What do you think of when you think of SEO? You must think keywords and a lot of work. Or you’re trying to figure out what guaranteed SEO boosts are, you know, actually guaranteed.
Let’s be real though. Google updates their ranking algorithm two to three times a day. SEO takes time to learn and even longer to implement.
It’s worth your time to understand the techniques being laid out here. Quality SEO techniques are an investment that takes time to flourish, but when it does, you’ll be glad you did. Here are 12 techniques to get you started.
1. Use the Rise of SERP
SERP is one of those SEO terms you should definitely know. If you don’t, time to brush up on your vocabulary.
Now that you’ve done your homework, let’s chat about SERPs.
Because if you think the #1 organic ranking spot is the only way to get traffic, you’re wrong.
SERP features have evolved. It’s high time to evolve with them. You’ve got two tasks:
- Track your rankings within SERP features
- Monitor the features on your keywords that are stealing traffic
The easy way to do it is with this Rank Tracker, which will track 15 Google SERP features and organic results to show you all features triggered by your keywords and the ones you rank for highlighted in green.
Based on this data, you can reach conclusions about your SERPs and analyze the opportunities available for you.
2. Optimize for Voice Search
We can’t talk about guaranteed SEO without talking about voice search.
Voice search is big. The accuracy of voice search and digital assistants has been improving.
Why Voice Search Matters
When was the last time you opened Siri and asked a question?
You, sir or madam, just used voice search. Or if you typed a question into Google the same way you would ask the person sitting next to you, the same basic principles apply.
Why does it matter?
Think about the way you asked the question.
Google ranks for the relevance of content, right? If you’re optimizing based on keywords or phrases that aren’t actually being searched (because they aren’t phrased the way people ask the question) you’re not going to be competitive for long.
How to Future-Proof Your SEO
The easiest way to voice-proof your SEO is to optimize for long-tail keywords based on natural language queries.
Basically, optimize for, “How old is Barack Obama?” versus “Barack Obama age”.
You should also keep one eye fixed on the featured snippet. With voice queries and conversational questions, the featured snippet matters more than ever because it’s a direct answer to the question.
How do you fight for the featured snippet?
Simple: answer the question the best way possible. Incorporate bulleted lists or a table of key points for an even better shot.
3. Linkless Link Building
It sounds completely counterintuitive. But small businesses are actually the most likely to benefit from the guaranteed SEO boost of linkless link building.
What is Linkless Link Building?
What is linkless link building? Well, what does link building do for you?
You get someone to mention your site and link to your content. With linkless link building, you’re getting the power of word-of-mouth – the site mentions you without linking to you directly.
Which is a lot more valuable than you think.
Mastering Linkless Link Building
Think of link building an art if you want to take advantage of a guaranteed SEO boost.
Above all, you should keep these two things in mind: quality over quantity, and keep track of the mentions you have.
Cultivate Relationships with Quality Backlinks
It’s the same principle that you’d apply to regular link building. You can’t have great backlinks without quality relationships with sites willing to link to you.
Same thing with linkless link building.
We’re not talking about the odd email or friendly backlink. We’re talking about real-world relationships with real humans.
Your biggest tool here isn’t any numbers or fancy metrics. It’s good old-fashioned PR.
Track and Build Linkless Mentions
Why are linkless mentions so important?
Because Google and other search engines are getting smarter all the time, they’re better associating mentions with brands and using those mentions as trust signals.
While you’re doing your normal backlink monitoring, track your linkless mentions so you know where you stand.
4. Be Smarter than AI and Machine Learning
There are no two ways about it: AI is changing the landscape of personalized marketing.
What does that mean for you? In short, it means Google is getting smarter every day. It’s doing it by teaching AI to take the reins in its ranking algorithm.
The takeaway for you is the old guaranteed SEO hacks won’t work anymore. You can’t trick Google.
You can Google-proof your SEO.
First of all, resist the urge to use black hat SEO. It will give you a short boost, but it will always burn you in the end.
Second, as a general rule, always go for quality content and user experience over shady shortcuts. As soon as you lose Google’s trust and the trust of your visitor, it’s going to be a long uphill battle.
5. Mobile is King
Anyone who says it isn’t is trying to sell you something.
And by mobile, we really mean mobile-first indexing. Your guaranteed SEO boosts won’t boost you very far if you don’t plan for mobile-first indexing, even if it hasn’t happened yet.
Mobile-first indexing will change the game in 2018.
Google now receives over half of their searches from mobile devices (thanks, voice searching!) With mobile-friendliness now an SEO ranking factor, you can’t ignore mobile any longer.
How to Design for Mobile
Mobile user experience is different than desktop.
If you only design your site for desktop, you’re going to run into issues.
Remember that mobile users can be searching the web from almost anywhere. Their desk, the line at their favorite coffee shop, the commute to work.
A truly guaranteed SEO boost would be to make your website responsive to user context.
6. Content is Still King
You’re probably sick of hearing content is king.
The cornerstone here is that you need to create quality content. Always. Every time.
That means content that’s usually at least 2,000 words of content that answers a relevant question in the most helpful way possible, with cited sources, a good link profile, quality images, healthy (but not overused) keyword usage, etc.
Not only does Google know when you create great content, your users will thank you for being a valuable resource.
Supplement Content with Videos, Infographics and More
Once you’ve got your blog down to a science, you can supplement your written content with video, audio, podcasts, and more.
Setting aside the power of video SEO, there are few better-guaranteed SEO boosts than user engagement.
7. Structured Data
Structured data is a way of formatting HTML to tell search engines how to interpret content (and thus how to rank the content in SERPs).
For the record, structured data isn’t an official ranking signal. It has definite power to help you stand out by controlling your SEO.
What can you do about it?
Basically, start doing it.
Try this step-by-step guide to Schema, which is the structured data format that most SEO folks stick to.
8. Improve Your Page Speed
Page load speed is a ranking signal.
So speed is a guaranteed SEO boost.
Plus, in the age of the Internet, most users are impatient. They’ll click away if your page doesn’t load in a couple seconds.
How to Be Faster than Your Competitors
The easy way to solve this problem is to start by using Google’s Page Speed Insights to determine where you need to improve.
Boosting your speed will help boost your visibility. And more visibility is good for your business.
9. Latent Semantic Indexing for Keywords
If you got lost somewhere around “semantic” don’t worry. Latent semantic indexing isn’t as tricky as you think it is.
Once you do it, you’ll be feeling the guaranteed SEO boost for a while.
Latent semantic indexing is a core tool behind Google’s Hummingbird update to assist in a semantic-style search. Basically, LSI helps Google to understand what the user is searching for rather than returning content solely based on the exact keyword.
For example, a search like “best beauty products” can be phrased a number of ways. Google knows that these various iterations are all the same keyword.
Now that you know it, use it for all of your content.
10. CDN for Your Domain
Don’t get nervous if this looks super-technical.
CDNs, or content-delivery networks, are crucial to delivering your content to users wherever they are.
CDNs work by spreading your content across multiple servers around the world by mirroring it and serving it to the user from whatever server is closest to them.
Think of it sort of like a signal boost for your website. Your users will thank you for it.
11. Improve the User Experience
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, one of the central tenets of all these guaranteed SEO boosts we’ve been talking about is making the user experience better for your site visitors.
Ensure Usability Across Devices
If your site isn’t optimized to work on mobile devices as well as desktops, mobile users just aren’t going to use it.
Which is a problem, considering that most Google searches are now mobile.
12. Don’t Kill Them with Marketing
If you take absolutely nothing else out of this article, remember this.
Your guaranteed SEO boosts will die as soon as you go overkill on your marketing.
Users don’t like being constantly sold something. And quality content won’t help if your user can’t see any of it without paying for it.
Ease Up on Above-the-Fold Ads
Think of the last site you saw ads taking up most of the header.
What was your instinctive response to that site?
Probably irritation. And you were less willing to give them the time of day, even though their content was good.
Don’t be that guy. Aside from the fact that you’re irritating your user, you’re also irritating Google. You don’t want to irritate Google.
Oh, and did we mention that too many ads will slow down your load time?
Ungated Super Guides
You need to create high-value long-form content, right?
Enter super guides.
A super guide is just a piece of content that is a massive value post, the kind that has insane levels of engagement and shares and works sorcery for your domain.
You might be tempted to lock that content and throw a price tag on it. Because you figure, hey, if it generates that much engagement and traffic, why shouldn’t it also generate a profit?
Wrong answer. If you gave up the super guide, it’s not a guaranteed SEO booster anymore. It’s driving people away.
And while we’re on the subject, make sure you’ve got a super strong call-to-action.
Guaranteed SEO to Grow Your Business
You think you know a thing or two about guaranteed SEO?
What if you could do your SEO even better?
You can with a bit of help from the right people.
We help you bring your online marketing to a global level. If you need an expert consultant to help get you there, we can provide exactly that.
Want to see what we can do for you? You can start off by trying our free website audit.
If you want to get started with a consultation, head to our contact page.
