3 Lesser-Known SEO Tips Marketers Should Use

Even the most oblivious SEO noobs already know about the importance of finding the right keywords to try and rank for, doing some on-site SEO and being smart about guest posting.

However, SEO is much more than that and even people who have been in the industry for a while can learn a new trick or two if they know where to look. Today, we are making this article the place to look, featuring a couple of lesser-known SEO tips that can help marketers take their efforts to a new level.

Learn About Latent Semantic Indexing

Latent semantic indexing sounds like a complex concept and it really is. It is an alternative name for latent semantic analysis, which is an important part of natural language processing, one of the big technological challenges for modern computers and scientists.

While the more scientific aspect of LSI and LSA require some serious education and expertise, when we are talking Google, LSI comes down to identifying words and phrases that hold the same semantic meaning as your keywords and keyphrases, despite the fact they are nowhere similar in form.

Google uses these semantic similarities to ensure that your content is bona fide or if it has simply been manufactured for SEO purposes. If the analysis of your content reveals that semantically similar words and phrases are used, then everything is okay.

The good news is that identifying these semantically similar words and phrases requires no serious science. When you do the search for your intended keywords or phrases, you will find these similar ones at the bottom of the Google’s result page, under “Searches related to”.

Another piece of good news is that if you have been creating content in a natural and value-heavy way, you have already been using these semantically similar words and phrases without even realizing it.

If, for some reason, you haven’t, here is your chance to do it.

Keep Sitelinks In Mind

The easiest way to define sitelinks is to simply show what they are. So, without further ado, these are sitelinks:

They are links to pages other than your homepage that are displayed when someone searches for the name of your company or a keyword or phrase that your brand revolves around.

Sitelinks provide the brand with more space on the search engine result page, it gives air of credibility to the brand (since only first results get to have sitelinks) and it helps visitors have a more streamlined experience on your website which can lead to faster conversions.

Sitelinks are generated automatically by Google and there is little point in trying to “hack” them. The best course of action is to go natural and organic by:

• having a unique brand name,
• being smart about the domain name,
• building your website with a clear hierarchy and structure,
• linking internally, and
• creating a sitemap that helps Google crawl your website.

Do Your Competitor Research the Smart Way

Even the most basic SEO practice will involve some competitor research. Every company will have at least one competitor battling for the same market in the same location and trying to beat them online will involve analyzing their backlinks (among other things) and finding out what they are doing.

However, you can always take this to another level and gain much more insight into the reason why they are ahead of you (in case they are ahead of you) or why they are closing in on you.

For instance, you can start regularly checking the activity of your competitors when it comes to their top keywords. This will let you know if they started targeting more of the same keywords you are targeting and it will also help you find out if they had any particular success with one or more of the keywords. If they had, this is the right time to try and figure out what they had been doing right.

You will also want to check your competitors’ social engagement and find out which of their content garnered the most attention over the previous period of time. This is a great way to discover which kind of content gets organic attention and traffic and you might get quite a few ideas by doing this.

While staying on top of your existing competitors (your traditional nemeses, so to say), you will also want to make sure that you stay in the loop when it comes to new companies popping up. Just as you once entered the market and started battling for position, so do other people with their companies.

You have to stay on your toes and make sure you are not losing position to a fresh, hungry competitor.

Closing Word

One of the most beautiful things about SEO is that you never know everything and there is always something new to pick up.

Hope you had the pleasure of doing exactly that today.

Nate Vickrey is a marketing consultant and an online author mostly focused on internet marketing for startups and SMBs. He is an editor on Bizzmarkblog.com an a contributor on many other business and marketing related websites, including Avex Designs. You can check out Nate’s work and contact him on Twitter at @NateMVickery.