The SEO plays catalog
Which SEO plays actually work
93 tactics that circulate in threads, courses and agency decks, each reviewed on the same card: the problem it claims to solve, the steps, the evidence and a verdict. Moves the needle, marginal or filler.
Browse by category guide
- Authority: Plays that try to earn or build links, mentions and the authority they carry.
- Assets: Things you build or buy that attract links and traffic on their own: tools, data, templates and domains.
- Demand: Plays for finding what people search and choosing which queries to target.
- On-Page: Titles, internal links, schema and content changes made on the page itself.
- Crawling: Plays that decide whether Google can find, render and index your pages.
- Scale: Publishing many pages at once: programmatic SEO, AI content, translation and comparisons.
- Distribution: Getting content and links outside your own site: PR, Reddit, syndication and newsletters.
- Measurement: How you read rankings and traffic without fooling yourself.
Filter by verdict
Filler Marginal Moves the needle
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Create pages by use case or industry
Generic product pages do not speak to specific buyers.
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Find query clusters with regex in Search Console
Thousands of queries hide the patterns behind them.
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Fix keyword cannibalization with Search Console
Two of your pages seem to compete for the same query.
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Link sibling pages to each other
Large sets of similar pages, such as locations or related articles, are poorly connected.
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Link to important pages from your strongest pages
Pages you want to rank receive little internal authority.
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Map redirects one to one before a migration
Migrations and redesigns lose traffic.
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Measure by page groups, not the whole site
Site-wide totals hide where traffic is gained or lost.
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Measure your own traffic with Ahrefs or Semrush estimates
Tool estimates are quick to check and look precise.
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Merge near-identical pages that are not indexed
Many similar pages stay out of the index.
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Mine Reddit and forums for keywords
Keyword tools miss the way people actually phrase their problems.
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Offer badges and embeddable widgets
You want other sites to link to you without asking each one.
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Optimize crawl budget on a small site
Small sites are told that crawl budget limits their rankings.
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Paste full articles into LinkedIn
LinkedIn looks like free reach for the articles you already have.
Start with the guides
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Dangerous SEO Tactics That Trigger a Google Penalty
The SEO tactics most likely to bring a Google penalty: what the spam policies…
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How SEO Works: What Actually Moves Rankings
How SEO works in practice: how Google crawls, indexes and ranks pages, what links…
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Is SEO Dead?
Is SEO dead in 2026? What zero-click data, Google’s updates and AI answers really…
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SEO Tips and Quick Wins That Actually Work
SEO tips that hold up against the evidence: quick wins worth doing first, the…
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White Hat vs Black Hat SEO: Where the Line Is
White hat SEO vs black hat SEO explained without moralizing: what Google’s spam policies…
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