Hey everyone, I wanted to open up a conversation about SEO strategies that are actually working right now in 2025. A lot has changed in the last few years—especially with Google’s updates shaking up rankings—but I’ve found that focusing on the basics (with a twist) still brings solid results. I’ll share a few things I’m doing and would love to hear your thoughts too! ⸻ 1. User Intent Is Everything We all know content is king, but context is queen. What’s been working for me lately is digging deep into search intent before creating any page or blog post. Instead of stuffing keywords, I focus on answering the exact questions people are asking in the simplest way possible. • Tip: I use tools like Google’s People Also Ask, but more importantly, I talk to actual people in my niche. Their language often gives me better keyword ideas than any tool can. ⸻ 2. Faster Websites Win I recently worked on a portfolio site (it’s a personal one showcasing SEO and e-commerce work), and just by compressing images, cleaning up the CSS/JS, and moving to lighter themes, I shaved seconds off the load time. • My mobile page speed went from 72 to 91, and rankings improved within weeks (small niche, but still!). • Pro tip: Lazy load images and avoid unnecessary plugins. Speed is user experience. ⸻ 3. Topical Authority Over Random Posts Instead of writing about random SEO topics, I built a content cluster—a set of related blog posts on my site all linking back to a core page. For example: • One core page about SEO Audits • Supporting blogs on On-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Competitor Analysis, etc. This structure signals to Google that you know your stuff about a topic. And it builds trust with readers too. ⸻ 4. Don’t Sleep on Schema Markup Adding schema (FAQ, Breadcrumbs, Reviews) has helped increase my CTR on search results. It’s easy to implement and makes your listing stand out in SERPs. Even something as simple as Breadcrumb schema improves navigation and gives Google more context. ⸻ 5. Consistency > Perfection One thing I realized is that regularly publishing helpful content—even if it’s not “perfect”—brings better results over time than waiting for the perfect article. I write about SEO case studies, little wins, and even experiments on my portfolio site. Some of those posts now rank with zero backlinks because they answer questions nobody else has. ⸻ Would love to hear what’s working for you all! Are you still seeing success with backlinks, or has content become your main focus? Let’s share notes and see how 2025 SEO is evolving.
The fifth point is really interesting. Just imagine if google ranking algorithms worked like a human being. In the sense that I as a living person would like a blog with quality articles at different times more than a blog that regularly publishes content for content's sake every week.
It sounds like a solid approach especially loving the focus on user intent and speed. Keeping it real with what people need makes a big difference.
Great insights! Totally agree—2025 SEO is all about intent and clarity. One thing that’s been working for me is combining AI-assisted content with strong human editing to hit that sweet spot of relevance and readability. Also, refreshing older content with updated info and internal links has brought surprising ranking boosts. Backlinks still help, but I'm seeing more value from topical depth and smart on-page SEO. Schema + fast UX = underrated combo.
John Mueller recently said that structured data has no impact on Google rankings. In fact, he outright denied that it’s a ranking factor. What’s your take on that?
Valuable insights. As a person that is deeply into domain rate growth in particular and SEO in general what we do with our website: - Valuable content (relevant to domain, useful for our potential and current customers) - Actual content (like to remove listicles of top-2022), consisency in content posting - Health link profile building (hunting good links is a hard job, but it is a vital necessity) - Keyword strategy (we build monthly plans)
Like you said, user intent is everything. For our Chicago clients, we dig into hyper-local search intent—think marketing company in Chicago or “web design near me.” We use Google’s People Also Ask and talk to local business owners to uncover phrases they actually search. For example, a recent client page targeting “Chicago small business SEO” ranks because it answers specific local pain points, like optimizing for Google Business Profile. 2. Speed + UX = Local SEO Wins Your point about faster websites is spot-on. We revamped a Chicago client’s WordPress site by compressing images, removing bloated plugins, and switching to a lightweight theme (Astra). Their mobile PageSpeed score jumped from 65 to 88, and they climbed from page 2 to #5 for “Chicago marketing agency” in weeks. Lazy loading and CDN integration (Cloudflare) were
Yes, Structured data is not an direct ranking factor. Google uses it for understanding content. And, it helps in potentially boosts the CTR and enhance visibility. Posting on regular basis seems spammy to me. For news websites it is good to post on regular basis but as if you said you mostly post about SEO case studies (how is it even possible to post case studies on regular basis).
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I’d also add a sixth point: 6. Work on building and developing your brand. The goal is to get people to deliberately search for your website or company in search engines - to make them genuinely want to become your customer or read your content specifically. A recognizable brand not only builds trust and increases conversion rates when you’re selling something - it also acts as a layer of protection against traffic drops caused by search engine penalties. I explained this in more detail in my article: How having a brand changes the game in SEO and how to succeed at it.
It might seem like I’m slipping into pessimism again, but... This isn’t “SEO 2025,” it’s just basic, healthy logic that any blogger naturally arrives at within a few months of hands-on experience. There’s nothing new or revolutionary in this information. It’s all perfectly logical behavior. I’ve been writing blog posts in a question-and-answer format for a long time now. Any blogger will naturally arrive at this strategy after just a few months of experience — or even sooner. And yes, if you type your keywords into Google, you’ll immediately see topic ideas from “People Also Ask” and titles of competing posts. There are no such things as “random posts” — if a site is a news magazine or a personal blog full of thoughts and reflections, then yes, posts may feel random. But if the site is niche-focused, random posts simply shouldn’t exist… unless the blogger starts selling guest posts on any topic, just to get paid. I own a few news sites and travel sites, and I honestly don’t understand how I could publish something “random” there. Random… about what? Posting about drilling wells on an aquarium blog? Writing meaningless content isn’t helpful either, but if you do have an idea, you can always "reserve" the URL with a superficial draft and build it out later. All of this is something any real blogger figures out naturally, not after a year or more, but right at the beginning of the blogging process. I’m not saying the advice in the post is entirely useless — it does contain helpful thoughts. But it’s also a very standard, generic publication full of tips that, honestly, won’t help anyone achieve massive traffic. Modest traffic? Sure — that’s always possible. But if you want serious traffic these days, it's more effective to build a reputation and relationship with your readers, so they come back to your site by choice, not just hope that organic traffic will magically scale. The truth is, organic conditions change every single month. For example, one of my sites had 200 posts and was getting 130 organic visits a day. I grew that to 1,000 posts — and it still gets only 130 visits a day - only now Google chooses other posts for traffic. But the total daily visits are more or less the same. Sometimes a bit more. But Google won’t let that organic ceiling rise beyond some invisible internal limit. On the other hand, if readers start coming back to your site regularly, that tells Google you’re doing something right, and then maybe the algorithm lifts your cap. In conclusion, following these generic tips won’t help you grow your daily organic traffic to any huge level. If you want solid, lasting traffic today, you need to make your blog a place readers choose to come back to — not just for information, but to read you, your perspective. Alternatively, there’s another strategy that still seems to work: build several niche websites and post on them periodically. None of them will generate huge income on their own, but together, the combined earnings can add up nicely. And when Google inevitably decides to strip traffic from one of your sites (with no explanation, of course), it’ll only hit that one site, not your entire portfolio. In most cases, traffic returns in about a year, even without any major improvements on your end. Just remember: you will never outrank authoritative sites. Google simply won’t allow it. Even if you’re a nuclear physicist writing a brilliant, deeply-researched article, your site will still rank below Wikipedia, major news portals that barely skim the surface of the topic you’ve covered in depth. I’ve written extremely informative posts, packed with useful insights. But when I search for the target keywords, I’m lucky to show up in position 5–10, after all the big news portals that barely even mention the topic I’ve covered in detail. You’ll only rank first where there’s no competition. But where there’s no competition, there’s no traffic either. That’s the frustrating loop small publishers live in — and why focusing on relationships, returning readers, and multiple small income sources is often a more sustainable long-term strategy than chasing Google’s ever-shifting algorithm. By the way, a couple of years ago, Google, for some time, just started changing post titles at its own discretion. That is, it completely ignored my title and SEO title, and in search results, my post appeared with a completely different name. No, I didn’t do anything unusual — it just suddenly started working that way. Then, after some time, everything went back to normal and worked like before. There was never any explanation from Google, and there never will be. So even when creating a title for a post today, you can't be sure that Google will display it the way you wrote it. So, you are still talking about mystic SEO rules and strategy?