17 Best SEO Strategies in 2021 [Beginner to Advanced]

An SEO strategy is a process that helps marketers drive traffic to their website by optimizing the content. If you use the best SEO strategies for a long-term method of driving traffic to your website then your sales will increase like no other. SEO marketing strategies are long-term solutions for high-quality traffic.

Reading time: 10 min

17 Best SEO Strategies to Drive Organic Traffic in 2021:

1. Spy on Your Competitor’s

First and foremost, you need to choose a keyword for the topic. You can take help from Google as well to choose the best keywords that are properly searched by users all over the world. And you also need to find out which keywords are in competition and are used by most of the websites.

To do that you can either spy on your competitor’s website or search for those using particular SEO tools. There are various keyword research tools available that can help you find suitable keywords. Moreover, you can also take help from tools like SEMrush, Ubersuggest, and Keyword Everywhere tools. These tools are very effective and convenient for finding proper keywords for a particular website.

2. Keyword Research

To do keyword research you can either take help from Google search (Searches related to) or some keyword research tools. Google search can easily help you find 4-6 keywords related to the topic you have chosen to write.

Your goal must be to find a keyword that has a high organic CTR (click-through-rate). And for that you can also use a few tools like Google Keyword Planner, Keyword everywhere, and AnswerThePublic tool. These tools are very effective and will surely help you find the best keywords.

Let me tell you, you won’t be able to get higher if you don’t know what keywords your competitors are targeting. Therefore, you need to gather proper information about them as well. You may need to spy on your competitors to find the best and effective keywords. You also need to put yourself in the shoes of customers. You need to think about what you would be searching for if you were a customer.  These simple initiatives will allow you to find the best focus keyword for your website.

3. LSI Keyword Research

Another important effort that you need to make is after finding the perfect focus keyword for your website is choosing the best LSI keywords. Let me tell you LSI keywords are those keywords that are derived from focus keywords. The meaning of all of the LSI keywords is almost similar to that of the focus keyword.

Suppose, you chose a focus keyword ‘Dog wash’ then its LSI keywords can be a Dog washing machine, Pet wash, Dog behavior, etc. These keywords are derived from the term Dog wash and are almost similar to that. Such should be the case with your focus keyword and LSI keywords.

Finding LSI keywords can be a bit difficult because you may not know what are the related keywords that user may search. But you can take help from the LSIGraph tool.  As soon as you type your focus keyword you may find 4-5 keywords related to that in the below search boxes. You can pick them up and use them. This step is the most important in this blog SEO strategy that bloggers use.

4. Analyze Google’s Top 10 Results (10 Blue Links)

After choosing a perfect focus and LSI keywords for your website you need to analyze all the top 10 results on Google. These results arrive on the top as soon as we search for something on Google. These results are considered the best results which Google chooses to provide to users.

You as a marketer need to read all the blogs including the featured snippet (Zero position) thoroughly. And you need to analyze various things on those blogs. First of all, you need to find out the word count of all those articles. This means you need to analyze how many words the articles present on the top are written. And then, you need to research the titles, headings, and subheadings.

You will realize how catchy the titles present in those blogs are. Plus, you will also understand how captivating subheadings they choose. After examining these things you need to research the points. You also need to examine URLs, Images, and lists. Few websites also contain videos with them. If there is any video present in the top 10 results. You need to do proper research about that as well. This step is necessary SEO tips for beginners and advanced users.

5. Create Useful Content

After doing proper research, you need to create the best content for your website. This should include every point and captivating headings and subheadings for your page. Content is the king and you can’t make it second-rate. It should be phenomenal so much so that as soon as the audience starts reading it they wouldn’t want to stop.

Your content should be engaging and the audience must not want to stop reading it. You need to create content as such as it doesn’t only fulfills all the audience’s demands but also makes them enjoy reading the content.

6. Page Title

You also need to choose the best and effective page title for your content. Your page title should be engaging and attractive. And it is also said that before creating a particular page title you should create at least 6 to 10 titles and examine each of them. After that, you can choose the best title for your page. Remember, the page title should not be more than 40-55 characters.

7. URL Structure

Creating the best and user-friendly URL is very important.  A user-friendly URL here means your URL should easily readable. You can’t create URLs that users find difficult to read. Such as; https://example.com/topic is a user-friendly URL and it must contain the focus keyword.

8. Meta Description

Catchy description about your page is a necessity that will appear on Google. You should definitely make it catchy so that users will want to open your webpage during search results. It should be attractive and captivating.

9. Canonical URL & Tags

The canonical tag allows search engines to know that a particular URL represents the master copy of a page. It prevents users from the problems of duplicate content that may appear due to more than one URL. A canonical tag allows the search engines to know what page you want to appear in search engines.

10. Create Links (Internal & External)

Creating both internal and external links is very important if you want to reach rank 1 on Google. Internal linking will allow the audience to go to other pages of your very crucial website. While external linking allows people to go to someone else’s website which is linked from your account.

External links are also known as backlinks (Outbound or Inbound links) and the process of creating backlinks is known as link building. For link building, you need to have a good relationship with your competitors and other website owners related to your niche. In backlinks, there are also ‘nofollow’ and ‘do follow’ buttons. And you can choose any of these according to your convenience.

11. Rich Results (Structured Data)

Rich Results (Known as, Structured Data Markup) means you need to implement a few types of markup on your webpage to provide detailed information regarding your page to Google. It helps Google to understand your site better and is a very powerful SEO marketing strategy. You shouldn’t ignore it.

Recently Google has announced that the Structured Data Testing Tool going to be shut down and recommend the new Rich Results Test tool.

12. Create Sitemaps.xml

A sitemap is actually a type of XML file that consists of a lot of individual webpage URLs. It is similar to the archives of a website. An XML sitemap will surely help you in improving your ranking because it provides Google a list of efficient URLs.

You can create the XML sitemap file through free tools like XML Sitemaps Generator and paid tools like Screaming Frog. If you are a WordPress user, you can use free plugins like RankMath, Yoast, or Google XML Sitemaps for creating an XML sitemap file. Once you created the healthy sitemap file, you need to submit it on GSC, Bing, and other webmasters tools.

13. Submit Your Page to Webmaster Tools

After creating awesome content and following the procedures mentioned above you can say that your content is ready. Make sure to double-check whether your content is perfect or lacking something. And when you are sure that your content is perfect then you can submit your webpages to webmaster tools such as; Google Search Console (GSC), Bing Console, or others.

14. Update Your Content Timely

After uploading your content you just can’t relax. You need to update your content whenever it seemed necessary. Users don’t like old and raw information. Even if your information is correct but not update you wouldn’t be able to reach rank one on Google search.

Plus, users won’t stay on your website for long because they will assume your information to be incorrect. Therefore, you need to update your content regularly. It wouldn’t only help you to gain traffic but also allow users to trust your site.

15. Create Your Audience

After publishing your webpage, you need to increase the visibility of your site. It will help you gain a lot of traffic. And to do that you can take the help of social media marketing platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

These platforms have become very popular and will allow you to get an audience who will be really interested in your site. These days, email marketing is also in trend and is an effective SEO technique that allows marketers to drive traffic.

16. Publish New Article Regularly to Increase DA

You can’t create only a few contents and relax. This would not allow you to create an audience. You will have to post something new on your website regularly. It is also said that you should post at least one new content after every 3 days. This will help you not only drive traffic but enhance your domain authority. Posting content related to your choose niche is a necessity and you should surely do that.

17. Track Your Website Daily

Last but not the least, you will have to track your site daily. You need to find out the number of visitors who are visiting your page and you also need to track various other things. To do that you can take help from few tools such as Google Analytics, Google search console, and Ahrefs. Google Analytics is a very powerful tool and will tell you exactly how many people are visiting your site currently. Rather keep tracking and analyzing the audience.

Conclusion

Now that you know all the powerful and effective SEO strategies. You don’t only need to read and understand each of these. Instead, you should go and implement all these strategies. They may take time and effort but are definitely worth the hard work and will surely allow you to receive the best results.

I’ve tried to mention here all the important SEO strategies but in case I’ve forgotten to add any strategy that you know. Please do let me know and also tell me your views about whether you found these strategies easily understandable or not.

Originally published Feb 4, 2021, & updated on Feb 4, 2021