Here we are, starting another new year and one thing remains the same: SEO is thriving and continues to be one of the best online marketing strategies to drive website traffic. Every year some clown talks about how search engine optimization is dead and that paid traffic is where all of your focus should be.
Yes, paid traffic is great and you can easily scale growth, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid SEO at all. The more traffic sources the better, and those that are quick to proclaim that organic search is dead simply can’t rank. There is no sugar coating it. Rather than keep up with updates and trends, they simply say it doesn’t work.
I’m here to tell you that SEO is alive and well. For those that have been reading my blog for a while know that I speak the truth and don’t sugar coat anything. If something works I tell you, and if something doesn’t I’m the first to tell you.
The key is to always adjust and keep an open mind — you have to always think of ways to be creative if you want to move up in the SERPs and stay there. The one thing that changes every year is the competition — more websites are created every day and everyone wants to rank in order to pull in that organic traffic.
I wanted to start the year off by writing a blog post about SEO tips that anyone can put into action to experience results. While keyword difficulty and competition always come into play, if you follow these tips and constantly work on improving your SEO you are going to see results.
Here are a dozen SEO tips to add to your 2019 organic search marketing strategy.
1. Beef Up the Content on Pages with Visuals, Videos and Audio Assets
Most webpages that feature an infographic, video or hosted audio file have very little to no content to support it. If your website has these types of content assets, then it’s important to go back and add text-content to each.
This will help tell Google what the content asset is about and result in more exposure in the search results. For an infographic, a nice thorough description of a couple paragraphs before the image is good, then more content below it that continues to describe it. This way you aren’t getting in the way of the person trying to look at the infographic while also giving Google enough information to help rank the page.
For audio and videos, write extensive descriptions under each, designed more for the search engines than the users. They are going to click on the video or audio, while more than likely skipping the text content. I would suggest aiming for at least 1,500 words or more per page.
2. Conduct Round-Up Posts with Niche Influencers (that have high DA blogs)
One of the easiest ways to acquire niche links is to conduct roundup posts and feature some of the most popular companies in your industry. The simplest and most effective way to do this:
- Reach out to companies via email or Twitter and tell them that you want to feature them in a blog post (with a link)
- Explain that all you want in return is for them to link to the article they are featured in on a future blog post on their website
You don’t have to make it too complicated. You see, most companies understand the goal here for both sides and are happy to cooperate. Too many people make things too complicated and miss opportunities.
Target sites you want a link from and you can easily collect them using this strategy. Be upfront and honest. They get a link and you get a link. Win-win for both.
3. Reverse Image Search All of Your Infographics to Find Instant Link Opportunities
I have been talking about how effective infographics can be for years. For those of you who have taken my advice and used this strategy, this tip is especially for you. When done right, infographics will be re-shared and published on several sites.
After all, that is the goal. You want other sites to publish it and link back to your website. But, not all of them will link back and it’s not usually intentionally. Sometimes the person posting it doesn’t know how to or they just forget.
So, just do a reverse image search for your infographics on Google and make a list of all the sites running it that have not linked back. Then, send a nice friendly email thanking them for posting it and then nicely asking them to link back to the original source URL.
4. Spend Time to Reduce Bounce Rate on High Click-Through Pages
Log into your Google Search Console and look at your keywords to see what pages are receiving the highest click-through rates. Under “Performance” look at the “Pages” tab and look for URLs that have high CTRs based on the impressions.
Now, look for those URLs in your Analytics account and check out the bounce rate for each URL. Create a spreadsheet so you can track the bounce rate for the next few months. Make changes to each page with the goal of keeping the visitor on your site. Related posts at the end of the content, a CTA that directs them to another page, etc.
You will see your rankings improve as your bounce rate decreases. People can argue about whether or not bounce rate comes into play, and I am here to tell you that along with click-through rate, it is definitely a signal that Google takes into consideration.
5. Create ‘Definition’ Pages for Niche-Specific Keywords
Every niche has a list of terms that is very specific and command search volume. If you are up for it, create an industry dictionary, with very detailed pages for each term. The more detail the better, and you will see Google not only rank them high, but possibly use the content on the top of the pages, above position number one.
Take the SEO niche for example. The term “Google Panda update” is something nobody outside of SEO would be searching for, so it’s a term that will bring in highly relevant traffic if you were able to rank for it. Aside from a long-form post, you would want to include videos, images and outbound links to authority sites as references.
These pages take a lot of effort but can prove to be traffic magnets.
6. Find New Keywords Using YouTube Suggest
Many people use Google auto complete to find new search phrases to target, but they forget that YouTube is the second largest search engine. There are so many keywords that can be discovered simply by typing in terms and words related to your niche in YouTube.
Start by typing in all of the keywords you are currently targeting and see what suggestions come up. Put all of those into a list and then type those into YouTube to see what other suggestions it spits out.
This simple and quick exercise can give you an endless supply of medium to low competition long-tail terms and search phrases to target via your blog. Commit to writing a new post every day targeting one and watch your organic traffic numbers spike.
7. Optimize Your Titles and descriptions to Draw Eyeballs in Organic Search
As mentioned before, click-through rate is very important, so you want to do everything possible to help draw more attention and clicks to your website in the SERPs, even if you are not in the top positions.
When Google was first introduced people would automatically just click on the first results because they assumed it was the one they wanted. They didn’t understand the search results. Over time consumers and users have become familiar with it, and they know that the very top results are ads and that the first organic position isn’t always the top choice.
That isn’t to say top rankings aren’t the best options, as they do pull in the most traffic, but you can still steal some clicks from the top positions with very clever titles and descriptions. Use this space to trigger clicks with special offers or enticing promises.
8. Find Low Hanging Fruit in Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a resource that not everyone takes advantage of and I can promise you that if you follow just this one tip you will see an increase in traffic. Look in your Search Console account and click the “Performance” tab and then the “Queries” column.
This will show you all of the Google searches that resulted in your website being displayed as a choice in the organic search results. You will also see how many impressions and clicks each query received.
Specifically look for queries that are receiving a lot of impressions but low clicks. You can usually fix that by optimizing your titles and descriptions to pull a higher CTR in the SERPs.
You are also likely to find terms that you never thought would bring in traffic that you can then add to your keyword targeting, which can help to scale your traffic numbers faster than any other strategy. Since you are already ranking for them it will just take a little effort to get higher in the SERPs and see a noticeable traffic spike.
9. Create (and Host) a Niche-Specific Case Study for Link Acquisition
Think of the one type of case study that your industry would go nuts over, resulting in all of the popular websites wanting to mention it and link back to your website as the source of the information.
Now, create something that goes above and beyond just a simple blog post. Create something that is interactive and requires someone to visit your website to experience it. If you just create a downloadable eBook people might visit your website but they will leave after downloading it.
An interactive element that requires they stay on your site will have a much better impact. It also will require websites to link to you in order for their audience to access the case study.
10. Optimize Product Pages to Include Similar Search Terms
For those that are running e-commerce businesses, you know that your product pages have to be perfectly optimized if you want them to rank, especially considering all of the competition from both national retail giants to drop shippers.
One thing that many fail to do is also target highly related keywords and search terms within the product page. The key is to do it in a way that doesn’t interfere with the user experience. Nobody wants to see a huge clunky product description. That should be perfectly optimized for the specific product on the page, from the item to its color and models number, etc.
There is nothing wrong, however, with including an information box down at the bottom of each product page that talks about the item in more detail, which is the perfect spot to include blocks of content optimized for similar search terms. You need to use every possible advantage to help draw in traffic, and this is an easy way.
Most platforms like Shopify and Big Commerce don’t have this built in, but a good developer can easily create an “Additional information” box that populates at the bottom of each product page.
11. Remove Pages on Your Website That Don’t Receive Traffic
Google evaluates all of your webpages that it is able to crawl, and if there are dead pages on your website that serve no purpose and don’t receive any traffic then it’s best to get rid of them. There is no reason to give Google any reason to not consider your website an authority. No traffic? Simple — delete the page.
12. Revamp Old Content (Update Strategy)
Dive into your Google Analytics and look at your older blog content from a few years ago. Are there some posts that are still pulling in decent traffic numbers? If so, it may be wise to look into updating that content and making it apply to the current times.
When someone sees an old post in Google they might clicked on it but in their mind it’s outdated. So, not only do you want to update the content itself, but you also want to update the date of the post or remove it entirely, which can easily be done with a plugin.
Without dates, your content then becomes more evergreen and by updating the content to be applicable to the current times it will greatly increase the time on the page, reduce bounce rate and lead to higher conversion rates.
Conclusion
What you should take away from this blog is that SEO changes, and while some strategies remain effective over the years, there are always new ways to approach the process and new tips to implement.
Once you fall into a routine you become lazy and that is when your competition can rocket right past you in the SERPs. The payoff when you reach the top can be huge, but it requires work. If you take the time to put these tips into action you are going to see improvements.
Are there any other SEO strategies that you are excited to try in 2019? Is there something from my list above that you are now excited to include in your SEO plan? Let me know in the comments below.
