Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a highly optimized website that ranks well on Google and delights users. Producing high-quality, expert content that answers every aspect of a user’s query isn’t quick or easy. Building a fast, technically sound website that Google can easily crawl and understand takes time. SEO is a long-term strategic investment.
That said, sometimes you need quick wins, and some efforts can deliver faster results, helping bridge the gap between where your site stands now and where you want it to be. More importantly, they demonstrate the value of SEO, helping you earn buy-in for greater resources and investment.
In this article, you’ll learn eight actionable SEO tactics that can deliver results quickly, from optimizing title tags to claiming your Google Business Profile—each designed to improve your search visibility and drive more qualified traffic to your store.
Look for easy keywords
Ranking for high-volume, short-tail, very competitive keywords requires investment (of time and content). But targeting longtail keywords is a better starting point. Longtail keywords have less volume, but they’re lower competition, and they’re often higher intent. A keyword like “hiking shoes” is a high-volume, short-tail keyword, whereas “best low top hiking shoes for women” is a longtail keyword. Someone searching this longtail keyword likely has a better idea of what they’re looking for, and therefore may be further along on their purchase journey.
Use an SEO keyword research tool to find keywords relevant to your business with medium keyword difficulty and meaningful search volume. Keyword difficulty is a metric assigned to keywords in tools like Semrush or Ahrefs—these tools use their own algorithms to determine difficulty, typically reporting on a scale from low to very high competition.
However, don’t chase after terms with a relatively low keyword difficulty score just because you can rank with them. Focus on keywords that are relevant to your business and align with a search intent you can satisfy—that way, you’re going after terms that actually bring in potential customers.
Analyze performance data to identify what’s working, then apply those insights to more competitive keywords. In Google Search Console’s Performance report, export search results for the past three, six, or 12 months. Review the Pages tab to see clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and position for your top URLs. Sort by clicks to spot patterns: Do certain product categories, blog posts, or guides consistently rank well? Do their title tags follow similar patterns or target related keywords?
Earn backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site. Search engines understand backlinks to be indicators of credibility and relevance, using them to assess how trustworthy and authoritative your content is for ranking purposes.
To earn backlinks, you have to create pages that people want to link to. That could be guides, blog posts, or tools that provide real value to real people. For example, a Glossier blog post featuring Emily Ratajkowski’s beauty routine has earned backlinks from a variety of high-profile sites, including BuzzFeed, Vogue, and Women’s Health.
If you come across blogs or articles that mention your site favorably, reach out to the content creator to ask if they’d be willing to link back to your site. You can track backlinks with almost any SEO tool, including Google Search Console, which is free. Remember, not all backlinks are desirable. Links from low-quality websites can actually hurt your SEO. Only claim those from non-spammy sites.
Clean up broken links
All three types of links—internal links within your site, backlinks to your site, and links you make to external pages—can break. Use Google Search Console (free) to identify broken links, or consider paid tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs for more comprehensive crawls. Here’s how to fix broken links:
-
Internal and external links on your site. Update, replace, or remove the broken link.
-
Backlinks to your site. These are less straightforward since they come from external sites. Fixing broken backlinks means reaching out to the site’s administrator to request an update. A polite email often does the trick—but some sites might say no to the request. It happens!
If you have a backlink from a spammy site, disavow it.
To fix a broken backlink: email the site in question, asking them to fix or remove the incorrect link. Create a 301 redirect (to a similar page, if the original has been removed) and a 404 page (so when users hit a broken link, they can get back to the homepage).
In some cases, it’s fine to do nothing. If there’s nothing to be gained from the broken backlink (i.e., it’s a small, niche site without much visibility), ignore it.
Add internal links for deeper engagement
Internal links are hugely important for SEO. They help Google crawl and index your pages, send users deeper into your website, and build topical authority.
Pages without links are often referred to as orphan pages, and you can use an SEO tool to find them. Both Screaming Frog and Ahrefs offer free trials or free versions of their tool which can be used to find orphan pages.
Review the orphan page, updating it to add links to relevant resources from elsewhere on your site, for example in blog posts, category or tag pages, other products or user testimonials.
When linking, use descriptive anchor text (clickable text in a hyperlink describing its target). Linking the keyword itself passes SEO value and helps both Google—and users—better understand the linked page.
To level up, add related content modules or category widgets so every page encourages users to explore further.
Add tables of contents and FAQs to informational pages
For blog posts or information pages on your site, add a table of contents, subsections (with secondary headlines) and a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section to round out the page.
These elements add structure to the page, which can help users navigate the content more easily—and stay engaged on the page longer. Those strong engagement signals do, indirectly, help your SEO.
Better yet: If the heading for the subsection is wrapped in an H2 HTML tag, it’s possible to rank on search with the keywords in that subheader.
Finally, an FAQ is a great catch-all for questions with short answers that didn’t warrant a full section.
Tweak title tags to boost click through rate
Title tags are an HTML element (the