SEO best practices for 2023

Are you curious about the SEO best practices for 2023 and if they’re changing from recent years? Well, good news, SEO best practices aren’t changing, and honestly, they haven’t changed much in about a decade. If you learn SEO best practices and follow them, you should be able to win at SEO for years to come.

What are the SEO best practices?

• Choose a keyword your website has a good chance of ranking on Page 1, so you get traffic.
• Write your content for your Ideal Customer. Answer their questions, provide value, and give insights or information that helps them with their question.
• Use your SEO keyword in the places Google is going to look for it to understand your content topic better and hopefully rank you higher.

Where should you use your keyword to follow SEO best practices?

Use your keyword in the following places for the best results with SEO.

• Title Tag – your Title Tag should be a maximum of 60 characters and include your keyword. For more information on writing Title Tags, visit this post.
• Meta Description – your Meta Description is a maximum of 160 characters and should include your keyword. Read this post for more information on Meta Descriptions.

Your Title Tag and Meta Description are the first introductions a potential visitor will have to your website when searching in Google. If you’ve used the keywords they’re searching for, they’ll show up in bold font, so they stand out. You want to write the Title Tag and Meta Description in a way that shows that you have the information they’re looking for so they’re more likely to click through to your website.

Some website platforms like WordPress generate a Title Tag by default, simply the page name and the website name. This isn’t what I’d consider a good Title Tag. In some instances, it may work but generally speaking, you want to customize your Title Tag for better performance.

The next place you want to use your keyword is in your URL. You want to use (-), not (_), between the words to break it up so it’s easier to read. Try to keep your URL short but still use your keyword in there. It’s OK to remove stop words such as and, the, a, an, etc., in the URL but keep the keyword.

SEO Copy Best Practices

Write for your audience, not the search engine. Doing this will provide value, answer their questions, and generally create better content than if you try to write for the search engine.

There is no target word count for SEO copy. The correct word count is the number of words it takes to tell the story and provide value for your audience. It’s honestly that simple. You also don’t need to use your keyword a set number of times. Write your blog post or website page, provide value, anticipate their questions, etc., and you’ll naturally use your keyword because it’s what the page is about. You want to use your keyword in the first paragraph, so if it’s not in there, go ahead and edit it to include the keyword near the beginning of your content piece.

Use your keyword in your Header Tags (those are the big separators I have in between the paragraphs on this page). You may not have noticed it before, but go back and look at them now; how many include the keyword “SEO best practices” or SEO best practices for 2023? Yep, almost every one of them because Google will look at them to help it determine what the page is about.

You should also use your keyword in your picture file name. You want to save your photo file with a name that includes the keyword and uses (-), not (_), to separate the words, just like the URL. If you want, you can add the keyword in the caption or ALT text.

By following SEO best practices, you’ll have a better chance of ranking higher and getting more organic traffic to your website.

Get Started with SEO Today

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