It’s no longer a secret; Google likes to frequently update SEO algorithms. So, it’s necessary to always optimize your website content so as to regularly rank higher. The problem is that there are so many adjustments to make that it’s possible to miss an important SEO detail. The hard truth is that without SEO, your content is practically invisible in the eyes of Google. With SEO, you are able to generate traffic to your site.
But, it’s important to know that the SEO tricks that worked for you a few years back may not work now. You have to update your tricks depending on what the current online community really needs. The whole idea is to generate more traffic and in the long run, be able to make sales. Surprisingly, you don’t have to publish new content. According to Denver SEO: Premier SEO Ninjas, you just need to make a few changes to your existing content and to your website.
Here are some of the top tricks that they recommend.
- Self-Audit
The first thing that you have to do is audit your site to see where you actually rank. You’ll need tools like Google Webmaster or Google Analytics. You should go through the site carefully as you read every word. Ensure that there are no poor grammatical mistakes. You also need to follow the links present in your webpages to ensure that they lead to the right landing pages. In case there are blatant errors, you need to write them down and fix them. Then, go to the analysis tools to see where most traffic is generated and where you need to improve.
- Local Presence
Just try to imagine for a second that you are the customer and you are seeking a specific service. Would you look for it within your local area or would you prefer something distant? Of course, it makes more sense to look for local service, especially if it’s a service that requires your physical presence. So, you need to build presence locally using your existing content. You can do it by optimizing your website for the local search result. This may mean inserting local keywords to your existing content such as the name of your city and correct physical address. You also need to list your business on Google and Yelp for easy finding.
- User Engagements
To make your existing content more exciting to your site visitors, you need to exploit the power of user engagement. Here are a few ways you can leverage:
- Ensure your existing content is easier to read. The paragraphs should be short and the headings need to be easy to read. You also need to utilize a lot of white.
- Capture the audience attention by using infographics, bold texts, images, and videos.
These ideas basically ensure that your existing pages appear valuable in the eyes of the site visitors. In addition, Google will identify the content as high-quality and this will improve your ranking and traffic.
- Rank on Snippet
You probably have come across Featured Snippet on Google on a couple of occasions. They normally appear when you search for question-based key phrases such as how-to content. The Snippet results appear on the first page—before ranked results and after ads. It’s generally important to have your existing content featured on the first page. The moment you do, the average click for your site or blog improves significantly. The secret is to find specific keywords that you can use to improve your Featured Snippet ranking. A great tool that you can use is SEMrush. Once you have the keyword, you should update them on your site. To ensure that your existing content is ranked on Featured Snippet, you should:
- Use headers that are easily scanned
- Be brief and clear with your content
- Be socially engaging
- Apply powerful external resources
- Develop Internal Links
When search engines go through new sites, they basically crawl through the pages. After scanning a particular website, they follow up the links listed there to see if they lead to webpages that may have been skipped during the scanning. For this reason, it’s important to link your pages to each other if they share similar content. Once you have such internal networks, it becomes easy to drive and retain traffic on your website without the need to publish new content.
- Voice Search Optimization
Voice search is an SEO trick that is here to stay. It’s necessary for improving local traffic. To optimize voice search, SEO experts advise on applying geo-targeted keywords. By doing so, you are able to optimize your existing content for local SERPs.
- Community Hijacking
There are different kinds of audience online. Each community is characterized by an audience with the same interest. You should, therefore, identify the community that relates to your content and brand in order to build a working relationship with them. This is what community hijacking is all about. Then, you can use them to promote your brand and to improve traffic. For example, Product Hunt is a community for those interested in new products while Lookbook is for fashion enthusiasts.
- Fix 404 Page Errors
Sometimes, site visitors see the 404 error when they click on a particular link, which is an indication that the intended page is no longer available. From a business perspective, this is missing on a chance to get more traffic. So, it’s necessary to fix the mess not to lose traffic. Use a tool like OnCrawl to identify and fix the errors.
- Link Reclamation
The essence of this SEO trick is to find a website that mentions your brand. You can monitor them using a tool like BuzzSumo or Mention. The tools will deliver an alert to your inbox whenever your business or brand is mentioned. Once you have gotten the alert, the next thing is to try to contact the Website or the author of the content in a bid to convince them to list the link of your site on their website. If they agree, then you are guaranteed more traffic.
Closing Thoughts
With the SEO sector changing so fast, it’s important that you try to stay relevant. You have to know what is needed to drive traffic to your site today. That’s the whole essence of employing SEO. Luckily, you don’t always have to create new content to improve your traffic. Just use the above tricks.