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With over 2 million blog posts published every day, ranking on Google is getting increasingly more competitive.
Understanding SEO and targetting the right keywords is an essential. But there are also some more advanced SEO tips that bloggers can use to help them grow their blog traffic faster.
So today, I am sharing 8 advanced SEO tips for bloggers.
If you are more of an SEO newbie then I’d recommending this beginner guide to SEO first.
Right, let’s go!
1. Use infographics to secure backlinks
Unless you are a high authority site already, therefore, encouraging other sites to link back to you for added trust and authority, you’re going to need to bring something else to the table to secure backlinks.
One way to do that is to find articles with broken links and politely let site owners know and suggest one of your links as a replacement.
Another way to add a lot of value and get people wanting to give you a backlink is to create infographics. People often include infographics to demonstrate figures or back up their own content. However, creating infographics can be time consuming.
So many website owners will be happy to give you a backlink in order to use your infographics on their site.
In order to have success with this you need to create quality images and infographics. Spelling mistakes or grainy images are not going to cut it.
Ideally, your infographic would contain unique information and preferably some statistics. If you don’t have any original research of your own then you can use stats from other studies as long as you credit them as your source.
You can create infographics using Canva. They have a few templates you can use or you can create your own.
>> Get a 30 day free trial for Canva Pro <<
Your image also needs to be optimised so that it can be found. Make sure your file name, description and ALT tags clearly state the topic and the word infographic which will help people to find them.
Then make sure you post it on social media, especially Pinterest, to increase visibility. There are also infographic sites where you can submit your image along with a 100-500 word description in return for a backlink.
Some of these sites charge but there are plenty of free infographic sites if you don’t mind waiting and understand not every infographic will be accepted.
You can also find articles where your infographic could help to support the blog content and do some backlink outreach.
You could also offer to write a summary to go alongside as a mini guest post. This idea was suggested by Backlinko and coined ‘the guestographic.‘
How to create an infographic
Infographics are a great way to get backlinks, especially if you can create fresh, unique images which have the potential to go viral.
Materials
Tools
Instructions
Recommended Products
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If you want to see an infographic, scroll down to see my Frase infographic! 👇
2. Use AI tools
AI SEO tools are becoming increasingly popular and as ranking in the SERPs becomes more competitive, I believe that using artificial intelligence tools will become almost a neccessity in the future.
AI SEO tools use artifical intelligence such as natural language processing and machine learning to help bloggers create content that is so well written, it would be hard NOT to rank!
The tool I am using is Frase.
Not only does it help me find potential keywords, but it helps me build out detailed content briefs by pulling information from the SERPs, related resources and question and answer forums like Quora and Reddit. I can then scan through adding anything I think is relevant.
What would normally take a few hours to properly research a topic, takes seconds. You can then either hand this off to guest or ghost writers or start creating the content yourself.
When you switch to the creation tab and start building out your content, Frase will continually score your content against competitors suggesting places you can improve and add LSI keywords.
Frase gives all the top-performing articles in the SERPs a score based on the depth of content and topics covered, LSI keywords used etc. Your goal is to get your score higher than those ranking, preferably as close as possible to 100%!
Since using Frase, I feel my content has improved significantly. Although I’ve only been using it a month or two so it’s too soon to see the full effect, I am noticing articles written in Frase, are rising up the SERPs much faster. And thats even the case for my newer site with a domain authority of just 14.
3. Bring your internal link A game
As bloggers, we often obsess over getting backlinks but neglect our internal links.
When was the last time you went back to an old article and optimised it for internal links?
Do you have any orphaned content where there are no internal links pointing to it? Orphaned content (or content with barely any internal links) can be harmful for SEO.
So spend some time going back to edit older blog posts adding links to your newer content.
Whilst you are there, look out for content that isn’t getting any traffic, content which is outdated or thin content with minimal value.
Decide if you can revamp the content and find new ways to drive traffic back to it. If you can’t, consider deleting it or changing it to draft mode. This thin content is dragging you down my friend!
If you want an easy and convenient way to update internal links then consider investing in the Link Whisper plugin.
It will automatically find orphan content and opportunities for links, setting up those links on your behalf. Just tick a few boxes to confirm which links you approve and link whisper will do the rest for you!
You can also set up keyword phrases for internal links so that all future content is automatically linking to previous posts without you lifting a finger.
4. Target purchase intent keywords
When bloggers first start using SEO to grow their blog traffic, they often get obsessed with search volume. In fact, I know people who say they will never target any keywords with a search volume below 1000!
But in reality, savvy bloggers know that search volume does not always = more money.
Instead, start considering the purchase intent behind keywords. Do they indicate that someone might be getting ready to purchase something?
This is a great opportunity to earn significant affiliate income.
Let me give you an example, I have an article on my travel site about a Peru hiking trip for which the keyword I targeted had a search volume of just 20. It gets fewer than 75 page views a month for a handful of low volume keywords.
However, that article generated $2400 affiliate profit in 18 months.
Why?
Because it was a review and when someone types + review into a search engine, they are showing that they are very close to being ready to purchase.
Choose keywords which show user intent like..
Product A review
Product A vs Product B
Is Product A worth it?
Product A alternatives
How to… (where your affiliate product is part of the solution.)
My favourite keyword research tool is Keysearch. It’s affordable but also powerful. You can get 20% off using my link and the coupon code KSDISC.
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a website which connects reporters with sources for quotes and interviews.
Responding to HARO requests in your niche can be a great way to get very high authority links from sites like Forbes or Buzzfeed.
When you sign up, you need to select which newsletter to subscribe to. HARO emails then come out 3 times a day and you need to react quickly and submit responses asap (preferably under an hour from delivery) to stand a chance of getting featured.
Remember that reporters using HARO are working to a strict deadline and will get hundreds of responses. So you need to make it as easy as possible for them if you want them to use your contribution.
That means emailing back with a full response.
I’d also recommend including
Also make sure you set up Google alerts for your business name as many journalists wont get back to you to let you know if you were successful! It can also take several weeks or months until the article gets published.
6. Address your E.A.T score
EAT stands for Expertise, Authority and Trust and refers to factors search engines will analyse on your site before determining your SERP position.
This is especially important in certain niches where accuracy is vital and misinformation could be dangerous e.g. health, legal or finance niches.
Ways to optimise your site for EAT
List your education, qualifications, awards, experience and accreditations in your author bio.
Make sure you have an easy way for your readers to contact you.
Make sure legal pages and your ‘about’ page is kept updated.
Make sure your content is factual correct and update it periodically.
Make sure you have an SSL certificate.
Keep your grammar and spelling accurate.
Gain authority backlinks, reviews and references.
Link from your content to other authority resources.
Hire experts to create content for your site or interview experts.
7. Optimise your content for voice search
Optimising for voice search is getting increasingly more important. A study by PWC showed that 65% of those ages 25-49 used voice search on a voice-enabled device at least once a day. That’s HUGE!
Therefor, when constructing articles, keep this in mind.
I try to include an FAQ section in every article where relevant. This is a great opportunity to write a short, succinct response to commonly asked questions which may help you get a featured snippet and therefore increase click-throughs to your blog.
You can use question and answer sites like Quora or Reddit to find out what questions people are asking. Another great way is to type your keyword into Google and see what questions show up on ‘people also ask.’
8. Apply Schema markups
Schema markups are a type of metadata which is added to a website or webpage that helps search engines to work out what type of content it is.
This helps specific information show up differently in specific types of searches.
Say for example you research the name of a film. Have you noticed how Google will bring up local cinema times, information about the cast and reviews? That’s entertainment and local based schema both in action!
There are various types of schema markup. Those which will be most relevant to bloggers include
By adding schema markup to your website and to your blog posts, you increase your chances of showing up in the snippets.
There are various ways you can do this. If you are tech savvy, you can add your own HTML. But chances are, if you are not a developer, you would prefer an easier way to do this?
The good news is that there are several ways.
If you use Gutenberg, you will find a couple of schema block options including reviews, how-to guides and FAQ schema markup.
If you use the Yoast plugin, you will also find that Yoast has its own blocks for how to guides and FAQs.
I’d recommend trying out both to see which style you prefer.
You can also get various other plugins which add other types of markup. For example, I also use the Create plugin by Mediavine.
Create currently offers 3 types of schema markup
The Create plugin also has a stylish way of displaying this structured data making it visually appealing for readers. Whereas the in-built Gutenberg blocks provide very little in terms of style.
There are also WordPress themes with Schema built in!
How many of these advanced SEO tips for blogs were you using? Let us know if you discovered anything new in the comments!
If you found this blog post helpful, can you do a fellow blogger a favour and pin this article to Pinterest? Thanks a million!
