25 Core SEO Principles for 2023

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has evolved significantly over the 23 years I’ve been doing it.

Yet, some core SEO principles remain timeless.

By mastering these core principles, you can improve your site’s visibility, traffic, and ultimately, conversions. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll delve into 25 essential principles of SEO to rank high in Google in 2023.

FYI: We provide AI powered SEO services that can help increase your organic search engine traffic.

1. Keyword Research and Selection: The Foundation of SEO

Keyword research is the search engine optimization process of identifying the words and phrases that people use in search engines. It’s about understanding what your target audience is searching for, what words they’re using, and what type of content they wish to consume.

When I say ‘keyword’, you might think of a single word, but that’s not necessarily the case. A keyword can be a phrase, a question – anything someone might type into a search engine.

As an 23 year SEO expert in charge of running an AI SEO company, the tools I recommend for effective keyword research include Google Keyword Planner, Surfer SEO, SEMrush, and Ahrefs. They can help you uncover a wealth of information about potential keywords, like search volume (how many people are searching for it) and competition (how difficult it is to rank for).

But remember, choosing the right keywords isn’t just about search volume. It’s also about user intent – what the user is likely looking for when they type in that keyword. The best keywords for you will align closely with what you offer and what your target audience is looking for.

2. Unique and Relevant Content: The Heart of SEO

The saying “Content is King” isn’t a cliché without reason. Quality content is the heart of SEO. Google’s primary goal is to provide users with the most relevant, valuable results for their query, so providing high-quality content is key to ranking well.

But what does ‘quality content’ mean? It means content that is unique, offering information or insights that aren’t found elsewhere. It means content that is relevant to your keywords and your audience. And, above all, it means content that provides value, answering user queries thoroughly and accurately.

Creating this type of content not only helps you rank in search engines, but also builds trust with your audience and encourages engagement and social sharing.

3. Mobile Optimization: Adapting to User Behavior

With over half of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, mobile optimization is a crucial aspect of SEO. Google has recognized this shift towards mobile usage and has even implemented a ‘mobile-first’ approach to indexing websites.

This means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your website for indexing and ranking. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you could be hurting your rankings.

Mobile optimization is about ensuring that your website not only looks good on mobile devices but also functions well. This includes factors like ensuring text is readable without zooming, spacing links so they’re easy to tap, and optimizing load times for slower mobile data connections.

You can check how well your site is optimized for mobile using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. This tool provides a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to whether your page is mobile-friendly, along with a list of any issues detected.

4. User Experience (UX): More Than Just Looks

In SEO, user experience goes beyond aesthetic appeal. It’s about the overall experience a visitor has from the moment they enter your site until they leave. When I discuss UX in the context of SEO, I mean things like site structure, ease of navigation, and site speed.

Google wants to deliver not just relevant content, but also a satisfying user experience. If your site is difficult to navigate or slow to load, visitors will quickly leave, leading to high bounce rates. Google takes these user behaviors as a signal that your website may not provide a good user experience, which can negatively affect your rankings.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a fantastic tool for assessing and improving your site’s speed, which is a critical part of UX. It provides detailed insights into what’s slowing your site down and offers suggestions for improvement.

5. Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Your First Impression

In search results, your title tag and meta description act as a kind of mini-advertisement for your page. They provide both users and search engines with a summary of your content. If crafted well, they can significantly improve your click-through rate.

Title tags should be concise, contain your primary keyword, and accurately represent your content. Meta descriptions don’t directly influence rankings, but they do impact user engagement. A compelling meta description can be the deciding factor that entices a user to click on your link instead of a competitor’s.

6. On-Page SEO: Mastering Your Own Domain

On-page SEO involves optimizing elements within your website to achieve higher rankings and earn more relevant traffic. It encompasses many tactics, including keyword optimization, crafting quality content, and improving title tags and meta descriptions.

When optimizing your content for keywords, you want to include them naturally and contextually in your title, headers, body content, and even URL if possible. However, don’t fall into the trap of ‘keyword stuffing’. Google’s algorithms have become sophisticated enough to recognize and penalize this practice.

Internal linking, another aspect of on-page SEO, also plays a significant role in how search engines understand and rank your content. By linking relevant pages together, you can help search engines understand the context and relationship between different content on your site.

7. Off-Page SEO: Building Your Online Reputation

While on-page SEO involves elements you can control on your website, off-page SEO involves factors outside your site that affect your rankings. This mainly refers to backlinks – links from other websites to yours.

Backlinks signal to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy. Think of each backlink as a vote of confidence from another site. However, not all votes are created equal. Backlinks from high-authority, reputable sites carry more weight than those from low-quality sites.

Building backlinks can be challenging, but techniques like content marketing, guest blogging, and building relationships with influencers in your niche can help.

That wraps up the first seven principles in detail. I’ll continue exploring the next core principles in the subsequent sections. Remember, mastering SEO is a journey, not a destination. It requires ongoing learning, testing, and refining to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of search engines.

8. Social Signals: The Indirect Impact on SEO

Social signals may not directly contribute to your SERP rankings, but they carry an undeniable indirect impact. Social signals refer to the collective shares, likes, and overall social media visibility of your webpage as perceived by search engines. These signals can indicate that your brand is being discussed and interacted with, which can enhance your brand reputation and visibility.

Over my years in search engine optimization, I’ve observed that when content receives a high volume of shares and likes, it typically leads to an increase in backlinks and traffic. This is because a wider audience is exposed to the content, increasing the chances of other website owners linking back to it.

It’s important to note, however, that social signals are a result of quality content and a strong brand presence. You should focus on creating compelling, shareable content and actively engaging with your audience on your social media platforms.

9. Local SEO: Dominating Your Geographical Area

If your business operates in a specific geographical location or has a physical storefront, Local SEO is a key principle to master. Local SEO is about making sure your business gets found by people in your locality looking for services you offer.

A key aspect of Local SEO is claiming and optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) listing. Your GMB listing is what appears in local search results and Google Maps. It contains essential information about your business, including name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and customer reviews.

Make sure all your information is accurate, and use relevant local keywords in your business description. Reviews play a crucial role in local SEO, so actively encourage satisfied customers to leave a review and always respond to reviews, both positive and negative. Remember, when it comes to local SEO, consistency is key. Ensure your business information is consistent across all online platforms.

10. User Engagement: Keeping Your Audience Interested

User engagement, as it suggests, involves the way users interact with your website. Key user engagement metrics include time-on-page, pages per session, and bounce rate.

Google’s algorithms are designed to interpret these metrics and evaluate your site’s quality. For instance, a high bounce rate and low time-on-page might indicate that your site isn’t meeting visitor expectations, leading to lower rankings.

To boost user engagement, ensure your content is relevant, valuable, and easily digestible. Break up text with subheadings, images, and bullet points to make it easy to skim. Incorporating multimedia, like videos, infographics, and interactive content, can also enhance user engagement.

11. SEO-Friendly URL Structure

An SEO-friendly URL is easy for users and search engines to understand. It’s typically short, descriptive, and includes a keyword relevant to the page content.

From my experience, I’ve found that creating a simple URL structure enhances user experience and aids search engines in understanding and indexing the content. For instance, a URL like “www.yourwebsite.com/seo-principles” is much more SEO-friendly than “www.yourwebsite.com/article?id=123.”

To optimize your URLs, include your target keyword, keep them as short as possible while still being descriptive, and use hyphens to separate words.

12. Image Optimization: More Than Meets The Eye

Images aren’t just visually appealing elements of a webpage; they also carry SEO value. However, search engines can’t “see” images the way humans do. They rely on the image file name, alt text, and surrounding text to understand what an image is about.

When optimizing images, include descriptive file names and alt text. For instance, an image file name like “seo-principles.jpg” and alt text like “SEO principles diagram” provides context to search engines.

Remember, image optimization also involves ensuring your images are compressed for faster page loading times. Large, high-resolution images can slow down your page, negatively affecting user experience and SEO. Use an image compression tool to reduce file size without losing quality.

The next batch of principles will delve deeper into some advanced SEO tactics. SEO is a journey that involves continuous learning and application. Keep in mind that what works today might not work tomorrow due to changing algorithms and user behaviors.

13. Structured Data Markup: Helping Search Engines Understand Your Content

Structured data (Schema Markup) is a system of pairing a name with a value to help search engines categorize and index your content. When you use structured data markup appropriately, you help search engines understand your content better, leading to improved SERP rankings.

For example, if you run an e-commerce store and have product pages on your website, you can use structured data to provide specific details about the product such as price, availability, and review ratings. When used correctly, this data can show up in SERPs, increasing click-through rates.

There are several structured data formats, but the most commonly recommended is JSON-LD. Google provides a Structured Data Testing Tool to check if your markup is working correctly.

14. Website Security: HTTPS as a Ranking Signal

Website security is more important than ever. In 2014, Google announced HTTPS as a ranking signal, pushing more websites to adopt secure, encrypted connections. The ‘S’ in HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’, and it means that communication between your browser and the website is encrypted.

If your site isn’t already using HTTPS, I strongly recommend switching. Not only does it provide security for your site visitors, but it can also give you a slight ranking advantage.

15. Voice Search Optimization: The Future of Search

With the rise of digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, voice search has seen explosive growth. To optimize for voice search, consider the natural language queries users might say rather than type.

For example, a user might type “best Italian restaurant NYC” but say “What’s the best Italian restaurant in New York City?”. Frequently asked questions and local search optimizations play a crucial role in voice search.

16. Content Freshness: Keeping Content Up-to-Date

Google prefers fresh, updated content. This doesn’t mean you always need to create new content. Sometimes, updating your existing content, like adding recent information or enhancing the content with multimedia, can significantly boost your rankings.

This is especially true for topics that evolve over time. For instance, a post about “SEO best practices” would need regular updates as the practices change and evolve.

17. Page Speed: Faster Pages, Better Rankings

Page speed has been a Google ranking factor since 2010. The faster your site loads, the better. Users have a short attention span, and if your site doesn’t load quickly, they’re likely to leave.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is a great starting point to check your website’s speed. It not only shows how fast your website loads on both desktop and mobile devices but also provides recommendations for improvement.

Remember, every second count. A delay of even a few seconds can lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversions.

18. XML Sitemaps: Guiding Search Engines Through Your Site

An XML sitemap is like a roadmap of your website that leads search engines to all your important pages. XML sitemaps can be especially helpful if your site is hard for search engines to crawl, for example, if you have a large website or if your site is new and has few external links.

Google Search Console allows you to submit your sitemap directly to Google, helping it discover and index your pages more efficiently.

19. Mobile-First Indexing: Prioritizing the Mobile Experience

Mobile-first indexing has been the default for all new web domains since July 2019, which means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. This shift came in response to the growing number of users accessing the web from mobile devices.

To ensure your site is ready for mobile-first indexing, you need a responsive design that works well on all device sizes. The content and links should be consistent on both mobile and desktop versions. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool can help determine if your site is up to scratch.

20. E-E-A-T: Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness

E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness

Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness, commonly known as E-E-A-T, are integral to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, which are employed by human evaluators to rate the quality of search results. In essence, E-A-T acts as a framework for assessing the quality of content, which indirectly influences a website’s ranking on Google’s search engine.

Experience

Experience is demonstrating that you have first hand user experience in the filed on which your writing about in your content. This could be a specific review based on your experience using a particular product, or it could refer to your experience working decades in a particular industry or sector.

Expertise

Expertise refers to the level of knowledge or skill in a particular area. If your website provides medical information, it should be evident that a healthcare professional has written the content. Similarly, a website giving financial advice should showcase financial expertise.

To demonstrate expertise, ensure that the content is accurate, in-depth, and provides value to your audience. The author’s credentials should be clearly visible, and the content should be presented in a way that showcases the author’s knowledge and skill in the subject matter.

Authority

Authority relates to the recognition of your website or an author in their field. An authoritative website is one that has been widely acknowledged by its peers, industry leaders, and audience.

Building authority doesn’t happen overnight. It involves consistently producing high-quality, engaging content that’s recognized by both your audience and other reputable figures or websites in your industry. Guest blogging, being mentioned or linked by authoritative websites, receiving positive reviews, and having an engaged social media presence are indicators of authority. Other websites linking to your website goes a long way with developing authority,

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness is about building confidence with your audience. Your website should be secure (HTTPS), provide accurate and transparent information about your business (contact information, physical location, etc.), and be upfront about its policies (privacy policy, return policy, etc.).

Trustworthiness also extends to content. The information you provide should be reliable and truthful. If you’re quoting statistics or studies, always provide a source. If you’re selling products, be transparent about the features, benefits, and possible drawbacks.

Achieving a high E-E-A-T score involves a holistic, long-term approach to SEO, focusing on creating a superior user experience, showcasing expertise, building authority, and fostering trustworthiness. It’s not an overnight process, but the rewards in terms of improved ranking, increased traffic, and building a loyal audience base are immense.

21. SEO Auditing: Regular Check-Ups for Your Site

SEO auditing is an essential process where you evaluate your site’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of search engine optimization fundamentals. Regular audits allow you to uncover technical issues, outdated content, and opportunities for improvement.

A comprehensive SEO audit involves reviewing several areas: technical SEO (like site speed and mobile-friendliness), on-page SEO (such as content quality and keyword optimization), off-page SEO (including backlink profile), and user experience.

There are numerous tools available, both free and paid, that can assist you in conducting an effective SEO audit.

22. International SEO: Expanding Your Reach

If your business operates in multiple countries or languages, international SEO is a principle you cannot afford to ignore. It involves optimizing your site so search engines can identify the countries you wish to reach and the languages you use.

Hreflang tags, for instance, help ensure that the correct language version of a webpage is served to users. Additionally, having separate country-specific domains can help your site rank better in those countries.

23. Semantic SEO: Understanding Search Intent

Semantic SEO involves optimizing your content based on the meaning behind user queries rather than focusing solely on the keywords. With the advent of Google’s Hummingbird and RankBrain algorithms, the search engine has become better at understanding the context and intent behind a search query.

For instance, if someone searches for “apple”, are they looking for information about the fruit or the tech company? Semantic SEO involves providing clear context in your content to help search engines understand it better.

24. Core Web Vitals: A New Ranking Signal

Core Web Vitals, introduced in 2020, are a set of metrics that measure the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a webpage. They are part of Google’s page experience signals and include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

To optimize your Core Web Vitals, you should aim to have LCP under 2.5 seconds, FID under 100 milliseconds, and CLS under 0.1.

You can text your website’s web vitals on Google’s website: https://web.dev/vitals/.

25. SEO Training and Keeping Up-to-Date

The world of search engine optimization is constantly changing. What worked yesterday might not work today. As an SEO professional, you need to continuously learn, adapt, and evolve. This means regularly reading SEO news, attending webinars and conferences, taking courses, and networking with other professionals in the field.

Whether you’re new to SEO or a seasoned pro, there’s always more to learn. I can’t stress this enough: staying on top of the latest trends and algorithm updates is not just beneficial – it’s essential.

Conclusion

By now, you should have an understanding of these 25 core principles of SEO.

Remember, these principles are just the beginning. search engine optimization is a journey, not a destination. Keep learning, stay curious, and most importantly, don’t be afraid to experiment. SEO is as much an art as it is a science.