The 8-Step SEO Strategy for Higher Rankings

Key Takeaways

in this video I'm gonna walk you through my entire eight step SEO strategy step by step in fact this is the exact strategy that I used to rank on the first page of Google for competitive keywords like on-page SEO video SEO keyword research tools and thousands of others now I should warn you this video isn't going to be a bunch of high-level fluff instead everything I'm about to show you is gonna be super tactical and actionable keep watching let's face it SEO can be hard and it's even harder when you read the same advice over and over again you know the stuff I'm talking about optimize your title tags share your content on social media publish great content o publish great content I didn't think of that and hey this advice isn't completely useless but it's not gonna rocket your site to the top of Google why because everyone with a website is following the exact same advice sort of rank above them you need to do something completely different which is exactly what I'm going to walk you through right now starting with step number one find an opportunity keyword an opportunity keyword is like a regular keyword but better I'll explain you probably noticed that Google's first page is packed with more stuff than ever before for example take a look at the first page for this keyword you've got a bunch of ads above the fold a featured snippet a questions box and news results which is exactly why now I focus almost a hundred percent on opportunity keywords so what are opportunity keywords opportunity keywords are keywords with a high organic click-through rate in other words they're terms that don't have a bunch of stuff on the first page that distracts people from the organic results let's look at an example a while ago I created a page of my site optimized around the keyword SEO checklist and as it turns out SEO checklist is an opportunity keyword yep there are a few ads on the page but that's not really a big deal it's actually in a way a good thing because it shows that people are bidding on that keyword in Google Ads other than that the first page is pretty clean which means the focus is on the organic results nice bottom-line look at the search results before picking a keyword if it's packed with stuff consider going for an opportunity keyword that's gonna get you more clicks with that let's move on to step number two check out the content competition okay so you found an opportunity keyword what's next well most people whip open WordPress and start writing but that's actually a huge mistake in fact that's what I used to do back in the day I'd write something that I think would rank in Google today I know better today I analyzed the first page results to see what's already working in other words my content competition and once I figure out the type of content that Google wants to see for that keyword then I start creating content for example look at the first page results for the keyword paleo desserts as you can see the results are lists of dessert recipes so if you want it to rank for that keyword you wouldn't want to write a blog post like what makes a dessert paleo or not instead you'd want to post that lists out a bunch of recipes how about another example one of my most important keywords is actually keyword research and back in the day when I looked at the content that was ranking for that term I noticed that they didn't list out tips or strategies for finding keywords instead they were all huge guides so I decided to create a guide that covered pretty much everything there is to know about keyword research which helped me crack the top three for this super competitive term with that it's time for our third step create content that's different or better when it comes to creating content for SEO you have two main options option number one you can create something different option number two is to create something better I'll explain most of the time you want to publish something that's just way better than what's already out there but sometimes it makes more sense to create something completely unique for example a few months ago I found the opportunity keyword mobile SEO and when I looked at the content competition I noticed that most of the results were list posts like nine ways to off my site for mobile now it could have created a giant list post like a hundred and fifty ways to mobile optimize your site but that wouldn't make any sense in this case it made more sense to create something different so that's what I did I spent two weeks writing this ultimate guide to mobile optimization and because my content was completely different than was already out there it really stood out which led to tons of shares on social media backlinks and Google rankings like I mentioned earlier you can also just create something that straight up better than what's already out there for example a while back I wanted to rank for the keyword SEO tools and when I looked at the content that was already ranking I noticed that most of them were lists of about twenty to thirty tools now I could have created my own list of twenty the best SEO tools but I know that that would just blend in so I decided to create something way better specifically I published this complete list of SEO tools over a hundred and eighty and all it took about six weeks to test all these tools it was kind of insane but at the end of the day that post did really well in fact it now ranks in the top three from my main keyword SEO tools which leads us to step number four add your hook this is an advanced SEO strategy so if you're new to SEO you might want to skip this step with that out of the way here's how it works you probably already know that in general pages with the most backlinks ranked highest in Google but how do you get people to link to you here's a simple two-step process step number one figure out why people link to content in your industry aka the hook step number two include that hook in your content for example last year I noticed that more and more marketing blogs were publishing content about voice search and when I read that content I noticed something super interesting hmm that's interesting when people wrote about voice search they almost always cited stats and data and when they mentioned a stat they linked to the source bingo so I created a post about voice search that was packed with bite-sized stats so how did it go according to AHS my post has been linked to thousands of times and if you look at those individual links most of them reference a specific step from my post now data is one type of hook that you can use here are three others that are working really well right now first up we have unique techniques think about it what a blogs and news sites love to cover new stuff and when you create something new you've got yourself a hook for example a few years ago I created a new strategy called guess toe graphics because guess toe graphics was a new approach that no one had heard of before my post that first talked about the strategy racked up a ton of links the next hook is to position your content as an ultimate guide this is actually one of my favorite hooks why because it's really straightforward in fact when you publish a massive guide your guide itself is the hook let's take a look at a real-life example a few years ago I published this definitive guide to backlinks now in my opinion this is the most comprehensive guide to backlinks out there in fact the fact that my post covers everything there is to know about that topic is the hook for example once in a while a blogger will mention the concept of backlinks in their post but they're not going to dive deep into a full explanation right in the middle of their post so they link to my guide as a way for their readers to learn more our last hook is to include results from case studies in your content in my experience case studies are one of the easiest hooks that you can use and all you need to do is feature one result in your case study this is a lesson that I had to learn the hard way for example a few years ago I published this case study post on my blog in this case study featured a ton of results some were about traffic somewhere about social shares and other stats were related to email subscribers and all these stats meant that my case study lacked that single hook that would make someone want a link to it and that's one of the reasons that my posts struggled to get links on the bright side I did learn a valuable lesson from that post if you want people to link to your case study you need to feature one specific result so when I publish this case study about a year later I made sure to really zero in on one specific result a seven hundred and eighty five percent increase in conversion rate and because that post has a single hook it gets linked to you all the time and now it's time for step number five optimize your sites on page SEO there's a lot that goes into optimize your content for SEO so instead of covering every single SEO technique on the planet I'm gonna focus on two strategies that are working really well right now the first strategy is to use short URLs when my team and I analyzed a million Google results we found a clear correlation between short URLs and higher Google rankings so if your urls tend to be super long cut them down so they're nice and short now to be clear I don't recommend going back and changing your existing URLs because that can do more harm than good instead just make your new URLs short and sweet for example my URLs are usually just my keyword or my main keyword plus a word before or after it next up we have internal linking yup internal links still work but you have to do it right specifically you want to link from high authority pages on your site to pages that you want to rank those internal links will send authority to the pages that you want to rank which can give them a nice rankings boost for example last year I published this post on my site and because the post was brand new it had absolutely zero Authority so I went over to this post for my site that lots of people had already linked to and added an internal link to my new post that's all there is to it with that let's jump right into step six the skyscraper technique 2.0 now you might have already heard of the skyscraper technique a content marketing and SEO approach that went viral a few years ago now the original skyscraper technique is pretty cool but it doesn't cover something that's super important for ranking in Google today search intent search intent is what a Google search or is looking for when they perform a search and the bed your content matches their intent the higher you'll rank let's look at how this works with a quick example when I first started my blog I wrote this post about getting more traffic and in general this posted pretty well in terms of social shares and comments but no matter what I did it wouldn't rank for any keyword including my main keyword increase website traffic and one day it hit me my page didn't match the search intent for that keyword I'll explain most of the content on Google's first page for increased website traffic were bite-sized traffic tips and strategies in other words they were list posts my content it was a high-level strategy post people that searched for my keyword didn't want a high level four step process they wanted a list of bite-sized strategies so I decided to rewrite my content from scratch specifically I rewrote my content to better match search intent so I turned this high-level process into a 27-point list post in this single change boosted that pages organic traffic by 70.4% nice with that it's time for one of my favorite topics content design in my experience your content design can make or break your SEO imagine that you just wrote the best post ever written but it looks like this well no one in their right mind is going to link to that page and Google searchers that see an ugly page like that they're gonna bounce back to the search results that's why I personally spent a lot of time money and energy on content design I've already mentioned a few of my definitive guides in this video in my opinion these custom guides look really nice and they do really well but each guide is custom designed and custom coded which makes them really expensive to make so if you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on every single guide that you publish no worries here are three simple ways that you can make your content look awesome first up we have images screenshots and pictures I use a ton of screenshots and images in every post for example this single post has over 75 images next you can make your content look aye sir with blog post banners post banners are those custom made images that go at the top of your post now sometimes I use a 220 by 220 pixel image in my intro and sometimes I go with a giant banner finally we have charts and visuals not only the charts and visuals look really cool but they help people understand complicated stuff from your post and they don't need to be super fancy or expensive to work for example in this article I explained how every version of your site should redirect to the same URL now it's kind of hard to picture this idea in your head only with text so I hired a graphic designer to make this simple visual and now it's time for our last step step number 8 build backlinks so you just publish an awesome piece of content on your site a piece of content that has a hook and it's also optimized for search intent so what's next it's time to build links to that page here's how first use something called the content Roadshow this strategy is all about getting your content in front of the right people who are the right people people that run blogs in your industry with that here's exactly how the content Roadshow works a few years ago I wrote a case study about the skyscraper technique and to get the word out I found people that recently shared content on that topic on Twitter and I sent each of these people a personalized version of this outreach script notice how I'm not being a pushy jerkface I'm just offering to send them a link to my post and I sent this simple email to anyone that replied to my first message and this simple technique led to me a ton of social shares from authority bloggers next you want to use broken link building this strategy is pretty simple first find a broken link on someone's website then picture content as a replacement for the dead link for example a while back I wanted to build links to this giant list of SEO tools that I published on my site so I found broken links on marketing blogs and sent the people that ran those blogs a simple outreach email and because I helped a person out before I even asked for anything they were happy to add my now before in this video it's time for a quick bonus strategy encourage comments and community a few years ago a Google employee made waves when he said that comments can help your Google rankings personally I think he meant that comments a community can indirectly help your rankings for example people that feel like they're part of your site's community are gonna be more likely to share and link to your stuff either way I've found a clear correlation between comments and rankings so how do you get more people to leave comments one thing that's really helped me is to reply to every comment that I get I see lots of people complaining that no one comments on their blog posts but when I do look at their blog they don't even bother to reply to the few comments that come in the truth is if you want to build a community on your site you gotta reply to comments in fact I just did the math on this last I checked we have about 25 thousand comments on the backlinko blog and about half of those are me replying to people and I have zero regrets about replying to so many comments why well these replies show that I care about their thoughts and comments which turns random people into loyal members of the backlinko community so that's it for my 8 step SEO strategy did you learn something new from today's video if so make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel right now and if you want exclusive SEO and traffic techniques that I only share with subscribers head over to Becca lucam and hop on the newsletter it's free now I want to turn it over to you which strategy from today's video are you gonna use first are you gonna try broken link building or maybe you're ready to start replying to comments let me know by leaving a comment below right now I always a good old-fashioned facepalm not good I'm shiny again option 1 so that's it for my app