today you're going to see my 15 absolute best seo tips ever i've used these exact strategies to rank on the first page of google for keywords like on-page seo keyword research and link building the best part all the tips i'm going to share with you are insanely actionable i'm brian dean the founder of backlinko and in this video i'm gonna reveal my favorite keyword research strategy what i learned from analyzing one million google search results and a new seo technique that's crushing it right now stay tuned before i reveal tip number one a quick word of warning the tips i'm about to share with you aren't the here today gone tomorrow strategies that stop working after a few months in fact i've used some of these techniques since way back in 2012 and they still work great why because my seo tips give google what it wants so whether you're watching this today or three years from now you can use the techniques from this video to get higher rankings and more traffic so without further ado let's dive right in with tip number one which is to use short urls when i first started with seo i'd use the first url that popped into my head and that led to long ugly urls like this today i make sure to only use short urls why because all things being equal short urls rank better than long urls in fact i recently analyzed one million google search results and we discovered that short urls rank best in google let's move on to tip number two which is to use amazon for keyword ideas did you know that you can use amazon for keyword research well you can here's how first find a popular book in your niche on amazon next check out the book's table of contents each chapter is a potential topic or keyword idea finally pop the chapter titles into your favorite keyword research tool to see if they get searched for in google now it's time for a third tip which is to optimize your title tag for ctr i probably don't need to tell you that you should include your target keyword in your title tag but what you might not know is that you also want to optimize your title tag for click-through rate why two reasons first when you improve your ctr you get more traffic without needing higher rankings for example let's say that you rank number four for your target keyword if you double your ctr you double your traffic second google recently stated that they use ctr as a ranking signal and this makes sense if you think about it if lots of people click on your result it sends a clear message to google that this page is a great result for this keyword and they'll give you a rankings boost bottom line optimize your title tag not just for keywords but for ctr too i'll show you exactly how to boost your click-through rate later in this video but for now let's dive into tip number four which is to publish content that's at least 1890 words remember that ranking factor study that i mentioned earlier well one of our most interesting findings was that longer content tended to rank better than short content in fact we found that the average first page result in google contained 1890 words yes this goes against the idea that people online have short attention spans but the data proves this clearly isn't true because the fact is this when you create a high value resource people will want to read it even if it's really long for example i have a post on my blog called ecommerce seo the definitive guide this post is over 5 000 words and it ranks in the top three of google for my target keyword ecommerce seo bottom line if you have a page that you really want to rank make sure it contains at least words of awesome content let's dive right into tip number five use title tag modifiers believe it or not but most of your search engine traffic comes from very long very specific searches for example someone searching for a new pair of slippers might search for something like this as you might expect insanely long keywords like this aren't going to show up in any keyword research tool if they don't show up in a tool how can you possibly optimize around them it's easy just add modifiers to your title tag some of my favorite title tag modifiers are the current year best review free shipping and checklist so you want to make your title tags look something like this with a title tag like this you'll rank for your target keyword fluffy slippers and dozens of long tail keywords too yes my fluffy slippers just came in the mail with that it's time for tip number six use keyword rich urls this is a simple one whenever you create a url for one of your pages make sure it contains your target keyword for example here's the page at backlinko optimized around the keyword seo tools as you can see the url is short which is the tip i showed you earlier and you can also see that the url contains my target keyword it's that simple let's jump into tip number seven which is to use numbers in your title tag to boost ctr remember a few minutes ago when i said that google uses your site's click-through rate as a ranking factor if lots of people click on your result it sends a clear message to google that this page is a great result for this keyword and they'll give you a rankings boost the question is how do you improve your ctr one of the easiest ways to get more clicks on your result is to add a number to your title tag according to a recent industry study titles with numbers get 36 percent more clicks than titles without a number that's why i make sure to use the number in almost every single one of my titles moving right along here we're already on to tip number eight use two-step email outreach i probably don't need to tell you that to rank in google today you need to build backlinks but not just any backlinks white hat backlinks from authority sites in your industry the question is how do you do it in my experience nothing beats old-fashioned email outreach that said there's a right and wrong way to do email outreach you see most people send out hundreds of spam emails begging for links in fact that's what i did back in the day it didn't work back then and it definitely doesn't work today instead i recommend two-step email outreach let me explain how two-step email outreach works with a real-life example a backlinko reader named mike benadio was promoting an infographic for one of his clients at first mike would ask for a link in his initial outreach email but it wasn't working so he decided to try a two-step approach so in mike's first email instead of asking for a link right off the bat he asked if the blogger or journalist would like to see his infographic when they said yes he followed up with a link pitch and the two-step approach led to 40 more responses than straight up asking for a link speaking of link building it's time for tip number nine broken link building broken link building is one of my favorite white hat link building strategies here's how it works first find a site that you want to get a link from next find a broken link on that site the easiest way to find broken links is to use the excellent check my links chrome extension when you find a broken link look for a piece of content on your site that would make a good replacement for the dead link if you don't have something that would make a good replacement feel free to create one finally email the site owner to let them know about their broken link and when they get back to you pitch your link as a replacement that's all there is to it alright next up we have seo tip number 10 choose keywords with strong commercial intent here's a mistake i see a lot of people make and it's a mistake i made a lot back in the day what's the mistake choosing keywords that have zero commercial intent so what does commercial intent mean exactly commercial intent is the likelihood that someone searching for a given keyword will buy from you for example someone searching for premium yoga courses has a much higher commercial intent than someone searching for free yoga videos wait i have to pay for this i'm out of here fortunately you can easily size up a keyword's commercial intent using the google keyword planner the higher the estimated bid the higher the commercial intent bottom line yes a keyword search volume and competition are important but before you decide on a keyword make sure it has at least some commercial intent let's move on to tip number 11 which is the controversial one delete underperforming pages a while back a webmaster trends analyst at google said something very interesting don't create low quality and no value add pages we think that it's a waste of resources the other thing is that you just won't get quality traffic if you don't get quality traffic then why are you burning resources on it in other words having lots of excess pages on your site is bad for seo and that's why i recommend deleting pages on your site that don't bring in any traffic in fact proven.com recently deleted 10 000 pages from their site and it's one of the main reasons that their organic traffic improved by 88 in six weeks bottom line delete low quality pages from your site you're not getting any traffic anyway so you have nothing to lose by deleting them in fact in my experience deleting these pages can help your remaining pages rank better in google now it's time for our first video seo tip optimize your videos around video keywords as you probably noticed youtube dominates google's first page for so many different keywords in fact 45 of all google search results contain a youtube video but that also means that 55 of google's results don't contain a video why is this important well if you're trying to rank your videos in google you need to make sure that there are already video results for that keyword otherwise your video is super unlikely to rank in google so before deciding on a keyword for your video search for that keyword in google if you see a youtube video on the first page great you just found a video keyword but if you search for your keyword and don't see a youtube result then you might want to choose a different keyword to optimize your video around speaking of keywords let's dive into tip number 13. use reddit for keyword research reddit is one of my favorite places to find untapped keywords that my competition doesn't know about where else can you find a site where people discuss literally every topic under the sun i mean reddit has an entire section of their site dedicated to otters otters seriously so how can you use reddit for keyword research let me walk you through an example let's say that you run a site that sells paleo diet meal replacement bars you do a search for paleo diet in reddit then check out any subreddits or threads that cover that topic when you see a topic covered again and again you have a keyword that you should look into pop that keyword into your favorite keyword research tool to see how many people search for that term in google rinse and repeat until you have handfuls of awesome keywords okay it's time for our second to last tip tip 14 link out to authority websites want to see something interesting an seo agency in the uk recently ran an seo experiment they created 10 brand new websites all optimized around the same made up keyword file and dozing phylandotic violindosic how do you even pronounce that anyway the 10 websites were all set up exactly the same way except five of them had one major difference they contained outbound links to authority websites and sure enough the five sites with outbound links ranked above the sites that didn't have any bottom line link out to authority websites in every piece of content that you publish okay here's our last tip tip number 15 hack wikipedia for keyword research just like reddit wikipedia is a keyword research goldmine here's the exact process that i use to find amazing keywords on wikipedia step one type in a topic or keyword into wikipedia for example if your site publishes content about coffee you'd want to type coffee into wikipedia search step number two is to look at other articles on wikipedia that the wikipedia article links to the anchor text of these links can be great keyword or topic ideas finally for step number three look at the table of contents for that article these can also reveal amazing keyword ideas that would be hard to find otherwise did you learn some cool new stuff in this video then make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel right now just click on the subscribe button below this video also if you want exclusive seo and traffic techniques that i only share with subscribers head over to backlinko.com and sign up for the newsletter it's free now i want to turn it over to you which seo tip from today's video are you going to try first are you going to add numbers to your title tag or try wikipedia for keyword research let me know by leaving a comment below right now yeah cause i just need to go boom like this my fluffy slippers just came in the mail i'm feeling it i'm gonna sit as long as i can because look at you in your chair comfy chair