A few years ago, I was trying to learn SEO.
I read blogs, watched videos, bought courses, and read forums. It was super tricky.
Not because of a lack of information.
But because of too much information.
Back then, it looked like everyone on the Internet knew how to do SEO and had an opinion.
Most often contradictory opinions.
Many people write about SEO and have opinions, but very few know how to achieve it.
That’s why I decided to compile a post with SEO Tips from people who know SEO.
Topic Research Replaced Keyword Research
Luca Tagliaferro – SEO Consultant at lucatagliaferro.com
Twitter: @lucatag2015
LinkedIn: Luca Tagliaferro
You should give a lot of attention to developing a topic strategy as opposed to a keyword strategy.
A couple of reasons why you should do it:
- Google tends to reward authoritative sites that are better positioned to explain certain topics as trusted and authoritative sources of information. It aligns with Google’s mission which is to organize the web’s information.
- Thanks to internal linking within topics and categories in a topic, users and search engines can navigate better and visit more pages, which increases your chances of generating higher-quality traffic (for users) and better crawling (for search engines).
- Bounce rate, avg. time on page, average pages visited, and, most of all, dwell time and return to SERP metrics are particularly important because they indicate good (or bad) page engagement.
To clarify, developing topics instead of keywords increases your query coverage and your ability to improve UX metrics at the same time, which is a recognized Google ranking factor.
Effect of Page Engagement and Bounce Rate
Teemu Raitaluoto – Founder of Markettailor
Twitter: @trteemuo
LinkedIn:Teemu Raitaluoto
Page engagement is one of the key elements Google considers in its ranking.
High page engagement tells the search engine that a visitor is spending a lot of time-consuming the content on the site and performing key activities. These contribute to a lower bounce rate which affects SEO dramatically.
A high bounce rate means a visitor left the website as soon as they entered because there was nothing relevant on the page for them.
There are many ways to increase page engagement, the most important being the high relevancy of the content to the visitor.
Modern B2B website personalization tools help with maximizing relevancy and therefore page engagement. Other ways to increase page engagement include adding engaging content such as videos and long-form content.
Create Multiple Feature Pages with Unique Titles
George Avgenakis – Founder of Loopcv
Twitter: @Avgenakis_G
LinkedIn: George Avgenakis
People tend to forget that page titles are one of the most important factors for SEO.
At Loopcv we created multiple feature pages for two main reasons:
- The first reason is always to educate the customer about the various product features and how these features can give value to them.
- The second reason is to help search engines identify all the different keywords that your website has in a clean and separate way.
If you have only one landing page is super difficult for Google or any other search engines to identify your main keywords and group your keywords together.
So what is the key takeaway?
Break down your key features into separate pages and use each page as an opportunity to grow your SEO and your authority.
Treat SEO Like the Science It Is
Hunter Branch – Founder of Rank Tree
Twitter: @ranktree
LinkedIn: Hunter Branch
There is more competition these days than ever before when it comes to SEO.
Google is releasing more (and more sophisticated) algorithm updates, searchers are becoming much smarter, and the bar for quality sites and content is rising quickly.
Pretty much the only way to stay ahead these days is by treating SEO like a huge experiment. You should always be testing–experiment with new content ideas, new link-building strategies, on-page split tests, and more.
The more you test, the more you’ll understand SEO and the better results you’ll get.
I can’t tell you how many weird things I’ve learned that work based on tests–and I never would’ve found them otherwise.
If You Want to Rank for It, You Need to Have Content for It
Neal Schaffer – President, PDCA Social at nealschaffer.com
Twitter: @nealschaffer
LinkedIn: Neal Schaffer
I find a lot of small businesses just expect their website to rank for a lot of content even if they only have a few pages published.
There are many ways in which Internet users search for your products and services, both directly and indirectly.
How much you rank for will be limited by the amount of content you have.
Think about it:
A search engine is trying to determine which search queries they should serve to each page of content on your website. Thus, if each page can only rank for a limited number of search terms, while there is more to SEO than just volume, your results will be limited by the volume of content you have.
When I think of companies in social media marketing that dominate search results, 3 come to mind that illustrates this point:
- Buffer has 214 blog posts in the social media marketing category alone and has been blogging since January 26, 2011
- Hootsuite has 568 blog posts overall had has been blogging since April 4, 2016
- SproutSocial has 1,281 blog posts and has been blogging since March 5, 2013
Let these serve as a role model that success in SEO requires volume … and time.
SEO Is for People, Not Crawlers
Samuel Szuchan – Founder of SamSzu
Twitter: @SamuelSzuchan
LinkedIn: Samuel Szuchan
Everything about SEO ultimately comes down to optimizing the user experience. After all, we need real people reading out content, not robots.
When creating a new piece targeting a particular query, don’t think about what your competition is doing–think about what they’re not doing.
Think about what that searcher wants, and how you can be the only answer they need. All the world’s best SEO tips and tricks will never beat the best answer to the user’s question.
Yes, include LSI keywords.
Yes, have the optimal amount of text, headings, paragraphs, and images.
But most of all, be the single best piece of content for that query.
Core Web Vitals are Very Important
Ben Walker – CEO of Transcription Outsourcing, LLC
Twitter: @benjaminkwalker
LinkedIn: Ben Walker
Google’s core web vitals have become way more important than we ever imagined they would be.
Our site has had some crazy strange issues with it not loading fast enough according to the core web vitals page. Yet when we test it on multiple testing sites it passes every single time.
It has been six months and our traffic continues to suffer because of it. We were told not to worry about it, and that it wasn’t a big deal.
Try telling us that when we go from 5 leads a day to zero leads per day and the speed thing is the one thing that changed for that day.
Make sure your core web vitals are all in good order if you want your site to rank.
Double Down on What Works
Nikola Roza – Founder of Nikola Roza– SEO for the Poor and Determined
Twitter: @NikolaRoza
LinkedIn: Nikola Roza
My best SEO tip for 2024 is to focus your efforts on content that performs unreasonably well on Google.
What I mean is, whenever you publish a group of articles on your blog, some of them will perform poorly and never get any traction, most articles will perform average, and some will explode picking up high rankings for the main keyword + for hundreds of related kW’s.
Focus on those pages because Google is showing you they like your site for those specific topics and ranking in those SERPs will be much easier than pushing the boulder of a keyword where you throw all your SEO on it, and your rankings don’t budge.
To find those golden pages go to Google Search Console and find pages that have been published in the last 3 months and see which ones have gotten an unusually large amount of impressions.
From the pages, you found, select those which are most important to your business and start working on them.
Optimize them better, make the content superb, update regularly, and build internal and external links.
Push on them until they start ranking and making you money.
Your CMS Matters
Harmonie Poirier – Digital Marketing Manager at Agility CMS
LinkedIn: Harmonie Poirier
Twitter: @agilitycms
SEOs as the bloodline of a website.
They are the backstage crew that sets up the front end for success. Unfortunately, this means that their priorities are sometimes neglected, especially when it comes to CMS.
A CMS (content management system) is the hub for all of your digital content. It provides all the publishing tools and integrations you need to run a successful, enterprise website.
Historically, smaller businesses have opted for WordPress while larger enterprises have added a CMS into their DXP suite- think Adobe and Sitecore.
In the former, updating SEO fields is easy.
The issue is when a business starts to scale- WordPress sites become incredibly slow, hindering your ranking on SERP.
Alternatively, there are DXP solutions that include a CMS which are better suited for ranking. The drawback?
These systems are incredibly complex and often neglect to provide SEO fields and access to content. This requires marketing teams to rely on developers every single time they need to make an edit or upgrade.
Thankfully, Headless CMS has emerged- think Agility CMS. It provides a ‘best-of-both-worlds’ approach where your website is lighting fast, yet accessible for marketing teams. It is expected to dominate the market in 2024 and completely transform how organizations approach their websites.
Make and Track Predictions
Kyle Roof – Founder of PageOptimizer Pro
Twitter: @kylebot1997
LinkedIn: Kyle Roof
When you launch a page you should make predictions as to how it will perform. When will the page get its first impression?
How many keywords will the page rank for? How high will it rank on the page alone? How many backlinks do you need to get to page 1? etc?
Once you make the predictions, track your success rate.
After you have made and tracked several predictions you will become better at SEO. You will make better decisions in implementation. You will learn what really works and what doesn’t. You will set better expectations for your clients.
Most SEOs track KPIs like clicks, impressions, and ranking but leave out the most important KPI of all, success rate.
User Experience is the Future of SEO
Matt Bertram – Head of Strategy, EWR Digital
Twitter: @EWRDigital
LinkedIn: Matt Bertram
Google’s mission statement is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today Google cares less about on-page or even links and more about quality and the user experience.
Starting in the middle of last year they have spun the dials again and you can not simply expect to check all the boxes and rank.
SEO is still an art form, many times even people at Google have admitted they don’t always know exactly what the algorithms are doing exactly as there are so many different factors playing off one another to determine a callback.
They have also tried to break it down in Google’s “quality rating guide”.
In the past Google algorithms perhaps favored:
- Sites with high keyword density
- Then PageRank w/ lots of backlinks
- Next lots of content with a focus on the heading
- Recently higher-quality backlinks
- Now, speed, CRO & UI/UX
Ranking now requires successfully delivering what the search engines want. In order to do so, you must first achieve a desirable user experience based on user interaction rates.
SEO at its core is about making your website useful. It’s not just about what the search engine spiders are looking for. UX helps visitors navigate the site and CRO encourages them to take the desired action.
Today it is important to strike a balance between SEO, CRO, and UX/UI to get sites to rank and ultimately the information users are looking for and the greatest possible value for their search.
Focus on your Local SEO Strategy
Nikola Minkov – CEO and Founder at Serpact
Twitter: @n_minkov
LinkedIn: Nikola Minkov
Nowadays, you should respect your Google maps strategy. It’s essential for businesses with or without an actual property/store.
There’s a Google maps option for businesses with delivery services only. Existing on the map makes your business more trustworthy and solid and helps users find you easily online. If you “connect” your Google maps listing with your website using Schema local business markup code – it will bring you many benefits.
Here are a few steps to follow:
- Create or claim your Google maps listing
- Fulfill your listing 100 %
- Keep updating pictures and posts regularly
- Invite your happy customers to give you a review
Pro Tip: If you don’t want to show the exact location, you could show the area that you cover.
Leverage Schema for Better Semantic Relevance
Luke Fitzgerald – SEO Consultant, RightFitz Consulting
Twitter: @lukefitz
LinkedIn: RightFitz Consulting
Schema.org was launched in 2011 as a collaboration between the major search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
It is a fundamental structured data format that makes it easier for search engines to parse and interpret information in web content so that more relevant results can be returned to users based on their search queries.
More than eleven years on in the current search ecosystem, with the advent of virtual assistants and the knowledge graph, structured data is driving many search-based decisions borne not only of the ‘regular web’ but the ‘semantic web’ also and Schema is the glue that helps bind both realms.
Though many modern CMS’ (and plugins) have inbuilt structured data functionality, very few websites are truly leveraging the full power of Schema.org for increasing the likelihood of enhanced SERP features being rewarded for the business products, services, and people at the heart of their organization.
Furthermore, structured data enables crawlers and search engines to recognize important data and return it in certain informational, navigation, and transactional queries.
Common examples include FAQ accordion dropdowns, star review ratings under product listings, and HowTo elements in video carousels (or even the very appearance of a video within the search carousel itself).
Semantic enrichment of your content ultimately gives more meaning to the overall corpus of work. When the primary objective of your work as an SEO is to get that content found and amplify its discoverability, that’s an enhancement worth embracing in full.
That’s why implementing correctly-formatted, in-depth structured data in 2024 and beyond is important as far as good SEO practices are concerned.
Use the Right SEO Tool
Andreyana Kulina – Outreach Specialist at Brosix
Twitter: @andreyanakulina
LinkedIn: Andreyana Kulina
When it comes to choosing an SEO tool, I focus first on the features.
Without the right features then even the most user-friendly tools won’t make an impact.
The features that I look for are, at the very least, strong site audit, SEO grade, and keyword research features. I’m mainly interested in what insights the tool can provide me from the data it collects. Of course, the cost is a consideration as well, but frankly, I’m more than willing to invest in a strong SEO tool as the payoff can be quite substantial.
I’m a big fan of ‘Answer the Public.’
One of the most important elements of SEO is writing on timely and topical themes. This tool helps with that by tapping into the public’s collective mind in the form of Google search queries. It’s great for generating new ideas for content.
Inner Cross-Linking is Still very Important
Iskra Evtimova – Business and Mindset Coach at Iskra Evtimova
Facebook: IsEvtimova
LinkedIn: Iskra Evtimova
Have you visited a blog article where you read about some product or a service you would like but there is no link to it and you have to search for it?
Yeah, this happens and it is not only a time waste for the user (and you may even lose a potential sale) but it is also a gap in your SEO strategy.
Google likes all of the pages on a site to be connected and when you insert a link to a page with the right anchor text, you actually help the algorithm to understand what that liked page is about and therefore you boost its ranking.
So don’t forget to link between your pages. It will be useful to your readers and for your rankings as well.
Track all Dependencies of SEO Elements on Your Project
Kostiantyn Bankovskyi – Product Marketing Manager at Netpeak Software
Facebook: Kosta Bankovski
LinkedIn: Kosta Bankovski
I think this tip may be the most useful for technical SEO tasks, especially when you’re working on new projects.
A lot of our SEO friends have the following workflow: find duplicate — set 301 redirects to the main page OR find 404 pagination page and then set the redirect to the first page.
But usually, the problem is that we forget to check all the dependencies affected by these changes. For example, taking care of sitemap and excluding redirected pages from there, replacing internal links from other elements or posts that are pointing to redirects, etc.
The same with almost every other aspect: if you decide to canonicalize any page, double-check if it’s excluded from the sitemap, if you update any content on the webpage, make sure to update its microdata.
To implement a more systematic workflow, I would suggest the following improvements:
-
- Automate as many processes as possible. It will decrease the number of things you have to remember and then do manually. For example, use plugins or scripts to update sitemap and microdata.
- Create a map of dependencies for the website’s elements. Thus, you will be able to see a chain of reactions to your changes and better prepare every time you test something. Also, I would suggest doing this to better explore your every new project.
- Implement regular technical audits. To minimize cases when you have some issues appearing for a long time on your project, schedule technical audits on a regular basis: twice a week or less, depending on the number of changes and size of a website. You can use either desktop crawlers or cloud-based solutions for that, whatever fits your budget and workflow better.
Optimize Your Images
Peter Babiy – Creative Director at Colorcinch
Twitter: @PeterBabiy
LinkedIn: Peter Babiy
It’s not a secret that visuals first meet the eyes of your audience. Stunning images drive traffic to your site. So, optimizing them is a vital part of your website’s SEO. It helps search engines understand your site and content better.
We couldn’t emphasize using high-quality and relevant images. You can take your photos or search for royalty-free stock images. Then, make them uniquely yours using a photo editing tool. Reduce your image sizes to boost page speed, add captions to provide context, and come up with alt-image tags to describe their contents.
Optimizing images helps ensure your visitors have the best user experience once they’re on your site.
Parasite SEO Still Works
Cormac Reynolds – Founder of eCentres SEO
Twitter: @brightoncormac
LinkedIn:Cormac Reynolds
Parasite SEO was all the rage five or six years ago before Google hit a number of the web 2.0s and self-publishing sites it was used for, hard.
However, the last year or so has seen an emergence of this parasite or barnacle SEO as it was once known. For those not in the know, Parasite SEO is the process of ranking a page attached to a domain, taking advantage of its high authority on Google and hence able to rank with some keywords relatively easily without having a website.
Unlike a few years ago, sponsored placements on high authority news sites are the hosts for the parasite page. For example, if you Google “CBD Oil” you’ll see large newspapers ranking with listicles on sponsored pages for CBD terms, recommending a number of companies within the content.
These sponsored articles aren’t especially inexpensive, however, they offer a fast way to the top in niches that have high financial barriers to entry or that google moderates heavily. Here is a good example.
Utilizing the existing authority of the sponsored posts in these newspapers allows companies the chance to create articles that rank well, and quickly. To do so you will need to:
- Ensure the niche is suitable for the publication
- Enquire about the style the page will take – number of links allowed, images, etc
- Create quality content – preferably using an on-page tool
- Publish content
- Be prepared to build links to the page in question – some pages rank on page one, and others don’t initially.
Utilize this method alongside good content, links, and some patience and you should rank for some tough terms and win some very nice referral traffic to your site.
Make Search Intent a Top Focus
Jerry Han — CMO at PrizeRebel
Twitter: @ThePrizeRebel
LinkedIn: Jerry Han
There is no secret in the fact that to rank high on Google your content should be actively searched.
Thus, you need to create content that specifically matches the searcher’s intent.
This match proves to be a decisive factor for any SEO strategy’s success.
To make sure you do everything right, make sure you take the following actions:
- Uncover the actual intent of your keywords. In simple words, analyze the pages that already rank high for your keyword, as the intent is not always as obvious as it seems.
- Optimize your content for a positive user experience. Google ranks content not only on the basis of its fitting the intent but the interaction users have with it.
As satisfying searchers` intent is Google’s top goal so is yours. Pay attention to your strategy details at all stages to make sure they will not spoil the bigger picture.
Invest in Voice Search Optimization
Roy Morejon — President and Co-Founder of Eventys Partners
Twitter: @roymorejon
LinkedIn: Roy Morejon
Due to the wide application of virtual assistants, voice search isn’t far off to append the traditional search means.
Therefore optimization of the schema markup should get into your focus this year.
Schema is the structured markup that helps Google to make sense of your content and as a result, make it discoverable for the users.
Thus, working on schema markup optimization means adding contextual meaning to your content.
Besides, to optimize for Google voice search, move your focus to the longer keywords which might be used by your potential customers in their daily speech queries (they are also also “speakable snippets”). As people tend to abbreviate while typing, voice searchers tend to be performed with longer, more natural-sounding phrases.
Here are a couple of simple strategies that will improve your voice search result right away:
- Work for reach and full answers, while working on your content
- Re-imagine and restructure your content to adjust it for voice search
- Prioritize conversational language rather than formal wording
- Target long-tail keywords phrases
- Improve your website loading time
- Pay attention to mobile virtual assistant tools.
Forget Link-building, Win with Low-competition Keywords
Ashish Garg – Founder of Blink Click Media
LinkedIn: Ashish Garg
Facebook: Ashish Garg
I know this will sound like a controversial topic but hell yeah it is true!
But how does this work and is it really as easy as this sounds? So the well-versed answer is maybe or maybe not.
If you’re starting with a fresh website/blog then like every other SEOs you’ll also jump upon the 3 pillars of SEO i.e. content, links & technical SEO.
But here I’ll say forget everything and just truly starts to focus on the content and that too by targeting the low-competition keywords.
But how do you really start with it?
Do a reverse analysis of your competitor and see what kind of topics they have covered and how frequently they are covering those.
Once you are done with that open a spreadsheet and sort all the keywords as per their Keyword Difficulty(took this metric from Ahrefs but you can take it from any SEO tool out there).
Add the keywords in the increasing order of their keyword difficulty and start writing & publishing your content like a maniac.
Start publishing 3x, 4x, or 10x times from your competitor(without compromising the quality of your content). Once you start this process and start internal-linking your content with each other you’ll gradually start to see you’re getting huge organic visibility.
SEO takes years because we let them look like that.
Here are a few Never forget items:
- Never forget to cross-link your content.
- Never compromise the quality of the content.
- Never forget to continuously update your content(Google loves the smell of fresh content).
- Never forget the key part i.e. low-competition keywords. Happy ranking 🙂
To Grow, Focus.
Patrick Herbert – Founder of Singularity Digital
Twitter: @PatrickHerbert
LinkedIn: Patrick Herbert
SEO can be an overwhelming and slow process, causing people to get distracted or obsess about “fixing everything” at once.
The best way to grow however is to set a goal and then break that goal down into small focused tasks over time.
Setting the goal is simple: get started with a quick audit to contextualize what a realistic goal is going to be.
That audit can be as simple as the following:
- Reviewing your Organic traffic for the last year in Google Analytics
- Reviewing rankings you have using a rank trackings tool like Semrush or Ahrefs.
- Crawling your site using Ahrefs or Semrush and find what technical issues you have.
Now you know where you are, set goals for the year based on what you think you can achieve then break them down into smaller steps and time frames.
I recommend focusing on one main objective per month or quarter (depending on its scale). Focused, directed action, that’s how you grow.
The Importance of Web Hosting for SEO
Radoslav Chakarov – Content Team Lead at ScalaHosting
LinkedIn: Radoslav Chakarov
Twitter: @ScalaHosting
Uptime vs Downtime
Downtime affects SEO as follows:
- Search engine indexation – Google’s web crawlers will not be able to access the site, so its content will remain outside the index indefinitely;
- Changes in bounce rate – this metric will increase dramatically due to the fact that visitors who come to an offline site leave immediately;
- Dissatisfied users – once landing on a slow or unresponsive page, the probability of returning to the site is small;
- Loss of SEO ranking – this is a consequence of the previous three.
Shared vs VPS
How do shared hosting plans affect SEO?
Pros of shared hosting plans:
- Lower price
- Easier and more intuitive infrastructure management
- Support
Disadvantages of shared hosting plans:
- Limited amount of resources;
- Not really scalable for growing websites;
- An indefinite number of clients on one server;
- Shared IP addresses that can easily get marked for spam or other malicious activities;
- Higher security risks.
How does VPS hosting plans affect SEO?
Pros of VPS hosting plans:
- Guaranteed amount of dedicated resources;
- Easy scalability without changing the server IP or completely changing the platform;
- Rock-solid security;
- Better loading speeds and TTFB;
- Dedicated IP address;
Disadvantages of VPS hosting plans:
- A bit more costly;
- More complex infrastructure – some technical or server management knowledge is always helpful.
Managed vs Unmanaged
The advantages of using a managed provider are clear:
- Fewer worries and complex software and hardware tasks for the end-user;
- More time to work on the site;
- Fewer chances of making an accidental mistake;
- User-friendly and intuitive work environment (cPanel, SPanel, Plesk, Softaculous, and other tools);
- And last but not least – professional support!
Of course, there are some cons to the managed service:
- Less flexibility to host non-traditional and more complex and demanding custom solutions sites;
- Higher price compared to self-managed;
- Inability to change all server settings.
If you want a custom solution – the unmanaged VPS platform is the way to go.
The pros here are:
- Complete management control
- Open to heavy customizations
- Lower price
Main disadvantages:
- The entire responsibility for everything falls on you
- Lack of support for any questions
Is Linkable Content Enough to get Links? – A Big NO.
Ravi Soni – Chief SaaS Link Builder at SaaS Linko
LinkedIn: Ravi Soni
Twitter: @ravi
How does one get free links?
One gets a free link when some content writer is writing on any topic and wants to add some statistics or research to back his article. He/She will go to google for finding statistics/research/ interesting case studies and whoever is ranking in the top position for those terms will get free links.
Can you rank on those terms if you have no authority?
Most probably NO, even with the highest quality content.
How do some SaaS brands get these free links?
Because they have spent on social media ads, PR, and many other things. They naturally get the authority and when they publish such research-based articles, it’s easy to get ranked on those.
But if you are a completely new SaaS company then there is a very high chance that even your linkable content will be lost somewhere in Google.
Remember you only get links when your content is visible to people who are writing content through any traffic channel I.e SEO, Google Ads, Social Media, and Influencers.
What’s my take on link building for new SaaS startups?
Don’t hesitate to build highly relevant links from other SaaS companies. Avoid low-quality blog sites.
It’s worth your investment.
Use AI Content Strategies to Show SEO Optimize Content
Fahad Shahjehan
SEO Executive at TechNerds
Twitter: @technerdsagency
LinkedIn: Fahad Shahjehan
Adaptive content is the practice of “create once, publish everywhere.”
At its core, adaptive content is a content strategy practice that looks at the needs and requirements for delivering personalized or targeted content through the lens of what will be required to create, provide, and evaluate the success of those initiatives.
There is a basic need for content for organizations to be used, managed, and leveraged to differentiate and be distinguished from competitors. However, for content strategists and content creators, managing, operating, repurposing, and marketing content can become a significant burden on their everyday workload.
Leveraging AI to manage content allows organizations to focus on refining content strategies instead of addressing the content they post.
Optimizing the content experience
Intelligent adaptive content is structured, reusable, and presentation independent and contains meaningful metadata that delivers targeted messages based on what is known about the user.
This may include information about the user’s device, the location, other contextual cues, or personal information such as life changes, gender, or income.
AI can help publish and target content, but it cannot tell content strategists and producers what to write. It also cannot develop a strategy for what should be posted. As a result, organizations can risk overestimating the value of using AI technologies and underestimating people’s effort and time to create, manage, and evaluate content.
Adaptive content can help content organizations, but some factors should be considered when determining how and when to use it.
Here are some things to consider when thinking about AI for your content:
- It’s hard to personalize everything using AI.
Predictive intelligence helps to personalize content to address user content needs and interests. Content strategists can imagine scenarios where content is personalized and tailored for individual user needs or experiences. Unfortunately, this type of personalization is challenging to build and create at scale. - AI can make your content curation much faster and easier to manage.
Daily curation of relevant and engaging content is a tedious task. It still takes a significant amount of energy and time to sift through content, let alone curate content relevant and engaging for users. AI helps content strategists curate content for users that maximizes an organization’s share of attention online.
Consistency Is The Key to Get Success with SEO
Harpreet Munjal – Founder Of LoudGrowth
LinkedIn: Munjal Harpreet
LinkedIn: LoudGrowth
To win at SEO you need to be consistent.
The rest of the stuff like keywords, tools, and techniques comes later.
You need consistency in publishing and promoting content, link acquisition, and improving your skills.
SEO is a long-term game.
That’s why to unlock the full potential of SEO you need to regularly improve your website and skills.
Only then you can stay on top of Google for a longer period. Otherwise, you can’t get successful with SEO.
Don’t Sleep on Data-Driven Content
Matt Bentley – Marketing Lead at Juicer
LinkedIn: Juicer
Twitter: @juicerio
Data-driven content is one of the most powerful content marketing and link-building tools at your disposal.
We all know content is important for SEO, and we also know original research makes for some of the most engaging pieces of content around. However, this seems to get ignored by professionals in the link-building industry that only focus on external efforts.
In the current content marketing landscape, writers can’t just make wild claims and get away with them.
They need to back it up with external links to research, surveys, and statistics – in other words, with data-driven content.
Still not convinced?
Here are just a few benefits you can get from your original researched content:
- It has a high CTR
- You’ll gain organic high-quality backlinks
- Uncovered insights can help you build more content
- Data-driven content is great for building authority in your industry
- You’ll see an increase in brand awareness and branded keywords
- Data visualization can win you image search traffic and further backlinks
- Data visualization is also great for social media engagement
So remember, don’t sleep on data-driven content if you want to build real authority in your industry.
Publish Valuable Content in Reputed Publications
Kashyap Trivedi – Growth Marketer at Salesmate
Twitter: @harf13594
LinkedIn: Kashyap Trivedi
It doesn’t matter how you chose to do marketing, content will always be an integral part of it.
Content published on your own site is important, but published on external sites is equally important.
It shows Google and other search engines that you create useful resources for the audience. The digital marketing community calls it “guest blogging”. But I always feel that guest blogging has something to do with links.
I am not talking about link building. I’m talking about contributing valuable and useful content via different publications. For that, you need to reach out to these publications, pitch topics, and create A+ content that audiences would love to read.
This process can be long and outreach can take too much time, but it’s totally worth it. Our team at Salesmate uses our own software to automate such outreach. You can set up a desired date and time to shoot the first email and take automated email follow-ups. This would save you a lot of time, and you can focus more on creating quality content for publications.
After mindful practice, you can see your brand growing as a leader in creating masterful content in your niche because other platforms are recommending you as a trusted source.
Local Businesses: Optimize Your Google My Business Profile as Your Life Depends on It
Elizabeth Nelson – Founder and CEO of Snowmad Digital
LinkedIn: Elizabeth Nelson
Instagram: @snowmaddigital
A lot of SEO advice revolves around your website and off-page SEO, but if you are a local business, your Google Business profile is equally, if not more important, than your website.
Here are 5 tips for you to optimize your profile to rank higher.
- Respond to Google My Business reviews and include your business name + keyword. This helps with brand SEO and reinforces keywords that you want to rank for. Make sure your reply is natural because keyword stuffing is bad.
- Include your business name and keywords in your description and info. List all your services and service areas. If you have a “geo page” for SEO on your website, make sure that the service/geo area is listed on your Google profile.
- Add at least 100 photos. Google favors businesses that have photos over businesses that don’t.
- Add 10 questions to your Q&A Section. This is another chance to get some keywords in naturally. Anyone with an email can ask the question on Google and any Google Business manager can reply to and answer them.
- Add a Google My Business post once a week, or as often as you’d like. Treat it like you would a social media post.
Top 4 SEO Tips For Visual Content in eCommerce
Yulia Honcharova – Senior SEO Manager at Gepard
LinkedIn: Yulia Honcharova
Twitter: @GepardSolution
The optimization of visual content in eCommerce is an influential aspect of SEO strategy, and here’s why:
- Quality visual content contributes to improving behavioral factors.
- Well-optimized images can get to the top for certain queries, bringing the resource owners new targeted visitors.
- Google tries to dilute every search result with videos (usually 3 in the first half of the results). Optimization of video content will contribute to getting your video to these places.
The TOP 4 tips to employ the full potential of the visual content:
- Employ the potential of ALT (alternative description of the image content) and Title for the image:
- Describe the image as specifically as possible;
- Keep it (relatively) short;
- Use your keywords but no keyword stuffing;
- Don’t include “image of,” “picture of,” etc.
- Include longdesc=”” tag.
- Give your visuals the unique, human-readable file name:
notebook-Lenovo-X505j.jpg is always better than image024.jpg - Use optimal file compression.
- Publish unique visual content.
Think of producing your own images/videos, or at least going for photo stocks with credits to the author.
Use Semantic Keywords to make Google Love your Content
Catalina Grigoriev – Content Marketer at Planable
LinkedIn: Catalina Grigoriev
Twitter: @planableapp
Using semantic keywords is as much important as the quality of the content.
Having semantically related keywords in your piece tells Google that your content provides contextual background on the topic.
This means that it has better chance of performing better in SERP as Google will understand thoroughly how your content answers the search intent.
Provide Content at Each Stage of the Funnel
John Marquez – SEO Specialist at Popmenu
Twitter: @J_PMarquez
LinkedIn: Popmenu
Focus on providing as much information at each stage of the funnel.
By taking control over the buyer’s journey, you make sure that the visitor stays longer on your website which increases the chances of conversion.
Investigate how your competitors control the narrative and emulate that to an angle that your brand stands out, but don’t be too promotional since your visitors can smell it from a mile away.
Get a Higher Ranking by Improving your E.A.T
Saad Raza – Senior SEO Executive at eWorldTrade & Retrocube Mobile App Development
LinkedIn: Saad Raza
Twitter: @saadrazaseo
Search engine result pages are heavily influenced by the quality of content, as Google has confirmed.
Google defines quality differently than other search engines.
Google will give a higher ranking to content that meets its EAT principle, which stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
A web page’s content quality can be determined by these elements.
Users receive the best results from Google based on its algorithms.
An example would be Google Panda, an algorithm that ranks websites according to their quality of content. The algorithm removes duplicated and low-quality content from the index.
Another example would be RankBrain. By using artificial intelligence, RankBrain interprets Google search queries.
The search engine will also display chocolate truffle cake recipes if you search for chocolate cake recipes, for instance.
By crawling websites with Panda and RankBrain, Google presents the most relevant and high-quality search results on top of search engines.
Implement the Barnacle SEO Strategy
Muhammad Shoaib – SEO Expert at eWorldTrade
Twitter: @M_Shoaib_seo
LinkedIn: Muhammad Shoaib
If you combine Quora’s traffic with traffic from Google searches, you can take your traffic generation to the next level.
Quora ranks on the first page of Google for literally hundreds of thousands of questions.
Thousands of users can find your answer on Quora, and Google can also find it.
Search for your keywords in the top ten organic results using tools such as SEMRush, which provides a list of the keywords Quora ranks for.
Get more Quora referral traffic with these tips:
- Look for questions with a high number of followers when choosing your questions to answer. Every time a new answer is posted to a question, followers will be notified. To ensure a decent-sized audience in the long run, pick questions with at least 15 followers.
- Your profile can be optimized by adding a description of your qualifications and a link to your website. When users read the answers you’ve provided, they will want to know more about you. If there’s no way to get to your site in your bio, don’t disappoint them.
- You may lose credibility if you make too many calls to action. Leaving affiliate links and too many off-site links that lead people off of Quora can result in suspension and even ban.
Longform in the Way Forward
Gurpreet Singh – CEO of Browntape
Twitter: @gnurpreet
LinkedIn: Gurpreet Singh
The best way to improve your website through SEO is only by optimizing the website tags at the backend of the site.
Many digital marketing teams ignore this, especially when they are handed over a site that has been existing for a long time.
Some key tags to look at are:
- H Tags – Also called Heading Tags, they are very crucial for an SEO On-Page Strategy. There should be only 1 H1 Heading Tag per page and can have multiple H2 & H3 Heading Tags per page.
- P Tags – A major portion of the content on a page is classified as Paragraph Tags.
- Avoid <span>Tags – This tag should not be present in the content. A span tag appears when we copy-paste directly the content from a word file to a Google doc or WordPress account or any other site. It will automatically show as span tags in the HTML section. Content should always be added by typing not copy-pasting.
- Use <ol> OR Numbered Lists – Numbered lists make it easier for users to know what the main information areas are, in a sequenced manner.
- <li> Tags – Where the content is written separately in short-form line by line.
Еnsure your SEO foundation is built correctly before starting other SEO strategies
Dario Zadro – Owner of Zadro Web
Twitter: @DarioZadro
LinkedIn: Dario Zadro
Like building a house, a poor foundation would be disastrous. Most people want to go straight to generating content and building links. And yes, those tasks are essential, but the foundation is vital.
- Is all your tracking correctly set up to track event behaviour?
- Is your UX tested and optimized?
- What is your plan to build brand authority?
- If you’re a local business, are your GMB and other citations consistent with NAP?
Don’t get me wrong, authoritative and relevant links are excellent, and stellar content is a must. But, it’s the SEO foundation that will set up your website for long-term success!
Link Building Is the Human Factor
Georgi Mamajanyan – Founder of SayNine
Linkedin: Georgi Mamajanyan
Human factor
No single soul can guarantee a link can go live if they do not have direct access to the website. So, when establishing some collaborations, make sure you have alternatives.
Your link-building contact could be out of the office or might have some other tasks to do. So, if you need 10 backlinks, make sure to find 20 placements and ask 15 of them to be added. In this case, if something goes wrong, there are 5 additional opportunities left.
Email security and deliverability
It’s critical you understand what email security is because only then can you implement the right strategy. It includes technologies and techniques designed to protect email accounts and communications from takeover. It also includes preventing cyber-attacks and securing the content of any emails you send.
Whenever you are doing link-building outreach via email, make sure your emails are not marked as spam or are not at the risk of getting lost in the receivers’ spam folder.
The legitimacy of your identity
Each link builder has most definitely received tons of emails with the message “hello sir madam” each day. If you want to build links and long-term partnerships at the same time, make sure your emails do not look like theirs since it makes it evident that your identity is fake.
Perform a Zombie Page Analysis
Dave Currier – SEO Manager at Vital
Twitter: @Vital_Design
Facebook: Vital
LinkedIn: Dave Currier
Removing low-quality content that isn’t useful to the user can massively boost your rankings.
There are a few ways this tactic can help:
- Reduces Crawl Budget – This allows for quicker indexation of new content changes and new pages. It also reduces the number of requests to the server from all bots and crawlers, including Googlebot, which can help increase Page Experience scores.
- Reduces Duplicate Content – Most zombie pages are caused by tags, categories, pagination, landing pages, etc. This can cause Google to filter your content and serve the wrong version of a page. Eventually, due to low click through in SERPs, Google will devalue your page as a result.
- Increases Link Equity – When you remove tens or even hundreds of pages all at once, link equity will now be reallocated to the rest of the pages on the site (don’t forget the redirects ;-). Increased link equity means all of the pages on your site will have slightly higher authority and as such, you’ll see rankings increase.
How It’s DoneTo do a zombie page analysis, simply pull up your preferred analytics software, set the date range to one year, and review pages with 10 views or fewer. Next, create a spreadsheet to help you analyze each page. At Vital, we categorize pages into four main categories: - Delete – These are pages that have no value in search or to the user. These pages should be obvious.
- Improve – This type of page has useful content, but it’s usually the type of page that has been slapped onto the website by the sales department or other non-marketing person. Keywords need to be applied and the page needs to be updated in order to bring value to both search results and users.
- Combine – This type of page is usually part of a whole. It can’t be removed because of the value it adds, but it’s causing issues in the search. An example here would be a one-sentence FAQ page. In most cases, this could be combined into a larger FAQ page that could not only rank but brings a lot more value to the user.
- No Action – Unfortunately, for whatever reason, this page can’t be deleted. The best options here are to canonicalize or noindex. This could be a login page, a sub-directory page for a post type, or other types of page that can’t be deleted.
Speed Is the Name of the Game
Jessica La – Founder of ByJessicaLa
Linkedin: Jessica La
There’s the adage that “content is king,” but the reality is that Google isn’t going to rank every single content you publish, no matter how mind-blowingly fantastic it is (and certainly not without links).
To grow, you’ll need content – and a lot of it. However, that doesn’t mean you should publish bad content.
Your first step is to write minimum viable articles that are good and can be published quickly for Google to index. It’s only when it starts to get picked up in search engines should you then optimize to make the article great.
Speed is the name of the game here – and you should always lean into what works.
Focus on Low Competition Keywords
Melanie Balke – Founder of The Email Marketers
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniebalke/
The best way to get traction with SEO is to focus on low-competition keywords. These keywords are a quick way to get some traction and you can use the momentum to publish more content and get more traffic.
You can find low-competition keywords by going into Ahrefs and filtering out keywords by difficulty. You can do this by choosing keywords with a difficulty of less than 10. These are relatively easy to rank for, and you can rank for them even with a new website.
Add Definitions to Your Blog
Surya Biswas – Founder of Bloggingrico
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamratSuryabr
Making things easier takes time, but one of the easy parts is that a newbie SEO forgets about “What is.” This is an effortless step, but we often forget this point, Definitions. You have written long-form and explicit content but haven’t covered the Definitions point.
Search about two-three phrase keywords; there is a huge chance you will see the part of the definition comes as a featured snippet.
If you have covered, this is good. If not, then you are missing SEO’s easy and traffic part. Analyze your post and check which one needs to add definitions. You have done definitions for the targeted keyword that nobody hasn’t done yet; there are good opportunities for your post to get a featured snippet if you already have featured on another post.
If trying to get a featured snippet position, never forget to use the “What is” part/point.
If you are trying to grow your qualified search traffic, you have to combine your content marketing with your SEO efforts.” – Neil Patel
You might be interested to check those related posts as well:
- Creating the Best SEO Strategy in 2024 [Detailed Guide]
- 15 Useful SEO Ranking Factors 2024 [Learn Digital Marketing]
- SEO Copywriting Guide 2024 [Improve your Website Today]
Final Words
I hope you enjoyed reading this post with SEO Tips for 2024.
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