Everyone who starts a blog but is not trained in content marketing, especially SEO, will go one of three ways.
First, the person will try to work out how to do SEO on their own. They will scour through guides and articles to find the same old SEO tips and tricks, do a trial and error of the most common SEO hacks they find out about, and, if they are fortunate enough, they will at most figure out the basics as they keep polishing their skills.
Second, the person hires inexperienced consultants and trusts them blindly. Unfortunately, most of the time that are mediocre, and leave no stone unturned to blow their own trumpet with labels like “100% Results In Just A Month”, and ultimately fail and suck out a ton of money from your purse in the process.
Third, you will be lucky enough to find a website development company that knows what they are doing.
However, the first way takes too much time. The second way wastes a lot of your money with no results. And, unfortunately, not everyone is conscious enough to figure out the third way at the right time.
So, does that mean SEO is a treasure chest you can unlock only with a lot of luck, money, and experience?
Absolutely not! There are a ton of famous bloggers with web pages ranking right on top of the SERPs who started from scratch and built up their authoritativeness with little to no help.
Their secret?
They figured out a bunch of SEO hacks that people usually do not talk about and leveraged these to reach the top of the search engine results.
Today, we will be helping you out here by amassing the most effective ones among these and explaining them right here.
Use Viral Words In Your Title Tag
Your title tag is the first impression people get of your webpage. So it is very important to put the right thing in it so that you can lure them in. Certain words attract people more to your site, which, in turn, makes your page rank more in the search engine results.
You can notice this on your own. Take any number of topics and search them on Google. You will find that all the top results usually always contain certain words. These include words like “top”, “best”, “guide”, “news”, “review”, etc. Using such words in your title and meta description will definitely help you rise through the SERPs.
Find Long Tail Keywords From The Unconventional Sources
You might think that the only way to find long-tail keywords is to use keyword generators and keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner. However, there are other ways you can find popular long-tail keywords directly from the search engine.
The first is to type in your primary keyword or search term into the search bar. You will notice a bunch of search predictions that will appear. These predictions are based on common organic search terms that involve the primary keyword. You can use them in your piece of content to pull said traffic.
Another good place to look for long-tail keywords is in the Related Searches that you will find at the bottom of the SERPs. They too show you things people are searching for along the same vein.
Use Google Ads Platform
Google Ads platform basically facilitates an auction for relevant keywords in exchange for visibility on the SERPs. But the good news is, you do not have to necessarily spend money on those target keywords to find and leverage them.
There is a trick to finding which keywords are performing especially well in your niche.
Simply search for your primary keyword in Google and go through the promoted links. You will find that certain words and phrases would be repeated multiple times in the ad snippets. These would be the priority keywords. Now, you can simply add them to your own content and watch it perform better than before.
Build Backlinks Through Link Roundups And Resource Pages
Backlinks are one of the top indicators that Google uses to judge the authoritativeness and reliability of your site and page. The more backlinks you have, the better your site will perform. However, it can be extremely difficult to earn backlinks, especially for people who are just starting out.
The best way to gain external links is through link roundups and resource pages. Link roundups are like content directories that provide links to pages dealing with a certain topic. They are updated regularly.
On the other hand, resource pages are like record books that name the best content of all time in a category. If you can get a hold of the person running these pages, it should not be too difficult to convince them to include your page in their lists.
Create Detailed And Evergreen Content
In the fast-changing, globalized world we are in, no one would take a second glance at your piece of content if it is generic, outdated, and only skims the surface of the topic. People want to get to a page and be done with it.
That means you have to provide them with in-depth and evergreen content on the topic. It should cover the A to Z of the subject you are dealing with, especially in terms of the latest changes. That means you will have to keep up with updates and make ensure reliable, relevant content, and providing a good user experience.
Improve Poorly Performing Content
One of the probable metrics that influence the organic rankings of your pages in the search engine results is your bounce rate and, to an extent, your average session duration. If people are leaving your page too soon due to poor content, it will affect your SERP rankings.
Therefore, one of your main tasks should be to see which of your web pages are performing poorly. You can use something basic like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to find out what is not working for the page and optimize it for organic traffic. Keep checking on a regular basis to see if the changes really worked.
Keep An Eye Out For SEO Updates
Google releases hundreds of SEO updates each year, including three to five core updates. It would be impossible to keep track of all of them. However, you must still make sure to at least keep track of the core updates as well as the visible changes in the search engine.
That way, you will be able to know how and when to optimize your content according to what parameters Google uses. You can also optimize your content for features like featured snippets, rich snippets, knowledge graphs, image and video panels, local 3-pack, news tabs, etc.
Optimize For Every Search Source
Google is the most popular search engine and optimizing for it does most of the job. However, there are other areas for which you should perform search engine optimization to improve the overall performance of your page. That means search engines like Bing and Yahoo and apps like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.
This is because people often transfer their search query from one place to another and grabbing that opportunity will help your site perform better. If you are content marketing on these social networking platforms, it is more important to optimize them accordingly.
Take Advantage Of Comment Wells
Comment wells have immense potential in providing visibility to your content and a common mistake is to ignore them. This happens mostly in two ways. The first is quite obvious, that is by checking the comments on your post, you can find out what people are wanting or expecting next from you.
By providing your target audience with content on those topics, you will be able to assure return traffic.
The other way helps in keeping your content relevant and active for a long period. By being active in comment wells, you will be able to feature your content in subtle, inbound ways to a bigger audience.
Leverage Free SEO Tools
SEO does not have to be costly. In fact, in some cases, it need not have any costs at all. There are tons of free SEO tools available on the Internet that are actually of really good quality.
Most paid SEO tools also feature a free version. True, they do not include the advanced features paid tools and versions do. But even the free tools can be enough if you are ready to do a little bit of extra work.
You can combine different free tools and do some of the legwork yourself to get the same results that paid tools provide you.
Use Multimedia
Several studies, surveys, and tests have proved that multimedia has a definite enhancing effect on the performance of web pages. Multimedia includes a range of different forms and formats like videos, images, audios, infographics, charts, games, interactive elements, and so on.
The reasons why multimedia brings in more traffic are threefold.
The first is that people tend to absorb information more when they hear or see it instead of reading it. This is the reason visual learning has gained so much traction these days.
Second, multimedia has the ability to show a lot of information concisely and clearly within a small space.
The last is that Google features multimedia like videos and images in special snippet panels in the organic search. There are also separate video and image search pages for the same. Getting featured in those for a search term can bring in extra traffic to your page.
Optimize Your Page For Smartphones
Today, more people are using their smartphones to surf the web than they are using desktops or laptops. After all, it is the smartphone they carry everywhere. A search engine does not run in exactly the same way on a smartphone as it does on a computer. Smartphones have a smaller screen as well as less powerful hardware.
Therefore, both users and smartphones react differently to the same page than a computer does. Optimizing your pages for mobile search is guaranteed to make your site perform better. Your pages should at least be responsive, and also light enough to open fast on a phone.
Many people actually create separate mobile versions of their websites for improved performance. AMPs or accelerated mobile pages are, in fact, recommended more and ranked higher in smartphones.
Repair Broken Links
We already talked about how important backlinks are for web pages to rank high in the SERPs. But if you are gaining backlinks and losing them at the same time, it makes no sense. This can be prevented using the simple SEO strategy of repairing broken links.
Broken links occur when someone uses an outdated link to your page or site in their content. This could happen due to a variety of reasons, including you updating your content or your page or site URL.
To counter this, you should keep checking your backlinks and if you find broken ones, contact the writer and ask them to update the information accordingly.
There was a time when people would cram keywords in their fat footers in a bid to rank higher in the search engine results. Gone are those days; in fact, Google discourages you from scramming keywords in this manner on your page as it could lower your search engine rankings instead of improving it.
But that does not mean you should not at all use your footer for SEO. The key here is balance. Do not unnecessarily stuff your footer anchor text with keywords. Rather, optimize them using commonly requested search terms and that should help enhance your visibility in the SERPs.
Add Questions To Your Content
Question searches have become even more popular than they were a decade ago, contrary to predictions. Most question searches are attributed to voice search and local searches. There is a whole “People also ask” section in the SERPs where content that specifically answers those questions is featured.
Not only that but questions asked on sites like Quora, Reddit, etc. are actually featured in the SERPs as valid search results. This goes on to show how important questions are when it comes to people searching for information on the web.
Including these questions in your content will help you rank higher when people search for them.
Conclusion
SEO is not a set-and-forget phenomenon. The internet is constantly changing and so is people’s online behavior. Doing SEO right means constantly staying ahead of these changes and keeping your content up with them. There are many standard practices of SEO that you will be following for your content, just like everyone else.
But the above hacks are some of the best-kept open secrets of the industry that you will greatly benefit from to create quality content and improve your site performance, especially if you are planning to go solo with your SEO.
In the midst of it, keep in mind the one SEO strategy that has no replacement – keep creating high-quality, evergreen content.
At the end of the day, Google believes content is king. Nothing can replace quality content. No matter how well you do SEO, if the content is poor, people will not visit your site and failure is inevitable.
FAQs
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Is SEO still relevant in 2021?
The only way for a website to be successful is to rank as high as possible on the SERPs. The way to do so is to optimize your site and content so that the search engine deems it worthy enough to show users. Hence, no matter what the year, SEO will always be relevant.
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How can I hack SEO?
There are no shortcuts to SEO. If you try to cheat the system, especially with black hat techniques, sooner or later, the system will throw you out. Doing SEO honestly, correctly, and comprehensively is the only hack you should use.
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How can I get SEO results fast?
SEO is a gradual process. It takes time to start off, but once it does, it should be easy for you to do. Follow the above tips and get in touch with a professional copywriting service provider to start seeing results fast.
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Is SEO a dying industry?
SEO has been around since the publication of the web and it is here to stay. Every brand needs SEO to reach people across the globe. As long as this need is alive, so is SEO.
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What is an SEO checklist?
An SEO checklist is a guide to SEO strategies and best practices that one must follow to optimize their site for the search engines.
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Is Google SEO dead?
Google SEO is far from dead. On the contrary, it is the most active, trusted, and quality SEO in the world that can drive laser focused audience to your business and blogs.
