Depending on your circumstances, there are dozens of different things that might help you carry out SEO on your website – but they’re not all created equal.

We’ve compiled a list of the 20 best ways to boost your site’s online presence. These are either very simple to implement, very quick, very effective, or a combination of the three – you can use these to get improvements in place quickly and make an impact.

• Get Your Site onto Google Search Console & Google Analytics. It may seem obvious, but it’s something many site owners don’t think about – a shame, as Google is a primary source of information for other work.
• Make Sure your Sitemap is Up to Date. One of the things search engines use to index your site, a sitemap missing new pages is a problem – but a sitemap that still references pages that are missing is a bigger one.
• Do Your Pages Have Metadata? Meta titles and meta descriptions become what potential visitors see for your site link in search listings. Purpose created text is stronger than snippets pulled from the page via algorithm.
• Make Sure Your Metadata is Good. Keep meta titles between 40-55 characters and descriptions between 130-155. They should tell people what’s on the page and make them want to click, and they should be written in good, understandable English.
• Take Advantage of Internal Linking. If a visitor arrives on a page of your site and doesn’t click on anything or visit other pages, the search engine records that as a ‘bounce’ and considers your site less useful. Make sure there are plenty of links that will interest the visitor.
• Always ‘Fetch’ New Pages or Page Changes with Search Engines. You can do this from Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and it makes sure that the search engine in question has indexed the new page.
• Be Careful When Removing Pages. Search engines don’t like to see bad links, and just removing a page can create several. If there’s an appropriate page to redirect to, consider setting up a redirect, or ask yourself if that page link can be repurposed.
• Pay Attention to Search Console Alerts. Search engines want to show their visitors good, relevant websites. If they flag an issue with your site, it should be fixed quickly.
• Make Sure You Know What People Are Searching for. You can use resources like Google Trends and Moz Keyword Explorer to compare different search terms; you can also see if anyone is searching for a particular term in Search Console.
• Do You Know Who’s Linking to You? Search engines pay attention to who links to you. If you’re heavily linked to by websites that search engines consider poor or deceptive, that can affect your rating. Search Console and Moz Backlink Checker are good ways to find out who’s linked to you, and for dubious links, the Google disavowal process is here and the Bing disavowal process is here.

Some of these tips will directly improve your performance while others will prevent it from worsening. Doing both is important – and remember, for the most part these aren’t one-time jobs. Many people embrace our services because they know that that way they’ll have experts monitoring for problems and accentuating strengths on an ongoing basis.

There’s much more to cover, though! For another 10 great SEO tips, click here for part two.