There is definitely nothing hidden about the latest algorithm updates from Google when it comes to search engine results. As expected, these changes highly affect a lot of website ranking in search engines, with some of them seeing total blackout from search engines after Google rolled out several updates in their real search engine data.
When you work in SEO, you always want to stay up-to-date and be aware of the latest changes. But, if you do your work well and don’t use black-hat SEO strategies and techniques, you should not be worried. Today, I will share with you several SEO strategies and techniques that I recommend you to follow if you want to improve your website search traffic. These tactics are all white-hat; so, if you follow them, you won’t need to worry about the future algorithm updates.
Algorithm Changes Require Changes in Your SEO Strategies and Techniques
Those who are in the internet industry for some time now know all too well about these algorithm updates and how these affect their online business. In fact, many webmasters fear these updates and they actively try new strategies in the hopes of evading any penalization from Google. It is completely understandable seeing how one penalization attack can ruin the entire site ranking in a matter of seconds.
At Growth Hackers, we’ve helped countless businesses adapt their SEO strategies to every Google algorithm update, keeping rankings high and traffic consistent. But, following the roll out of the latest search engine results which improve algorithms in real data, most people believed that Google killed SEO and now focuses on brand new metrics to rank the sites in search results.
However, this is far from the truth! SEO still exists and the only difference is that Google decided to change the way of SEO tactics since most of the old strategies are no longer valid in the current search engine game and you have to be extra careful before you start to play with search engines. There are currently a lot of metrics to test website legitimacy and authority before you rank good in search engine results and these extra processes increased the time of SEO.
Whether you work on enterprise SEO or startup SEO, there are common search engine optimization strategies you should apply. This is where an important question arises. What type of SEO strategies and techniques should you adopt after Google updates to improve the rankings of your site or blog?
SEO still relies a lot on backlinks to your site or web page to have a better rank in search engines.
Link building continues to play a vital role but even the smallest mistake here can alert Google about your methods and get you included in the blacklist in search engines.
Many web masters right now are worried about the incoming links they get as Google also started to counter the sites with links from their bad neighbors or attempt to manipulate search engine rankings with the anchor texts to get a search engine market appear on top search results. But, web masters still see themselves in danger with the latest Google updates and would appreciate some solid tips to stay safe with these latest updates.
A lot of them suggested refocusing on their link building methods to easily evade these updates from Google and almost everyone now works very deeply to bug out their link building strategies. However, many beginners and non-SEO people with good content online are in for serious trouble and have no idea how they can save their site from being hit by Google updates.
There are a lot of elements you need to balance when doing SEO and here are 14 SEO strategies and techniques to help you survive Google penalization:
1. Focus on Your Topics, Not Your Keywords
As mentioned earlier, Google and its algorithm evolve continuously. Its objective as of now is to understand the user’s intention: what they expect, what they are searching for and more specifically, what search results are going to best help in answering their query. Aside from that, for a rather large amount of queries, Google provides rich results which include the best answer on top of search results.
Never expect that your website will shoot to the top of the first page of results by just coming up with a content that focuses on your keyword. Experts suggest that it is about time to stop looking at your keywords and start looking at the queries.
Chasing keywords is like chasing shadows: at Growth Hackers, we teach businesses to illuminate entire topics, capturing the attention of both users and search engines. To keep things simple, you have to consider exactly what your users are searching for instead of just coming up with various ways that users phrase their search queries.
2. Add Some Length to Your Existing Pages
A recent study has come to a conclusion that when your content is longer, there is a higher chance that it will rank at the top of search engine result pages. A Fintech client had a 1,500-word blog ranking on page three until Growth Hackers added fresh insights and expanded it to 2,200 words, and within weeks it climbed to the top of Google.
But then again, you have to keep in mind that writing more than 2,000 words for each blog post is something that not everyone can do. It is a time consuming and intensive process. Instead, it will be so much easier to take an existing page of 1,200 words and extend it to 2,000 words than start from scratch and try to reach 2,000 words in one go.
Your existing content already carries some authority as well as an established readership. So, instead of coming up with something completely from scratch, it will be simpler to look for one of your posts that already does well on Google, refresh this with some updated details and extra content and rely on the existing signals to make this rank for terms.
Updating and improving your existing content works very well. This is one of my favorite SEO strategies and techniques because this doesn’t require much work and can bring you great results in a short amount of time. So, if you already have content, which is ranked on the first 3 pages of Google for certain keywords, I recommend you to go over this content today and start improving. This can boost your search traffic in no time.
3. Be Natural and Authentic
The moment you join the link building industry, you have to brace yourself to be greeted by tons of quick offers and services from SEO companies promising to make you reach the top of search results using their super fast services exclusively made for you.
Before you even accept such service, it is important to keep in mind that there is definitely no shortcut in clean SEO or SEO with no penalization from the search engines. You need to be clever and work hard in order to survive in this cut throat competition. But, when you speak of, be natural, it means that you must give attention to your link building campaigns then provide proper value to both do-follow and no-follow links.
Most beginners assume that do follow link backs are the only means to get yourself on top of search results but this is not really true. If you just make do follow links to your sites, search engine bots will be able to track you right away and get you listed as link hungry, which means that you might be kicked out of search engines.
You will also need no-follow links to your site since this will give you authority in the eyes of search engines. This will show that you are not hungry for do follow links just to rank higher and doesn’t give value to the backlinks.
One of our insurance clients tried a shortcut service and got penalized. Growth Hackers rebuilt their link profile authentically, balancing do-follow and no-follow links, and restored their rankings safely.
4. Avoid Overloading
You are probably aware that Google now actively watches your links and penalizes your site on SEO so you have to know at which point Google will penalize your site. Most people only work on the factor that more back links to your site can make your site shoot to the top of results and with no constant speed, you generate quick back links to your sites, alerting Google bots that some sketching is happening under the webmaster hood and your site easily moves into their consideration list.
This problem can be easily overcome through making a constant speed in the generation of back links to your site. If you make 10 back links to your site in one day, then, you have to continue the same routine to a minimum of 30 days since this will not generate or send false signals to Google bots.
At Growth Hackers, after optimizing SEO for hundreds of websites, we have seen that sustainable rankings always come from disciplined link velocity and a strict 1% keyword ratio, not from shortcuts.
Be careful to not overload your content with keywords. Keyword stuffing is one of those broadly used SEO strategies and techniques but that can hurt you more than helps you. It’s been said that your keywords should represent 2% of your content. In fact, at Growth Hackers, we think it’s even too much. Having a ratio keywords/number of words of 1% is already good.
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5. Offer Knowledge, Not Scrap
I am going to repeat myself: Content is King. This is still true. Even if people might say Promotion is Kink or Context is King; I still believe Content is King while Context and Promotion are Queen. Providing quality content is key to SEO success.
When you run a blog, there is nothing wrong if you bring quality content on your site. It will be easy for you to generate content on your site and get back links from the internet world in the same niche. However, when you generate content, there is one small issue that could pose some problem for you in link building, and that is valued content.
Before applying Growth Hackers’ strategy, one of our SaaS clients often published scraps of content that went unnoticed, but after focusing on valuable, problem-solving posts, they saw engagement and SEO rankings soar. Make sure that your content offers solutions to the problem of the users or at least provide them knowledge on the subject with the right references.
6. Improve the Speed of Your Website
Not too long ago, Google announced that they will use site speed as a ranking factor and from then on, Google consistently emphasized the essence of site speed.
They initially launched their PageSpeed tool to help the developers in improving site performance before it was followed by Accelerated Mobile pages Project for boosting speed on mobile websites. They also launched a tool referred to as Think with Google which helps gauge the responsiveness of the site, where speed is included as a parameter.
It is clear that Google wants your site to have a faster load time than what it has right now. But, how fast should it be? Sadly, site speed’s exact definition is open to speculation. Based on surveys conducted, almost half of web users expect a website to load in a matter of 2 seconds or even less. When the site fails to launch within 3 seconds, there is a great chance that users will abandon it.
You have to work on the speed of your site and not just work your way up to reach high rankings in Google but also to boost your conversions. For example, a certain survey discovered that almost 79% of online shoppers who have difficulties with site performance never go back to the site to shop ever again.
We once worked with an e-commerce client whose slow site was losing nearly half of visitors. After Growth Hackers started speeding it up with caching, image optimization, and smart scripts, their traffic and conversions surged almost overnight.
If your website is slow, you have very little chance to be ranked on the 1st page of Google. Speeding up your website is one of those very effective SEO strategies and techniques that won’t take you much time. So, start optimizing your image, implementing cache and more today!
7. Improve Your Rankings with Improved Engagement
Engagement is simply the ability to hold the attention of users. In the SEO world, this is a measure of the amount of time that a user spends on the page. Even though Google has not declared it yet officially, there is still evidence which suggests that the search engine giant rewards sites with strong user engagement with a higher page ranking.
A research conducted discovered the found positive correlation between search rankings and engagement metrics and the study of 1 million search results found the same correlation between rankings and bounce rate. At Growth Hackers, we’ve seen firsthand that websites with higher user engagement consistently climb search rankings, proving that keeping visitors interested is just as important as keywords.
The reasoning of Google is that when a user spends more time on a certain page, it could be because they found the page useful. With Google only wanting to provide the best possible results to users, it pushes up those websites with strong engagement in search engine results pages.
Having a social media strategy and/or having call-to-action on your content pushing people to engage will therefore improve your SEO.
8. Go for Mobile (App) Optimization
Today’s mobile market is gigantic to the point that Google still tries to figure out how they can provide a better search experience to mobile users.
The ever famous Mobilegeddon or Google’s mobile-friendly update, as it is more accurately called, is a step towards this direction, with site owners being urged to develop responsive or mobile designs to increase the loading speed of websites on mobile devices.
A site with faster loading is equivalent to more chances of retaining visitors. Although there is an interest in spending on the mobile ads as figures from recent studies revealed, Google will be taking a more important role in providing content to mobile users which start with app store optimization.
Experts even claim that App Store Optimization or ASO is going to be the next generation SEO in the next few years. If you will take a look at the increased mobile use and the amount of paid ad dollars being spent every year, you will see a huge rush and demand to reach people using their mobile devices.
It is also important to note that App indexing is the newest development in search results which can leave an impact on the rank of your site pages for your target keywords.
Apps are originally indexed on Google Play and App Store, not on Google search. It made it more difficult for Google to streamline their search capabilities and marketers need to optimize on both the app stores and not only on Google organic.
With App index, apps are currently indexed on Google search. Search ranking of the apps falls under Deep Link or App Pack category.
9. Go for Long-Tail Keywords
Keywords will always be the lifeline of online marketing and now more than ever, people’s needs have become more complex and they simply don’t type two or three words in Google’s search box for their queries. Instead, they ask a complete and long question to Google. It only shows that short keywords are no longer the trend as long tail keywords are now thriving.
The truth is that this kind of keywords is going to decide the ranking and visibility of websites in the near future. Thus, it makes complete sense to add long tail keywords in your SEO strategies. This kind of keywords have high conversion rate, low competitive and are more specific to your services and products.
Focusing on short-tail keywords is very hard if you’re just starting. Why? Because they are much more competitive. Better to target long-tail, mini-volume keywords where you have a high chance of ranking rather than short-tail, high-volume keywords where you have little to no chance to rank.
Before applying Growth Hackers’ long-tail approach, one of our B2B clients competed hopelessly against giants for generic keywords but after we applied targeting precise phrases, they dominated niche searches and saw measurable traffic growth.
Leave those to the big players and websites will high authority and start focusing on long-tail keywords. They are less competitive and therefore, you’ll have much more chance to rank for those. I’m sure you’ve heard it before: successful SEO campaigns are run by companies focusing on long-tail keywords, so do that too! The long-tail keyword tactic is one of those SEO strategies and techniques you need to use if you want to increase your search traffic.
10. Improve Your Anchor Texts
Ever since Google Penguin was launched, the web masters were recommended to review their incoming links and anchor texts used for links. This plays a crucial role in the old era of SEO wherein webmasters generated several link backs with the use of one keyword.
However, as Google’s algorithms become more advanced, the old tactics have lost their effectiveness and it is strictly recommended for web masters to avoid the same campaigns on anchor text link building.
You can solve this particular issue by trying to mix up the keywords and refraining from overloading one keyword to your site.
Also, to control your anchor texts, start working on internal links on your website. Indeed, having a great internal link structure will improve your overall SEO strategy by telling search engines the plan of your website. Internal linking is one of those great SEO strategies and techniques used by SEO experts but not so much by average SEOs. So, start working on anchor texts with your internal linking structure and you’ll have a competitive advantage.
11. Build Backlinks
No matter what you probably heard out there, building backlinks remain to be vital to get good rankings. The backlink profile of a website is still the most dependable indicator of the rankings it will get. Studies also revealed that with no backlinks, it is impost impossible to get a good rank even when you have the best content in the world.
The one thing that changed though is how you should build your backlinks if you like to get good results. Those low-quality links which can be easily spammed such as paid links and blog comments will never work anymore and might only actively bring harm to your website. At Growth Hackers, we’ve secured high-quality backlinks (e.g. through guest posts) for hundreds of clients, proving that earned links (not shortcuts) are the key to sustainable SEO success.
On the other hand, earned links through influencer marketing, outreach and high-quality content are extremely safe and effective. Are you looking for tips and techniques to build backlinks to your site. Here’s the ultimate list of backlinks strategies with our 45 best off-page SEO techniques. I’m sure you will enjoy!
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12. Pay Attention to Youtube SEO
About 55 percent of all the keyword searches done on Google will give at least one video with 82 percent of these videos coming from YouTube. By far, YouTube is the second most famous search engine with over 3 billion searches a month which surpassed Yahoo and Bing combined.
Putting some efforts on YouTube SEO can greatly help in pushing your site to Google’s first page results while giving you traffic coming from YouTube. This will then result to two times more traffic using the same content.
After you create your videos, it is important to make them SEO friendly. Remember that the description, filename and title will all affect your rankings. The video title must be made compelling, clickable and SEO friendly. It is ideal to follow the same rules in the title of your video as you would with your blog post titles. To get shares and clicks, you can also include keywords and power words.
One more strategy is to put your keywords at the start of your title then add a sub header following a colon to drive more clicks. The title must have 5 or more words then add a broad target keyword. It will not just help you rank better in search engine results page but will give you more clicks on YouTube at the same time.
Since there is no way for Google’s spiders to read videos, they will simply rely on the written description to know what your video is all about. Instead of simply throwing in a couple of target keywords, you can create a short blog post describing the content of your video in detail.
It will tell both Google and your readers exactly what the video is all about. Since not all of your competitors are doing it, this will help you rank much faster.
13. Analytics and Reporting
An important part of SEO is analysis and reporting, both of which are indispensable to improve marketing strategies. Through establishing an analytics platform for tracking both macro and micro events, you will be able to understand the journey of your customer from your marketing and sales funnel.
For example, what are the contents that truly appeal to your customers? You have to determine the part of your site with the most user experience problems. You also need to determine the page with the most or least visits and why it is so.
We once helped an eCommerce client struggling with low engagement by setting up detailed analytics and reporting, and within weeks working with Growth Hackers, they discovered key bottlenecks and boosted both traffic and conversions. Tracking results and metrics are key to SEO success and there are a lot of SEO tools that can help you do so.
14. Local Listings and SEO
In today’s modern digital era, it is very easy to forget that consumers are still visiting physical establishments and shops. While it is true that they are using online resources for their research, a big chunk of commerce is still done in real life. When you have a brick and mortar business, you should look into the Google Snack Pack to boost your local SEO rankings and you must not neglect local listings for SEO if you like to stay profitable.
Before Growth Hackers optimized the local listings of one of our HVAC clients, they missed out on nearby customers but after we implemented local SEO strategies, their stores became easy to find online and in real life, boosting both traffic and sales.
Finding listings in your niche or industry is fairly easy. Signing up and registering your website on those will definitely give you an SEO boost. I love these SEO strategies and techniques because they are easy to put in place and can give you fast results.
SEO Constantly Changes So Learn to Keep Up
SEO is one tool composing your marketing strategy. Indeed, besides SEO, you have an arsenal of digital marketing tactics at your disposition such as social media, email marketing, branding, user experience, etc…
Ultimately, SEO rapidly changes year after year or even month after month. For instance, voice search is becoming big thanks to virtual assistants like Alexa. So, stay up-to-date to rank for voice search queries as well. Marketers and business owners need to adapt quickly although it is still possible to make your business website stay ahead of your competition.
Just make sure that you focus on creation of solid content and copywriting fundamentals, have a deeper engagement with viewers and stay updated with the newest technical trends such as site speed, SEO health, backlinks and schema.
If you follow those 14 SEO strategies and techniques, you will already be on the right path to search engine optimization mastering.
If these all seem a bit overwhelming, just take a deep breath. Putting some effort in understanding the basics of SEO can help your site gain more engagement, click through rates and rankings. This year and the many years to come, even the tiniest bit of reading and exploring on your own can already go a long way to help you get the best results with all your SEO campaigns.
Growth Hackers is an experienced small business SEO company helping startups, SMBs and entrepreneurs with SEO strategy and execution. We also help them with many other digital marketing strategies; so, feel free to contact Growth Hackers now if you want us to help you. Looking forward to hearing from you and starting to grow your business together.
2 Comments
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Thank you for the clarification.