12 Days of SEO: End 2023 Strong with Quick SEO Tips
It’s getting close to the end of the year. And most of us have probably not accomplished all the goals we set for 2023. But if one of your goals was to get your SEO sorted you’re in the right place with my 12 quick SEO tips, you still have time to make inroads before 2024 pops up (and you get set with all new goals!).
Here are the top 12 quick SEO tips that you can accomplish in just 12 days (of Christmas)!
12 Days of SEO – 12 Quick SEO Tips to Get You on Track Before the End of the Year!
First day of Christmas – first day of your quick SEO tips – Check your site security
On the first day of Christmas, check your site security. This means simply ensuring that you have HTTPS, and not just HTTP at the start of your website’s URL. An HTTPS uses SSL/TLS protocol to encrypt communications so that attackers can’t steal your data and information, and it’s important because a lot of people don’t want to work with businesses that aren’t secure.
Plus, it’s a Google ranking factor!
How to do it: Simply go to your website on your search engine of choice and look in the search box. If you see a little lock next to your website name, then you’re good to go.
If you don’t, then you’ll need to buy and install an SSL Certificate on your web hosting account. Your web developer can help you with that process.
2nd day of Christmas – Check your site speed
My second in the list of quick SEO tips is your site speed. Speed matters to Google and all the search engines. And if your site is slow to load, you’re more likely to lose potential customers and clients. Checking your site speed is easy (though the fixes can be harder!). But for today, let’s just see where you’re at.
How to do it: Go to any free site speed tester, but I personally like Pingdom because you can choose the area to run the test from.
Just plug in your URL and it will give you a report. The report will also give you areas that you can improve in order to increase your site speed as well.
3rd day of Christmas – Check for broken links
Having broken links on your site is never good. They negatively impact usability which results in reduced traffic and conversions. And they damage your rankings by preventing search engine crawlers from indexing pages. So one quick SEO tip is to check for broken links and fix them!
How to do it: Use any free online checker. I like Online Broken Link Checker, which issues you a report like this one (and it looks like I have a few to fix!).
Once you know which links are broken you’ll need to either go in an replace them with functioning links, or use a 301 redirect.
4th day of Christmas – Check for mobile friendliness
Today we want to make sure that your website is mobile friendly. Google wants all websites to be built for mobile, and if your site is newish, it likely is. But not always. So it’s always good to check.
How to do it: For this step I like to use an online test (I use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test but this will be retired soon. Chrome Lighthouse will be its replacement.) It will give you a report like the below.
But I also like to simply open the page up on my mobile device. Sometimes a human user sees things that a computer just doesn’t (particularly when it comes to real-life usability!).
5th day of Christmas – Draft a blog
If you don’t usually like creating blog posts take this as your push to draft a single blog for your website. There’s nothing that will drive your traffic forward more than creating new content on your site.
How to do it: If you really don’t know how to get started (and you’re not in a position to work with a talented copywriter), ChatGPT can get you started!
Word of warning – never use the content that ChatGPT (or any AI) suggests as provided. Google recognises it as AI, considers it spam and will penalise your site. This has been confirmed by Google themselves (using it is against Google policies), so just don’t do it! Rewrite everything, use your own voice and double check all facts and research.
And make sure you add your own thoughts and insight. ChatGPT can only regurgitate what’s already been done before (and that’s pretty boring!).
6th day of Christmas – Strategise 5 primary keywords
On the sixth day of Christmas, take half an hour to strategise five keywords about your business. I’ve written about this before, but it’s not as hard as you might think. And these keywords could become the cornerstone of your content and SEO efforts for the upcoming year.
How to do it: Start by thinking about what your customers are searching for and how they describe their needs. You can use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to research keywords – though these are paid products. If you don’t want to pay for those services (and if you’re not an SEO, it really doesn’t make sense) then you can simply brainstorm your ideas and then type them into Google’s search function. You’ll see the types of results you get and even get additional suggestions in the ‘People also ask’ panel of the search results page.
When it comes to keywords you should try to choose those that are specific enough to attract targeted traffic but broad enough to drive a decent number of searches. So, rather than writing ‘real estate agent’, you might want to use, ‘real estate agent in New Farm’ or ‘real estate agent for apartments’ or even, ‘how to find a real estate agent for an apartment’. These have lower competition meaning you’ll be more likely to grab the people who are using those search terms.
7th day of Christmas – Optimise Your Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions play an important role in your digital marketing and presence. They don’t directly influence rankings. But they can convince people to click through to your website (and that’s the quick SEO tip and win we’re looking for!).
How to do it: Review your most important website pages, and make sure that each one has a unique and targeted meta description. This should ‘sell’ the content of the page to the reader. If you can, use your primary keyword in the meta description as well. And be sure to keep them to about 160 (which is all that is typically visible on the search results pages!).
8th day of Christmas – Check your website navigation
One of the most important elements in my list of quick SEO tips (and often overlooked) is navigation, one that can impact the user experience on your website. Often people think that as long as users can get around their site, then all is well. But actually how your navigation works is very important.
How to do it: Go through your website and actually click through the pages. All your main content should be one click from your main navigation (that means that the pages and links are sitting in the main navigation header and, most likely, are linked to from your home page). No content should be more than three clicks away from your home page/landing page.
If you want to put FAQs and Blogs/Resources in the footer, that’s OK. But be sure that everything is easily accessible and intuitive to the user.
9th day of Christmas – Reach out to one person for link purposes
I have a complicated relationship with backlinks (more on that to come!). But when they’re done right (links from authoritative and relevant sites) they can lend authority to your own site. One great way to get good backlinks is to feature on a complementary website to your own.
So your task today is to reach out to one person, or one company with the view of ultimately getting a link to your own site.
How to do it: One great way is to appear on a relevant podcast – particularly one in your industry – and then have them link to your own site (this is generally standard practice). Another great way is to appear as an expert in someone else’s blog or editorial
10th day of Christmas – Write one social media post that links back to your own website
Social signals are not direct ranking factors. But when you use them to engage with your audience, they can amplify your content’s reach and drive traffic to your site. And the result is an indirect SEO benefit.
How to do it: Your 10th day of Christmas challenge is to write one social media post that links back to your website. One easy and quick way to do that is by sharing a blog you’ve already written, or a service that you offer (particularly if it’s timely!). And this is a quick SEO tip that will lead to a quick SEO win.
11th day of Christmas – Link your blog posts to your most closely related main page
Internal linking guides your users to related content and keeps them on your site and engaged in your content. So today’s job is to spend a bit of time linking your blog posts to the most closely related main page.
How to do it: The best way to do this will depend on the set-up of your site and the services or products you offer. With a services business, you would most typically do this by linking each blog to the service that most closely relates to it.
Let’s imagine you’re in the real estate space. If you have a blog post on ‘the best suburbs for renters’ then you would want to link this to a services page for rentals. If you have a blog post on ‘how to win at an auction’ then you might want to link this to say your auction services.
12th day of Christmas – the last of the quick SEO tips – Embrace your SEO wins (and plan for 2024)
You’ve had some amazing wins over the past 12 days. (Little things matter in SEO!) Now is the time to celebrate… it is Christmas after all! But you’re not done now. In fact, 2024 should be the time to really get serious about your SEO.
How to do it: SEO doesn’t have to be overwhelming or expensive. You don’t have to enter into an ongoing contract with an SEO agency. Taking little SEO steps each month can see you increasing your traffic, your reach and, most importantly, your conversions every week.
So, my final and biggest in my list of quick SEO tips is to take action now and set up your SEO plan. January is a great time to get some learning under your belt (there are loads of excellent and free tutorials and webinars online!) that can get you started. And you’ll get an idea of where to go next.
Of course, if you need any help, feel free to get in touch with any questions or advice. I’m always here to help!
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