If you are a blogger who is passionate about writing chances are SEO is not your primary focus. This can easily lead you off the track where you indulge in tactics that really doesn’t move the needle. I have seen many beginners struggling to rank in search engines with even the best quality content because of subpar SEO implementations.
SEOEaze, a prominent SEO company educating bloggers and clients about the importance of SEO has some tested tactics to share with beginners. According to them, beginners should have some basics down right that teaches them the science and art of search engine optimization.
If you are beginning your blogging journey and want to outsmart your competitors from the very start then the strategies shared here are definitely going to help as they are based on deep research and analytics.
Let’s get started with the techniques.
Long gone are the days when stuffing a single keyword in the content allowed you to rank higher in search engines particularly Google. As search algorithms are evolving themselves to offer more human value, it is important to organize keywords into clusters.
There are many benefits of keyword clustering. First of all, it provides the best information about your site’s information architecture. It also helps to optimize the landing pages as well as help to identify the potential areas of content development.
However, it can be a difficult task to group keywords. You will need tools, to begin with. Many SEOs maintain excel sheets for this purpose but as a beginner, it can be overwhelming for you. This is why we recommend the use of automated tools like the SE Ranking Keyword Grouper.
As keyword landscape changes all the time and it is important to have a strategy in place to deal with the changes. Keyword grouping the best strategy for beginners. Other than making your content immune to the ranking fluctuations it also:
However, you need to be aware of the fact that no tool is perfect and you have to be careful while grouping the keywords.
In a competitive landscape, it is always a good idea to stay smart. In today’s SEO realm, you need smart work more than hard work, this is why keeping yourself informed about your competitors’ strategies can give you an edge. From tracking your competitor’s search rankings all the way to their links and new content will allow you to frame your SEO strategy accordingly.
There is no shortage of spying tools that allow you to know about competitors’ keywords for organic search. To name a few SEMrush, Ahrefs and SpyFu are some of the best tools I recommend.
Keeping a track of the activities of your competitors is going to help you understand the SEO strategies that are working for them and generating traffic. If they can win with that strategy then you also can.
Page change monitoring is not something most bloggers think of as a crucial SEO strategy. If you are running a small blog or website with very few landing pages then you can let go of this strategy. However, if you have a large website to manage or you expect to exponentially grow your website then it is advisable to monitor page changes.
When you have a large website to manage that is worked on by more than one webmaster or marketing experts, it is a good idea to actively monitor pages for any changes made to them. This will allow you to make the necessary changes in time and ensure there is no sudden drop in ranking or your website is not penalized by Google.
Even minor SEO changes can have serious consequences for website ranking. I know the idea of monitors all the web pages for changes can worry. However, you don’t have to worry as there are automated monitoring tools like VisualPing that allow you to keep a track of any change on web pages in real time.
Even some of these tools allow you to monitors your competitor’s site changes as well.
Google’s aim behind integrating Penguin and Panda updates into its core search algorithm is to force webmasters to offer more value in their content. This gave rise to long-tail keywords. Before the SEO community neglected these keywords as they get less traffic. But by cultivating the long-tail keywords you get better organic rankings in the long run.
The main reason for targeting these keywords is because searchers behind them are looking for exact service or product that you have to offer.
The challenge in harnessing the potential of long-tail keywords is there is no easy way to find profitable long-tail keywords. But will a little bit of practice you can learn about using Google’s Keyword Planner tool in Adwords to find out such keywords. Another tool which is my favorite is the Lsigraph.com.
The impact of mobile devices of people’s like cannot be ignored now. This is the reason why mobile metrics is growing invariably important for SEO.
In March this year, Google rolled out it’s mobile-first indexing
that puts mobile versions of websites before desktop versions. This is why you need to analyze the mobile ranking of your website.You do not need any fancy tool for the purpose as Google Search Console is enough to provide you with needed insights about the improvements needed to be made to the website. Start with comparing the desktop and mobile rankings to identify the problems.
If your website ranks lower in mobile searches it’s time to eradicate the non-mobile friendly elements from your site.
There are plenty of SEO platforms that easily allow you to track mobile rankings. This SERPs Mobile Ranking Tracker is one of the best-automated tools for the job. Embracing the mobile-first approach in 2018 is inevitable for SEOs.
SEO is not a static realm rather a dynamic marketing field that is challenging at the same time exciting. Beginners are susceptible to fall for age-old tactics that are no more relevant, this is why the strategies listed here are important for them to keep them on the right track from the beginning.