Advanced SEO: Strategies for Bridging the Gap Between Where You Are & Where You Want to Be

Lauren Owens - April 3, 2014

With each year, internet marketing gets a little more complex – especially SEO. The strategies that worked a few years ago just won’t hack it in this highly competitive – and highly distracting – environment. But there are ways to help your brand come out on top – even if you’re in a competitive field. In this post, we’ll look at some of our favorite advanced strategies for getting found in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) today.

Creating a Sound Technical Infrastructure

Before you can really move into any “advanced” strategies, you’ve got to make sure your website is technically sound. This includes hunting down duplicate content and addressing any canonicalization issues, web architecture issues, and site speed issues. For more on this, check out this technical SEO checklist.

Addressing Usability Issues

A website with poor usability is a website that won’t garner a lot of love from people – people who link, share and buy – so before you begin any larger content marketing efforts, you’ve got to make sure your website offers a stellar user experience. Read about how you can begin to evaluate your website for usability here, or learn about how we can help you perform usability testing.

Using Structured Data to Stand Out in the SERPs

You’ve probably noticed that today’s SERPs are a lot more crowded than they used to be. One of the ways to help your listing stand out for users is by implementing structured data to create Rich Snippets, those snippets of extra information in a SERP that makes your listing more attractive to the user. For more on Rich Snippets, check out this blog post.

Creating Content Your Users Want and Need

Of course, it all comes down to content. If your content is not useful to your users, it’s not worthy of being ranked for the keywords you’ve optimized it for. We can – and probably have – written reams about this. For a couple of good primers, check out this post, or download our recent white paper on writing effective web content.

Establishing Authority

More and more, Google is looking for authoritative content creators. To find them, they’re using the Google+ authorship tag, inbound links, and other social signals. If you want to rank – especially in a competitive landscape – it is becoming and more important to be known for what you do. Getting there requires a combination of effective social media marketing, content marketing and strategic authorship.

Strategically Using Social Media & Content Marketing

Your company is likely already engaging in some form of social media marketing, but if you’re not engaging your audience, or building the relationships necessary to take your efforts further, you’re missing out on one of the biggest ways to establish your authority and spread your ideas throughout the web – content marketing. Effective content marketing requires strategy, dedication and a robust social infrastructure that cannot be made overnight. For more on this, download this white paper on building content marketing partnerships.

All of this leads to…

A Sense of Ubiquity

When combined with paid digital advertising efforts such as social advertising, remarketing and search engine marketing, the above advanced strategies can help you to create a sense of ubiquity, even in the most crowded fields. This type of omnipresence doesn’t happen overnight – and it is not, by any stretch, easy – but it is possible. It just takes time, expertise and a little bit of elbow grease.