urgency with time-limited offers, such as Offer Valid for 1 Day or Limited Time Only.
• Insert informative, high-quality images in between text blocks. People like seeing occasional images when scrolling through long articles, instead of endless blocks of text. 
• For e-commerce sites, include case studies and testimonials from previous customers to build trust.
• Improve your website speed and ensure mobile-friendliness. Visuals can be compressed to their smallest sizes (without compromising quality), and elements should automatically adjust to smaller mobile screens.

Domain authority

Domain authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz, a popular SEO solution. It isn’t a direct factor assigned by Google or other search engines, but it describes a website’s relevance in its niche. The higher the score, the more likely it’ll appear on search engine results pages.

This metric is tracked on a scale of 1 to 100, with new sites having 1 and top-ranking sites having scores close to 100. Moz considers several factors when assigning domain authority, like the number of backlinks, speed & mobile-friendliness, internal links, and depth of content. 

Anyone can use Moz’s free Domain Authority checker to check their site’s score. You can also use it to check competitors’ scores. The closer your score is to 100 and the higher it is compared to competitors, the better.

Backlinks count / Referring domains

Backlinks are links to a site from external websites. Search engines use backlinks as a yardstick to establish a site’s authority. If many websites link to a specific site, it logically signals that the site provides high-quality information worth directing readers to. 

However, backlinks aren’t a mundane system that can be gamed easily; otherwise, site owners can simply pay others to insert backlinks and get automatic high rankings. Search engines prioritise backlinks from related, high-traffic sites. For example, an electronics blog is best served by backlinks from other electronics-related sites. Backlinks from other sites still count, but those from similar sites provide better results.

SEO tools like Semrush and Google Search Console make it easy to monitor your backlinks. You’ll see the number and name of each site that has linked to your content. Of course, compare your number of backlinks to that of competitors and try to outperform them.

Posting high-quality content with original insights is the best way to get backlinks, as people naturally link to such content. You can also exchange backlinks with other sites or write guest posts that link to your site.

Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) / Page speed

Core Web Vitals are custom metrics that Google uses to evaluate a site’s user experience. They include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric indicates how long it takes for the largest image or text block on a page to load. The faster it loads, the higher the score assigned by Google. Under 2.5 seconds is the ideal range.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): It indicates how often content unexpectedly shifts around the user’s screen. The less this occurs, the better for users, as unexpected visual disruptions can confuse visitors. A score below 0.1 is ideal.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP): This metric measures the speed of all user interactions, like taps, scrolling, and clicks. The faster, the better, with less than 200 milliseconds being ideal.

Websites that score high in Core Web Vitals are prioritised over those with lower scores. Google provides a free PageSpeed tool for checking the Core Web Vitals for any website. The scan results page looks like this:

Feel free to use this tool to check your site’s vitals and ensure it falls within the ideal ranges. You can also scan core competitors’ websites and compare their scores to yours.

Indexed pages / Crawl errors

On Google Search Console (GSC), you can view a detailed report on which pages of your website are in Google’s index and which pages weren’t indexed. For the non-indexed pages, Google provides a precise reason, often because of technical errors. 

Always check the GSC report about non-indexed pages and correct the errors so that the pages can be reindexed. For example, the error might be a page having a noindex tag, so you’ll need to remove this tag to enable indexing. Without fixing such errors, the pages remain unindexed, leading to lost search traffic. 

After fixing errors, click Validate Fix in the GSC report, instructing crawlers to recrawl your site and index the fixed pages. Likewise, ensure the pages are included in the sitemap submitted to Google Search Console. 

User engagement (average session duration, pages per session, returning visitors)

SEO revolves around getting user engagement, so engagement metrics have to be constantly monitored. Watch out for these key metrics:

Average session duration

The average amount of time each user spends on your site. It’s calculated by dividing the total duration of all sessions by the number of sessions. 1 to 3 minutes is the average, but 3 to 5 minutes (or more) is the ideal range to target, as it indicates in-depth engagement. An average duration below 1 minute is inadequate, signaling the need to update content to encourage readers to spend more time.

Pages per session

This metric represents the average number of pages viewed in each session. It’s measured by the total pageviews divided by the number of sessions. Higher numbers indicate that a site is easy to navigate and provides high-quality content that leaves users wanting to read more. 2 or more pages is a good starting point, but 4 to 6 pages is the ideal range, particularly for e-commerce sites.

Returning visitors

Returning visitors represent the percentage of visitors who have visited your site at least once before. It indicates how loyal your audience is, as engaged readers will likely return for more content. Returning visitors tend to click on ads or buy products more than fresh visitors. 25% to 50% is a healthy rate for this SEO performance metric.

Tools for measuring SEO performance

We’ve mentioned some tools that help SEO professionals measure key metrics, like Google Analytics and Semrush, but there are several more. Below, we’ll explore the best SEO tools and what each specialises in.

Google Search Console – For tracking Google rankings

Google provides a native Search Console for site owners to track their search rankings. First, the owner verifies their domain ownership, and afterwards, can track their search traffic and performance. Key stats provided by Search Console include:

• A detailed list of the keywords attracting visitors to a site. For each keyword, the site owner can view the number of impressions, clicks, and position on Google search results pages.
• Alerts on technical issues that Google identifies on a site, e.g., 404 error pages. These errors should be promptly fixed to ensure proper indexing.
• Core Web Vitals, which are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Interaction to Next Paint (INP). These metrics, which we’ve earlier explained, are provided in the Search Console dashboard.

On Search Console, site owners can also submit sitemaps and individual URLs to ensure proper indexing.

Google Analytics – For in-depth traffic analysis

Google Analytics is another free tool offered by Google. It gives site owners detailed insights about their traffic, understanding exactly how visitors interact across a site. Key features include:

• Real-time reports on traffic, including each visitor’s location, operating system, and time spent on site.
• Detailed engagement reports for the whole site, from average session duration to number of returning visitors, referral sources, and more. Users can also view detailed reports for individual pages. 
• Comparison of traffic statistics between different periods in an interactive dashboard. 
• Monetization reports for e-commerce sites or sites monetised with Google AdSense.
• User lifecycle monitoring. Site owners can monitor every page visited by distinct users and the time spent on each.
• Integrations with other analytics tools to provide a comprehensive traffic overview. 

Rank tracking tools

Semrush and Ahrefs are the most popular rank tracking tools used by SEO specialists. They provide deeper SEO insights than Search Console, but are paid platforms that require a monthly or annual subscription.

Semrush – For identifying keywords and tracking search rankings

Semrush has a vast keyword database that keeps getting updated daily. It helps site owners find the top-performing keywords to incorporate into their content. Then, they can track their site’s rankings for these keywords. 

Key Semrush features include:

• Analysing competitors to identify their top keywords, then targeting similar keywords with your content.
• Analysing competitors’ backlinks and targeting similar sites for your backlinks.
• Generating SEO-friendly content ideas and optimising content in real-time for higher rankings.
• Managing Google My Business profiles for better visibility.
• An AI visibility toolkit to monitor and optimise how a website appears in AI-generated answers. With many users increasingly depending on AI chatbots, it has become a major traffic source that can’t be ignored.
• Technical SEO audits and suggesting improvements for a website.

Ahrefs – For rank tracking and competitive intelligence

Ahrefs is a broad SEO platform that lets site owners track keyword rankings, engagement rates, backlinks, impressions, and other key SEO performance metrics we’ve discussed. Site owners can track both their sites and those of key competitors, providing in-depth insights to help them outshine rivals. 

Key features include:

• A rank tracker to monitor a site’s rankings for specific keywords. 
• An AI tool that helps optimise content for better search visibility. 
• Tracking a site’s visibility to AI chatbots and optimising it for higher visibility.
• Scanning sites for technical SEO issues that hinder rankings.
• Tracking brand mentions on social media and other online sources.
• In-depth competitive analysis, helping site owners discover content gaps to fill in and outrank rivals.
• Managing search engine ad campaigns to produce better results.

Technical auditing tools

Some SEO tools allow site owners to conduct comprehensive technical audits, identifying any issues that could be hindering search rankings. They also provide suggestions on fixing these issues.

Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider – For identifying key technical SEO issues

Screaming Frog is an SEO agency best known for its SEO Spider tool. This tool crawls entire websites to detect technical issues preventing proper search indexing. It mimics the function of a search engine crawler, letting site owners know what technical factors hinder proper indexing of their web pages.

SEO Spider’s core technical auditing features include:

• Identifying broken links (404 errors) that need to be deleted or revamped. 
• Pinpointing pages without proper meta tags (H1s, titles, and meta descriptions).
• Generating XML sitemaps to be submitted to Google Search Console for proper indexing.
• Identifying redirect loops can confuse search crawlers and need to be fixed. 
• Discovering duplicate content that should be deleted. 
• Evaluating internal linking and URL structure.
• Reviewing robots.txt files to identify URLs blocked from indexing.

Users can choose the free version of SEO Spider, which crawls a maximum of 500 URLs, or the paid version, which allows unlimited crawling.

PageSpeed Insights – For Core Web Vitals

PageSpeed Insights is yet another free SEO tool provided by Google. Users can analyse their site’s Core Web Vitals (or that of competitors), which Google prioritises when ranking sites.

We’ve discussed the Core Web Vitals earlier: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and Interaction to Next Paint (INP). They revolve around loading speed, visual disruption, and the speed of user interactions, respectively.

PageSpeed Insights gives detailed reports for any scanned site. You’ll see the exact score for each Core Web Vital, and these can be compared with those of competitors. If your site doesn’t meet the recommended Core Web Vitals, it signals a need to improve its loading speed and make it more visually appealing. 

Publishers can improve site speed by compressing images and videos to the smallest possible sizes, ensuring they don’t take too long to load. Visual elements should be arranged neatly, and avoid frequent pop-ups and interstitial ads that disrupt the user experience.

Conclusion

Measuring SEO performance is a key duty of every website owner. In the tight race towards the top of search engine results pages, sites must constantly monitor metrics and know when strategies should be adjusted to achieve better outcomes. 

In this guide, we’ve explored the most essential metrics to monitor, both for your site and those of competitors. For site owners who need help with SEO monitoring and strategic implementation, Why SEO Serious provides just that! Contact us today to see how we can help.

SEO performance FAQs

How long does it take to see SEO results?

SEO efforts typically take 3 to 6 months to see initial traffic spikes and up to 12 months to see the most optimal results. SEO is a long-term process, not a quick-result strategy. 

What is the most important SEO metric?

Organic traffic is the most important of all SEO metrics. The ultimate goal of SEO is to generate higher organic traffic from search engines, so this metric supersedes the rest.

Should I focus on rankings or conversions?

Rankings are important, but you should focus more on conversions. A site may have high rankings, but low conversions mean it won’t get much traffic. Conversions measure the percentage of organic visitors who complete a desired action on your site, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter.

How often should I measure SEO performance?

SEO performance metrics should be reviewed at least once a week. This timeframe helps you spot issues early and fix them to avoid traffic reduction. You can also conduct extensive SEO audits monthly or quarterly and adjust strategies to achieve better results.

What is a good organic click-through rate?

3% to 5% is a generally good click-through rate (CTR), but you can aim higher. 20% or more is an excellent CTR to target. In search engine results pages, the top three sites get the most clicks, so always aim to be among the top three.

FAQ

Your future customers are out there searching for exactly what you offer, but they’ve chosen your next-door competitor because it outranks you on Google. Why did that happen? Probably because your local SEO strategy isn’t as detailed as the competitor’s. Local SEO helps your physical business get noticed on Google and attract new customers.

Ahead is an explanation of local SEO, why it’s worth your attention, and how to improve it without getting mad at yourself, your competitors, or Google.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of optimising your business’s online presence to attract visitors from location-based searches. It focuses on making your business appear in “near me” or “local packs” search engine results pages (SERPs). Key steps include managing a detailed Google Business profile, optimising for local keywords, and getting mentions from local review sites.

How local SEO differs from traditional SEO?

In local SEO optimisation, the aim is to rank high for geographic-specific keywords and attract nearby customers. In contrast, a traditional SEO strategy aims for broader national and global visibility, not specific cities, towns, or neighbourhoods. 

A local SEO strategy targets users seeking nearby solutions (e.g., “event halls near me”), while traditional SEO targets a wider audience seeking information that isn’t specific to any location.

Examples of local search queries

Here are typical examples of local search queries that businesses optimise for:

• “Best pizzas near me.” Here, a user searches for the best pizza spots in their vicinity. Pizza outlets that rank high for this keyword will attract a steady stream of new customers.
• “Things to do in Denver.” This query indicates someone searching for fun activities in the city of Denver. Local businesses that offer fun activities can target this keyword and position themselves to visitors or city dwellers seeking to have fun.
• “24/7 pharmacy.” In this simple query, a user searches for pharmacies that are open 24/7 in their vicinity. A pharmacy store mentioned in the search results page will likely receive a visit.

Local search queries are characterised by the searcher’s high intent to purchase something or visit somewhere.

Why local SEO is important for businesses

Local SEO works because it catches people in the exact moment they’re searching for something. It increases visibility in “near me,” “things to do,” and similar search queries, attracting significant foot traffic. Smaller companies can compete better with larger businesses by implementing the right local SEO strategies.

Growth of local search and user behavior

Localised searches are experiencing rapid growth. Recent data indicates that 46% of all Google searches are for local information, and 92% of searchers choose businesses on the first page of search results. These stats highlight the increasing importance of local search optimisation for businesses. 

With the right local SEO strategies, you can attract foot traffic like never before and grow your business without spending much on paid ads. Local searches have high purchase intent, so targeting the right audience leads to improved sales.

Benefits of appearing in local search results

• Increased visibility to your precise target audience.
• Increased foot traffic, which translates to higher revenue.
• It gives a competitive advantage over larger businesses with more advertising and content creation resources.
• A higher return on investment than paid ads. Most SEO efforts are implemented at the initial stage, and you don’t have to spend frequently to maintain higher traffic levels, unlike ads.
• It provides a better user experience for your customers, as they’ll know your exact opening hours, pricing, and services.

How local search works

For localised queries, Google uses a specialised search algorithm to deliver geographically relevant results. If the searcher indicates a specific location, Google shows results for that exact location. If no specific location is indicated (e.g., “Grocery stores near me”), the searcher’s location is identified via GPS or IP address, and Google uses this information to show locally relevant results.

The role of relevance, distance, and prominence

Local search results rely mostly on

• Proximity. How close is a business to the searcher’s location?
• Relevance. How well does the business’s profile match the searcher’s intent?
• Prominence. How popular is the business, based on its online mentions and customer reviews?

What is the Google Local Pack?

When a user makes a local query on Google, the algorithm often displays a map with the top three business listings matching their query. This block is known as the Local Pack, displayed at the top of the search results page to highlight the most relevant options. It looks like this:

Businesses listed in a Local Pack get the most foot traffic compared to rivals listed below. There’s intense competition to get listed, and optimisation helps you climb over rivals.

How Google determines local rankings

Google determines local rankings through the three factors we mentioned earlier: relevance, proximity, and prominence. This implies that:

• Businesses need a detailed profile to help Google determine their relevance for search queries.
• Trusted businesses with positive reviews and mentions are more likely to rank higher.
• Websites optimised for local keywords tend to rank higher.

Key components of an effective local SEO strategy

You’ve learned how local search works and how Google determines rankings for local results. Now, it’s time to learn the key steps of optimising your business to rank high in local search results. They include:

Optimise your Google Business profile

Every business can create a custom profile on Google, filled with details like their address, contact information, opening hours, reservation information, price ranges, and high-quality photos. Customer reviews are displayed in this business profile.

Having a complete Google Business profile is necessary for ranking high in search results. Google uses this information to determine your business’s relevance to search queries. The information also keeps customers informed about important details like prices, opening hours, and temporary closures. 

A Google Business profile is free to create. Simply enter Google Business Profile and follow the instructions to create one. Afterwards, you can update the profile anytime to keep customers informed about important changes.

Build and maintain local citations

Businesses with external citations rank higher on local search results, as Google considers these citations as a vote of confidence. Effective local SEO in digital marketing includes getting mentions from trusted sources like review sites, industry-specific blogs, and other businesses.

For example, hotels benefit from mentions on Tripadvisor, a prominent travel booking site. New York City-based outlets benefit highly from mentions on Curbed.com, a popular local real estate publication. 

Target citations from sources relevant to your location. For example, create listings of your business on third-party sites like Tripadvisor. The more your business gets mentioned on external sources, the better.

Encourage and manage customer reviews

Encourage customers to leave reviews on your Google Business Profile. Respond to positive reviews in an appreciative manner and negative reviews in a reconciliatory tone. Avoid getting confrontational, as it leaves a negative impression on intending customers. Your reviews get prominently featured on Google, encouraging people to try out your business. 

Google displays a summary of your review ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. 4.5+ stars is the ideal rating to build credibility. 

Conduct local keyword research

Research the location-specific keywords that people often search for in your vicinity. For example, if you run a restaurant, the most searched keywords could be “restaurants near me,” “restaurants in [city name],” “budget-friendly restaurants near me,” and “premium restaurants.” The idea is to create content that matches these keywords, increasing your brand’s chances of appearing in search results.

Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Google Trends help with keyword research. You can use them to find trending, high-intent keywords without hassle– enter a ‘seed’ word and location, and they’ll show the most high-intent keywords related to your seed word and location. For example, if ‘Jewelry’ is the seed word, and the U.S. is the chosen location, the given high-intent keywords can be:

• Handmade silver earrings under $50.
• Ethically sourced jewelry under $500. 
• The best handmade jewelry store in Chicago.

Optimise website content for local searches

Just above, we mentioned finding the right local keywords to target. Then, the next step is creating content optimised for these keywords. 

You can integrate city or neighbourhood names into your website content. For example, an entertainment center in Koreatown, Los Angeles, should clearly mention this location on its website, indicating its relevance to search engines. 

Writing blog posts about local events and community news is an effective way to attract search traffic. Still on the same example, the entertainment center’s owner can create content about “Best places to visit in Koreatown,” “Fun activities in Koreatown,” “A tourist’s guide to Los Angeles,” and similar topics. The center’s website should clearly list its address, with an embedded Google Map location that readers can follow.

Create dedicated location pages

If your business serves multiple locations, creating dedicated pages for each location is the best strategy. Each page will feature content tailored to its specific location, like testimonials and local landmarks, creating more credibility. Google’s algorithms understand location-specific pages better and recommend them to the right people. 

For example, a restaurant with multiple outlets in the same city can create a different page for each outlet. Each outlet’s page lists its menu, prices, and available perks. This highly specific information is more relevant to users compared to having one page for all outlets.

Build local backlinks

As we mentioned earlier, external citations boost your business’s credibility to search engines. Seek backlinks from local directories and businesses offering similar services. Cities, particularly the big ones, have popular directories where you can create business profiles. 

You can participate in brand owner meetups and exchange backlinks with others. It could be an industry event or a trade fair where you meet other business owners and establish relationships.

Ensure a mobile-friendly experience

Mobile devices account for 60% of online traffic, so SEO is incomplete without prioritising mobile-friendliness. Your website should be highly optimised for mobile devices, with text and visuals clearly visible on smaller screens as they would be on PCs. 

Every website needs a responsive design, where content automatically adjusts to the screen dimensions of each user. Pages should load fast, ideally under 2.5 seconds. Navigation should be simple, buttons should be visible and spaced apart, and fonts should be legible. You can use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to test your site’s speed and mobile-friendliness.

Local SEO tools

In case you’re worried about going through the steps described above, you need not be. SEO for local businesses is more automated than manual. Many SEO tools automate key parts of the process, from keyword research to generating content ideas, identifying technical issues, and managing customer reviews. Below, let’s explore three essential local SEO tools and what they offer:

Google Keyword Planner

Google offers a free Keyword Planner tool, which helps businesses find trending local keywords to optimise for. Users can search for and analyse new keywords on this tool. Google displays how many impressions and conversions a business will likely get if it runs paid ads or creates optimised content for each keyword. It’s a highly valuable tool for businesses investing in local SEO.

Semrush

Semrush is an advanced SEO platform with broad features. Its local SEO offerings include a tool for optimising Google Business profiles, an AI agent for responding to Google reviews, and detailed insights about local reviews.

The AI agent is valuable for businesses that receive a lot of customer reviews. Instead of having someone replying to all reviews manually, an AI agent automatically replies to most routine reviews, freeing up time to focus on the complex ones that require careful responses.

Google Search Console

Google provides a free Search Console for site owners to monitor their traffic and SEO performance. For example, you can view which keywords bring the most traffic to your site and your site’s ranking for specific local keywords. This tool also scans websites to identify technical issues that need to be addressed (e.g., broken links and 404 errors) to improve search visibility.

How to measure local SEO performance

Given you’ve learned about the key local SEO strategies and some essential software tools that make it happen, it’s natural to also know how to measure SEO performance. After all, you need to evaluate the strategies you’ve put much effort into and adjust if you don’t see the ideal results. Let’s explore some key tenets of measuring SEO performance:

Tracking local keyword rankings

Track your site’s rankings for the most relevant keywords and compare with your competitors. Google Search Console provides a free tool for keyword tracking. For example, if you run a museum based in Philadelphia, you can track its rankings for “Top places to visit in Philadelphia,” “Experiences in Philadelphia,” and “Museums in Philadelphia.” As a saying goes, “the best place to hide information is on the second page of Google, as almost no one clicks on it,” so ranking on the first page is the ultimate aim.

Monitoring Google Business Profile insights

After creating a Google Business Profile, you can track key insights like

• The number of calls made to the phone number listed on your Business Profile.
• The number of bookings made via Google for your business.
• How many people clicked on your business address for Google Maps directions?
• How many people clicked on your website link via the business profile?

Google provides an interactive dashboard to track these insights, and you can filter reports by specific dates. Increased interactions with your Google profile indicate an effective local SEO strategy.

Measuring local website traffic

Organic traffic remains a key indicator of your SEO effectiveness. Monitor your website’s traffic from local visitors over time. Increased traffic means you have an effective local SEO strategy that’s attracting eyeballs. Otherwise, you’ll need to adjust your strategy to get the desired results.

Google Analytics is a free tool for website owners to monitor traffic. It shows in-depth traffic insights like location, average time spent on site, average time spent on a specific page, referral source, and bounce rate.

Common local SEO mistakes to avoid

Like with everything, business owners make some common mistakes when implementing local SEO. However, knowing about these mistakes beforehand helps you avoid them. Let’s explore them below:

Inconsistent business information across platforms

A business may have different information across multiple platforms, such as a different email address listed in their Google Business Profile and social media page. While having multiple email addresses may seem normal, this inconsistency creates confusion for potential customers. They can have doubts about which contact information to use and, in some cases, conclude that the business isn’t trustworthy. 

To avoid losing trust, always have consistent information across all directories where your business is listed. Use the same phone numbers, email addresses, physical address, and other key information across all directories. 

Ignoring customer reviews

Businesses often don’t give feedback on customer reviews, whether positive or negative, but this is a mistake. A lack of feedback gives searchers the impression of a business not caring about its customers’ opinions. It can result in lower search rankings and, consequently, revenue.

Promptly respond to reviews to give the impression of a business caring deeply about its customers’ opinions. As we’ve mentioned earlier, respond to positive reviews in an appreciative manner and negative reviews in a conciliatory tone. Resist the temptation to match negative reviews with negative feedback, as this leaves a bad taste with people viewing your profile. 

Let’s see some examples of proper responses to negative reviews:

Review	Response
A disappointed customer who left a 1-star rating.	We’re sorry to hear you didn’t get an ideal experience with our product. We’ve relayed this issue to the relevant department, and be assured we’re working on a quick solution.
A restaurant’s customer who complained of poor service.	Hi [customer’s name], we’re sorry that you had that experience. That’s not the kind of service we strive to provide. We’ve addressed this issue with our team, and please feel free to reach out to make things right.
A customer who got a defective product.	Hi [customer’s name], we’re sorry that the product you bought was defective. We take product quality seriously and would like to correct this mistake. Please reach out to [customer care’s contact] to obtain a replacement.

Poor optimisation of location pages

Some businesses neglect optimising their location-based pages. They use the exact content across all location pages, merely changing city names. The lack of unique content causes search engines to deem the pages as duplicates and derank them, so this mistake should always be avoided.

Tweak the content for each location-based page, incorporating keywords and slang popular in each location. Each page should have unique meta descriptions, title tags, and schema markup. Include testimonials, FAQs, and other content that make each page unique.

Lack of local backlinks

Failing to get backlinks from local and regional sites is a mistake. For local businesses, Google considers local backlinks a better approval stamp than backlinks from generic sites. A backlink from a local directory, city blog, or a chamber of commerce site can do a lot for your business. Focus on backlinks from local sites to build search authority.

Conclusion

With the right local SEO strategy, attracting foot traffic to your store becomes a cakewalk. With a detailed Google Business Profile, optimised content, local citations, and positive reviews, your business gets set up for long-term success spurred by search traffic. 

We’ve outlined the best local SEO practices, the common mistakes to avoid, and how to measure your local SEO performance. Follow these guidelines to take your business to the next level. 

If you need help with local SEO efforts, why not work with Why Seo Serious? We offer full-stack SEO services to grow both your online and foot traffic. We are one email away, so contact us today to see how we can help.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about local SEO

What’s the difference between local and traditional SEO?

Local SEO prioritises rankings for location-based searches (e.g., “restaurants near me” or “shopping malls in my area”), while traditional SEO prioritises rankings for generic, non-location-based search queries. Local SEO is targeted at a specific radius (city, neighbourhood, or region), while traditional SEO targets broad national and international audiences.

How long does local SEO take to work?

Local SEO efforts generally take 3 to 6 months to show initial results and up to 12 months to deliver the best results. It’s a long-term effort, not a quick-win strategy, so don’t fret if you don’t see the ideal results within weeks– it works on a longer timeframe. 

Do I need a website for local SEO?

You don’t necessarily need a website for local SEO, although having one helps. A website provides a central hub for customers to discover important information about your business. It also allows customers to book appointments before heading to your physical location.

How important are reviews for local SEO?

Reviews are very crucial in local SEO. Businesses with positive (4.5+ stars on average) reviews rank higher than those with fewer positive reviews. Reviews build trust with people encountering your business for the first time, encouraging them to try out what you offer.

Is a Google Business Profile necessary for local SEO?

Yes, a Google Business Profile is a necessity for local SEO. It provides a one-stop snippet for customers to discover key information about your business, like phone numbers, email addresses, official website, and physical address. Otherwise, Google may index and display the wrong information to customers. Physical businesses without a Google Business Profile are at a competitive disadvantage.

What is B2B SEO and how it drives business growth

A corporate decision maker follows a different search pattern than an everyday consumer. While everyday users search for broad terms like “restaurants near me” and “24/7 pharmacies,” corporate decision makers search for highly specific terms like “ERP software for healthcare organisations.” 

SEO for business-to-business (B2B) firms, targeted at key decision makers, requires a different approach than typical SEO. In this case, you’re targeting people who carefully scrutinise content like a scientist with a magnifying glass. Ahead is a guide on B2B SEO, its best strategies, and the key strategies for attracting business decision makers to your website. 

Understanding B2B SEO: Core concepts 

B2B SEO is all about optimising your website to attract enterprise customers through search engines. It revolves around creating content that appeals to your ideal corporate target audience, then adopting strategies that make the content rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs).

How B2B SEO differs from B2C

Some core concepts that separate B2B from business-to-consumer (B2C) SEO are:

• Targeting high-intent, low-volume keywords. Corporate decision makers search for specific, solution-oriented keywords (e.g., “Cloud-based software for e-commerce logistics). These keywords may not have high search volumes, but they have strong purchasing intent. 
• Long-term approach. Business purchasing decisions aren’t made on a whim. They require deliberate, extensive research and input from multiple stakeholders. Hence, a B2B SEO strategy requires creating content for several purchasing stages: educational (creating awareness for a product), consideration (comparing the product with other alternatives), and decision (validating the product). 

The role of SEO in generating qualified leads

Effective SEO attracts high-intent searchers to your website, and these searchers are potential customers seeking to make corporate purchasing decisions. If they encounter valuable content with compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) on a website, they’ll likely fill out the contact form or book a consultation to get more information. With the right SEO strategy, businesses can convert a sizable percentage of visitors into qualified leads. Those visitors can quickly start contacting you to discuss big deals.

Why B2B SEO matters more than ever

Most B2B buyers research solutions online before contacting sales teams. B2B SEO positions your content to reach these high-intent buyers. It increases brand visibility among key corporate decision makers, translating to a higher chance of selling your product.

In competitive industries, particularly enterprise software, B2B SEO isn’t optional. It helps build lasting authority that you can rely on to attract customers. Paid ads drive conversions, but the conversions go away when you stop paying. Effective SEO, on the other hand, drives long-term conversions at little to no cost. You don’t have to spend all your marketing dollars chasing organic traffic.

Staying competitive in a complex digital landscape

To stay competitive, businesses should shift from “volume-first” to “high-intent-driven” SEO strategies. It isn’t about the search volumes, but rather about the search intent. The best keywords to target may have low search volumes, but people searching for these keywords have indicated their status as potential customers. Prioritising high-intent, long-tail keywords is the main aspect of a competitive B2B SEO strategy.

Also, focus on creating content that demonstrates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Google uses the E-E-A-T framework to evaluate content quality, and sites with higher scores are prioritised over the rest.

Integrating SEO with marketing and sales strategies

To get the best results, SEO strategies should be aligned with a business’s marketing and sales strategies. For example, you can use sales team insights to determine what features customers want in a product, then create optimised content discussing these features. Website blog posts can be aligned with social media content uploaded by the marketing team. 

The SEO team should ensure the website meets technical SEO standards (fast speeds and mobile-friendliness), as this also helps sales teams get leads. B2B SEO doesn’t work alone. Instead, it delivers the best results when aligned with general business marketing strategies.

Advanced B2B SEO strategies

Effective B2B SEO requires implementing key strategies to capture high-intent traffic. These strategies span keyword research, technical SEO optimisation, amassing backlinks, and creating high-quality content. Let’s explore them below:

Strategic keyword research for B2B markets

Optimisation starts with researching the right high-intent, long-tail keywords to create content for. Your focus should be on the search phrases used by corporate decision-makers, not generic industry search terms. For example, you can collaborate with sales teams to analyze call recordings, then note the common pain points mentioned by leads. Then, these pain points can be transformed into search queries, e.g., “third-party logistics software with multi-warehouse visibility.”

However, to make things easier, businesses can use SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to identify long-tail keywords. These tools have vast keyword databases, from which they suggest long-tail keywords based on unique factors (like word count, difficulty, and intent). They help SEO professionals quickly find the right keywords to target, rather than go through longer manual processes.

Technical SEO optimisation for site performance and indexing

B2B SEO is as technical as it is about creating high-quality content targeting the right keywords. A website’s backend infrastructure (speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability) needs to be in the best shape to enable it to rank high on search engines. You don’t want to have a website that takes so long to load that users could handle a few chores before finally seeing the content. 

• Speed. A website should completely load under 2.5 seconds to provide a good user experience. Google prioritises fast sites over slower ones. To ensure faster speeds, compress images, videos, and other visual elements to the smallest possible sizes.
• Mobile-friendliness. A website’s elements should automatically be adjusted for smaller mobile screens. The content should be legible, highly visible, and easy to scroll through on smartphones and tablets. Mobile devices constitute 60% of online traffic, so create content for mobile devices first, not desktops. 
• Crawlability. Upload a detailed sitemap.xml file to Google Search Console; this sitemap provides a roadmap for search engine crawlers to properly index a website. Also, optimise your robots.txt file to instruct crawlers about which pages to index and which to avoid. Otherwise, search crawlers could index irrelevant content and overuse their crawl budget for little gain.
• Fix technical issues. Scan your website for technical issues like 404 error pages, duplicate content, and broken links. Then, fix these issues immediately to prevent search crawlers from hitting dead ends during indexing. 

Google provides a free PageSpeed Insights tool to evaluate a website’s speed and mobile-friendliness. It also provides a free Search Console tool where site owners can submit sitemaps, conduct technical audits, and learn which keywords attract the most traffic. 

Creating authoritative and industry-focused content

You need to create authoritative content around the high-intent keywords identified during the research stage. Authoritative content has these characteristics:

• It demonstrates first-hand knowledge of the topic being discussed, with relatable examples provided for the reader. For example, an article about “Third-party logistics software with multi-warehouse visibility” will include an example outlining how this software helps logistics companies keep tabs on their operations. 
• It provides original insights instead of rehashing generic information. Offer a unique perspective, even if it may challenge industry consensus, and talk about new industry trends. The content should provide the reader with data and insights to think about.
• It incorporates visuals, like images, videos, and infographics, to provide context. No one likes reading endless blocks of text without occasional images that add more context.
• Figures and statistics are properly cited. That way, readers will be sure the figures weren’t pulled out of thin air– they’ll follow the citations to confirm for themselves. 
• The best articles are written from a problem-solving perspective. They respond exactly to the problem the reader searches for. 

Content that fits the above characteristics is rewarded by search engine algorithms, leading to increased visibility for a high-intent audience.

Building a high-quality and relevant backlink profile

Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites to yours. They are akin to “votes of confidence” in your content, signaling to search engines that you provide high-quality content people direct their audiences to. Think of them like a tap on the back from your buddies, telling everyone that you’re in the clique.

Target high-traffic sites in related niches for backlinks, not generic sites. For example, a gaming blog should prioritise backlinks from high-traffic gaming sites. The best way to get backlinks is by posting informative content that people will naturally link to. You can also participate in backlink exchanges with similar sites. 

Avoid dealing with spammy, unrelated sites, as Google penalises websites found trying to game the backlink system. Link quality matters more than quantity, so target backlinks from reputable publications and industry experts.

On-page SEO optimisation for better engagement and conversions

On-page SEO deals with adjusting on-page elements to get higher search rankings and audience engagement. It covers:

• Creating a title tag and meta description for each page, indicated in the HTML source code. Title tags should be under 60 characters, and meta descriptions should be under 160 characters. The former defines what the webpage is about, and the latter provides a short summary of the page. They both appear in search engine results, so use compelling descriptions to convince people to click on your site.
• Separate pages with proper headings. There should be one H1 tag, then H2s, H3s, H4s, etc., to indicate the content hierarchy. Proper headings improve readability and help users navigate content conveniently.
• Keep URL structures short and descriptive. Example.com/guide-to-seo is much better than Example.com/a-guide-to-seo-how-it-works-and-best-practices.
• Add the primary keyword naturally in the first 100 words of a page. Then, incorporate other keywords into different parts of a page. They should sound natural rather than forced. Search engines penalise forced keyword stuffing, so it should be avoided.
• Add alternative “alt” text to all images. Search engines rely on alt text to understand what images are about and suggest them to the right users.
• On each article or page, add internal links to other relevant pages of your website. Internal links boost search authority and keep readers on your website for longer periods.
• Use schema markup code to help search engines understand your content. For example, you can use schema markup to define a “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)” section, and search engines will properly index and suggest the content to the right audience. 
• Pages should be optimised to load fast, as speed is a major search ranking factor.

Measuring B2B SEO success

You’ve learned the B2B SEO best practices. Now, it’s time to learn how to measure the success of your strategies and make timely adjustments when called for. Let’s cover the key methods below:

Tracking organic traffic and lead conversions

The ultimate goal of B2B SEO is to attract organic (unpaid) traffic that’ll translate into valuable business leads. Hence, the primary metric to measure success is the increase in organic traffic over time. Also, closely watch your conversion rate, which represents the percentage of visitors that convert into leads.

Google provides a free Analytics tool that enables easy traffic monitoring. With this tool, website owners can view their exact number of visitors, the location of each visitor, and the traffic source. It shows crucial metrics like the average time visitors spend on your site, the number of returning visitors, and the average time spent on specific pages. You can find both real-time and historical data on Google Analytics.

SEO efforts can take 3 to 12 months to show concrete results, so don’t expect an immediate organic traffic increase. B2B SEO is a long-term bet, so monitor your organic traffic over several months to know if you’ve implemented the right strategies. The process might take longer than your commute during rush hour, but you need to endure.

Monitoring rankings, visibility, and SERP features

Monitor your website rankings for targeted keywords. Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and similar SEO tools make monitoring search rankings easy. The aim is to get the highest rankings and outdo competitors. Compare current rankings to previous results and ensure there’s an improvement. Otherwise, it’s a signal to adjust your B2B SEO strategies to get better results.

Check your website’s visibility score, which denotes the percentage of clicks received based on its rankings. This score provides a more complete picture of SEO performance. 

Likewise, monitor how often your site appears in search engine features like AI overviews, rich snippets, and local packs (for businesses with physical retail outlets).

AI overviews. These are AI-generated summaries displayed at the top of search results. Websites that get cited in an overview receive more clicks.

Rich snippets. These are visually enhanced search results that display key data like prices, review ratings, and images. This data is sourced from schema markup, highlighting the importance of website elements with schema markup code.

Local packs. A prominent Google feature that displays a map and the top three local businesses for location-based search queries. For example, if someone searches for “restaurants in Chicago,” Google displays the top three results of restaurants in this region. Entering the top-three works wonders for a business. 

Conducting comprehensive SEO audits

Conduct extensive SEO audits on your website at least twice a year. This audit is a thorough evaluation of your site’s technical and on-page SEO attributes, ensuring they follow the recommended best practices. Things to audit include:

Technical

• Crawl errors. Use tools like Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider to detect errors preventing your site from being crawled properly, then fix these issues promptly.
• Core Web Vitals. Use Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to check your site’s Core Web Vitals, which revolves around loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP), user interaction speed (Interaction to Next Paint, or INP), and how often content unexpectedly shifts around a user’s screen (Cumulative Layout Shift, or CLS). If the vitals aren’t in line with Google’s standards, edit your website to bring them up to standard, as Google prioritises sites with good Core Web Vitals scores.
• XML sitemap. Upload an updated XML sitemap after adding substantial new content or changing your website structure. Also, check your robots.txt file for any errors preventing search crawlers from indexing the right pages, then correct them.

On-page

• Duplicate content. Identify and remove duplicate content across your site. Otherwise, crawlers will waste their budget indexing the same content repeatedly and neglect some other relevant pages. 
• Meta elements. Review all pages and ensure they all have proper title and meta description tags. 
• URL structure. Simplify bulky URL structures and make them shorter. Example.com/one-two-three-four is a good template, not Example.com/this-information-is-too-long-and-unnecessary-123-456.
• Content updates. Add new information and correct outdated figures across your content. Up-to-date content keeps readers engaged on your site. 
• Google My Business profile. If you run a location-based business, ensure your Google My Business profile is up-to-date and has the right contact information. Google prominently displays this profile when someone searches for your business, so having a complete profile helps attract customers. You don’t want a customer calling the wrong number and getting yelled at by a stranger.

You don’t have to audit an entire website manually, although some manual checks still help. SEO tools like Semrush, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and others can scan sites to automatically detect errors that should be fixed. It’s like having a magic wand to wave and point out all your SEO problems. 

Overcoming common B2B SEO challenges

Handling SEO for B2B companies has its challenges. Sales cycles are longer compared to B2C SEO, and you’ll mainly work with low-volume but high-intent keywords, not the high-volume keywords used in B2C SEO. Adjusting to these differences can be challenging, so let’s explore how to overcome them:

Working with low-volume but high-intent keywords

Niche B2B products often have low search volumes, yet attract significant leads. In B2B SEO, you have to get comfortable with working with low-volume keywords and focusing on intent over search volumes. Focus on long-tail keywords, which are highly specific phrases with 3 or more words and have clear commercial intent.

Analyse sales support tickets to know what customers often complain about, then convert these problems into precise long-tail keywords. Use SEO tools like Semrush to identify long-tail keywords in your niche and competitive content gaps to fill. Mine social media sites and online forums to discover the exact phrasing corporate buyers use, then create specialized, in-depth content around this information. 

Managing limited content resources effectively

Resources for creating content are often limited. You can counter this challenge with a strategic approach that prioritises quality over quantity. For example, you may not have the resources to write many articles, but the few should be informative and optimised enough to reach the exact target audience. 

Earlier, we outlined what constitutes high-quality content, from providing original insights to demonstrating first-hand experience, incorporating visuals, citing sources for key figures, and being written from a problem-solving perspective.

Instead of writing fragmented blog posts, organize them around specific topics to build search engine authority. 

For example, you can write a deep dive on “A complete guide to third-party logistics.” Then, you’ll write smaller articles like “Managing multiple warehouses with 3PL software” and “Processing cross-border returns through 3PL software.” The smaller articles will link back to the pillar “A complete guide to third-party logistics” article. This cluster model demonstrates expertise and authority to search engines.

Competing in highly saturated niches

Some B2B niches are highly competitive, with too many companies vying for the same target audience. For example, logistics is an intensely competitive sector, where you and 1 million others contest for attention from corporate decision-makers. 

In competitive niches, you’ll need to stand out by providing high-quality content. Explain topics in a way that’s informative and engaging. For example, you can write a guide that breaks down the complexities of third-party logistics for an everyday audience, or a guide comparing prices and services between various third-party logistics providers. Content should be written from a problem-solving perspective and demonstrate real expertise with the topic.

Build backlinks from industry-specific sites to stand out in competitive niches. Use SEO tools to analyse content gaps, then create informative content that fills in these gaps. 

Conclusion

With the right B2B SEO strategy, you wouldn’t need much else to get that CEO, CFO, or President to seek your services. You’d be surprised who scours through search engines looking for solutions, arrives at your site, and is willing to negotiate large business deals just from observing your online presence. B2B SEO is an undisputed competitive advantage, and this guide has outlined how it works. 

You can handle B2B SEO yourself or work with a professional agency. Professional agencies apply their expertise and experience to create the right strategies, saving you a lot of headaches. At Why SEO Serious, we offer full-stack B2B SEO services, so contact us to see how we can help you. 

SEO Techniques to Boost Organic Traffic

Hitting the first page of Google is no longer the sole objective of businesses. With the rise of AI chatbots, SEO is now as much about getting organic mentions from these chatbots as it is about topping search rankings for specific keywords. This guide will help you refine your SEO techniques, describing actionable strategies to boost your organic traffic. 

Core SEO techniques to boost organic traffic and improve rankings

Keyword research and intent optimisation

It starts with researching the right keywords that will attract readers to your site. You’ll create content that revolves around these keywords, drawing traffic from search queries or chatbot recommendations. 

The right keywords depend on your content niche and desired audience. For example, a sports blog targeting U.S.-based readers will need keywords related to “NFL,” “football,” “basketball,” and “baseball,” as these represent the most popular sports in the U.S. In contrast, the same blog targeting U.K.-based readers needs keywords related to “soccer,” “tennis,” and “rugby,” as these are more popular in the U.K. 

Use schema markup code to define entities on your website. Entities help Google understand content on your site, such as the difference between “football” for a U.S.-based audience (the NFL) and “football” for a U.K.-based audience (soccer). 

Keyword research may seem hectic, but it has been made easier by AI-based systems. SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can automatically recommend keywords based on your audience criteria. You don’t have to spend much time thinking about keywords when these tools can deliver them within seconds.

Identifying primary, secondary, and long-tail keywords

Keywords are divided into:

• Primary. The main, high-volume words that attract readers. Website pages are optimised more for primary keywords than other categories.
• Secondary. Related keywords that support the primary keywords. These have lower search volumes than primary keywords, but they add context and depth to web pages.
• Long-tail. These are phrases, often of more than 3 words, that reflect specific search intent.

Suppose your primary keyword is “fashion boots.” The secondary keywords can be “top fashion boots for men,” “the best fashion boots for women,” and “fashion boots stores in NYC.” These secondary keywords provide context for the primary keyword.

Long-tail keywords can be “the best fashion boots for wide feet,” or “black-colored boots for a casual outing.” These long-tail keywords are highly specific. They don’t have the highest search volumes, but creating content that matches long-tail keywords attracts deeply engaged readers.

You can use Semrush, Ahrefs, and other SEO tools to identify primary, secondary, and long-tail keywords. These tools analyse vast data to suggest the most effective keywords for your site.

Competitor analysis and identifying content gaps

Analysing competitors is a key SEO tactic. You’ll learn what SEO strategies work by analysing the competitors dominating the search engine and large language model (LLM) chatbot rankings. 

After identifying your top competitors, you might be thinking of checking each website manually to note their successful SEO techniques, but that’ll be strenuous. Instead, SEO tools like Semrush can analyse competitors’ websites and extract key insights for you. What are their primary, secondary, and long-tail keywords? What are their backlink volumes? How is their site speed and mobile-friendliness compared to yours? SEO tools answer these questions.

Creating high-quality, intent-driven content

After identifying the right keywords and analysing your competitors’ strategies, it’s time to apply the insights to create high-quality content. 

• Content revolves around quality, not volume. What matters is providing information that answers your users’ queries in detail. For example, a guide about “the best fashion boots for women” should mention what makes boots a good fashion choice, the ideal occasions to wear them, list multiple fashion boots, and identify what makes each worthy of being considered the best.
• Good content revolves around answering user intent. Any user whose search query leads them to your website should have their curiosity satisfied after scrolling through your content.

AI can provide assistance when creating content, like suggesting outlines and ideas, but you’ll do most of the work involved in this SEO technique.

On-page SEO optimisation for better rankings and PR

On-page optimisation involves tweaking individual web pages to get higher search engine and AI visibility. Dear SEO pros, you can skip it, but if you want to remind yourself of the basics, here’s a breakdown:

• Adding the right keywords and creating high-quality, informative content.
• Add title tags, headers, and meta descriptions for each page. This data tells search engines and AI crawlers exactly what a page is about, enabling them to suggest it for the right queries.
• Web pages should be fast and mobile-friendly. Compress visuals to the minimum size (while maintaining quality) to make the page load faster. All elements should automatically adjust for mobile screens, as many readers visit your site on a smartphone.
• Long pieces of text should be separated into clear headings (H1, H2, H3…) to make it easy for readers and search crawlers to follow.

Optimising title tags and meta descriptions

Title tags and meta descriptions are HTML code snippets that indicate a web page’s title and summary, respectively.

A title tag looks like this:

A meta description tag looks like this:

Structuring H1-H3 headings for SEO

H1-H3 headings create a logical, hierarchical structure for your content. Rather than reading a long, bland block of text, readers get a well-structured outline that’s easy to follow.

Headings should be short, ideally 10 to 70 characters.

Technical SEO fundamentals that impact rankings

When discussing on-page search engine optimisation methods above, we mentioned speed and mobile-friendliness contributing to a site’s search ranking. These technical SEO aspects are as crucial as creating high-quality content for generating organic traffic. Let’s explore them below.

Page speed and core web vitals optimisation

Have you ever waited more than 5 seconds for a page to load? Yeah, we neither. At 3 seconds or so, it feels like a dead end, making users reach for the X button. A webpage should load under 3 seconds, or visitors will quickly close the page, increasing the bounce rate. High bounce rates are a negative signal for search engines.

To improve page speed, you should

• Compress images, GIFs, and videos to the smallest possible sizes.
• Minimise your use of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript code scripts.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to deliver content from servers closest to a visitor’s location.

Here’s a free tool for checking page speed: PageSpeed Insights.        

Mobile-first experience and usability

Mobile devices comprise over 60% of online traffic, so search engines prioritise mobile optimisation. All text and visual content should automatically adjust to smaller mobile screens, enabling users to view them legibly like they would on a desktop. 

An effective SEO approach is designing for mobile screens first, not desktops. 

• Insert large buttons and easy-to-tap links. 
• Use hamburger menus (three stacked horizontal lines that lead to a hidden menu of navigation links) instead of long dropdown menus. 
• Limit the use of popup and interstitial ads that cover a whole mobile screen. 
• Ensure content is easily scrollable on mobile devices. 
• Adhere to the “thumb zone” rule, which we’ll explain later in this guide.

Crawlability and indexation

Crawlability is the ease with which search engine bots can navigate your website pages, crawl data, and add this data to the search index. Crawlers work autonomously, but they rely on site owners guiding them to the right data. Otherwise, they can crawl random data bits that aren’t relevant for search engines.

Upload a sitemap.xml file to your site’s directory. This sitemap lists your website’s pages and the relationships between them, helping crawlers index the pages faster. Also, upload a robots.txt file that specifies which pages search crawlers should crawl. Otherwise, they can crawl irrelevant pages or pages containing sensitive data.

Crawlers are assigned a ‘budget’ for each session. By having sitemap.xml and robots.txt files, you help crawlers maximise their budgets by indexing the most relevant information.

Fixing technical issues (redirects, duplicates, 404 pages)

Scan your website for technical errors and rectify them immediately. Such errors include:

• Redirects. A page redirecting to another unintended page, confusing web crawlers.
• Duplicates. Multiple pages having the same content, making crawlers index the same information repeatedly.
• 404. Page links leading to “404 page not found” errors. Such pages should be deleted to prevent crawlers from hitting a dead end. 

Internal linking strategy and site structure optimisation

Websites should have internal links, which are hyperlinks to other pages of the same website. Internal links provide context and help search crawlers understand your content better. For example, when writing an article about “the best fashion boots,” you can suggest pairing boots with a nice piece of clothing and link to “the best t-shirts to wear.” Some readers will click on the t-shirt link, generating more traffic for your site. Search crawlers also index this link and suggest it in relevant search queries.

Also, optimise your site structure to make it easy to navigate. Ideally, have clear menus and submenus at the top of the website, guiding users to the most important sections. The footer should have links to your “privacy policy,” “terms & conditions,” “contact us,” and “about us” pages. Easy navigation encourages readers to deeply engage with your content.

Content structure, readability, and user experience (UX)

Content should be structured coherently, making it easy to read. Websites should have a generally friendly user experience, as search engines prioritise mobile-friendliness when ranking sites.

Improving content hierarchy and scannability 

We’ve mentioned using H1, H2, and H3 headings as one of the actionable SEO techniques that work, as it helps readers follow through with your content. 

Mobile-friendly formatting and readability

Web pages should have minimal clutter, and elements should adjust automatically for smaller mobile screens. Text and visuals should be clearly separated from each other. Maintain consistent colors and layouts as users navigate different pages, providing a coherent experience. These tips keep visitors engaged, and search engines prioritise sites with longer average-time-spent-by-visitors.

It’s said that 75% of mobile users rely on their thumbs for interacting with sites, and nearly half of them hold their phones with one hand. This pattern creates a map of sort-of “invisible fences” on the mobile screen:

• The Natural zone is where interactions feel effortless. 
• The Stretching zone is accessible, but requires users to stretch their thumb further, so it’s inconvenient.
• The Hard zone is physically strenuous to reach without a user shifting their smartphone.

Given this “thumb zone” rule, it’s advisable to place important buttons only in the Natural zone. Placing buttons in the Stretching or Hard zones reduces conversions. 

Building topical authority and semantic relevance

To establish topical authority, create broad, interlinked content clusters for specific topics. For example, a fashion retailer can create blog posts on “the best clothing to wear for [specific event]” and interlink all posts. The interlinked content pieces cover the subject of “picking clothing for various occasions.”                    

For semantic relevance, focus on a broader conversation rather than a specific keyword. For instance, if your topic is “clothing,” discuss related concepts like “accessories” and “jewelry” to provide depth. Search engines prefer sites that demonstrate topical authority, so go all in on it.

Link-building strategies to increase domain authority

Link-building entails seeking backlinks from sites similar to yours. Backlinks from reputable sites represent a ‘vote of confidence’, signaling to search engines that you have trustworthy content. The more high-quality backlinks amassed, the more search engines and AI chatbots are likely to recommend your site.

The first step to getting backlinks is posting high-quality content that other sites will naturally link to. You can also contact website administrators to offer backlink exchanges, where they’ll link to your site and you’ll link to theirs. Even if you’re just starting, it never hurts to ask for backlinks.

Use SEO tools like Semrush to identify which sites your competitors get backlinks from, then target similar sources.

Improving organic CTR through titles and meta descriptions

Earlier on, we mentioned adding title and meta description tags to each web page. Both titles and meta descriptions should incorporate relevant keywords, sound compelling, and match user intent. Title tags should ideally be under 60 characters, and meta descriptions should be 150–160 characters with spaces.

For example, for a guide on the best gadget deals for the Christmas season,

• The title could be: The Best Gadget Deals We Found for the Christmas Season.
• The meta description could be: These are the best deals to take advantage of and secure affordable gadgets this Christmas season. Snag the best gadgets for yourself, family, and friends.

The title tag and meta description speak directly to a user searching for electronics deals during the upcoming Christmas season. It matches the user intent, so your page will likely get recommended when people search for “Christmas gadget deals” or something similar.

Optimising for SERP features and featured snippets

On a search engine results page (SERP), users can find featured snippets giving them exactly the information they seek. The snippet looks like this:

SEO tools can help you identify keywords that trigger snippets, and you’ll create content that matches these keywords.

Featured snippets and People Also Ask (PAA)

To optimise a site for featured snippets, post concise, well-structured, informative content that answers users’ exact questions (who, what, and how). Use bullet points, tables, and Q&A formats to structure the content. A site that gets featured snippets receives more traffic, as the snippet is the first thing the user sees and will likely click on.

Also, use schema markup to define entities (people, places, and things) on your website. Schema markup helps Google know exactly what the content is about and recommend it to the right users. For example, it tells Google the difference between Apple, the fruit, and Apple, the company that makes iPhones.

Updating and refreshing existing SEO content

Keeping content always up-to-date is among the best SEO strategies. Content must be constantly updated to remain relevant for future readers. For example, after writing a blog post about “the best fashion boots of 2026,” you’ll need to update it for 2027, 2028, and beyond. Otherwise, the post becomes outdated to search engine algorithms. You can also add new entries or revamp the whole content to keep attracting readers. 

Ideally, have a schedule for updating blog posts, product pages, and other content on your site. It could be weekly, monthly, annually, or biannually, depending on the content type. 

You can use Google Search Console or Analytics to identify old pages with declining traffic, signaling the need for an update. Replace outdated statistics, add new trending keywords, and provide new information on these old pages. You’ll likely observe a traffic increase afterwards.

Scaling SEO with advanced strategies and automation

Thanks to AI, a lot of organic SEO techniques have been automated. Implementing SEO tricks doesn’t require as much manual work as it usually did. 

For example, you can use AI tools to analyse top-ranking keywords, then get ideas on creating content for these keywords. AI tools can draft detailed article outlines, create meta descriptions & title tags, and suggest how to incorporate keywords in an article. Human editors do most of the job, but AI tools provide valuable help like never before.

Site owners can use software tools to identify link-building opportunities, analyse competitors’ SEO strategies and techniques, and forecast search trends. They can achieve much more with less manual effort. 

Programmatic SEO for scaling content

Site owners can scale content programmatically through software tools. These tools first identify keywords with high demand, build a database of these keywords, and create content templates based on them. You can generate content based on unique prompts, then edit them to sound more human-like. AI tools help you create high-quality content with less effort, making them a critical part of how to do organic SEO.

Long-tail keywords and linkable assets

Create in-depth content, like user guides and how-tos, that cover a topic comprehensively. Naturally, other websites are encouraged to link to such content, directing their readers to yours to get valuable information. In-depth content also attracts readers with high purchasing intent who are ready to click on ads, affiliate links, and Add to Cart buttons. With SEO tools, you can quickly identify long-tail keywords to create in-depth content around.

Common SEO mistakes that limit organic traffic growth

Website owners sometimes make mistakes that inhibit organic traffic growth. These mistakes, seemingly mundane, can significantly dent search engine rankings. They include:

Ignoring search intent and user needs

Publishers often create content while ignoring search intent. You may create the most informative guide about a topic, but it won’t get much traffic if the topic isn’t popular with readers. 

For example, posting an article about do-it-yourself (DIY) house building during the winter season won’t get as much attention compared to the summer season. Construction is generally harder in winter, so DIY builders don’t search as often for online guides as they do during the summer. Considering search intent, the summer is the best period to post the article.

Use SEO tools to find high-ranking keywords, indicating significant audience interest, then create content for these keywords. Analyse what your target audience searches for and write articles that answer their questions.

SEO tools have made identifying search intent easier than ever. Search trends change, so the process doesn’t stop. Publishers need to keep analysing emerging search trends and creating content that matches the trends.

Keyword stuffing and over-optimisation

Some website owners take keyword optimisation too extreme, inserting keywords excessively or in places they sound unnatural. Search engines detect keyword stuffing and penalise sites engaging in this practice. Keywords should be placed naturally and ideally be 1–2% of a page’s word count.

Take the below sentence for example:

• We sell custom t-shirts for men. Our custom t-shirts are the best you’ll find in NYC. Buy our custom t-shirts and get free gifts today.

“Custom t-shirts” is mentioned three times in a short paragraph, which constitutes keyword stuffing that search engines penalise sites for. Instead, it can be:

• We sell the best custom t-shirts for men in NYC. Order some t-shirts and get free gifts today.

Above, it sounds more natural, and the primary keyword is mentioned just once. Search engines will trust this sentence above the other.

Publishing thin or low-quality content

When writing content to answer trending search queries, publishers can make the mistake of writing short listicles or guides that don’t provide much context. For example, in an article about “the best cars of 2026,” the text may include just the names of each car and a few technical specifications, without going in-depth. These guides only touch the tip of the iceberg and leave readers’ curiosities unsatisfied. Search engines deprioritise sites with such content.

Content should provide both context and depth. Go deep into a topic, use structured headlines, and add visuals. Write well-researched information and cite credible sources when discussing statistics. Thoroughly edit content for grammatical and spelling errors before publishing. 

Weak internal linking structure

Site owners often publish posts with little to no internal links, and this negatively affects search engine rankings. Such a mistake should be avoided.

Place internal links where possible, as they help search engines understand your site’s hierarchy. Internal links also guide site readers to other relevant content, improving engagement rates.

Ignoring technical SEO issues

Webmasters may fail to address technical issues like 404 errors, redirect loops, poor loading speed, inadequate mobile optimisation, and misconfigured robots.txt and sitemap settings. Often, site owners are too focused on content that they ignore these technical issues. However, technical SEO is just as important as content creation. 

Scan your website for errors and address them immediately. Search engines penalise sites with technical errors, causing lower traffic. Google provides free tools like the Search Console and the PageSpeed tester to identify technical issues.

Not updating or refreshing content

Updating content is one of the most crucial SEO methodologies, but site owners often ignore this. Content gets outdated as time goes, losing relevance to search engines and AI crawlers. 

To avoid losing relevance, content should be updated with new information over time. Pages should be updated with new data, and articles should incorporate emerging information. After all, who needs an article about the best bikinis of 2025 when it’s 2026 (even if the best bikinis remain the same)? Updating the year makes a major difference.

FAQs: SEO techniques to boost organic traffic

Conclusion

Effective search engine optimisation requires following key steps, which we’ve explored in this guide to the best SEO strategies. These steps boost a site’s relevance to both search engines and AI chatbot crawlers. Recommendations on search results and chatbot responses boost your site’s traffic significantly. A lot of these SEO steps have been automated, thanks in part to AI, helping site owners achieve more with less effort. Get ready for traffic spikes as you follow this guide!

What Is SEO Content and How to Create It

You select specific keywords and then write articles incorporating them. That’s what many think when they hear “search engine optimisation (SEO),” but there’s much more to it. SEO requires creating a strategic plan, implementing that plan, and making occasional adjustments to draw traffic to your site. 

You need a systematic SEO approach, which this guide will help you formulate. Read on to learn what an effective SEO strategy looks like and how to create highly optimised content that drives organic traffic.

What is an SEO content strategy?

SEO content strategy is a detailed plan that guides how you research, create, optimise, and promote content to attract organic traffic. It includes identifying which topics to cover, the search intent for these topics, and creating high-quality articles that attract readers through search engines and AI chatbots.

Why an SEO content strategy is important

Your SEO content strategy is vital to your website’s continued success. It ensures you create content that aligns with search intent, attracting engaged readers instead of visitors who won’t spend as much time on your site. 

As a site owner, a structured SEO content creation strategy is non-negotiable. It’s the difference between running a website with average viewership and one that thrives with an engaged audience.

How SEO content strategy supports organic growth

An effective SEO content marketing strategy ensures you create informative content that aligns with search content. Such content improves visibility in search engines and draws citations from AI chatbots. Improved visibility translates to higher organic traffic. 

With effective content SEO strategies, you can build a high-quality, engaged audience while spending little on advertising. It gives a significant competitive advantage as many sites vie for a similar target audience.

What does creating an SEO content strategy involve?

Creating an effective SEO content strategy requires a structured, multi-step approach. It starts with identifying your target audience and follows many steps all the way to creating and updating optimised content. Let’s explore these steps below:

Step 1: Define your niche or industry

Identifying your niche is the first step to creating effective content. What industry is your content focused on, and what are the general trends in that industry? Is readership growing or reducing in the niche? Who are the top competitors? These are key questions to answer with extensive research.

Check industry blogs, survey sites, news sites, and other sources for information about your niche. A niche with a growing audience serves you best, as there are expanding opportunities to latch onto. Niches with little growth prospects can work, but they’re tougher to break into.

Assess existing content from competitors to get a hint of what works or doesn’t. With your niche defined, it’s time to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Identify your target audience and their pain points

Precisely define your target audience and their pain points, which your content wants to solve. Have a clear demographic description, including the age, location, gender, and interests of your ideal audience.

For example, an automotive blog targets people aged 25 to 54 who are in their prime buying age. This niche is historically male-dominated, although the female audience is gradually increasing, so males are the primary target. People buying cars usually have mid-to-high disposable income and live in urban or suburban areas. Hence, an ideal target audience for this blog is

• Males aged 25 to 54 with high disposable income living in cities.

For the above audience, the pain point is finding their preferred automobiles in a sea of many options. Some like EVs, while others like internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Some are focused on affordability and reliability, while others focus on safety and fuel efficiency. The SEO content planning strategy will revolve around guiding this audience towards the best options.

Step 3: Research the topic and market

After identifying your target audience, carefully research their pain points, sought-after topics, and general market trends. 

Understand the search intent, which denotes what users search for and why. Intent can be:

• Informational: a user seeking answers to their questions.
• Transactional: a user intending to buy a product and comparing different options.
• Commercial: Someone who seeks out a specific product they have in mind. 
• Navigational: Someone who looks for a specific site.

You can analyse search intent from the above perspective. The idea is to understand what information your audience needs, then building an SEO content strategy focused on delivering that information. 

People often search the web for solutions to problems they encounter, so an ideal content strategy should focus on creating problem-solving content. Users who visit your site should have their curiosities satisfied, encouraging them to seek more content.

Step 4: Conduct keyword research

The next step is conducting comprehensive keyword research. This research allows you to find and analyse the words or phrases that are popular with your target audience. 

Earlier on, we gave an example of an automotive blog seeking a precise target audience. In that case, popular keywords from the target audience can include “Best EVs to buy in 2026,” “The most fuel-efficient cars of 2026,” “The best-looking SUVs,” and “Emerging car brands.” Keyword research helps the automotive blog owner discover the most highly searched words or phrases, then create in-depth content that answers the search queries.

Keywords can be:

• Primary/short-tail: Single words or 2 to 3-word phrases with high search volumes, e.g., “Escalade SUV” and “Fast cars.”
• Long-tail: 3-word or more phrases with lower search volumes but higher conversion rates. These keywords are highly specific, such as “The best cars to drive in Colorado” and “The best EVs to buy with available government rebates.”

You could brainstorm short and long-tail keywords based on your understanding of a niche. However, the most efficient way is to use an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. These keyword tracking tools have vast databases stocked with data collected from search engines over the years, and these databases keep getting updated. After entering a few metrics, you can quickly identify the most sought-after keywords in your niche through these databases. 

For each keyword identified on Semrush or Ahrefs, you can view the search volume, search intent, and competitive difficulty. This way, you’ll work with concrete data rather than guesswork.

Step 5: Identify entities and build semantic topics

In SEO, an entity is a unique, distinct concept characterised by a name, attribute, and relation to other entities. It enables search engines to understand the context behind a word rather than just matching keywords.

For example, “Apple” can mean the fruit or the famous company that produces the iPhone. Entities are what enable search engines to differentiate between them on your site.

Site owners need to identify and create entities through these steps:

• In-depth content. Write in-depth content that covers related topics, helping search engines understand the context behind keywords.
• Internal linking. When a specific article links to other related articles on a website, search crawlers can understand the topic better.
• Structured data. You can use schema markup code to explicitly define the context behind a word or phrase.

High-quality content is less about incorporating keywords than creating informative articles that answer the user’s question and cover related topics. Keywords can attract people to your site, but informative content keeps them engaged and wanting to click more pages. The more time people spend on your site, the higher reputation assigned by search engines, and the more likely it’ll be recommended to others. Building entities and semantic topics is a critical part of every content strategy for SEO.

Step 6: Build Topical Authority and Knowledge Graph Connections

To build topical authority, you need to create in-depth, interlinked content that convinces search engines of your site’s reputation. For example, an automotive blog can write in-depth guides for readers seeking to buy different types of cars (Best Sedans to Buy, Best SUVs, Best sports cars, etc.), and each guide will contain links to other related guides. This interlinking helps convince search engine algorithms that the site is a trusted, reliable source.

Map your core niche and break it down into various topics and subtopics. Then, create content around these topics and interlink them. Over time, your site will build informative depth that’ll enable it to outrank competitors. You can analyse competitors’ sites directly to note their content gaps, then create content that fills in these gaps.

When people search for content on Google, they’ll often encounter a Knowledge Graph that looks like this:

For every piece of information available in this Graph, Google cites the website where it was obtained from. The Knowledge Graph is the most prominent part of a search results page, so any cited website gets more clicks. You can optimise content to improve your chances of getting cited in a Knowledge Graph. Follow these key steps:

• Use structured schema markup to define entities on your website. For example, schema code helps crawlers differentiate a product listing from other content, and the product, its description, and price will be accurately indexed.
• Create a Google My Business profile and fill out all details, including your business hours, description, contact information, and photos. These details will be cited in a Knowledge Graph when someone searches for your business name.
• Create structured content, with headings (H1, H2, H3…), bullet points, and numbered lists that help crawlers easily understand the information.
• Get backlinks from other sites in your industry, as external links signal trustworthiness to search engines.

Step 7: Generate content ideas

Generate compelling content ideas that will attract visitors to your site. We’ve emphasized the need for content to be informative and well-structured. Articles should directly answer the questions that users search for. They should be original, in-depth, and provide unique insights instead of rehashing mundane information. Figures and external data should be cited, headlines should be persuasive, and paragraphs should be concise.

Google follows the E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) framework to evaluate content quality, so ideas should be centered around this framework.

• Expertise highlights the author’s specialised knowledge and credentials, so having an author bio helps.
• Experience demonstrates the creator’s first-hand experience with the topic they’re writing about. Writing in a conversational tone with real-world examples helps in this criterion.
• Authoritativeness indicates the site’s reputation to Google. Having backlinks helps greatly here.
• Trustworthiness denotes how accurate the information is with respect to industry consensus. It also accounts for the security of a website (e.g., insecure websites without SSL certificates are deranked by Google).

In summary, content should be persuasive, demonstrate expertise, and provide factual and in-depth answers to your audience’s search intent. You can brainstorm ideas yourself or enlist the help of AI chatbots. Trained on vast amounts of information, AI tools like ChatGPT are good at suggesting content ideas for unique demographics. They can suggest not just ideas but also create outlines to follow when writing the content.

Step 8: Define your unique angle and content positioning

The most recommended articles offer unique perspectives rather than just generic information. Unique content blends the creator’s expertise and viewpoint with general information.

For example, if writing about “The best EVs of 2026” for an automotive blog, the post won’t just be the names of the EVs and their specs, as readers can find this same information everywhere. Rather, you’ll state what makes each highlighted EV unique and compare its performance with the rest, such as

• “The Tesla Model X has a range of up to 645 km, while the BYD Sealion offers up to 710 km, but the Model X offers a larger 6/7 seat configuration and superior, supercar-like acceleration. I think the Model X wins in premium performance, while the Sealion is a more budget-friendly option…”

In the above example, the author doesn’t just provide generic information about both EVs. It answers what, why, and when to choose one over the other. Such a unique angle is how content should be written on every topic. 

Other tips to note include:

• Open articles with a bold statement, curiosity-triggering questions, and relatable examples to grab the reader’s attention. It can be something like “Rising petrol costs have probably eaten into your budget, and it’s rational to consider switching to an EV to future-proof your wallet. But choosing an EV in a sea of many options gets challenging. Lucky you! As you’ve arrived at the perfect place to learn how to choose an EV based on your unique transportation needs…”
• Use consistent messaging and style across all articles.
• Discuss what you believe competitors aren’t focusing on. The opinion could be contrarian, but audiences won’t have problems with dissenting opinions that encourage valuable discussions.

Step 9: analyse existing content and content gaps

An effective SEO and content strategy is analysing competitors’ sites to note content gaps. What content do you think competitors do not cover, or if they cover, do not pay much attention to? This gap could be the golden opportunity to attract readers to your site.

For example, an automotive blog owner can analyse competitors and observe that little attention is paid to newer Chinese EVs by U.S.-centric automotive blogs. Then, they can close that gap by extensively reviewing newer Chinese EVs for a U.S.-based audience. This strategy attracts high-quality traffic by providing in-depth information not easily found on rival websites.

Site owners can manually scour through rival websites to analyse content gaps. After scouring multiple sites, intuition can help them identify which content gaps need to be closed. 

SEO tools like Semrush also help with identifying content gaps. They analyse rivals’ sites and, paired with extensive search engine data, pinpoint content gaps that can be closed. These tools achieve more with less effort, so instead of spending endless hours brainstorming on content gaps, you can identify them within minutes. 

Step 10: Build topical clusters and content structure

Strong content structure is as important as the content itself. An article should be arranged in a way readers can easily understand, with a clear logical hierarchy using H1, H2, and H3 headings. Content should be broken into short paragraphs to make it easy to digest. Use bullet points and numbered lists to improve scannability. Insert images and infographics, as people generally don’t like reading long pieces of text with no visuals in between. 

• Use one H1 for the main title, H2 for main sections, and H3, H4, H5… for subsections. Incorporating keywords into headings helps with search rankings.
• Keep paragraphs concise. 3 to 5 sentences is the ideal length to ensure readability.
• Use images and videos to break up text. Every image should have an alternative text that describes its content to search engines. Search crawlers depend on this alternative text to understand the context behind images.

Topical clusters are a related SEO content strategy, where content is structured into “pillars” (broad topics) and “clusters” (subtopics). A pillar is a comprehensive page that covers a broad topic, whereas clusters are detailed articles that address specific subtopics.

For example, a “Guide to the Best Cars of 2026” can be the pillar, and the clusters will be “The best EVs of 2026,” “The Best Sedans of 2026,” “The Best SUVs of 2026,” etc, and all clusters will be interlinked. By building topical clusters, this sample site signals that its expertise in a topic (automobiles), causing search engine algorithms to give it higher rankings.

Step 11: Create an SEO content plan

With the valuable information we’ve covered above, you can begin creating a detailed content plan in line with your SEO strategy. 

Develop a content calendar that outlines the topics to cover, the content formats (short blog posts, long detailed guides, videos and infographics, etc.), and the publishing dates. A formal content calendar helps you stay consistent with your posting.

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your SEO strategy. The typical KPIs are organic traffic increases, improved rankings for specific keywords, and higher conversion rates of visitors.

For sites with multiple authors, the administrator should ideally create a guideline that should be followed for each article. The guideline can specify:

• The tone of articles, e.g., instructing authors to adopt a conversational tone.
• The preferred length of paragraphs and for the whole article.
• The version of English to adopt (American or British English) based on the target audience. 
• The minimum number of images to be included in each article.
• What phrases should or shouldn’t be used.
• The preferred sources to cite.
• A minimum number of internal links for each article.

Step 12: Create and optimise SEO content

Based on the plan created above, you can begin creating in-depth, high-quality content for your target audience. Here’s a rehash of what makes content high-quality:

• It should satisfy the reader’s intent. Anyone who searches for a topic and heads to your site should have their curiosity satisfied.
• Cover topics thoroughly, giving a complete picture instead of just surface information. Dive deep into the nuances of a specific topic.
• Offer unique insights, relatable examples, and personal experiences about a topic. Unique insights differentiate a site from rivals covering the same topic.
• Include high-definition images, infographics, and videos to add context and enhance the reader’s understanding. 
• Cite reputable sources when discussing figures.
• Provide factual information in line with industry standards.
• Add keywords naturally into an article. Avoid keyword stuffing, as search engines penalise this tactic. 
• Write for a human first, not for search engine crawlers. Assume you’re conversing with a real person and write from that perspective.

Step 13: Update and refresh existing content

Facts and figures change over time, making updates an essential part of content marketing for SEO. Site owners should frequently refresh content with new information or edit existing information. For example, a site that provides tourism guides must stay updated with new travel guidelines released by government agencies. From changing visa policies to travel restrictions and flight bottlenecks, readers need up-to-date information about the places they plan to visit.

Updated content helps maintain high search rankings, as readers keep returning for more. Search engines derank outdated information in favor of more up-to-date content, so there’s fierce competition in this criterion.

Add new statistics, add new keywords, optimise internal links, or even revamp whole articles. Updating existing content is faster than creating new pages, which will take some time to garner high search rankings. 

There’s no specific schedule for updating content. Rather, it depends on your niche and target audience. Content can be updated daily, weekly, biannually, or annually, depending on the topic. 

Step 14: Measure SEO content performance

Earlier on, we mentioned setting key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your SEO content tactics. These KPIs should be tracked thoroughly, and strategies should be adjusted if the optimal results aren’t obtained.

Key metrics to track are:

• Organic traffic: What’s the percentage increase in visitors arriving from search engines?
• Keyword rankings: A site’s position for specific keywords, as measured by Semrush, Ahrefs, and other SEO tools.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors completing suggested actions, like subscribing to your newsletter or clicking on an affiliate link.
• Backlinks: The number of new backlinks obtained over time.
• Engagement: What’s the average time a visitor spends on your site? The more, the better.

Google provides free tools, including the Search Console and Google Analytics, to track key metrics. You can also use other tools to keep tabs on KPIs and know when to adjust SEO strategies.

Conclusion

With the right SEO content marketing strategy, websites get a steady stream of organic traffic without spending much on ads. A little effort here and there, and you can build a loyal following through effective SEO. We’ve outlined the key steps for effective SEO content development, which any site owner can easily follow. Prepare your servers for higher traffic as you implement these steps!

SEO content strategy FAQ

How long does SEO content take to rank?

It typically takes 4 to 6 months for optimised content to earn high search engine rankings. Breaking into the highest search rankings can take up to 12 months. SEO isn’t a quick-results strategy. Rather, it takes some time for optimisation efforts to achieve the desired results.

How many keywords should one page target?

There’s no specified range, as it varies depending on page length, but an ideal structure is to target one primary keyword and support it with 4 to 10 related secondary keywords. Short content of 500 words or less can target 1 to 3 keywords, while long content of 1,000+ words can target 10 or more keywords.

How often should you publish SEO content?

Quality matters more than quantity when it comes to website content strategies. 1 to 4 high-quality posts per month is a good starting point, but it could be much more based on your niche. For example, news sites post much more frequently than regular blogs.

Should you update or create new content?

Updating older content is generally better, as you’ll maintain the page’s existing search engine authority instead of a new page, where you’ll have to build high search rankings from scratch. Updating offers faster results than creating new content. However, don’t hesitate to create new content when needed to target new keywords and emerging topics.

What makes content rank in Google today?

Pages receive high Google rankings when they fulfill various criteria, including having a good user experience (speed and mobile-friendliness), quality backlinks, updated information, and providing original insights with in-depth coverage. Content that answers specific questions rank high on Google.

In the first article, we looked at where AI is useful in SEO and why the “one prompt, one finished page” approach does not work. In this article, we have collected ready-to-use prompts and AI tools that can help automate SEO work, from content creation to analytics and technical audits.

Scenario 1. Content and semantic automation

In this scenario, AI is used as part of the workflow. It does not replace the writer.

Scenario 2. Analytics and reporting automation

Scenario 3. Technical SEO automation

Scenario 4. Competitor analysis and semantic research

Limitations and pitfalls

1. Hallucinations

AI can be confidently wrong. Facts, numbers, case studies, and research should always be checked.

2. Data validation

A model does not know which rows in a table are junk and which ones matter. Any analysis built on unclean input data will produce distorted output.

3. Service limits

API restrictions, query limits, and service instability still matter. 

4. Over-reliance on tools

When the whole process turns into “the AI said it, so we did it,” several problems follow:

• analytical skills get weaker;
• there is no prioritisation;
• decisions are made without understanding why they matter for the business.