12 Advanced SEO Tips

SEO is the one thing digital marketing cannot do without. It is indispensable for lifting rankings and winning traffic.

But how much do you know about the advanced practices that go beyond the classic ones?

For anyone who wants new tactics to raise their standing in search, I have gathered useful SEO tips that will work whatever your industry.

Let's begin.

1. Long-tail keywords

We all know SEO rests on keyword usage. If you use short, generic search terms your results will suffer. The better practice is to use long-tail keywords when choosing your titles. Because those terms are narrower, you can produce more effective content — and given the lower competition, your odds improve. Instead of "seo tips", try "best seo tips".

2. Modifiers in the article title

Small additions to your titles will earn better results in search. The most common modifiers are:

• E-book
• Guide
• Best X
• Reviews
• Year (e.g. Best SEO tips 2017)
• PDF

3. Merge your old posts

The days when a 300-word blog post could rank are, sadly, behind us. Short, low-quality content can hurt how search engines score your site. These days around 1,000 words is the sensible target. Merge your old short posts into one comprehensive piece.

4. Borrow readers from an author's audience

Having your brand mentioned on the leading sites in your industry is a great way to get noticed. You can ask writers with large audiences to write for your brand. Showing that you have a professional relationship with a well-known figure in your field boosts your brand's credibility.

5. Clean up the harmful links pointing at your site

Not every backlink is a good one. Go through your link profile, find the links that could be read as spam, and clean them up. Moz Open Site Explorer will help.

6. Keep watching your competitors

Your competitors may be producing popular content you have not noticed. You can turn that into an advantage by reaching out to the people creating content in your sector. To make that monitoring genuinely useful, take a look at this Kissmetrics article.

7. Remove duplicate content

If you have a large site — especially a large e-commerce site — you probably have a lot of duplicate content. It can seriously damage your SEO. Try to edit, merge or delete those pages. Here is a helpful resource.

8. Get rid of low-performing pages

Many e-commerce sites carry low-performing pages. They are worthless to you and to users, and they hurt your SEO. Deleting them is usually the best move.

9. Prefer fast, simple headlines

Internet users do not have long attention spans. To pull searchers to your site you can use words such as "fast", "simple" and "effective" in your headlines. They signal that your content will hand over the needed information in the shortest time.

10. Use multimedia consistently

Using photos, video and graphics in your content pays off. It is an excellent way to attract traffic and raise engagement. Sites that produce original images and video rank higher.

11. Use LSI keywords

LSI keywords are the long-tail terms related to your main keywords. Including the words that appear in related searches helps Google understand your content better.

12. Use bulleted lists

Content laid out as bullets and step-by-step instructions performs well. Users reach the information they came for more easily. And Google can display that information at the top of the results (Google snippets), which sends a flood of traffic your way.

Use these advanced tips and you too can pull traffic to your site, blog or brand — and start to see the return on that investment grow.