When it comes to SEO, you have to adapt or die. And to adapt, you sometimes have to go down the unorthodox route.
Google is constantly updating their algorithm. In fact, it made eight updates last autumn alone! Phew. For online marketers who are trying to perfect their SEO campaigns, this can be a bit of a nightmare because what worked at the start of the year might not work anymore.
Fortune favors the brave, however, and if you’re willing to be a bit, shall we say, different with your approach where SEO is concerned, you could outsmart your rivals and Google (maybe).
Being different with your approach doesn’t mean there’s going to be more work. In fact, unorthodox SEO strategies can even the opposite. As the graph below shows, the most tried and tested SEO tactics we all know and love (and perhaps hate a bit) are also the most difficult. And where content creation and keyword research is concerned, the ratio between difficulty level and effectiveness is extremely biased in favor of difficulty.
Credits: http://www.marketingcharts.com/
In other words, many of us are spending too much time on tactics that aren’t giving us a fair return. So why not try something different to supplement your existing tactics? Let’s take a look at 5 unorthodox SEO strategies to try this year.
Adopt a simpler approach to securing backlinks
Acquiring backlinks should be a crucial part of your SEO strategy, but as you know, it takes a lot of time and effort. Not only do you need to spend time researching possible websites related to your niche, but you also need to build relationships with bloggers and craft compelling articles.
It seems a lot of work for a single link at a time. But hey, don’t knock it as a single link from the right domain can send your rankings soaring.
Here is an easier way of securing those precious links. Instead of spending all your time creating exceptional content, you can find websites that have already posted articles on subjects you yourself would have written about. Then, take a look through the articles and see if there’s any key data missing that you feel would make the piece stronger.
Simply reach out to the author of the article and provide them with the data. With any luck, they’ll be so pleased with the new information that strengthens their piece that they’ll give you a link.
The more you do this, the more links you’ll get. Is this time-consuming? It is, but it’s not as time-consuming as writing fresh content from scratch.
Tap into creative technical SEO
Etsy has done extensive testing where creative technical SEO is concerned, and while this may sound a bit daunting at the moment, it needn’t be.
For example, you could look deeper into data mining and semantic keyword research to outsmart your competitors who would rather just touch the surface — or you could use Google Search Analytics API to dynamically populate your title tags. Piece of cake, right?
Post content at alternative times
When do you usually post your content?
Perhaps you don’t give it a second thought and post whenever you’re ready. However, this kind of inconsistency can harm your rankings, especially if you never check your metrics to see what works best.
Most of us are too busy wondering how often we should publish fresh content. True, Google is on the lookout for relevant, high quality content first and foremost. But to get an edge over your rivals where SEO is concerned, thinking a little bit more about when you post new content can be key.
Posting each day gives search engines another incentive to index and crawl your site. And as Matt Cutts of Google himself points out, freshness is a critical signal.
This doesn’t mean you need to post each day, though. Instead, do some experimentation and keep checking your analytics tool to see how frequent versus infrequent publishing performs.
Post at different times of the day and week, post on Saturdays and check your statistics. What’s working best? Post times you know your rivals don’t post, such as Sundays or national holidays. This kind of thing could get you noticed by Google’s crawlers and you might gain an edge over your rivals. It’s well worth a shot.
Shorten your URLs
When it comes to URLs, it’s been a tradition for a long time to go long. However, it’s now time to buck the trend by going short.
On the face of it, a shortened URL has many obvious pros and cons. Shortened URLs are easier to share on social media, which boosts your chances of going viral, but they also encourage spam since it’s really easy for the bad guys to hide their spammy links behind short URLs.
However, short URLs are great for netting you more link juice. True, social media platforms tend to include a “nofollow” tag on their links, but URL shorteners bypass this on both social media and Google.
In fact, search engines will follow back shorter links, which means you will get some value eventually. Not just that, but here’s what Matt Cutts himself had to say about shortened URLs:
“If we try to crawl a page and we see a 301 or permanent redirect, which pretty much all well-behaved URL shorteners will do, it will pass Page Rank to the final destination.”
Use your main keyword in your URL but try not to go over five words. Anything after that might not be given a lot of credit.
Write linkable content
Finally, don’t just focus on writing relevant content. Instead, try to write linkable content: this means content that can be linked to from articles that are unrelated.
For example, does an article about productivity have to be super duper specific to your niche? Absolutely not. It can be linked to all kinds of topics, from project management, employee happiness, stress, and wellness.
These are the 5 unorthodox SEO strategies you should try this year. They can supplement your existing strategies, but as the graph pointed out at the start of the article, you might want to cut down the amount of time you spend researching keywords and apportion it elsewhere for better results.
Enjoyed the article? Leave us a comment if there’s something you’d love to add.
Aljaz Fajmut is an internet entrepreneur and founder of Nightwatch — a search visibility tool of the next generation.
Follow him on Twitter: @aljazfajmut