SEO is one of the fastest changing areas in the digital world. Even experienced professionals don’t have complete confidence in their success and may be caught off guard by another Google update, or by competitors’ disarming techniques.
In the pursuit of new ways to rank higher, many SEOs forget about basic things. Being tempted to find magic methods for staying ahead of competitors; they often make their task far more difficult than it should be. However, considering something obsolete, overused and overestimated without sufficient reason can negatively affect your rankings. Below are 5 often ignored SEO tasks that you should pay attention to.
1. Disavowing negative backlinks
We know that a backlink profile has an impact on a website’s rankings. Since for SEO, quality of backlinks is more important than their quantity in the long-term, it is necessary to monitor sites linking to yours. After the release of Penguin 4.0, however, many SEO specialists concluded that it is now possible to leave everything as is.
However, as is often said: prevention is better than cure. You cannot be 100 percent sure that irrelevant links will not do you any harm. If sites linking to you have nothing to do with your topic, you probably would not like to be associated with them.
Negative backlinks come either from your competitors, or from webmasters who decided to point to your growing site, especially if it is of high authority. You could contact the latter and ask them not to do that, but it is doubtful whether you will get a reply. It is better to take matters into your own hands.
To see which sites are linking to you, go to your Google search console, choose the necessary site, and then click Search traffic on the Dashboard. You will see the Links to Your Site category. Go there and find Who links the most to find websites that have links to your pages and analyze their quality and relevance.
Do this on a regular basis to prevent Googles’ unjustified antipathy.
2. Making the most out of your traffic-driving posts
If you have blog posts on your website, you know that some of them perform better than others. Besides analyzing the reasons for it and learning what approach works best with your audience, you should also optimize your internal linking.
Light the rest of your content up with high performing posts by inserting necessary links to less successful publications.
To optimize internal linking you have to find posts that can become traffic donors for other pages in Google Analytics or with SEO tools. Then link from them to less performing pages. However, do not place too many links – keep your internal linking structure clean.
3. Creating skyscraper content
Although this technique is often misused, it does not mean you should not try it. Of course, it is time-consuming (and confusing) to improve already good content, and pitch it to webmasters. However, the potential results can inspire you to get past yourself.
First, it is necessary to find your high performing content in your niche with relevant keywords. For this, you can use content research tools like ContentGems, Buzzsumo, Ahrefs Content Explorer, or SEMrush. The last two are especially good if you want a list of your competitors’ websites. It wouldn’t hurt to set up Google Alerts as well.
Secondly, you have to improve the content you have found by adding more details, real cases for examples, experts’ opinions, or changing the text structure to make it more readable. Spend some time and enrich your content with infographics, diagrams, and screenshots – information with visuals get more views and shares.
The third step is to find websites that shared content you now have a better version of. The simplest way to do that is by clicking the View sharers button in Buzzsumo. Then contact webmasters and editors of the relevant platforms and offer them your improved content.
4. Using infographics
Like skyscraper content, infographics were invented with better intentions than the purposes for which they are now being used. Many marketers produce them just to keep up with competitors without taking the time to make them informative and useful.
However, nothing has changed in how people perceive information. It is easier and more interesting for them to remember pictures enriched with data. So if you manage to create valuable visual content, there is no reason for you to ignore infographics.
Of course, they are harder to update in contrast to posts. Nevertheless, evergreen infographics exist; you just need to explore topics in your niche that are always in demand. There is no need to use numbers that quickly become irrelevant and outdated.
You also have an option to remake old infographics to save much of your time.
There will be no point in your efforts if you do not promote your infographics. Submit them to websites, and ask influencers from your niche to share your works.
5. Adding videos and podcasts
You have probably heard there is no marketing without video. And it is not just an exaggerataed statement – for instance, look how many active users are on YouTube. Moreover, people also want to see more videos from brands. They are easy to consume, entertaining and can be watched on the go. Besides, video content helps you to increase the time that visitors spend on your website and that affects your rankings.
You may say video production is only for companies with large budgets. In fact, a good video can be created even with a smartphone. What is important is to get your visitors interested.
As for podcasts, they are popular again. If you have something to tell, you should create one. It is a cheap and, at the same time, very rewarding way to drive traffic to your website.
Summing things up
Of course, this list of often ignored SEO tasks is not exhaustive. There are other methods that are not secret and widely discussed at conferences, but underestimated by many SEOs. You shouldn’t be one of them. Try various methods.
SEO is about both experimenting and routine. Some practices are just proven to work, and before you find a revolutionary way to win the game, it is necessary to cover your bases and not to miss the opportunities you have by default.
