3 Easy & Overlooked SEO strategies For Any Website

SEO is more important than ever before, especially when you consider that Google indexes over 130 trillion pages.

If you’re not on the first page of Google’s search results, then you might as well not exist. 75 percent of users don’t bother going past the first page and the top five results gather 65 percent of all clicks.
With 4 billion searches on Google every single day, what overlooked SEO opportunities can you use to make your business stand out?

Improve page speed, especially for mobile

Google’s algorithm change from a couple of years ago prioritized mobile responsive design and page load speeds to be a key determining factor for the search engine results page (SERP).
What most folks don’t know is that the average mobile webpage is roughly 2.2 MB, with images accounting for almost 70 percent of that size.
If you’re using bloated images then you’re not optimizing your webpage for mobile devices and therefore hurting SEO.
53 percent of people will abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. So by using dense images, not only are you hurting your chances of being indexed positively by Google, but you’re also increasing your bounce rates. This has a further negative impact on your search engine visibility.
A vicious cycle, if you may.
You can use Google’s Page Speed Index to identify sluggish pages. Once that’s done, compress the images on the page using conversion tools like Kraken.

Experiment with different forms of content

Your content marketing strategy can’t be simply reliant on just one or two types. 65 percent of people are visual learners, which means you’re overlooking a key audience if you mostly rely on text-based formats such as blog posts.
There are two important visual content types that you should incorporate into your inbound marketing strategy immediately:

• Infographics
• Videos

According to Social Media Examiner, 32 percent of marketers use visual images as a core part of their content strategy. That’s also the most popular format, with video in third place after blogging.

Infographics can break down complex topics so that key takeaways are easily digestible for readers. Plus they’re also a great way of repurposing your content so that there’s always a fresh stream.
The same applies to video.
Almost 2 billion people access YouTube every single month, with Cisco predicting that it’ll constitute 80 percent of all internet traffic by 2021.

Can you afford to miss out on this sea of traffic?

Evocative videos will not only help your SEO strategy, but they’ll also strike a chord with your target customers.
High-ranking videos on YouTube automatically pushes them up on the SERPs too. With an effective video strategy, you’re conquering two large sources of referral traffic in one fell swoop.
Not a bad approach, right?

Modify content for the ‘longtail’ through voice search

Voice-based search using smart home systems like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home is quickly becoming the hottest new category in consumer tech.
It’s not hard to see why.
Alexa alone is expected to pull in $10 billion in revenue by 2020 with an estimated 60 million devices sold next year. The estimated revenue from device sales is projected to be $5 billion and an additional $5 billion from Alexa-enabled ecommerce sales.
In fact, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches by 2020 with 40 percent of online adults engaging in the practice at least once a day.

So how do search engines rank voice results?
Google explains in its evaluation of search speech guidelines.
Similar to how it indexes text-based pages, Google will choose to showcase results on voice searches depending on how well the content answers the question being asked or meets the intent of the user.
Answers in speech-enabled devices are brief, concise, and to the point. That’s a conscious decision by Google so that there are no long and rambling results.
This means your content will have to serve those needs if it is to stand any chance of appearing in voice searches.
Incorporate simple sentence structure and vocabulary. You can start by adding an FAQ page which will address common questions and includes highly-relevant answers.
Quick tip: one great way to optimize for this is to leverage audio transcriptions for content.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive and cutthroat SEO environment it’s imperative to keep tweaking your growth strategies to stand out from the crowd.
Even the slightest bit of stasis can result in depleted rankings and a resulting loss of revenue.
Boost page speeds by compressing and optimizing the images on your site.
Add rich descriptions to their file names so that you’re setting yourself up for ranking on those keywords as well.
Experiment with different content types and keep your brand fresh and interesting. That’ll help with link building, social shares, as well as SEO.
Finally, position yourself for the next frontier of search: voice.
By effectively adopting these strategies, you’re setting yourself up for the best possible chance to rank highly.