1. Rank content in Google’s Featured Snippet
When you search Google for something, you may come across Featured Snippet some times. It’s more frequent for question-based keywords, for example “how to create a mega menu in joomla”
The Features Snippet section appears on the top of Page 1, so it’s cool to have your content included, right? Here are some features contributing highly towards ranking within Featured Snippets:
- You should aim at having target search keyword within one of the HTML headers in your content.
- Links don’t matter much for ranking in the Features Snippet when you already rank on page one of Google.
- Google doesn't always include a whole paragraph of text in the Featured Snippet. If you add "Step 1," "Step 2," "Step 3," etc. to the start of each HTML heading within your content (for example, within your H2 tags), Google will sometimes just list out your headings within the Featured Snippet. I've started to see this happen more and more in keywords beginning with "how to".
- Google tends to prefer Featured Snippet content that begin logically as an answer which will begin with, "Start by", "The first step is", etc.
- Directly beneath the header that contains the target keyword, you should write the answer to the question, keeping it between 54–58 words in length.
Bonus: You can use a tool like SEMrush to find different keywords that you rank for. Here’s the good guide you can refer.
2. Boost underperforming content.
You can use Google Console for help in this situation to find out “low-hanging fruits”, I mean qualified keywords. After that, try to add links, where relevant, within some of the most powerful pages on your website, in other words, add internal links within your site. You should add links to pages that have highest number of external links pointing to them. Ahrefs or Majestic can be helpful with navigation to “Top pages” report.
That’s not done without tracking results and scale it. Use Accuranker, a keyword tracking tool to keep track of keywords in projects. Simply upload your keywords and tag them accordingly, then you can get daily or weekly reports on improvements. Once you start seeing results from this method, start scaling it up.
3. Competitor link analysis.
Have you ever wondered that what keywords your competitor uses or how to hijack your competitor’s campaign. If so, what can you get from this analysis:
- Compiling a short list of competitors within your industry.
- Looking at the websites and specific webpages that are linking to them.
- Finding opportunities where you can get similar links.
How it gets done?
The first step is to use a link analysis tool like Ahrefs, Majestic or Open Site Explorer to get a list of the back links for one of your competitors.
By this way, you will have more ideas of your keywords and also know how your competitors run their business. In above example, I checked out the backlinks from joomlashine.com which my website joomlaux.com competes with. From result, I can have more ideas of good websites for external backlinks. Not bad!
4. Transcribe your video content.
Another tip to improve organic traffic is nothing but video content. Facebook users are now watching over 100 million hours of video per day on the social network alone, and video is becoming an increasingly cost effective format for advertisers. Transcribing video is not only beneficial to SEO but also to user experience.
If you're looking for a cost-effective but good quality service for getting text transcriptions done then I'd recommend using SpeechPad.
5. Update and republish old content.
If your blog lists your individual posts in order of the date that they were published, like most blogs do, then the older your blog post gets, the lower down the website architecture it goes. As your blog posts get older, they go deeper into the architecture of your website because you'll have to go to page 2, 3, 4 or more of your blog feed to find them - and Google has to do the same. A nice little hack that you can use to boost some of your older content is to update an old post with some extra content and swap around any old references, then change the date of the post to the current date and republish it. While doing this, you have to consider two these following things:
- add more relevant content
- push your blog post to a few higher levels because your blog post is now in the top of your blog feed.
Let’s see example of Hubspot after using this technique. Awesomesauce!
6. Run co-marketing campaigns.
"Co-marketing is when two companies collaborate on promotional efforts for a co-branded offer. In a co-marketing partnership, both companies promote a piece of content or product, and share the results of that promotion." (Amanda Sibley).
Co-marketing is a seriously powerful way to tap into audiences larger than just your own to drive leads, links, social engagement and more. Obviously, it’s not easy to implement this tactics, but it’s cool if you can. “Two heads are better than one”.
Some examples of ideas for running a co-marketing campaign can include:
- A joint case study
- Report based on original data from each brand
- Charitable causes
- Events (e.g. co-branded local meetup)
- Incentive or awards campaign
- Joint webinars
- Online courses/training
7. Create an expert roundup.
You can use this SEO tactic as a way to build trust with visitors and relationship with influencers, although it’s not easy to get it done. This method seems to be everywhere nowadays. Here’s process you can follow:
- Gather a list of influencers you want to form a relationship with.
- Reach out to them to take part in an expert roundup by answering a simple question.
- Touch base with them via email when the post goes live and sign off by asking if you can keep in touch with any future projects.
- Reach out to them again in a few weeks to ask what you really want (guest post opportunity, etc.), thanking them again for contributing to the previous expert roundup.
If it’s impossible for you to get access to experts, you can collect their opinions or suggestions about topic-related questions and create your own feed. It’s helpful, too!
Do you think these SEO tips useful for you?
Well, we are at the beginning of 2017 so this is another blog post providing “7” SEO tips to improve organic search. I hope this post will help you all to run your business better in age of Internet and automation. If you find this article helpful somehow, don’t hesitate to share it with others. This means so much in way that you may not imagine!
