SEO strategy for 2023

In this article, I am going to lay out my entire SEO strategy for 2023 and explain it step by step so you can copy it for massive traffic on Google.

Before I get started, there are a few things to note. First, everything you are about to learn is current and up-to-date. This article is written in 2023. I didn’t just change the title of an old one. Second, you will not be reading the same generic unactionable SEO advise that you are used to reading: the right quality content and Google will reward you. Everything I’m going to tell you will be actionable and clear so that you can start today. Lastly, make sure to stick around to the end. The bonus tactic I will share with you is already making waves and will change SEO forever. Let’s get started.

Write engine-friendly content

The first pillar of my SEO strategy for 2023 is to write perfectly optimized search engine-friendly articles. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let me break this down. You need to keep in mind that Google is a code. It has no idea what apple pie is. It never made apple pie or eaten apple pie. So, if you write an apple pie recipe article, how can you make Google understand that your article is best?

Give Google exactly what it is looking for

While Google doesn’t know what apple pie is, it does have a good reference for what makes a good apple pie article, and it’s called page one of Google. Google compares your content with the existing content at the top of Google to see how you measure up. So your SEO strategy for 2023 needs to reverse engineer what got these people to the top of Google in the first place, and it’s not just me that’s getting results with this approach. My colleagues said that by following the process I am about to show you, they don’t get affected by core Google updates, and they doubled traffic for two websites in a recent update.

Make your article superior to your competition

Before creating an article, you need to make an article outline superior to your competition. To do that, you want to determine the heading structure outlined for your article and the ideal word count. For example, let’s say you’re writing an article on whether the Metaverse exists. Go to Google, type in your keyword, then open up the number one article.

Now, look at these H2 and H3 headings on the page since this is the best article on the topic and the best outline. Note these headings down. Also, look at this article’s length because Google thinks it’s ideal. Now open up the second-place and third-place articles to get more titles to add to your outline. The reason that your outline is the best is that it’s the superset of all three of the top-ranking articles.

Now it’s time to start writing, but here’s how again you will outclass your competition in your introduction paragraph. Don’t fluff around. If someone searches for, does the Metaverse exist yet, that means they already know what the Metaverse is. Refrain from wasting their time explaining what the Metaverse is.

Use a SEO tool that reverse engineers page one of Google search

Next, you know how Google uses the top articles as a reference. You want to write your content to include the keywords that Google expects to see in the best Metaverse articles. If you jump in and start writing, there’s a good chance you’ll include keywords like VR, web 3.0, and Zuckerberg in your article. But that would be blind luck. It would help you if you had a SEO tool that reverse engineers page one of Google search to determine the exact frequencies that Google expects to see in an article. It guides you as you write, so you can’t mess up.

The next tip is a game changer, write the answer to a search query in a Google-friendly format. If the question is, “Does the Metaverse exist?” then use an extremely simple sentence to answer it. “Yes, the Metaverse does exist.” or “No, the Metaverse does not exist.” Responding in a format like this makes it easy for Google’s language algorithm to know you answer the question. It also skyrockets your chance of getting the featured snippet position at the top of Google.

Become a topical authority

The next key pillar of my SEO strategy for 2023 is to become a topical authority. Let’s say you want to write an article on how to start a business. And you would like it to be the best article the world has ever seen on starting a business. Let’s assume you got Elon, Bezos, and Bill Gates to co-author this article. This article will get zero traffic unless you post it on a website with a lot of business content. This concept is called topical authority. On the other hand, when you start to cover completely every aspect of a topic, Google has no choice but to think this website is an expert on business.

How you become a topical authority

Here’s how you become a topical authority. First, you need to figure out all the topics that need to be written. That is called generating a topical map. Then you will start writing each of these articles one by one. That is good because you just learned the formula for writing a perfectly optimized article. And lastly, you seal the deal by interlinking relevant articles together. Remember to link more to the articles that are your topic centerpiece, like “How to start a business.” The topical authority will become standard practice this year. So don’t get left behind.

Backlinks matter in SEO strategy for 2023

The next foundational pillar of my SEO strategy for 2023 is to have a link-building plan that the Google algorithm loves. You may hear in generic SEO videos that link building is dead and you don’t need backlinks to get Google traffic any more. When I think of backlinks, observer.com, Outlook India, or Dallas News comes to mind. All these sites have one thing going for them, a ton of backlinks. Backlinks matter in 2023, and that’s not going away. And within a global racing for topical authority, links will be the deciding factor over who wins. If your website is the car, then links are the fuel.

But there is an even more important reason that you want to build links. A strong backlink profile protects you from getting messed up when the Google algorithm updates. The reason is EAT. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust are three requirements that show up 130 times in Google’s quality rate guidelines. You might think EAT was about putting author boxes in your article. Not really. Google has said EAT is largely based on links.

What kind of links you need in 2023

What kind of links you need in 2023

So what kind of links am I building in 2023? 40% of the links are Guest Posts. And these are coming from both in-house outreach and using vendors like Authority Builders. Another 30% of my links will be the link insertion getting links in existing articles that have links going to them. I also do that in-house or outsource to Authority Builders. 15% of the links will come from Health Reporter Out, HARO, which we build in-house, 10% comes from Digital PR, where we are creating newsworthy stories and outreaching journalists. 3% is coming from business Directory Citations, which I outsource to Authority Builders, and the remaining 2% is coming from link exchanges just answering the inbox and working out some exchanges with high-quality websites.

Give Google exactly what it is looking for

My next 2023 strategy is to give Google exactly what it is looking for by focusing on the user experience in particular goal completion. Google wants users to achieve their goals. And they explicitly showed how important this is to them. A friend of mine searched for the best data center in Buffalo on mobile. He visited the first result, then hit back on his browser. And he found the survey asking him to rate how easy it was to find what he wanted. It’s crystal clear. Stop horsing around and give your users what they are looking for as fast as possible.

Ancient SEO theory used to believe that Google loved it when users were on your content for a long time. No, not anymore. Google has TikTok to deal with this attention economy. There’s no time for reading anymore, use a TOC section to summarize the bulk of your article. In the quick section at the top, use large fonts to draw the eye to a quick answer to the search query. And if you are writing review content, put your comparison tables at the top just like CNET does.

AI content will completely change SEO techniques

Let’s get to my next SEO strategy for 2023. Whether you like it or not, this strategy will completely change how SEO is done. And even if you don’t want to do it yourself, your competition definitely will. And that’s AI content. The current quality of AI tools on the market is good. Some sites built on AI content have shot up vertically in traffic while avoiding every single Google update. Why AI content generates traffic on sites read in my article.

But the roadmap of what is on the horizon for AI content is insane. GPT-4 is coming out with better, more undetectable algorithms, and the AI software is now letting you write full SEO-optimized articles from top to bottom in one click.

Matt Diggity