Awesome Search Engine Optimization Ideas
A curated list of backlink, social signal opportunities, social media marketing, and referral traffic generation ideas.
If you find this site to be useful, please star and/or watch it. If you have an idea not included here, pull requests are welcomed!
General Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Articles
- John Mueller Of Google: SEO Lives & Dies With Consistency "In 2015, John Mueller said this at SMX conference. He said his top SEO advice is be consistent. He reiterated it again in 2019 and 2018 and numerous times before and after this."
- Consistency Is King In SEO While this article was written in 2010, it's still very much worth a read: "In SEO, the small stuff truly matters, and consistency is especially powerful. At the enterprise level things like page titles, internal links and duplicate content may seem almost trivial compared to the overall complexity of the site. But they are hugely important, and when well-optimized in sum can literally make or break a siteβs SEO potential."
- Google Search Essentials -- "The Google Search Essentials make up the core parts of what makes your web-based content (web pages, images, videos, or other publicly-available material that Google finds on the web) eligible to appear and perform well on Google Search"
- Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons - Moz
- Holy Grail SEO: High Volume, Low Competition Keywords -- "Instead of targeting keywords or topics that have high volume, we need to target keywords and topics that we actually have a chance to rank for, making the best use of our time and SEO efforts."
Link Building Strategies and Backlinking Ideas
- Help a Reporter Out (HARO), see also How to Get Backlinks: 11 Strategies
- Register with your local Chamber of Commerce -- the business directory may offer a backlink opportunity.
- Are Link Exchanges a Legitimate SEO Strategy in 2021?
- Google Search Central -> Link schemes note "[e]xcessive link exchanges"
- An easy way to build links (no fluff)
- Further research required, mentioned but not endorsed: Engage a link-building service (RhinoRank, Authority Builders, Crowdo).
- Create an infographic (a dated strategy) -- from What Type of Backlinks Does Your Business Really Need Right Now? : "[a]t the old KISSMetrics site, 47 infographics generated 2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains" and "...at Quicksprout, every infographic I published generated 41,487 visitors and 469 backlinks from 38 unique domains" -- when we're talking ROI creating an infographic, at least insofar as these numbers go, probably has the highest potential return. See also 12 Infographic Tips That You Wish You Knew Years Ago. See also Canva: Free infographic maker.
- Create an image and release it on a site such as Flickr under creative commons distribute with attribution as a backlink to your website (source: Creative Commons Image Link Building Strategy β Free Template). See also Using Flickr To Help Generate Backlinks.
- Add a link on a page from your company website to the project
- Add a link on a page from your blog to the project
- Twitter (social signal)
- LinkedIn Company Updates - Add a URL to the project will be available for indexing (shortened links are considered redirects by Google).
- LinkedIn Group Posts - Do NOT count as backlinks but may help to bring awareness to a project.
- LinkedIn Personal Posts - Do NOT count as backlinks but may help to bring awareness to a project.
- Write an article on _____ and backlink to the project.
- Medium.com
Medium publications may publish an your article if it meets their criteria. This would expand the audience size considerably, for example:
- HackerNoon.com has ~484k subscribers (FYI no longer on medium.com)
- PM Insider has ~18k members
- Startup Grind has ~414k members
- Better Programming has ~ 168k followers.
- [WANTED: Other publications here]
- DZone.com has ~1mm+ subscribers (TBC)
- dev.to
- reddit.com
- theserverside.com
- DevToolsDigest
- StackOverflow -- Note that (from StackOverflow), "A link to a solution is welcome, but please ensure your answer is useful without it: add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why itβs there, then quote the most relevant part of the page you're linking to in case the target page is unavailable"
- Tumblr, see also Do Tumblr links still work for SEO in 2019?
- InformIT (TBC)
- [WANTED: Other sites here]
- Medium.com
Medium publications may publish an your article if it meets their criteria. This would expand the audience size considerably, for example:
- Answer questions on Quora and link to the project.
- Answer questions
- For content generation opportunities look for questions with a large number of views and/or upvotes and develop content around that subject.
- Send email to group mailing lists (project awareness, may be indexed if the mailing list is is archived and publicly available).
- Create a video and release it on YouTube and link to the project in the description.
- Find appropriate awesome-[x] lists and add a link to your project there.
- Find complimentary projects and add the backlink to the README in a "See Also" section or where appropriate. Note that reciprocity is likely welcomed.
- Talk about the project in a podcast and request that the project backlink be added in the details.
- [Podcasts WANTED]
- Talk at a meetup.com event and request that the project backlink be added in the details.
- Post on Facebook (for referral traffic, see also https://monitorbacklinks.com/blog/seo/facebook-backlinks )
- Showcase the project including the backlink on Google My Business
- To be confirmed: Link from a document which was released for Amazon Kindle back to your website.
- Create a document with a backlink and upload it to Scribd.
- Convert your content into a YouTube educational video and submit it to the FreeCodeCamp.org channel, which has ~2.4mm subscribers.
- Present your content via EventBright (TBC if this idea has merit)
- AWS IQ members can add links to other sites in their biography -- you can see an example in my AWS IQ profile.
- In the "About" section of a project on GitHub you can add a link to your website or to the project website if it's hosted elsewhere.
- BuiltIn -- "Built In is a national community united around a shared passion for tech, offering content and career opportunities, whether you want to work at home or in office." -- see, for example, companies built in Washington, DC.
Guest Posting, Writing, Blogging, Syndication Ideas
- The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting in 2021
- Google Podcasts
- Show up in Google News
- Bing PubHub -- Note that "[b]oth news and non-news supported!"; see also Bingβs New PubHub Offers Millions Of New Site Visitors.
Technical Search Engine Optimization (Technical SEO) Articles and Videos
Technical Search Engine Optimization (Technical SEO) Testing Tools
- WebPagetest.org -- see also WPO Foundation on GitHub
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Chrome Developer Tools Lighthouse
- Google Rich Results Test
- Facebook for Developers : Sharing Debugger
- Twitter Card Validator
- LinkedIn Post Inspector
- KeyCDN http2-test
- KeyCDN brotli-test
- KeyCDN Performance Tools
- Neustar UltraTools DNS Speed Test
- GZIP and Brotli Compression Test
- CDN77 TLS Checker
- dunp lab PWA tester online -- Note that the Chrome browser Lighthouse testing tool also has PWA auditing.
- Small SEO Tools : Keyword Rank Checker
- Google AMP Test
- AMP Project Validator
- Google Webmaster Tools Robots.txt testing tool
- Crawler Test -- Used to test how custom crawlers handle edge cases such as JavaScript or Cyrilic URLs.
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Netcraft Site Report: What's that site running? Find out the infrastructure and technologies used by any site.
- BuiltWith -- Find out what websites are built with.
- httpstatus.io is a popular bulk HTTP status checker, redirect checker and header checker.
SEO Tools
- Google Trends -- "Explore what the world is searching [for]".
- SEO Learning Center / On-Site SEO / Title Tag
- Ahrefs Website "Authority" Checker
- Ahrefs Broken Link Checker
- Ahrefs Backlink Checker
- TechnicalSEO.com
- LinkWhisper: Building Smart Internal Links Just Got Easier
- FREE Hobo SEO Checklist & Task Manager (V1 .1) SEO audit template compliments of Shaun Anderson
- MonsterInsights.com Headline Analyzer tool enables you to write irresistible SEO headlines that drive traffic, shares, and rank better in search results.
On-Page SEO Tools
Local SEO Tools
- Moz Local -- Moz Local helps you easily create and manage your local business listings on Google, Facebook, and other sites to help consumers find and choose your business; see also: What is Local SEO?.
- Surfer Local -- Surfer Local is a tool for analyzing competitors and generating strategies for growing business.
Local SEO
- Local SEO: A Simple (But Complete) Guide See quote re Places "there will be an option to import data from Google My Business."
- How To Dominate The Google Snack Pack & Local SEO
Keyword Research Tools
Content Generation Tools
- ScaleNut.com Scalenut gives you a simple and scalable way to produce content that serves your business goals.
- copy.ai Experience the full power of an AI content generator that delivers premium results in seconds.
Event Announcements
- Moz Local has a publish button -- TBD regarding how effective this is at event announcements.
- Meetup.com
- Google My Business -> Posts -> Add Event
- Dev.to
- Slack Communities
- 13 Ways to Use Facebook Events for Your Brand
SEO Experts on Twitter
- Patrick Stox
- Dan Taylor
- Malte Landwehr
- Dr. Marie Haynes
- Kristina Azarenko
- Keith Goode
- Carolyn Shelby
- Chris Silver Smith
- Barry Adams
- Emily Dyson
- Sam Underwood
- Daniel Waisberg
- Cyrus Shepard
- Shaun Anderson
- Brodie Clark
SEO Threads on Twitter
- @fatjoedavies: The fastest and most effective way to increase organic traffic?
- @jaredbauman: "The easiest way to get organic backlinks is to write a blog post based on statistics or include statistics in your post. If you can incorporate your own data, even better."
- @azarchick: "The difference between fragments and hashbangs in the URLs. # vs #!"
- @azarchick: "What's the most underrated SEO tip?"
- @alexgarcia_atx: "Here are the 5 ways you should categorize your SEO-optimized articles for maximum ROI"
Niche Site-Related Threads on Twitter
Digital Marketing Threads on Twitter
Other Tools
- tiny jpg -- Don't assume that images are compressed prior to uploading them. Uncompressed images can place a significant drag on a web server so it will behoove you to compress the image before uploading it.
- 15 Awesome SEO Competitor Analysis Tools
SEO Communities
See Also
- 28 Social Media Backlinks To Increase Your Rankings In 2020
- How to Find 50 Backlink Opportunities in Just 20 Minutes
- What are Backlinks? And How to Build Them in 2020
- 20 SEO Link Building Methods for 2020
- How to Find Who Links to Your Website (and What to Do Next)
- 9 EASY Link Building Strategies (That ANYONE Can Use)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Other articles pertaining to SEO can be found at ThosPFuller.com
- How to Create SEO Friendly URLs
- 15 Smart Ways to Find Guest Posting Opportunities
- How to Build High-Quality Backlinks When Nobody Knows Your Name
- SEO Hidden Gem: How do you find out which questions your site ranks for?