Search Marketing Trends 2018 | Advanced SEO Techniques and Strategies for 2018 | Effective SEO Techniques that Work in 2018 - Divyanshu Chavda

SEO Techniques for work 2018

I’ll talk about the following tactics in this post below:

1. Improve engagement to improve rankings
2. Make your existing pages longer
3. Focus on YouTube SEO
4. Improve site speed
5. Focus on topics instead of keywords
6. Build backlinks
7. Reporting and analytics
8. Technical optimization
9. Local SEO and Listings
10. Guest posting.

And there’s a good reason for that, since a technical site audit allows us to genuinely understand what is needed to be done in order for the site to achieve it’s intended goals.

But what sorts of processes does an SEO audit entail? Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Keyword and SERP analysis
• Competitor research and analysis
• Technical and sitewide analysis
• Page and content-level analysis
• User Experience (UX) analysis
• Link analysis

UNDERSTAND THE SITE, BUSINESS, TARGET MARKET, CURRENT SITUATION AND ACTUAL NEEDS.

The first step to any successful SEO campaign is to understand everything about your client’s website. This phase establishes your campaign’s objectives, through determining:

Type (and Size) of Website – is it an ecommerce, SaaS/app, publication, community, enterprise or a small business?

Nature of Business – which industry or business category do they belong to? Is it a highly-competitive one? Who are their top competitors? How long has this industry/niche existed? Will it still be there in the next 10 years?

Target Market – which demographic group? Are they targeting local, national or global audience?

Current Situation – How long have they been in the business? How’s their sales/revenue generation? What are their top competitors doing right (and wrong)? Have they been hit by an algorithmic penalty?

Actual Need(s) – Recover from a penalty? Grow organic traffic? Improve Sales? Or is it just to build awareness for branding?

IDENTIFY PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

It becomes easier to determine these areas as soon as you’ve completed your initial audit.

Site issues – which you’ll mostly uncover through the audit using checklists. Below are a few technical SEO checklists you can start with (depending on your client’s profile/needs) :
Technical SEO – Distilled, Webris, Annie Cushing
Local SEO – LocalSEOChecklist, Moz, BrightLocal, Moz’s Local Ranking Factors Study

Ecommerce SEO – Backlinko, BigCommerce

International SEO – Aleyda Solis, Martin Kura

Mobile SEO – Bruce Clay, Moz

Link Audit – Distilled, BuiltVisible

Penalty Diagnosis – Google Algorithm Change History

Budget – is the allotted budget substantial enough to build or execute a competitive SEO campaign? How many hours (per month) will the team need to be able to perform all the necessary tasks?

Competitiveness ­– From 1-10, how difficult do you think it is to rank for their top target keywords? Are they directly competing against big brands? Do their top competitors invested a lot in SEO and link building? What do the competitors do? Can we outdo and/or outsmart them?

FINDING OPPORTUNITIES

Once you’ve weighed in the problems, challenges, as well as the resources that you’re certain are at your disposal, it will be easier to find and identify opportunities you can take on through these processes:

Keyword research – which sets of search queries do the site have better chances of ranking well in a fairly short period of time? What are the keywords that you’re competitors aren’t ranking well? Useful guides on Keyword Research :

Backlinko

Ahrefs

IFTF

Competitive Intelligence – What are the categories that your competitors are not focusing on? What are the topics they excel in creating content around on? Can you do better? What sites/publications are linking to most of your competition? Which sites/publishers they haven’t built a relationship with yet? Useful guides on Competitor Analysis :

Moz

GotchSEO

Content gaps – make an inventory of the site’s key content assets, are they lacking any foundational/cornerstone content pieces, non-existent content types, or relevant topic areas that haven’t been covered? What topics or content are missing from your competitors? Can you beat your competitors’ information-rich content assets? Useful guides on Content Gap Analysis :

Moz

ScreamingFrog

PageOnePower

COMING UP WITH SOLUTIONS

Common SEO and traffic-related problems are often easily solved by stringing the following results from your audit and assessments together :

Actions we should take to address what the site actually needs.

1. Fixing the site’s major issues.
2. Knowing the opportunities we can take advantage of to build a momentum.
3. Make sure that you heavily prioritize on items that will hit both quick wins and the long-term success of the campaign. Combining all these insights together should allow you to design and develop result-driven SEO strategies.

SET THE STRATEGIC GOALS YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE FOR YOUR CAMPAIGN

Every task and action included in your strategy must be aligned with your client’s business goals.

Make sure all your weekly goals will positively impact your campaign’s long-term objectives (build on small wins to get big wins).

Make more money (or build awareness) through a robust search visibility.

Improve organic traffic by significantly improving the site’s overall quality and experience.

Significantly improve the site’s overall quality through optimizing its architecture, content, and reputation (links).

Implement all the crucial tasks to effectively optimize the site’s architecture, content, and reputation.

With the right mindset, approach, and strategies in place, no matter what the goals are, they should be well within reach.

Backlinks : Quality and quantity - backlinks are among the most important factors that affect your search engine rankings. Track the root domains linking back to your site.  Tools like SEMrush Backlinks Checker, Moz Open Site Explorer, and MajesticSEO, Bulk Backlink Checker allow you to input your domain in order to track the number of backlinks you’ve gained over a certain period of time. You should see an upward trend if you’re doing things right.

Visits : pages per session: This might not sound like an SEO metric, but ensuring that your content is on topic and relevant to your site should mean that visitors are interested in more than one page of your website. Adding internal links to your content will encourage your visitors to learn more and increase time on site! Use Google Analytics for this metric.

Returning users : For the same reason as pages per session, if your visitors aren’t returning then you’re either not providing relevant and useful content or you’re reaching the wrong audience. You’re getting clicks to your site, make sure you’re delivering on what visitors are craving so you become the authority they’re looking for.

Page load speed score : This is important to Google. They want to deliver quality. Your site needs to display quickly and appropriately. Check your speed score monthly with HubSpot’s free marketing grader.

Mobile bounce rate : Over 50% of web traffic coming from mobile devices. Make sure your pages load quickly and you're giving your visitors all the information they came for. Then, keep an eye on your mobile bounce rate to make sure you're not missing out on potential business.

Conversions : One of the most valuable SEO metrics. Increased conversions means your SEO strategy is working! You’re finding high quality visitors and delivering the right content that successfully encouraged them to take a next step. 

Keyword rankings : Understanding which keywords are most relevant to your business, then keeping track of SERP rankings will let you know where you stand with the competition. Word of advice: track changes using a three-month rolling calendar. Focusing on week-to-week changes will (in most cases) cause unnecessary anxiety with the natural ebb and flow of search results.

Blog visits (from organic search) : Understanding which blog topics are most viewed will provide insights and direction for future blog posts and topics. Your audience may respond best to “how to” type posts, comparison posts (“Type A vs. Type B”), in-depth articles, lists, or short copy with images assisting in telling your story.

Domain Authority and Page Authority : Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) are scores (on a 100-point scale) that predict how well a website will rank on search engines. These scores can be increased by improving overall SEO and providing excellent content. Tracking this score is easy with this free MozBar tool from Moz. Mark your baseline then check in on your score monthly, and compare to competitor websites. This score changes very slowly so be patient!

Social likes and shares : Like blog post views, your customers and prospects will let you know what they like by sharing it with their individual networks. You'll know you've selected the right topics and keywords to resonate with your audience. With this data you can be sure to give them more of what they want.

And if you’re ready to dive into deeper measurement, these metrics will help you knock it out with your CXOs:

ROI : Depending on the length of your sales cycle this number may take time to track, but it’s necessary. Evaluating which tactics are converting to marketing qualified leads, then to sales qualified leads, and on to customers is what it’s all about. Measuring results from specific tactics will help you improve the bottom line and make your CEO happy!

Customer Retention Rate: New customer acquisition costs more than retaining your current customers. And if you like your current customers, this is a metric for you! Not only does marketing have a role to play in customer retention, your job is much harder if you have to keep replacing the relationships previously solidified.