At some point, every marketer worth their salt will struggle to find the best SEO tactics to push their website and brand to the top of search engine rankings. There’s just too much competition, and there are several theories on boosting your online visibility with nothing substantial.
What you need is an actionable strategy that works. This strategy should lead to something productive, even if the improvement is only incremental. Here are five SEO tactics that will work for 2020 and beyond.
1. SEO Tactics: Find the Right Keywords
Using the right keywords in your content is one of the best SEO tactics to boost your traffic. These key phrases form the building blocks of SEO for your website.
However, the trick is to find keywords that are going to work for you. It is not enough to invest in extremely common keywords, like “keyboard,” anymore. The competition is just too high and the traffic probably won’t yield high conversion rates.
This is why you need to research long-tail keywords. These keywords dictate user intent when they type them into the search bar. A good example of a long-tail keyword that shows commercial intent is “mechanical keyboard for gamers.”
Understanding Keyword Intent
There is a world of difference between the word “keyboard” and the term “mechanical keyboard for gamers.” The former implies a range of intents, including basic office keyboards. The latter clearly shows commercial intent and will likely result in a higher conversion rate.
To find a range of keywords for your website and niche, you will need to conduct proper research. There are several paid and free tools that let you do this. Google Keyword Planner does a fairly good job of identifying a range of keywords. Simply enter your competition’s website URL and you’ll get a few ideas.
Alternatively, you can visit kwfinder.com where the first few searches are free (depending on their promos). A good article writing service provider will take care of keyword research for you.
2. Create Long-Form Content
Now that you’ve identified the keyword you want to rank for, it’s time to start writing long-form content. This is a surefire means of ranking for keywords rapidly. We’ve seen websites move from relative obscurity to the first page of Google’s SERPs by simply publishing long-form content regularly. These websites publish at least 1500+ words on topics related to their niche.
These blogs are not glorified sales pitches. They improve a user’s experience by shedding credible insights into their pain-points. As an example, most users who like paintball will commonly search for terms such as “will paintball hurt,” “can paintball kill,” and “how long paintball pellets last?”
Now if you’re selling paintball guns and want to capture this market, the best way to go about doing this would be to answer these questions in a comprehensive manner that isn’t found elsewhere. You will need to do considerable research to provide engaging content, and your life experiences may also help.
Case Study – Neil Patel’s Long Form Blogs
Long-form content has been the hallmark of bloggers who suddenly find themselves labeled as ‘experts’ in a niche. The case in point is Neil Patel.
A cursory glance at his website reveals that most of his content is well over 4000 words in length. Why would he write extensive articles that are essentially short eBooks? The answer lies in the fact that long-form content ranks higher than short, 500-word articles.
The SEO benefits of long-form content are enormous. These articles get a lot more backlinks, they naturally rank for keywords, and they are shared more often by users. Just make sure you don’t fall into the proverbial trap of adding filler that just doesn’t engage. That won’t get you anywhere.
Ask a Professional Writer for Help
According to SWEOR, the average length for the first results in SERP was well over 2000 words. And this number will only continue to bloat up.
So it makes sense to ask professional article writers to curate a constant stream of high-quality blogs for your website. This saves you the time to focus on the core aspects of your business.
To sum up: long-form content + long-tail keywords = better online visibility.
3. Use an Onsite SEO Checklist
You want to make it easy for search engines to find your article and rank it. This is done by making sure your article contains the following SEO essentials:
- Title tag: This is how search engines get to know the niche of your article
- Meta description: It gives searchers a TL;DR version of your article and what pain-points you will address
- URL: The URL must be short and catchy and contain the target keyword
- Headings: Your content needs a healthy dose of H1, H2, and H3 headings
- Image title: Not writing image title and alt text is an opportunity lost
Adding an image title and alt text is a great way of ranking your website and gaining new backlinks. Webmasters who search for these images will likely find your website and link back to it.
4. Create Catchy Titles
Catchy titles are designed to capture your audience’s interests from the get-go. They are not necessarily click-baits, since you’re offering real value to the user. A good example of catchy titles would be these two:
“10 Best Mechanical Keyboards That Will Last You a Lifetime”
Or
“Best Mechanical Keyboards Money Can Buy”
These titles will pique your user’s interest and get them to click.
Remember, most online users have an average attention span of around eight seconds. Let your title do the talking. Besides, Google and other search engines seem to love these titles and reward webmasters richly for being creative with them.
Boring titles like “Mechanical keyboard” or “Gaming keyboard” will not fare well and most likely get pushed to the 6th or 7th page of Google search results.
5. Reduce the Site Loading Time
Google has updated its algorithm to consider a site’s loading time. This is done for one simple reason: user experience. Most users simply don’t have the patience to wait for websites that take more than 3 to 4 seconds to load. This means that if your website doesn’t load properly, users will leave it in a heartbeat.
In most cases, the best solution is to find a faster hosting provider. Good places to start would be Hostgator and Bluehost.
6. Add Backlinks
It is important to acquire high-quality backlinks through outreach. It makes sense why search engines prioritize backlinks so much. Backlinks from authoritative websites are like validation for your content. Google simply can’t verify the authenticity of every single website, but it can trust validation from authoritative and trustworthy websites.
Backlinks do half the work for search engines and remove the burden of verification from them. It is extremely important to only target high-quality backlinks. If you try to get low-quality backlinks, Google will think you’re trying to game the system and will punish you for it.
A good idea is to shoot emails to influencers, webmasters, and other bloggers to link to your content. You can also offer to guest blog for their website in exchange for a simple backlink.
Conclusion
Your website is often the first touchpoint for many potential clients. A proper approach to SEO on your website will go a long way in improving brand visibility and its digital properties.
This will require many marketers to break out of their comfort zones and adopt ‘new-age’ techniques. But doing so is critical in this day and age, especially in the light of the ever-increasing competition that continues to grow.
What do you think of the above SEO tactics? Do you have any to add?
Let us know in the comments below. 🙂
