6 Quick SEO Tips You Can Do Today for Better Rankings
We’ve been talking a lot about SEO on our blog recently, particularly related to blogging and content strategy.
While blogging for your business is super important for SEO, it’s time-consuming and can often feel like a beast to tackle.
Sometimes, we small business owners just need some simple tasks that will get us quick results – and that’s what we’re bringing you today.
You can get these 6 SEO tasks done in an hour or less, and they have the potential to significantly boost your position in the search results.
So, let’s jump in!
6 Quick SEO Tips for Better Rankings + More Traffic
1. Add Page Title Tags and Descriptions
This is likely the most time-consuming task on this list, but it’s also the most important – so if you’re going to pick one thing from this list, let it be this one!
As a reminder, here’s an example of what we’re talking about when we say “page title and description”:
If you don’t add your own title tag and description for each page on your website, Google will generate one for you based on the content that’s on that page.
Remember that you’re competing with a bunch of other websites in the search results. You want to encourage people to click on your link, and they probably won’t do that if they see a bunch of AI-generated mumbo-jumbo or the first half of a sentence that got cut off because it exceeded the character count limit.
When it comes to writing your SEO title, you’ll want to make sure it’s under 60 characters and includes your focus SEO keyword for that page (and if you need help finding the right SEO keywords for your business, we’ve got you covered).
Your SEO description should be between 75-100 characters. It doesn’t need to include your focus keyword, but it should be written in a way that encourages readers to click. A good rule of thumb is to start out with an action verb such as “read”, “discover”, “explore”, etc.
If you get stuck writing these, head over to this free AI title generator to get you started.
Here’s how to edit your SEO title and description in Squarespace:
Go to “Pages”
Hover over the page and click the gear icon
Click “SEO” in the left sidebar
Enter your page title in the space for SEO title (For best results, keep your title under 60 characters)
Enter your page description in the space for SEO description — right below the space for SEO title (For best results, keep your description between 75-100 characters – Google will cut it off if it’s too long!)
2. Add Content to Pages With Low Word Count
Here’s a golden nugget of SEO knowledge for you.
Each page on your website should have a minimum of 300 words.
Before you freak out, we have some ideas for how to get to that minimum (or exceed it) without needing to do any writing – these are quick SEO tips, after all!
Typically, the pages on a website with the lowest word count are pages like your contact page and your 404 page (more on that later), but you can check and see exactly which pages have a low word count by plugging your domain into UberSuggest for an SEO audit. You get one free SEO audit per day, and it’ll identify SEO issues on your website and tell you how to fix them.
If your SEO audit identifies low-word-count pages on your website, all you have to do is recycle a little bit of content from other pages to get you to that 300-word count threshold.
Here are a few ideas for content you can add to low-word-count pages:
An FAQ section
A small “about us” section
An email newsletter signup box with a few sentences of text
A testimonial carousel
A mission or vision statement
Boom! SEO issue fixed. ✅
P.S.: When it comes to blog posts, try to reach at least 1,500 words. Google loves long-form blog content!
3. Check for Broken Links on Your Website
Don’t click out of that UberSuggest audit yet!
You’ll need it for this quick tip.
A broken link on your website is a hyperlink or button that leads to a page that no longer exists. Maybe the page was deleted, or the URL slug was changed somewhere along the way, or maybe there was a typo in the link – either way, someone clicked the link hoping to view the information on it, but they hit a dead end.
Why does this matter? Well, Google likes websites that provide a good user experience for visitors, and a website that has a bunch of broken links isn’t doing that.
So, click over to your UberSuggest SEO audit and see if it found any broken links that are hurting your website. Scroll down to the box that says “Pages Discovered” and click “See All Pages”. You may need to create a free account on Ubersuggest to see the next page.
Here, you’ll see all the links on your website and whether they are successful or broken.
Then, jump into your site and fix them!
This leads us right into our next quick SEO tip…
4. Create a Custom 404 Page
We have a whole blog post all about 404 pages and why your website should have a custom one. It’s so simple to set up, but it can make a big SEO impact.
What is a 404 page?
A 404 page is the page someone lands on when they click on a broken link on your website.
Why do you need a custom 404 page?
Users tend to get frustrated when they land on a 404 page, and most 404 pages are dead ends that don’t tell the user where to go next – and many times, it could result in them clicking off your website entirely.
If you fixed all your broken links in the previous step, good for you! 👏🏼 However, links on your website can still break in the future, so you need to make sure you’ve got a solid 404 page with buttons to tell people where to go next to find the information they’re looking for.
How do I set up a custom 404 page in Squarespace?
Create a new page in the “Not Linked” section of your Pages sidebar.
Design your 404 page with these 404 page best practices in mind.
Once your page is ready to go, scroll down to the “Utilities” section of your Pages sidebar and click “System Pages”.
Then, click “404 Page”.
Select the title of your new 404 page from the dropdown and hit “Save”.
Note: We’re talking about Squarespace here because that’s the platform we use. If your website is not on Squarespace, maybe one of these articles will help:
How to Add a Custom 404 Page on Wordpress
How to Add a Custom 404 Page on Shopify
How to Add a Custom 404 Page on Wix
How to Add a Custom 404 Page on Showit
5. Optimize Your URL Slugs
A URL slug is the content that comes after your domain in the search bar of your browser.
For example, the URL slug of this blog post is: /6-quick-seo-tips
If you don’t edit your URL slug yourself, you’ll have one selected for you – and because Google sees URL slugs and uses them as ranking factors, you’ll want to optimize them yourself!
Here are some best practices for optimizing your URL slugs for SEO:
Keep it relevant to the content on the page
Don’t use uppercase letters
Add hyphens to separate words
Aim for 3-5 words
Remove random characters or numbers that don’t need to be there
Try to include your focus keyword
Remove any filler words such as “and,” “the,” or “of”
The UberSuggest SEO audit will actually identify any URL slugs that are poorly formatted for SEO, so give that another glance to see if it picked up on any URLs you should optimize.
6. Make Sure Your Site is Secure With an SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate is the thing that makes your website https:// instead of http:// – the s means it’s a secure website.
As you can probably guess, Google wants your website to be secure and safe for users to browse – so if you have an SSL certificate, your website will rank higher in the search results than websites without one!
If your website is on a closed-source platform like Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify, you likely automatically have one on your website. But if you don’t see that s after the http that makes your website secure, you’ll need to make sure you get one!
If you don’t have an SSL certificate, see this article for how to get one and more on why it’s important.
More SEO Tricks + Treats 🎃
Want more SEO tips you can use to boost your website’s SEO?
Check out these other posts with actionable SEO tips you can implement yourself:
As always, if you get stuck or have any questions, we’re here for you! Schedule a Call (it’s free!) with our team, and let’s talk about how we can help get Google to ❤️ your website!
More soon,
Mara
WEB DESIGNER AND DEVELOPER + COPYWRITER + SEO SPECIALIST
P.S.
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