SEO professionals are expected to be everyday heroes with the power to boost traffic, raise rankings, and increase the ROI for the companies that they serve. But, oftentimes, SEOs hands are tied when it comes to handling many issues. For instance, what can a SEO professional do if the site isn’t responsive? Or if it was created in the late 90s and must be updated? What about if the server keeps malfunctioning?

Most SEOs can’t fix every single problem on a site and it’s not because they lack the skillset. In fact, many times these problems require executive approval, third-party vendors, and the buy-in of developers to be fixed.

So, with all of these issues and obstacles in their way, how do SEO professionals get their work done? Thankfully, there are some things that SEOs can do, without input or approval from another party, that can make a huge impact on a website. Intrigued? Keep reading for more information.

1. Alter Your Title Tags
If the title tags for your site aren’t optimized, your site will not perform well in the SERPs. The problem is that website designers or developers don’t consider these SEO ramifications and will typically place stock text in their title tags. As the SEO, you will have to fix this. Not sure where to begin? Here are some guidelines that will help you optimize your title tags:
• Your title tag should be between 50 and 60 characters long
• Place a longtail keyword in the title to optimize the title tag
• Your target longtail keyword should be in, or close to, the beginning of the title

In addition, consider implementing the following steps for better title tag optimization:
• Use a unique long tail keyword for each page on your site
• Change the title tag so that it includes the assigned keyword
• If the site is fairly large, place your focus on the most important pages, like top traffic pages, first.

2. Optimize H1s
The section of HTML code that pinpoints a huge heading in your content is called the H1 tag. It is one of the most common SEO elements and has been in use for years. But, there are some problems that are associated with H1s, they include:
• Multiple H1s
• Short H1s
• Duplicate H1s
• Very long H1s

When it comes to analyzing a site’s H1 tags, Screaming Frog is one of the most useful tools available. It can help you identify:
• Pages without an H1
• Pages with duplicate H1s
• Pages with H1s that are over 70 characters
• Pages with multiple H1s

3. Add Extra Content
Google loves content so, the more you have on your site, the better your pages will rank. In fact, in a study on content length and top ranked pages, serpIQ discovered that there’s a strong link between top-ranked pages and having lots of content on your page. To take advantage of this fact, place high-quality content on your site that solves the problems of your visitors and addresses their needs.

4. Add Alt Tags to Your Pictures
A picture’s alt tag is the meta text that is used to describe an image. Sometimes, your CMS will automatically give your images an alt tag, but usually these aren’t optimized. To optimize these tags yourself, just use Screaming Frog to give you an idea of what they look like. To make any changes, simply go into the image source code or attributes and change the alt tag.

5. Add Internal Links
If you want search engines to be able to easily access your site, it’s important that your website is crawlable. One of the best ways to go this is by building internal links.

Internal links lead from one page of content on your site to another. They are fairly easy to implement, all you have to do is go to the existing content on your site and add text links that will take you to another page. But, before you begin, there are some things that you should keep in mind:
• Add an average of 3 internal links per page
• Don’t link to the homepage or the “about” page
• Link to content rich pages

6. Improve Readability of Content
Nowadays, SEO is all about usability so, it’s important that you make every effort to make your content easy to view, read, and digest This is accomplished by adding headings, bullets, lists, and paragraphs to your content. When your content is more readable, it will be more user-friendly, and thus, more attractive to search engines.

7. Alter and Optimize Your Meta Descriptions
A meta descriptions is simply a brief (about 160 characters) description of the page’s content and although they don’t directly impact search rankings, they are able to affect it in a very real, albeit indirect, way. This is because meta descriptions are seen in the SERPs and, as such, they are able to affect whether or not and how quickly a user will click on a certain page. For best results, make sure that your meta descriptions are the right length, relevant to the content, and appealing to the user.