SEO for When You Don’t Really Care About SEO

1. The Importance of Backlinks

What they are: A backlink is when another website links to yours. Google uses backlinks to help determine your site’s authority and ranking.
Quality over quantity: Links from reputable sites (e.g., CNN, BBC) provide significant boosts; links from spammy sites can hurt you.
Dofollow vs. Nofollow: A dofollow link transfers ranking “credit,” whereas nofollow links do not. Most natural links in articles are dofollow.
Practical tips: Simply be aware that backlinks are important. If someone likes your site, see if they’ll link to it. If you get press coverage or do interviews, make sure they include a dofollow link. You don’t have to buy or heavily engineer backlinks if you’re not trying to “game” the system.

2. Structuring Your Content

Use relevant keywords: If you want to rank for a particular topic, include those keywords in the title and the body of your post. For example, if you’re writing about “Anki,” make sure “Anki” appears in the title.
Match user searches: Think about what search terms people actually use. Incorporating those exact phrases into your content can help Google match you with relevant searches.
Website optimization: Make sure your site isn’t slow or error-prone. A fast, stable site typically ranks higher. Tools such as Lighthouse or Google’s PageSpeed Insights can help you spot performance issues.

3. Using Ahrefs (or Similar Tools)

What it does: Ahrefs provides insights on backlinks, site authority, and the keywords that drive traffic to your site.
Why it’s useful: Even if you’re not deeply invested in SEO, it helps to know who’s linking to you and which topics bring in search traffic.
Practical setup: It’s free to monitor your own site. Install it, check basic reports occasionally, and note any big spikes or dips in your search traffic.

4. Meta Tags & Basic Technical SEO

Meta tags: Properly formatted titles, meta descriptions, and other tags help Google understand what your content is about.
Length considerations: Titles and meta descriptions should typically adhere to Google’s preferred length (around 50–60 characters for titles, 150–160 for meta descriptions).
WordPress plugins: If you use WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO make it easy to follow best practices (e.g., alerting you when your title is too long or if you haven’t used your keyword enough).

5. Maintaining Consistent URLs

Avoid broken links: If Google sees many broken links, it can harm your ranking.
Use redirects: If you move or rename articles, set up a 301 redirect so visitors and Google can follow the new URL without penalty.

Final Thoughts

Even if you don’t care about advanced SEO techniques, following these basics helps ensure you’re not sabotaging your website’s visibility. Most steps—like keeping your site fast, organizing your content, and being mindful of backlinks—are also just good web practices. By spending a few hours on setup and then following simple guidelines, you’ll capture the majority of SEO benefits without the hassle of deep optimization.

Fried Kielbasa