The digital marketing game has changed a lot throughout the years. Ten years ago, webmasters were spamming keywords on their pages because Google was not able to “catch” them. Ten years ago, digital marketing was way less complicated than it is today.
What happened? Well, the marketplace is evolving and the webmasters too. Nowadays, the smartest webmasters and marketers strive to find the latest methods and updates that only a few other marketers are pursuing. Google is constantly making updates to its algorithms, it adds new features frequently, and it makes us all wonder what should we optimize next.
In today’s post, we’ve decided to share 4 SEO strategies that happen to be extremely underrated at the current moment. Use these strategies now, as soon as you can, and you’ll benefit from what most won’t: extra ranking signals and an accelerated website growth.
Schema Markup
Schema.org or Schema is a particular type of vocabulary tags which can be inserted into your HTML code. The purpose is to help search engines better represent your page in the SERPs.
Schema markup will change the way your website is displayed on the first page of Google. For example:
No schema:
Schema markup:
As you can see, with Schema implemented, your website will be better understood by the SERPS, therefore it’ll gain an extra information box that will help search users immediately scan your brand.
Implementing schema markup is now easier than ever. Here are the benefits it’ll bring:
- When you bid on your brand’s name, your paid advertising costs will be reduced.
- Searchers will immediately remark your brand’s name. Therefore, you gain extra brand awareness.
- The SERP will be “filled” with your name. Therefore, it’ll be hard for other brands to “steal away” your searchers.
How can you implement it?
Well, the easiest way to do it is by using Google Search Console. Take advantage of the Data Highlighter feature and you’ll never have to touch any code. There are more options you might consider, such as Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator and Schema.org’s Organization Markup.
Once you’ve implemented it, make sure that you’ve done it properly. Test it using the Structured Data Testing Tool – also a tool developed by Google itself.
301 Redirects
Every time you’re removing content from your website, your URLs will either change, or they will be left broken. That’s a big problem, as Google is no big fan of broken links. A bad link means a bad experience for the user, so that’ll automatically classify you as a “careless” platform.
In order to stay away from such problems, you should leverage the so-called “301 Redirects”. By creating all the needed redirects, your website visitors will not have trouble accessing links. Also, you must periodically search for page errors. Whenever you find any, write 301 redirects in order to solve those errors.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
User experience is already a popular topic among digital marketers, and it’ll continue to be so because that’s what the big players are also looking for. Google, for example, the biggest search engine, stated their desire to make the web more mobile-friendly while also focusing on speed.
In other words, if your website loads fast on both mobile and desktop, Google will favor you. Unless you miss these criteria, you might lose your rankings or at least be disadvantaged in rapport with your competition.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is basically a tool for webmasters. It allows the creation and optimization of websites and advertisements. It makes them work fast, it allows them to perform perfectly on any device, and it makes the entire experience better for the user. Getting started with AMP is no rocket science but it’s not easy either. As Sharon Hooper, webmaster at BestEssays stated: “By making pages of my personal blog AMP-friendly, I’ve seen a huge rise in mobile visits. AMP actually works great for Google ranking”.
Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio is the tool which helps you turn your overall data into informative and specific dashboards and reports. The purpose is to help you analyze your organic stats in the simplest way possible, so you can come up with optimization ideas and implementations.
With Google Console, you’re frequently limited. You can’t see all the data you want. Moreover, even if you see it, you can’t really manipulate it. You can’t give it the easy shape that you need in order to better judge the optimizations required. Just use Data Studio and these problems will be gone.
Takeaways
Search engine optimization is probably the most complex way of acquiring traffic. Ranking your website, moving it to the 1st position in the SERP, and making sure that it stays there is surely challenging. But I guess that you know that already.
Have you used these underrated SEO strategies yet? If you did, how well they performed? Make sure to leave a comment in the section below and let us know of the problems and the setbacks you’ve encountered while optimizing.
Article by Warren
Warren is a marketing enthusiast and a blogger at Edugeeksclub, who loves music. If he doesn’t have a guitar in his hands, he’s probably embracing new technologies and marketing techniques online! You can follow him on Twitter.
