For the last two decades, search engines like Google have been continuously updating their algorithms. The reason for this is that their main intention is to provide their users with the most relevant and top-notch quality as they can.
On the other hand, marketers have been either doing their best to properly get a high ranking, or finding loopholes to boost their traffic. This is why Google has become much stricter, introducing its Panda update in 2011. Now, basically, if you intend to deal in low-quality content and unscrupulous linking schemes, your site will no longer go so well, as you will most probably end up getting penalized.
As of today, Google has made webmasters re-think their approaches, so it’s all about focusing on the right SEO strategies which are bound to make the search engine evaluate your website as valuable, authoritative, and relevant. In this article, we are going to discuss some of the SEO strategies that every advanced marketer needs to focus on.
Do keyword and audience research
The fact is that doing a proper research of the keywords that you use, as well as your audience, is still a very important SEO strategy. Instead of keyword stuffing your content, you should make use of the variety of tools that are at your disposal in order to find the optimal keywords for your content. By using a tool such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, you’ll be able to find out what the volume of optimized content for particular keywords is in comparison to how much they were searched for. In addition, Google Trends is there to give those keywords a context, according to what is popular “here and now”. Basically, it’s what you need to find out what kind of content your prospective audience is looking for.
Furthermore, if you want to know more about your audience, all that you need to do is ask. Use your social media platforms to come up with posts that people will engage with, or surveys and quizzes that will help you gather the information that you need in order to learn what your audience wants from you. Then, you can tailor your content according to their needs.
Write your content like you are a human being
So, as we have previously ascertained, keyword stuffing is a practice whose days have been numbered a long time ago, and you will actually get penalized for it. However, what you need to keep in mind is that avoiding to sound like a keyword-pushing machine does not necessarily mean that you sound like a human being.
So, when writing your texts, make sure that they have that human side, and sounds like someone who people would actually have a conversation with. The fact is that this increases the engagement factor of your content, as well as the time spent on your website. As a result, of course, your ranking will improve, and more people will be interested in what you are all about.
Come up with strong backlinks for your website
Good ways to generate great backlinks for your website are to have an influencer on your side and, of course, a well-developed content marketing strategy. However, you should always be on the lookout for more ways to get high-quality links to your pages. According to the advice from an SEO company, the best way to do this is to write content for huge publications, look for industry-related interviews that you can take part in, and share valuable content with important people.
Furthermore, there are tools such as Majestic SEO, which can help you find out where the links leading to your competitors’ websites are coming from. Find those links, properly analyze them, and then try to come up with a similar strategy for your own efforts.
Write amazing headlines
You can find all sorts of headlines on the internet. Some of them are boring as hell and only do damage to websites. Others sound attractive, but are, in fact, misleading, and while they do attract some attention, it is short-term and also bad for your reputation. And in no time, search engines will realize that your content doesn’t really deserve the traffic.
So, instead of teasing your audience with headlines, be as descriptive as possible, and let them know what they can expect from your articles. You can actually come up with amazing headlines without resorting to trickery. Clickbait titles bring you short-term attention and end up throwing your audience away, while the amazing ones drive people to stay on your website, read through your content, and look for more. If you really want to come up with great and smart headlines, you need to test and optimize them all the time. It’s all about finding the headlines that do the job all along the way.
In summation
So, what can you conclude from all of this? First of all, do your research and be thorough, as it is still essential for getting a high ranking. Write your content like you are a human being interacting with another person. When it comes to backlinks, avoid all the shady tactics, and get top-notch backlinks the right way. Finally, focus constantly optimizing your article headlines in order to come up with amazing ones that attract a lot of attention.