11 Advanced SEO Tips

Advanced SEO tips are 11 practices that go beyond classic SEO to lift rankings and traffic. SEO is the one thing digital marketing cannot do without. It is necessary 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. Your results will suffer if you use short, generic search terms. The better practice is to use long-tail keywords when choosing your titles. Because long-tail keywords are narrower, you can produce more effective content. Given the lower competition, your odds improve. Instead of "seo tips", try "best seo tips".

Google Keyword Planner in Google Ads suggests new keywords with search estimates, which makes it a source of long-tail candidates. The long-tail queries your site already earns impressions for appear in the Search Console Performance report. My article on the Search Console BigQuery export shows how to get past that report's 1,000-row limit.

Keyword stuffing goes against Google's spam policies. Per Google's SEO Starter Guide, a page that varies its wording naturally, instead of chasing a keyword density, has more chances to show up for more queries.

2. Modifiers in the article title

Small additions to your titles will earn better results in search. The six 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. My post on Google's May quality updates covers the 2017 quality update and how Google judges content quality today. When I wrote this article in 2017, around 1,000 words was seen as the sensible target. Merge your old short posts into one comprehensive piece. Update (October 2026): Google's SEO Starter Guide states that there is no minimum or maximum word count target for ranking.

4. Borrow readers from an author's audience

Having your brand mentioned on the leading sites in your industry gets you noticed by their readers. 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.

Writing as a guest author on another site, known as guest blogging, is part of off-page SEO. Google's spam policies list links with anchor text tuned for rankings in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites as link spam.

5. Clean up the harmful links pointing at your site

Not every backlink pointing at your site 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. Update (October 2026): Moz's Open Site Explorer address now redirects to its Link Explorer tool. Google states that most sites will not need its disavow links tool, because in most cases it can assess which links to trust on its own.

Google uses links as a signal of how relevant a page is and to find new pages to crawl. Buying or selling links for ranking purposes and excessive link exchanges count as link spam under Google's spam policies.

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. Update (October 2026): the Kissmetrics blog address now redirects to neilpatel.com/blog, and the article no longer opens at its old address.

7. Remove duplicate content

You probably have duplicate content on many pages if you have a large site, especially a large e-commerce site. Duplicate content can seriously damage your SEO. Try to edit, merge or delete those pages. Here is a helpful resource.

For merging, see my article on canonical tag best practices. Update (October 2026): Google's SEO Starter Guide says the same content under multiple URLs is inefficient but does not cause a manual action. Copying others' content is a different story.

8. Get rid of low-performing pages

Low-performing pages turn up on e-commerce sites. 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

Fast, simple headlines work because 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

Consistent use of multimedia such as photos, video and graphics in your content pays off. Multimedia helps to attract traffic and raise engagement. Sites that produce original images and video rank higher.

11. Use bulleted lists

Content laid out as bullets and step-by-step instructions performs well. Users reach the information they came for more easily. Google can display that information at the top of the results (Google snippets), which can send traffic your way. Update (October 2026): Google calls this area a featured snippet and explains it in its featured snippets guide.

Which advanced technical SEO checks matter?

Advanced technical SEO checks cover three areas: how Google understands a page, how it indexes the mobile version, and how fast the page responds.

Structured data and rich results

Structured data is markup that describes a page's content to Google in a standard format. Google's introduction to structured data says the markup can make a page eligible for rich results, the enhanced listings in search engine results pages (SERPs). Google recommends JSON-LD as the format. The markup must describe only information that users can see on the page. Validate the code with the Rich Results Test before publishing. The structured data section of my SEO guide lists the supported rich result types.

Mobile-first indexing

Mobile-first indexing means Google uses the version of a site that opens on mobile devices, crawled with its smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking. The mobile version needs the same primary content, headings and structured data as the desktop version. Google does not load primary content that needs a user interaction such as swiping, clicking or typing.

Page experience and Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are Google's three metrics for loading, interactivity and visual stability. Google treats these values as good: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1. The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console shows how your site scores.

Is SEO still worth doing now that Google shows AI answers?

Yes. SEO is still worth doing now that Google shows AI answers. Google's guide to AI features in Search states that SEO best practices remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode. The guide adds that appearing in them has no additional requirements.

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.