Advanced SEO Explained: How to Outrank Competitors with Strategy

Successful blogs usually have good Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That is very important for organic traffic, especially when attracting people who are interested in what you have to offer besides blog posts. However, it is not easy to rank high in search engines, including Google. After all, every competitor knows about SEO too, and they use it as well. It is a very common belief that 75% of users never go beyond the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP). A 2021 study suggests that the figure may be close to 97%, in fact. The best solution is to use advanced SEO strategies. We will talk about them today. 

What Is Advanced SEO?

Advanced SEO requires paying more attention to technical details and algorithms. It is more strategic and data-driven than regular SEO. However, it still needs the basics like good, well-structured content, internal links, and keywords. So if you know how to do basic SEO, you already have the knowledge helpful to advanced SEO.

Google (and other search engines) uses algorithms to deliver the information that users need and want. Advanced SEO helps you show that your blog, indeed, provides that information. Here is how to do that.

How to Publish Right?

The main key to successful SEO is high-quality online content. It is best if you write about something you know very well as an expert. Alternatively, consider interviewing experts for your high-quality blog posts. If someone wants to share what you have written, there will be more organic traffic. That also increases the likelihood of backlinks. Expert opinions and reports are especially important for a modern business, including small businesses.

In this regard, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness or E-E-A-T is crucial to consider. These parameters help Google understand what search results are most likely to be helpful to a user. Create helpful content, and your blog will receive more attention from users.

Regular publishing is also important. Your content needs to be fresh. For that, go back to your older posts and update them. Use new information, more relevant titles and meta descriptions, as well as new pictures and other media. With a new date of publication (if applicable), you can cause your text to rank higher.

Select important keywords that you can write about. Link pages together when they cover similar topics. Consider choosing “evergreen” themes: ones that will remain relevant for years to come. And then, still make sure to update those pages every now and then. Even evergreen topics change and evolve.

Good SEO starts with understanding your audience.

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Important Pages

Aside from the blog posts, your blog will probably have hub pages. You can call them “category” pages. They will link your posts together, making the navigation easier and allowing users to find what they are looking for. Additionally, it is a good idea to include landing pages, which can lead to specific posts or even products to buy. Use intent-based keywords to optimize both these types of pages, and they will bring you organic traffic. How to use keywords? Let’s find out!

Advanced SEO for Keywords

Keywords are important for any type of SEO. Researching keywords is crucial. You should also use them meaningfully. It is imperative not to spam them because that would limit your position in rankings. 

Long-tail keywords are very useful. They are typically longer, and they are searched by users with a notable intent to convert. A lot of services can help you find long-tail keywords; however, they are generally not helpful in determining the intent of your potential buyer. And it is the intent that matters. 

For example, a buyer who is studying the differences between two products would need a different type of content than one who has already decided what to buy. It is your responsibility to give people what they need and want based on the intent behind the keywords.

Links: Internal and Backlinks

Links are important both for advanced SEO and its less technical version. However, advanced SEO means more intent behind links. Take internal links; even basic SEO requires including those in your content. However, for advanced SEO, you need to use those strategically. Connect your content in such a manner that it produces clusters of useful materials. This way, a search engine will be, in a way, “aware” of the structure of your website and the path a user would take through it. The most important pages should have the most links pointing at them. 

Backlinks, that is, links from other resources, are also very useful. In fact, it can be argued that they are more important for search engines than internal links. They prove your authority to Google. However, in advanced SEO, it is always pointed out that a backlink should be of high quality. 

You determine the quality of a backlink based on the reputation of the website that links back to you. It must be a valuable and, if possible, niche website. You can achieve backlinks by making guest posts, simply creating content that people want to link, or offering to replace broken links with your own materials. You can also use services like Ahrefs to learn where your competitors place their backlinks. Then, you can emulate their behavior.

Advanced SEO and Featured Snippets

The “Position 0” is a very good place to be for a website. That is where the featured snippet appears right on top of all search results. It is meant to respond to the user’s inquiry. Google reports that its systems automatically determine which page to use for a snippet. However, you can learn if you have snippets with the help of tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. You can encourage Google’s systems to read your content correctly through structured data and schema markup. In addition, take a look at the AI Overview, which is a very recent feature for Google. Getting there would also be great, and it can be done through the same methods.

Loading Speed: It Matters for Pages

Modern clients are not very patient. Generally, users want their pages to load fast, and Google knows it. As a result, pages with slow load speed get lower rankings.

A good monitoring tool to determine the speed of your pages is Google PageSpeed Insights. It is a little technical, and you might need a specialist to make real use of the resource.

Solutions to slow page loading speed include compressing images, as well as resizing them where possible. You can also use newer image formats like WebP for better loading speed. Additionally, you can enable browser caching, as well as check the code and reduce the use of JavaScript. Overall, it is possible to make your pages load faster, improving your rankings.

Advanced SEO and Mobile Friendliness

SEO needs to take into account the different sizes of the screens in use. After all, mobile traffic is a substantial portion of all the traffic your website is going to receive. The exact number depends on numerous factors, including the sector in question. However, it is not unusual for mobile traffic to be greater than that from desktop devices. Google in particular uses mobile information to determine the ranking of your website. Fortunately, Google offers its Lighthouse to help you learn how your website performs on mobile.

Some of the things you can do to improve mobile friendliness include:

• responsive or adaptive design;
• legible text regardless of the size of the screen;
• convenient elements (for example, buttons that are easy to tap and pop-ups that do not cover essential information).

Learning More About Advanced SEO: Crawling 

Google crawling involves Google discovering, visiting, and processing pages before adding them to its index so that they can later be ranked. One thing people do not always know about Google crawling their pages is that there is a budget. 

In other words, it is very important not to have duplicate and outdated pages because Google might crawl them and then stop, without taking care of the really important pages. You can avoid that by building a very sound website architecture. Internal links can help here by connecting to the most important pages. Also, submit your sitemap to Google Search Console — and do it regularly, since your website is going to be changing constantly. But updating your blog is good since it shows search engines that your website is not abandoned. 

Additional Advice

• Use paid ads. Paid ads are a good idea, especially when you are just starting out. They can also be used to augment your organic traffic campaign. Paid ads result in an immediate traffic surge — you just need to be able to keep that traffic with your optimized pages. It is recommended to create paid ads for the best-performing posts that are also well-optimized. They are your best work, and they have the most chance of bringing traffic in the long-term.
• Employ social media. Use social media to bring in traffic to your blog by posting excerpts or otherwise advertising your posts. Social media is very popular nowadays, and it is a great advertising platform.
• Consider using emails. Certain limitations can apply — in particular, make sure that you have the permission of the recipients to send them emails. But emails are generally good for a business to promote its content, including blogs.
• You can use animations to enhance your posts. Just remember that videos and even GIFs can be slow to load. So compress them and use them sparingly. 
• Structured data and schema markup are a little complicated, but they are easier to use due to tools by Google.
• You need to continuously monitor the performance of your blog. Screaming Frog, Google Analytics and Google Search Console are the tools meant to help you keep up with changes in the Google algorithm. It may be a good idea to have an SEO audit every month.
• Study your competitors. Here, use tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. You can learn a lot about their keywords and backlinks, as well as their best-performing materials. You can follow their example or see the opportunities they have missed.

In Conclusion

Advanced SEO is a strategic, data-driven endeavor, which can help you direct traffic toward your blog. This type of SEO still uses links and keywords, and it still needs good content, mobile friendliness and fast page loading. However, it also takes into account more technical aspects of search engines’ ranking your website. SEO is not static. It changes, which is why your website should change with it. So make sure that you monitor your blog’s performance and react accordingly.