SEO Strategy - Search Engine Optimization Tips in 2025

Creating a great website is about more than just having pretty designs - it's about making your website perform well on search engines.

What is SEO and Why is it Important?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not just a process; it's a gateway to improving the online visibility of your website or web page in search engine results. This means more eyes on your content, more potential customers, and, ultimately, more success for your business.

Following these pro blogging SEO tips will increase your chances of ranking higher in search engines.

16 Simple SEO Tips to Boost Your Rankings

Please remember that there is no such thing as an SEO "holy grail". Every site is different and will have its SEO strategy. Search Engine Optimisation techniques that work well on one site may not work or even hurt a completely different site.

Set Well-Defined Goals for Your SEO Strategy

What are your main objectives for search engine optimisation? How will you measure the success or failure of your SEO strategy? These are two important questions that need to be answered before starting the optimisation process.

When I ask people what they want from SEO, they often say, "Get to number 1 on Google" or "I want more visitors". When I sit down and talk to them, they realise that it's not about the number of visitors to the site; it's about the number of Quality visitors who buy things, so their actual goal is to increase their conversion rate.

When defining your goals, make them realistic and start small. Setting a goal of reaching number 1 in a week isn't going to happen unless you are working in a very small niche market, promoting something very obscure AND are very lucky. Don't expect to increase conversions by 1000% in a month; aim for a 5% increase over a few months. SEO is slow progress, and you will not see immediate overnight gains.

Let's look at a few key SEO tips and how they can help increase your rankings.

Pay Attention to Your Core Web Vitals

According to Google, core web vitals became a ranking factor in 2021. Core web vitals are a set of three specific web page experience metrics that Google considers super important. These are Loading, Interactivity and Visual Stability.

The steps you take to improve your core web vitals depend on your site. However, the tools and techniques can be applied to almost any site. First, open the Google Search Console and click on "Core Web Vitals".

What you want to see is that there are no pages listed under Poor or Needs Improvement. You can drill down into the report to see individual pages that need work and what is causing problems on the page. There could be any number of issues preventing a page from being "Good"; however, some of the most common include poor performance and long load times, a large number of requests (combine and minify scripts and styles), mobile tap targets too small and page size greater than the viewport.

Google Passage Ranking

In 2020 Google announced a new search technology called "Passages". Passages allow Google to rank specific, relevant passages from a specific page. Not just the page itself. So, instead of Google only taking into account the relevancy of the whole page, they now also evaluate the relevancy of a specific section of that page.

Backlinks, on-page SEO, UX signals, and Google's other page-level ranking factors will still apply. The only difference is that a single page has more chances to rank. That is, assuming the page is optimised and organised.

This means your content needs to be divided into dedicated sections using headings, which we will cover shortly.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority used to be all about links. The more people link to you, the more authority you have. Not anymore. Google also evaluates your site based on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT).

You're in trouble if you hire random freelancers to write your content. That's because Google wants to feature content that legit experts in their field write. They even go as far as to say that medical content needs to be written by healthcare professionals.

Google focuses on off-site signals to figure out your site's EAT. This could come from off-site mentions. Specifically mentions from other authorities in your field.

The guidelines also point out:

We expect most websites to have some information about who (e.g., what individual, company, business, foundation, etc.) is responsible for the website and who created the MC, as well as some contact information unless there is a good reason for anonymity.Google Quality Rater Guidelines

This means having:

• Thorough about page
• Easy to find contact page
• References and external links to sources
• Privacy policy and terms of service
• Author bylines on every article

Optimise Key Phrases

It used to be popular to try and rank well for single keywords. However, there is so much competition on the web now that getting a good ranking for singular keywords such as "photography" or "astronomy" will be extremely difficult. It is becoming increasingly popular to target niche markets with phrases such as "urban wildlife photography" or "amateur astronomy in England", which are more specific to your content, thus driving more targeted, quality visitors. You can still use keywords; don't rely on them to bring in quality traffic.

The keywords meta tag is dead now, so you don't need to stuff keywords into the header; select one word or phrase and optimise your content. This includes setting title tags, image alt tags, links and quality content.

When deciding on keywords and phrases, avoid using industry-specific jargon. Stick to simple and clear, "natural language" instead.

You can research different keywords using Google AdWords Keyword Tool or Google Trends. These tools can help discover new keywords and phrases that you can target combinations of keywords that work well together. You can determine your niche phrase or discover new keywords you haven't even thought of before.

Search Engine Optimised Content

To gain higher rankings, you need to have good quality original content, with 1000 - 1500 words. Duplicate content is plagiarism; as such, it is heavily penalised by search engines, especially Google, with the latest Panda update. This trend targets more auto blogs (automated blogging/website scrapers) where content is scraped from genuine websites and used to create spam blogs and phishing sites.

Ensure your content is clear, concise, and to the point and primarily written for humans, not search engines. Don't deviate or go off on a tangent, as it will distract your readers. Spell-check and proofread your copy; otherwise, you will lose online credibility.

You should use all keywords and key phrases, but keep the keyword density around 3-5%. Too low, and it won't get ranked for that phrase; too high, and you'll be penalised for "keyword stuffing". Page features, such as headers, navigation and footers, should not be included as web copy text.

Google cannot index content such as images, so avoid using images instead of content, especially when replacing heading text with fancy images. When you do use images, make sure that you utilise the alt and title tags to describe the image.

Post Content Length and SEO

SEO and content marketers are always trying to figure out what it takes to drive their content to the top of search results. One frequently talked about content characteristic is word count, specifically what length gives their content the best odds of reaching the top of the search results.

Unfortunately, there is no set rule here; the ideal length of the content will vary by industry and region. Remember to always focus on quality over quantity; a long post full of garbage will not rank as well as a shorter post of quality content. Adding too much padding and "fluff" to meet a specific word count will likely hurt more than a short post providing all the useful information the visitor requires.

Use H1, H2 and H3 Heading Tags for SEO

The purpose of heading tags is to split the content into a reader-friendly format. Splitting content using headings enables the reader to follow the flow of the article and understand it better.

There are 6 heading styles which should be used in a hierarchy.

Your web page's main focus will be the H1 and H2 heading tags. They are the first things that users will notice about your page and must be appropriate.

There should be only one H1 tag on the page, and it is recommended to contain the article or page title.

The content is split into sections using H2 tags, and each section is further split using H3 tags if required. H4 can also be used in an H3; However, you may look at how your article is structured if you need more than three headings.

You shouldn't use an H4 tag after an H2 tag without an H3, as this breaks the hierarchy structure.

Make use of Alt and Title Tags on Images

An image's alt and title attributes are used to describe the image in a text format. The title attribute is shown in a popup when the mouse hovers over an image, and the alt text is used when the image is unavailable in screen readers, text-only browsers and some search engine crawlers.

Every image should have an alt text. This is not just for SEO purposes but also to make the page accessible to blind and visually impaired people. A title attribute is not required. It can be useful, but leaving it out in most cases shouldn't be much of an issue. These attributes can be used to add keyphrases to your page, but don't stuff keywords in. The goal is to describe the image.

Google Image search is becoming a popular tool for finding pictures, so if you have a lot of images on your website (product images or photography, for example), it makes sense to try and cash in on this traffic source.

Images and anchor links can (and should) have alt and title tags. The alt tag should contain an alternate image representation should the image not load, while the title tag should contain a description of the link or image. Search engines look at these tags to determine the link's relevance or the image's content.

<img src="image1.jpg" alt="Picture of a Dog" title="A photo of my pet dog Wolfie sat in the garden" />

Always use natural language descriptions, not just a keyword list. If you have a lot of images on the page, try not to make all the title tags the same.

Interlink your Content When Appropriate for Better SEO

Internal linking is important for your website structure for SEO purposes and to help your readers find related content.

An internal link connects one website page to a different page on the same website.

Within your content, you should naturally link to relevant content to the reader. Using natural links that match the content context, your readers will be more likely to click on that link.

Good internal linking boosts visitor engagement and SEO, so it's a win-win. Just don't go overboard and link every other sentence. Only link when it is natural to do so.

Are Header and Meta Tags Still Relevant for SEO?

Meta tags are descriptive elements inside a web page and (used to be) used to provide search engines with information about the website. Meta tags are contained within the header structure of the HTML document and the dedicated title tag.

Meta tags cover, among other items, a page description and keywords. There is much debate about the usefulness of meta tags in today's advanced search algorithms, but it certainly won't hurt to use them.

Meta Keywords should be kept to a maximum of 15-20, but do not overdo it - only use keywords and phrases that appear on that page and don't go looking for every synonym in the thesaurus.

Meta Description should be kept to a maximum of 160 characters; any more will be ignored or truncated in the listings. The description should describe what the visitor will find on the page and, combined with the title, compel the user to visit your site. Google and most other search engines will typically extract a segment of text based on the search query, but it doesn't hurt to add a descriptive tag.

The Title Tag is, however, very important as it will be seen at the top of a search engine listing (see above) as well as in the visitor's web browser window. Page titles should be relevant to the content on the page and unique to the site.

Strong, relevant, clickable titles can impact rankings, visitor numbers and conversions. For this reason, it is one of the, if not the most important factors when considering on-page SEO.

URL Permalink Structure

Permalink is a term used to identify the URL of a web page. While a URL can change, it is recommended that a permalink does not change, hence the name permanent link. Permalinks should be structured to include keywords and information about the content but not be too long. Many CMS utilise "ugly" permalinks by default, for example mydomain.com/?id=3345.

This is considered ugly and bad practice for several reasons.

1. It gives away information about the potential back-end system (internal information disclosure) as well as opening up the door to parameter tampering.
2. The link means nothing to anyone by itself; it does not indicate the page type or content.
3. Search Engines rank keywords in the URL fairly highly, so there is a missed opportunity for SEO points.

A good permalink structure would contain the keywords from the post title. You should exclude common words such as "a", "and", "the", etc. Most CMS systems can generate "clean" URLs or have an extension.

An example of a clean URL would be mydomain.com/fantastic-seo-ideas-blogs/, which immediately shows that the page is about SEO for blogs and contains some all-important SEO points.

Pick your permalink structure wisely. Don't change your permalink structure for the sake of it.

Which is better for SEO, Relative or Absolute URLs?

A question often asked is which is better for SEO, using relative or absolute URLs when adding links to web pages and blog posts? There are many different reasons why your website may have duplicate content issues. With the recent requirement for adding HTTPS, this configuration may not be optimal for your site.

You see, Google views different versions of a web page address and different server configurations as separate websites. For example, Google sees http://mywebsite.com as a separate site from https://mywebsite.com. While this won't get penalised for not having proper redirects in place, it will make it harder for Google to work out which site is the "true" site, and it potentially spreads out the "link juice".

This is not a major problem; redirect all non-HTTPS traffic to the HTTPS version. Google will detect this, and everything will be fine.

Page Speed and Performance

In the last year or so, Google has been putting more emphasis on page loading speed and site performance. While this created much buzz on the internet when it was announced, page loading speed has always been important. How many websites have you visited where the page takes too long to load - either through overuse of images or adverts? The natural course of action is to go back and try a different site, as a slow page is a bad experience. For this reason, page speed is now a ranking factor, and slow-loading pages will be marked down.

Research by Google showed that, on average, visitors will leave a website if it does not load within 3 seconds. For this reason, Google gives preferential treatment to websites that load quickly.

You can test and optimise your page speed using two add-ons for Firefox. Google has released an add-on for the popular Firebug add-on for Firefox. If you haven't already, you must download and install Firefox, Firebug and Google Page Speed.

There are many reasons why websites load slowly, from low-cost servers, poor web programming, unoptimised images and overuse of embedded media.

You can check your web page load speed using the Google Page Speed Analysis tool or the excellent GTmetrix page speed tool.

Get Connected with your Audience

Social media websites are rapidly becoming an increasingly important factor for search engine optimisation, as search engines are using the recommendations of users of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to rank pages in the search engine result pages. The reasoning is that when a web page is shared or "liked" by a user on a social network, it counts as a "vote" for that webpage's quality. Thus, search engines can use such votes to rank websites properly in search engine results pages.

Read Google Webmaster Guidelines

These guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise penalised.

Check out the official Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide for a free eBook that lists some best practices that teams within Google and external web admins alike can follow that could improve their sites' crawl ability and indexing.

Install an SEO Plugin

I've discussed various SEO plugins in a previous post and again in my WordPress SEO plugins for the 2018 article. In the ten years between posts, not a lot has changed. Yoast SEO plugin has consistently been the best solution for WordPress users, as have a few others.

Build Your Site for Readers, NOT Search Engines

My most important SEO advice is that your site should be designed and built, and content should be written for your visitors and readers, NOT search engines. Search engines will likely penalise you if a website looks over-optimised or is stuffed with unnatural links and keywords with little real content. This is equally true for plagiarism, which can block your site in Google results. Copying and Pasting other articles from the web without permission is theft and will be dealt with harshly.

Redirect WWW to non-WWW

The solution is to correctly redirect WWW to non-WWW (or vice versa if that is your preference). In Apache, it is as easy as adding one of these rules to your .htaccess file:

Redirect WWW to non-WWW in Apache

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirect non-WWW to WWW in Apache

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

The next solution is redirecting all traffic to HTTPS (or HTTP if preferred). Again, place these rules in your .htaccess. If you already have RewriteEngine and RewriteBase in the rules, you don't need to add them again.

Redirect HTTP to HTTPS in Apache

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirect HTTPS to HTTP in Apache

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule (.*) http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]