64 Quick SEO Tips You Can Do in 30 Minutes or Less

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We started an email series a while back called SEO Squeeze. We share quick SEO tips you can do each week to improve your SEO. This blog is a compilation of all the SEO Squeezes we’ve done so far! If you want to get the SEO tips in your inbox every Sunday, sign up here!

We know this many SEO tips can get overwhelming. We heard some advice recently to make consistent, small changes to your website and thought it was genius! Write each of these tips on an index card. When you have an extra 20-30 minutes one day, draw an index card, and perform that SEO tip. You won’t feel like you have to do all these SEO best practices in one day, but you can make consistent changes to improve your SEO. Give it a try!

These SEO tips are just a taste of what you get inside SEO on Tap. Join the waitlist to be notified when we open the doors again (psst… it’s very soon!)

1. Update One Old Blog Headline

Do you have an old piece of content that might say something like “best this or that of 2023?” (or dare we say, 2022, 2021…🤭) Jump in and update the headline to read 2024 (after making sure the content is still relevant of course!) That is exactly what we did for this blog!

2. Fix Your Broken Links

Use this tool (it’s completely free), and copy and paste your website. Run the report and see if you have any broken website links that need fixing!

The awesome part is that this tool shows you exactly where to find that broken link. Click on the URL link and search for whatever the “Link Text” is – that’s your broken link!

3. Google Yourself

This SEO tip is pretty simple huh!? Before you give yourself a Google makeover, you need to see what you have to work with. 

So give yourself a Google and take note of what you see:

• Do you show up easily or are you having a hard time finding yourself?
• Do you have an image showing up next to your website name?
• What shows up in that blue text? Your name + a keyword?
• What additional links show up?
• As you scroll, what other types of content show up for you?

Just take note of what’s happening in the ecosystem here and later, we will start tweaking things. 😉

4. Update Your Homepage SEO Title

When you Google yourself, that blue text that shows up on Google is called your SEO Title. If that looks like just your brand name or said the word “home” (newsflash, everyone knows this is already your home page 🫣) then we need to make this a little more impactful. 

For your home page, follow this formula:

Brand Name | Keywords

Here are some of our clients for inspiration: 

Mixly Cocktail Co. | Simple Ingredient Cocktail & Mocktail Mixers

My Pop-Up Party | Pittsburgh Balloon Artists & Party Stylists

Media By Molly | Montana Wedding & Elopement Videographer

Wendy Kathryn | Simplified Holistic Health & Nontoxic Living

A couple of quick notes:

• If you don’t know where to find this within your website platform simply Google “Change my SEO Title for Showit / Shopify / WordPress / etc.”
• Use Title Case— capitalize the first letter of every word to help you stand out. 
• Use this tool to stay within the width requirements (about 60 characters)

And that’s it! Don’t overthink it. This will take you 10 minutes at most to update one page so don’t put it off either! 

5. Update Your Favicon

A Search Engine Result Page (SERP) is more visual now than ever before. See that cute little peace sign image next to our brand name? That is called a Favicon and it will show up alongside your brand on every page of your website.

Usually, because of how teeny these are, they should be submarks or icons of your brand versus the full logo. 

Open a Canva doc to size 16 x 16 (yep, teeny tiny) and drop in a submark or icon. Then upload that to your website platform. Most of the time these are found in the “Site Settings” section. But if you aren’t sure, just Google “Update my Favicon for Showit / Shopify / Squarespace / etc.” 

And now you’ve just made your website more visually appealing on search! 👏

6. Update Your Meta Description

Now that you’ve updated your favicon and SEO title, there’s just one thing left – edit your meta description, or that black description underneath your blue SEO Title. 

Fun Fact: This is NOT a ranking factor, so take the pressure off right now. 

Here are a few things you could include in your short sentence or two:

• Keywords of your offerings or products
• A pain point or a benefit you solve
• A call to action
• Also, don’t repeat your SEO Title (use this precious real estate wisely!)

Use this tool to help you stay within the character limit. And write this like you would a paid ad to help you stand out amongst the sea of other people on that search page. 

7. Update Your Site Name

See “Duo Collective” in the screenshot below? This is called your Site Name, and it should be your brand name. If it’s not, let’s update it!

You’ll likely find this in your “Site Settings” section and it’s usually in the same place you updated your Favicon. A peek at Showit below…

8. Get Yourself Published!

Have you heard of this tool? Featured is a website where experts like you can connect with journalists and publications to get you featured online. And it’s completely free. You can get 3 submissions a month on the free plan.

It gets your brand and expertise out in front of new eyes and gives you a fancy backlink, which is great for your SEO. Take a peek at one of the features we received recently! 

P.S. This is the exact type of content we share in Module 5 of SEO On Tap: Long-Term Growth Strategies. We have an entire lesson dedicated to backlink strategies just like this!

9. Understanding the Difference Between All the Google Tools 

There are so many tools out there that Google gives us for free (thank you Google!) that sometimes it’s hard to keep track. And sometimes we confuse them and think they are all the same. 🫣

So today we are breaking down the THREE Google Tools you need. Click on each link to see if you have them!

Google Search Console: Measures the performance of your website on Google. 

Google Analytics: Measures the performance of your website across any platform.

Google Business Profile: A local profile that helps you rank higher on maps and get reviews.

Psst… This is the exact type of content we share in Module 4 of SEO On Tap: Measuring Your SEO Success. We have lessons that will teach you how to sign up for these tools and better yet, understand them!

10. Use The Compare Feature in Google Search Console to See Which Blog Posts Need Some Extra Love

This is one of our favorite SEO tips and tricks to see how our blogs are performing over time. When you look at your search results under “performance”, you’ll sort by page, then click on the dates and choose “compare”. 

Take a peek at the column that shows “click difference” and look for posts with a decrease. These are the posts that might need some extra love!

11. Search Engines Index Mobile First

Did you know this? Search engine bots are only crawling and indexing the mobile version of your website. When was the last time you peeked at your own website on mobile? 

Head on over to your website and ask yourself a few questions:

• How’s the experience and overall navigation?
• Is the text legible? Are the font sizes large enough?
• Are all the buttons clickable?
• Do all your content, imagery or videos load quickly?

Go pick up that mobile phone (or maybe you are already on it), head to your website, and start scrolling!

12. Stop Hiding Your Sales Pages

This is something we see often when auditing websites. The sales page for that course, coaching program, retreat… whatever it is, is sitting unpublished or hidden because the doors are closed. 

When a well-written sales page is hiding, it won’t do much for you on search engines. During a one to two-week launch window, Google isn’t won’t have time to index and rank your content. 

So what should you do?

Keep your sales page live, swap the CTA’s to your waitlist sign-up page, and hide your payment details. Take a peek at SEO On Tap if you need an example!

Even if our course is in waitlist mode, we still want Google to know and rank us for ‘DIY SEO Course’. We worked hard to show up on that first page of Google— why hide it?

13. Google’s Biggest Algorithm Update Ever (kinda)

Yes, Google had its biggest update in years, which happened in March 2024— called the “Core Algorithm Update”. They estimated that about 40% of the content and entire websites were completely eliminated from search results. Like overnight, poof gone. 👀

But let me tell you why that shouldn’t scare you.

Because that 40% of content that disappeared was crap content – junk and spam – created purely for search engines. 

You likely won’t notice a difference unless you too had spammy content. And if you did, you’d get something called a “manual action” from Google Search Console (It looks like the below)

Except, we haven’t seen a single manual action appear across all our clients or ourselves. And if you are here learning authentic SEO tips and strategies, you too likely have nothing to worry about. 

So what should you focus on post-update?

Continue to create helpful content that delivers a great user experience that is created for people rather than search engines.

Which you are likely already doing so keep it up. And don’t worry about the doomsday messengers out there making you fear the algorithm. 

14. How to Get Better at Internally Linking Your Content

An internal link is a link on your website that drives to another page on your website— meaning you never leave your .com These are super important because they help search crawlers understand your content and how they are all related. Not to mention it helps them to find your content quicker!

Not sure how to do it? We have the perfect ChatGPT / Gemini prompt for you:

Suggest a few places to naturally link to other pages on my site from this page/post [insert URL].

*If you pay for ChatGPT it will actually be able to crawl your content and therefore give you better link suggestions.

Here’s a quick example of us using this prompt inside Gemini for this podcast episode.

15. How to Do TikTok Keyword Research 

Answer the Public is a listening tool recently bought by Neil Patel— the founder of Ubersuggest (a keyword research tool we frequently recommend). They just announced a completely new feature: TikTok Search.

If TikTok is your jam— or maybe it will be now that you have some data behind it— you can use this tool to find trending topics based on real search volumes. 

Pretty neat right?!  You get three free searches a day. Dive in and check it out!

16. Interact Quizzes

This brand new quiz called What’s Your SEO Superpower took me a whopping 15 minutes to create using Interact Quizzes’ new AI Quiz Creator Tool. 

Seriously, it was so easy! We entered our website link and it spit out a bunch of on-brand options. Then, it built the entire quiz including the results in seconds. All we had to do was add our brand colors and images and link our resources. 

If you want to learn more about Interact Quiz, listen to episode #29. 

17. New Cookie Laws

Did you hear about the new cookie laws? And no, unfortunately, it’s not a “you must eat a cookie every day for better health” kinda rule. We wish. 🍪

Here’s what it’s all about…

Basically, if you use any sort of data tracking (which we know you do because we’ve been harping on you to get Google Analytics installed) then you need to get consent from any EU visitors that your website tracks cookies. 

Sounds complicated, right?

Thankfully, it’s not that challenging to set up. In fact, we did it in about 20 minutes this week for our website. See that little cookie banner in the lower right-hand corner? ⤵

Here’s the website we used to ensure we are cookie-compliant. It costs $49/year. There is a free version, but it doesn’t include protection for Google Analytics. 

And thankfully, it was super simple:

1. Answer all their prompts in the cookie questionnaire.
2. Update the branding with your brand colors.
3. Embed the cookie banner code into the head section of your website (on every page)
4. Embed the cookie policy on your legal page. We recommend embedding it so that they can update the policies automatically as rules change versus you needing to re-copy and paste the policy.

That’s it! It won’t take you long, we promise. And you’ll have some peace of mind knowing you are legally compliant regardless of who comes across your website. 

P.S. If you are a web designer, this might be a good thing to add to your workflow process to ensure your clients are compliant when building a new website!

18. SEO-Rich FAQ’s

Do you have a section of your website dedicated to answering frequently asked questions?

• Maybe a whole page dedicated to it like this.
• Maybe these are specifically tied to a product page like this. 
• Or maybe you just have some catch-alls that live on your contact page. 

Whether you already have some FAQs or not, have you considered how juicy these questions are for SEO? In fact, Google tells you the exact questions people are asking in a lovely section called “People Also Ask”.

Google your product, service, or offering and see what questions people are asking. The more you click on questions, the more related questions will pop up.

Take some of those questions, plop them in your FAQs (or add a new section in), and answer them in your own unique way that reflects your brand, vision, and voice. 

If you don’t have a section currently, these don’t need to be fancy click-to-expand sections. A simple headline and subtext will do just fine. Don’t overcomplicate it 😉

19. Claim Your Google Business Profile

Click here to see if you have a profile. Businesses with a Google Business Profile are considered 2.7 times more reputable than those without one. Having a complete Google Business Profile can help you outrank competitors who haven’t claimed theirs.

Oh, and it’s completely free. 👏

Once you’ve signed up here are a few things you should do to optimize it:

• Complete every section. Seriously. This helps Google better understand and serve you for relevant searches.
• Add your social links. This is new! You can now link your social profiles.
• Use keywords in your description— ask ChatGPT or Gemini to help!
• Get reviews— Businesses with higher star ratings and more reviews are more likely to appear in Google’s Local Pack (the top 3 results in local searches).

Claiming your profile is quick and takes a simple verification process to make sure you aren’t lying about where you live. 😉

And two questions we get all the time… 

• No, you can’t use a PO Box.
• Yes, you can hide your home address. (behind Google’s profile is Abbey’s home address, but you can only see a selected area of the map)

Now head on over here and get to work!

20. All the Ways AI Can Help with SEO

We want to share all the ways we are using our friends ChatGPT or Gemini to help us with our SEO. Because seriously, it’s a game changer. 

• Writing SEO titles and meta descriptions
• Coming up with clever 404 page copy
• H1 headlines that use keywords
• Coming up with blog and podcast ideas
• Finding new internal linking strategies
• Updating old content
• Doing competitive research
• Writing alt text

Sometimes all you need is a really good prompt. 👀 Good thing we created more than 50 of them for you inside this workbook. 

This workbook is pure gold. If you’ve been struggling with getting AI to write you good content, then this will help. You need three things:

1. a good foundation to share with these tools
2. a really good prompt that clearly explains what you want
3. the expectation that this tool is your intern, not your CMO

We shared this workbook recently at our speaking events for UPP and ESC and we wanted to make it available to you, too. 

This workbook is packed with expert AI and SEO tips, tricks, and proven strategies that will:

✨  Demystify AI jargon and make it easy to understand.

✨  Help you develop an AI voice that’s uniquely yours.

✨  Show you how to craft killer prompts that get real results.

✨  Give you 50+ tried-and-tested prompts to kickstart your content.

✨ Save you oodles of time… the best part, tbh.

Grab the workbook here!

21. Voice Search… What You Should Know

8.4 billion people are expected to use voice assistants in 2024, double the number of active voice assistant devices in 2020. Around 80% of voice searches are predicted to be conversational in 2024, which is different from traditional search methods.

As the search experience changes, you might be wondering how you can keep your content relevant and optimized without pouring a billion hours into it.

So here are two quick SEO tips meant to complement what you are already doing (not add to it!)

• Target long-tail keywords or complete phrases and questions: Imagine how you’d ask Siri or Alexa something and use that in some of your headlines.
• Use the “People Also Ask” section in Google or use this keyword tool to add some of these conversational questions to your content.

It’s not about creating new content specifically for voice. It’s about considering all the ways people might find the current content you are creating. 

What types of content you might ask…

• How-to’s and FAQs
• Product searches for voice-activated shopping assistants
• Near me searches for those of you with physical locations

And seriously, go check out that tool— we are seriously loving it.

22. How to Check Your Core Web Vitals

It’s not just about page speed anymore. Google now ranks websites based on something called “Core Web Vitals” and page speed is a tiny part of that.  

So how do you check yours? Use this free tool. 

23. Should You Compress Your Images?

We get this question a lot because most website platforms compress images for you. But here’s the deal, sometimes it’s not good enough. Minimizing image sizes is one of the easiest, non-techy ways to improve your Core Web Vitals.

Here are two of our favorite tools to compress images:

• https://tinyjpg.com/
• https://compresspng.com/

A couple of quick things to note:

• yes, you should do this for all your blog images, too
• do this moving forward rather than stress about all the old content you need to update
• never compromise quality for size

24. How to Check Your Heading Tags

Tagging your headlines is extremely important for SEO and often one of the most forgotten SEO tips to bettering your rankings. This Chrome extension is one of our most used tools! You can easily see what all your headings are tagged.

Here’s what you should know:

• You should only have one H1 per page
• Your H1 tag tells Google this is the most important piece of content on a page— so make sure that’s true!
• Try to use keywords in H1-H3 headlines when you can
• Oh, and there’s an entire lesson dedicated to heading tags inside SEO On Tap.

Now, go check your website! Here’s a peek at what the tool looks like in action⤵

25. Our Favorite Alt Text Trick for Those Weird Images

Are you ever confused about how to write alt text for those pretty pampas grass and laptops sitting on a beautiful bedspread? Especially how to write them with keywords or if you even should! 😅

We have the perfect trick for you. Say hello to your new bestie, ChatGPT. 

Doesn’t she do a beautiful job at writing alt text that 1) describes the image, 2) uses context within the site and 3) leverages that context to pull in keywords without being spammy? 😍

You need to have the paid version of ChatGPT, but we can say with full confidence it’s worth every penny because the content that comes back is so much better. Use this simple prompt and get started writing stellar alt text for your website! 

26. Keyword Density

How many times should you use your chosen keyword in your content? We get this question A LOT, and rather than show you what the SEO-ers say you should do on the interwebs… we want to show you the data…

This is our top-performing blog post and it averages at position one for “entrepreneur conference”. It uses the keyword “conferences for entrepreneurs” only 6 times, but it uses the word “conference” 46 times and “entrepreneur” 30 times— well because that’s natural. 

This is another top-performing blog post and it’s featured in a “people also ask” section of Google for “Are reels better than posts”. Guess how many times that phrase is mentioned in the blog. Once… in the very first sentence. (NOT even a headline) Yet this post drove over 2k hits to our website within the last three months. 

So what’s the point? 

Density doesn’t really matter. It’s more about writing a good piece of content that actually answers the query the searcher is looking for. So here’s our advice:

• Create rich content and make it actually helpful
• Use the keyword in the right places, not the most places.
• The right places are your H1 or H2 headlines, the SEO title, and potentially your URL slug.

Hopefully, this gives you a sigh of relief about not needing to pepper your content with the same keyword a billion times. 

Curious about what other outdated strategies you might be stressing about? Tune into this podcast episode!

27. Should You Use Tags vs. Categories in Your Blog?

Personally, unless you have a very complex website, we usually recommend you pick one. And our preference is categories. 

Did you know that every tag and every category you open creates a new page like this? Meaning if you have hundreds of different tags, you have hundreds of pages that will likely be flagged by search engines as “thin content”. This can affect the overall quality of your website. 

If that’s the case, we recommend you un-index your tags from search engines. It’s usually as simple as toggling a button over. Take a peek ⤵

If you aren’t sure how to do this, just Google “how to un-index tags in my blog on [website platform: Wix, Shopify, etc.]

One more thing – if tags are a big point of functionality for your site, like it is for our client Kendra (she needs her tags to help people search her website for specific ingredients) then you can use this brand new WP Plugin called Fewer Tags. 

28. Broken Links Aren’t Bad, But Experiences Can Be

You know the feeling… You’ve clicked on a link— maybe it’s one of the thousand new finds from Amazon Prime Days or maybe it’s an article with the latest celebrity gossip—but instead, you land on a “this link is broken” page. 

Womp Womp.

Here’s the thing. This happens to all of us. We can guarantee we have one right now in one of our dozens upon dozens of older blog posts. 

This is the big question: will that broken link hurt my SEO? Will Google penalize me for it?

Answer: probably not.

However, if your audience is constantly hitting broken links on your website, they probably won’t come back so please don’t ignore them. 

Now, what if you could keep your audience around even if they land on a broken link? That’s the dream, right?

This is where a strategic 404 Page comes in.

> Maybe you are a product owner who is constantly refreshing your products to have the latest and greatest assortment. Let your audience know and have them keep shopping like this page does.

> Or use it as a chance to share some benefits like this page does.

> Or just be silly, because you can like this page and this page. 

Now it’s your turn. What’s your clever 404 page copy going to be!? 

29. Submit Your Sitemaps to Google Search Console

If there is one single thing you can do to help your SEO it’s this. This is soooooooo damn important. 

Head over to Google Search Console and submit your sitemaps, AKA the map of your entire website so Google can better understand you and all the beautiful pages you built. 

Not sure how to find your sitemap? Head to your website and add /sitemap.xml to the end of it. Depending on where your website is hosted, that might be your only sitemap. You can see for ours, we have three ⤵

If you have a Showit website you’ll also have to add /siteinfo.xml (this will be all your Showit Pages whereas /sitemap.xml is all your WordPress pages)

And if you have any subdomains like we do with our SEO courses living on Thinkific, you’ll have to check those subdomain.domain.com/sitemap.xml too. 

And that’s it. Copy and Paste a couple of times and you’ve just told Google all about your website. 👏

30. Above the Fold

Have you heard the phrase “above the fold” before? It’s the part of the webpage that shows before you have to scroll. We used to think that you had to jam everything in there. That isn’t really the case anymore… so no one really talks about it much. 

However, it’s still very important for SEO. Why? There is a metric called LCP (largest contentful paint) that is a part of your Core Web Vitals score. All you need to know is that it affects how fast the first part of your website loads. If this part of your website doesn’t load before three seconds, you’ve failed. 

The absolutely best way to improve this score— even if you don’t know what it means and can’t understand a lick of code— is to compress all your images above the fold on every page. 

But today, let’s start with your home page. Grab the image(s) that are above the fold and compress them with a tool like this. Then re-upload them to your website. This might seem obvious, but please don’t sacrifice quality here. No grainy photos. Only compress if you can!

31. 3 Strategies to Finding a Good Keyword

This tip will take you two minutes. 🙌 Here it is, register for this free masterclass. Why? Because we are answering some BIG questions we know you have rolling around in that smart brain of yours, like…

1. How to find a good keyword when you don’t know wtf to write about
2. How to find a good keyword when you think you have some idea
3. How to back into a keyword when you already have a topic idea

In other words, we are going to help you find a good SEO keyword to use on your website no matter what.

And then after you register, all you have to do is show up. Easy peasy.

32. How to go From Page 5 to Page 1 on Google

We are embarrassed to be saying this, but we realized a huge missed opportunity the other day. 🫣 We were so busy optimizing our client’s websites and teaching our people, like you, all the things, that we never optimized our Course Sales Page. Yikes. 

So Abbey grabbed her computer, cozied up to the TV, turned on Presumed Innocent (seriously so good), and spent 20 minutes making some updates. 

Here’s what she did to take our sales page from page five to page one in less than two weeks. 

• Updated our heading tags
• Used our ideal keyword “diy seo course” more often and in more headlines
• Updated our SEO Title to put our keyword first
• Hit publish and re-crawled the page in Google Search Console.

Twenty minutes later, she was done and consumed by Jake Gyllenhaal… I mean 😍

And here’s the deal… You can do this too!

You simply need to understand;

1. what keywords to use
2. where to put those keywords
3. how to make sure Google can find you

And that is exactly what SEO On Tap teaches you. Stop throwing away the days and let’s start seeing some real SEO progress because it truly can be easy for you to show up on Google’s page one, too! 🫶

33. Optimize One URL Slug Today

Did you know that the slug after your website is an important thing to optimize with keywords? Even something as simple as adding “services” to our Branding Services page can help us rank for a more specific keyword: https://duocollective.com/branding-services

So today, we want you to take a moment to browse your website and ask yourself some of these questions:

• Are you using keywords to better explain what you are selling or offering?
• Are there dates in your blog URLs? We recommend removing these because they just muddy up the slug and can deter performance if the blog is outdated.
• Are there random characters or numbers that don’t need to be there?
• Can you easily read the slug and understand what the page is about?
• Are there dashes in between the words? If not, Google will read it like one big jumbled word.

And yes, there can be too much of a good thing. Please don’t put keywords on every slug. Your about page and contact page can be simple. Adding keywords everywhere is overkill. 

But what if I want people to remember my slug?

Great question. And guess what… you don’t have to decide! You can create a slug with dashes for SEO but then set up a redirect so it’s easy to say out loud on podcasts, lives, or webinars.

For example, both of these URLs work:

https://duocollective.com/makeseoeasy

and

https://duocollective.com/make-seo-easy

That way we can tell people to go to “make SEO easy” without having to say the dashes out loud and it’s great for SEO.

34. Use This Tool to Think of Your Next Content Idea

Exploding Topics is one of our favorite tools to find trending keywords relevant to our industry. It’s a free tool and just joining the email list helps us keep this tool and new content ideas top of mind each week. 

Just scrolling by some of the featured trending topics, here are some ideas:

• 10 Ways I Use My Walking Pad As An Entrepreneur
• 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use An AI Logo Generator For Your New Business
• The Best Podcast Microphones That Won’t Break The Bank When Starting a New Podcast
• Easy Tips For Using ChatGPT For YouTube Content Creation

Not to mention all the various AI tools mentioned here as trending topics and keywords. We could vet them and simply update this existing blog post with some of our favorites that are also trending. 

Our friend Eden shared more ways to think of topic ideas in episode #136!

35. Do You Know Your SEO Numbers?

The very first thing we do before jumping on an inquiry call is pop into our SEO tools and check their SEO numbers. Just knowing these numbers, Abbey instantly knows where we need to focus and what to recommend.

The numbers are:

• Keywords indexed
• Organic Traffic
• Backlinks
• Domain Authority

You should know these numbers for your website. 

And if you don’t, let’s figure them out together because that is exactly what we will teach you in our SEO Lab.

It’s only $47 to register and save your spot. So let me ask you… 

• what if you could get 5 more leads
• what if you could drive 500 more traffic hits to your website which then leads to 100+ new email subscribers
• what if you could sign just one more client

These are very realistic things that can happen in the next three months when you focus on your SEO and have a real live-action plan. 

If that happens… is $47 worth it? 😉 (we think so)

Save your seat for this workshop!

36. Grabbing Your Audience’s Attention the Right Way

When your audience lands on your website you want them to scroll… right? Better yet, you want them to say wow… this is gorgeous, badass, captivating, funny… (or whatever adjective you want your brand’s personality to evoke.)

Sometimes this means an eye-catching video or animated graphics. And here’s the deal… We will never going to say this is a bad idea. 🤭

But we will tell you… everything in moderation. The more you jam-pack in that first view of your website, the heavier it will be to load. 

When measuring your website’s load time, remember First Contentful Paint— in other words, how quickly does it take for the first paint of your website to load?

This is a ranking factor, meaning it DOES determine where you sit on a search engine results page. So have an animated graphic or a captivating video, but maybe not both. And please make sure they are compressed to the smallest size possible without altering quality.  

You can check that “First Contentful Paint” score here. 

37. How to Get Keywords in Your Testimonials

Abbey was recently doing competitive research for a local painting company. She found that this company ranked (and drove traffic) for the keyword “Sherwin Williams Woodbury” which is a very popular local paint company. 

Want to know why? Because a customer used that keyword in a testimonial. And then they took that testimonial and put it on their website!

💡 Genius 💡

So how do you get your clients or customers to use keywords in their testimonials? 

It’s all about how you position the question:

We want to make this super simple for you! Please feel the freedom to make it as short or long as you want, and we only ask that you answer one question for us with your review:

What would you tell someone who is on the fence about working with us on [fill in the blank service / product]

When you ask the question in this way, your clients or customers all of a sudden are encouraged to 1) convince your audience to buy from you and 2) use the name of your product or an ideal keyword in their response. 

So next time you capture some testimonials— steal this question! You are welcome. 🙇‍♀️

38. Optimize Your Footer for SEO

Your footer is the bottom navigation bar on your website. It can be prime real estate for a little SEO boost. Add 1-2 internal links to key pages—like your services page, best selling product category, or contact page—right in your footer.

Why? The footer shows up on every page of your site, so adding these links can make it easier for both users and search engines to navigate your website.

Bonus: One of my favorite things to add into a footer is a little snippet of what you do (that uses keywords, of course!)

39. Check for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can actually hold your site back from ranking its best on Google. Duplicate content means having identical or highly similar text on multiple pages of your website, which can confuse search engines and impact your rankings. Typically, this means more than 50% of your content is duplicate. Duplicate content can keep your site from reaching its full potential. By making sure each page is unique, you’ll help Google understand your content better—and that means better rankings and more visibility!

An example on our own website could be our blog category pages like this SEO page vs. this branding page. What could we do to fix this? 

• We already have unique headlines and copy on each blog category page, which is an often missed opportunity we see with our clients. 
• We could add a section on each page that speaks to our SEO or Branding offerings.
• Add a section that mentions unique freebies related to SEO or Branding.
• Rather than the combined introduction, we could introduce just Court on the branding page or just Abbey on the SEO page.

All of these would help make the page more unique to just SEO / branding educational content related to our business. 

How would you do this for your website? Don’t worry, it’s easy! Enter Siteliner (yep, it’s free!). This tool scans your website and spots any duplicate content that might be confusing search engines. Here’s how to use it:

1. Head to siteliner.com.
2. Pop in your website’s URL.
3. In just a few seconds, you’ll get a report showing where any duplicate content lives on your site.

What do you actually need to care about in Siteliner? When looking at the breakdown of duplicate content, sort by “Match Percentage” this means that “71% of the content on this pages matches 10 other pages on our website” — when you click on that it will show you what those 10 pages are and the exact words that are matching. Your task is to go into each of the posts with high match percentages and add new, unique content to each of them. This will reduce the match percentage of your pages.

40. 3 Places to Put Keywords

Take a moment and imagine the words your ideal audience is typing into Google. Now consider if these words are on your website. If they aren’t, how is Google supposed to show you on a search engine result page when your audience types this in? 

(A: Google won’t show you as an option) 🫢

Here are THREE places you should have your keywords on each page

• Your URL Slug— sometimes… Don’t add this to every page because it’s going to get spammy, but this is great for blogs, service and product pages. i.e. our SEO Services page is https://duocollective.com/seo-services (go ahead and use our website as an example of where these can be beneficial)
• Your H1 Headline— that headline at the top of your page that’s tagged Heading 1
• Your SEO Title— that blue clickable link on Google

41. Update Your Logo Alt Text

Did you know your logo can help with SEO? Yep, that tiny image sitting at the top of your website is more than just pretty branding in your navigation bar—it’s an opportunity to get your business name in front of search engines!

Here’s how to optimize your logo:

1. Find your logo’s alt text in your website editor.
2. Update it to include your business name and a keyword. Example: “Duo Collective SEO and Branding Agency Logo.”

Why does this matter?

Alt text isn’t just for accessibility (though that’s super important too!). It also helps search engines connect your logo with your business name and key services, strengthening your branding online.

Give your logo a little SEO love today—it takes less than 5 minutes! 💪

42. Is Your NAP Consistent?

Let’s talk about something super simple — after all, that’s the point of these emails, right? This tip can make a BIG impact on your SEO: we are talking about your business’s NAP consistency across platforms:

• Name
• Address
• Phone number

Here’s your action step for today:

1. Check where your business info is listed (website, Google Business Profile, social media, any directory features like your local Chamber of Commerce, etc.).
2. Make sure your Name, Address, and Phone number match EXACTLY—no abbreviations or formatting differences.

Why is this important?

When search engines see consistent NAP details across the web, they trust your business more, and that trust can lead to better rankings—especially for local SEO.

Pro tip: Don’t forget to check your footer and contact page too!

Take 5 minutes today to double-check your NAP and keep it consistent everywhere.

43. Make Sure Your Website Has a Contact Page

One of the best places for your NAP to live on your website is your Contact Page. 

Why? A clear, easy-to-find Contact page does two things:

1. It tells your visitors how to reach you—hello, more inquiries!
2. It signals trust and legitimacy to search engines (Google loves when you make life easier for users).

Action Step for Today:
If you don’t have a Contact page yet, create one! Make sure your page has the following:

• Your full business name.
• Your address (if applicable) or locations you serve.
• Your phone number. (if applicable— we don’t share our numbers since they are our personal cell phone numbers.)
• A contact form or email.
• Oh and of course make sure it’s 300 words— we love adding mini bio descriptions, FAQs and email sign ups to help increase word count.

Already have one? Take a few minutes to make sure all the details are up-to-date and match your NAP everywhere else online.

Your Contact Page isn’t just helpful—it’s an SEO tool, too!

44. Organize Your Content Like a Recipe

A good recipe is clear and easy to follow—just like your website content should be!

Here’s your quick action step for today:

Choose one blog post or page and organize it with clear headings, bullet points, or numbered lists.

Why?

• Search engines love structured content because it’s easier to crawl and understand.
• Your readers will stick around longer because they can quickly find what they need. (people love to skim)
• When your content is structured well, it’s more likely to be pulled into those AI overviews appearing at the tippy top of those search engine pages.

Here’s what that looks like…

• Heading 1: Your Recipe Title
• Heading 2: The Recipe Steps
• Heading 3: The little notes, reminders and steps in between.
• Bullet points sprinkled throughout to structure the content and make it easy to read while you bake or multi-task. 🤪

If you quickly scroll your content, it shouldn’t feel heavy. It should be easy to skim and get the jist of what it’s all about by reading headlines.

Time to get baking!

45. Canva Slide Title = Alt Text

I was recently adding a whole bucket of canva images to a website and realized this might not be a trick everyone knows…

Before you download all your images from Canva, change the slide name to the alt text. That way when you download all the images, the alt text is already your file name— it’s an easy copy paste into your website’s alt text box. 

And the best part is that the file name stays even after you’ve uploaded and re-downloaded these images from a compression tool like TinyJPG.

It’s the little things like this that make the whole process move quicker. Enjoy!

P.s. did you know this trick??

46. Dark Mode

Have you ever checked how your website looks in dark mode?

Dark mode is everywhere these days—on phones, browsers, and even apps. And if your site doesn’t look good in the dark, it could impact readability and user experience.

Here’s what to do:

1. Turn on dark mode on your browser or phone.
2. Visit your website and explore key pages.
3. Look for anything that doesn’t display properly—think logos disappearing, text blending into the background, or funky colors.

Why does this matter?

A site that looks great in all modes keeps visitors happy and engaged, which can improve SEO metrics like time-on-site and reduce bounce rates. Plus, it shows off how polished your brand is. 💅

How to enable dark mode in chrome.

• Open Chrome and type chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark into the address bar.
• Press Enter to access the “Force Dark Mode for Web Contents” setting.
• Click the dropdown menu next to this setting and select “Enabled.”
• Click “Relaunch” to restart Chrome and apply the changes.

How to enable dark mode in Safari.

• Click the Apple menu and select “System Preferences.”
• Choose “General.”
• Under “Appearance,” select “Dark.”

How to enable dark mode in Firefox.

• Open Firefox and click the three horizontal lines (menu) in the top-right corner.
• Select “Add-ons and Themes.”
• In the sidebar, click “Themes.”
• Find the “Dark” theme and click “Enable.”

47. TEST YOUR WEBSITE WITH VOICE SEARCH

Pick the voice assistant you (or your audience) use most often—Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa. Test on more than one if you can (i.e. your phone and your laptop)

Ask questions related to your business in a natural, conversational way.

• Your Business Name: “Hey Google, who is Duo Collective?”
• Your Services: “Hey Siri, what are SEO tips for small businesses?”
• Your Location: “Alexa, what marketing agencies are near me?”

Check if your brand appears in the results. If not…

• What websites do show up (competitors, directories, etc.).
• What are the phrasing of the top answers—how are they structured?

If your website isn’t showing up, try some of these simple tweaks:

• Add conversational keywords into your content… again taking note of what the phrasing of the questions and answers were on the voice responses.
• Create an FAQ Page— voice assistants love clear, concise answers.
• Claim your business on all local platforms.
  • Google Assistant: Relies heavily on Google Business Profile and your website.
  • Siri: Uses Apple Maps and Bing search results.
  • Alexa: Leverages data from third-party integrations like Yelp or specific Alexa Skills.
• Focus on Page Speed— voice assistants prioritize fast-loading sites. [resource]

Happy voice searching!

48. Add a Search Bar

Let’s talk about one small feature that can make a big difference for your website: a search bar.

Why does it matter?
A search bar helps your visitors find what they’re looking for faster, which makes their experience on your site better. 

✨ The real magic ✨ it also provides data on what people are searching for, giving you valuable insights to refine your content strategy.

Your action step for today:

1. Check if your site has a search bar.
2. If not, add one! (Many website builders make this super easy.)
3. If you already have a search bar, test it to ensure it’s working properly.

Pro Tip: Take a look at what people are searching for on your site—this could inspire your next blog post or product idea (a peek at our data is below)

Not sure how to do this → this article might help.

49. Featured AI Snippet

Let’s talk about how to grab one of the most coveted spots in Google search results: the Featured AI Overview Snippet.

You’ve seen them—they’re the answers that show up right at the top when you Google a question. And they’re a major visibility booster! And it’s the main reason why we say AI overviews are NOT eliminating the need for SEO.

Here’s a peek at our SEO Tools for Small Business Blog. It’s being pulled on the right and the tool it’s featuring from our blog is the Google Business Profile. 

Here’s how you can take one step toward snagging that spot today:

1. Pick a blog post or webpage on your site (preferable one that is already indexed and gets some search traffic)
2. Find a section where you’ve answered a common question.
3. Rewrite that section into a concise, 40-60 word answer that’s clear, direct, and helpful. And make the question any heading tag rather than just paragraph.

Google loves pulling short, punchy answers into snippets. By structuring your content this way, you’re making it easy for search engines to highlight your expertise.

Whenever you are writing a blog think… Bite Sized. Skimmable. Easy To Read.

50. Clean Up URLS

Let’s talk about something small that makes a BIG impact on your SEO…

If your blog URLs look something like this:

/blog/2024/02/09/seo-tips

Then it’s time for a quick clean-up. Instead, they should be short, simple, and keyword-rich like this:

/blog/seo-tips

Some people even drop the /blog which is okay too! I personally like to keep it for analytical and tracking purposes in Google Analytics.

Here’s Your Quick 5 Minute Homework

• Go to your blog and check the structure
• If the URL has dates, random numbers, or extra fluff, edit it down to just the main topic.
• Using WordPress? You can remove dates from all your blog URLs by going to Settings > Permalinks > Post Name for a cleaner structure moving forward.
• If you update an existing URL just make sure to set up a 301 redirect so old links still work!

Short, clear URLs tell Google exactly what your page is about. Plus, if you’re still rocking date-based URLs, you’re making your posts look older than they are—even if they’re still relevant.

51. Stop Visitors From Leaving Your Website Too Soon

Did you know that one of the simplest ways to keep visitors on your site longer (and boost your SEO) is by adding internal links?

Here’s how to do it:

1. Pick one page or blog post on your site.
2. Look for opportunities to link to another relevant page—like a related blog post, your services page, or a popular product. (bonus points if it’s a page that already gets search traffic— aka a top performer!)
3. Update the text to include a descriptive link (e.g., “write good meta descriptions” instead of “click here”).

Why this matters (for SEO)

Internal links reduce bounce rates, improve the time spent on your website and guide visitors through your content—helping them find more of what they need and keeping them on your site longer.

Longer time spent on your website is a signal to Google that you are worthy. 🙌

52. Adjust Your Business Hours

I have a feeling that, as an entrepreneur like us, you might not have traditional business hours—and that’s normal!

But even if your business is “always open,” it’s important to make sure your Google Business Profile does NOT reflect that. 

Why Not??

• Specific hours make your business look more legitimate to Google.
• You may not show up in “Open Now” searches.
• Clear hours set expectations and avoid confusion.
• You miss opportunities to signal active management (e.g., holiday hours).
• Features like “Open Soon” or “Closed Now” can encourage engagement.

So head on over to your Google Business Profile → Click on “Info” and find the “Hours” section.

53. Linking Away From Your Website

In one of our recent trainings, someone asked, “Should I share links to places I’ve been featured— even if it sends people away from my website?”

The Answer: YES. ABSOLUTELY YES.

We totally get the fear. You work so hard to get traffic, why would you send people elsewhere? 

But here’s the thing…

✨ Sharing those links builds credibility (with your audience and Google’s bots)
✨ It boosts trust.
✨ And it actually helps your SEO. (the best part!)

When you link to reputable sources— especially places you’ve been featured— it tells Google you’re connected, credible, and part of a trusted community. It’s like saying, “Look at this street cred I’ve earned!”

So yes, keep linking to those features, podcast interviews, guest posts, and shoutouts. Just be sure to have them open in a new tab so you aren’t permanently driving traffic away from your website. 

54. See How Many Pages Google Knows About

You already know that Google Search Console is the tool that helps you do that. (or at least we hope you do, because we usually don’t shut up about it)

But we have another trick up our sleeve too… Go to Google and type in Cache: your domain.

And now you can see all the beautiful pages Google knows you for and take a peek at how sexy your SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions are. 😉

55. Favorite Chrome Plug-In

Here are some of our favorite things to look for when doing research for ourselves or our clients:

• What pages are currently ranking for this keyword
• How many times are they using that keyword on their page (the page that’s ranking! You’d be surprised, sometimes it’s very little)
• How many words they use
• How much traffic this domain gets overall and how authoritative they are (aka can I out rank them?)

Keyword Surfer is the Chrome Extension that does all that and then some. It’s one of our favorite sneaky little tools and we don’t pay a dime for it!

56. When Is Your Audience Active?

All you need is Google Analytics and we promise to keep this beginner-friendly.

Go to Reports → then click Acquisition → then Traffic Acquisition. 

Don’t forget to check the upper right hand corner to see what timeframe you have selected— 28 days, 90 days, etc.

Once you’re looking at the table, click the little “+” icon at the top and choose Time and then Hour.

Boom! You’ll now see what time of day people are actually visiting your site and you’ll be able to see this by traffic source— Search, Social, Direct, etc.

Why does this matter?

If your people are scrolling at 9 p.m. (hello fellow night owls 🦉), you might want to publish or email then— not at 8 a.m. when they’re wrangling kids and chugging coffee.

Knowing when your site is busiest = smarter timing for content, launches, and sales.

57. Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords

Low-hanging fruit keywords are search terms you’re already kinda ranking for—usually sitting on page 2 or the bottom of page 1. With a little nudge (like an internal link or content refresh), you could bump them up to the top!

So how do you find them?

1. Open up Google Search Console
2. Head to Performance → Search Results
3. At the top, turn on the “average position” metric (you’ll see a little orange line appear!)
4. Click on the Impressions column to sort by highest
5. Then scroll until you see keywords in the #10–20 range

Remember, Google shows 10-ish results per page. So positions 10–20 = Page 2.

These are your easiest opportunities to win more traffic—because you’re already halfway there.

Now what do you do?

First you have to identify what content you have that is supporting this keyword. Then, make a few bite-sized tweaks that could make a quick, yet powerful, difference. Here are a few examples:

• Add internal links to this page from other relevant blog posts or pages
• Naturally mention the keyword in your H1, intro, or section headings (if not already there)
• Expand the content—add a short FAQ, a how-to tip, or a real-life example
• Include images with alt text that references the keyword
• Update the post’s publish date (if it’s relevant) to signal freshness

Even just one or two of these can nudge you up a few spots—which could mean way more eyes on your business 👀

58. Do you ever get stuck writing alt text?

For some reason this can feel super challenging sometimes. But today I am just going to give you a quick 10 minute task.

First Google your business name in the Google Images section. Next, Google a keyword or offering of yours.

Now ask yourself a few questions:

• What images are showing up? Are any of them from your website? Or backlinks from other websites?
• What’s the description being pulled in underneath?
• What page of your website is being pulled in?

Now that you’ve taken a peek…

• If none of your images are showing up— your alt text might need some love.
• If the descriptions feel off— Google might be guessing because it’s missing context.
• If the page being pulled in isn’t the one you want— this is a sign it’s time to optimize your: image file names, alt text & page titles.

It’s time to let your visuals work just as hard as your words 🧡

59. Let’s Talk About Orphaned Pages

Orphaned pages are pages on your site that have zero internal links pointing to them. That means there’s no clear path for users or Google to find them — unless they know the exact URL and type it in.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

If there’s no link path to a page, Google’s bots might not crawl it properly or understand the content in the eco-system of your entire website.

On a lot of websites I audit these orphaned pages can be sales pages, live webinars and other high priority pages that you surely want crawled, indexed and understood.

HOW DO YOU FIND THEM?

If you are using a paid SEO tool like Semrush, it’s easy to see these issues pop up in your Site Audits. Unfortunately this error doesn’t pop up in Ubersuggest’s Site Audits. (boooo)

If you “Google it” there are a ton of directions that are going to feel overwhelming, so let’s make it simple.

• Go to Google Search Console and click on Links on the lefthand side.
• Click Export.
• Now go to ChatGPT and upload that CSV file + your sitemap which is yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.com/siteinfo.xml (for Showit websites) and use this prompt:
  

“Hey ChatGPT! I’m giving you two reports to cross-reference; A Google Search Console Internal Links Report (a table with “URL” and “Internal Links” columns, copied from Google Search Console). and my Sitemap [insert your sitemap link here). Now can you please list any URLs in the sitemap that aren’t in the GSC report?”

This will help you find orphaned links without spending hours trying to figure out how to use Screaming Frog.

You don’t need every page to be linked. Some pages (like hidden thank-you pages or expired offers) can stay orphaned. Just make sure it’s a choice not an accident.

60. Does your page support rich results?

We’ve talked a lot about the power of things like FAQ’s on your webpages and inside your blogs. Especially because they can be use as “Rich Results” on a search engine results page.

What’s a Rich Result?

Rich Results (aka “rich snippets”) are the extra bells and whistles Google can show rather than just the blue links. Like FAQs that expand in search or step-by-step How-To boxes. Making your listing stand out and get more clicks.

Under the hood, this works thanks to something called “schema.”

Schema is just a standardized way to tell Google exactly what’s on your page (in other words it’s the code behind your page)

Guess what? With all the advancements to common website platforms, you don’t need to write any code to make this magic happen. If you have the Yoast SEO plugin adding schema is as easy as dropping in a block— but not just any block.

• Open Your Post or Page in the WP Block Editor.
• Click ➕ Add Block, then search for “Yoast FAQ” or “Yoast How-to.”
• Select the Block and fill in your Questions & Answers (FAQ) or Steps (How To).
• Publish or Update and Yoast automatically adds the right schema behind the scenes.

QUICK CHECK: Run your page through Google’s Rich Results Test. Confirm your FAQ or How To shows up under “Detected structured data”

And that’s it! No developer, no fuss, just a quick SEO boost that makes your content pop in search. Just how we like it.

61. PDFs on Your Website

Think things like free guides, worksheets on blog posts, or your pricing sheet on pages that are indexed by Google?

Guess what? Google crawls those too!

But if your PDFs still have names like document1.pdf or file.pdf, you’re missing a very simple SEO win.

• Find a PDF on your site (your most-downloaded guide is perfect).
• Rename the file to include keywords like “your-guide-to-seo.pdf”
• BONUS: If you use Abode to create and download your PDF’s you can add a little extra metadata in there by updating the Title property to be keyword rich too. (image below) P.s. I always ask Courtney to do this for me since I am the non-designer of the Duo and don’t ever open or use Adobe. 😉
• Finally, you’ll re-upload the PDF and update any links pointing to it on your site.

Descriptive file names help Google understand and rank your PDF in both web and document search.

62. Are You Blending In?

Betcha didn’t think your brand was that important for Google huh? Turns out your brand can blend into the search page or stand out.

This is one of our most popular blogs in terms of organic search traffic. So I took to Google to see what everyone else saw.

As I scrolled the page I thought “I bet our brand can pop even more”. So I played around with our Favicon a bit.

The first two had words that were wayyyyy too small. You’d never be able to read them. And that third one you see is what is currently on our website. But I thought to myself… that white is really blending in.

As I scrolled the page I thought “I bet our brand can pop even more”. So I played around with our Favicon a bit.

The first two had words that were wayyyyy too small. You’d never be able to read them. And that third one you see is what is currently on our website. But I thought to myself… that white is really blending in.

63. Are You Choosing a Social Share Image?

Your social share preview link is more than just pretty posts. It’s a key part of your SEO and brand consistency too.

• Higher Click-Through Rates: A clean, branded image with a clear title stops scrollers and stands out.
• Stronger Brand Recognition: When people see your logo and colors consistently, they remember you and Google notices repeat visits.
• Better Engagement Signals: Social shares, likes, and comments all send positive signals to search engines that your content is worth ranking.

Time to get to work!

• Open your website page or blog post
• Find the Social Preview Section (On you website platform it’s usually in “page settings”)
• Upload a branded image that relates to this page.
• Save or Update your post.

64. Get Notified When People Talk About You

Want to know whenever someone mentions you online? Maybe it’s your brand name, a course you created, a book you wrote, a trademark you have…

This is where Google Alerts comes in— we’ve got one for Duo Collective and SEO On Tap.

HERE’S HOW YOU DO IT:

• Go to google.com/alerts
• In the search box, type your business name (e.g. “Duo Collective”)
• Click “Show options” and choose “As-it-happens” for frequency
• Pick your alert delivery email and hit “Create Alert”

That’s it! Now Google will email you every time your brand name pops up on the web from blog posts, news articles, even forums.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

• Backlink Opportunities: Spot mentions and politely ask for a link back to your site.
• Reputation Monitoring: See what people are saying so you can jump in with a comment or thanks. Or maybe someone is using your trademarked name?
• Content Inspiration: Discover new topics and conversations to join or write about.

Give it a try!

Use These Quick SEO Tips!

Whew! We know that was a LOT of SEO tips! Take it one by one – you don’t have to optimize everything in a day! (unless it’s a CEO day 😉) And don’t forget to subscribe to SEO Squeeze to get tips like these in your inbox every week!