The 7 Pillars of Modern SEO

Simply put, if Google or any other crawling agent is having a hard time indexing pages on your site due to 404 errors, restrictions in your robots.txt file, or a simple “no index” tag on any page, then your page or sometimes even your whole website will rank lower due to these errors.

Browsers like Google and Safari want to send their users to a website that will provide them with the best possible experience. You wouldn’t recommend a dirty restaurant to a friend, would you? Google feels the same. So make sure your errors are all taken care of:

• your pages are being indexed
• you have a site map that you have submitted to Google Search Console
• Your robots.txt file is not restricting any important pages
• You have no HTTP insecure links

Those are just a few important points. If you would like the most comprehensive guide for technical SEO, you can read about it in this Google document. 

According to CloudFlare 47% of people expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less. That may seem like a very tall ask but seeing as how low all our attention spans have been getting, can you blame anyone that is waiting for a site to load when there are literally hundreds and sometimes thousands of websites similar to this one that load much faster. 

A lot of factors that affect website speed:

• The hosting platform 
• Images/videos
• Embedded scripts

And the list goes on. Luckily, web.dev has provided us with a comprehensive tool that not only checks your website speed, but also gives organized, detailed, and practical insights on what is slowing down your site and how to fix it.

Have you ever gotten lost in a large store like Ikea or Costco? Wasn’t fun, was it? That’s EXACTLY how someone who is trying to navigate a poorly architected website with a confusing internal link structure feels. 

Having a header with a clear navigation bar for users to click around goes a long way. But first, you have to make sure your website is built in a certain way that makes sense for people to navigate. You can easily implement a hierarchical structure for your site, one that has pages inside folders. Some prefer a flat architecture where all pages are only one or two clicks away from the home page.

Whichever structure you decide to go with, just make sure that:

• There is good internal linking between your pages which allows crawlers and users to access every page on your site
• No page is more than 3 or 4 clicks away from your home page
• There are no orphan pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them)
• Internal links clearly state where each link is taking anyone who clicks on it

A very controversial and often overlooked factor of user experience is its accessibility level. This means that your website is:

• Using semantic HTML for its pages and components such as charts
• Using aria labels (an HTML attribute that provides accessible names for interactive elements (buttons, links, form controls) when no visible label exists
• Using high color contrasts in regards to backgrounds and font color

Although the majority of users don’t really need these factors to easily read your website content, there are many people who benefit greatly from accessible websites. Aside from the potential lawsuit it may cause if you don’t apply these factors, they also help your site rank higher with AI searches because they make the code cleaner and easier to parse. 

Here you can find a quick guide to website accessibility provided by industry leader, W3. And once again, if you would like to see where your website stands in terms of accessibility,  web.dev will provide those answers for you.

The days of stuffing as many keywords into pages is long gone. Browsers want to send people to find what they actually searched for. Not that keywords aren’t as important as they always were, it’s just that Google and other browsers have gotten better at identifying pointless keyword stuffing and identifying pages that actually answer search intent. 

And there lies the acrobatic dance; target the keywords you want to rank for while still providing helpful, useful, and engaging content. 

Once you’ve identified your keywords, you should make sure to create a page targeting that keyword by:

• Placing the keyword in the URL
• Placing the keyword in the meta title
• Placing the keyword in the meta description
• Placing the keyword in the H1 title tag (make sure you ONLY have one H1 tag per page)
• Placing the keyword in the first paragraph of the page

The rest of the page can be used wisely to create engaging content, create brand awareness, and market your product/service. 

Backlinks remain a top-three ranking factor. They act as “votes of confidence” from other reputable websites and create a good domain authority for your site. Would you recommend to a friend a plumber you never heard of? Neither would Google. That’s why backlinks are so important, they tell browsers (including AI) that you’re not a stranger. You have peers, colleagues, and platforms that know who you are and the value you provide. 

Good quality backlinks are not easy to find, however. The good news is that some of them are free. Whichever niche you may be in, there are many listing sites that will list your company and services. 

Some must-have directories include:

• Google Business Profile
• Bing Places for Business
• Yelp
  
• Yellow pages (yeah, they still exist)
• Better Business Bureau
• TrustPilot

Apple Business Connect: Claim your listing on Apple Maps and other Apple services.

Even though practically all social media platforms place a “nofollow” tag on your website links, that doesn’t mean they are worthless. Having a strong social media presence signals to browsers that you are in the know.

A new SEO frontier is upon us and its name is AI overviews. With reports indicating they appear in 30% to over 60% of US search queries as of late 2025, these overviews are DEFINITELY something to brace for.  

The good news is that these AI search results piggyback on regular search results which means that if you rank for a specific keyword or niche on Google, your product/service will likely be recommended by AI as well. 

And there’s even better news about AI. You can easily optimize your site for AI crawlbots by adding schemas and FAQs to your website and important pages. 

You can find a handy tool to create a schema file here. 

Other than that, social media platforms such as Reddit, Quora, and YouTube provide credible sources that AI relies on. 

The SEO landscape is evolving at a very fast pace making it hard to keep up. Use the 7 pillars of modern SEO that we listed above as a focal point to make sure you don’t lose track of what really moves the needle. 

In summary, these are the 7 pillars of Modern SEO:

• Technical SEO – cleaning house
• Site speed – functioning efficiently 
• Site structure – good internal navigation
• Accessibility – inclusive user experience
• On-page SEO – keywords and search intent
• Backlinks – showing your site can be trusted 
• AI search optimization – ensure AI can easily scan your site

If you need any help with any of these pillars, the SEO experts at Devonshire Dev Shop will gladly get on a FREE consultation call and provide you with the support you deserve! 

Just click here and leave us a message or call us at 310-426-8083