Bell-bottoms, fidget spinners and Beanie Babies: Fads come and go, but when it comes to SEO, your site shouldn’t be rooted in nostalgia. Check out these old school vs. next generation SEO tactics to see if your strategy is stuck in a time warp or ready to soar through the web at warp speed.
- Old school: Keyword stuffing and trophy search terms.
Next-gen SEO: Incorporating mid- and low-volume keywords into your strategy. Focus on naturally incorporating relevant keywords and related terms that complement the content and optimize your meta description. High-volume, short-tail keywords — such as “cars” — can bring awareness and traffic to your site, but only about 3% might actually convert. Instead, incorporate a mix of highly relevant mid- and low-volume long-tail keywords that reflect greater search intent — such as “luxury sedans with advanced safety features” to better target your key audience and boost your conversion rate.
- Old school: Creating content geared toward search engines instead of real users.
Next-gen SEO: Writing for people. Search engines can lead online visitors to you, but the customer is the one in the driver’s seat. Achieve higher rankings by prioritizing high-quality content that your audience will “EAT up,” which according to Google means it conveys expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (EAT).
- Old school: Low-quality content that prioritizes quantity over quality.
Next-gen SEO: Comprehensive, high-quality content. Instead of pushing hollow, keyword-saturated content just to get something up on your site, focus on quality content that answers users’ questions and leverages expertise and insights that your demographic craves. That’s the type of content Google aims to reward, per the “helpful content” update made to its search engine algorithm at the end of last year. Rather than word count, it’s about the quality and value you deliver to your audience.
- Old school: The outdated practice of excessive link exchanges with other websites.
Next-gen SEO: Earned backlinks. If you want your page to remain credible, then the links that you’re associated with should be credible too. Create quality content that others will naturally want to link to and manually reach out for guest blogging or partnership opportunities in order to gain high-quality backlinks.
- Old school: One-size-fits-all SEO that focuses only on the desktop version of your site.
Next-gen SEO: Mobile-first indexing. Make mobile optimization a top priority in your marketing strategy. Google factors mobile content into its indexing and ranking, and more than 83% of visitors come from mobile devices. Here are a few additional ways to optimize your site:
- Localized SEO: Target your audience in a specific geographic area.
- Voice search for SEO: Optimize for voice search by visitors using the microphone on their mobile device for their queries.
- Zero-click SEO: Incorporate techniques such as focusing on local SEO and implementing schema markup to help users find the answers they’re looking for with zero clicks. This could be in the form of a featured snippet, image, video or direct answer that appears at the top of the page.
- Accessibility optimization: Implement strategies such as intuitive site navigation, alt-text for images and transcriptions for multimedia content to make your website more accessible and inclusive. Not only does this cater to a broader audience, but it also significantly aligns with many top-tier SEO practices.
Win at SEO: The Future Is Now at Kymera
Unlike the leisure suit, SEO isn’t going out of style anytime soon. But the way to win at it is constantly evolving and changing. Contact Kymera and let our digital marketing specialists fast-forward your SEO from the Stone Age to the Space Age.
Sources
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/enterprise-boost-seo-roi-resultfirst-spa/481998/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-eat/what-is-it/#close
