SEO Priorities for 2023: Where to Spend Your Time

You have a limited number of hours for SEO this year, and every blog post and agency email says something different. So where should that time go? My short answer on SEO priorities for 2023: cut or improve weak content, show real first-hand experience, get GA4 running properly before Universal Analytics stops, and keep your links and technical basics clean.

Google’s changes in late 2022 point clearly in that direction. Below I explain each priority, why it matters now, and what I would actually do first.

How I Would Rank SEO Priorities for 2023

Not every task deserves the same effort. I sort work by two questions: how many pages does it affect, and is there a deadline? Here is my order for most small and medium sites.

If your business depends on local customers, move your Google Business Profile up the list. For a local shop, it often matters more than anything on the website.

1. Make Every Page Earn Its Place

This is my top priority for 2023. Google’s helpful content system, launched in August 2022, looks for content made mainly to rank rather than to help people. When it finds a lot of that on a site, it can pull down the whole site, not just the weak pages.

That site-wide effect is what changes the maths. A hundred thin posts are no longer harmless filler. They can hold back your best pages too.

What the December 2022 Update Changed

Google started a second helpful content update on 5 December 2022. This one expanded the system to all languages worldwide, not only English. Google said the rollout could take about two weeks, and at the time of writing it has not been confirmed as finished.

Google has also said that removing unhelpful content can help the rest of your content perform better. It has also said recovery is not instant, because the system needs time to see that the site has changed.

How to Find Pages That Hold Your Site Back

Here is the process I use. It works with a spreadsheet and Search Console, no paid tool needed.

1. Export all indexable URLs from your sitemap or a crawler into a spreadsheet.
2. Add clicks and impressions for the last 12 months from the Search Console Performance report.
3. Mark pages with almost no clicks and no clear purpose, such as old news, thin tag pages and near-duplicate posts.
4. For each marked page, choose one action: improve it, merge it into a stronger page with a 301 redirect, or remove it.
5. Start with the biggest groups of similar weak pages, because fixing a pattern beats fixing single URLs.
6. Note the date of each change so you can compare results later.

I go into more detail on this in my guide on how to audit your site for unhelpful content.

One warning. Low traffic alone does not mean a page is unhelpful. A useful support page or a niche product page may get few visits and still deserve to stay. I judge by purpose first and numbers second.

Google’s own guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content has a list of self-check questions. I recommend reading it with one of your own pages open next to it.

2. Show Experience, Not Just Expertise

On 15 December 2022, Google updated its search quality rater guidelines and added an extra “E” for Experience. E-A-T became E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Google says Trust is the most important part of the group.

Raters do not change rankings directly. Their scores help Google check whether its systems are working well. But the guidelines tell you clearly what Google wants its results to look like. You can read Google’s announcement in its post on the E-E-A-T update, and I cover the change in plain words in E-A-T becomes E-E-A-T.

Practical Ways to Show First-Hand Experience

Experience means the writer has actually used the product, visited the place or done the task. You show it through details that only a real user would know.

• Your own photos and screenshots. Stock images prove nothing. A photo of the product on your desk does.
• Specific results and problems. Say what went wrong, what surprised you and what you would do differently.
• Clear author information. Add a short author bio with the person’s real background, and an author page that lists their work.
• Honest comparisons. Explain who a product is not right for. Real users always have an opinion on that.
• Trust signals. Show contact details, an about page, and clear policies for returns, editorial standards or reviews.

Product review sites have had this message from Google all through 2022 in the product reviews updates. In my view, 2023 is the year the same idea applies to almost every kind of content.

3. Move to GA4 Before Universal Analytics Stops

This one has a hard deadline. Google has said standard Universal Analytics properties stop processing new data on 1 July 2023. Universal Analytics 360 properties got more time and stop on 1 July 2024.

GA4 does not import your old Universal Analytics data. Every month you wait is a month of history you will not have for year-on-year comparisons in 2024. If you set up GA4 today, you will have about six months of data before the switch-off.

When I set up GA4 for a site, I check these things first:

1. The GA4 tag fires on every page, including checkout and thank-you pages.
2. Key events, such as form submissions and purchases, are marked as conversions.
3. Data retention is changed from the default two months to fourteen months.
4. Internal traffic from your office or team is filtered out.
5. GA4 is linked to Search Console and, if you run ads, to Google Ads.

Also export the Universal Analytics reports you care about before the data becomes harder to reach. A simple spreadsheet of monthly organic sessions and conversions by landing page is often enough.

While you are thinking about measurement, keep in mind that Chrome plans to start phasing out third-party cookies in the second half of 2024. It does not change SEO directly, but it is one more reason to rely on your own first-party data and on organic search. Google’s planned replacement for interest-based ads is the Topics API, which replaced FLoC.

4. Clean Up Your Link Profile and Stop Risky Link Building

Google started the December 2022 link spam update on 14 December. It uses SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based spam system, to find sites that buy links and sites that exist to pass outgoing links. Google said those unnatural links are neutralised, meaning they no longer pass any value.

If a site’s rankings depended on bought links, that value can simply disappear. There is no warning in Search Console when this happens, because it is not a manual action. I explain the details in my post on the December 2022 link spam update and SpamBrain.

My priorities for links this year:

• Stop buying links that pass value. If a link is paid, sponsored or part of an affiliate deal, it should use rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
• Check guest posts. Google has long warned about guest posts made mainly to build links, especially with keyword-rich anchors.
• Build links through things people want to reference: original data, useful tools, clear guides and real partnerships.
• Do not panic about random spammy links pointing at you. Google ignores most of them. I only consider the disavow tool when there is a manual action or a clear history of paid link schemes.

Internal links are the most underused part of this. You control them fully. I usually find the quickest wins by linking from strong, well-ranked pages to important pages that sit deep in the site.

5. Keep the Technical Basics in Good Shape

Technical SEO is rarely the most exciting priority, but it decides whether everything else can work. If Google cannot crawl or index a page, the best content in the world will not rank.

Crawling and Indexing

Once a month, open the indexing report in Search Console. Look for sudden jumps in excluded or error pages. Common causes I see are a noindex tag left on after a redesign, broken redirects, and pages blocked in robots.txt by mistake.

Also check that your XML sitemap lists only pages you want indexed. A sitemap full of redirected or noindexed URLs sends Google mixed signals.

Core Web Vitals on Mobile and Desktop

Page experience has been a ranking signal on desktop as well as mobile since early 2022. The Core Web Vitals are Largest Contentful Paint (how fast the main content loads), First Input Delay (how fast the page reacts to the first tap or click) and Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the layout jumps around).

Google is also testing a newer metric called Interaction to Next Paint, or INP, which measures how fast a page responds to all interactions, not just the first. It is still experimental. I would start checking INP numbers in PageSpeed Insights now, so a future change does not surprise you.

Keep this in proportion. Page experience matters, but Google has said great content can still rank with average page experience. I treat speed as a tie-breaker and as a way to keep visitors happy, not as the main lever.

6. Plan for How People See and Click Results

The search results page keeps changing, and that affects clicks even when rankings stay the same. Two changes from the last year or so are worth planning for.

First, Google has rewritten more page titles since August 2021 when it thinks the title tag does not describe the page well. Long, stuffed or duplicate titles get replaced most often. I review titles on pages with many impressions and a low click-through rate, and I keep each one clear, unique and close to the page’s main heading.

Second, in December 2022 Google brought continuous scroll to desktop results in the US for English searches, after doing the same on mobile in 2021. More results load as people scroll, so there is no hard “page one” cut-off anymore. Positions below ten may now get a few more impressions, so your Search Console data might shift a little.

For keyword research in 2023, I would focus less on single keywords and more on the full set of questions behind a topic. Look at what Google already shows for a search: videos, forums, product grids or local packs. That tells you what format people want before you write a word.

7. Decide How You Will Use AI Writing Tools

ChatGPT launched on 30 November 2022 and suddenly anyone can produce pages of text in seconds. Many site owners are asking whether they should use it for content.

Google’s spam policies already cover automatically generated content made to manipulate search rankings. Put that together with the helpful content system, and the risk is clear. Publishing large amounts of unedited AI text is the exact pattern Google says it wants to demote.

My view is that these tools can help with outlines, first drafts of simple sections, or rewording a clunky paragraph. They cannot add first-hand experience, and they sometimes state wrong facts with full confidence. If you use them, set simple rules for your team:

• A person with real knowledge of the topic reviews and edits every piece.
• Every fact, number and date is checked against a reliable source.
• The final page adds something the tool could not, such as your own examples, photos or opinions.
• You never publish pages in bulk just to cover more keywords.

I share more thoughts on this in what ChatGPT could mean for search and content.

8. Keep Local Listings Fresh

If you serve customers in a set area, your Google Business Profile is part of your SEO. You now manage it directly in Google Search and Google Maps, since Google retired the separate Business Profile app in 2022.

I check a local profile every month or so. Make sure your hours (including holiday hours), categories, phone number and website link are correct. Add new photos, reply to reviews, and answer questions in the Q&A section before someone else does.

What I Would Put Lower on the List

Knowing what to skip saves as much time as knowing what to do. These are tasks I see teams spend too long on:

• Chasing a perfect speed score. Moving from 85 to 100 in a lab test rarely changes rankings. Fix pages that fail Core Web Vitals for real users first.
• Exact keyword density. Google understands synonyms and topics. Write naturally and cover the subject fully.
• Reacting to every ranking wobble. Rankings move daily. Check Google’s Search Status Dashboard to see if a known update is rolling out before you change anything.
• Publishing more for the sake of volume. After the helpful content updates, fewer and better pages usually beat more pages.
• Mass disavow files. For most sites, Google already ignores the junk links.

A Simple Quarterly Plan for Your SEO Priorities in 2023

If you like a schedule, here is how I would spread the work across the year. Adjust it to your site’s size and team.

1. January to March: Finish your GA4 setup, export key Universal Analytics reports, and run a content audit to decide what to improve, merge or remove.
2. April to June: Work through the content audit, starting with the largest groups of weak pages. Add author bios and first-hand details to your most important pages.
3. July to September: Universal Analytics stops processing in July, so confirm GA4 reports match what you need. Review titles, internal links and Core Web Vitals.
4. October to December: Review what worked, update your best-performing pages for the new year, and plan next year’s content around real user questions.

Keep a simple change log through the year. When Google releases a core update, you will be able to tell your own changes apart from Google’s.

Final Thoughts on SEO Priorities for 2023

The common thread in 2023 is simple: Google wants to reward sites that help people and show real experience, and it is getting better at ignoring shortcuts. My SEO priorities for 2023 follow that. Clean up weak content, show who is behind your pages and what they have done, move to GA4 before July, and keep your links and technical basics honest.

If you only do one thing this month, export your pages and start the content audit. It will show you where most of your time should go for the rest of the year.