Holistic SEO: An Actionable Guide

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SEO is an ever-changing landscape. There are two reasons for this. First, algorithm updates. And second, user behavior. We don’t have control over both of these.Does that mean you shouldn’t focus on SEO?

No.

Without a strong SEO presence, you’re missing out on potential customers who are actively searching for products or services like yours. Now you need a new SEO approach. That’s where holistic SEO comes into the picture. It’s not just about ranking higher on SERP. It’s about creating a website users love, and search engines trust.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through holistic SEO, helping you attract more organic traffic, improve user experience, and future-proof your website.

Let’s get started…

What Is Holistic SEO?

Holistic SEO is the practice of optimizing every aspect of your website to provide an exceptional experience to your users. It includes technical SEO, user experience, on-page SEO, content quality, off-page SEO, and brand reputation.

Why Is Holistic SEO Important

Traditional SEO solely focuses on ranking a web page for a target keyword. On the other hand, Holistic SEO is focused on ranking a page and giving the users the best experience. Google wants to provide the best content and experience to its users. So they keep improving their search all the time. In fact, in 2022, Google made 4,725 changes to its ranking systems and user interface.

It’s next to impossible to track everything they do. What you can do is provide the user experience. That’s what holistic SEO is all about. Recently Google introduced the March Core Update to tackle low-quality content. After this update, so many sites lose traffic because they have used AI tools to produce low-quality content.

There’s a saying among SEOs and marketers. It goes like this “Humans have credit cards search engines don’t”. People are gonna pay you, not the search engine. Your SEO strategy should be user-focused not search engine-focused. You might see some results in the short term using the tactics. But in the long run, you might struggle.

Because now Google’s algorithms are super smart. If Google penalizes you, it can take longer to recover. You should better avoid those shady tactics. SEO is one of the best marketing channels and can be lucrative for your business. You just need a holistic SEO approach instead of focusing on traditional SEO. Holistic SEO focuses on providing a great user experience to users.

Benefits of Holistic SEO:

Let’s talk about the benefits of having a holistic SEO approach.

1. Boosts organic traffic: Holistic SEO helps you attract more organic traffic to your websites. You’ll be ranking higher in SERPs for relevant keywords that your target audience is searching for.

2. Improves user experience: When you make your website load fast, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate – you create a positive experience for your users.

3. Future-proof your website and SEO: You’re less likely to get penalized by algorithm changes that target low-quality websites.  Because you have a user-centric approach. SEO is changing and will change in the future. AI Overview is one of the examples. We can’t do anything about it. What we can do is focus on our users.

4. Increases Your Website Authority: Holistic SEO involves creating high-quality content. When you consistently churn out high-quality content, People will start seeing you as an authority.

5. More Conversions: Holistic SEO not only attracts the right audience but also provides them with a valuable and seamless experience, that leads to more conversions.

Holistic SEO Best Practices:

Now you know what holistic SEO is and why it’s important.

Let’s see holistic SEO best practices.

1. User Experience (UX):

Holistic SEO is all about giving your target audience a great experience. Make sure you do it.

Here’s how.

Website design:

If you are still using old website designs that interrupt user experience, you’re going to struggle with SEO. Because old website designs are not user-friendly, it’s hard to find something on the old web designs. You need to have a good website design that speaks to your target audience.

According to Statista, 58.67% of traffic comes from mobile devices. You can check your Google Analytics, chances are your most visitors are using mobile devices to visit your website.

If your website is not mobile-responsive it may frustrate your users. Most new themes offer responsive design. But still, you should check before installing any theme. If web design is not a cup of your tea, you can hire an agency or a freelance website designer.

Content Readability:

Now most people don’t read your content, they skim through it. Nobody wants to read a long wall of text. It’s hard to read especially on mobile devices. Now many people use their mobile devices to browse.

If you make it hard for people to read your content, your audience will bounce back from your website. And they may never visit your website again because of poor readability.

Here are some tips to improve content readability:

• Use Short Sentences

Longer sentences are hard to digest. And sometimes they can confuse your readers. Most of the time, you can convert a long sentence to a short and easy-to-digest sentence.

Here you can see an example:

Long: While crafting marketing copy, it’s important to consider your target audience’s reading habits and attention span, ensuring your message is clear, concise, and impactful.

Short: Short sentences grab attention and deliver your message with a punch. Short sentences create a sense of momentum, keeping readers hooked and wanting more.

With that said, long sentences can add depth, emotional connection, and emphasis to your copywriting. you can use long sentences when they make sense and make your content clear and impactful.

• Let your content breathe

Make sure you leave space for your content to breathe. This means your content should have white spaces between letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. And use short paragraphs.

Having fewer white sentences can your content overwhelming. On the other hand, having too much white space can make your content feel disconnected. You need to have a good balance.

• Don’t use jargons

Remember you’re not writing content for scientists. You’re writing content for everyday folks. They may not understand the technical jargon words. Use simple language and easy-to-understand words.

• Use active voice

Active voice is easy to understand. And it makes your writing crystal clear. You can use AI tools to convert passive voice to active voice.

Pro Tip: Use a readability checker tool. I use Hemingway Editor.

2. Content Marketing:

Just optimizing your website for SEO is not enough to attract traffic from search engines like Google. You need to have a solid content marketing strategy.

Creating valuable and unique:

Throwing a lot of content on the web but not getting results. You need to focus on creating unique and valuable content that resonates with your audience. Now people are creating content like never before. Because of the AI tools. It’s a piece of cake to create content. Everyone can create content. But there’s still room for unique content.

AI tools are not that good at writing valuable blog posts. Plus if you use AI tools, you can’t share your experience. And guess what? People are looking for the human touch, not the AI touch. With that said, your content needs to be great. If you write mediocre content like AI tools don’t write content. You can find experienced freelance writers in your niche. Your goal should be to create helpful content that solves people’s problems.

• Share your post on social media.
  

Which social media?

Go where your audience is hanging out. If you have a good amount of followers, you can expect a significant amount of traffic. Even a single retweet can get you a lot of eyeballs.

•   Do Blog Outreach

Find blogs in your niche. Google any keyword related to your niche. You can see blogs are ranking on the SERP. Find the owners using tools like Hunter or Snov. Now craft an email and ask them to share it. Don’t use any template. Write your outreach emails. Before sending emails, you can share their content and comment on their posts. It will increase your chances of getting a response. Most people will ignore your emails. And that’s okay. Some will read and share your content.

3. Technical SEO

You can have great content, but if search engines can’t find it or understand it, it won’t rank well. That’s why I call Technical SEO the backbone of SEO. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to analyze your website’s technical SEO.

Here are the main:

Crawlability:

Indexation:

• Submit your site on Google Search Console:

Create an account on Google Search Console and submit your website. You can monitor indexing issues.

Site Speed:

Nobody (including Google) likes a slow-loading website. Even page speed is a confirmed ranking factor. You need to make sure your website loads super fast.

Here’s how you can improve your website’s load time:

1. Use high-quality web hosting:

A website is an asset. You should invest money in it. Don’t use cheap web hosting. Think of it as an investment.

2. Compress your images:

Using images and screenshots is necessary to make your post visually appealing. However high-quality images can make your web pages slower to load. So compress your images. You can also use .webp format. It’s a relatively new format that delivers high-quality and lightweight images.

3. Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Using a CDN can boost your website’s load time. By leveraging a CDN (Content Delivery Network), your website will automatically utilize a server located geographically close to your visitors, resulting in faster loading times and an improved user experience. Cloudflare is one of the most popular CDNs.

Check Broken Links

Broken links can hurt your overall SEO. You can use a broken link checker tool to find broken links. Head over to drlinkcheck.com and enter your website URL. It will show you the broken links on your website. Fix all the broken links on your website.

4. On-page Optimization:

If you want to increase your organic visibility, you need to optimize your posts for search engines.

• Optimize the title tag:

Most people don’t spend much time writing the title. That’s a huge mistake people make. A title tag is important. Why? It tells both Google and the users what your page is about. Plus it’s the first thing people notice in your content. Based on the title tag they will decide if they will click on your page or not.

David Ogilvy, the father of advertising once said, “On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

You need to make your title click-worthy. And you need to include your target keyword in the title as well. It can be tricky and take some time. But it will be worth your effort and time.

• Internal Linking:

Internal links help search engines understand the structure of your site and discover new content. Make sure your website has a strategic internal linking approach. Use keywords in anchor texts.

• Write SEO-friendly URLs

Does your URL look like this: “http://www.yourwebsite.com/blog/index.phpid=20231121&title=the_ultimate_guide_to_
digitalmarketing_in_the_year_2023_and_beyond”.

Your URLs should look like this: “http://www.yourwebsite.com/digital-marketing-guide/”

Here are some best practices for writing URLs:

1. Write short URLs. According to a Backlinko study, Pages with short URLs rank higher than long URLs.
2. Include the target keyword in your URL. It will help Google and other search engines understand what your page is about.
3. Use hyphens (-) to separate words. For example, https://yourwebsite/blog/what-is-digital-marketing

• Meta description

A meta description is an HTML tag that provides a summary of your web page. It’s a second chance to convince people to click on your page.

Some tips for writing a killer meta description:

• Make it unique: Write a unique meta description for each web page. You can run SEO audits through tools like Semrush to find duplicate meta descriptions.
• Use keyword: Include your keyword in your meta description.
• Make it relevant: An irrelevant meta description can increase your bounce rate. It should be relevant to the web page.

5. Off-page SEO:

Off-page SEO is crucial for a well-rounded holistic SEO strategy. You need to focus on off-page SEO to increase your search engine visibility. Off-page SEO is efforts made outside of your own website to improve its search engine rankings. You need to build your website’s authority 

1. Link Building:

Link building is still important to rank your content higher on SERP. How can you build links in 2024?

Let’s see…

• Email Outreach:

Google your target keyword and you’ll see websites that are ranking on the first page. Now take the website and put it in any backlink analysis tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. And it will show you the list of backlinks pointing to the page. Now craft an email pitch and send it to the website owner or editor. Not everyone will respond to your email. And that’s okay. If your blog post is good enough, chances are a few of them will link out to you.

• Broken Link Building:

It’s an effective link-building tactic. You need to find broken links on relevant websites and replace them with your web page.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Find some target websites. Make sure they are relevant to your niche.
2. Now head over to Semrush or Ahrefs.
3. Enter a website URL. Now look for the broken link section and click on it.
4. It will show you the broken links.
5. Now look for some relevant links that you can replace with your web page.
6. Then craft an email to them notifying them that they have a broken link on their website.
7. Nobody wants broken links on their website. They may link out to your page.

• Utilize Unlinked Brand Mentions:

Some websites might mention your brand name but don’t link to your website. You can use Google search operators to find unlinked brand mentions.

Here’s how:

Head over to Google type “intext: your brand – yourwebsite.com” and hit enter. Google will show you the websites that have mentioned your brand but haven’t linked out to you. Reach out to them and ask them to link to your website. Ahrefs has an awesome guide on how to build links with brand mention.

2. Social Media Engagement

Social media is not a direct off-page SEO factor. But it can impact your ranking. Sharing your content piece on social media can give you a wider reach. it increases the chances of others finding your content valuable and linking to it on their own websites. Make sure you share your content on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

3. Brand Mention

When other people mention your brand on their sites, Google interprets it as a signal that others are talking positively about your brand. As a result, Google may rank your website higher because it considers your brand to be reputable and trustworthy.

4. Digital PR:

Digital PR is the practice of getting online converge for your brand. Think of it as traditional PR, but here you can measure results. Digital PR is about building relationships with bloggers, journalists, and influencers. It can help you get brand mentions and link-building. Both are great for SEO. Want to create a digital PR for your brand, here’s a guide on how to create a digital PR campaign.

Conclusion

This is my complete guide on holistic SEO. By taking a holistic approach, your website will not only rank higher but also attract, engage, and convert visitors into paying customers. It’s not a one-time fix, but it’s an ongoing process. Remember, It’s all about giving your users the best experience you can.

Author Bio:

Subhrajyoti Mahato is a freelance content marketing strategist and marketing writer. He helps business achieve their marketing goals through content marketing and storytelling.

You can connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.