Forget SEO For a Minute: Here are Some Non-SEO Tactics to Improve Your Rankings

SEO is hard work. Especially when search engine algorithms keep changing. You are probably researching keywords/phrases; you may even be buying Google AdWords or paying for ads; you’re studying your competition that is getting first-page rankings; you think you are creating the right tags. But your page rankings aren’t moving. Without that good ranking, you are losing traffic – not a good thing.

Maybe it’s time to take a look at some non-SEO tactics that can improve that traffic and page rankings. They really do exist.

1) Analyze Your Website

Non-SEO Tactics to Improve Your Rankings - business-chart-desk-google-analytics-marketing-office-stats-work

Take a good long look at your site. How long has it been since it was updated? There are so many new tools to add engaging features to websites – animation, videos, even augmented reality elements. Check out the following too:

  • Does your website load quickly and easily on all devices?
  • Are you performing analytics so you know where visitors are coming from? Where they spend time? Where do they bounce? All of these things can help you improve your site and capture more audiences who stay for longer periods of time.
  • Study the websites of your competitors who are getting first-page rankings. What can you incorporate into your own site?
  • Can you add interactive elements? People love quizzes, surveys, and even contests.
Once you have a compelling website – one that informs and entertains – your visitors will stay and also share your site with their communities. The more traffic you gain, the more search engines will notice.

2) Expand Your Social Networking

social-media-networking

You already understand how important a social media presence is. When you are where your target audience is, you have the opportunity to engage and capture visitors who you can then drive to your site with great incentives. But there are other ways to use social media too.

  • Make use of groups. Facebook has groups based on e-commerce sectors. So do LinkedIn and Reddit. Set yourself up as an expert in your business niche and start contributing articles and participating in discussions. As you get known and as others trust your expertise, you can drive them to your site and ask them to refer you to others. Suppose, for example, you are an online nursery. Are there landscapers in your group? Set up mutually beneficial relationships and recommend each other to your customers.
  • Think about the power of hashtags. They are a great alternative to keyword efforts, and they are not utilized as they should be. You can search the most popular hashtags – those that are trending in your niche and with your target audience. Read the related posts and articles and begin to respond to them, adding a link to your site. While Facebook does not support hashtags, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, and Google+ do.

3) Capitalize on the News

tablets-reading-news-ebook

Watch the news, you can even set up tools that will alert you when there are news events. You can use Google alerts or any of several other tools, and select the categories of news articles you want. You can incorporate those news events in your social media posts, on your website or blog, and generate interest on the part of your readers. The goal is to have them share.

Another thing you can do is craft newsworthy content, publicize its existence on your site, and encourage visitors to share its content. Recently, I have read a blog post on the Stephen King Western Fantasy Series. There was a newsworthy controversy over the selection of a black actor to play the part of the Gunslinger in the movie series, and it attracted lots of comments, discussions, and shares. This is the type of traffic that search engines will pick up on. And the post itself was also picked up by two other sites – Agents of Geek and Movie Boozer – even more coverage.

4) Don’t Forget that Content Still Reigns

effective good quality content

When all is said and done, it is your content that will engage your readers. Content is everything you publish or post, and it is what will bring readers to you and keep them reading (and sharing). Craft compelling headlines; use great visuals and engage with great information, entertaining elements, and some interactivity whenever possible. When you do this, others will share your stuff. Sharing means traffic, and traffic means getting noticed by search engines.

5) Use Your Happy Customers

Negative Feedback may harm your business

You have a great pool of “ambassadors” – they are your loyal customers. Use them. Offer incentives for them to write reviews, to share your content on their social media platforms, and to recommend your brand to others.

Another type of “ambassador” are influencers. If you are able to establish a presence on blogs and social media platforms of related sectors, and a relationship with owners of those blogs and platforms, you can ultimately request mutual shout-outs and reciprocal postings – more exposure.

No one suggests that you throw out all of your traditional SEO efforts. But understand too that SEO is not the only answer to attracting attention from search engines and for increasing traffic and revenue.

6) Brand Ambassadors/Influencers

Online Reputation Management

Much has been said about this as well. But, it is still a major way to generate greater traffic. From satisfied customers who receive additional incentives to share you with their communities, to developing relationships with influencers in your niche, using others to promote your site and its product/services of your blog. You are not doing the selling, and that is a good thing.

Your goal is traffic, whether that comes from standard SEO strategies or from other strategies you can come up with. The greater the amount of generated traffic, the greater the sales. And the greater the traffic, the more search engines will notice anyway and improve your page rankings.

This article is written by Amanda Sparks. Amanda is a pro writer and editor at Essay Supply, a lifestyle writer at Huffington Post. She is fancy doing perfect things for this perfect world and helps people make their life easier with her lifestyle tips. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
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Published By: Souvik Banerjee

Souvik Banerjee Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".

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