Your SEO score is a snapshot of how well your website is optimized across four areas: technical performance, content quality, on-page signals, and authority. To increase it, you need to fix crawlability issues, strengthen your content for both humans and AI systems, pass Core Web Vitals, and build topical authority over time. This guide walks you through exactly how to do each one, in order of impact.

I’ve been doing SEO for over a decade. I’ve seen the game shift from keyword stuffing to helpful content to AI-generated answers. What I’m sharing here reflects what actually moves the needle in 2026, not what worked three years ago.

What Is an SEO Score (and Why You Should Take It With a Grain of Salt)

An SEO score is an aggregate metric that tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and SEOptimer use to grade your site’s overall health. These tools crawl your pages and assign a score based on factors like broken links, missing meta tags, page speed, and on-page optimization.

Here’s the thing though: your SEO score from a third-party tool and your actual Google rankings are two different things.

I’ve seen sites with a 95/100 tool score sitting on page 4. And I’ve seen sites with a 62/100 generating thousands of organic visits a month. The score is useful as a starting diagnostic, but it does not directly tell Google where to rank you.

What does matter is fixing the underlying issues those tools are flagging. The score goes up when the site improves, and the rankings follow when the improvements are meaningful. That’s how I use it.

The Four Pillars of a Strong SEO Score

Before diving into fixes, it helps to understand what actually drives the number. Every legitimate SEO audit tool measures some combination of these four areas:

Technical SEO covers crawlability, indexing, site speed, mobile usability, and Core Web Vitals. If Google can’t access and understand your pages, nothing else matters.

On-page SEO covers title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, internal links, and keyword optimization. This is where most beginners start and where most basic issues live.

Content quality covers search intent alignment, depth, freshness, and E-E-A-T signals. Google’s Helpful Content updates made this the most important factor on the list.

Authority covers backlinks, brand mentions, and how well your site is recognized as a trusted source in your niche. This is the hardest to build and the slowest to move.

Let’s go through each one.

Step 1: Fix Technical SEO First

Technical issues are the easiest to identify and the most urgent to fix. A single crawl error on an important page can wipe out months of content work. I’ve put together a detailed technical SEO site audit guide if you want to run through the full process step by step.

Run a Google Search Console Audit

If you have not connected your site to Google Search Console yet, do that today. It is free and it is the only tool that shows you exactly what Google sees when it crawls your site.

Once you are inside, check three things immediately:

Go to Pages under Indexing. Look for pages marked “Crawled, currently not indexed” or “Discovered, currently not indexed.” These are pages Google found but is not ranking. Common causes are thin content, duplicate content, or a noindex tag you forgot about.

Go to Core Web Vitals. This report shows your LCP, INP, and CLS scores based on real user data. Any pages flagged as “Poor” need attention before anything else.

Go to Manual Actions. If Google has penalized your site for any reason, this is where it will tell you. Most sites have nothing here, but it is worth checking.

Fix Your Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are three metrics Google uses as ranking signals. As of 2026, the three are:

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures how fast the main content of a page loads. Your target is under 2.5 seconds. The most common culprit on WordPress sites is unoptimized hero images. Compress your images with a tool like ShortPixel and implement lazy loading on anything below the fold.

INP (Interaction to Next Paint) replaced FID in 2024 and measures how quickly your page responds to user interaction like clicks or taps. Your target is under 200ms. Bloated JavaScript and too many third-party scripts are usually the problem here. Audit your plugins and remove anything you are not actively using.

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures how much your page visually jumps around while loading. Your target is under 0.1. Always define dimensions for your images and avoid inserting ads or banners that push content down as the page loads.

Run your pages through Google PageSpeed Insights to get specific recommendations per URL. It is free and gives you both mobile and desktop scores.

Check Crawlability and Indexing

A few quick things to verify:

Make sure your XML sitemap is submitted in Search Console and does not include pages you have marked noindex. Contradictory signals confuse crawlers.

Check your robots.txt file. I have seen sites accidentally block Googlebot from crawling entire sections of their site. Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt and confirm nothing important is blocked.

Fix broken internal links. A tool like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) will crawl your entire site and flag any 404 errors. Each broken internal link wastes crawl budget and kills user experience.

Step 2: Sharpen Your On-Page SEO

Once your technical foundation is solid, on-page optimization is where you can move fast.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Your title tag is the single most important on-page SEO element. Every page should have a unique title that includes the primary keyword close to the front and stays under 60 characters.

Do not write your title for Google alone. Write it for the person deciding whether to click your result over the ten others on the page. Ask yourself: would I click this?

Meta descriptions do not directly affect rankings, but they absolutely affect CTR. A compelling meta description at position 12 can outperform a lazy one at position 8. Keep it under 155 characters, include your keyword, and end with something that makes the reader feel like they need to click.

Header Structure

Every page should have one H1 that matches the intent of the target keyword. Your H2s should cover the main sub-topics of the page. H3s go under H2s for more specific points.

I see a lot of writers using bold text or random caps for subheadings instead of proper header tags. Google cannot parse those as structure. Use actual H2 and H3 tags in your CMS.

Internal Linking

Internal links are how you pass authority from one page to another within your site. They are one of the most underused levers in SEO.

Every time you publish a new piece of content, go back through your existing posts and add contextual links to it from relevant pages. Use keyword-rich anchor text, not “click here” or “read more.”

Your most important pages, pillar guides, service pages, and high-converting posts should have the most internal links pointing to them. This tells Google which pages matter most.

Image Optimization

Every image on your site should have a descriptive alt text that includes a relevant keyword where natural. File names matter too. “how-to-increase-seo-score-google-search-console.jpg” beats “image1.jpg” every time.

Compress everything before upload. A 3MB hero image is one of the fastest ways to tank your LCP score.

Step 3: Create Content That Actually Ranks

This is where most SEO advice from 2020 falls apart. Google has fundamentally changed how it evaluates content since the Helpful Content Update rolled out in 2022 and continued through 2024 and 2025.

Match Search Intent Precisely

Before you write anything, search your target keyword and look at the top five results. What format are they using? What questions are they answering? What angle are they taking?

If the top results are all step-by-step guides and you write a listicle, you are fighting the SERP instead of working with it. Google has already told you what it thinks searchers want. Give them that. My SEO content writing guide goes deep on how to read and match search intent for any keyword.

Build E-E-A-T Into Your Content

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is the framework Google uses to evaluate content quality, and it is now more important than any keyword tactic.

Experience means showing that you have actually done the thing you are writing about. I do not just write about SEO in theory. I have been doing it for clients since 2013. When I mention that, and back it up with specific results or examples, it signals real-world experience to both readers and Google’s quality evaluators.

Expertise means demonstrating deep subject knowledge. Go beyond the surface. Explain the why behind your recommendations, not just the what.

Authoritativeness comes from external recognition. Being published on Search Engine Journal, Niche Pursuits, and Blogging Wizard builds this over time. Every byline you earn on a recognized publication reinforces your authority in the eyes of Google.

Trustworthiness comes from accurate information, transparent sourcing, clear authorship, and a site that does not make people feel like they are about to get scammed. Author bios, testimonials, and privacy policies all contribute here.

Keep Content Fresh

Google rewards freshness, especially in competitive niches. If you have posts that have not been updated in two or more years, they are probably losing ground to newer content that covers the same topic.

Refreshing content does not mean rewriting from scratch every time. Sometimes all it takes is updating statistics, removing dead links, adding a new section that covers something competitors have started covering, and changing the publish date.

I check my top-performing posts at least once a quarter and update anything that has aged badly.

Step 4: Build Authority the Right Way

Authority is the slowest part of SEO to build but one of the highest-leverage. A single link from a high-DR publication in your niche can move a page more than dozens of on-page tweaks.

Focus on Quality Over Volume

The era of building hundreds of low-quality backlinks to rank is over. Google is significantly better at detecting and discounting manipulative link patterns. One link from Search Engine Journal carries more weight than a hundred links from random blog networks.

The most reliable ways to build quality links in 2026 are guest posting on industry publications, creating original research or data studies that others want to cite, and digital PR that gets you mentioned in news articles and roundups.

Reclaim Unlinked Brand Mentions

This is one of the easiest wins most sites leave on the table. Search for your name and your site’s name on Google. Find any mentions that do not include a hyperlink. Reach out to the site owner and ask them to add one.

These are warm outreach targets because they already know who you are. Conversion rates on unlinked mention outreach are typically 20 to 30 percent.

Build Topical Authority

In 2026, Google rewards sites that comprehensively cover a topic over sites that have one great post surrounded by unrelated content. This is the whole argument for pillar content and content clusters.

If your site covers SEO and content writing, every supporting post should connect back to your pillar guides through internal links. The cluster of related content tells Google that your site is a serious resource on the topic, not just a collection of random posts.

Step 5: Optimize for AI Search (GEO)

Generative Engine Optimization is not replacing SEO. It is extending it into a new channel. AI Overviews appear in a significant portion of Google searches. ChatGPT and Perplexity are now referral traffic sources for many sites. Getting cited in these systems requires a slightly different approach to content structure.

Lead With Direct Answers

AI systems pull content from the opening section of your page when generating answers. If your first paragraph is a story or a hook, you miss the citation window. Put a concise, direct answer to your target question in the first 60 to 80 words of every post.

Add FAQ Schema

FAQ schema markup tells Google exactly what questions your page answers and in what format. AI systems use structured data to identify authoritative answers. Add five to eight Q&A pairs to your most important posts using FAQ schema.

Every FAQ question should mirror the conversational phrasing people use when asking AI assistants. “What is an SEO score?” gets you further than “SEO score definition.”

Include Citation-Worthy Data

Research shows that AI systems preferentially cite content that includes statistics from credible sources, expert quotes, and original data. Include at least one cited statistic per major section of your content. Link to the primary source, not an intermediary article.

Tools to Measure Your SEO Score

You do not need to pay for six tools to track your SEO health. Here is what I actually use:

Google Search Console is free and the most accurate source of truth for how Google sees your site. Use it to track impressions, clicks, CTR, average position, Core Web Vitals, and indexing issues.

Google PageSpeed Insights is free and gives you Core Web Vitals data per URL with specific improvement recommendations.

Semrush or Ahrefs for a comprehensive site audit score, backlink tracking, and keyword rank monitoring. Either one is worth the investment if SEO is central to your business.

Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) for crawling your site to find broken links, missing meta tags, duplicate content, and redirect chains.

You do not need all of these on day one. Start with Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. Add a paid tool when you are ready to go deeper on backlinks and keyword tracking.

SEO Score Improvement Checklist

Use this to work through your site systematically. Start from the top and move down.

Technical SEO

• Connect site to Google Search Console and review index coverage
• Check Core Web Vitals report and fix any “Poor” pages
• Run site through PageSpeed Insights for mobile and desktop scores
• Fix broken internal links with Screaming Frog or a similar crawler
• Verify XML sitemap is submitted and does not include noindex pages
• Confirm robots.txt is not blocking important pages

On-page SEO

• Every page has a unique title tag under 60 characters with primary keyword
• Every page has a unique meta description under 155 characters
• One H1 per page that matches the target keyword intent
• H2 and H3 tags used for all subheadings (no bold text substituting for headers)
• Internal links added from related posts to each new piece of content
• All images have descriptive alt text and compressed file sizes

Content quality

• Each post directly matches the search intent of its target keyword
• Author bio is present with credentials and experience
• Content includes first-hand examples, personal experience, or original data
• Statistics are cited with links to primary sources
• Posts reviewed and refreshed at least once a year

Authority

• Backlink profile checked for any toxic or spammy links
• Guest post strategy in place targeting industry publications
• Brand mentions monitored with Google Alerts
• Internal links funnel authority to pillar pages and key service pages

GEO

• First paragraph of each post includes a direct, extractable answer
• FAQ schema added to pillar guides and high-traffic posts
• Content tested manually in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews
• AI referral traffic tracked in Google Analytics 4

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Improving your SEO score is not a one-time project. It is a system you build and maintain. Fix the technical issues first because those are the foundation. Then sharpen your content to match what searchers and AI systems are actually looking for. Then build authority through links and brand recognition that compounds over time.

I have been doing this for clients and for my own site for over a decade. The fundamentals have not changed that much. What has changed is the bar. The sites winning in 2026 are the ones that do all of it well, not just one part of it.

If you want help with any of this for your own site, my SEO audit and content reoptimization services are a good place to start.

By now, you should know that you can rank for more than one keyword for your blog post or web page.

The problem is, most of the time, people optimize their content using a focus keyword.

This is not wrong by any means. However, you don’t get to maximize the organic traffic potential of your page if you don’t optimize it for related terms.

This is where keyword grouping, or keyword clustering, comes to the rescue.

In this post, I will discuss keyword grouping and its benefits. Also, I will show you how you can group your search queries in different ways.

In the end, you should be able to do keyword grouping to help your blog post rank for multiple keywords on SERPs.

What is keyword grouping?

The keyword grouper method is the process of researching a list of keywords and grouping search terms closely related to one another. They help you build a silo that covers different user intent for each search term in the cluster.

Most conduct keyword research by finding a search term with a high search volume that they will use to optimize the content. There are different tools you can use for this.

With keyword grouping, you can unearth thousands of keywords and organize them into keyword groups.

Benefits of a keyword group

So, what’s the big deal with coming up with keyword clusters?

Below are its advantages:

Increase organic traffic

By coming up with clusters of keywords, you can optimize for them in your content.

Since they are related to your target keyword, you shouldn’t have any problem mentioning them in the post. Simply use them as synonyms to your main keyword to mix things up.

By doing so, you increase your chances of ranking for your target keyword on search results and closely related keywords on search results.

And by ranking on top of search engine results for all those keywords in a single page, you can increase traffic coming from search engines!

Organize your content structure

Aside from using a keyword group for a single page, you can use the keywords to create a silo in your website.

A silo is a structure where a category or a folder in a website contains pages related to the topic of the category.

For example, if the category is “running shoes,” then the pages in it can optimize for the following keywords:

• Running shoes for men
• Best running shoes in 2020
• Nike running shoes

Basically, keyword groups can help you come up with relevant content ideas for categories in your site.

By doing so, you create semantically relevant content about a topic, which plays a big role in your content marketing strategy.

Focus on topics, not keywords

In relation to the benefit above, keyword grouping allows you to approach your site as a source of information about a topic.

Again, if your website is about running shoes, creating content about woodworking for it doesn’t make sense.

Even if the search terms for woodworking have generally higher quality scores (high search volume and low difficulty), it adds nothing to the topic of your website.

So, if your visitors see content optimized for irrelevant keywords, expect them to leave right away.

It’s about time webmasters create topically relevant content instead of chasing profitable keywords left and right. 

This way, they create authority and credibility for your website about their topic.

How to use Keyword Planner for creating keyword groups

You can use tools like Long Tail Pro if you want a paid tool to help you find keyword ideas. But Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword tool mainly used for Google Ads and PPC.

For SEO, however, you can use it to find keyword suggestions for building your keyword strategy.

But for the purpose of this post, you can use Keyword Planner as a keyword grouping tool to help you cluster related keywords together.

If you have a Google account, login from Google Adwords to access the tool.

Once in, type in your topic on the text bar.

The tool will then generate keyword ideas that you can include in your campaign.

From the Keyword ideas page, click on Grouped ideas on the sidebar.

It will show you the keywords organized into groups.

To view the keywords for each group, click on the arrow button to show them.

From here, you can download the keywords ideas and organize them further manually onto a spreadsheet.

Now, using the Keyword Planner is the easiest and simplest way to group your keywords. It also doesn’t provide you with the most value.

For one, the tool doesn’t tell you how it grouped the keywords together (more on this later).

It also lacks features to help you analyze the clusters properly.

So while Keyword Planner is good enough to help you group keywords together, it’s not useful enough.

Cluster related keywords using SE Ranking

SE Ranking is an all-inclusive SEO tool that helps you rank your websites higher on organic search. You can use its features like link building, competitor analysis, PPC keyword research, and more to formulate your SEO strategy.

But its keyword grouper feature lets you come up with keyword lists for optimizing your websites with topically relevant keywords.

SE Ranking is a paid search marketing tool but you can sign up for a 14-day free trial to test its features.

But before you can use its keyword grouper feature, you must upload a number of keywords manually to the tool.

You can use the keywords you downloaded from the Google Adwords tool.

While they are already clustered together, it doesn’t hurt to run them again using SE Ranking. You could get different and possibly better results in the process.

Or you can also use SE Ranking’s keyword tool to find ideas and suggestions for your topic. I personally feel it’s one of the better keyword research tools in the market.

To begin, go to Tools > Keyword Suggestions from the menu.

Then enter your topic on the text bar. Change the source and country database if necessary before hitting “Start search.”

On the overview page, scroll down until you reach the Similar keywords section. Click on View detailed results to see the entire list of keywords.

From here, click on the Export button and choose .csv or .xlsx format to download the list.

Once you have downloaded the file, go back to the dashboard and go to Tools > Keyword Grouper.

Next, enter the title of the keyword group and change the settings as you see fit.

Next, and perhaps its best feature, is the ability to organize the keywords according to accuracy and method.

If you want to create accurate keyword groups, you need to set it at a higher setting.

What happens is the tool will be stricter regarding clustering keywords. 

Therefore, the higher the accuracy is, the fewer search queries there will be in each group.

Regarding the method of grouping, choose between soft and hard.

In a nutshell, the soft method groups together a much larger set of keywords. However, there’s a chance that each group will have irrelevant keywords in there.

The hard method clusters fewer keywords compared to the soft method. But there’s a low chance you will see unrelated search queries in each group.

After choosing the settings, confirm if you want to include the search volume of each keyword. Then upload the file where your keywords are.

Also, you must understand that keyword grouping is an on-demand SE Ranking service. This means it’s not part of your subscription of the tool.

Each keyword query check costs $0.004, while the search volume check is at $0.005.

Once you start grouping the keywords, wait for a couple of minutes. The length of time clustering your keywords depends on how many you uploaded.

The keyword group on SE Ranking should look like this:

If you expand the group, you will see the keywords included, their search volume, the Top 10 matching URLs, and the highlighted keywords on the top 10 results.

You can export the groups and explore each of them more in detail from a spreadsheet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Grouping keywords is not really reinventing the wheel. However, the best SEO strategies happen to be the simplest.

In this case, clustering your keywords is one of the easiest ways to organize your content according to topic. 

This way, you can rank your pages for multiple keywords at the same time. You also create semantically relevant content based on keywords.

Google Keyword Planner is a great place to start keyword grouping. But if you want a leg up on the competition, try out SE Ranking.