12 Best SEO Practices to Rank Higher in 2024

Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for ensuring your website or blog ranks higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). With the everchanging algorithms used by search engines like Google, staying uptodate with the latest SEO trends and best practices is essential. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the 12 best SEO practices you should implement to boost your rankings and attract more organic traffic in 2024.

These strategies will help you optimize your website for both users and search engines, giving you a competitive edge in your niche.

1. Focus on User Experience (UX) and Core Web Vitals

Google has made it clear that user experience (UX) is a critical ranking factor. Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics introduced by Google, measure how users experience the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a page. By improving these factors, you increase your chances of ranking higher.

Why UX and Core Web Vitals Matter
Google’s algorithm prioritizes websites that provide a seamless and enjoyable user experience. Core Web Vitals specifically measure loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint), interactivity (First Input Delay), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift). If your website offers a positive experience for users, they are more likely to stay longer, lowering bounce rates and increasing engagement.

How to Improve UX and Core Web Vitals
Improve page speed by optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing code.
Enhance mobile responsiveness so that your site looks great and works well on all devices.
Eliminate intrusive popups or elements that disrupt the user experience.
Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse to track your Core Web Vitals and make necessary improvements.

Tips for Success
Monitor your website’s performance regularly and make incremental changes to improve load times and responsiveness. Focus on creating a clean, userfriendly design that enhances engagement.

2. Optimize for MobileFirst Indexing

In 2024, mobile optimization will continue to be crucial. Google uses mobilefirst indexing, which means it primarily uses the mobile version of a website for ranking and indexing. Ensuring your site is fully optimized for mobile devices is no longer optional—it’s a necessity.

Why Mobile Optimization is Important
With more than half of all internet traffic coming from mobile devices, Google wants to deliver the best possible experience to mobile users. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, it could hurt your rankings, no matter how good your content is.

How to Optimize for MobileFirst Indexing
Use a responsive design that adjusts to different screen sizes.
Ensure that all elements, such as images, buttons, and text, are mobilefriendly.
Avoid using Flash or other outdated technologies that mobile devices don’t support.
Make sure your page load times are fast on mobile devices by compressing images and using lazy loading for media.

Tips for Success
Test your website on multiple devices to ensure it looks and functions well on smartphones and tablets. Google’s MobileFriendly Test is an excellent tool to check whether your website meets mobile optimization standards.

3. Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

Keyword research remains one of the foundational elements of SEO. However, it’s essential to focus on intentdriven keyword research to match what users are searching for. In 2024, you should concentrate on understanding the searcher’s intent behind the keywords.

Why Keyword Research is Critical
Using the right keywords ensures that your content is discoverable by your target audience. Optimizing for the wrong keywords, however, can lead to lowquality traffic or none at all.

How to Conduct Effective Keyword Research
Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find highvolume, lowcompetition keywords.
Focus on longtail keywords, which are more specific and often have higher conversion rates.
Analyze the search intent behind keywords—are users looking for information (informational), products to buy (transactional), or to compare options (navigational)?
Monitor competitor keywords to identify gaps in your content strategy.

Tips for Success
Continuously update your keyword research to keep up with trends and changes in your audience’s behavior. Make sure your keywords are naturally integrated into your content, titles, and meta descriptions without keyword stuffing.

4. Create HighQuality, LongForm Content

Content is still king, and highquality, longform content tends to perform better in search rankings. Google favors comprehensive, indepth articles that provide significant value to readers. Longer content generally ranks higher because it covers topics more thoroughly and can naturally include a variety of keywords.

Why LongForm Content is Important
Longer content gives you more opportunities to engage readers, cover a topic indepth, and target multiple keywords. This type of content is also more likely to earn backlinks, which further boosts your SEO.

How to Create HighQuality LongForm Content
Focus on creating blog posts or articles that are 1,500 to 3,000 words in length.
Break up the content with subheadings, bullet points, and images to improve readability.
Ensure the content is original, wellresearched, and informative.
Include internal links to other related articles on your site to keep readers engaged longer.

Tips for Success
Use tools like Hemingway Editor and Grammarly to improve the readability of your content. Keep your longform posts uptodate by adding new information or revising old data.

5. Focus on EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)

Google’s algorithm takes into account the EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) of a website when determining rankings. This is especially important for content related to finance, health, and other sensitive topics where accuracy is crucial.

Why EAT is a Ranking Factor
Google wants to ensure that the content it promotes is credible and trustworthy. Websites with strong EAT signals are more likely to rank higher, especially in niches like health, law, and finance where misinformation can be harmful.

How to Improve EAT
Showcase your expertise by highlighting credentials, including author bios, and providing citations from credible sources.
Build authoritativeness by earning backlinks from other highauthority sites in your niche.
Strengthen trustworthiness by ensuring that your website has secure HTTPS encryption and clear privacy policies.

Tips for Success
Establish yourself as an authority in your niche by consistently producing accurate, highquality content. Collaborate with other reputable sites to build credibility and earn more backlinks.

6. Optimize for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are those short pieces of information that appear at the top of Google search results in response to a query. Optimizing your content to appear in a featured snippet can significantly boost your visibility and drive traffic to your website.

Why Featured Snippets are Important
Featured snippets (also known as position zero) get a prominent spot at the top of search results, often above even the first organic search result. Being featured can drive substantial traffic to your blog or website, as it directly answers users’ queries.

How to Optimize for Featured Snippets
Use a questionandanswer format in your content, as many snippets come from FAQs or lists.
Structure your content with short, concise paragraphs that provide clear answers to questions.
Use bulleted or numbered lists when appropriate, as these formats often appear in featured snippets.
Focus on longtail keywords that are commonly used in voice search, as these queries are often served by featured snippets.

Tips for Success
Monitor which keywords in your niche generate featured snippets and tailor your content to answer those queries in a clear, concise manner.

7. Improve Page Speed

Page speed has always been an essential factor in SEO, and it continues to be a ranking signal in 2024. Slowloading pages frustrate users and can result in higher bounce rates, which negatively impact your rankings.

Why Page Speed Matters
A fast website provides a better user experience, leading to lower bounce rates and higher engagement. Additionally, Google has confirmed that page speed is a ranking factor, particularly for mobile searches.

How to Improve Page Speed
Optimize your images by compressing them without sacrificing quality.
Use browser caching to reduce load times for repeat visitors.
Minimize HTTP requests by reducing the number of elements on each page.
Enable lazy loading so that images and videos load only when the user scrolls to them.

Tips for Success
Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights or GTMetrix to analyze your website’s speed and follow the recommendations to improve performance.

8. Leverage Internal Linking

Internal linking is the practice of linking to other pages or posts on your website. This not only helps users navigate your site more easily but also improves your SEO by distributing link equity across your site.

Why Internal Linking is Effective
Internal links help search engines understand the structure of your website and the importance of individual pages. By strategically linking your content, you can improve the visibility of your highpriority pages and keep users engaged for longer.

How to Implement Internal Linking
Add links to relevant content within your blog posts or articles.
Use descriptive anchor text that tells users and search engines what the linked page is about.
Regularly audit your content to identify opportunities for additional internal links.

Tips for Success
Ensure that your internal links provide value to users by directing them to related, useful content. Avoid overloading a single page with too many links, which can be confusing to readers.

9. Use Schema Markup Schema markup

is a type of structured data that you can add to your website’s HTML to improve how search engines read and represent your content. By using schema, you increase the chances of your content appearing in rich results like reviews, recipes, or event listings.

Why Schema Markup is Important
Schema markup helps search engines better understand your content, allowing them to present it in more meaningful ways, such as rich snippets, which can improve your clickthrough rate (CTR).

How to Use Schema Markup
Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to add schema to your website.
Implement specific schema types like FAQ schema, review schema, or product schema depending on your content.
Test your schema markup using Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure it’s implemented correctly.

Tips for Success
Start by implementing schema on your most important pages, such as product pages, blog posts, and FAQs. Over time, expand schema markup across your entire site.

10. Earn HighQuality Backlinks

Backlinks from authoritative websites signal to Google that your content is trustworthy and valuable. The more highquality backlinks you have, the better your chances of ranking higher in search results.

Why Backlinks are Crucial
Google views backlinks as endorsements of your content. If reputable sites link to your blog or website, it shows that your content is reliable, helping to boost your rankings.

How to Earn Backlinks
Create highquality, shareable content that others will want to link to.
Guest post on authoritative blogs in your niche and include a link back to your site.
Reach out to influencers or industry leaders who may be interested in sharing your content.
Create infographics or other valuable resources that others will link to.

Tips for Success
Avoid blackhat SEO tactics like buying backlinks or using link farms. Focus on building organic, highquality links that will enhance your site’s credibility.

11. Optimize for Voice Search

With the rise of voiceactivated devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo, optimizing for voice search is becoming increasingly important. Voice searches tend to be more conversational and longtail, so adapting your content to match these queries is essential.

Why Voice Search is Growing
More people are using voice search to find information quickly. As a result, optimizing for voice search can help you capture this growing audience and stay ahead of the competition.

How to Optimize for Voice Search
Use natural language and focus on longtail keywords that mimic how people speak.
Create content that directly answers questions, as most voice searches are questionbased.
Optimize for local SEO, as many voice searches are local queries (e.g., “best coffee shop near me”).

Tips for Success
Include a dedicated FAQ section on your blog or website to answer common questions and improve your chances of appearing in voice search results.

12. Monitor and Update Content Regularly

SEO isn’t a oneanddone task. You need to continuously monitor your content’s performance and make updates to ensure it remains relevant and optimized for search engines.

Why Regular Content Updates Matter
Google favors fresh, uptodate content. By revisiting and refreshing older posts, you can improve their rankings and attract more traffic over time.

How to Monitor and Update Content
Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor how your content is performing.
Identify pages that are underperforming or have outdated information, and update them with fresh content.
Regularly refresh your target keywords and make sure your content aligns with current search trends.

Tips for Success
Create a content calendar that includes regular audits of your site’s content. Set reminders to review and update old posts every few months to keep them optimized and relevant.

FAQs