Keywords research, link building, and page optimization: all well known SEO techniques. They are difficult things to forget even for SEO beginners.
But there are other not so popular techniques, which tend to be forgotten in favour of more obvious and well known strategies. There is a good reason for this: it’s possible to reach good ranking even without using these techniques.
Having said this, the three underlying strategies has the potential to bring your SEO to the next level. Other than keywords research and page optimization, these techniques will help you to attract important traffic that will bring real conversions. And working smartly will mean less time and energies to reach a better result.
1- Writing content based on consumer’s intent
SEO and content marketing work together beautifully, if done right. Unfortunately your SEO strategies can inadvertently sabotage your efforts in content marketing.
To be sure this isn’t happening, focus on creating content that matches user intent. While you can have fundamental keywords, keep in mind that people who are looking for that word or that phrase can have a intent totally different from what you think.
There are 3 main kinds of research:
- informational: researches where people are looking for general information
- transactional: researches where people are looking to perform an action or specific activities online
- navigational: researches where people are looking for a specific company or website
Not considering this kind of researches can make useless your optimization efforts. For example, trying to better the rank for informative phrases is useless for a company that is working towards conversions.
How can this be avoided? when you will choose the keywords. The thing to do is to enter the keywords on Google and examine the results page. Because Google is very competent on determine research intent, the first pages of the results can be used to gather an idea on what people are really looking for.
2- Networking
Given that a lot of SEO related tasks can be performed in isolation, it’s easy to remain into a nice little bubble. But networking, particularly the online kind, it’s the fundamental base to establish mutually advantageous relationship and opportunities. Networking is important for different reasons, but the pivotal ones are the following:
- Establish a relationship with blog guests: it really takes a lot of work. Famous sites will want to progressively work with you, until you demonstrate to be able to create innovative content.
- Being in sync with influencers: there’s nothing that can substitute authenticity and trust while building a brand online. Given the multitude of content produced every day, creating something that shines is a must. Having a key player that mentions, promotes and endorses your brand is important: if you don’t have credibility as a brand, you’re borrowing theirs.
- Increment potential and reach for external links: we can’t forget social networking. While we know social sharing has not a direct impact on search rankings, indirect benefits are undeniable. When your content obtains likes, shares and retweets, it’s seen by more people. The more people see them, the more probable is that it gains external links that, as we know, has a direct effect on ranking.
3- Improve user experience
A good user experience means that visitors can easily find and consume what they need on your page. There are a lot of factors playing, but the most important is to give visitors what they want.
According to Moz, while user experience is not that relevant to ranking, its impact over time can be noticeable. Which kind of elements you should incorporate to improve user experience?
- optimized internal link structure to guide users and search engines through your content
- relevant images and video
- reactive design accessible on every device
- a font with a readable size
- using list to break the content in more easily read chunks
It’s unquestionable that Google tracks and considers users’ signals as important for ranking: the above stated elements will help users to find what they’re looking for on your site.
Source for the article on Entrepreneur.