SEO is an ever-changing industry. Ai, ChatGPT, Google SERP features like SGE, Gemini, etc., and algorithmic updates are moving things in another direction where we need to adopt the latest SEO techniques.
traditional SEO approach and strategies are not enough to deliver results in 2024 and beyond. Your SEO strategy must be laser-focused and requires advanced SEO techniques to make your business and SEO future-proof.
SEO technique meaning; What are SEO techniques?
SEO techniques are the methods of search engine optimization to rank higher on Google and other search engines.
There are four main SEO techniques;
- Black-hat SEO techniques
- White-hat SEO techniques
- Gray Hat SEO techniques
- Blue Hat SEO techniques
White hat SEO techniques are the best SEO practices that search engines like Google and Bing approve for better visibility on search engines.
Black hat SEO techniques are unethical or unapproved ways of boosting your rankings on Google or other search engines.
In today’s guide, you will learn how to increase your rankings on Google, leveraging the best SEO techniques; and white hat SEO practices.
In this guide, I’ll share the most latest SEO Techniques;
- For website
- On-page SEO Techniques
- Content SEO Techniques
- Off-Page SEO Techniques
- SEO Techniques to Avoid
- SEO Tools to Consider in 2024
Important SEO Techniques of 2023
- Upgrade Existing Content
- Topical Authority
- Improve Your E.A.T.
- Run An Audit
- Internal Linking
- Optimize Featured Snippets
- Links and Mentions
- Schema Markups
- Analyze log files
- Improve UX
- Load time
- Design for Mobile First
- Understand What Users Want
- Optimize for Google Discover
- Look for low-hanging fruit keywords
- Get Help with Videos
1. Update And Upgrade Existing Content
For your content to generate organic traffic regularly, you will have to update and upgrade your article when due. ” Content Freshness, ” a Google ranking algorithm, is a 2011 algorithm that rewards fresh and new content over outdated content.
Many of us forget to update and upgrade our articles which affects our rankings. According to Google, 6-10% of searches were noticeably affected by this algorithm.
When searching for;
- Trending News,
- Sports updates(recent basketball or football) scores,
- Updated review articles,
- Or current statistics(most visited website in 2024),
You want to see results with new and updated information.
Google wants to serve you up-to-date information; that’s the reason for this algorithm. However, not all topics are affected by this algorithm.
If your content falls under the categories specified below, you will want to update your articles and or create new pages of content to retain and increase your rankings.
- Recent, hot, and trending topics
Trending News or recent events will always be new or updated to achieve a high-ranking reward from the content freshness algorithm by Google.
Let’s see a demo of how this algorithm works.
Search for “covid news” or “trending news in your area,” and you will always find new or updated articles on the first page of Google.
News websites will want to leverage this simple but effective SEO technique to increase their visibility on Google.
- Regularly recurring events
Regularly occurring events are timely events that occur yearly, monthly, or even daily or hourly. EPL’s latest scores and Presidential election fall into this category.
Searching for “EPL scores during matchday” will always return recent scores of clubs playing the English Premier League(EPL) at that time.
- Frequently updated affiliate sites.
Do you have an affiliate website? You will want to update your content to leverage your real estate.
People searching for “Review” articles need frequently updated content to get the latest information. It is essential to update review articles promptly to stay fresh and influence this algorithm. Content like “Best A.I. Softwares “”{Product Name + Review}” are the types of content that are affected by the content freshness algorithm.
One of the best SEO techniques is to update and upgrade your article.
When upgrading your article, you add and remove some content to your existing piece of content to make it stand out.
Google loves in-depth content, so upgrading and updating your blog post will help you rank higher on Google.
2. Topical Authority
Topical authority is one of the 10,000+ ranking signals Google utilizes to present searchers with the best results. Google wants to ensure they serve the best article from a closely related website, not from a random website.
Suppose you want more search rankings; you will want to cover specific or similar types of content on your website, period.
That’s what Google wants; Publish content related to your website’s main topic.
Topical relevance and authority are among the best SEO techniques to rank on Google with minimal effort.
3. Improve E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T., which stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” is a Google quality rater guideline that ranks “YMYL” articles according to the writer’s knowledge, the website’s authority, and trust.
YMYL stands for “Your Money, Your Life.” YMYL is used to classify websites that deal with your “finance, health, stability, safety, and happiness.”
Google wants to serve content that wouldn’t disrupt users’ experience; that’s the main goal of the E.E.A.T. ranking signal.
Below are key takeaways to improve your E.E.A.T.
Expertise
- Write your article yourself and demonstrate your knowledge in a particular area.
- Have an author bio on every piece you make(yours and guest posts).
- Invite or hire experts who have a proven track record of writing in a specified industry.
Authoritativeness
- Get backlinks from websites with a good reputation relevant to your website.
- Get mentioned online on different websites, forums, and directories positively.
Trustworthiness
- A positive review is a trust signal; get more reviews for your product or business to influence the algorithm.
- Your website should be encrypted, too; it signifies trust because visitors are confident when browsing your website or purchasing from your store.
E.E.A.T. is a broad SEO topic to discuss and one of the best SEO techniques to increase organic traffic.
4. Run An SEO Audit
How many times do you run a site audit? Auditing your website is a critical SEO technique because it allows you to find errors and glitches that affect your website’s ranking on search engines.
Do you want more search traffic? It would be best to find what hinders your success and optimize it.
Running a site audit will help you uncover SEO issues affecting the visibility of your website. Free and paid tools allow you to run a comprehensive site audit.
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free SEO tool by Google that allows you to see your website’s performance and technical issues.
With this software, you will find error pages that need to be addressed.
Premium SEO tools like “Screaming Frog and Deepcrawl make website audits more in-depth. With the help of the software above, running an SEO audit to find optimization opportunities becomes easier.
5. Internal Linking Is An Untapped SEO Technique
Internal linking is a link-building practice that focuses on linking pages from other pages on your website. Internal links are hyperlinks that connect your web pages.
Internal links do what backlinks do. However, you have more control over linking your content than backlinks.
There are many benefits of internal linking that add up to other ranking signals;
- Internal links increase your page views per session which is a positive ranking signal,
- It makes your pages accessible to search engines and site visitors,
- It helps in building your website navigation and overall site architecture,
- Internal links will help your content rank on Google.
Don’t hesitate to leverage this underrated SEO technique that boosts your rankings on search engines.
6. Optimize Featured Snippets
To rank your content in the featured snippet, you must rank your article on the first page for your target keyword.
Optimizing for featured snippets is a no-brainer if your article ranks on the first page of Google.
Suppose your article is already ranked on page one. You can optimize for featured snippets by doing this;
- Answer as many faqs on that page as possible which are related to the primary keyword,
- Utilize “people also ask” questions on Google by answering the questions with your article
- Answer faqs with a “Yes or No,” followed by a few lines of text when applicable.
When you implement the above SEO techniques and strategies, you increase the possibility of ranking your keywords in the featured snippet.
Also Read: How to Get Google Featured Snippets: The Ultimate Guide
7. Links and Mentions
Backlinks are common in the SEO world because of their impact on your website. Do I need backlinks to rank my content on SERP? If you want to rank on Google with ease, you need quality backlinks.
Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. According to Google, it acts as a voting count and a symbol of trust.
Google uses backlinks to rank your article on the search engine result page because it’s not very easy to acquire.
When many websites link to your site, it shows your site is helpful, and as such, Google tends to rank it higher on SERP.
Buying links or exchanging something for a backlink is an SEO link-building technique that is not approved by search engines.
Google prohibits site owners from avoiding black hat link-building tactics that attract shadow penalties.
Like backlinks, when other websites talk about your website positively, it also helps rank your website on SERP.
It’s essential to have other websites mentioning your name or website to build your citation.
Implement this technique in your search engine optimization strategy to increase your rankings on Google.
8. Schema Markups
Schema markup or structured data gives search engines more details about your page. Picture schema markup as the data you provide Google to understand your page’s content more.
You can add many schema types to your web page to help Google understand your article; recipe, how to, faq and review schema are the common schema markups.
Ensure you are using schemas the right way. Assuming your schema code is invalid, it could affect your page’s rankings because schemas influence the click-through rate on SERP.
9. Analyze log files
Analyzing log files is a technical and one of the advanced SEO techniques. Logfile analyzer by SEMrush allows you to find your website access logs, and how Google and other bots crawl and request data.
SEMrush log file analyzer makes it easy to find;
- The time, date, and frequency of the request,
- The type of request,
- The impact of the request on your web server,
- User agents requesting information from your site,
- The version of the user agent,
- Status code of your website and lots more.
With this information in hand, you will find potential issues and optimization opportunities for your website.
Optimizing for crawl budget is a no-brainer leveraging the advanced SEO technique above.
10. Improve UX
User experience is one of the essential SEO techniques that increases your rankings on Google. Some of Google’s ranking signals focus more on users’ experiences(core web vitals and rank brain).
That’s to show how important it’s to optimize your website for visitors of your website.
When people have a good experience on your website, they tend to stay longer, visit more pages, and revisit your website.
There are many ways to improve the UX of your website; you will want to;
- Increase the speed of your website,
- Design for mobile visitors,
- Make your website’s structure good,
- Have an easy-to-navigate website,
- Use popups strategically on mobile,
- Have an enticing webpage and more.
11. Website Load time
Your website’s speed is crucial to your success. A slow-loading website will not only affect your rankings on Google, but also decrease your earnings and website conversion because more people leave your website when it loads forever.
Want to increase the speed of your website? Practice the SEO techniques below;
- Upgrade to a cloud or dedicated hosting,
- Minify your CSS and javascript files,
- Compress your images before uploading them to your server/website,
- Async or defer javascript files,
- Installing a page speed optimization plugin will help you decrease your website’s load time.
12. Design for Mobile First
Before the Google mobile-first index announcement, Google used the desktop-user agent to crawl and index our website in the result pages. This works this way;
- Google crawls your website using desktop and mobile user agents,
- Find your page information from the desktop version,
- And index the pages using the data from the desktop version.
With the mobile-first index, Google seeks information from the mobile versions of your web pages(not the desktop versions).
Websites that aren’t optimized for the mobile-first index will have issues ranking on Google(mobile-first index issues could hinder your site from Google search results). You will want to optimize your website for mobile visitors to see your pages on search results.
Implementing the SEO techniques below will help your website rank on Google without any mobile-first index issues;
- Ensure your web server is reliable and robust enough to handle many requests at a time.
- Remove anything that could cause errors to the mobile page.
- Create a page with adequate and correct information.
- Avoid thin pages.
- Avoid robot meta directives: “disallow” and “no follow” rules on mobile pages.
- Ensure your mobile pages are served in mobile versions.
- Optimize for crawl budget.
- Serve your primary content on the mobile and desktop versions.
- Add meta titles and meta descriptions to your mobile pages.
- Add alt tags to your images.
- Ensure your website is optimized for a good user experience.
- Add the same structured data to your mobile and desktop versions of your pages.
13. Understand What Users Want
Search intent optimization is an essential SEO technique that allows you to reverse-engineer your target audience’s search on Google.
Ask yourself this question;
Why are people searching for this? What is their main problem? What do they want from Google?
Understanding what users want becomes super easy if you uncover the answers to the questions above.
14. Optimize For Google Discover
Google Discover uses a different approach to personalize content for you in your feed. Unlike Google Search, Discover allows you to add your favorite website or interest to get a personalized feed.
According to Google, your website is automatically eligible for Google Discover if it’s indexed and meets Discover’s content policies.
You don’t need any unique tag or structured data to appear in Google Discover.
Implementing the SEO techniques below increases your chances of appearing on Google discover;
- Create high-quality content,
- Use images and videos in your article,
- Optimize for speed or use A.M.P. (accelerated mobile pages),
- Publish evergreen and trending content,
- Tell your followers or subscribers to add your website to their feed,
- Run competitive analysis and monitor successful websites on Discover.
15. Find Low Hanging Fruit Keywords
Keyword research is a common SEO technique that helps SEOs find lucrative keywords.
What makes a keyword a low-hanging fruit?
Keywords that are ranking on the first or second page of Google SERP (between 5-20 positions) are known as low-hanging fruit keywords. You can easily rank them on top positions by making tweaks to your webpage.
How do you find low-hanging fruit keywords?
Keyword research tools have made everything straightforward. With Ahrefs or SEMrush, finding low-hanging fruit keywords is very easy.
Here is how to find low-hanging fruits using SEMrush or Ahrefs;
- Search for a broad keyword using Ahrefs or SEMrush and filter by “keyword difficulty.”
- Using Writerzen, you can filter by “K.G.R. or allintitle” to find low-hanging fruits that are easy to rank yet profitable.
16. Leverage Youtube SEO
YouTube is the largest video search engine with over 2 billion monthly visitors; it’s also the most popular search engine behind Google.
YouTube has ranking algorithms just like Google has its algorithm.
However, YouTube utilizes more user signals and engagements to rank YouTube videos.
Here is a simple YouTube SEO technique to rank your videos on YouTube;
- Include your keyword in the video tags, description, and thumbnail.
- Use a captivating headline and thumbnail that influences C.T.R.
- Increase your video retention time.
- Remind viewers to like, share, and comment on your video.
- Increasing your click-through rate is critical to ranking your YouTube videos on search results.
Summary Of SEO Techniques To Rank On Google And Other Search Engines
Search engine optimization is a complicated type of digital marketing that is ever-changing. The SEO tactics that work today might not work tomorrow.
Implementing the white hat SEO techniques explained in this guide will help you rank high on Google, YouTube, and other search engines.
What SEO techniques do you love among all?
Let us know in the comment box, and don’t forget to share the article with your friends.