Table of Contents
Regular body text as placeholders here. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
9 SEO Best Practices to Improve Your Organic Traffic
There are hundreds of things you can do to get higher Google rankings.
But it’s important to get the basics down first.
In other words:
You want to make sure that your site follows current SEO best practices. That’s the foundation.
What Are SEO Best Practices?
SEO best practices are tasks designed to help improve a website’s rankings.
Common search engine optimization best practices include on-site optimization, researching keywords, and building backlinks to a site.
In fact, only 63% of Google searchers ever click on something from the second page of search results. Which is why it’s so essential to rank on the first page of Google.
You can put your best foot forward by following SEO best practices.
With that, here are the 9 most important ones you need to know.
Align Your Content with Search Intent
Search intent (also called “user intent”) is the purpose behind every search query.
Understanding and satisfying search intent is Google’s ultimate priority. Pages that rank on the first page have all passed Google’s test on search intent.
For instance, take a look at the search results for “how to make oatmeal cookies.”
The top search results are blog posts or videos. Not ecommerce pages selling oatmeal cookies.
Google understands that people who are searching for this keyword are looking to learn. Not to buy.
On the other hand, the results for a query like “buy oatmeal cookies” are product ads and ecommerce pages.
Write Compelling Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Your page title and meta description are two of the most important meta tags on your page.
Title Tags
Title tags are clickable headlines that appear in SERPs (search engine results pages).
They signal to Google what your page is about. And they’re fundamental from an SEO perspective.
This is what a title tag looks like in Google’s search results:
In this case, Google understands that people are looking to buy. Hence, no links to oatmeal cookie recipes.
Which means:
If you’d like to rank on page 1 of Google, you need to understand search intent and create content that matches it.
There are four common types of search intent:
- Informational: when someone is trying to learn more about something
- Navigational: when someone is searching for a specific page or website
- Commercial: when someone is looking to learn more before making a purchase
- Transactional: when someone is intending to complete an action or purchase
To quickly find a keyword’s intent, head to Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool.
Enter your keyword, hit search, and you’ll see a box labeled “Intent.”
Meta Descriptions
A meta description is a meta tag used to describe the content of a page.
It’s often displayed below the title and URL of your page in the SERP.
Like so:
Meta descriptions should generally inform and interest users with a short, relevant summary of what the page is about.
They’re like a pitch that convinces a searcher that the page is exactly what they’re looking for.
Google typically truncates meta descriptions to 155–160 characters.
So, make sure your summary is accurate and succinct.
Here are a few meta description best practices to follow:
- Write a unique meta description for every page
- Use action-oriented copy
- Include your target keyword
- Match search intent
