62: Building Healthy SEO Habits - Part 1: Introduction

Summary

This episode emphasizes the importance of cultivating healthy SEO habits for long-term website performance. Meredith’s husband breaks down five key areas of focus: website health, measurement, content quality, link building, and content creation. These habits help maintain site performance and rankings by avoiding shortcuts and ensuring consistent improvements. Website owners can benefit from ongoing SEO maintenance and a proactive approach to content and link opportunities.

Blog Post: Building Healthy SEO Habits for Long-Term Success

In the world of SEO, it's easy to get caught up in quick fixes and overnight solutions. Many website owners chase rapid results, only to find themselves disappointed when they don’t rank on page one immediately. However, just like maintaining personal health, SEO success requires healthy, consistent habits over time. In this blog post, we’ll explore five core areas that, when approached regularly, will help ensure your website's sustained growth and strong rankings.

1. Keep Your Website Healthy

Your website’s health is the foundation of good SEO. This means ensuring that the technical aspects of your site, like title tags, meta descriptions, and other on-site SEO elements, are optimized and free from issues. One of the best ways to maintain this is by running regular SEO audits using tools like SEMrush or Google Search Console. These tools will notify you of duplicate tags, broken links, or other issues that need addressing.

Healthy websites rank better because search engines favor sites that are optimized and easy to navigate. By maintaining your site’s health, you help ensure that it remains competitive in search rankings.

2. Measure What Matters

As the saying goes, “You measure what you treasure.” To improve your website’s performance, you need to track essential metrics. Using Google Analytics or other SEO tools, monitor traffic, bounce rates, and user engagement. This will help you understand what’s working and what needs improvement.

Keeping an eye on how visitors interact with your site gives you the insight needed to make data-driven decisions about your content and SEO strategy. By measuring results, you can continually refine your approach and ensure you’re targeting the right keywords and audiences.

3. Improve the Quality of Your Content

Quality always trumps quantity when it comes to SEO. Instead of constantly producing new content, revisit your best-performing blog posts or pages and look for ways to improve them. For example, if you notice a post ranking on the second page of Google, you can update it with more relevant information, add images, or create internal links to boost its ranking potential.

Improving content quality over time not only helps your SEO but also delivers better value to your audience. High-quality content keeps visitors on your site longer, reducing bounce rates and signaling to Google that your site is worth ranking.

4. Think About Links

Link building remains one of the most important SEO strategies. Internal links help users navigate your site, while external backlinks signal authority to search engines. Whenever you create new content or collaborate with others, think about how you can generate link opportunities.

If you volunteer, collaborate with businesses, or guest post, always look for ways to secure backlinks to your site. These links are vital for improving your site’s authority and helping you rank higher.

5. Stay Open to New Content Ideas

Content creation is an ongoing process. The easiest way to stay ahead is by consistently noting down content ideas as they come up in everyday interactions. For instance, when a client asks a question that others frequently ask, it might be a good topic for a blog post.

Having an “idea bank” ensures you’re never scrambling for content ideas when it’s time to write. This approach allows you to develop content that’s useful, timely, and engaging for your audience.

Key Takeaways:

• Maintain website health by regularly auditing your site for technical issues.

• Measure and track key SEO metrics to monitor progress and make data-driven decisions.

• Improve the quality of existing content to boost rankings and engagement.

• Build links consistently by looking for opportunities in everyday activities.

• Keep a running list of content ideas to ensure a steady stream of relevant, valuable posts.

By developing these healthy SEO habits, you’ll set your website up for long-term success. Avoid the temptation of quick fixes and shortcuts, and instead, focus on consistent, strategic improvements that will yield results over time.

Resources For a step-by-step guide to mastering your SEO strategy, including how to prioritize and optimize each area, check out Meredith’s husband’s SEO Roadmap.