How to Improve Your Website’s SEO: 10 Strategies That Work in 2026

Want to improve your website’s SEO and get more visibility in Google? You don’t necessarily need to start by publishing dozens of new blog posts or completely rebuilding your website.

Some of the biggest SEO improvements I’ve seen come from getting the fundamentals right: targeting the right searches, improving existing pages, strengthening internal links, creating genuinely useful content, fixing technical problems, and building authority around the topics that matter to the business.

I’ve worked in SEO for more than 20 years, and one thing I’ve learned is that there isn’t one magic SEO trick.

Good SEO is usually the result of many smart improvements working together.

Below are 10 SEO strategies I recommend businesses focus on in 2026.

Table of Contents

• 1. Target the Right Keywords and Search Intent
• 2. Create Content That Deserves to Rank
• 3. Strengthen Your Most Important Service Pages
• 4. Improve Your Internal Linking
• 5. Optimize Your Images and Alt Text
• 6. Improve Your Technical SEO
• 7. Earn Quality Backlinks
• 8. Update and Consolidate Older Content
• 9. Build Topical Authority
• 10. Measure What Is Actually Working
• What About SEO for AI Search?
• SEO Mistakes I See Business Owners Make
• Where Should You Start?
• Frequently Asked Questions

1. Target the Right Keywords and Search Intent

You can rank #1 in Google and still get absolutely nothing from it.

How?

Rank for something your potential customers aren’t searching for—or rank for a search that doesn’t match what you’re selling.

This is why keyword research isn’t simply about finding the phrase with the highest search volume.

I want to understand the intent behind the search.

Someone searching:

“what is SEO?”

has very different intent from someone searching:

“SEO company San Diego.”

The first person is probably looking for information.

The second may be looking to hire someone.

Both searches can be valuable, but they should usually lead to different types of pages.

Match the Page to the Search

I generally think about keywords according to what the searcher is trying to accomplish.

• Informational: The person wants an answer or explanation.
• Commercial: The person is researching services or comparing options.
• Transactional: The person is closer to taking action.
• Local: The person wants a business or service in a particular area.

If someone searches for a service, don’t automatically send them to a generic blog post.

Build a strong service page that actually satisfies that search.

This sounds obvious, but mismatched search intent is one of the reasons businesses can have traffic without generating enough leads.

2. Create Content That Deserves to Rank

One of my original SEO tips from years ago was simply to publish quality content.

I still agree with that—but my definition of quality has become much stricter.

Adding another generic 800-word blog post to the internet isn’t necessarily helping anyone.

When I’m evaluating content, I ask:

• Does this answer a real question?
• Is the information genuinely useful?
• Does it match search intent?
• Does it demonstrate actual knowledge or experience?
• Does it add something beyond what’s already on the website?
• Is it easy to read?
• Does it naturally connect to related pages?
• Is there a reason this page deserves to exist?

That last question is especially important.

Don’t create content just because your marketing calendar says you need another blog post.

I would rather have 100 strong pages than 500 weak ones.

I’ve written more about this in my guide explaining why publishing more blogs doesn’t always improve SEO.

3. Strengthen Your Most Important Service Pages

This is something I think many business owners get backward.

They spend enormous amounts of time blogging while their actual service pages contain three paragraphs of generic copy.

If you’re trying to generate leads, your commercial pages deserve serious attention.

A strong service page may include:

• A clear primary heading
• A strong explanation of the service
• The problems the service solves
• Who the service is for
• Your process
• What makes your approach different
• Relevant experience
• Photos or videos when helpful
• Testimonials or case studies when appropriate
• Frequently asked questions
• Related services
• A clear call to action

For local businesses, the page should also make it clear where the business provides the service.

This is especially important when you’re targeting searches with strong local intent.

For example, my own homepage isn’t simply a generic digital marketing page. It clearly establishes what I do and where I do it because I’m targeting people looking for an SEO company in San Diego.

Your important money pages should be some of the strongest pages on your entire website.

4. Improve Your Internal Linking

This remains one of my favorite SEO strategies because it’s something you have direct control over.

An internal link connects one page on your website to another page on your website.

Internal links can help:

• Visitors discover related information
• Search engines discover pages
• Establish relationships between content
• Build logical topic clusters
• Signal which pages are important
• Direct visitors toward service and conversion pages

Don’t just link everything to your homepage.

And don’t rely on vague anchor text such as “click here” when a more descriptive phrase would make sense.

For example, rather than:

Click here to learn about internal links.

I could say:

Read my complete guide to internal linking for SEO.

Now both the reader and the surrounding context make the destination much clearer.

And don’t forget to go backward.

When you publish an important new page, find relevant older articles and add links from those pages to your new content.

5. Optimize Your Images and Alt Text

Image optimization is another tip from my original article that is still important, but it needs a little clarification.

Alt text exists primarily to describe an image and improve accessibility.

It can also give search engines useful information about the image.

Don’t stuff keywords into every image alt attribute.

Instead, describe what’s actually in the image when the image requires a text alternative.

For example, if I have a photograph of myself performing an SEO website audit at my desk, descriptive alt text might be:

Jen Ruhman performing an SEO website audit

That’s much more useful than:

SEO SEO company San Diego best SEO expert SEO services

Please don’t do that. 🙂

Image SEO Goes Beyond Alt Text

I also pay attention to:

• Image dimensions
• File size
• Compression
• Modern image formats when appropriate
• Descriptive filenames
• Lazy loading
• Responsive images

Huge image files can make an otherwise good website painfully slow.

Optimize the image without destroying its visual quality.

6. Improve Your Technical SEO

You can have amazing content and still create problems for yourself if search engines can’t efficiently crawl or understand your website.

Technical SEO doesn’t mean obsessing over every possible technical metric.

Start with the fundamentals.

Check for:

• Broken internal links
• 404 errors
• Incorrect redirects
• Accidental noindex tags
• Robots.txt problems
• Canonical issues
• XML sitemap problems
• Slow pages
• Poor mobile usability
• Duplicate content
• HTTPS/security problems

I also use Google Search Console to see whether Google is discovering and indexing the pages I actually care about.

If you’re struggling with pages that aren’t appearing in search, I’ve written a separate guide with SEO tips for getting pages indexed.

7. Earn Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours.

They’re still an important part of SEO, but my approach to link building is much more quality-focused than it was years ago.

I don’t recommend chasing huge numbers of easy links just because a tool says you need more backlinks.

I’d rather earn links that make sense.

Good backlink opportunities can come from:

• Industry publications
• Local organizations
• Professional associations
• Digital PR
• Useful original resources
• Relevant guest contributions
• Business partnerships
• Local media
• Original research or data
• High-quality directories where inclusion makes sense

Relevance matters.

Quality matters.

And natural link profiles matter.

Don’t build links simply because they’re easy to obtain.

Think about whether the link makes sense for your business, your audience, and your website.

8. Update and Consolidate Older Content

This has become increasingly important for me because I’ve been publishing content for years.

Eventually, websites accumulate old pages.

Some are excellent.

Some are outdated.

Some overlap with newer content.

Some haven’t received a Google click in years.

And some might have more SEO potential than you realize.

Before creating another article, I recommend checking what you already have.

An older article may need:

• Updated information
• Better organization
• New internal links
• Better search-intent alignment
• Improved examples
• Additional FAQs
• Outdated sections removed
• Overlapping content consolidated

But don’t simply change the publication date and call the article “fresh.”

Make the page meaningfully better.

This is also where you should watch for keyword cannibalization.

If you have five articles targeting essentially the same search intent, combining some of them into one stronger resource may make more sense.

9. Build Topical Authority

I don’t want a business website to look like it randomly selected 100 keywords from a spreadsheet and wrote an article about each one.

I want the website to demonstrate depth around the topics that business actually knows.

For example, if you’re a personal injury attorney, your content might naturally develop around:

• Car accidents
• Truck accidents
• Motorcycle accidents
• Pedestrian accidents
• Insurance claims
• Injury compensation
• California accident laws

Those topics have meaningful relationships.

Strong service pages, supporting articles, internal links, examples, and useful FAQs can work together to build a much deeper resource.

This is what I mean when I talk about topical authority versus domain authority.

Go deep on the subjects that actually matter to your business.

10. Measure What Is Actually Working

SEO without measurement becomes guesswork.

One of my favorite free tools is Google Search Console.

It can show you:

• Which queries generate impressions
• Which queries generate clicks
• Which pages receive organic traffic
• Average search positions
• Click-through rates
• Indexing problems

Google Analytics can provide another view of what visitors do after arriving on the site.

But don’t become obsessed with rankings alone.

If you’re a business owner, I ultimately care about whether SEO contributes to actual business results.

That may include:

• Phone calls
• Contact-form submissions
• Appointments
• Sales
• Qualified leads
• Revenue

You can rank for thousands of keywords and still have a lousy SEO campaign if none of those searches have anything to do with your customers.

What About SEO for AI Search?

Search has expanded beyond the traditional list of blue links.

People now discover businesses and information through Google AI-powered search experiences and AI assistants in addition to traditional search results.

That doesn’t mean you should abandon SEO fundamentals.

Quite the opposite.

I want a website to make it extremely clear:

• Who the business is
• What it does
• Where it operates
• What subjects it has expertise in
• How its pages relate to one another
• Why its information should be trusted

Clear writing, useful answers, strong entity signals, organized site architecture, original experience, authoritative mentions, and comprehensive topical coverage all contribute to a stronger web presence.

This is why I don’t think of AI SEO as throwing traditional SEO out the window.

The fundamentals still matter. The search environment has simply expanded.

SEO Mistakes I See Business Owners Make

After working on business websites for many years, I see certain mistakes repeatedly.

• Targeting keywords nobody valuable is searching for
• Publishing content without a strategy
• Having weak service pages
• Creating multiple pages for essentially the same search
• Ignoring internal links
• Buying questionable backlinks
• Ignoring technical problems
• Never updating older content
• Expecting SEO results immediately
• Measuring success only by keyword rankings

Another big one?

Doing SEO for three months and then stopping because you’re not #1 yet.

SEO is a long-term marketing strategy.

If you’re wondering why progress sometimes takes longer than expected, read my guide explaining why SEO results don’t happen overnight.

Where Should You Start?

If you’re looking at this list thinking, “Jen, that’s a lot,” don’t try to do everything in one afternoon.

Start with the pages closest to revenue.

Ask yourself:

1. What are my most important services?
2. What searches would someone use when they’re looking for those services?
3. Do I have a strong page that satisfies each important search?
4. Can Google crawl and index those pages?
5. What existing content should link to them?
6. What supporting questions should my website answer?
7. Do I have evidence of authority and trust?
8. Am I measuring whether those pages generate leads?

That’s a much better starting point than randomly publishing another blog post.

Frequently Asked Questions About Improving Website SEO

What is the fastest way to improve website SEO?

There is no single change that guarantees immediate rankings. However, fixing major technical problems, improving pages that already rank near page one, strengthening internal links, and better matching search intent can sometimes produce faster improvements than starting entirely from scratch.

Can I improve my website’s SEO myself?

Yes. Business owners can handle many SEO fundamentals themselves, including improving page content, adding useful internal links, optimizing images, updating old articles, and using Google Search Console. Competitive SEO campaigns may require more advanced technical, content, local, and link-building expertise.

How long does it take to improve SEO?

SEO timelines vary significantly depending on the website, competition, market, existing authority, technical condition, and keywords being targeted. Some improvements may become visible relatively quickly, while competitive organic growth can take many months of consistent work.

Does adding more content improve SEO?

Not automatically. New content can help when it addresses valuable topics your website doesn’t already cover. Publishing thin, repetitive, or overlapping content simply to increase your page count may provide little value and can make your website harder to manage.

Do backlinks still help SEO?

Yes. Relevant, reputable backlinks can contribute to a website’s authority and visibility. Focus on earning meaningful links rather than simply trying to accumulate the largest possible number of backlinks.

Are internal links important for SEO?

Yes. Internal links help connect related pages, make content easier to discover, establish website structure, and guide visitors toward additional resources and important service pages.

Does updating old content improve rankings?

It can when the update genuinely improves the page. Correct outdated information, strengthen weak sections, improve internal links, address current search intent, and add useful information. Simply changing the date without improving the content isn’t the same thing.

Should I focus on SEO or AI search optimization?

Businesses should build a strong overall search presence rather than treating them as completely separate strategies. Useful content, technical accessibility, topical depth, authority, clear business information, and a well-organized website can support visibility across traditional and AI-powered search experiences.

Want Help Improving Your Website’s SEO?

If your website isn’t generating the organic visibility, leads, or sales you expected, there usually isn’t one magic button that needs to be pushed.

I look at the entire picture: keywords, search intent, content, service pages, internal links, technical SEO, backlinks, local visibility, competition, and the authority you’ve built around your business.

I’m Jen Ruhman, and I’ve worked in SEO for more than 20 years. I help businesses improve their visibility in Google search, local search, and today’s evolving AI search environment.

If you’re looking for an experienced SEO expert in San Diego, I’d be happy to take a look at your website and identify where your strongest opportunities are.

Call or text me: (619) 719-1315

— Jen Ruhman
SEO Expert & Founder of Jen Ruhman SEO