Top 10 Advanced SEO Tips to Rank Your Content on Page 1
You can write all the content you want, drawing well-researched opinions and conclusions only from the most trusted sources, but without anybody to read your content, all your hard work is going down the drain. You could write the best article in your niche, but a search engine has no way to know unless you learn to optimize your content for search engines to find it. Commonly known SEO tricks are only going to take you so far. What you need is advanced SEO to make sure your content cuts through the competition to the front page.
Thousands of articles and blogs are added to the internet each day. If the work you put into your blog is writing it alone, then it will most probably go unseen. In fact, writing makes up only 50% of the total work input into successfully publishing a piece of writing.
The other half of the work lies in being able to market it to the people that are likely to read it. And for people to read it, you need to make your article appear on the web pages. To do so, you need to master advanced SEO techniques.
Learn about the Importance and Prospect of SEO here.
What Are Search Engines? How Do They Work?
Search Engines are software services that allow people to enter a query and obtain results on the internet related to their query in return.
Google, Bing, Yahoo, Youtube, etc. are all search engines.
Search engines work in 3 steps, namely:
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Ranking
The first step – crawling, involves how web crawlers (also called spiders or bots) crawl the internet, scouring the landscape for web pages through the network of links on the internet.
The next step – indexing, is the process where these crawlers add the web pages they discovered during crawling into the search engine’s database. This database is called the index.
The final step – ranking, is the process where the best web pages on the index are selected to rank at the top. The information regarding the exact algorithm search engines use to rank web pages is not available to the public. However, there are certain methods that can be employed on web pages to make them rank better.
A search engine is not a fairy. It cannot make your wishes come true unless you make the necessary arrangements. When thousands of web pages are indexed, it will pick out only the ones it finds most appealing, even if there are other more valuable pages that don’t appeal to it.
Great SEO can only take you so far. However, great advanced SEO skills are what you’re going to need to get yourself seen on the internet. Ranking on the second or third pages is not going to help you at all. You need to rank on the first page of the SERPs if you want to make a difference.
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What Are the Three Most Important Types of SEO?
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
These three sisters, if studied right, can weave magic into your content. They work hand in hand, so ignoring even one of them will greatly reduce your chances of getting ranked well.
- On-page SEO includes those adjustments and alterations made within the webpage, right where the reader can see your content.
- Off-page SEO includes the adjustments made outside a particular web page to help it rank higher.
- Technical SEO involves the methods used to remove any and all technical difficulties that might make it harder for search engines to assess your site and hence, make it easier for you to rank the page.
Studying these three forms of SEO in depth can make it marginally easier to rank your content for the right search queries.
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That being said, let’s dive into the top 10 tips for advanced SEO to rank your website on the front page.
1. Use Schema to Get Featured in Rich Snippets
Using schema is an important advanced SEO tactic you can use to rank your website higher. Schema markup is the code that is added to the HTML of a website so that the search engines are able to better assess and understand the content.
There are several items a schema markup could indicate. Some of them include people, events, businesses, products, and reviews. When these schema markups are added to a site, the search engine is able to understand what your site is about easily. This in turn can help get you space in the rich snippets.
Why are rich snippets so special? A standard snippet contains just the URL, title tag, and meta description, but a rich snippet can have additional data on it that can make your site look more informative and attractive in the SERPs, thus increasing your click-through rate (CTR).
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2. Publish Content Updated for the Current Year
Writing content that is updated for the current year is another important advanced SEO tactic you should know about. Algorithms, methods, events, and trends change extremely frequently. If you’re an electronic gadget enthusiast, you would want to read about the best phones in the market today, not last year. If you’re an SEO enthusiast, you’d want to learn about the latest trends in the SEO world, not those from 2010.
That’s why we are always attracted to headings with the year mentioned in them. However, while adding the year, it is also necessary to keep the article updated with the latest information. Readers, especially enthusiasts, will quickly be able to tell when the year is mentioned just to make a heading more attractive while the article is still outdated. This can negatively impact your SEO.
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3. Update Your GMB
Another advanced SEO tactic that is worthy of your time is updating your GMB. Your GMB or your Google Business Listing is a listing that local businesses can use to manage their profile on Google. Business Listing is an important part of SEO, as it is one of the biggest ways to increase your local reach.
Publishing on Google Posts with clear CTAs can go a long way in increasing your reach. Q&A’s and updated images will help too when it comes to your GMB. You can also fill in the new categories relevant to your business every once in a while as Google adds new categories frequently. Encouraging your customers to write reviews about their experience with you is also a great idea.
4. Use Original, Eye-Catching Images and Video Content to Increase Dwell Time
The more dwell time a web page has, the more that page is likely to rank. Research has proven that the two have a direct relationship. But how do you get people to stop skimming through your articles and stay on your page longer? Of course, you need engaging, interesting content. But that’s not enough.
One method is to use custom-made, original images, or even animated images. Stock photography is not the best idea as images seen several times already across the internet are boring. Use easy software like Canva to make original and animated images to interest your readers.
Another method is to add a video to your page so that people will stop to watch the video. This can greatly increase your dwell time.
5. Work on Your 404 Pages
We’ve all encountered our fair share of 404 pages – pages that display the “404 Page not found” error message. These pages are dead, (hence, the name ‘deadlinks’) and are currently, non-functional.
Over time, these dead links (or broken links) can amount to a large number and since they are empty, they do not help your website to rank.
You can use an analyzer tool to find the 404 pages and then either rebuild the link or use a 301 redirect on it to another page of your site.
6. Take Up More SERP Space
In the early days, Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) were just a bunch of snippets arranged one below the other. However, today, SERPs are much, much, more complex, with several types of snippets, including featured snippets, rich snippets, knowledge panels, answer boxes, etc.
Featured snippets are often the most important, as they come up on the top of the page. These snippets show information from the page with the highest value of those in the search results. To get featured, you should find keywords with featured snippets in the SERPs, and write content around those keywords in the format shown in the snippet.
You can also use Schema to take up more space in the SERPs. The more space you take up on the front page, the more people are likely to see you, and the more people click through.
7. Convert Unlinked Brand Mentions
Brand mentions are a great way to improve your site’s reliability both with the search engines as well as readers. They give you recognition in your field and uphold your stance as a reliable information source.
If you have enough experience in your field and have brand mentions, it is a great idea to reach out to those sites and ask for a backlink. This is a great tactic in advanced SEO to quickly increase your conversion rate.
You can use brand mention alert tools to find out who is giving you unlinked brand mentions and then email them, requesting them to give you one. You can also thus establish a professional relationship with these websites by sharing value.
8. Update Previous Content
Although adding new content is necessary for your site to stay relevant, it is a great idea to instead focus on updating your previous content first. New content can take its own time to rank, but paying attention to pages that are already ranking and increasing their dwell time is an excellent advanced SEO alternative.
How can you update your existing content?
Add new information to those pages, and delete the outdated portion of those pages. Understand the current trends and update the content. You can then update the year mentioned on the page to the current year after you’ve updated the content to the latest trends.
9. Add More Organized Information to Your Content
Nothing makes us click away from a website faster than paragraphs and endless paragraphs of words. Even if you’ve added sufficient white spaces between the paragraphs and lots of images to interest your readers, they are still likely to click away. People are impatient today and want to be able to skim through content rather than sit through and read it.
Enter additional features and organized information. Easily readable and eye-catching features include bullet lists, tables, charts, comparisons between two or more things, pros and cons, boxes, etc. Using these features on your site can almost always improve your site rankings. These features could also help you land the page in featured snippets.
10. Comparison Articles
Comparison articles are a greatly advanced SEO tactic to improve your rankings. All you have to do is to take two or more similar products or services and research how they compare to each other. Make a list of their pros and cons, their bonuses, their costs, etc, and publish an article on your research.
Why are they so important? They are important because of their ability to rank quickly. Comparison keywords don’t have too much competition and hence, you will easily be able to rank using those keywords and gain enough traction if their search volume is high.
Note to Remember
SEO can bring you to your people and catapult your brand to repeated waves of discovery, interaction, and success. That’s why your knowledge of advanced SEO is going to be one of the biggest factors for your success if you’re going to get into internet marketing. Without SEO, nobody is going to get to see the amazing work that you put a lot of effort into. You need SEO to crack the code.
This doesn’t mean that content doesn’t matter. Search engines today are incredibly smart and can tell when the quality of your content is below that of your competitors.
Ultimately, search engines want people to spend more time on their platforms. They want people to come back to them for search queries. If they find that your content is of poor quality, people are not likely to be vested in your content and so, you might be refused entry into the front page of the SERPs.
People are going to enter search queries into a search engine only if they trust the search engine to find them the desired results. And if a search engine believes your page is not going to impress a person with a query, it’s game over for you.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. What are some of the on-page SEO skills?
On-page SEO skills include those optimizations that are done ON the page, like using the right keywords with the appropriate keyword density, using the right heading formats, using outbound links, optimizing for a better user experience (UX), reducing page loading speed and bounce rate, increasing dwell time and click-through rate, etc.
2. What are some of the off-page SEO skills?
Off-page SEO skills are those optimizations that are done outside the web page to let it rank higher. They include backlinks from related websites with higher authority, gaining positive reviews, optimizing for local SEO, engaging in social media marketing as well as email marketing, gaining brand mentions on other trusted sources, and guest blogging.
3. What are some technical SEO skills?
Technical SEO skills are those that ensure the web page meets the technical requirements of the respective search engines so that it can easily be crawled, indexed, and ranked. They include having a flat structure on websites, dealing with the issue of duplicate content, interlinking, reducing web page size, checking for deadlinks, validating XML sitemaps, etc.
Conclusion
The internet is the most important place where you need to publish your work to ensure maximum reach. Millions of people scour the internet every day, looking for information, or to communicate with the world, or just to find something interesting to pass the time.
Nothing feels better than appreciation for the work you put your blood and sweat into. But for people to appreciate you, they need to be able to find you first. And just because you have a piece of work published on the internet doesn’t mean people are going to find it.
We are all at the mercy of search engines and no amount of worshipping and praying for luck will work with the search engine gods. Only solid, smart advanced SEO skills are going to help you appeal to them and have them rank your content.
That’s why it is so important to learn SEO if you want to build a brand. Without SEO, your content is merely a house with no windows. People inside will never get to see the light of day.
There is immense potential on the internet, where billions of search queries are entered into search engines every single day. If you want to leverage the humongous market of search queries in your field, advanced SEO is the way to go.
