7 Best SEO Principles You Should Follow to Boost Your Rank

SEO is a complex thing if you’re trying to memorize the rules from a “textbook.” This is an evolving industry that changes with every update, and this is why only the most adaptable ones, and those capable of empathy and critical thinking, can find their way. 

Instead of learning rules (which will quickly get outdated), you ought to be learning principles. These are the trends that will always hold true or trends that have a promise of staying around in the future.

With that in mind and without further ado, here are the top seven best SEO principles you should start following.

You can’t go wrong if you start from your audience's standpoint. Instead of getting stuck in semantics, morphology, and grammar, you need to start from the standpoint of what your audience is looking for.

Google understands what people are looking for, and since an algorithm can do it, you, as a human, let alone a marketing expert, should be able to do it, as well. This is one of the first SEO principles you have to master in order to make your SEO truly impactful. 

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and, when doing keyword research, try to imagine their situation. Are they looking for a cookie recipe, a place to buy new car tires, or the best antivirus to install on their smartphone?

Now, think about it. If it were you, how would you look for it? What would you type in the search bar?

However, there’s a catch. You see, you are a marketer, someone doing an SEO, which means that your search might slightly differ from that of their own. You understand how the algorithm works, which is a negative thing in this particular scenario. This could influence the way you phrase your question.

This is why it’s important to use KW research tools instead of just relying on your own intuition.

Because of the rise of AI and NLP, a lot of people assume that the old principle of writing for both the algorithm and the humans is outdated. People assume that they can now write for humans, and thanks to the NLP, bots now understand the content and the context.

The reality is slightly different than that. 

First of all, both meta title and metadata are visible to the internet user, and they might decide whether to click on the link based on this. Both meta description and meta title will appear in the SERPs, which is why they matter so much. Therefore, writing great metadata is still the key to adequate SEO programming.

This is a bit more technical, but you have to do it right. First of all, you need to stick to a certain number of characters (less than 60 for title and less than 105 for description), use your primary keyword, and make sure it is as compact as it gets. 

Think of it as an email subject line. What do you have to write to maximize the chance that someone will actually click and open it?

One of the biggest questions regarding SEO is whether or not it’s worth it. Is SEO worth it for small businesses?

The short answer is that quality SEO done by professionals can yield amazing results and ensure that you get to the top in SERPs. Poor SEO, on the other hand, will leave you wanting. There are so many SEO practices that are not only ineffective but outright bad for your ranking. Keyword stuffing, spamming, inserting anchor text non-organically, etc., are worse than not doing any SEO at all. 

The same goes for DIY SEO. When done right, it’s better than no SEO at all, but it will never measure up to good professional SEO. The biggest problem with DIY SEO is that it takes too much of your time to give you minor or moderate results. In other words, it’s just not worth it.

What you need are specialists who will be on your case 24/7. You need someone to do the keyword research, content creation, and curation, monitor results, and adjust the course based on how well you’re doing. Even more importantly, they need to track algorithm changes. As a DIY SEO marketer, you have no time to undergo a reeducation every time search engines introduce a major update.

From the administrative standpoint, you want someone who can generate legible and concise reports.

Good SEO is self-sustainable. If your content is good enough (both on-site and off-site), it will generate backlinks. Still, what kind of content is most likely to be organically linked to?

The answer to this question has a few layers.

You see when trying to create linkable assets, you need to think about more than the quality of your writing. Just think from the perspective of an average content creator and try to figure out what kind of content you’re the most likely to link toward.

First, you’ll likely link to a news source that you’re referencing. So, covering news and industry updates is one of the simplest SEO principles to follow. The problem is that this type of content generates a lot of backlinks in the short run. The further you are from the event in the news, the less interesting it will be, and, eventually, it will become completely uninteresting to the general audience.

Guides, tutorials, and how-tos are another great way to create linkable assets. Just think about someone writing a generalist article. They brush up on the topic that you’ve covered extensively, and instead of covering it again unnecessarily, they just link toward your resource.

Lastly, statistics are always a great source of backlinks. Even when they’re no longer valid, people are still going to reference them for the sake of comparison.

In the past, the main form of content was blog posts. Today, this is not necessarily the case. Sure, your blog posts are still the staple of your SEO activity, but now, they’re no longer just in the written form. Any SEO business strategy needs to acknowledge this and prepare for it accordingly.

You also need to optimize your content for voice search, which requires a slightly different approach. Today, you need to understand that it’s not just about the voice search but the AI-powered voice-to-text and text-to-voice systems. In other words, voice search should always be on your mind when creating content. 

This also affects the keyword research tips for small businesses. You should always try to make it as grammatical as possible; this is mostly because people are more likely to use a proper keyword phrase form (or even go long-tail) when speaking. Typing is more labor intensive, and internet users are, by default, quite lazy. This sounds like a small difference, but it’s something that will require you to change the way you think. 

Since AI is such a game-changer, you need to start using AI tools to help you out.

This sounds intuitive, but it’s really so important. Instead of just estimating whether you’ve done the optimization right, you need to use the proper tools to help you see where you’re going.

You probably wonder, in what two ways can optimization score drive a marketer’s success?

The right answer is that it can help you see which campaigns should be prioritized. Where you’re lacking the most is where you should put the bulk of your efforts. This way, you’ll get a maximum impact with minimum effort.

Second, it can help you speed up the implementation and enhancement of the said campaign. You can instantly see whether the implementation/enhancement has achieved the desired effect. If not, you can rectify the course of your campaign and make a difference there.

Also, an optimization score is a number that can be measured, which means that you get an objective indicator of whether you’re doing a good job and how far you’ve gone.

This SEO principle will never get out of style, no matter what kind of algorithm change you face. People in 2025 are unlikely to wait for more than 3 seconds for the site to load.

Here are some examples of how this can directly affect your rank:

The list goes on and on…

By prioritizing loading speed, you’ll give your site a better SEO boost than if you did the best content marketing campaign there is. The reason why it gets so downplayed is because it’s actually a technical issue (and not a strictly marketing one).

Always try to think with the mind of your consumer. Focus on what they see and how they use the search engines. Put a special emphasis on the quality of your SEO and think about the lifetime value of every asset. Keep in mind that the formats change and that the written word no longer reigns supreme. Also, always focus on speed and evaluate everything through objective metrics. 

With these few SEO principles on your side, you just cannot lose.