How to improve your SEO ranking

In part 1, we covered keyword research and the LUMPS principle. Now the L: links. A link takes you from one place to another with one click. We make a distinction between external and internal links.

Your ranking improves when other websites link to your pages. In Google Search Console, you see which sites link to your website today.

What matters is quality. Links from websites that search engines consider reliable count more: the more important the site that links to you, the more the link is worth. Several SEO tools estimate this authority of a domain, so you can compare websites.

A common strategy to earn external links: write an in-depth article on a topic, then publish shorter parts of it on platforms such as LinkedIn or Medium, with a link to the original. A bit like we did with this series!

At Blastic, we focus less on external links. It takes a lot of time and attention, and our experience shows you can reach the top of the search results with a limited number of external links, as long as you pay enough attention to keywords, structure and good content.

Internal links affect your ranking too, and the big advantage is that you control them completely. Search engines give more weight to pages that more internal links point to. Google Search Console shows your internal links as well.

You improve internal linking, for example, with links in your menu or footer: they're on every page, so they multiply the links to a page in one go. Another quick win: a section with related or recent articles under each blog post. Many CMSs can do this automatically.

Quality matters here too. The most valuable internal links are the ones in your articles. But don't overdo it: too many links make an article worse. Apply these tips well and your ranking will improve, and your visitors will find their way more easily.

Choose your link texts carefully. Search engines look at the words in a link to understand the page it points to. That's why we never ask visitors to click here, but to find out more about Blastic. The second link tells much more than the word "here", for search engines and for people using a screen reader.

Paying attention to links will help you improve your ranking. Next up: URLs, meta tags, paragraphs, page speed and sitemaps.