If you’ve managed to make it to 2018 and you still don’t know how important SEO is, you’ve got a lot to learn. However, let’s assume you do know how vital SEO is and that you’ve got a strategy in place. Hopefully, it’s working quite well for you and you’re seeing increased traffic as a result. But what if it isn’t? You’re doing everything that you should be doing but it’s still not having much of an effect. Or, maybe, it had a big impact to start with but now your traffic is starting to level out and you aren’t seeing much of an increase anymore.
The first thing to do is check whether the search engine algorithms have been updated recently. Google regularly update their algorithms to make them more accurate and to better weed out bad SEO practices to ensure the results that appear at the top of the page really are the best matches. When those changes come into effect, they can change what works and what doesn’t. You may need to update your strategy to fall in line with the new algorithms.
Often, people are making use of some of the best SEO strategies at their disposal, but they’re neglecting other areas and which may be why their traffic isn’t increasing anymore. There are a lot of underrated SEO strategies that could increase your traffic substantially. These are some of the best ones.
Transcribing Videos
Pictures and videos are great for digital marketing. They help you to create interesting posts that encourage more engagement and hopefully increase traffic to your site. However, you’re letting yourself down if you’re not optimizing videos for SEO. There are a few things you can do on this front but the most important by far is transcribing your videos. When the search engine algorithms come across a video post, they’ll only take into account the text on the page which is likely to be a small introductory paragraph. Even if you’ve got video content that’s packed full of keywords, it won’t count for anything because the search engine doesn’t take notice of it. If you want your video content to have any benefit to your SEO strategy, you need to transcribe it and post the text on your website as well. You also have the benefit of making your content more accessible to people that have hearing loss issues or those that want to read the information on their own time.
Title Tags
You should know already that your title tags are important and you need to consider the keywords that you put in there. But a lot of people still aren’t taking full advantage of their title tags. Keywords are important, but you’ve also got to remember that users are going to see the title. It’ll appear on the top of their tab in their browser, on bookmarks, and most importantly, on the search results.
Even if your SEO strategy pays off and your posts feature high up on the list of search results, the title tag could turn people off if it doesn’t sound like the post they’re looking for. Consider this tip when writing your title tags and you’ll find that you get an increased click-through rate. A tag that focuses too much on keywords might get near the top of the results but it won’t get that many clicks if it looks spammy. Make your title appear organic and you’re far more likely to see an increase in traffic. The tag also appears when people share the post on social media. This is one of the best ways to get more clicks so it’s essential that it attracts people there too.
Optimize For Mobile Searches
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that mobile devices are fast taking over desktops and laptops as our primary devices. In fact, 60 percent of Google searches are now done on a mobile device. Google has also suggested that future updates to their search engine algorithms are going to start prioritizing results that are optimized for mobile devices. Nobody knows quite what effect this is going to have yet but it’s clear that mobile content will probably benefit.
You should already be optimizing your website for mobile devices because it gives a better user experience. Check how your website performs on mobile and see whether all of the key information is easily accessible. If it isn’t, you need to make sure that you update it so that it works perfectly on mobile devices as well as desktops and laptops. If you don’t make these changes now, your SEO will surely suffer when the new updates come into play.
Optimize For Voice Search
The rise in mobile searches is contributing to an increase in voice searches, as is the increased popularity of home assistants like the Amazon Echo or the Google Home. Having assistants on your phone means that more and more people are using voice searches instead of typing. At the minute, typing is still the main way that people search but that is going to change sooner than you think. This means you need to rethink your SEO strategy and begin optimizing for voice search because it’s different to a typed search. The main difference is the way that people phrase things. When they’re typing into a search bar, they’re less likely to use full sentences and they’ll often put in keywords (hopefully the same ones you’re using in your content). But when they’re using a voice search, they’re more likely to speak as if they’re talking to a real person. That means they’ll use more casual phrasing and use more full phrases rather than a string of keywords. Consider that when you’re writing content and coming up with keywords.
Schema Markup Language
Search Engine Algorithms are quite advanced but they can’t do everything. Sometimes, they need a little helping hand, which is where Schema Markup Language comes in. This is code that helps the search engines understand what your content means, rather than just what it says. For example, if you write a post about ‘Microsoft office,’ the search engine will probably pick up that phrase but it won’t necessarily know that it’s referring to a piece of software. So, if somebody searches something with the phrase ‘Microsoft office’ in there, your page might come up. However, if somebody searches something like ‘software that is good for businesses,’ the search engine isn’t likely to recognize that your content is relevant.
By making use of Schema Markup language, you can put phrases like that into context and help the search engines to work out when your posts are relevant to searches. This will make your posts appear higher up in search results but more importantly, it makes sure that people find posts that are useful to them. That makes them more likely to click on them in the first place and more likely to consider your site a useful source of information. Being useful is key when you’re trying to increase social media shares and get repeat visitors to your site.
Cut Down On Content
This might sound counterproductive because if you aren’t posting regular content, how can you improve your SEO? You’re right and you do need to be posting regular content but, if you’re posting too regularly, you’re probably not doing yourself any favors. Quality is the most important thing here, not just posting massive amounts of content packed with keywords. If you’re producing good quality content that is useful to your audience, you’ll get more shares and backlinks which will help you to move up the search rankings.
You need to stop thinking only in terms of SEO and start putting your audience first. If you write good quality content that answers their questions or offers them something useful, you’ll improve your traffic as a result. Putting keywords in the text should be an added bonus, not the focus of the post.
If you’re trying to post too often, you won’t be able to maintain that quality. It’s far more useful to post less content but make sure that the quality is always there. You’ll see far better results doing it this way.
We hope you find these 6 underrated SEO strategies useful in your SEO campaigns.