Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an ever-evolving field, and mastering advanced SEO strategies is essential for businesses and website owners who aim to achieve top rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). With millions of websites competing for visibility, staying ahead of the curve is crucial to attract organic traffic and reach a wider audience. In this blog post, we will explore advanced SEO techniques that can help you dominate search engine rankings and maximise your online presence.
Comprehensive Keyword Research: Advanced SEO starts with in-depth keyword research. Instead of merely targeting high-volume keywords, focus on long-tail keywords and semantic variations that align with your content and user intent. Use keyword research tools, competitor analysis, and user data to identify relevant keywords that have a higher chance of driving targeted traffic to your website.
User Experience (UX) Optimisation: Search engines prioritise user experience, so optimising your website for usability and engagement is critical. Ensure your site loads quickly, is mobile-friendly, and has a clean and intuitive navigation structure. User-friendly websites with clear calls-to-action lead to higher user satisfaction, lower bounce rates, and improved search rankings.
High-Quality Content Creation: Creating valuable, relevant, and authoritative content is a cornerstone of advanced SEO. Focus on producing comprehensive, well-researched, and original content that addresses your target audience’s pain points and provides solutions. High-quality content is more likely to attract backlinks and social shares, signaling to search engines that your website is a reputable source of information.
Content Optimisation for Featured Snippets: Featured snippets are highly coveted positions in search results that provide concise answers to user queries. Optimise your content to appear in featured snippets by formatting it in a structured manner, using lists, tables, and concise answers to common questions. Featured snippets can drive significant traffic to your site and boost your credibility as an authoritative source.
Voice Search Optimisation: With the rise of voice-activated devices, optimising your content for voice search is becoming crucial. Voice search queries tend to be more conversational and longer, so tailor your content to match natural language queries. Focus on answering specific questions and optimising for local searches, as voice searches often have a local intent.
Link Building and E-A-T: Link building remains a crucial aspect of advanced SEO, but focus on quality over quantity. Earn backlinks from authoritative and relevant websites within your industry. Additionally, emphasise your website’s expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) to build credibility with search engines. Showcase expertise through author bios, industry accolades, and case studies.
Technical SEO and Website Structure: Pay close attention to technical SEO aspects, including optimising site speed, fixing broken links, implementing schema markup, and creating an XML sitemap. Ensure your website’s structure is intuitive and search engine-friendly, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.
Analyse and Adapt: Continuous analysis of your SEO efforts is crucial for staying on top of the competition. Monitor website traffic, user behavior, and keyword rankings using tools like Google Analytics and Search Console. Regularly adjust your SEO strategies based on data insights and emerging industry trends.
Conclusion: Mastering advanced SEO strategies requires a combination of technical expertise, content creation, user-centric approach, and adaptability. By conducting comprehensive keyword research, focusing on user experience, producing high-quality content, optimising for featured snippets and voice search, earning authoritative backlinks, and staying on top of technical SEO, you can dominate search engine rankings and achieve sustained success in the ever-changing landscape of online visibility. Remember that SEO is an ongoing process, and continuously refining your strategies based on data-driven insights will lead to long-term success in dominating search engine rankings.
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The last year 2016 was quite a roller coaster for search marketers due to substantial and unforeseen changes took place in paid search marketing, for both Google and Bing platforms. Taking into consideration these changes and their impacts, at the start of the year 2017, lot many people have published numerous posts regarding most prominent and top SEO trends to watch out for. Various predictions were made on SEO, search engine, and ranking algorithms. Now, we are halfway through the year 2017. The exciting part is most of the anticipated trends proved to be of significance for SEO.
Here we present the most talked SEO trends and how it proved their prominence in this year:
1. Video content is booming
People love audio-visual content over textual content. As predicted at the start of the year 2017, many established as well as newbie brands are banking their advertising campaigns on video content. With so many active social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat where people love to share their stories, how come brands stay behind this trend?
Crowdcart is quite prominent in the race of video advertising. Crowdcart helps to connect and engage with your audience through LIVE video. It enables to teach, share, and connect over webinars, Q&As, live courses, and summits.
Coming back to video advertisements, popular brand Coca Cola’s advertisement #LiftTheFeeling has gone viral on digital media. The video garnered over 20 million views (around 12+ million views on official YouTube page and around 9 million views on the Facebook page of Coca Cola) in just two days of the advertisement.
The ad titled ‘Elevator’ has been made under the ‘taste the feeling’ campaign keeping the Indian audience in mind. It is about a tale of togetherness between two strangers, a celebrity and a diehard fan. The video content focus on those two strangers who meet up in an elevator and coca-cola helps them to break the ice and make the connection between them. Since it was an elevator, they promoted it as ‘lift the feeling’. The amazing dance and music quality make video content more interesting.
Before the digital launch of the ad, teasers of the campaign sent the consumers in a dither guessing what is next. Creating curiosity amongst viewers, the launch on digital media had consumers liking, sharing, and commenting persistently, which resulted in greater engagement between consumers and the brand.
Later on, the ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign was featured by more than 200 countries across TV, outdoor, print, retail signage and more.
Here is the curated list of the most popular video ads (visual marketing) on YouTube in the year 2017:
Samsung: This is a phone (March/April 2017)
A Better Super Bowl | NFL Hyundai Super Bowl LI (February 2017)
2017 Kia Niro | “Hero’s Journey” (February 2017)
2. User-generated content is shared and perceived most
If you serve what your audience is seeking, you are surely going to rock with all your campaigns. But, how to know what they are looking for? There is a marketing gimmick called user-generated content. User-generated content (i.e. UGC) comprise any form of content that is created by users and consumers about a brand or product. Ask users indirectly what they want and accordingly tailor your content marketing and SEO content.
Especially on Instagram, UGC is highly prevalent, shared, and perceived. UGC generates more engagement on social media and from there attract more organic traffic towards the website.
According to HubSpot, 76% of individuals surveyed said they trusted content shared by “average” people more than by brands, and nearly 100% of consumers trust recommendations from others.
Let us take a glance over how SEO can be benefited with the help of user-generated content.
Wayfair, an online furniture store, is one of the world’s largest online destinations for the home decor. Wayfair is running a fun UGC campaign since 2016 to boost its online sales. Basically, this campaign intends to let customers display their online shopping experiences using hashtag #WayfairAtHome. Many buyers who did online shopping posted millions of content using this hashtags. This hashtag is highly popular on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. And, in June 2017 also, people are highly using this hashtag to convey their experiences. Lots of UGC is available for this brand and it is cashing on it through varied advertisements.
Here, are some of the recent examples posted on social media:
Whatever hashtags are posted on social media by users, they all are reposted by the brand with relevant hyperlinks that can drive organic traffic and boost conversions. The user-generated content serves two-way benefits – it acts as testimonials plus it provides an exact idea of what they want and how they feel about the specific product/service.
3. Intense content paves a smooth road for SEO
“Don’t optimize your keywords, optimize your content”. This was emphasized as one of the top SEO trends for the year 2017. Unlike past years, the focus has shifted on comprehensive and long-form content for SEO to provide value to the readers. On the other hand, search marketers can also have a higher number of Backlinks and internal links in the intense and long-form content, which eventually boost their SEO. Airstream is a popular and iconic American brand, dealing in Travel Trailers and Touring Coach. Their policy is “Let’s not make any changes, let’s make only improvements!” They well applied their philosophy for their content to boost their conversions. They were not much worried about the number of visitors, but their real challenge was their conversions.
According to Hileman, the team needed content that would appeal to people who were higher up in the funnel. They did take help of lifecycle content (by developing gated and lifestyle-centred eBooks, revamped newsletters) to boost their conversions. The new content they created included guides — such as “Road Trips Across the U.S.” and “Farms & Wineries” — as well as ebooks like “Why Airstream?”
Their textual content was beautified by adding image content. Earlier they discovered that inclusion of an image of the cover of the eBook resulted in much higher conversion rates than just a text-heavy page. Later on, they also realized that video headers on a landing page distracted people from performing an action on their CTA buttons. Minor updates resulted in huge conversions, their brochure download conversion rates surprised and satisfied them with good traffic.
4. Personal branding – verified as an undisclosed SEO strategy
Branding makes a huge difference in your overall online impression and foothold. Personal branding is an unexplored yet very powerful tool for your SEO. The biggest benefit it provides is the trustworthiness of the brand. In the digital marketing field, there are some giants who have established their personal branding very well. People just trust their offerings by their names.
Examples include:
Neil Patel: there is hardly anyone who hasn’t heard about him for SEO and digital marketing. He has consistently grown his personal brand through blogging and guest posting on sites like Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inc., etc. Owner of neilpatel.com, quicksprout.com, and crazzyegg.com. Also, a co-founder of hellobar.com and KISSmetrics.com
Rand Fishkin: He is the CEO and Co-Founder of SEOMoz, a leader in the field of SEO tools, resources & community. Furthermore, he is the host of Whiteboard Friday, co-author of a pair of books on SEO, co-founder of Inbound.org, and serves on the board of the presentation software firm, Haiku Deck.
Gary Vaynerchuk: He runs VaynerMedia. He is regarded as one of the well-known entrepreneur personal brands. He’s active on Snapchat and YouTube and his podcasts are everywhere on the internet.
Jeff Bullas: His blog receives over 5 million visitors a year. He helps businesses and personal brands with digital marketing services that include blogs, social media marketing, and search engine optimization.
Larry Kim: He is the founder and Chief Technology Officer at Mobile Monkey. In addition, he is regarded as the most influential PPC expert. No doubt, building a personal brand takes a lot of efforts and consistency matters. But, one should try it out persistently. A strong and recognizable personal brand can attract tons of organic traffic.
5. AMP does make a significant difference in your SEO
As we already know that Google favours the websites which have switched over to AMPs.
According to Google, more than 50% of search queries, globally, are now take place from mobile devices.
Here’s how 2Dogs Media churn out huge results from improvised SEO due to AMP in place.In November 2016, there were no AMP pages indexed on the website. On 2nd December 2016, they implemented accelerated mobile pages on their WordPress website. They also submitted a new sitemap into Google Search Console so that Google can easily notice the site. On the first day of AMP installation, they experienced website traffic on all 14 AMP indexed web pages.
Not only this, other massive benefits include:
Within 6 months of AMP implementation, observed much higher CTR on AMP pages as compared to traditional pages
Improved website speed (earlier non-AMP page load time was 11 seconds which went down to 2.2 seconds for AMP pages, with reduced page size and reduced requests)
40% of the traffic on AMP pages was organic (Excluding referral, social and direct traffic sources)
The gist of the entire story is if a greater portion of your traffic comes from mobile, implement AMP NOW! However, even if your traffic sources include both desktop and mobile devices, then also we suggest you go for AMP. This is because we cannot deny the fact that mobile optimization is already extremely important in SEO strategies in 2017.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
The above-mentioned SEO trends are just a portion of the chunk of anticipations. There is a high reliance on other trends as well, which are: voice search, user intent, the influential role of structured data and schema implementation, the influence of artificial intelligence on working of algorithms, local search, cross-channel marketing, and optimization for user-intent. As a general tip, continue to optimize your online presence to boost your SEO.
In case you feel something else can change the scenario of SEO in the rest of the year 2017, do drop in your words in the comments section, we would love to hear from you!
Finally, we are in 2017! New Year, new hopes, new resolutions, but the same old passion! 2016 was a passionate year, predominantly when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) trends and Google in particular. With each New Year, search engine portals develop new algorithms and rules with a view to fighting spamming links and people trying to play the system.
The SEO industry is always poignant, so it rewards to be aware of these evolutions.
An exciting year for SEO, with the following trends heightening the limelight:
1. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) will rise
Over the past few years, easy access to mobile has restructured SEO. Mobile search is growing at a rapid pace. In addition, there is not any sign of its getting slow down in the near future. There is a significant shift in website traffic. Searchers are moving away from desktop towards mobile devices. There are many websites which attract major traffic from mobile devices. Google has experienced that mobile searches surpassed desktop searches.
The same was reported in May 2015. Since then, many steps taken by Google have indicated that mobile should be measured as the default user experience. In fact, Google has initiated measures to make its index mobile-first. Google favours the websites which have switched over to AMPs. AMP is an open source initiative that aims to provide mobile-optimized content. It provides the capability of loading sites instantly on mobile devices four times faster along with eight times lesser data usage.
15 of the 24 hours in a given day, more mobile search is performed on mobile than on Desktops or tablets. searchenginejournal.
Mobile optimization is already extremely important in SEO strategies. However, it will prove to be mandatory in 2017. Experts have anticipated seeing more preference for AMPs in search results. More and more brands are anticipated to take advantage of this option.
2. Intense content will mount
Don’t optimize for keywords. Optimize your content. Readers are tired of surfing the messed up content again and again. Initially, content marketing efforts were focused on producing as much crisp content as possible. However, over the past few years, the focus has also been laid towards comprehensive content.
Interestingly, the current market is flooded with both sorts of content. The trend in 2017 will have much focus on optimized and intense content. The users will receive maximum possible information in the minimum possible space. Epic content is surely going to appeal to the readers.
3. Video Content will enhance revenue
Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is at its peak and it is not going anywhere soon.
According to Syndacast,74 per cent of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video.
In fact, the Facebook higher authority also stated that video will become the main type of content by 2020. Along with the development and increased usage of advanced technologies including, Snapchat, Vine, Periscope, and even Instagram, video content is going to last its impression in 2017 as well.
At present, marketers who use video grow their revenue 49% faster as compared to non-video users. Google is experimenting with video ads in the search results.
There are multiple types of video content including advertisements, webinars, tutorials, question answers, quizzes, and others. Marketers can implement such types of videos in their search marketing strategy.
4. Structured Data and Schema will have an influential role
Search engine crawlers need to understand the web content to provide the best search results. With a view to providing such information to the user, Google, Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo! collaborated to form Schema.org. The inclusion of Schema markup in a user’s HTML improves the way his page displays in SERPs by improving the rich snippets that are displayed below the page title. Schema.org provides particular set shared vocabularies that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways that can be understood by the major search engines.Look for structured data and Schema are expected to have an influential role in SEO in 2017 and ahead.
5. Voice Search will mark a footprint
Voice search is definitely not a new thing; however, till recent past, it had no significant role to play in the industry of search engine marketing. Conversely, with the increasing usage of mobiles and other advancements in technology, voice search is gradually gaining drive.
The study, based on results obtained by 1,400 US residents, showed that 55 percent of teens use some kind of hands-free search on their smartphones every day, such as Google’s own solution, along with Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. While voice search use is growing among older smartphone owners, 45 percent of adults in the survey claimed to fee “like a geek” when they talked to their smartphone.
Obviously, to search for anything rather than typing out the word or phrase, it is a lot more convenient to just speak. Searching through voice is going to grow more in 2017.
However, to optimize search engine marketing strategy, you need to ensure that you comprehend the searchers intent. Voice searches will usually be in the interrogative form and would be including question words like who, what, when, how, where, and others. The best way out to optimize if rephrasing headlines and make it look like a question rather than a statement. For example, “Tips for social media marketing” can be better rephrased as “What are the best tips for social media marketing?”
6. Influence of artificial intelligence on algorithm working
Finally, late last year, Google search algorithms got a boost on the release of Google RankBrain. Google RankBrain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence (AI) system which assists in processing search results. It is anticipated to make search smarter and more pertinent to the user. To get along with the flow, use taglines, compose compact articles and reduce the amount of the information you post.
Industry experts are expecting more machine learning updates similar to Google hummingbird in this year as well. Machine learning updates may get released in the areas of data interpretation or marketing automation. Though these are anticipations, they are unquestionably an important portion SEO trends for 2017.
Sites which lay emphasis on enhanced user experience are always favoured by Google and other search engines. To some extent, user experience matters when it comes to SEO. It is straightforward that users will spend more time on the site if they find it user-friendly. Even though keywords and phrases are vital; in 2017, brands are also required to place significance on optimizing their digital content on the basis of user intent. In your SEO strategy for 2017, three musts are:
8. Personal branding – an undisclosed SEO strategy
A social media platform like Facebook has refined its algorithms to favour individual posts over branded posts. In addition, it is continuing doing so. This indirectly places an emphasis on personal branding. Personal branding strategy is very similar to the strategy of corporate branding.
According to Forbes, with the help of a personal brand, you’ll have an easier time securing guest posts, building user trust, and driving more traffic to your website.
Surprisingly, quite a low number of brands have actual cash on it in their SEO activities. However, it would not be incorrect to anticipate that more and more businesses will attempt to cash on personal branding. At the same time, personal branding will bring in more opportunities and more competition.
CONCLUSION
Of course, it is not an easy job to predict what exact changes Google and other search engines are going to announce this year. However, it is not that tough to anticipate that the aforesaid trends will probably widen in some consequential way. As an SEO marketer, you need not to immediately refurbish your digital marketing strategy but need to factor the upcoming trends with a prolonged vision.
The year 2017 will be an influential year in many ways. Get yourself well ready for future challenges and future opportunities.
