4 Bite-Sized SEO Tips For Better Rankings
I run an affiliate website on online casinos.
Pretty tough industry, if you ask me.
When it comes to the competition I am up against every day, you have some giants out there with massive domain authority and tons of backlinks you cannot possibly compete with.
That’s why if you’re a new site and want to at least have some remote chance of ranking for keywords that are going to increase website traffic and bring you profit, you have to have some kind of strategy in place.
Here are some of the things that have worked for me so far.
1. Research the 1st page of the SERPs.
This is straight up fundamental for me when I’m about to start writing a new piece.
I have to see who I will be up against and whether I have a chance of ranking at all or not. Yes, of course for everyone that’s on 1st page for a competitive keyword it has probably cost them an arm and a leg on link buying, but the least you can do is to try to figure out what has allowed them to rank in terms of the content they provide.
The concept I always try to apply is the infamous “Skyscraper technique”, in other words, take everything the competition has done and try to build something better, in my own tone of voice and with a unique touch to it. In that sense, I usually focus on 2 things.
First, the keywords they have targetted in that article, and second the user experience and actual reader value they have achieved. Are they just rewriting what everybody else has written or are they bringing something unique to the table? Are they going for 100 different keywords on one page, or focusing on a few? If they are focusing on a few why did they choose those particular ones instead of others, given their site’s authority?
In other words, I try to get as much insight from the 1st page of the SERPs as possible to have a clear direction of where I’m going with the piece that I’m about to deliver.
2. Go for long-tail keywords you can possibly rank for.
Being a new site, or a site with low domain authority means you cannot possibly go after broad keywords and expect to rank for them. That’s why I am a big fan of using FAQs at the end of an article or questions on headings (especially if the intent behind the article is informational).
In those FAQs, I will incorporate long-tail keywords or question keywords (Ahrefs I love you for having that Questions feature). That type of keywords does not usually have massive search volumes.
However, if you apply this strategy for as many articles as you can, it all adds up to a good amount of traffic you can bring in to your site through that technique. I’m not suggesting of course that you shouldn’t base your content around bigger keywords in some cases, only that you should not neglect the smaller ones.
3. Optimize for mobile.
Optimizing for mobile in 2019 is not a “Nice to have”, but a “Must have”. While you may not consider this a straight up SEO tip, it does apply a lot to it. 70% of my website’s traffic comes from mobile. What does that tell me?
That I have to deliver the best experience possible to as many types of mobile devices, or at least the most popular ones my visitors are using. I consider mobile more important than desktop based on the data I have on my site’s visitors.
In that sense, I would say research what types of devices your audience uses and go page-by-page and check that everything runs smoothly for those devices. Are any widgets or banners maybe overlapping with the content on the page? Are they not aligned properly for a specific device? Maybe your H2s or H3s are too long and go over 2–3 lines on mobile.
Bottom line, if your users are coming through to your site from a mobile device and you deliver a bad experience, then they’re very much prone to bounce right away. If this happens repeatedly it will affect your rankings at some point, bringing you down in the SERPs.
4. Optimize your anchor text in a natural way.
Google says webmasters should not be trying to buy links or get them in an unnatural way, so the least you can do is make your link building strategy look as natural as possible. One of the best ways to achieve that is by choosing your anchor text accordingly.
Go for a variety of exact match, URL and branded anchors. What’s even best in doing that is to research your competition to find out the approximate percentage to which they are using each type of anchor.
Bottom line, going for exact match anchors is a straight red flag for Google that you’re building links and will probably diminish the juice the link is passing along, so try to diversify your anchors.
Handing it over to you now! What are your favorite tips/ways to boost your content up in the SERPs? I’d love to know, so hit me up in the comments below.
I’d also appreciate one or many 👏 so that this article can reach other people too.
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