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The Complete Guide for Advanced Users (with Checklist)

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If you’re running a website, it’s important to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to optimize it for search engines. Technical SEO is one of the most important aspects of this process, and it can be tricky to get right.

In this follow-up to our Learn SEO: The Complete Guide for Beginners, we will walk you through everything you need to know about technical SEO. We’ll cover topics like crawlability, indexing, and page speed optimization. We’ll also provide tips on how to troubleshoot common issues and fix them. 

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website for the technical aspects that search engines use to crawl and index it, with the end goal of increasing rankings.

What is technical SEO?

This includes things like your site’s structure, code, and page speed. By improving these technical factors, you can make your site more visible and easier to find in search results.

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Why is technical SEO important?

You can have awesome content, but if your website has technical errors, that awesome content you worked hard on will be difficult to find. This is why technical SEO is important.

For one, it can help improve your site’s visibility in search results. If your site is well-optimized, it will be easier for search engines to find and index it. This can lead to higher rankings and more traffic over time.

Additionally, technical SEO can help improve your site’s user experience. Faster loading times and an easy-to-use interface can make a big difference for your visitors.

Is technical SEO difficult?

Technical SEO can seem daunting at first, but it’s actually not that difficult once you get the hang of it.

The most important thing to remember is that technical SEO is all about making your website as easy to find and index as possible.

That means ensuring that your pages are well-structured and free of errors, and providing clear and concise metadata.

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It also means taking steps to improve your site’s speed and performance.

While this may sound like a lot of work, the payoff is worth it—technical SEO can help you attract more organic traffic and improve your search engine rankings.

Is it possible to rank a website properly without technical SEO?

In order for a website to rank on the search engines, technical SEO must be implemented.

This means that:

  • The website must be designed in such a way that it can be easily found and indexed by the search engine crawlers.
  • The website must also have fast loading times and be free of errors.
  • The website’s structure and hierarchy should be easy to understand.

So without optimizing the technical factors in your website, it won’t rank in the search engines.

Technical SEO vs on-page SEO

One common misconception is that technical SEO and on-page SEO are the same thing. But there is a big difference between the two.

On-page SEO refers to the optimization of individual pages on your website. This includes things like title tags, meta descriptions, and keyword research.

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Technical SEO, on the other hand, refers to the technical aspects of your site that affect its crawlability and indexation. This includes things like site structure, code, and page speed.

So if you’re looking to improve your website’s visibility in search results, be sure to focus on both technical and on-page SEO, and not just one or the other.

Glossary of terms

Before we move forward, here are some terms for quick reference.

Crawling

Search engines detect new and updated content by sending search spiders, which crawl and store information from websites for indexing and retrieval.

Indexing

Search engines index content they find during crawling and store it. As soon as a page is indexed, it is eligible to appear when relevant to a user’s search query.

Retrieval

Search engines search their index database for results relevant to the search query, then retrieve those results and rank them according to what looks to be the most useful to the user.

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XML sitemap

An XML sitemap is used to help search engines understand the structure of a website. It’s basically a map that shows search engines what pages are on a site and how they’re related.

This can be especially helpful if a website has a lot of content or if it’s regularly updated.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt is a file used to control which files search engine spiders can access on your website. The file is located in the root directory of your website.

Structured data

Structured data is a specific format for organizing information on a website. This format can be used by search engines to understand the contents of a page, and provide more relevant results to users.

Structured data also makes the SERPs more informative by triggering knowledge panels, featured snippets, and event snippets.

Technical SEO audit tools

Here is a list of the tools you can use for your audit.

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Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Technical SEO tool Screaming frog interface

We covered Screaming Frog extensively in our Learn SEO guide. Basically, it crawls your links and gives you an overview of what’s going on in your website: Your 404s, duplicates, missing metadata, and more.

Learn SEO The Complete Guide for Beginners Landing Page

Download: Learn SEO: The Complete Guide for Beginners

SE Ranking

New SE Ranking Website Audit Tool Dashboard 3

A paid tool I’ve found to be useful as well for auditing is SE Ranking. The best part for me about this tool is that the report interface is so clean and intuitive. You can check out our review for SE Ranking’s website audit feature here.

Semrush

Technical SEO tool Semrush site audit

Semrush has a site audit functionality as well which you can use to check orphan pages, core web vitals, and more.

Further reading: Semrush Core Web Vitals Report Review

Google Search Console

Google Search Console Coverage Interface

Google Search Console is an indispensable tool for technical SEO. This is where you check and verify URLs, submit your sitemap, and more.

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PageSpeed Insights

Technical SEO tool PageSpeed Insights Analysis

It’s important that you know how fast your website is and what’s causing it to slow down. PageSpeed Insights is the tool you need for that.

Think with Google page speed

No matter how good your content is, if people just leave your website because of technical issues like slowness, your traffic and engagement will remain low.

How to perform a technical SEO audit (with checklist)

One of the most important aspects of technical SEO is auditing your website. This helps you identify any potential issues that could be holding your site back from ranking higher in search results.

How often should I do a technical SEO audit?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The frequency of your technical SEO audits will depend on the size and complexity of your website, as well as how quickly things change on your site.

That being said, we recommend doing even just a short technical SEO audit once a month, and a more in-depth audit every quarter. This will give you a chance to identify and fix any technical issues before they have a chance to hurt your site’s performance.

Let’s begin.

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Technical SEO Checklist

Review your site structure

Tools to use: Screaming Frog, Semrush

One of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s SEO is to review its structure. This will help you identify any potential issues that could be hindering your site’s performance in search engines.

Website structure includes things like your site’s hierarchy, URL structure, and internal linking.

For businesses with new sites, planning your website’s structure is the first and most important thing to do.

You have to make sure that both visitors and search engines can easily navigate through your website.

A poorly designed site structure can make things confusing for developers, leaving behind orphan pages. And when this happens, you will have to take the extra time and effort to look for these orphan pages and link to them.

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To plan your website structure, you can create a simple chart or outline like this example below:

site structure

Go as simple with your site structure as you can, so visitors and search engines can easily navigate between your web pages.

There are articles that argue that the most important information on a website should only be a couple of clicks deep (see: the 3-click rule), while the Nielsen Norman Group argued that it’s an arbitrary rule not backed by data.

But in 2018, Google’s John Mueller discussed that it does matter—so a good rule of thumb would be to ensure that the most important information is accessible from the homepage.

Look for orphan pages

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As mentioned earlier, you will have to look for orphan pages as part of your audit.

Orphan pages are pages of a website that is not internally linked or has zero links from other pages of your website. This makes it difficult for search engine bots to crawl and index these pages.

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Orphan pages may occur for different reasons. It could be old blog posts, old products that are not being sold anymore, old services pages that are not being offered anymore.

While there are some pages that are purposely left out such as testing pages and tags pages, it is critical that you check if there are orphan pages that are still relevant for the users.

Does it affect my SEO?

The answer is both yes and no. The effect of orphan pages in a website’s rankings depends on how you look at it. If a page that is orphan was created to be shown to users and has content that is important to users, it hurts your SEO because crawlers can’t see this page thus it won’t appear in the search results. Users won’t be able to see them either.

However, if a page that is orphan was created for other purposes not related to users such as testing functionalities or testing a new website design, then you can leave these pages as it is.

How to find orphan pages using Screaming Frog

To find orphan pages using Screaming Frog, you have to first make sure that your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts are connected.

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To do that, under Configuration, scroll down to API access and connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

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Once you got them connected, make sure that under the General tab of the API window, you select Crawl New URLs Discovered in Google Analytics.

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After connecting your GA and GSC accounts, under Configuration, go to Spider, and check Crawl Linked XML Sitemaps. Then check the option Crawl These Sitemaps: and input the URL of your website’s sitemap.

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After setting everything up, you could now start crawling your website. Once it’s finished crawling, under Crawl Analysis, click on configure and check the box beside Sitemaps. It will start analyzing the crawl log of your website and will allow you to see the orphan pages.

After the analysis, in the Overview under Sitemaps, you can now see all orphan pages that were crawled by Screaming Frog.

Orphan URLs

How to find orphan pages using Semrush

You could also find orphan pages by setting up Site Audit in Semrush. If you don’t have a website set up, create a new project first and let Semrush crawl your website.

Once the set up of the project is complete, go to the Site Audit of your website then go to Issues. Under the Notices tab, scroll down to check if orphan pages report is enabled.

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If it hasn’t been enabled yet, connect your Google Analytics account in the Site Audit Settings. The process is similar to Screaming Frog. It will prompt you to log in with your Google Account, select the Profile, Property, and View of your selected Website and click Save.

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Once you complete the setup, Semrush will automatically collect data from Google Analytics. Unlike Screaming Frog, you don’t have to connect Google Search Console to get orphan pages data in Semrush.

After a few minutes, refresh your browser and check the Issues tab again. Click the drop down menu Select an Issue and you will find Orphaned Pages (Google Analytics) under Notices.

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Optimize or scrap?

Once you collected all orphan pages, it is now up to you what to do with these. You could place them inside a Google Sheet.

  • If a page is still relevant, label them as ‘optimize’ and find possible pages to link to this page.
  • If a page was relevant but now irrelevant such as old products or old services, you could delete them and leave them as 404. No need to redirect these as they don’t carry any link value at all.
  • If a page is purposely left out, you could leave them as it is.

Here’s a sample template that you could use:

1651735028 477 The Complete Guide for Advanced Users with Checklist

While orphan pages can be harmless to your website’s overall rankings and SEO value, it could be a critical issue when important pages are left out. Include monitoring of orphan pages in your regular website maintenance audit. Make sure that your website has a healthy site structure and good flow of link juice by internally linking pages to each other.

Fix 404 pages

Screaming frog 404

The 404 error is an HTTP status code that is sent by a website server to the browser if it is unable to find the webpage a user wants to access. It usually displays a message “Page Not Found” to users.

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To find them, open your Screaming Frog and input your website URL, then start the crawl.

Then click Client Error (4xx) to see the status codes.

You can opt to compile these and send them over to your team’s web developers. You can also redirect the URLs (301) you believe are still useful to the new pages created to replace them.

Secure your website

Switch to HTTPS by using a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). SSL encrypts the link between a web server and a browser.

If you’re building a website from scratch, you can add this to your purchase for free depending on the hosting you’re using.

If not, you can ask the web developers assigned to your website to purchase the SSL and activate it. You can also see how to do it by yourself through this in-depth guide by HubSpot.

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Generate and submit an XML sitemap

Tools to use: Google Search Console

You can check if your website has a sitemap by entering in the search bar: www.[website]/sitemap.xml.

SEO Hacker Sitemaps

If your website doesn’t have one yet, you can use a plugin such as the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin by Arne Brachhold. You can also use https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ to generate your sitemap.

XML sitemaps

After you generate your sitemap, you need to submit it. To do that, you need to open Google Search Console, then click Sitemaps. You can then add your sitemap URL and submit.

Submit XML sitemap

Further reading: Ultimate Sitemap SEO Guide

Check your robots.txt

To verify your website’s robots.txt, you can type in the search bar: www.[website]/robots.txt.

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Robots

If you don’t have one yet, open your Notepad and copy-paste the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Sitemap: https://www.[website]/sitemap.xml

This is the default directive found in a basic robots.txt file.

You can add other rules based on your needs.

Once you’re done, save it as a .txt file and upload it to the root directory of your website. You can ask the web developers to do so or you can contact your web hosting service provider to help you out.

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Further reading: The Complete Guide to Robots.txt and Noindex Meta Tag

Check your robots meta tags

Tools to use: Screaming Frog

Robots meta tags pieces of code used to instruct search engines what to follow, what not to follow, what to index, and what not to index. It is found in the <head> section of your webpage.

They usually look like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

You can opt to press CTRL+U on an individual page to view the page source and check for the meta tag, or you can use Screaming Frog to check the directives in your website.

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Screaming Frog noindex

For example, /category/marketing/ has a directive of noindex, follow. Let’s look at it through the page source:

technical SEO noindex follow

There you go.

Further reading: What Meta Robots Tag Are For

Optimize URL slugs

Next, optimize your URL slugs.

SEO Philippines

When you create a slug, make sure that it contains your keyword, and that it’s as short yet descriptive as possible.

So instead of using /seo-in-the-philippines/ as our slug, we just use /seo-philippines/.

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It’s much easier to understand and remember. It’s also a good web accessibility practice.

If the webpage already exists, you can still change the URL—but make sure to redirect the old URL to the new one. In our case, we use the 301 Redirects plugin, so our redirect settings look like this:

WP 301 Redirects

Provide clear and concise metadata

Meta tags are snippets of information that describe a page content—they appear in the source code, not on the page. Meta tags are essentially little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about.

According to WordStream, “The “meta” stands for “metadata,” which is the kind of data these tags provide—data about the data on your page.”

To optimize your meta tags, you can opt to change your title tags and meta descriptions—and of course, include your keyword.

A rule of thumb for title tags is to keep them between 50-60 characters.

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For meta descriptions, keep them under 155 characters.

Technical SEO meta description

When you have a compelling and informative title tag and description, the likelihood that users will click on your page will increase.

And when Google notices you’re getting more clicks through your page, it will tag you as a relevant site, thus making you rank higher.

Further reading: INFOGRAPH: 5 Steps to Create the Perfect Meta Description

Optimize site speed and performance

Tools to use: PageSpeed Insights (you can also choose Google Lighthouse (Chrome Extension) or Test My Site)

Another important aspect of technical SEO is page speed optimization. Site speed is a ranking factor for both desktop and mobile searches, so it’s important to make sure your pages load quickly.

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Do take note that some websites use site speed and page speed interchangeably.

However, some websites say that site speed is different from page speed.

Nevertheless, it’s important that the content on your webpage loads faster. This is to prevent your site visitors from leaving your website and going to your competitors.

Optimizing images

If you use a large image size, it will greatly affect your site speed. In this case, you need to reduce your image size.

The trouble with reducing your image size though is that it also reduces its quality. The good news is that there are plugins or scripts that let you decrease the size of your file without reducing its quality.

To reduce your image size without compromising its quality, simply choose the right combination of your file format and compression type you will use. Ideally, your image’s file format should be in PNG and at a medium compression rate.

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You can use the following tools when optimizing images for your webpage:

  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Gimp
  • FileOptimizer
  • ImageResizer.com

ImageResizer

ImageResizer.com dashboard

Enabling browser caching

The concept of browser caching is straightforward: it takes whatever files you define as files that don’t change often (such as your company logo and website menu) and downloads them once to the visitor’s browser.

This way, they don’t have to be redownloaded every single time they visit your website, making your webpages load much faster.

There are three ways to go about this:

Ask your web hosting provider

You can contact your web hosting provider and have them edit your site’s .htaccess file. That way, you don’t have to touch anything in your website.

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Edit the .htaccess file yourself

The header says it all. I wouldn’t recommend this unless you have knowledge on how to troubleshoot in case you make a mistake. If you’re using Yoast, here’s their guide.

Use a plugin

There are various plugins you can choose from that you’ll just download and activate. Quick and easy as pie. Just check with your web developers to confirm if they won’t be causing any issues with other plugins.

Enable Gzip Compression

When a browser loads your website, it requires downloading all the relevant files stored on your server. If your files like HTML, PHP, CSS, and Javascript are too large to load, chances are it will affect your site speed as well.

This is where Gzip comes into play. What it does is that it compresses or reduces the size of your file by up to 30% or less than its original size so your webpage loads faster.

You can use the Gzip Compression Test tool to check if Gzip is enabled on your website, or if you simply want to check your website’s Gzip compression rate.

GiftOfSpeed

A word of caution. When you use Gzip, you’re only meant to compress files, not images—or you’ll end up with low-quality, pixelated images on your webpage.

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There are many other aspects you need to check when it comes to optimizing your site speed. I’ve only included three in this post. For our in-depth guide to site-speed optimization, check out:

Further reading: Ultimate Guide to Site-Speed Optimization

Also, keep in mind that consistency is key when it comes to site speed optimization. An optimized site speed requires adding scripts or plugins on occasion, so it’s best to always do a site audit every month to keep site downtime from happening.

Site Speed Optimization Package

Fix content issues

If you’re having trouble with technical SEO, there are a few common issues that could be to blame.

One of the most common is duplicate content. This can happen if you have multiple pages with similar or identical content.

To fix this, you’ll need to either apply a 301 redirect or add rel=”canonical” tags to your pages.

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Another common issue is thin content. This happens when a page has very little useful content.

Different websites have their own opinions on how long content should be—Yoast recommends >300 words for regular posts or pages, while HubSpot claims that your content length shouldn’t go lower than 2,100 words.

Which one should you follow? I would argue that it’s not exactly a matter of word count, but of content quality.

  • Does your blog post go in-depth and answer what your target audience needs to know about the topic?
  • Does it match search intent?

I suggest focusing on those instead of word vomiting irrelevant content just to “fix” thin content.

Further reading: How TO NOT Screw up Your Canonical Tags and Search Intent SEO for Beginners

Implement structured data

According to Yoast,

“Where Schema is the language in which you present your content, structured data is the actual data you provide. It describes the content on your page and what actions site visitors can perform with this content. This is the input you give search engines to get a better understanding of your pages.”

Technical SEO schema

Simply put, it helps make your page more understandable for search engines and users.

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To implement structured data, there are a number of things you can do, but I would suggest using a plugin like Yoast or WPSSO Core.

It gives you the option to select entity types and automatically applies the schema for you instead of you having to manually choose a template and inputting data.

Schema Markup and Structured data

Further reading: How to Create Structured Data Markup for Rich Snippets

Prioritize mobile-friendliness

Percentage of Global Mobile Traffic

Source: BroadbandSearch

The mobile friendliness of a website can be measured by how well it is designed and optimized for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Just looking at the graph above, we can confidently say it’s integral to optimize for mobile.

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Install an AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) plugin to your website

AMP for WordPress

Instead of having to manually work on optimizing your site for mobile, we recommend installing the AMP for WordPress plugin.

This is what we use here in SEO Hacker, and it’s made our job a lot easier when it comes to optimizing for mobile.

  • Install the AMP WordPress plugin.
  • Activate the plugin—what it will do is append /amp on all your pages but it won’t redirect visitors to them.
  • Edit your .htaccess file—you could use an FTP program to do this. I personally use Filezilla.
  • (Optional) Just in case you want to check if your AMP pages are working across the board—in your .htaccess file, paste this code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/amp$ [NC]RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (android|blackberry|googlebot-mobile|iemobile|iphone|ipod|#opera mobile|palmos|webos) [NC]RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9-]+)([/]*)$ https://website.com/$1/amp [L,R=302]

Note that you have to change website.com to your site’s domain name. I explicitly made the redirect into a 302 because we don’t want all the link equity to be passed on to your /amp pages since it’s merely an accelerated mobile page version.

  • Edit the CSS to make your Accelerated Mobile Pages look and feel more like your site. You can edit the CSS using FTP by going to your wp-content > plugins > AMP > template.php
  • Use rel=”canonical” tags to your original pages. Just to be sure to keep anything Panda-related off your back.

That’s it!

SEO Hacker AMP

You could see that SEO Hacker’s mobile version still look and feel like our desktop page design—without all the fluff.

How can I make AMP work for my non-WordPress site?

You will have to go to the AMP Project’s site and learn how to integrate it via hard-code, hands-on.

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If you want to know more about AMP, Moz’s Whiteboard Friday does a swell job on explaining it further:

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Verifying your AMP pages on Google Search Console

Once you’ve set up AMP on your website, Google will start crawling and indexing them. In a few days, you should now see that there is an AMP section under Enhancements in your Google Search Console.

Technical SEO AMP SEO Hacker GSC

Google Search Console will notify you if there are any errors in your AMP pages. Just like any other coverage errors, it is divided into 3; Errors, Valid with Warnings, and Valid. When you first apply AMP on your website, there is a high chance that most of your pages will fall under Valid with Warnings.

Don’t worry, your AMP pages will still be available to users. It’s just that there are missing data that could further enhance your AMP pages such as structured data or image sizes.

Structured Data on AMP pages

Aside from loading speeds and user experience on mobile, adding structured data on your AMP pages also makes them eligible for Rich Results.

If you’re using WordPress, there are plugins that enable structured data on AMP pages. Google highly recommends having structured data on both the original page and the AMP version.

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Further reading: The SEO Hacker Mobile Optimization Checklist

How do I know if my technical SEO is working?

There are a number of metrics you can measure to gauge the effectiveness of your technical SEO.

Organic traffic

This measures the number of visitors coming to your site from search engines. If you’re seeing an increase in organic traffic, it’s likely that your technical SEO is working.

Click-through rate (CTR) from SERPs

This measures the percentage of people who click on your listing when it appears in search results. A high CTR indicates that your listing is relevant and appealing to users, and that your technical SEO is working.

You can also check if you’re showing up on the Knowledge Panels and other snippets.

Loading times

If you’ve optimized for page speed correctly, you will notice that your site is a lot faster and smoother than before.

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Troubleshooting common technical SEO issues

I asked some folks over at Reddit what they wanted to know about technical SEO, and some of them gave me questions that I wanted to include here.

How to fix unused CSS/Javascripts in WordPress

Reduce unused CSS and javascript

Unused code can make your website load slower, but thankfully there is a way to at least reduce this issue.

Use WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a plugin you can use to remove unused CSS and delay JavaScript execution.

You can check out and follow this really good tutorial from WPBeginner.

How to fix XML sitemap errors

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages of your website. They ensure that Google is able to crawl and index your web pages.

XML sitemaps also help search engines understand your site structure.

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Essentially, a good XML sitemap tool will greatly benefit your website. However, if it’s not done correctly, you might increase your risk of not getting recognized by Google.

Here are some pitfalls that you need to avoid with XML sitemap:

Submitted URL has crawl issues

This is one of the most common XML sitemap issues you will come across in Google Search Console.

This means that your sitemap has listed a page with a known crawl error, but Google will not tell you exactly what kind of error it was.

You will need to reanalyze your sitemap for any error that is undetected. The most common crawl issue errors are:

  • Robots.txt blocking crawlers
  • Error pages other than 404, such as “403” forbidden and 401
  • Javascript or CSS blocked by search engines

You can address these crawl issues with the 11 steps I outlined earlier.

Then go to Google Search Console and resubmit your sitemap.

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Sitemap size error

As we discussed in this post earlier, size matters in SEO. Your sitemap size must NOT:

  • Be longer than 50MB
  • Contain no more than 1,000 images per URL
  • Contain no more than 50,000 URLs

If you have a simple site, your sitemap’s size shouldn’t be an issue.

However, if you have (for example) an eCommerce website that’s growing fast, it’s best that you create separate sitemaps for every 10,000 URLs you have.

Fewer URLs mean fewer crawl issues for you.

I suggest that you take a look at Common XML sitemap errors by Yoast and Polishing a sitemap: fixing errors, weeding out trash pages, and finding hidden gems by SE Ranking for a more in-depth treatment of this issue.

How to handle multiple connected websites

The Redditor who asked this question works as a software developer who put their apps under different <appname.>app websites.

It’s generally not recommended to have multiple domains or websites for the following reasons:

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  • They can compete for the same keywords.
  • They can be expensive.
  • It can take a while for you to rank the websites because you’ll be doing a full SEO strategy for each of them.

I recommend to figure out first what the purpose is of your website. For example, is it to showcase your work as a software developer?

In that case, you can put your apps under one domain, then create subdirectories in your website for the various apps you want to feature.

This works especially if your apps are connected to one another, or they generally fall under a specific theme (e.g., productivity tools}.

HubSpot CRM

For example, under HubSpot you have various software you can check out—and they’re all under HubSpot.com

If they are completely different and you want to market them as such (and you have the time and energy to SEO each of them), then you can go ahead and put them in different websites.

Key takeaway

Technical SEO is one of the most important aspects of ranking your website properly. It covers all the behind-the-scenes elements that are necessary for Google and other search engines to understand your site correctly.

Without proper technical SEO, it’s difficult to rank at all, let alone achieve high SERP positions. That’s why we created this guide—to help you audit and troubleshoot any issues on your own website and improve your rankings with these 11 steps.

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If you want us to take care of your technical SEO for you, check out our SEO Services Package or contact us today for a free consultation.

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SEO

A Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist for 2024

Published

on

A Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist for 2024

If you’ve invested time and effort writing an epic piece of content, don’t forget about on-page SEO. It helps google to understand what your page is about and show it to as many people as possible in the search results.

Even better, many on-page improvements are super quick and easy to do.

Follow this checklist for perfect on-page SEO every time:

If you’re looking for a reusable interactive checklist to use time and time again, here are a few other formats

Let’s run through everything real quick.

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Google says it’s best to use words that are relevant to your content in page URLs, so you don’t want random gobbledygook urls like domain.com/734/834753956756 if you can avoid it. It’s better to use something short and descriptive like domain.com/mens/shirts.

Short, descriptive URLs are best for SEOShort, descriptive URLs are best for SEO

It only takes a few seconds to change this in most content management systems:

You can change URL structures in most CMS's in secondsYou can change URL structures in most CMS's in seconds

If you’re not sure what words or phrases to use, the main keyword you’re targeting is usually a good bet. That’s what we do on the Ahrefs blog 90% of the time.

For example, our target keyword for this post is “on page SEO checklist,” so that’s what the post’s URL is:

Using the target keyword is never a bad idea for a URL slugUsing the target keyword is never a bad idea for a URL slug

Few best practices to keep in mind:

  • Avoid repeating words. If your page is about mens shirts and it’s nested in the /mens/ subfolder, you don’t need to repeat the word “mens.” domain.com/mens/shirts/ is better than domain.com/mens/mens-shirts/
  • Avoid dates. If a searcher comes across domain.com/blog/2020/fashion-tips/ in 2024, they’re going to assume it’s out-of-date even if you updated the content yesterday. So domain.com/blog/fashion-tips/ would be better.
  • Avoid being too specific. If your URL is domain.com/blog/20-best-fashion-tips/, it’s going to look weird if you add more tips to your post later on. Using the less specific domain.com/blog/best-fashion-tips/ gives you more future freedom.

Google says that title tags are often the main piece of information searchers use to decide which result to click on. If yours is boring and dull, you’re probably not going to get as many clicks as you could—even if you rank.

It’s the same story for meta descriptions, which Google often uses for the descriptive snippet.

Pages with compelling title tags and meta descriptions get more clicksPages with compelling title tags and meta descriptions get more clicks

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for title tags, but the ABC formula is a decent starting point for blog posts:

Use the ABC formula to craft more compelling title tagsUse the ABC formula to craft more compelling title tags

For your meta description, my best advice is to try to expand on your title tag to give searchers more detail and context.

If you’re struggling or just want a fast solution, give our free AI title tag generator and meta description generator a shot. Tell the tools what your page is about and your desired writing tone and they’ll generate a few options.

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Use Ahrefs' free AI and meta description generators to craft compelling copy in secondsUse Ahrefs' free AI and meta description generators to craft compelling copy in seconds

Remember to keep them both short and swee, too. If they’re too long, they’ll get cut-off in search. This looks odd and makes them less compelling. You can use a free tool like this one to check for truncation before publishing, or Ahrefs’ Site Audit to find all the issues on your site.

Google recommends using one H1 tag per page. It makes sense to use this for your page title as H1 is the highest level heading there is.

Most content management systems do this automatically, but you can double-check your title is indeed a H1 for free using Ahrefs SEO toolbar. Just click the Content tab:

Use the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar to check the structure of your contentUse the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar to check the structure of your content

If the copy you’d expect to be wrapped in a H1 tag isn’t, hit up your developer!

People want what you promised them in your title and meta description, so don’t kick things off with a load of fluff. Get straight to the point and give the reader what they came for in the first sentence.

There’s no one-size-fits-all way to do this. It all depends on what searchers are looking for.

For example, when people search for “toxic backlinks,” they’re overwhelmingly looking for a definition above all else. That’s why I made the very first paragraph of my article the definition:

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People have short attention spans; get to the point fastPeople have short attention spans; get to the point fast

But when people search for “best snow blower,” they just want a recommendation—so that’s what Wirecutter gives them in the first paragraph:

Wirecutter is great at getting to the point in their introsWirecutter is great at getting to the point in their intros

Sidenote.

I think Wirecutter’s opening paragraph could be even better because there’s no point in that first sentence. If you’re searching for “best snow blower,” you already know the benefits of the product. You just want to know which one is best!

Google’s John Mueller said that the search giant uses headings to help better understand the content on a page. This is why you need to make sure they’re clear and descriptive.

It’s easy to miss the mark here. We’ve even been guilty of it ourselves.

For example, look at these two subheadings from our list of blogging tips:

Some of our rather cryptic subheadings from our list of blogging tipsSome of our rather cryptic subheadings from our list of blogging tips

Do you have any idea what those mean at first glance?

Me neither. And many of the other subheadings in our post were also unclear.

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If you suspect the same might be true for your subheadings, try this: ask ChatGPT to rewrite them for clarity.

Asking ChatGPT to rewrite subheadings for clarityAsking ChatGPT to rewrite subheadings for clarity

This is exactly what Sam did for our post, and it made them much clearer in seconds.

For example, “Create a ‘Do 100’ project” became “Start a ‘write 100 blog posts’ project”:

Example of a subheading rewritten by ChatGPTExample of a subheading rewritten by ChatGPT

Make sure your subheadings have proper hierarchy, too. It helps Google to understand the structure and makes it easier to skim for readers.

Headings improve user experience by creating hierarchyHeadings improve user experience by creating hierarchy

Search intent is the reason behind the search. Unless your page aligns with intent and gives searchers what they’re looking for, your chances of ranking high are slim to none.

To show just how important this is, look at this graph:

Our rankings for "backlink checker" shot up after we matched search intentOur rankings for "backlink checker" shot up after we matched search intent

This shows our ranking position for the keyword “backlink checker” over time. You can see that in late 2018, we suddenly went from struggling to rank higher than position #5 to consistently ranking #1.

How? By optimizing our page for search intent.

Here’s what the page looked like before:

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Our original "backlink checker" landing pageOur original "backlink checker" landing page

Here’s what it looks like now:

Our current "backlink checker" landing pageOur current "backlink checker" landing page

Minor design tweaks aside, there’s one important difference: there’s now a free backlink checker embedded. Before it just asked visitors to start a trial of our SEO software.

By catering to what searchers actually wanted, we improved the page’s rankings and its estimated search traffic from ~18K to ~215K monthly visits. That’s a 12X improvement!

Traffic increased by 12X when we improved search intent. That's huge!Traffic increased by 12X when we improved search intent. That's huge!

But how did we know what searchers wanted?

Back then, we had to do a manual analysis of the top search results. While you can still do that, it’s much easier just to click the “Identify intents” button in Keywords Explorer:

Use the "Identify intents" button in Keywords Explorer to quickly understand what searchers are looking forUse the "Identify intents" button in Keywords Explorer to quickly understand what searchers are looking for

This uses the power of AI to analyze the top search results and tell you what searchers are looking for.

Broadly aligning your content with search intent isn’t enough. It should also cover the topic in full to tell searchers everything they want to know. This can help it rank for more keywords and bring more traffic as a result, too.

To find what searchers are looking for, look for common subtopics among top-ranking pages.

There are a few ways you can do this.

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Manually check the top-ranking pages

Search for your target keyword in Google, open a few top-ranking pages, and eyeball them for commonalities.

For example, many top results for “best running shoes for flat feet” give a budget option:

Many first-page results for "best running shoes for flat feet" talk about the best budget option
Many first-page results for "best running shoes for flat feet" talk about the best budget option

Check the keyword rankings of top-ranking pages

Pages often rank for keywords related to the subtopics they cover. If you see many top pages ranking for these keywords, it’s probably an important subtopic to cover.

Here’s how to find these keywords:

  1. Go to the Competitive Analysis tool in Ahrefs
  2. Enter your page’s URL in the “This target doesn’t rank for” field. (If you haven’t published your page yet, enter the URL you plan to use.)
  3. Enter the URLs of a few similar top-ranking pages in the “But these competitors do” fields
  4. Look for keywords that represent subtopics

For example, the top three results for “best running shoes for flat feet” also rank in the top 10 for many keywords related to men and women’s shoes:

Keyword rankings for top-ranking pages often reveal important subtopicsKeyword rankings for top-ranking pages often reveal important subtopics

This tells you that the best picks for men and women is an important subtopic to include.

Find subtopics with the help of AI

It’s currently in beta, but the new AI Content Grader in Ahrefs finds “missing” subtopics. It does this by comparing the content of the three top-ranking pages for your target keyword to your content.

To use it, just enter your target keyword and your page’s URL. (If you haven’t published your page yet, enter the URL you plan to use).

For example, here’s one of its suggestions for the keyword “best running shoes for flat feet”:

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AI suggestions for subtopics to include, via Ahrefs' Content GraderAI suggestions for subtopics to include, via Ahrefs' Content Grader

Information gain is a measure of how unique your content is. Google describes a mechanism for scoring this in a patent granted in June 2022.

Two months later, in August 2022, Google launched the helpful content update, which they described as “part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

Are these two things related? Nobody knows. But what we do know is that Google cares about the originality of your content, and almost certainly has mechanisms in place for identifying it. 

This means that covering what other top-ranking pages cover isn’t enough for a well-optimized page. It also needs to bring something new and valuable to the table.

For example, my colleague Chris collected data on how folks deal with low-quality backlinks for his post on removing backlinks:

Research Chris did for his post on removing backlinksResearch Chris did for his post on removing backlinks

Ryan interviewed three B2B marketers for unique insights for his post on B2B content marketing:

Research Ryan did for his post on B2B content marketingResearch Ryan did for his post on B2B content marketing

And I worked with Patrick Stox to create an interactive workflow and template for my content audit guide:

Template I made for my post on how to do a content auditTemplate I made for my post on how to do a content audit

None of these posts are completely unique. They contain plenty of information that you can probably find elsewhere—and that’s fine. What matters is that we’re bringing at least something new to the table.

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Google’s algorithms are designed to surface content that demonstrates E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

If you’re an expert in your field or crafted your content from personal experience, your page already has E-E-A-T. But searchers aren’t going to know that without reading it, so you should try to showcase it as obviously as you can on the page. Let’s look at two ways to do this.

Flash your credentials

Healthline does this extremely well. The very first thing you see on their page about rheumatoid arthritis is that the content was reviewed by a rheumatologist:

Healthline flashes author's credentials right in the introHealthline flashes author's credentials right in the intro

Put your uniqueness front and center

If you’ve put time and effort into adding “information gain” to your content, don’t bury it. Make sure searchers see it right away so they know they can trust you.

For example, to curate our list of the best Facebook groups for SEOs, we asked the 12K+ members of our customer-only group to vote for their favorites. Instead of burying this fact deep in the post, we highlighted it in the very first paragraph.

Always put your uniqueness front and centerAlways put your uniqueness front and center

For a page to earn backlinks (which are a strong ranking factor) and shares, people have to actually consume the content. This isn’t going to happen if the copy is hard to read.

You can use free tools like Hemingway and Grammarly to fix this.

For example, Hemingway gives my recent guide to toxic backlinks a reading grade level of 7:

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Use tools like Hemingway and Grammarly to improve readabilityUse tools like Hemingway and Grammarly to improve readability

Given that 54% of Americans lack literary proficiency (essentially reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level), this means we’re alienating at least 46% of readers. If we could bring the reading grade level down, more people would be able to read it.

Sidenote.

This isn’t absolutely necessary for every topic. It depends on who your audience is. If they’re technical folks, don’t worry about it. But if you’re publishing content for the masses, accessibility matters.

Here are a few more tips to improve readability:

  • Use short sentences and paragraphs
  • Use bulleted lists
  • Use images

Featured snippets give searchers a short answer right in the search results.

Featured snippets in search resultsFeatured snippets in search results

But here’s the cool thing: Google pulls the snippet from one of the top-ranking pages. This means that if your page already ranks in the top 10 for keywords where Google shows a featured snippet, there might be an opportunity to steal it without much effort.

This is exactly what I managed to do a couple of months ago, which led to a ~38.9% jump in estimated search traffic to our page:

Traffic improvement of 38.9% by optimizing for featured snippetsTraffic improvement of 38.9% by optimizing for featured snippets

Here’s what happened:

In Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, I used the Organic Keywords report to find the page’s top 10 keyword rankings with featured snippets we didn’t own.

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How to find featured snippet opportunitiesHow to find featured snippet opportunities

Right away, I noticed a trend: many of the keywords were people searching for the most searched thing in Google (singular) rather than a list of top searches (plural):

Example of an obvious opportunity to optimize for featured snippetsExample of an obvious opportunity to optimize for featured snippets

After searching for a few of these keywords in Google, I saw that the snippet was pretty much always pulled from this very short paragraph in a competing post:

Example of copy Google was using for a featured snippetExample of copy Google was using for a featured snippet

So… I added a similar paragraph to our post (using our data instead):

The copy I added to our page to optimize for featured snippetsThe copy I added to our page to optimize for featured snippets

This quick big of on-page SEO won our page 163 more featured snippets:

Results of optimizing - 163 more featured snippetsResults of optimizing - 163 more featured snippets

Images on your page can rank in Google Images and send you more traffic. There are three things you need to do to optimize them.

Filenames are descriptive

Google says that these give clues about the subject matter, so avoid random file names like IMG_5497.jpg in favor of something short and descriptive like brown-dog.jpg.

How to name image files for SEOHow to name image files for SEO

Alt text is present and descriptive

Google also says that image alt text helps them understand subject matter, so the same rules apply as filenames: keep them short and descriptive.

How to write alt text for SEOHow to write alt text for SEO

Most content management systems have a place to add alt text in the UI, so there’s no need to mess around with HTML:

Most CMS's make it easy to add alt textMost CMS's make it easy to add alt text

Images are compressed

Compressed images are smaller and faster to load. Some platforms like Shopify claim to do this automatically, but the results aren’t always great. It’s generally better to employ the help of a plugin like TinyIMG or Shortpixel.

Internal links are links from one page on your site to another. They help Google understand what a page is about and boost its authority, which can lead to higher rankings.

For this reason, when you publish a new page, it pays to internally link from there to other relevant pages. This won’t help the new page’s rankings, but it might help the rankings of the pages you internally link to.

To find relevant opportuntities, use Ahrefs’ Site Audit:

  1. Go to the Internal Link Opportunities tool
  2. Enter the URL of your newly-published page in the search box
  3. Choose “Source page” from the dropdown
How to find internal linking opportunitiesHow to find internal linking opportunities

Sidenote.

Site Audit needs to have crawled your site since you published the new page, otherwise this won’t work.

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Pay attention to these columns:

  • Source page → your newly-published page, where you will add the link
  • Keyword context → where on the page to add the link
  • Target page → where to link to

For example, here the report is suggesting that I link from my post on toxic backlinks to our bad links guide:

Example of an internal linking opportunityExample of an internal linking opportunity

Citing valuable resources is helpful for readers. Even Google says so.

Does that mean it’s a “ranking factor?” No. But it does improve your content’s credibility with readers, and that can impact things that do matter like links and shares.

This is something we regularly do on the Ahrefs blog:

Example of us linking to sources on the Ahrefs blogExample of us linking to sources on the Ahrefs blog

If you’re trying to boost the rankings of the page you’re optimizing, you’ll want to add internal links to it from other pages on your site.

To find relevant opportunities, use Ahrefs’ Site Audit:

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  1. Go to the Page Explorer tool
  2. Enter your target keyword (or part of it) in the search box
  3. Choose “Page text” from the dropdown
How to find internal linking opportunities on other pagesHow to find internal linking opportunities on other pages

This will find pages on your site that mention your target keyword, which may be good places to add internal links.

For example, it tells us that our guide to removing backlinks mentions the word “toxic”:

Example internal linking opportunityExample internal linking opportunity

If we search that page, this is the mention:

Perfect place to add an internal linkPerfect place to add an internal link

That looks like the perfect place to internally link to our guide to toxic backlinks.

Schema markup is code that helps search engines understand the information on a page. It also powers many rich snippets you see in Google, which can lead to more clicks.

What rich results look likeWhat rich results look like

If you’re not sure whether schema markup is worth prioritizing for your page, search for your main target keyword in Google and look at the top results. If all or many are rich results, it’s probably worth adding it.

Most of the results for this term show rich snippets, so it's probably worth optimizing for themMost of the results for this term show rich snippets, so it's probably worth optimizing for them

If you use WordPress, you can easily add schema with a plugin like Yoast or RankMath. Alternatively, use a tool like Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator to generate the JSON-LD code yourself and add it manually.

Keep learning

Check out even more of our on-page SEO resources:

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Marketing Calendar 2024 With Template To Plan Your Content

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Marketing Calendar 2024 With Template To Plan Your Content

Setting yourself and your organization up for successful marketing means understanding the interesting dates, holidays, and events throughout the year that you can leverage for your brand.

Pulling that information together takes time and effort, so we’ve done the legwork for you.

Our complete marketing calendar for 2024 with a template gives you all the information you need to plan your content.

You can customize this easily referenceable table and pull out the relevant dates for your business to create your own 2024 marketing calendar.

For planning content and social media campaigns, using a marketing calendar gives you insights and opportunities to tie your content into well-known events in engaging ways.

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These range from big sporting events to awareness months that you can plan content around, to public holidays so you can leverage them for engagement.

Free Marketing Calendar And Template For 2024

Below, we have listed some of the major holiday highlights for 2024. We have also compiled a free spreadsheet that lists many obscure awareness days to help you plan content in any niche.

The full 2024 marketing calendar and template are available at the end of the article, with a breakdown of each month.

This calendar focuses mainly on the U.S. and Canada, with some major international and religious holidays included.

Your 2024 Holiday Marketing Calendar

January

January is a time of resolutions and fresh starts, with many picking a goal for the year or looking to make a change.

It can be a slow start, given that many people are still recovering from the end of last year, but that gives you time to plan your calendar and ease into a new year of content.

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There are plenty of broad activities to lean into, like Veganuary and National Hobby Month, to connect with audience lifestyles.

Events in January always have all eyes on them, too, like the Golden Globes and Winter X Games, so content around them can kickstart your 2024 engagement.

Monthly Observances

  • International Creativity Month
  • National Blood Donor Month
  • National Braille Literacy Month
  • National Hobby Month
  • Dry January
  • Veganuary

Weekly Observances

  • January 1-7 – New Year’s Resolutions Week
  • January 1-7 – Celebration of Life Week
  • January 1-7 – Diet Resolution Week
  • January 8-14 – Home Office and Security Week

Days

  • January 1 – New Year’s Day
  • January 1 – Mexican Independence Day
  • January 1 – Global Family Day
  • January 2 – National Science Fiction Day
  • January 4 – World Braille Day
  • January 6 – Epiphany
  • January 7 – Orthodox Christmas
  • January 10 – Golden Globes
  • January 13 – Korean American Day
  • January 13 – Stephen Foster Memorial Day
  • January 14 – Orthodox New Year
  • January 14 – Ratification Day
  • January 15 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day
  • January 15 – Civil Rights Day
  • January 17 – Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day
  • January 17 – Benjamin Franklin Day
  • January 18-28 – Sundance Film Festival
  • January 20 – World Religion Day
  • January 24 – Tu BiShvat
  • January 26-29 – Winter X Games
  • January 27 – International Holocaust Remembrance Day
  • January 28 – Data Privacy Day

Popular Hashtags for January:

  • #NewYearsDay
  • #ScienceFictionDay
  • #NationalTriviaDay
  • #NationalBirdDay
  • #NationalStickerDay
  • #GetToKnowYourCustomersDay
  • #CheeseLoversDay
  • #MLKDay
  • #NationalHuggingDay
  • #PieDay
  • #NationalComplimentDay
  • #PrivacyAware

February

Despite being the shortest month, February is full of interesting events you can leverage for your marketing campaigns.

The colder days can leave people looking for things to get involved with from the comfort of their homes. So, make sure your content is working in line with popular days to attract people to your organization’s content.

Spread the love on Valentine’s Day, celebrate the Lunar New Year, and embrace Black History Month as we enjoy a slightly longer February with 2024’s Leap Year.

Monthly Observances

  • Black History Month
  • American Heart Month
  • National Heart Month
  • National Weddings Month
  • National Cancer Prevention Month
  • National Library Lovers Month
  • Celebration of Chocolate Month

Weekly Observances

  • February 7-13 – African Heritage and Health Week
  • February 9-14 – New York Fashion Week
  • February 11-17 – Freelance Writers Appreciation Week
  • February 11-17 – International Flirting Week
  • February 11-17 – Random Acts of Kindness Week
  • February 18-24 – Engineers’ Week
  • February 19-25 – National Pancake Week
  • February 28-March 5 – National Eating Disorders Awareness Week

Days

  • February 1 – First Day of Black History Month
  • February 1 – National Freedom Day
  • February 1 – National Change Your Password Day
  • February 2 – Groundhog Day
  • February 4 – Rosa Parks Day
  • February 4 – World Cancer Day
  • February 4 – The Grammy Awards
  • February 7 – National Girls and Women in Sports Day
  • February 10 – Lunar New Year
  • February 11 – Super Bowl Sunday
  • February 11 – International Day of Women and Girls in Science
  • February 12 – Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday
  • February 12 – Red Hand Day
  • February 12 – Georgia Day
  • February 12 – Darwin Day
  • February 13 – Mardi Gras
  • February 13 – International Pancake Day
  • February 14 – Valentine’s Day
  • February 14 – Ash Wednesday
  • February 14 – Arizona State Day
  • February 15 – Susan B. Anthony’s Birthday
  • February 18 – NBA All-Stars
  • February 18 – Daytona 500
  • February 19 – Presidents’ Day
  • February 22 – George Washington’s Birthday
  • February 29 – Leap Day

Popular Hashtags for February

  • #GroundhogDay
  • #WorldCancerDay
  • #NationalWeatherpersonsDay
  • #SendACardToAFriendDay
  • #BoyScoutsDay
  • #NationalPizzaDay
  • #ValentinesDay
  • #RandomActsOfKindnessDay
  • #PresidentsDay
  • #LoveYourPetDay

March

March marks the beginning of spring, and the days start to get longer. Whether March Madness turns up the heat or Easter is on its way, there are plenty of exciting events to get your content involved with.

Some of the monthly observances, such as Women’s History Month or The Great American Cleanup, can serve as great causes for regular engagement this month.

Monthly Observances

  • Women’s History Month
  • Nutrition Month
  • Music in Our Schools Month
  • Craft Month
  • American Red Cross Month
  • The Great American Cleanup
  • Ramadan begins on March 10

Weekly Observances

  • March 10-16 – Girl Scout Week
  • March 10-16 – National Sleep Awareness Week
  • March 17-23 – National Agriculture Week
  • March 24-30 – National Cleaning Week

Days

  • March 1 – Employee Appreciation Day
  • March 1 – Zero Discrimination Day
  • March 1 – Global Unplugging Day
  • March 3 – World Wildlife Day
  • March 3 – National Anthem Day
  • March 4 – International HPV Awareness Day
  • March 8 – International Women’s Day
  • March 10 – Daylight Savings
  • March 10 – Ramadan
  • March 12 – 96th Academy Awards Ceremony
  • March 14 – Pi Day
  • March 15 – The Ides of March
  • March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day
  • March 17 – NCAA March Madness
  • March 17 – World Sleep Day
  • March 18 – Global Recycling Day
  • March 19 – Nowruz
  • March 19 – Spring Equinox
  • March 22 – World Water Day
  • March 24 – Palm Sunday
  • March 24 – Purim
  • March 26 – Epilepsy Awareness Day
  • March 27 – World Theatre Day
  • March 28 – MLB Opening Day
  • March 28 – Maundy Thursday
  • March 29 – Good Friday
  • March 30 – Holy Saturday
  • March 31 – Easter Sunday

Popular Hashtags for March

  • #PeanutButterLoversDay
  • #EmployeeAppreciationDay
  • #ReadAcrossAmerica
  • #DrSeuss
  • #WorldWildlifeDay
  • #NationalGrammarDay
  • #BeBoldForChange
  • #DaylightSavings
  • #PiDay
  • #StPatricksDay
  • #FirstDayofSpring
  • #WorldWaterDay
  • #NationalPuppyDay
  • #PurpleDay
  • #NationalDoctorsDay
  • #EarthHour

April

April is probably best known for April Fools’ Day, and a chance to get creative with parody and spoof content for your calendar that can make your customers smile.

Earth Month also means you can make more eco-friendly posts about your organization’s commitment to reducing its impact on the planet.

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You also might want to get your cape out of storage on April 28th for National Superhero Day.

Monthly Observances

  • Earth Month
  • National Autism Awareness Month
  • Parkinson’s Awareness Month
  • Celebrate Diversity Month
  • Stress Awareness Month
  • Ramadan ends on April 8

Weekly Observances

  • April 15-21 – Animal Cruelty/Human Violence Awareness Week
  • April 21-27 – National Volunteer Week
  • April 21-27 – Administrative Professionals Week
  • April 22-26 – Every Kid Healthy Week

Days

  • April 1 – April Fool’s Day
  • April 1 – Easter Monday
  • April 2 – World Autism Awareness Day
  • April 2 – International Children’s Book Day
  • April 5 – Lailat al-Qadr
  • April 6 – National Walking Day
  • April 7 – National Beer Day
  • April 7 – World Health Day
  • April 8 – Total Solar Eclipse
  • April 10 – Eid-Al-Fitr
  • April 11-14 – Masters Tournament PGA
  • April 11 – National Pet Day
  • April 12-21 – Coachella Music Festival
  • April 13 – Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday
  • April 13-15 – Songkran
  • April 15 – American Sign Language Day
  • April 15 – Tax Day
  • April 15 – Boston Marathon
  • April 15 – Patriots’ Day
  • April 16 – Emancipation Day
  • April 21 – World Creativity and Innovation Day
  • April 22 – Earth Day
  • April 22 – Passover starts
  • April 26 – Arbor Day
  • April 27 – World Design Day
  • April 28 – National Superhero Day
  • April 30 – National Honesty Day
  • April 30 – Passover ends

Popular Hashtags For April:

  • #AprilFools
  • #WAAD
  • #FindARainbowDay
  • #NationalWalkingDay
  • #LetsTalk
  • #EqualPayDay
  • #TaxDay
  • #NH5D
  • #NationalLookAlikeDay
  • #AdministrativeProfessionalsDay
  • #DenimDay
  • #EndMalariaForGood
  • #COUNTONME
  • #ArborDay
  • #NationalHonestyDay
  • #AdoptAShelterPetDay

May

May brings a lot of variety with it as there are plenty of good causes to raise awareness for, plus major sporting events and unique celebrations you can join in with.

Cinco de Mayo, the Kentucky Derby, and Memorial Day are just a few examples of events that will have lots of people paying attention and can make for great marketing themes.

Monthly Observances

  • ALS Awareness
  • Asthma Awareness
  • Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
  • Jewish American Heritage Month
  • National Celiac Disease Awareness Month
  • Clean Air Month
  • Better Sleep Month
  • Lupus Awareness Month

Weekly Observances

  • May 5-11 – National Pet Week
  • May 19-25 – National Travel & Tourism Week
  • May 5-11 – Drinking Water Week
  • May 6-12 – Nurse’s Week
  • May 12-18 – Food Allergy Awareness Week

Days

  • May 1 – May Day
  • May 1 – Law Day
  • May 1 – Lei Day
  • May 2 – World Password Day
  • May 4 – Star Wars Day
  • May 4 – International Firefighters Day
  • May 4 – Kentucky Derby
  • May 5 – Cinco De Mayo
  • May 5-10 – French Open
  • May 6 – National Nurses Day
  • May 6 – Yom HaShoah
  • May 8 – World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day
  • May 10 – World Lupus Day
  • May 11 – World Fair Trade Day
  • May 12 – Mother’s Day
  • May 13-19 – PGA Championship
  • May 14 – Yom Ha’atzmaut
  • May 15 – International Day of Families
  • May 17 – NASCAR Day
  • May 17 – Malcolm X Day
  • May 17 – Internet Day
  • May 19 – HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
  • May 20 – World Bee Day
  • May 20 – Victoria Day (Canada)
  • May 21 – World Meditation Day
  • May 25 – Geek Pride Day
  • May 26 – Trinity Sunday
  • May 26 – Indianapolis 500
  • May 27 – Memorial Day
  • May 28 – World Hunger Day
  • May 29 – Memorial Day

Popular Hashtags For May:

  • #RedNoseDay
  • #MayDay
  • #WorldPasswordDay
  • #StarWarsDay & #Maythe4thBeWithYou
  • #InternationalFirefightersDay
  • #CincoDeMayo
  • #MothersDay
  • #BTWD
  • #MemorialDay & #MDW

June

Once June has arrived, it’s finally starting to feel like summer. Everyone wants to make the most of the sunshine, and the positive energies are flowing.

Given that June also marks Great Outdoors Month, this is a great opportunity to make your brand a must-have companion for planning a beachside vacation or hosting a cookout.

You can also show your support for LGBTQ+ Pride, Flag Day, and Father’s Day, along with all the other events listed here.

Monthly Observances

  • LGBTQ Pride Month
  • Caribbean-American Heritage Month
  • Great Outdoors Month
  • Men’s Health Month
  • National Safety Month
  • National Zoo and Aquarium Month

Weekly Observances

  • June 2-8 – National Garden Week
  • June 2-8 – National Headache Awareness Week
  • June 10-16 – National Men’s Health Week
  • June 16-22 – National Roller Coaster Week

Days

  • June 1 – Global Parents Day
  • June 5 – Hot Air Balloon Day
  • June 5 – World Environment Day
  • June 6 – D-Day
  • June 8 – Belmont Stakes
  • June 8 – World Oceans Day
  • June 8 – National Best Friends Day
  • June 9 – Donald Duck Day
  • June 10 – Chinese Dragon Boat Festival
  • June 11 – Kamehameha Day
  • June 12 – Shavuot
  • June 13-16 – Bonnaroo Music Festival
  • June 14 – Flag Day
  • June 14 – Flag Day
  • June 16 – Father’s Day
  • June 16 – Tony Awards
  • June 13-16 – U.S. Open PGA
  • June 19 – Juneteenth
  • June 20 – Summer Solstice
  • June 23 – International Widows Day
  • June 29 – July 21 – Tour de France
  • June 30 – International Asteroid Day

Popular Hashtags For June:

  • #NationalDonutDay
  • #FathersDay
  • #NationalSelfieDay
  • #TakeYourDogToWorkDay
  • #HandshakeDay
  • #SMDay

July

July presents lots of opportunities for savvy marketers, from the 4th of July to the International Day of Friendship.

As we enter the summer slow-down period, there’s lots to celebrate that can help to feed your social media content to keep customers engaged.

So celebrate your independence, indulge in a little ice cream, and bring people together with one of the many events in July.

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Monthly Observances

  • Family Golf Month
  • Ice Cream Month
  • National Parks and Recreation Month
  • National Picnic Month
  • National Independent Retailer Month
  • National Blueberry Month

Weekly Observances

  • July 15-21 – Capture the Sunset Week

Days

  • July 1 – International Joke Day
  • July 1-11 – Wimbledon
  • July 2 – World UFO Day
  • July 4 – Independence Day
  • July 6 – International Kissing Day
  • July 7 – World Chocolate Day
  • July 8 – National Video Games Day
  • July 11 – World Population Day
  • July 12 – Pecan Pie Day
  • July 16 – Moon Landing Anniversary
  • July 16 – MLB All-Star Game
  • July 17 – World Emoji Day
  • July 17 – Ashura
  • July 18 – Nelson Mandela International Day
  • July 20 – International Chess Day
  • July 20 – National Moon Day
  • July 21 – National Junk Food Day
  • July 24 – Amelia Earhart Day
  • July 26 – Aunt and Uncle Day
  • July 26 – August 11 – Summer Olympics
  • July 28-30 – Summer X Games
  • July 28 – Parents’ Day
  • July 28 – World Hepatitis Day
  • July 30 – International Day of Friendship
  • July 31 – World Ranger Day

Popular Hashtags For July:

  • #NationalPostalWorkerDay
  • #WorldUFODay
  • #WorldEmojiDay
  • #DayOfFriendship

August

We’ve hit the hottest days by August as back-to-school looms, and we welcome the return of football.

While many are topping up their tans and making the most of the final Summer days, August still provides lots of opportunities to align your content with wider events.

Make sure you’re using your marketing calendar to the fullest extent to post any sunny seasonal content promptly before fall arrives.

Monthly Observances

  • Back to School Month
  • National Breastfeeding Month
  • Family Fun Month
  • Peach Month

Weekly Observances

  • August 1-7 – International Clown Week
  • August 4-10 – National Farmers’ Market Week
  • August 25-31 – Be Kind to Humankind Week

Days

  • August 1 – National Girlfriends Day
  • August 1 – NFL Hall of Fame Game & Preseason
  • August 2 – International Beer Day
  • August 4 – National Friendship Day
  • August 7 – Purple Heart Day
  • August 8 – International Cat Day
  • August 9 – Book Lover’s Day
  • August 11 – National Son and Daughter Day
  • August 12 – Victory Day
  • August 13 – Left Hander’s Day
  • August 15 – Assumption of Mary
  • August 17 – National Honey Bee Day
  • August 19 – World Humanitarian Day
  • August 19 – Raksha Bandhan
  • August 20 – National Radio Day
  • August 21 – Senior Citizens Day
  • August 26 – Women’s Equality Day
  • August 30 – Frankenstein Day
  • August 30 – National Beach Day

Popular Hashtags For August:

  • #InternationalCatDay
  • #NationalBookLoversDay
  • #WorldElephantDay
  • #LefthandersDay
  • #WorldPhotoDay
  • #WorldHumanitarianDay
  • #NationalLemonadeDay
  • #NationalDogDay
  • #WomensEqualityDay

September

As fall begins, some of the bigger events happening in September are Hispanic Heritage Month, Grandparents Day, and, of course, Labor Day.

There are also plenty of other events to inspire you, from Oktoberfest to National Yoga Month. Plus, a National Coffee Day for those who struggle to start their day without a caffeine fix.

Monthly Observances

  • Wilderness Month
  • National Food Safety Education Month
  • National Yoga Month
  • Whole Grains Month
  • Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15)

Weekly Observances

  • September 8-14 – National Suicide Prevention Week
  • September 15-21 – National Indoor Plant Week
  • September 16-22 – Pollution Prevention Week
  • September 24-30 – National Dog Week

Days

  • September 2 – VJ Day
  • September 2 – Labor Day
  • September 4 – National Wildlife Day
  • September 5 – International Day of Charity
  • September 6 – National Fight Procrastination Day
  • September 8 – Pardon Day
  • September 8 – National Grandparents Day
  • September 11 – 9/11
  • September 11 – Patriot Day
  • September 12 – Video Games Day
  • September 13 – Uncle Sam Day
  • September 15 – Greenpeace Day
  • September 17 – Constitution Day
  • September 21 – Oktoberfest Begins
  • September 21 – International Day of Peace
  • September 22 – World Car-Free Day
  • September 22 – September Equinox
  • September 24 – World Bollywood Day
  • September 24–29 – Presidents Cup PGA
  • September 27 – Native American Day
  • September 27 – World Tourism Day
  • September 29 – National Coffee Day (US)
  • September 29 – Confucius Day
  • September 29 – World Heart Day

Popular Hashtags For September:

  • #LaborDay
  • #NationalWildlifeDay
  • #CharityDay
  • #ReadABookDay
  • #911Day
  • #NationalVideoGamesDay
  • #TalkLikeAPirateDay
  • #PeaceDay
  • #CarFreeDay
  • #WorldRabiesDay
  • #GoodNeighborDay
  • #InternationalPodcastDay

October

It’s that time of year when pumpkin spice lattes roll around again.

While October is known as the spooky season to many, there’s much more to this month than just Halloween – there’s Teacher’s Day, World Mental Health Day, and Spirit Day, to name a few, around which your organization can look to create content.

Monthly Observances

  • Breast Cancer Awareness Month
  • Bully Prevention Month
  • Halloween Safety Month
  • Financial Planning Month
  • National Pizza Month

Weekly Observances

  • October 8-14 – Fire Prevention Week
  • October 13-19 – Earth Science Week
  • October 20-26 – National Business Women’s Week

Days

  • October 1 – International Coffee Day
  • October 1 – World Vegetarian Day
  • October 3 – National Techies Day
  • October 5 – World Teacher’s Day
  • October 6 – Oktoberfest Ends
  • October 7 – Child Health Day
  • October 10 – World Mental Health Day
  • October 11 – National Coming Out Day
  • October 12 – Yom Kippur
  • October 14 – Indigenous Peoples’ Day
  • October 14 – Columbus Day
  • October 14 – Thanksgiving Day (Canada)
  • October 16 – World Food Day
  • October 19 – Sweetest Day
  • October 20 – Spirit Day (Anti-bullying)
  • October 22 – Make a Difference Day
  • October 24 – United Nations Day
  • October 30 – Mischief Night
  • October 31 – Halloween

Popular Hashtags For October:

  • #InternationalCoffeeDay
  • #TechiesDay
  • #NationalTacoDay
  • #WorldSmileDay
  • #WorldTeachersDay
  • #WorldHabitatDay
  • #WorldMentalHealthDay
  • #BossesDay
  • #UNDay
  • #ChecklistDay
  • #Halloween

November

During the month in which we all give thanks, there is also a wide range of causes you can help out with or raise awareness for, like Movember and America Recycles Day.

You should also mark your marketing calendar for arguably the biggest sales events of the year – Black Friday and Cyber Monday (Dec. 2) – which are sure to be on everyone’s radar.

Monthly Observances

  • Native American Heritage Month
  • Movember
  • World Vegan Month
  • Novel Writing Month
  • National Gratitude Month

Weekly Observances

  • November 11-16 – World Kindness Week (second week: Monday – Sunday)
  • November 18-22 – American Education Week
  • November 18-24 – Game and Puzzle Week

Days

  • November 1 – Day of the Dead/Día de los Muertos
  • November 1 – All Saint’s Day
  • November 1 – World Vegan Day
  • November 2 – Melbourne Cup
  • November 3 – Daylight Savings Time Ends
  • November 5 – Election Day
  • November 8 – STEM Day
  • November 9 – World Freedom Day
  • November 10 – Marine Corps Birthday
  • November 11 – Veterans Day
  • November 13 – World Kindness Day
  • November 14 – World Diabetes Day
  • November 15 – National Entrepreneurs Day
  • November 24 – Evolution Day
  • November 28 – Thanksgiving Day
  • November 29 – Native American Heritage Day
  • November 29 – Black Friday

Popular Hashtags For November:

  • #WorldVeganDay
  • #NationalSandwichDay
  • #DaylightSavings
  • #CappuccinoDay
  • #STEMDay
  • #VeteransDay
  • #WKD
  • #WDD
  • #BeRecycled
  • #EntrepreneursDay
  • #Thanksgiving
  • #ShopSmall

December

December is here, and the end of the year is in sight.

Although 2025 is right around the corner, and you might want to start planning your content calendar for next year, don’t neglect your content in the run-up to the holidays.

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Send your year off in style with marketing campaigns dedicated to events like Nobel Prize Day, Rosa Parks Day, Green Monday, and more.

You can even do a content wrap-up of your best moments from the year – and make sure to get your 2025 marketing calendar sorted early before the post-Christmas wind-down.

Monthly Observances

  • Human Rights Month
  • Operation Santa Paws
  • Safe Toys and Gifts Month
  • World Food Service Safety Month

Weekly Observances

  • December 9-15 – Human Rights Week
  • December 25 – January 2 – Hanukkah (Chanukah)
  • December 26 – January 1 – Kwanzaa

Days

  • December 1 – World AIDS Day
  • December 1 – Rosa Parks Day
  • December 2 – Cyber Monday
  • December 3 – International Day of Persons with Disabilities
  • December 6 – St. Nicholas Day
  • December 7 – Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
  • December 7 – National Letter Writing Day
  • December 8 – Feast of the Immaculate Conception
  • December 9 – Green Monday
  • December 10 – Nobel Prize Day
  • December 10 – Human Rights Day
  • December 11 – UNICEF Anniversary
  • December 15 – Bill of Rights Day
  • December 18 – National Twin Day
  • December 21 – Winter Solstice
  • December 22 – Forefathers Day
  • December 23 – Festivus
  • December 24 – Christmas Eve
  • December 25 – Christmas Day
  • December 25 – Hanukkah
  • December 26 – Kwanzaa
  • December 26 – Boxing Day
  • December 31 – New Year’s Eve

Popular Hashtags For December:

  • #IDPWD
  • #NationalCookieDay
  • #NobelPrize
  • #WinterSolstice
  • #NYE

The Complete Marketing Calendar And Template To Plan 2024

You can find the link to our complete marketing calendar and template for 2024 right here.

By having a content plan set out months in advance, you can rest assured that you’ll have great ideas to work with throughout the year.

And just because you have a plan doesn’t mean you can’t adapt if something interesting happens later in the year.

Simply rearrange your calendar and work your trending content around key dates.

Keep track of what ideas work throughout the year and use them to help guide your marketing calendar for 2025, so you can double down on successful content ideas.

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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

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Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It

Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when

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