How to Optimize your SEO in JUST 8 HOURS

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Some agencies love to take weeks to define a strategy. But what if I told you that you just need ONE DAY to do that? There’s a condition, though.

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Building an SEO strategy in a day is about being organized and focusing on the most impactful tasks. Plus, it’s all about taking action. So… let’s start NOW

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MORNING Keyword Research & Competitor Analysis.

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Keyword Research & Competitor Analysis: Start by identifying the keywords your target audience is searching for. Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Keyword Planner to find high-traffic, low-competition keywords. Then, analyze your top competitors to understand their keyword strategy and find gaps you can exploit.

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ACTION : Make a list of 20–30 relevant keywords to target.

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MID-MORNING Technical SEO Audit

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Technical SEO Audit Use tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console to perform a quick audit of your website. Look for issues like broken links, slow loading times, or missing meta tags (title & description). Fix these issues to make sure that search engines can easily crawl and index your site.

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ACTION Fix 3–5 technical SEO issues identified in the audit.

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LUNCHTIME SEO Content Strategy

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SEO Content Strategy Plan out your content based on the keywords you identified. Decide on the types of content you will create (blogs, videos, infographics) and map out a content calendar. Make sure your content is aligned with the needs and interests of your audience.

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ACTION Outline 3-4 content pieces around your main keywords.

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AFTERNOON On-Page Optimisation

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On-Page Optimization Focus on optimizing the key elements of your web pages. Don’t spread yourself too thin. This includes title tags, meta descriptions, headers (H1, H2, etc.), images, and internal linking. Make sure each page is optimized for the specific keyword you’re targeting + use secondary keywords.

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ACTION Optimize the top 5 most important pages on your site.

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LATE AFTERNOON Backlink Strategy

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Define a Backlink Strategy Identify easy backlink opportunities, such as reclaiming unlinked brand mentions or submitting your site to relevant directories. Reach out to existing partners or use press releases or HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to gain high-quality backlinks.

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ACTION Reach out to 5 sites for backlink opportunities.

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EARLY EVENING Local SEO and Social Media.

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Local SEO and Social Media If you have a local business, optimize your Google My Business listing and get listed in local directories. Use social media to share your content and build a community. SEO-wise, engaging with your audience on social platforms can drive traffic and backlinks.

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ACTION Optimize your Google My Business profile and schedule 3 social media posts.

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EVENING Review and Set KPIs

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Review and Set KPIs Wrap up your day by reviewing the work you’ve done. Set clear KPIs to measure the success of your strategy.

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ACTION Set 3-5 KPIs to track over the next month.

My advice?
Just do your best! Define the best strategy for your website, but don’t try to tick all boxes.

WWhen we hear the word SEO, most of us think about just optimizing websites with keywords or building backlinks. But SEO is so much more than that. In fact, it has grown into dozens of specialized practices-each with its own goals, techniques, and tools.

If you’re a marketer, recruiter, business owner, or content creator, understanding the different types of SEO can help you choose the right strategy for your goals. Let’s break down the 51 types of SEO into categories.

General SEO

These are the foundations of search engine optimization:

1. On-page SEO: Optimizing page content, meta tags, titles, and internal linking.
2. Off-page SEO: Building backlinks, brand mentions, and authority outside your website.
3. Technical SEO: Making sure your website’s backend is search-engine friendly (site speed, indexing, crawlability, etc.).

Technical SEO Variations

Technology shapes how search engines crawl and understand websites. Here are some specialized branches:

4. Mobile SEO: Ensuring websites are mobile-friendly.
5. Accessibility SEO: Optimizing for users with disabilities (e.g., screen readers).
6. Edge SEO: Using server-side optimizations and edge computing.
7. JavaScript SEO: Making JS-heavy websites crawlable.
8. React SEO / Next.js SEO / Headless SEO: SEO for modern frameworks and headless CMS platforms.

Content SEO

Content is still king, but SEO helps it shine:

9. Landing Page SEO: Optimizing pages designed to convert.
10. Blog SEO: Structuring blog content for both readers and search engines.
11. Content SEO: Overall content strategy for keyword ratio relevance.
12. Semantic SEO: Targeting search intent and meaning behind queries.
13. Multimedia SEO: Optimizing images, videos, and infographics.

Local & International SEO

Businesses with physical locations or global reach need specialized strategies:

14. Local SEO: Getting found in Google Maps and “near me” searches.
15. International SEO: Targeting global markets.
16. Multi-lingual SEO: Optimizing websites in multiple languages.

Platform-Specific SEO

Different platforms need different strategies:

17. eCommerce SEO: Optimizing online stores.
18. YouTube SEO: Ranking videos on YouTube and Google.
19. App Store SEO (ASO): Making apps visible in app stores.
20. Amazon SEO / Etsy SEO / Shopify SEO / Squarespace SEO / WordPress SEO / Wix SEO: Tailoring strategies to specific platforms.
21. Social Media SEO: Boosting visibility of social content.
22. News SEO / Google Discover SEO: Getting content featured in news and discovery feeds.
23. Yep SEO : A fun nod to Ahrefs’ own search engine!

Specialized SEO Types

These focus on unique use cases:

24. Image SEO / Video SEO:Optimizing media for search.
25. Programmatic SEO: Scaling SEO with automation.
26. Holiday SEO: Seasonal campaigns (Black Friday, Christmas, etc.).
27. Featured Snippet SEO: Winning position zero.
28. Long-tail SEO: Targeting niche queries with lower competition.
29. SaaS SEO / Enterprise SEO / Niche SEO: Tailored to business models.
30. Voice SEO: Preparing for voice search queries.
31. AI SEO: Leveraging artificial intelligence tools.
32. Taxonomy SEO: Structuring site categories and tags.

SEO Philosophies

Finally, SEO isn’t just about tactics—it’s also about approach:

33. White Hat SEO: Ethical, long-term strategies.
34. Black Hat SEO: Aggressive, often risky tactics.
35. Grey Hat SEO: A mix of both worlds.
36. Negative SEO: Harmful tactics used against competitors.
37. Sustainable SEO: Eco-conscious, long-term strategies.
38. Continuous SEO: Ongoing optimization.
39. DIY SEO: Do-it-yourself SEO for small businesses.
40. Holistic SEO: Looking at SEO as part of a bigger digital ecosystem.

Final Thoughts

SEO is no longer a “one-size-fits-all” discipline. Whether you’re running an online store, growing a SaaS company, or just trying to get more visibility for your blog, there’s a specific type of SEO that can help.

The key is to choose the right mix of strategies, stay updated with trends, and always focus on adding value to your audience.

IIf you’ve been following me for some time, you know I post a lot about GSC, and for good reason too; it’s probably one of the most powerful tools in SEO

Google Search Console

This audit will help you find any issues with indexing, crawling, discovery, rendering, ranking, and content quality on your site

Let’s jump right in

Indexing

First things first, you’ll want to check that the right pages are being indexed. Check that you’re not indexing any unnecessary items like tags.

Check if there’s a high volume of Excluded URLs

Most commonly URLs that should be indexed will sit in discovered and crawled, not indexed. You’ll want to find ways to get those pages indexed (I’ll cover this in a few slides)

Is Google Respecting Your Canonicals?

Duplicate, Google chose different canonical” means Google chose another URL as the canonical and not your user-selected canonical.

You’ll also want to make sure you have a canonical tag set, otherwise, Google will choose one for you or let it sit in excluded.

Do You Have “Noindex Tags” Added to the Wrong Pages?

While rare, you’ll want to check that none of your priority URLs have a noindex tag applied to them… it happens more often than you’d think.

Can Google Successfully Access and Read Your Sitemap?

Add your sitemap here if nothing has been submitted yet.

Do You Have Pages Sitting in Discovered or Crawled, Not Indexed?

This is basically Google’s version of purgatory. As always, it depends, but I’ve found improving content quality and internal linking helps with these pages.

You’ll also want to request these URLs to be recrawled after you update them.

Is Google Excluding the Right URLs from your Robots.txt

This likely won’t be an issue if you set your robots.txt up right, but still worth a quick look.

Crawl Stats

Here you can access different stats on how Google interacts with your website

It’s Settings > Crawl Stats > Open Report

Any Spikes or Drops in Crawl Trends?

This crawl trend is worth keeping an eye out for any crawling or server-related issues

By Response

Is Google coming across a high volume of 3xx or 4xx responses?

You’ll also want to check that you’re not internally linking to any of these

Are New Pages on Your Website Being Discovered?

Here you can check whether Google is having any issues discovering and crawling new pages

By File Type

Here you can see which resources Google is crawling the most and if it’s causing any crawling issues like a slower response time.

By Googlebot Type

Here you can see which Googlebots are crawling your site

Look for any fluctuations, specifically with page resource load as it may indicate a rendering issue

Has the Website Been Hit With a Manual Penalty?

As always, you should check if your website has ever been hit with a manual penalty.

These are still pretty rare, but it will absolutely debilitate your SEO efforts if it’s still there.

Is Your Schema Being Read Properly?

Depending on the type of schema you use, you’ll want to check the “enhancements” tab to see if it’s being read properly.

Core Web Vitals

While the page experience and mobile usability tabs are leaving GSC, Core Web Vitals will still be around.

Remember, don’t use SEO as an excuse to update page experience and CWV, you should optimize for it regardless for your users.

Internal and External Links

Use the links tab to find pages with high volumes of external and internal links pointing toward them.

You can use these URLs as a base when looking for internal link opportunities.

Traffic Drop Analysis

Has your website seen a drop in either positioning, impression, or clicks?

You’ll want to use this report to find and fix that.

Just use the date filter to compare different ranges of time.

Low-Hanging Fruit Pages

You see this one get posted all the time on LinkedIn

These are queries on your website that rank between 4-20

These are essentially quick wins you can go after with a little bit of work

Cannibalizing Pages

To check keyword cannibalization, all you need to do is enter your exact query and check the page tab to see if multiple URLs are appearing

From there, you’ll want to take these URLs to the SERPs to see if their results are the same

Do you have any outdated content on your website?

Set a date filter for the last 28 days and enter a query filter for a year (2020, 2021, 2022)

You’ll find a list of queries on your site that are still ranking for previous years.

Content with Potential

Similar to the LHF pages, these are queries on your website that have potential (high impressions) but will need a full makeover to see movement.

These will likely be ranking in positions 40–60… always remember to check the intent of those pages.

High Impressions and Positioning, Low CTR

These pages are pages that very likely could drive traffic but aren’t for some reason. This could be due to boring titles and meta descriptions, but luckily this is a quick fix.

Content Audits

If you have been consistently creating content, you likely have a few duds in there.

Why not turn garbage into gold with a quick content audit

You’ll basically want to look for content with 0 clicks and low impressions over the last 16 months that you can delete or merge into relevant pages.

That’s It! Just to Recap

Just to recap, GSC is one of the best (FREE) SEO tools you have access too.

When it comes to anything discovery, crawling, indexing, rendering, and content performance, GSC will be your best friend.

Introduction

IIf your website isn’t ranking the way it should, it’s probably time for an SEO audit. Think of it like a health check-up for your site—it helps you uncover what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s holding you back in the search results. Whether you’re trying to boost organic traffic, fix indexing issues, or just get a clearer picture of your site’s performance, a thorough SEO audit can uncover powerful opportunities for growth. In this guide, I’ll walk you through 18 essential steps to perform a complete SEO audit—tools included—so you can take action right away.

The tool you need

• Audit tool like Semrush Site Audit
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Google Schema Markup Testing Tool

Basics — The Things You 100% Must Check

• Benchmark your rankings and understand your competitors
• Check for duplicate versions of your site in Google’s Index
• Check your site’s indexed URLs
• Check for manual actions
• Analyze your site’s speed
• Confirm that your site uses HTTPS
• Check for mobile-friendliness issues
• Analyze and resolve further indexation issues
• Understand your site’s page experience
• Audit your on-page SEO

SEO Audit Quick Wins

• Fix broken internal links
• Clean up your sitemap
• Check your redirects

Auditing Content

• Find and fix duplicate content issues
• Identify thin content pages
• Fix issues with orphan pages
• Compare your content to top ranking pages & analyze searcher intent
• Run a Backlink Audit

Conclusion

Doing an SEO audit doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. Once you break it into steps—like we’ve done here—it’s really just about getting a clear picture of how your site’s performing and spotting areas where you can improve. Some fixes might be quick wins, others might take more time, but all of them move you in the right direction.

The key is consistency. Don’t just audit once and forget about it—make it part of your regular website maintenance. Over time, you’ll catch issues early, stay ahead of algorithm changes, and keep your content in line with what your audience (and Google) actually wants.

If you’ve got any questions or tips from your own audits, feel free to share—always happy to swap notes.

Crawlability & Indexability

AAchieving strong visibility in search engines starts with a technically sound, content-rich, and user-friendly website. In this comprehensive guide, we walk you through a detailed SEO audit framework that covers everything from crawlability and site structure to content optimization, mobile readiness, and international SEO. Whether you’re uncovering hidden issues in your robots.txt file or fine-tuning your hreflang implementation, this roadmap highlights the most critical technical and on-page SEO elements that can make or break your organic performance.

Robots.txt

• Format errors in robots.txt
• Invalid structured data items
• Issues with blocked internal resources in robots.txt
• Issues with blocked external resources in robots.txt
• Robots.txt not found
• Pages blocked by X-Robots-Tag: noindex HTTP header
• Pages were blocked from crawling

URL Structure

• Malformed links
• Underscores in the URL
• Too many parameters in URLs
• URL is too long
• User-friendly first, then search engine-friendly
• Concise
• Punctuated correctly
• Consistent
• Avoid repeating keywords

Links

• Broken internal links
• Pages with only one incoming internal link source
• Pages that need more than 3 clicks to be reached

Internal Linking

• Identify Orphan Pages
• Fix Redirected / Broken Links
• Relevance
• Anchor Text
• Remove Internal Links to Unimportant Pages
• Internal Link Position

Redirects

• Pages returning 4XX status code
• Pages returning 5XX status code
• WWW domain configured incorrectly
• Redirect chains and loops
• Pages with a meta refresh redirect tag
• Broken canonical link
• Multiple canonical URLs
• Pages with temporary redirects
• Internal links with nofollow attributes
• Too many on-page links
• Broken external links
• External links with nofollow attributes
• URLs with a permanent redirect

Sitemap

• Format errors in sitemap.xml
• Wrong pages found in sitemap.xml
• Sitemap.xml files are too large
• Sitemap.xml not found
• Sitemap.xml not indicated in robots.txt
• Orphaned pages in sitemap
• Orphaned pages from Google Analytics

On-Page SEO

Page Title Optimization

• Compelling and engaging
• Short, sweet, and descriptive
• Unique
• Not too long
• Optimized for your primary keyword
• Add your primary keyword towards the front

Content

• Missing or empty title tags
• Issues with duplicate title tags
• Duplicate H1 and title tags
• Title tag is too long
• Title tag is too short
• Write As You Talk
• Target Your Audience Pain Point
• Analyze the Heading
• Use Sub Headings and Bullet Points
• Use Table of Content
• Avoid Plagiarism
• Write for Content Salesy
• Avoid Keyword Stuffing
• Add Relevant CTA
• Keep the Vocabulary Simple
• Remove Duplicate Content

Heading Optimization

H1 Heading

• Missing H1 heading
• Duplicate H1 and title tags
• You only have one H1 tag
• Your heading describes what your page is about
• They aren’t too long
• They aren’t too short either
• They grab the user’s attention
• Try to include the primary keyword you want to target

H2-H6 Heading

• Are meaningful
• Include long-tail keywords
• Answer subtopics required to answer the main search query
• Accurately summarizes your content
• Are optimized with your primary keyword
• Are engaging
• Aren’t too long

Meta Description

• Duplicate meta descriptions
• Missing meta descriptions

Image

• Broken internal images
• Broken external images
• Images missing alt attribute
• Resources formatted as page link
• Descriptive
• Not too long
• Optimized for your keywords

Technical SEO

Page Speed

• Large HTML size
• Slow page load speed
• Uncompressed pages
• Issues with uncompressed JavaScript and CSS files
• Pages have a JavaScript and CSS total size that is too large
• Pages use too many JavaScript and CSS files
• Issues with unminified JavaScript and CSS files
• Issues with uncached JavaScript and CSS files
• Issues with broken external JavaScript and CSS files

Core Web Vitals

• Pages that take more than 1 second to become interactive

Old Technology

• Frames used
• Doctype not declared
• Incompatible plugin content

Mobile

• Missing viewport tag
• Missing the viewport width value
• AMP pages with HTML issues
• AMP pages with style and layout issues
• AMP pages with templating issues
• AMP pages have no canonical tag
• Issues with broken internal JavaScript and CSS files

HTTP Implementation

• Mixed content
• Non-secure pages
• No redirects or canonicals to HTTPS URLs from HTTP version
• SSL certificate registered to an incorrect domain name
• Old security protocol version
• Expiring or expired SSL certificate
• Subdomains don’t support secure encryption algorithms
• HTTPS pages lead to HTTP page
• Homepage doesn’t use HTTPS encryption
• HTTP URLs in sitemap.xml for HTTPS site
• Subdomains don’t support SNI
• Subdomains don’t support HSTS

International SEO

• Hreflang implementation issue
• Hreflang conflicts within page source code
• Incorrect hreflang links
• Pages with no hreflang and lang attributes
• Pages without character encoding declared
• Hreflang language mismatch issues

A successful SEO strategy starts with a solid foundation. By regularly auditing key areas like crawlability, content, page speed, and mobile performance, you’ll stay ahead of issues that could hurt your rankings. Use this roadmap as your guide, fix what matters most, and keep your site search-engine friendly and user-focused.

Causes, Consequences, and How to Fix It

HHere is a general overview of keyword cannibalization — from its definition, causes, and negative impact on SEO to how to identify and effectively fix it.

1. What is Keyword Cannibalization?
2. Why Keyword Cannibalization Hurts Your SEO
3. What Causes Keyword Cannibalization?
4. How to Identify Keyword Cannibalization
5. How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization
6. Final Thoughts

What is Keyword Cannibalization?

Keyword Cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on the same website rank for the same target keyword on Google. This confuses Google about which page to prioritize, leading to internal competition instead of keyword synergy.

Example of Keyword Cannibalization

Imagine you run a website about smartwatches and you publish the following articles:

• Article 1: “Apple Watch Series 9 Review”
• Article 2: “Should You Buy the Apple Watch Series 9?”
• Article 3: “What’s New in the Apple Watch Series 9?”

If all three articles are optimized for the same keyword “Apple Watch Series 9”, Google may struggle to decide which one deserves the top spot — resulting in lower rankings for all of them.

Why Keyword Cannibalization Hurts Your SEO

 1. It Dilutes Your Rankings When several of your pages compete for the same keyword, Google doesn’t know which one to rank higher — reducing the potential performance of all pages involved.

 2. It Splits Backlink Authority Instead of consolidating backlinks to one authoritative page, the links are spread across multiple pages, weakening your SEO power.

 3. It Confuses Users Users might see multiple similar pages from your site on search results and struggle to decide which one to click, lowering your CTR (click-through rate) and conversions.

 4. It Can Trigger Duplicate Content Penalties Google may treat similar pages as duplicate content, potentially triggering penalties under Google’s Panda algorithm and harming your site’s reputation.

What Causes Keyword Cannibalization?

1. Creating Too Many Articles on the Same Topic Publishing several posts that target the same keyword without clear distinction or structure is a common mistake among beginner SEO practitioners.

2. Lack of a Clear Keyword Strategy Without proper keyword research and content planning, it’s easy to accidentally create overlapping content.

3. Poor Website Structure When your website lacks content hierarchy (like pillar vs. supporting pages), Google can’t determine which page to rank for a keyword.

How to Identify Keyword Cannibalization

Method 1: Use Google Search Console Go to Google Search Console > Performance Check if a single keyword is associated with multiple URLs on your site.

Method 2: Use SEO Tools (Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc.) Analyze your keyword rankings in tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush. If multiple URLs rank for the same keyword, that’s a red flag.

Method 3: Use Google Search Operators Use this search query format: site:yourwebsite.com “your target keyword”

Example: To check if you have cannibalization for the keyword “running shoes” on your site: site:sportshub.com “running shoes”

If you see several different pages from your site appearing for the same keyword, you might have a cannibalization issue.

How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization

1. Merge Similar Content (Content Consolidation)

If you have multiple articles covering similar content, combine them into a single comprehensive post.

Before merging:

• Article A: “How to Choose the Best Running Shoes”
• Article B: “Top Running Shoes You Should Buy in 2024”

After merging:

• New article: “How to Choose the Best Running Shoes + 10 Expert Picks for 2024”

This removes keyword overlap and builds stronger topical authority.

2. Optimize Internal Linking

Use internal links strategically to direct authority toward your main target page.

Example:
If you have multiple product reviews for the iPhone 15, link them all to your main “Ultimate iPhone 15 Review” article. This helps guide both users and search engines.

3. Re-optimize Content for Different Keyword Intents

If you don’t want to merge content, ensure each page targets different keywords or user intents.

Example:

• Article A: “iPhone 15 Camera Review: What’s New?”
• Article B: “iPhone 15 vs iPhone 14: Is It Worth Upgrading?”

Though both cover the iPhone 15, they serve different search intents, so Google is less likely to view them as duplicates.

Final Thoughts

Keyword cannibalization hurts your SEO by making pages compete for the same keyword. To fix it, audit your content, merge similar pages, optimize internal links, and target different keyword intents. Regular checks with tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs can help you spot issues early. Clean, focused content boosts rankings – so stay organized and strategic.