Before exploring the implementation tactic of The Skeptic’s Journey, it’s important to consider its applicability. Simply put, this strategy is not for everyone or every industry. For example, gambling websites generally attract visitors due to advertisements rather than trust.

This strategy is designed for those with a skeptical audience. However, even within that demographic, the strategy may require adaption.

The Curious Case of DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean, arguably the most popular blog in the developer community, have built their reputation with information, simple, and approachable content, mostly in the form of tutorials and explainers, rarely covering their own offering.

As an alternative to major cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform, DigitalOcean—often referred to as “the big three”—offers a simplified yet still powerful approach to cloud computing.

Their content aligns well with this goal, given how good tutorials focus on making a complex topic simple and approachable. In this way, manifesting expertise and proficiency are synonymous.

I believe this to be a great example of having authority drive content efforts. As a developer myself, I’ve gained a lot of value from DigitalOcean posts, yet I don’t remember ever being explicitly told anything like “our platform provides a simple approach to cloud computing”, or phrases often used in marketing.

Instead, they highlight their solution only when it’s relevant. In a tutorial mentioning a firewall setup, they only highlight their offering like this:

Note: If your servers are running on DigitalOcean, you can optionally use DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls instead of the UFW firewall. We recommend using only one firewall at a time to avoid conflicting rules that may be difficult to debug.

There are two key takeaways from this example:

  • The use of “optionally”
    • It’s only presented as an option, not the right solution
  • No mention of the benefits
    • Although true, the text does nothing to highlight how their firewall is easier, simpler, approachable, etc.

This is a prime example of mindfully presenting information and highlighting your offering, relating specifically to their audience of developers, notoriously known for their dislike of being marketed to.

It also demonstrates another key principle understood by DigitalOcean; driving conversions through authority is a cohesive strategy. They’re confident in not just their content, but their offering.

The big three cloud platforms are great in their own way, offering a huge variety of services. But, even for experienced engineers, trying to set up a Linux server for the first time can easily take 15-30 minutes. Conversely, DigitalOcean allows even inexperienced engineers to do it in a few minutes.

This allows DigitalOcean to focus on simple and approachable tutorials, merely highlighting how they’re a cloud platform, creating the association between the two. Then, the next time an engineer experiences frustration with the complexity of “the big three”, it’s highly likely they’ll consider DigitalOcean as the “easy” option. And most importantly, they deliver.

Measuring the success by evaluating individual content pieces won’t provide useful insights, as your content may not even be the last touch-point before a reader converts. Authority-Led Content is about ensuring readers associate your brand with your core values, having readers think of your offering the next time they experience the challenges you’re solving.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that I’m in no way affiliated with DigitalOcean, I’ve simply been helped by their content many times over the years, and recognize the ingenuity of their content marketing. If anything, this section should serve as defining proof of just how effectively DigitalOcean has established authority.

Fostering Trust in The Skeptic’s Journey

trustfactors2 - Morningscore SEO tool

 

Though I’ve touched on the importance of fostering trust, I believe it to be crucial enough to warrant its own section.

Guiding the Reader’s Research Approach

I’ve mentioned how all claims should withstand scrutiny, however it is possible to influence how that scrutiny unfolds. Often, research involves either validating or disproving information. A minor yet significant difference in how your readers approach their own research.

Research for validation often appears as “Their statement makes sense, but let me just double-check”.

Research for disproval often appears as “Hmm, this doesn’t make sense. Let me check for myself”.

One approach is inherently positive, while the other is inherently negative. You lose control of the reader’s journey once they start researching, so guiding them toward positively-minded research is crucial. Depending on the topic, the implications of their approach can be significant.

Some topics will have seen little discussion, but heavily-discussed topics are bound to have resources supporting every perspective—also those going against your offering.

“EV battery life problems and limitations” will provide significantly different results than “Benefits and longevity of EV batteries”.

How to Present Your Claims

Influencing a reader’s research approach is a result of the content as a whole, but is in large part determined by how you present your claims, which can generally be done in one of two ways:

  • Providing resources and solid reasoning, with links to resources combined with carefully explaining how you’ve come to a given conclusion
  • Providing no resources or reasoning, expecting your readers to agree, as your mind, it just makes sense

Most claims fall somewhere in between. However, the first approach can create a scenario where research doesn’t feel necessary; research is only done to validate. The second approach can lead to readers disregarding the claim entirely or doing research with a skeptical and negative mindset. Additionally, providing resources and reasoning aids in manifesting expertise and proficiency.

Being Confident, Yet Receptive

Acknowledging the possibility of being wrong is often key to fostering trust when combined with all the previously mentioned principles. Providing resources and reasoning can help readers understand where your conclusions stem from, likely being more understanding if they do end up being wrong. In most instances, they’ll disagree with your statement rather than disagree with you, a major factor in fostering trust.

The biggest challenge here is to be receptive without coming across as insecure. With a risk of exposing myself, these are some of the ways I’ve approached it throughout this post:

  • “I firmly believe…”
  • “The way I see it…”
  • “It’s highly likely…”

While avoiding phrases like:

  • “I might be wrong…”
  • “This might not be right…”

I want to emphasize how I don’t view the phrasing above as “tricks for authority”. With any statement I make, I fully believe that I’m in the right. If I didn’t, I’d be wasting your time with uncertainties. However, I don’t anticipate anyone disagreeing, or if I do, I try to the best of my ability to address any disagreements.

That said, I fully acknowledge that these are opinions and interpretations based on my own knowledge and experience, and someone else may have more perspective than I have, and by extension have more insight.

Final Thoughts

Now ask yourself, what’s your reaction to this post? Does it read as someone being confident in their belief, or does it border on arrogance? Is your reaction negative or positive? If it’s negative, please reach out, I’d love to know how the phrasing can be improved. If it’s positive, then perhaps there is some sense to this approach.

Creating authority is but one part of getting new customers, it’s the part that established trust in you as a company and ensures genuine refusals. However, all this great content is useless if nobody sees it, so it’s important to also make great content that can boost people’s awareness of who you are.

In this post, you’ll be taken through a short example of how you can establish your presence with an Authority Cluster, which can then be built upon with pieces focusing on awareness. This implementation addresses each core quality of authority individually, providing a clear path for any reader, although multiple qualities can be addressed simultaneously.

The Three Steps of Authority Content Ideation

The core of your content should always seek to answer questions, ensuring relevance for the reader. Using the example of a company creating a monitoring solution for Linux servers, let’s explore how to manifest expertise, proficiency, and trust.

Manifesting expertise involves establishing your basis of existence. Identify the fundamental questions your readers may ask whenever they click on a post of yours. For a Linux monitoring solution, it could simply be “What is Linux monitoring?”. This also shows how authority and awareness aren’t mutually exclusive, as a post answering that question also has the potential to rank highly for the keyword “Linux monitoring”. It can also aid in establishing authority with search engines, given the “basic” nature of the question.

Another question could be “How do I track resource usage on Linux servers?”. (Note for non-techies: tracking resource usages like CPU and RAM is a very common concern). This question can easily lead into the question “What are the inefficiencies of current resource tracking solutions?”, where you can showcase proficiency.

Manifesting proficiency highlights your reason for existence, which in this example, is to solve the inefficiencies of current solutions. Focus on why your offering is necessary rather than promoting it. Mentions of your offering come when the reader then asks “How do I mitigate the inefficiencies of current solutions?”.

Leveraging trust builds on the credibility established by answering the previous solutions. Highlight your solution when the reader asks, using other content to guide them toward asking. People prefer their own ideas, so creating a situation where the reader genuinely wants to know about your offering is highly beneficial.

Using the answer of one question to generate new questions helps address different levels of knowledge, while ensuring that your content ties together cohesively. This is what I refer to as an “authority cluster”, where every piece of content is written, specifically aiming to guide the reader toward asking about your offering. An added benefit is of course that it provides very clear internal linking opportunities.

Bringing Awareness to Authority

authcluster - Morningscore SEO tool

In the realm of content marketing, awareness pieces are what most marketers and writers are most familiar with, as they’re the pieces of content primarily focused on SEO and traffic generation. However, it’s important to still consider the key principles outlined so far:

  • Avoid absolute statements
  • Answer your reader’s questions
  • Provide resources or reasoning

The major difference with awareness content is in how authority content should, in some way or another, provide a clear path to talking about your solution. Awareness content is about generating traffic and providing a path into the “authority cluster”.

Awareness Topic Ideation

Awareness topic ideation involves determining questions that provide answers that then prompt questions answered by your authority cluster.

For a Linux monitoring solution, such a question may be “How do I monitor a MySQL database?”. It’s not strictly related to your solution, as you only provide monitoring for Linux servers and not databases, but there’s a path. Somewhere in the post, you can link to “What Is Linux Monitoring?” with an anchor like, “… in order to monitor databases, unlike [monitoring Linux servers], …”.

Possible questions will heavily depend upon your industry, topic, or niche, so I will refrain from providing more examples. The goal is to create a content strategy where, no matter the content you produce, there’s always a clear path to talk about your solution, even though it might not be addressed directly in every single post.

As you’ve likely seen, The Skeptic’s Journey is a concept specifically developed with a focus on establishing authority through blog content, however, key principles like a focus on answering reader’s questions can be applied to any audience interaction.

That said, I do want to highlight some of the other ways you can build trust. My personal expertise is around blog content, hence why that’s been the focus of this strategy. Note that the methods described below are not necessarily alternatives to blog content, but are often something to be used in tandem.

To demonstrate how these methods may be used in practice, I’ll be using the example of a company I’m fairly certain anyone reading this is familiar with: Zoom.

“Trusted By…”

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One of the quickest and most effective ways to foster trust is by embracing people’s trust in other companies. As you can see, Zoom is trusted by large and well-known organizations like Formula 1, Nasdaq, WWF, etc.

If you didn’t know Zoom beforehand, it’s fair to assume a certain level of quality, being trusted by so many well-established organizations. However, remember the difference between implicit and explicit trust. This is a prime example of implicit trust.

Any trust gained by this approach relies on something not personally experienced by the audience, and great care must be taken to follow up on that trust, making it explicit.

Case Studies

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Case studies are a common and effective way of turning the implicit trust above into explicit trust. This is where you provide deeper insight into the experience of real customers, usually coupled with statistics and testimonials.

Given that it’s still not personally experienced by the audience, it can be argued that it’s still not fully explicit trust, but it’s a great step in the transition from implicit to explicit.

User-Generated Content

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Content created by someone not directly associated with your company can be a major driver of converting implicit trust to explicit trust. Essentially, why would someone talk positively about you if your solution isn’t good?

This is very much a gray area, as there are many ways of creating what seems like user-generated content, where the company is still influencing the content behind the scenes. But, truly user-generated content can be a major sign of trust in your company.

Podcasts and Webinars

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Going on a podcast or hosting a webinar has a significant advantage, as it fosters a more personal connection than written content ever can. While someone may read your byline and know you’ve written it, it’s easy to forget who the writer is once you delve into the content, trying to absorb the information. Think about this, are you currently thinking about how you’re reading the words written by me, Kasper Siig? Probably not, and I don’t blame you!

It can be argued that a writer can have a certain style, but there’s nothing inherent about letters on a screen retaining a human connection. With a podcast or webinar, it’s almost impossible to not retain the human connection. The audience is hearing your voice, or seeing your face. You won’t necessarily be performing a strict edit, cutting out a funny joke, an interesting anecdote, or you going on a tangent. Those are usually the exact reasons people listen to podcasts.

A human connection is often one of the most effective ways of fostering trust, it’s why motivational speakers care so much about body language and tonality.

Final Thoughts

In summary, these are all ways to foster trust in either you or your solution, either implicitly or explicitly. But, no matter what the approach is, always ensure that anything you say holds up to scrutiny.

The level of displayed proficiency needed to establish authority varies depending on factors such as target audience and industry, and establishing this level for your audience is a crucial part of The Skeptic’s Journey. Remember, authority is achieved through trust, and trust cannot be enforced, but you can create more content to enhance your perceived proficiency.

This post aims to provide guidance on establishing a Manifested Proficiency Threshold required to gain your audience’s trust. These are not step-by-step instructions, and a Manifested Proficiency Threshold is not a metric to define. Rather, it’s a focus point meant to guide your efforts in understanding what’s required of your content.

It’s crucial to understand the difference between displayed and actual proficiency. Your proficiency should be evident from your reader’s very first interaction, and should in no way allow any doubt in your proficiency. Manifesting proficiency through multiple pieces of content is meant to foster trust in your proficiency, leading to trust in you, and eventually, trust in your solution.

Disruption vs Optimization

Determining your Manifested Proficiency Threshold can be done by considering the immediate impact of your offering. This impact can be categorized into two types: disruption and optimization.

Disruption requires a change in behavior from the customer, subsequently requiring trust in both you and your technology/approach.

Optimization doesn’t require a significant change in behavior from the customer, often making it easier to foster trust in your offering.

Note that disruption and optimization aren’t mutually exclusive, as disruption often leads to optimization, and optimization is often caused by a disruption under the hood. The key is to evaluate the immediate impact.

Petrol vs EV

thres ElectricvsPetrol - Morningscore SEO tool

Consider the immediate impact of buying a petrol car versus an electric vehicle (EV). For someone familiar with petrol cars, purchasing one from a new brand would be an optimization of their existing experience. Conversely, switching from petrol to EV involves a substantial disruption in the driving experience and the ownership experience as a whole.

Petrol cars may have automatic gears, while EVs have no gears. Petrol cars require the use of both the brake and accelerator, while most EVs come with one-pedal driving, using the electric motor to brake and recuperate energy. And of course, even the fastest-charging EVs like Teslas or Hyundais take at least 18 minutes for an 80% charge, whereas petrol cars can be refueled in less than a minute.

In general, selling someone a new petrol car—optimization as the immediate impact—requires less trust, while EVs—disruption as the immediate impact—requires significantly more trust. Not only will the customer need to trust the seller and the brand, but they also need trust in the charging network as well, i.e., the technology.

General Adoption or Early Adopters

As in every marketing campaign, determining the target audience is essential. Although I believe it to be true, that selling EVs requires more trust in general, it can’t be argued how a company like Tesla sold a large quantity of cars almost from the very beginning.

This happened in large part due to the early adopters—the ones inherently gravitating toward disruptive solutions—and as such are more inclined to trust a new and exciting technology. Conversely, there are still a large group of people without trust in the concept of EVs as well.

Determining if you want to focus on early adopters or general adoption will greatly impact your content strategy. A focus on answering most questions within the “manifesting expertise” category before manifesting proficiency can increase the likelihood of early general adoption. On the other hand, focusing mostly on manifesting proficiency from the beginning can help appeal to early adopters.

These examples showcase opposite ends of the spectrum, and your job as a content marketer is to determine what balance between them is required for your content.

The Key to Mindful Proficiency Display

 

thres AOStatements - Morningscore SEO tool

Being mindful throughout your content and considering the reader’s need is essential, as I’ve mentioned a few times already. It’s a core principle of this strategy, as absolute statements and irrelevant information can generally result in four different scenarios:

Best case scenario is the reader appreciating the additional knowledge.

Most likely scenario is the reader ignoring the information, reducing their expectations of getting relevant information, and now starting to skim through the post.

Worst case scenario is the reader perceiving the content as unhelpful, clicking off the page and finding other content.

Absolute worst case scenario is the reader being annoyed at the attempt to peddle irrelevant information, perceiving it as a marketing attempt—which all content ultimately is, but it should not be perceived as such—and forming a negative association with your brand.

Though there is a likelihood of getting reader appreciation, the negative scenarios outweigh the positive three-to-one, hence why I believe open statements and exclusively relevant information is the optimal approach.

Final Thoughts

As you work on content and receive feedback through analytics and readers, getting a deeper understanding of your audience, your Manifested Proficiency Threshold can be modified to suit your situation better. This is not something to determine at the start, to then never modify.

Authority is a key aspect of SEO, cemented by Google including it in their E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) guidelines, and The Skeptic’s Journey is a conversion-centric strategy designed to build trust as the defining factor in establishing authority, while also driving awareness among target audiences, particularly those that are naturally skeptical.

Prioritizing trust, transparency, and genuine engagement, The Skeptic’s Journey avoids hard-selling tactics and absolute statements, fostering strong connections with readers and boosting conversions.

By fostering trust through the authority content, the company’s offering can be presented without asserting it as the definitive solution, allowing readers to discover the best solution to their challenges without feeling like they’ve been sold to, ultimately leading to increased trust and authority.

This strategy aims to provide clarity on the importance of establishing authority and offer adaptable principles—rather than focusing on implementation steps—that you can adopt at the core of your strategy to greatly increase the likelihood of being seen as an authority.

A Short Summary

Given that this concept as a whole is split into multiple posts, here’s a short summary of the key points, with other blog posts filling in for more nuanced and detailed takes.

Authority can be defined as the ability to make statements met with reduced skepticism through demonstrated expertise, proficiency, and trust. This strategy emphasizes manifesting expertise and proficiency, producing content able to withstand scrutiny, and ensuring long-term credibility and trust.

Authority is crucial for ensuring genuine refusals, leaving a lack of need, want, or funds as the only option for not buying, and removing a lack of trust as a possibility. Providing useful insights backed by expertise empowers the reader in their decision-making, leading to a better reception of your marketing efforts.

Establishing authority pertains to presenting knowledge rather than stating it, and considering the reader’s needs. Avoiding absolute statements and providing only relevant information—with different posts for different knowledge levels—leverages trust that can be used to highlight your offering. The strategy emphasizes guiding the reader to the optimal conclusion rather than trying to convince them, leading to more conversions from more trusting customers.

A Manifested Proficiency Threshold aids in guiding the implementation of this strategy, helping you assess what it takes to garner your audience’s trust, based on factors like the target audience and the immediate impact of your offering while emphasizing the importance of mindfully displaying proficiency.

The Skeptic’s Journey is not a one-size-fits-all strategy, as highlighted by exploring the success of DigitalOcean, a popular developer blog manifesting expertise and proficiency simultaneously.

By the end, your implementation tactic should help you create an authority-cluster with a clear path toward highlighting the benefits of your offering, then leveraging SEO-optimized blog posts to create awareness and lead readers onto the path within said cluster. Ultimately, this should help you balance high traffic with a high conversion rate.

I believe authority is best described as: the ability to make statements met with reduced skepticism, through demonstrated expertise & proficiency, resulting in trust.

Reducing skepticism is key, focusing on making claims able to withstand scrutiny. I don’t believe fully removing a reader’s skepticism is possible, and such a focus would, in my mind, result in poor and questionable implementations. I see the ability of withstanding scrutiny as a true sign of authority.

Explaining the 3 Qualities

guide exp prof trust - Morningscore SEO tool

The underlying qualities of authority can be described as:

  • Expertise

The foundation of authority, showcasing knowledge based on facts and common consensus. A lack of trust in your knowledge is a lack of trust in you.

  • Proficiency

Effectively utilizing expertise to form opinions and interpretations.

  • Trust

A feeling your audience has towards you—unable to be proven or disproven—determining the likelihood of them engaging with your offering.

Implicit vs Explicit Trust

Dividing trust into two categories can provide a better understanding of what to aim for.

Implicit Trust

Implicit trust is based on credentials or reputation, without experiencing the expertise and proficiency first-hand. This is commonly seen when meeting a new doctor for the first time.

Explicit Trust

Explicit trust is built on personal experiences, resulting in a more stable and enduring trust. This is like having the same doctor for 10+ years, also showcasing how implicit trust can be turned into explicit trust over time.


This strategy focuses on gaining authority through explicit trust, being the more resilient type.

Why Do You Need Authority?

refusals 2 - Morningscore SEO tool

 

Beyond the aforementioned reasons—namely, gaining trust and reducing skepticism—why exactly is authority so important? What are the tangible benefits of authority?

Ensuring Genuine Refusals

An unsuccessful sale usually boils down to either:

  • A genuine refusal due to lack of need, want, or funds
  • A lack of trust in the offering

Establishing authority ensures that you only receive genuine refusals. For example, hiring a freelancer is generally from wanting someone more competent, better at execution, or wanting to free up time. Each of those requires trust in the freelancer.

Unfortunately, this strategy cannot help you provide readers with more funds, it is determined to increase the likelihood of gaining trust.

Avoiding the Hard Sell

People generally don’t like being sold to—this is a core consideration of this strategy. Establishing authority by providing useful knowledge and insights meant to empower readers, aids in guiding readers toward deciding on your company’s offering, based on their own judgment.

Having defined the importance of authority, let’s explore how to establish it.

How Do You Establish Authority?

A crucial part of establishing authority is the way you present yourself. Making readers feel the decision is theirs involves presenting knowledge rather than stating it.

Making readers feel the decision is theirs is a crucial aspect of content marketing, and a core principle of this strategy’s approach to establishing authority. This involves presenting knowledge in a way that engages the reader and encourages consideration, as opposed to stating claims with the aim of convincing the reader.

This approach aids in establishing you as a proficient thought leader through key considerations like avoiding absolute statements and considering the needs of the reader.

Avoiding Absolute Statements

Consider “the consequences of X is Y” compared to “some possible consequences of X can be Y”. The difference is subtle but significant, with the first option implying a disagreement with you, and the second option implying a disagreement with your statement.

Proposing the consequences as a possibility rather than a fact, a disagreeing reader is more likely to wonder how you got to that conclusion. Now they’re curious, rather than judgmental (bonus points for catching that reference). I’ve found this small shift in articulation helps create an open mindset for readers.

Considering the Needs of the Reader

Keeping the reader engaged often comes down to providing valuable information, but a focus on addressing their concerns and helping them solve their challenges is crucial. Especially in B2B content, readers will most often be searching for a specific answer, ignoring anything not aligning with that.

It can be tempting to include as much knowledge and insights as possible, in an attempt to either showcase expertise or showcase your offering. I understand the thinking, but consider how it aligns with the need of the reader.

For example, software engineers rarely read a post from start to finish, instead opting to skim through it, looking for the answer they need. This can easily lead to entire sections of—perhaps very valuable and useful information—content being skipped, if it doesn’t align with their goal.

Essentially, every piece of information not relevant to the reader is an open door for them to leave.

Manifesting Expertise

guide manifest - Morningscore SEO tool

To reiterate, expertise involves sharing factual, well-researched information, or, knowledge based on common consensus, often backed up by studies or scientific resources. Manifesting expertise is to foster trust in your knowledge and research skills.

As a content marketer, this is where you create your basis of existence while acknowledging all knowledge levels.

Catering Beyond Your Target Audience

A statement like “With our offering, you can efficiently solve the problems caused by X” makes two assumptions:

  • The reader knows about the problems caused by X
  • The reader even understands how X can cause problems

I see companies state “if they don’t understand this, they’re likely not in our target audience”. While I agree with this statement, it’s missing out on the opportunity of educating people, and effectively build a larger target audience.

Addressing all knowledge levels—like explaining how X can cause problems—can result in a sub-optimal reader experience, deterring those already equipped with the necessary knowledge.

Rather, explanations like “how X can cause problems” can be covered in another post, which can then be linked to. This approach will cater your content to a wider audience without deterring more experienced readers. Additionally, it has the added SEO benefits of targeting more keywords and providing internal linking opportunities.

Addressing Reader Questions

To reiterate, your readers are more often than not looking for an answer, and as such, asking and answering questions is a key principle of this strategy. With each question you answer, consider what knowledge the reader may be missing, with the goal of educating them.

For example, the statement “With our offering you can mitigate the issues of X” answers the question “Why do I need your solution”. The full answer may generate questions like:

  • What are the issues with X?
    • Generally asked by those familiar and experienced with X
  • How can X cause issues?
    • Generally asked by those just getting familiar with X

Creating a series of posts to address different aspects of a topic and linking them together, allows the reader to gain just the understanding they are missing without skimming through what they already know. Ultimately, this avoids alienating anyone while ensuring all readers understand your content.

Manifesting Proficiency

guide manifest proficiency - Morningscore SEO tool

While expertise is to present factual information, proficiency is to utilize that knowledge to offer valuable insights. Note that manifesting expertise and proficiency are not mutually exclusive, and one will often follow the other. The point is to determine the primary purpose of each piece of content, with the possibility of a second purpose.

Manifesting proficiency is where you begin guiding the reader to your preferred conclusion—that your offering is the best—and foster trust in not just your knowledge, but trust in you. This is where you create your reason for existence, answering the “What are the issues with X?” or “What are the consequences of X?” questions.

Displaying proficiency before/while making the case for your offering encourages larger amounts of trust, i.e., heightens the likelihood of genuine refusals.

Leveraging Trust

guide leverage trust - Morningscore SEO tool

Having established trust in both your knowledge and in you, it’s time to leverage that trust and highlight your solution. At this stage, it’s crucial to maintain the same level of expertise and proficiency showcased in other pieces.

This post isn’t to say that conversions are impossible without having established authority. Rather, this strategy is intended to increase the odds of a favorable conversion rate and foster genuine connections with your readers, replicating the feeling of having the same doctor for 10+ years.

What are Your Concerns?

Well, that’s it! It’s been quite the lengthy post, but hopefully, every piece of insight has either provided you with new insights or made some connections you hadn’t considered before. During the development of this strategy I’ve talked it over with a few individuals, and to the best of my ability have adapted it or addressed any concerns that have come up.

That said, there are some concerns I haven’t been able to fit into the main sections of the post, while still being relevant to the point, which I would like to address below. Before that, I’d like to thank you for reading through this, and I’d love to hear any thoughts you have, positive or negative.

What’s the Expected Timeline?

Although I’ve clarified throughout the post how this is not an attempt to define a generalized implementation tactic, but rather a set of core principles, I understand how you may still not be entirely sure how much time is supposed to be spent on this.

The reason I’ve refrained from a generalized implementation tactic is that the timeline is influenced by so many factors, like your post cadence, the complexity of your solution, the level of skepticism of your audience, etc.

That said, I will try to illustrate what a timeline could look like, assuming an example of wanting to create a solid foundation of authority. In this example, the company has established three questions to answer, to manifest expertise. Then, each of those questions prompts two questions to manifest proficiency, each of which then prompts two questions to leverage trust and promote your solution. 3 + 3 * 2 + (3 * 2) * 2 = 21.

I’m not a mathematician so there’s probably a better way of calculating that, but it does show that 21 pieces of content are needed in this example. With one post per week that’s just under five months. However, this assumes you want to establish the entire authority cluster at once, which may not be the case. Authority is only supposed to lead your content.

It’s reasonable that no company wants to go five months without any content focused on authority, and once again this is why I encourage you to evaluate what’s most suited for your situation. One approach to implementation could be:

  • First 12 weeks: 100% authority
    • Only content like “What are the inefficiencies of X?”
  • Next 12 weeks: 50% authority, 50% awareness
    • An even mix between “How to mitigate the issues of X” and “How do I implement…?”
  • Next 12 weeks: 20% authority, 80% awareness
    • Content aimed to maintain and increase authority, though heavily focused on generating traffic

I also want to point out that I don’t see authority as an end-goal. I see it as something to focus heavily on in the beginning and then maintain as time goes on. If you need to lose 20kgs of weight, you don’t lose the 20kgs, only to then stop eating right and working out. You maintain the new healthy lifestyle.

Won’t This Result in Boring Content?

I often get to meet people as they start out in content, and a common thought I hear is, “I want to produce content with unique insight and exciting thoughts”, and I completely understand where the thought comes from. Nobody wants to appear “boring” or “dull”. And, I see how someone might be concerned that this strategy will result in boring content. I’ll concede that “What Is Linux Monitoring?” isn’t exactly an exciting new topic.

The danger of this thinking is that it can often result in a lot of great content, with one of two drawbacks:

  • Nobody is seeing it
  • Nobody is believing it

So yes, this strategy will most definitely result in “boring” content, but hopefully it’s clear by now why it’s useful and necessary. It’s also important to remember that, unless you’re already an established individual or entity—like Justin Welsh or Uber Engineering—it’s highly unlikely people will be visiting your blog specifically to read your newest post.

Some will! But then it’s a matter of prioritization. Do you want to cultivate a small but loyal audience? Or, a large but trusting audience?

How Do I Measure the Success of The Skeptic’s Journey?

The answer to this will depend on what your current situation is. If you’ve just started out, or are yet to publish your first blog post, then you won’t have anything to measure against. In this case, you might benefit from researching your industry and determining the average conversion rate to expect, then monitoring whether you match or exceed it. You can also set up analytics to track what links people are clicking on your website. Are they actually moving along the path established within the authority cluster?

If you already have an established blog you can follow the same tactics, but you’ll also have the opportunity to compare your conversion rate to a previous period, to see if it’s improved.

At the end of the day, this is still content, and it’s still SEO. Meaning, success is still monitored using all the regular metrics like retention rate and pageviews per user. And, like regular SEO, success may start appearing within a few weeks, or a few months.

Final Thoughts

Given how traffic has had no mention, it’s valid to be concerned about—you can’t convert readers if you have no readers.

In the post “From Authority to Awareness” you will get more insights into using the established content around authority, to then generate SEO content for awareness.

This guide is for you if:

1. You use a rank tracker to track your website’s keywords positions on Google

and

2. Wonder why the rank tracker shows a rank, while you find nothing on Google by manually searching for it.

 

Having dealt with this mystery myself, I decided to explain the 4 main reasons for why you see your rankings in your rank tracker but not when manually searching in Google.

Together with that, I’ll also share 2 foolproof methods for checking whether and how your pages are indexed by Google.

4 reasons for keyword ranks showing up in rank tracker but not in manual search

  • Google is still adjusting your ranks
  • Google is currently testing where you should rank
  • You’re trying to rank in another country
  • It’s simply an indexing bug in Google

Now let’s explain each of them in detail.

Reason 1. Google Is Still Adjusting Your Ranks ⚙️

When Google indexes a new page, it needs some time to adjust. When Googlebot visits your page and makes a copy of it on Google’s server, Google needs a bit of time to synchronize that data across all servers worldwide. Considering you’re probably not the only one who has written something on the subject lately, Google has to do that with all of your sites collectively.

Because of that, when your rank tracker checked your ranks, it might have simply ended up on a server that already had that information. Meanwhile, your search might lead you to a server that hasn’t yet. In other words, it could simply be “luck of the draw”.

Reason 2. Google Is Currently Testing Your Ranks 🧪

Google might have already fully indexed your website – but this time they might already be testing your page in the results.

Google tests pages and the ranking of them in many different ways, here are some examples:

  • Only ranking your website in a niche geographical area
  • Only ranking your website based on browser history or other data they have on the user
  • Google is split testing your ranking. So on some searches they rank you and on others not. Like a lottery.

Reason 3. You’re Trying To Rank In Another Country 🌍️

Next up, there’s also the chance that you’re trying to rank in another country or location of where you’re located. This point builds upon the previous one – if you’re not positioned in the place you’re trying to rank for, Google is simply going to show you results that fit your location (and the data they have about you) rather than the true results for your target location. With Morningscore’s keyword management tool you are able to track keyword rankings down to city level.

Reason 4. It’s Simply An Indexing Bug In Google 🪲

We can’t skip the fact that Google is running an extremely large operation – and at such a scale, search bugs can happen rather easily. After all, they are literally downloading every website they find on the internet. That’s a lot of information! In the process, some things get messed up and this can affect how you see the rankings. This can be either a single instance – again, simply bad luck. Or they can be temporary – something that affects search results over a few days. Sometimes Google drops URLs temporarily, which might take you a couple of days to figure out.

Because these things happen all the time (at least more often than you might think) and they can cause you unnecessary confusion.

Let’s look at how you can be nearly 100% sure your site is showing up in Google:

How To Check And Confirm Your Site Is On Google

Now, this solution is not fool-proof for the same reasons we listed above. However, it can give you pretty good insights into whether your site is indexed – which is something you should correctly see the majority of the time after Google has said it is indexed.

Method #1 – Using A Specific Search Query In Google

The easiest way to see if any particular page on your site is indexed is to use a search query directly in Google. The search query is: “site:” followed by the URL of your page.

For example, when I want to check if this blog post will get indexed, I’d simply go to Google.com and enter:

site:https://morningscore.io/showing-rank-tracker-not-manual-search/

keyword showing up rank tracker but not manual search trick - Morningscore SEO tool

Similarly, simply replace the query after “site:” with your specific page. And if you run this query for your root domain (e.g. “site:https://morningscore.io/”), you will see all of your pages that Google has indexed and added to their index.

 

Method #2 – Checking Your “Coverage” In Search Console

The next tip here is to use Google Search Console – If you don’t already have one, you can follow our guide to set up Google Search Console. It is a very powerful tool that shows you when and how Google scans your website and whether your pages are in their index. For example, you can easily enter a URL in the search bar and immediately see if it’s in Google’s index.

If you are already seeing your positions in your rank tracker, the page is indexed and it will display as “URL is on Google”.

checking the coverage tab to ensure page is indexed

As you can also see in the image above, clicking on the “Coverage” tab will reveal great information about when Google crawled your page last.

Take away: What to think about this ranking difference between a rank tracker and a manual Google search?

These 2 methods can’t fully explain the mystery of why your rank tracker says you rank but you can’t see it. But together with the explanations above you should have a more full picture of what is going on now.

There is no guarantees with Google. Generally speaking Google will serve different rankings to different users, and that’s the main reason for the difference between a rank tracker and your own manual search.

But if your page is not ranked if you use the 2 methods above, I would certainly suspect the rank trackers accuracy or freshness too.

What are internal links on a website?

As an example, this is an internal link to our homepage. I will dive into a detailed explanation below.

Why are internal links important?

  • Internal links help your users navigate your website
  • Internal links help search engines find and index pages on your site, thus establishing your website’s hierarchy
  • Internal links help you pass link equity between your pages to rank them higher for their target keywords

Imagine your website as a city 🏙️. Then internal links are like roads connecting different neighborhoods 🛣️. Roads help people navigate the city, just as internal links help search engines navigate your website.

What is internal linking In SEO, and how does it work?

In my daily work, I see way too many websites underutilize internal links. This is a pity as internal links simply provide too much “bang for the buck.” But the most common reason I see people skip internal links is that they don’t even know what they are and how they work. Let’s change that.

Internal linking is the SEO practice of creating a link from one page on your website to another page on your website.

what is internal linking in SEO, and how does it work

Like all HTML links on the web, users need internal links to navigate between pages. Similarly, search engines use internal links to understand the hierarchy of all the pages on your website. Additionally, all internal links are simply backlinks – and it is no secret that backlinks are still one of the most important factors for SEO. Naturally, pages that you link to most often are seen as a higher priority. As a result, they receive more link equity from Google’s algorithms.

The only difference here is that internal links are all links from and to your own website. If you decide to link to another page, this is known as an external link. External links are also called outbound links because they are bound to send the user away from your page to another page. The names “external links” and “outbound links” are used interchangeably.

Meanwhile, since there are outbound links, we also have to mention inbound links. However, keep in mind that internal links are not the same as inbound links. An internal link is strictly a link pointing between two pages on your website. An inbound link points from a page on another website to one of your pages. The image below visualize the relationship between internal links, external links, outbound links, and inbound links.

You can also read this, to further understand how inbound and outbound links work and how they differ.

types of links in SEO

So as you can see, it all comes down to the point of reference. There are no special attributes that denote or differentiate internal links or external links.

💡 Tool tip:
You can use our SEO tool to get an overview of your internal links. It’s free for 14 days and quick to set up – no installation or credit card required:

 

8 tips to improve your internal linking

Remember the eight tips I mentioned, to improve your internal linking? Here they are:

  1. Use keywords in your internal link anchor texts
  2. Only create relevant, contextual internal links
  3. Link form your blog content to your products
  4. Only ever create dofollow internal links
  5. Write more content to create link opportunities
  6. Avoid automating internal linking
  7. Avoid linking from pictures
  8. Update and optimize old content

By incorporating these tips into your SEO strategy, you’ll not only boost your website rankings, but you’ll also increase user experience, which is also a key factor in SEO. 

Now, let’s take a deeper look at each of these tips, to further expand your knowledge about how to improve your internal linking.

1. Use keywords in your internal link anchor texts

The anchor texts provide Google with more context as to what the content on the linked page is about. It also increases the relevancy for the end-user reading the post, as it creates an expectation of what to expect once they land on the page. Because anchor texts play an important role in ranking higher, many SEOs try to game the algorithm by buying links that feature their exact keyword in the anchor text. Since Google has taken notice of that, the algorithms now monitor for unnatural linking through anchor texts. Accordingly, they can demote those pages from the Search Results.

use keywords in your internal link anchor texts

The great news is that Google is not as strict with the anchor text of your internal links as they are with external links. As such, you can freely use the keywords you want to rank on as the anchor text for your internal links.

2. Only create relevant, contextual internal links

Because internal linking can give you a great SEO boost, it’s often tempting to fill your pages and blog posts with them. Hey, it helps Google and the user, right?! However, adding tons of internal links to your content is not a good idea, and it’s definitely something you should stay away from.

But there are more reasons why you don’t want to fill your pages with internal links. It is both visually confusing and displeasing to look at internal links in every sentence from a user’s perspective. Simply imagine a book where every sentence has a footnote that you feel obligated to refer to every time.

Besides that, what you really want from your internal links is for users to click on them. This would be your main goal if your links truly are contextual and provide more value. With such expectations, it would take the user hours upon end to go through one of your blog posts if they have to refer to all of the 50+ internal links you’ve added to it. Naturally, no user wants to do that – or even has the time for it.

only create relevant, contextual internal links

3. Link from your blog content to your products

Ultimately, everyone’s goal in generating traffic is to earn money by offering a product or a service. Even 100,000 monthly visitors can’t pay the bills if none of them do business with us.

Because of that, it’s paramount to get people to see our offers – and here, internal links come in very handy.

Firstly, as we established, contextual internal links promote users to explore more of our content. Because of that, where the opportunity presents itself, we can funnel website visitors to our product pages. Naturally, every user is at a different stage of the customer journey. Some are simply curious, while others are in the process of collecting the last bits of information they need to make a purchase. This applies to your website visitors as well. Although you shouldn’t expect crazy returns just yet, you can easily boost your conversion rates by a few percent.

Secondly, internal links tell Google which pages we find more valuable. Naturally, linking to our product pages also boosts their performance in the Search Results. This effect is further reinforced if the linking content has inbound links from other websites.

Well-written blog posts tend to attract links from other websites, unlike product pages that rarely earn links. Product pages simply don’t provide a good enough reason to get that.

In turn, creating blog content allows you to then pass even more value to your product pages through the internal links. And doing this gets you more website visitors that are actively looking to buy. And thus, you get to keep the lights on for just a little longer.

4. Only ever create dofollow internal links

When you link to a page on your own website, remember to avoid using the nofollow attribute. Nofollow links tell Google that they shouldn’t visit the link on the page – because you don’t trust or recommend it. As such, this suggests to Google that it shouldn’t pass link equity to the linked page. Naturally, this is not what you want to happen with your own pages, and your internal links should only be dofollow.

5. Write more content to create link opportunities

If you have one or more important pages (money pages), but you’re unsure how to build internal links to them, you can favorably write new quality content specifically about that topic and link to a product page.

The bread and butter of internal linking is having content to link from. Suppose you have a few landing pages around your products or services – but you don’t know how to link them internally. In this case, you can easily create more relevant blog content around your products, answering questions your target users might have. Doing this also helps you create “a hub” of relevant content, allowing Google to better derive meaning from your posts and thus rank you higher.

6. Avoid automating internal linking

Some tools and plugins provide the idea of automating internal links. This can sound great on paper, but it can be quite harmful in practice. Like your title tags and meta descriptions, it’s always a bad idea to automate things in regards to SEO. The final product is simply never optimal as it will never be as good as if a human created it.

Automated links rarely fit in the context of your content and thus provide less or no value for the end-user. Additionally, as all of your pages link to the same other pages repeatedly, you send bad signals to Google. By doing this, you run the risk of triggering some of its spam algorithms.

7. Avoid linking from pictures

Where possible, always try to link from written content instead of a picture. A picture link can never provide enough context to Google and the user compared to text links. And as we mentioned before, relevance and context are everything when it comes to internal linking.

avoid using internal link in pictures

Lastly, if your only option is to link from a picture, make sure that you add relevant alt text to the picture – since that will be used as your anchor text instead.

8. Update and optimize old content

While writing new content is important, updating and optimizing your old content is just as important. When regularly updating your content, it sends signals to search engines that both your website is actively maintained, and the content you provide is fresh and provides up to date information. 

Now you might be wondering where internal links exactly factor into this. Internal links are a very good way to get Google to crawl your website again. You also might have written new content, where an internal link from, or to an old post would enhance the users experience on your site.

How does internal linking help SEO?

By now, it should be clear that internal links are a good thing to keep track of since they are essential for both end-users and search engines. From my experience, internal links are an excellent booster for your SEO rankings, and they work very quickly. Let’s examine in detail how exactly they help SEO.

Internal linking creates a contextual map of your website for search engines, establishing a hierarchy by giving your most important pages more link equity, increasing your SEO potential. 

Without a contextual map of your website, both Google and your users see your content as scattered. This is bad from a UX(user experience) perspective since users naturally want to explore more content. Similarly, content relevance is an important factor for ranking. Google promotes well-organized websites that thoroughly cover the keywords in their niche.

As such, underutilizing internal links can negatively impact your website’s engagement rates. In the long-term, it can also cause you to lose out rankings to your competitors, who are employing every conceivable method to get to the top.

The eight tips we went through earlier are all well and good, but what are the benefits from all that work. 

Let’s take a look at the benefits of internal linking for SEO:

Internal links spread link equity among pages

As per Google’s PageRank algorithm, we know that links on the web pass value between each other. This is true for both internal and external links. Building natural links towards your product pages is almost impossible. The reality is, your products or services landing pages rarely provide enough value to other website owners to receive inbound links directly.

internal links spread link equity among pages

However, because internal links pass PageRank value, we can sculpt authority for product and service pages from other pages on our site. Such are most often blog posts as they naturally provide enough value to other websites, earning backlinks along the way.

This way, we can boost the performance of our main pages with link equity/value provided by backlinks from other websites – without involving ourselves in link schemes and bad SEO practices.

Internal links help Google establish a contextual index

In addition to passing on value from your strongest pages, with internal links, you can also try to tell Google which of your pages you would like to rank on a given keyword. This is especially important if you have multiple pages on the same topic targeting similar keywords in texts, page titles, etc.

internal links help Google establish a contextual index

For example, we have several posts and landing pages about link building. To further help Google distinguish which page fits which search intent, we build internal links with the appropriate anchor text.

Internal linking improves crawling and indexing

Internal links also enable Google to find more pages on your website. Furthermore, as we established, they help you show a hierarchy of importance for your pages. Google wants to show only the best content in the search results. By utilizing internal links, you give Google signals of which pages on your website you value most. And naturally, the algorithms are more likely to feature them in the Search Results.

internal links improves crawling and indexing

Similarly, highly important pages that rank well also need to be up-to-date. As a result, Google tends to crawl and update your pages more often the more authoritative they are. Even if you lose some of your rankings over time, you can update your content and regain its keyword positions at the top much easier.

Internal linking improves the User Experience and navigation

With all this talk about Google, it’s easy to neglect why internal links exist in the first place. As we established, links are the very nature of how people navigate the web. Internal links help your visitors navigate your website with ease in a similar manner.

By providing more context in your content, you improve the experience for the end-user. Consequently, Google rewards you for everything you do to improve the User Experience (of course, with a few exceptions). That is because ultimately, it’s the end-user that has to be satisfied to use Google again.

Internal links boost your website’s engagement metrics

Let’s also not forget that rewarding users with great content also has clear upsides for you. By funneling visitors to other pages on your website through internal links, you’re directly improving all of your engagement metrics. This means that you create more opportunities among more people to eventually offer your products or services.

Firstly, with contextual internal links throughout your content, you will see an increase in your average pages per session. This is directly caused by users exploring more of your content as they land on your website. In turn, this is great because it means you’re building a more loyal following as you’re solidifying your brand among this group of curious website visitors.

The second metric that you will see improve is the time users spend on your website. This has a great return on investment, as companies spend billions online trying to grab the attention of their target market.

Lastly, you will also see an improvement in your bounce rates. This metric correlates with the previous two – but it’s still very satisfying. The more time people spend on your website, the higher the likelihood of visiting your other pages – and thus, lowering your bounce rate. This is yet another indicator of success, as low bounce rates indicate your website is relevant to your website visitors.

Internal links have a great return on investment

One of the biggest benefits of internal links is their cost compared to the potential gains. Internal links are free and don’t require much time or resources compared to producing content that attracts backlinks. Similarly, you don’t have to wait to build internal links as they take virtually no time to create.

In contrast, this article outlines that building more than 50 high-quality links per month is highly unlikely, even if you have someone working on that full-time. If we quickly run the numbers for a full-time employee working on your link building for a month, we can see that roughly one link takes a little over 3 hours to build on average.

From an ROI perspective, this means that you have to pay for their salary PLUS additional costs involved with building these links. While this is always a necessary cost when facing tough competition in search, a quick (and much cheaper) way to boost rankings is to leverage internal links.

Internal links help you rank for more long-tail keywords

According to research, long-tail keywords account for 70% of all web searches. Additionally, the click-through rate for long-tail keywords is 56% – almost double compared to the 30% for single-word keywords. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that long-tail keywords are precious, and you want to rank for more of them. By strategically mapping out your internal links, you can quickly expand the long-tail keywords each of your linked pages ranks for.

For example, assume we’re trying to rank one of our pages for the keyword “women shoes.” While ranking for the head term is great, consider that many people also search for variations of that exact phrase.

Naturally, we want to appear on as many of those close variations. A great way to get a chance to rank for such similar terms is by using different anchors. For example, from 3 different pages on our blog, we can link using the following anchor text:

  • “cheap women shoes”
  • “shoes for women on a budget”
  • “affordable shoes for women”

Internal linking keeps older posts evergreen

As the name suggests, evergreen content is content that remains relevant regardless of how old it is. In contrast, content that isn’t evergreen is one for which the demand drops over time.

In reality, you can rarely create truly evergreen content that doesn’t need maintenance and the occasional update. However, regardless of how old your content is, there’s still hope for it. Internal links are a great way to bring some life back to your older articles.

Simply find older content, pieces that do not rank very well any longer, or those that have lost a portion of their traffic – all which you can use your SEO monitoring tool to identify. Once done, interlink them from relevant articles that are enjoying a healthy share of traffic. This way, you’re both referring people between your pages, and you’re improving the odds of ranking your older pages higher up. Obviously the pages you link from have to be in the right context, as a random link to an old blog post doesn’t do any good.

Internal linking helps you raise and solidify brand awareness

SEO and branding go hand in hand. Having strong branding influences how well you rank for your target keywords directly. However, you might not have expected that SEO is also a great channel to build your brand from scratch. How come?

While only so many people search exactly for your products or services at any given moment, there are tons of users in the earlier stages of the customer journey. And what are they doing? That’s right, they are researching options, reading reviews, watching how-to videos, and so on.

In general, we can summarize all this type of content as “Informational SEO,” – and as the name suggests, we’re not aiming for the purchase right away. Instead, this is a more long-term strategy that aims to continuously educate consumers and thus regularly provide new leads.

internal linking helps you raise and solidify brand awreness

Internal links help you back your arguments

I find that one of the best ways to use backlinks throughout my content is to back up the arguments I’m making. However, those backlinks don’t only have to lead to external sources.

For example, suppose you’ve already created a resource with statistics that are relevant to your industry. In that case, you can reference certain numbers from that study to back up your arguments in other blog posts. Not only does this tie your content contextually together, but you also have an easier time establishing yourself as an authority in your industry.

You can always reconfigure your internal links

I rarely see perfectly planned SEO campaigns. This is normal as there are always some constraints with time, money, and production resources. In turn, as SEOs, we often need to make adjustments later after we’ve collected some data and can do a more in-depth review.

One of the main challenges when reviewing your SEO efforts is that some things can’t be changed so easily – namely, backlinks. This can be quite frustrating, considering it’s one of the top factors for ranking.

However, what you can control is your internal link strategy. And as we established, if used correctly, you can sculpt authority for your important pages through your blog content.

Don’t like the anchor text you’ve used? You can change that at any point! Think your internal link sounds too forced and doesn’t fit the context? A couple of quick edits, and you’re done! Found an internal link opportunity? It takes no longer than a minute!

If you want to unlock the potential of internal linking and visualize the effectiveness of your entire SEO strategy, read more about Morningscores features as it will help you elevate your search engine rankings.

Optimize your internal links and improve your search rankings and visibility

As Google increasingly aims its algorithms against spam on the internet, you shouldn’t create internal links just to have them. Because of that, relevance and contextuality are more decisive than ever. This doesn’t necessarily mean that excessive internal linking will result in a penalty. Instead, here we’re aiming to prevent “neutering” our internal links – and only use them in the right way so that they still pass as much value as possible.

Google doesn’t just look at individual pages when determining their ranks but instead at the website as a whole. Yes, the “80/20 Pareto principle” applies to SEO as well – and 20% of your pages will receive the 80% majority of your traffic. However, you rarely see a singular page ranking at the top while the rest of the website struggles.

At least, I personally haven’t seen many (any?) cases of this happening (considering I dig up tons of information every day as part of my work). In the vast, vast majority of cases, there is some harmony and correlation between the overall quality of the website and the rankings of individual pages.

In conclusion, your internal linking strategy is essential for your SEO success, and you shouldn’t neglect it. Well-optimized internal links boost your rankings and help you get more traffic from purchase-ready keywords. Similarly, they also improve your website’s engagement rates, as users find them relevant and keep on reading your content.

 

Are you not ranking within top-100 results for your keyword on Google? Or would you like to rank higher?

Here is a quick guide in 7 steps on how to rank for any keyword.

OBS: This guide provides a quick overview and low hanging fruits 🍇 not the full manual.

Step 1: Google yourself to see if the keyword is on your website

Believe it or not, this is how experts often do. It’s simple and powerful:

  1. Go to Google and put this in the search bar: site:yourwebsite.com your keyword. Example: “site:morningscore.io horse wagon” (put it without the “” in the search bar) google rank for keyword test - Morningscore SEO tool
  2. Now check the results shown on Google. In the example above, Google did not find anything on our website related to “horse wagon” (we ain’t selling em’ 😉)
  3. If Google does not find any results for your keyword there is a big chance you don’t write enough about it.
  4. If Google finds results but the pages are weird or not super specific or rich with information about the keyword, then you also have an issue.
  5. If Google finds a wonderful page that you believe should rank within top-100 then skip step 2 below.

 

Step 2: Create a new page or optimize existing for your keyword

  1. If your situation fits 3 in the checklist above then you need to create a new page on your website. Before you do, make sure no pages already exist with that keyword in focus by manually checking in your CMS (website editor). Follow step 3 to make sure your new pages is optimized for your keyword.
  2. If your situation fits 4 in the checklist above then you need to figure out if the current pages that Google found are relevant for your keyword. If they only mention your keyword like a little side-note, my answer would be a clear no and you should create a new page. If you think the keyword is in focus, then improve the page by following step 3.

 

Step 3: Use this checklist to improve your keyword rank

Before I give you the checklist, you need to first do a simple Google for your keyword – like I did here for “horse wagon”:

rank keyword top 100 check google - Morningscore SEO tool

Now I open the top organic results (so not the ads) and check what they wrote on their pages. This is my best clue for what to write on a page to get to the top of Google.

In the above example I can see Google values visual inspiration and sellers of horse wagons.

Also note down the amount of words used on the page. Often it can be hard to rank for pages below 300 words. But it depends on the keyword.

With that in mind, open this keyword booster PDF that shows you where to include your keyword.

keywordbooster rank guide - Morningscore SEO tool

You will need to do all of this in your CMS. If you do not know how, an SEO tool like Morningscore can guide you step by step.

To summarize you need to:

  1. Google your keyword
  2. Check what the top search results write about and match it
  3. Note down amount of words. match it if relevant. Focus on quality
  4. Open the PDF
  5. Follow the PDF and improve your page in your CMS

 

Step 4: Build at least 3 internal links

Even if you have the most awesome page in the world it won’t rank unless you link to it.

Build at least 3 links from your website to the page you are fixing in step 3.

See my 1 min video guide on how to build internal links:

In the video I follow step 1 and got several pages on Google that I could build links from.

This might not be the case for you and then you will simply have to choose the pages on your website you consider the most relevant to link from.

 

Step 5: Check if you have enough links from other websites

If no one mentions you on the internet, Google (generally) doesn’t rank your website. This is the hard reality 😑

So you need to figure out if you have enough links from other websites.

Tools you can use for a free check:

In Morningscores example, we give you a Linkscore from 0 (no links) to millions (biggest sites in the world).

If your Linkscore is below 300 you could have a very hard time ranking no matter how great your page is.

Get your Linkscore above 300!

Morningscore has step by step guides for natural links you can build for free to achieve that goal.

 

Step 6: Run a Google health test of your website

Sometimes there are fundamental issues with websites that stop them from ranking on Google. To make sure this is not the case for your website, run an SEO test and get a score from 0-100 and see if things are generally OK

Tools you can use for a free health check:

I recommend these tools because they let you check more than just your frontpage and are free (or have a free trial period without credit card etc)

health seo rank - Morningscore SEO tool

You don’t need a perfect score to rank, far from it. But i you get a score below 60 and there are big problems on your site, it might stop you from ranking.

 

Step 7: Wait at least 1 month before giving up

SEO is a long term game. Getting a rank for your keyword within top-100 in Google might happen within one or two days. It might also take 1-3 months. But if you followed this guide thoroughly and your content is of good quality and is original, there is a +90% guarantee* that you will rank within top 100 on Google for your keyword. Monitor your rankings with your favorite keyword management tool.

If you hope to rank within the competitive top-3 positions on Google, you will often need to do more than this guide showed you.

These +20 ranking tips is a good next step.

Thanks for reading and I hope you feel inspired to get busy and grow your keyword ranks on Google 🔥😊

effect seo 18 months - Morningscore SEO tool
– The full effect of SEO takes up to 18 months

 

* Some keywords have a high competition. So in those cases this rule will not apply.  Examples: keywords like “casino” or “life insurance” are VERY hard to rank for.

The short answer to whether no-follow links are valuable is: YES! 

And what is my proof?
Google themselves have said they give value to nofollow links in this post on their official guidelines website:

Google says they also look at nofollow links as hints to what pages are important

As you can see Google now sees nofollow links as “hints” for which websites to give rankings to. More on this below.

How does Google handle nofollow links today?

Historically Google has treated nofollow links as “directives”. Essentially, this meant that Google disregarded all nofollow links, determined that they do not affect the website’s authority, and did not use them to influence the rankings of that website.

However, the March 1, 2020, Google Algorithm Update introduced changes to how Google handles the nofollow tag. Together with the addition of rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc”, Google now considers the rel=”nofollow” links as “hints”. In other words, contextual, high-quality links can still contribute to your web rankings.

To put it simply, currently, Google’s search ranking algorithms treat the nofollow attribute as a suggestion on whether any ranking credit should be passed to the linked website. Based on the quality of the link and the context it provides, Google can either count the link as a beneficial credit to the website, disregard it as a signal from the index altogether, or count it towards their spam signals calculations.

These changes mean that things are no longer “black and white”, and Google’s collecting even more signals from the web to determine the search result page’s rankings. In fact, as long as your nofollow links are contextually relevant and well-placed, they can even potentially be considered as dofollow links by Google.

However, you can most certainly assume that nofollow links appearing on thin, irrelevant pages are still considered fully “nofollow”. Consequently, they likely pass no beneficial value between the websites at all.

Can you rank #1 on Google only with nofollow links?

No it would be hard.

If you only had nofollow links you wouldn’t have a natural link profile. So that would be your biggest problem. Not the fact that the links are nofollow, but the fact that they are ALL nofollow.

Also the competition for some keywords has gotten really high. So having a great mix of both dofollow and nofollow links would be what you need to compete.

Having only nofollow links is rarely sufficient in achieving the desired rankings on some of these competitive keywords.

💡 Tool tip:
You can check your own link profile and get a Linkscore with our SEO tool. It’s free for 14 days and no credit card is needed:

 

Build nofollow links and improve your SEO

To conclude, nofollow links are still valuable for SEO – and will be so for the foreseeable future. In essence, you should implement them as part of your link-building strategy. That is, even if you’re not actively reaching out to get nofollow links, you should not turn down contextual links marked with “rel=nofollow”.

With an astounding 62% share in website traffic (Recent 2022 survey) SEO is the worlds biggest traffic channel. Optimizing your website for search engines should therefore be a high priority.

Let’s dive in:

1. Make your URLs discoverable by using a sitemap

In essence, sitemaps are XML files that list all of the crawlable URLs on your website, together with some metadata such as the date they were published. Submitting this file to Google Search Console enables Google to find your new pages faster and more efficiently.

This feature is especially great for pages that do not have many (or any) internal links – which Google would otherwise have a hard time discovering.

Most modern CMS platforms like WordPress have plenty of plugins (similar to Yoast SEO) that enable you to generate and maintain your sitemaps automatically. In some scenarios where you’re using a custom-built website, you can use a tool with a sitemap generator feature like Screaming Frog. However, keep in mind that manually generated sitemaps need to be regularly regenerated. Otherwise, they won’t feature URLs published after you’ve originally created them.

Add your XML sitemap in Search Console

2. Link important pages in the footer

Most websites have only a few pages that truly deserve their place in the main navigation. Because of that, and to avoid cluttering, a great option to effectively interlinking your website is to link your important pages in the footer.

Footer links aren’t a huge direct factor for SEO itself.  But they are a great User Experience factor – and can indirectly improve your website’s rankings.

Footer links naturally promote your users to explore the content on your website. That is, even if a user came for a different reason, they open the opportunities for them to find relevant content and, as such, learn more about your company. This way, they improve your branding – and having a strong brand is an important factor for ranking easier and higher in Google Search.

To give you a practical example, here’s our Google Analytics showcasing the entries towards our software’s development roadmap from all other pages on the website.

how to make seo friendly website link secondary pages from footer

As you can see, in roughly 5 months, there have been over 300 page views – with an average time on page of more than 3 minutes. In general, this means there have been over 300 opportunities to create brand ambassadors. What a great return on investment for simply adding that page to the footer!

 

3. Add internal links between important pages

Internal links are not only a great way to engage users by providing them with more relevant information but also help your pages rank higher.

A good and contextual internal linking structure allows search engines to better understand your content. They are yet another signal that Google uses to create a “topical cluster” for your website.

Additionally, as a side benefit, internal links help search engine crawlers discover the individual pages on your website. This is especially important if you decide not to create a sitemap, as otherwise Google won’t be able to find and index your new pages.

You shouldn’t see your internal links as a replacement for your sitemap or vice-versa. Internal linking also helps Google understand which pages on your website you find more valuable. The more prominent a link on your website is (of course, within a reasonable amount), the more you indirectly tell Google that you want users visiting this page – and that it is a valuable resource.

Furthermore, sitemaps don’t provide the benefits that internal links bring in terms of passing “link juice” between your pages. As such, a sitemap doesn’t directly influence your rankings as much as internal links do. Because of that, they are both meant to work together.

Internal links are important to rank

4. Implement SEO-friendly “hub pages”

Hub pages, also known as topic clusters and content hubs, are yet another important factor when restructuring or creating your website. Hub pages are pages that host topically relevant content sub-pages. Essentially, their role is to create a hub of content that both Google and the end-users find relevant, well-structured, and well-optimized.

For example, if your website focuses on marketing, this can present itself as a very large subject. Because of that, breaking down “Marketing” into relevant hubs can improve the SEO performance of each of these hubs. Building upon the example, such hubs would be “Content Marketing,” “SEO,” “Facebook Ads,” etc.

Each of these serves as its own “pillar of content,” where users find only the most contextual articles. This way, users can naturally explore the content and find more relevant articles. It’s also easier for you to interlink your content and thus create a topically relevant “net of content.” And naturally, this can promote your pages in Google Search.

In comparison, if you do not feature those hubs and only have the general “Marketing” category, your blog can look messy. Users will have a hard time finding the content they find relevant. Similarly, Google will also have a harder time building a “contextual map” of your site.

This can hurt you because it prevents you from establishing your site as an authority on your subject. And as we’ve seen, in recent years, the trend of ranking well in Google is shifting towards subject matter experts. This is a great segway into the next tip.

Hub pages illustration seo - Morningscore SEO tool
Author: Seobility – License: CC BY-SA 4.0

 

5. Improve your SEO’s E-E-A-T with “author pages”

In SEO, E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness and is part of Google’s Quality Raters’ Guidelines.

For simplicity’s sake, you can think of EEAT as credibility. In other words, are you credible enough to write about (and rank well) your subject? Some subjects require less EEAT than others. For example, while always beneficial, more hobby-orientated subjects like handcrafting do not require as much credibility as finances and health.

Regardless of the strength to which EEAT is present in your niche, SEOs agree that it’s a critical element for ranking – and is only bound to become more prominent. As such, you need to implement it on your website as well.

In practical terms, this means showcasing your credibility by having dedicated pages for your authors. There, you can (and should) showcase as much credible material as possible – from education and certifications to previous work experience and collaborations with authoritative figures in your niche.

To add to that, make sure that all of your blog content has an author assigned to them. This way, you’re not only leveraging your existing credibility but also building more for the future.

Similarly, some content requires more credibility which you can leverage by bringing in experts. Many articles in the financial and medical sectors are now vetted by professionals that check the correctness of the content.

Lastly, as a side note, E-E-A-T also has a lot to do with off-page SEO. Being featured in relevant media outlets and websites certainly helps your credibility in real life – and as such, it helps your online presence as well.

 

6. Utilize a mobile-friendly responsive design

Once you’ve laid out your SEO-friendly website structure, it’s time to consider one of the most important modern SEO aspects: mobile-friendliness. It’s no secret that Google’s Algorithm prioritizes websites that are well-optimized for mobile devices. After all, 56% of all traffic in 2021 came from mobile devices – and the trend will only continue.

Because Google knows that, its algorithms are optimized to provide a great User Experience not only to everyone sitting on their computers – but also to those searching from mobile devices. Consequently, Google has also upgraded their own crawlers – and now most well-ranking websites are crawled with their mobile crawler “Googlebot smartphone.”

You can see whether Google uses this crawler for your website in Google Search Console. However, even if you see “Googlebot Desktop,” remember that eventually, all websites get switched to mobile crawlers – and as such, your website must be ready for the change.

And that is important because mobile devices come with their own limitations – from slower processors and networks to smaller screen sizes. As such, websites that rely on Google need to adapt and create fast and responsive websites. There are two main aspects of optimizing your website for mobile devices.

Firstly, you need to ensure that your website is up to the technical standards that create a great user experience. Doing this includes having a fast-loading website that scales well on mobile devices and doesn’t feature intrusive elements like popups and horizontal scrolling.

Secondly, and still equally important, is optimizing your content for mobile devices. This includes the font size of your main text and headings, having a well-structured page layout where mobile can see all content, and featuring optimized images that are easy to see on mobile. Therefore, simply hiding elements on mobile isn’t enough.

mobile-friendly-seo

 

7. Add your most important pages to the main menu

Following up on the previous point, when considering the layout of your website – including its mobile version – you need to take a strategic look at your navigational menu.

It should come as no surprise that SEO-friendly websites have great navigation. In the past few years, the trend in SEO has clearly established itself as providing the most helpful experience to the end user. In other words, SEO and UX are merging at an ever-increasing rate.

As such, when designing your SEO-friendly website, your goal should be to make it as helpful and easy to navigate as possible. One great way to do this is by structuring your navigational menu so that it promotes the pages you want your potential customers to see.

For example, if you’re a service company, your main menu should feature pages with the individual services you provide. If you offer products, you can take a similar approach by showcasing the categories for your products. For bloggers, such pages are the blog topic categories.

Doing this also invites Google to crawl and index more of your pages. After all, these are the most valuable pages on your website. Adding internal links from the navigational menu ensures that Google recognizes that, too.

💡 Pro tip: Consider creating a mega menu to really push all your important SEO pages front and center

Here is an example from video tool veed.io – I think they do SEO really well in general and have used mega menus in a smart way to get Google and visitors to see their huge arsenal of SEO pages:

Use mega menus in your navigation to give all your SEO pages and keywords more internal links

Why do this? Several reasons, but no. 1 reason for SEO: Now all their important SEO pages have a ton of internal links from the main menu, signalling to Google that these pages are important and should be ranked.

8. Set up an SEO-friendly URL structure

Talking about pages, let’s take a deeper look at the elements that make a page – namely, the URL structure. SEO-friendly URLs are critical for ranking high in Google and work as an indirect factor that improves or worsens the User Experience.

In other words, featuring a keyword in your URLs on its own will not rank your website high – however, not doing so can hurt your potential for ranking high. That is because, similarly to your page title tag and meta description, users intuitively understand the contents of the page they click on from your URL. Additionally, search engines like Google use the URL in order to understand the contents of your page.

A user is more prone to clicking on an URL that matches their search rather than a generic one that doesn’t indicate what’s on the page they are about to visit. Because Google uses such User Signals to judge whether a page deserves to be at the top, URLs play an important role in convincing users the page is relevant to them.

Consider the following example. A user searches for “what do shiba inus eat.” A badly optimized URL contains numbers, has many forward slashes (i.e., “partitions” or “subfolders”), and does not provide relevant context to what’s about to appear on the page.

Contrary to that, good URLs match the search phrase of the user very well – and thus provide relevant information about the page. In fact, you can see this trend all across the search results. Most well-ranking websites on page 1 have an SEO-friendly URL.

how to make seo friendly website setup seo urls

Lastly, having well-optimized contextual URLs also helps returning visitors, as web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox offer live URL suggestions when the user types into the search bar.

 

9. Ensure robots.txt and meta robots allow crawling

We’ve covered how to help Google find your pages – but what about their crawlability? The most severe mistake you can make from an SEO perspective is to disallow search engines like Google from indexing your website.

Correctly setting up your robots.txt file is critical in allowing search engine crawlers on your website. Similarly, you can also de-index important content on a per-page basis using the meta robots tag.

As such, you need to ensure both of these are set up correctly so that Google is allowed on your website.

This is a common mistake that less-experienced SEOs or website developers can allow, especially during website redesigns and migrations. That’s because websites under construction are usually set up on what is known as a “development environment” so that the live website can still function on the side.

Now, neither of these settings is complex; however, their effects can be quite harsh. It’s always a good idea to regularly check if your robots.txt file is functional (or even there) as this document is quite important for the health of a website. We often recommend that people regularly use a tool to crawl their website – which also highlights other important website health issues.

robots txt Google bot

 

10. Improve the UX by reducing page load times

The technical setup of your website is essential in SEO as it impacts the User Experience. Having a fast-loading website is one of the core aspects you need to focus on if your goal is to create an SEO-friendly website.

Furthermore, fast websites have better performance on all other business metrics as well. A 100ms reduction in the website load time improved conversions by 8.4% for retail websites. Similarly, it increased conversions for travel websites by 10.1%.

But there’s more. If you have a slow-loading website, this can also discourage Google from crawling and indexing all of your URLs – because it has to spend considerably more time on them.

In fact, even if Google is able to find and index your pages, it understands that your website’s performance is not optimal and will not provide a good User Experience. As such, they are likely to demote your site from the Search Results.

Here are some areas where you can improve your page load times:

  • Remove unused scripts
  • Minimize scripts
  • Add server-side caching
  • Add caching to your website
  • Optimize images

 

11. Optimize images

Talking about images, let’s look at how they impact your website’s SEO-friendliness. Excessively large images are one of the lowest-hanging fruits when it comes to optimizing the speed of your website.

Firstly, you need to ensure that you’re using the right image formats for the job. JPGs are great for actual photos you’ve taken, while PNG is optimal for digitally created graphics.

Next up is the resolution of the image. Most desktop screens work with 1920×1080 pixels, while mobile phones have 1080×1920 pixels. As such, uploading huge images is unnecessary – you will not notice a significant improvement in quality, while the size of the image will be excessive.

In fact, in many instances, it’s perfectly acceptable to use images smaller than that, too. That’s because we rarely see the images full-screen – and when they are featured on, say, your blog, they are naturally going to be shrunk by the blog’s layout and bounding box.

Additionally, with the help of an online image compression tool like TinyPNG, you can easily half the size of your images. For both landing pages and blog posts, the user has to download smaller files – and thus, the page loads faster. The best part is that there’s no visible difference in the quality after compression, even for the trained eye.

Consequently, many plugins help you lazyload images, further reducing the time it takes for your website to load. And in some instances where your content revolves around using many images, using a Content Delivery Network might be a great solution as it takes the load off of your main servers.

Lastly, as part of SEO’s best practices, remember to name your images something relevant – and include an alternative text that helps Google understand its contents. This can boost the rankings of your main content on the Search Engine Result Page and bring you some relevant traffic through Image Search.

images in correct file format and optimized

 

12. Set the right hierarchy for your Heading tags

Another important element for SEO-friendliness is the structure of your H-tags. Heading tags are critical for two things. Firstly, they provide a contextual hierarchy of the contents of the page for search engines so that they can understand what the page is about. Secondly, they are important for the end-user. That is, they don’t only communicate your point across but also get the user to spend more time on your page and read further. For example, well-written headlines aim to incentivize the reader to explore your content. As such, there are some important practices you need to incorporate when writing headlines.

Firstly, make them incentivizing and actionable. Use power words to communicate to get the user excited about what’s coming. Similarly, use your main keywords and variations of them in the headings. Furthermore, short and sweet headings help the user skim through the content and find what’s most relevant for them. Lastly, try to make your headings non-obvious.

Everyone has read posts where all you need is the headlines – and you don’t want your content to be one of those articles. Together, these three tips ensure the user finds your content relevant as it provides context.

The last important thing to note here is that your headings set the hierarchy of your content on the page. Similarly to a school report, your pages need to have a certain hierarchy that thematically links the continents. In the case of a web page, those are the H-tags. Always aim to have only one H1 tag on the page, as this sets the “topic” for the page. From there on, major turning points in your texts can be set as H2 tags – with H3, H4, H5, and H6 serving as sub-headings for their relevant parent H2 tags.

13. Write unique title tags and meta descriptions

The title tags and meta descriptions are very important for actually gaining something from all of your SEO efforts. Even well-optimized websites can struggle with attracting users from search engines if their pages aren’t perceived as incentivizing enough by the end users.

That’s because your page title and meta descriptions, in a way, work as a promotional banner. Their content and the message they relay directly influence the user – and determine whether they are going to visit that website or click away. Your goal here is to make unique meta content for each page that the users find relevant and interesting enough to click on.

 

14. Avoid thin content

  • You need to ensure that none of your pages are shallow.
  • I would recommend: Having at least 100 unique words on all your pages.
  • This is the minimum. +500 words are often needed to rank.

 

15. Create SEO-friendly site architecture

One of the most important things to consider in order to make your website more SEO-friendly is the architecture of your website. The hierarchy in which your pages are structured directly impacts how search engines understand them. This is especially true for eCommerce sites and sites with many pages.

Naturally, on any website, some pages are more important than others. Because of that, Google wants to see them organized in an “intuitive” way so that both machines and users can make sense of it.

Credit: this Swedish article on site structure is a great quick overview.

SEO s

 

 

Bonus: 4 great examples of SEO-friendly websites

Now, let’s examine some practical examples of SEO-friendly websites. For this breakdown, we’ve intentionally selected 4 websites, each of which serves a unique purpose. This way, you can both find the most relevant use-case for your own website yet also gain ideas from other industries. The websites we’ll be examining are in the following niches:

  1. Service company
  2. Ecommerce store
  3. SaaS company
  4. Blogger

Let’s do the breakdowns!

Example 1: an SEO-friendly web design for a service company

FreemanHarris is a great case of a lawyer company with an SEO-friendly website. Looking at the full SEO picture for their website, you can see that they aren’t some conglomerate with infinitely deep pockets. Surprisingly, however, the company ranks well for its relevant keywords such as “London personal injury lawyer.”

example1 seo friendly service website lawyer

The answer to this becomes very apparent when taking a look at the structure of their website. Their website is fast, their layout communicates their brand effectively and is easy on the eyes. Their landing pages are built with the user in mind, as they contain tons of relevant information – from relevant copywriting, FAQs, a pricing table, and a contact field. Having this is important as it helps not only search engines rank the page but also keeps users longer on the site by providing better help.

example1 seo friendly service website unique content

As noted in the tips above, they are also implementing content hubs. This helps them rank not only for more specific long-tail keywords (e.g., “divorce lawyer London,” but also for broader keywords that do not specify the direct intent (e.g., “family lawyer London”).

example1 seo friendly service website content hubs

Looking at their navigational menu, you can see that they have approached their website design very strategically. Each of the services they want to be found on appears on its own dedicated page that is well-optimized. As such, Google sees their pages as very relevant and promotes them in search.

example1 seo friendly service website landing pages

While I do not have the exact numbers, I’m also certain that their conversion rates are high as well. They have a very relevant Call-To-Action button at the top of the page that has contrast and stands out from the background. As you can see, they used the color palette in a very smart way so that each color represents a specific and recognizable element. For example, their most important CTA button is always red.

example1 seo friendly service website call to action

Similarly, something that improves both SEO and conversions is their approach to E-A-T. On every landing page, they have a unique table representing their team’s qualified lawyers for the job. This is additionally backed up by their social proof with links to their Google, Reviews, and Trustpilot ratings. Lastly, further down the page, you can also see that they feature testimonials from their customers.

example1 seo-friendly service website EAT credibility

Example 2: an SEO-friendly web design for an eCommerce store

The website SoloStove.com is a perfect example of an SEO-friendly web design for an eCommerce store. They offer high-quality grills and grilling accessories at very reasonable prices.

Breaking down the layout of the page, we can take an educated guess that their best-selling products are fire pits – as they have highlighted that in the Hero section of their homepage. The website is also stunningly fast, while the images still look great.

example2 seo friendly ecommerce store

What’s unique here is their approach to SEO. For a keyword like “smokeless fire pit,” it’s standard for eCommerce companies to have a product category page ranking. However, because SoloStove has one signature product in that category, they have directly optimized their product page to rank for that keyword.

example2 seo friendly ecommerce store landing page

The great part about this is their execution – while they do offer a single product, they offer a ton of information on the product page, similar to what you’d expect from a whole category page. This amount of relevant content helps them both rank higher in search engines and convert more people to customers.

example2-seo-friendly-ecommerce-store

Example 3: an SEO-friendly web design for a SaaS company

For a well-optimized and SEO-friendly SaaS website, we need to look no further than the company DashThis.

From a technical perspective, they have a fast website with a straightforward page layout, which is expected, given that the software industry is highly competitive.

From a content perspective, they have a crazy number of relevant landing pages, which, based on my analysis, is a huge driver of traffic and sales. As you can see, they have found a perfect mix of keywords based on highly relevant purchase intent:

  • They have landing pages based around their audiences (e.g., “/marketing-agency-reporting-software/”)
  • A set of pages based around specific problems (e.g., “/ecommerce-reporting-tool/“)
  • A bunch of pages around integrations with popular platforms (e.g., “/google-analytics-dashboard/”)
  • Another set of landing pages offering templates for different purposes (e.g., “/advertising-campaign-report-template/”)

example3 seo friendly saas software company

By analyzing the content, we can see that they implement a very strategic layout, as the pages are optimized for conversions. For example, all of their main Call-To-Action buttons maintain the same color scheme and anchor the user that this color is the “action” color.

example3 seo friendly saas software company call to action

Similarly, they implement social proof as part of their page by listing not only customer logos but also relevant numbers and KPIs.

example3 seo friendly saas software company social proof

Example 4: an SEO-friendly web design for a blogger

EmmaCruises.com is a blog focusing on cruises created by the award-winning blogger Emma Le Teace. It is the perfect example of a passion project done right in all aspects, including SEO.

Starting off, you can see that the layout of the page is very much structured around blogging. The main content on her landing pages is her articles, with additional information being provided on the sidebar. She uses a lightweight theme and fast web servers, so her website load time is low.

example4 seo friendly blogger design layout

As Emma doesn’t operate a cruise fair, her monetization strategy revolves around informational SEO backed by her premium content, partnerships, and affiliate deals she has struck with other companies.

If you have some previous experience with blogging, you might have noticed that many bloggers start with the monetization idea of offering ads on their websites. What stands out in Emma’s case, however, is that there are no ads.

This only points us to thinking that she has been able to build an audience of followers that are looking exactly for the informational value she provides. This is great from an SEO-friendliness perspective because:

  1. Third-party ads introduce additional scripts that have to be loaded by the website visitor, thus slowing down the overall page load time. As we established, every (milli)second matters.
  2. Ads are often a big cause for layout shifts and intrusive user experience. Given Google’s latest Core Web Vitals changes, this can hurt the overall rankings.
  3. The purpose behind an ad is to get clicked. As an independent blogger who has to fight for and earn through hard work every website visitor, it is in your direct interest to keep users on your platform longer. Offering 3rd party ads from platforms like Google Adsense, in a way, goes against that idea, as the ads want to pull the customer towards another website.

example4 seo friendly blogger monetization

One other thing that becomes apparent is the E-A-T she has built. Her content is so well-researched, in-depth, and original that she has earned lots of credibility in her industry. This has earned her both media appearances and tons of highly relevant backlinks. Overall, what Emma has done is truly something we can all admire.

example4 seo friendly blogger about page eat credibility

Creating an SEO-friendly website is a process

To conclude, we’d like to stress once again that well-optimized websites don’t happen by chance. Because of that, consider SEO as part of your strategy already in the planning stages. Doing this will save you a lot of time, effort, and money for potential changes down the road. We hope you found these tips for designing an SEO-friendly website useful, and the examples were useful.

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