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17 Advanced SEO Techniques

Brian Dean

Written by Brian Dean

17 advanced SEO strategies for 2020

This is a list of 17 advanced SEO strategies, techniques and tactics.

In fact, these strategies have helped my site bring in 360,408 visitors per month from Google.

Backlinko – Organic traffic

So if you’re sick of reading the same old beginners stuff (“create great content!”), you’ll really enjoy this list.

And for some added material, I recommend getting familiar with these actionable steps for ranking on Google.

1. Rank for “Journalist Keywords”

As the name suggests, Journalist Keywords are terms that journalists search for.

And they’re a super powerful way to build backlinks at scale.

For example, a while back we published this page speed study.

Backlinko – Page speed stats

Take a look at the referring domains data for that page.

Page speed stats post – Referring domains spikes

See how there’s a spike when the content was first published? Then it flattens. And then it spikes again?

Well, that second spike came because that page starting rankings for a bunch of Journalist Keywords, like this:

Average page loading time – SERPs

See how that works?

A journalist needs a stat for their article. So they head to Google to find it.

And my site gets in front of journalists right as they’re about to publish their piece.

Which means they see my stat. And cite it in their articles.

Page speed study cited in article

Very nice.

2. Use Animated Images to Improve Time On Site

Our recent search engine ranking factors study found that time on site correlates with Google rankings.

Website time on site correlates with higher Google rankings

And I recently figured out a simple way to improve it: animated images.

Specifically, high-res animated images (like animated SVGs). These are basically animated GIFs. But much higher quality.

Here’s an example:

And I’ve noticed that animated images stop people from skimming.

That way, they read more of your content. And spend more time on your page.

For example, this post from Backlinko has a handful of animated images.

And it’s no coincidence that the time on site for that page is 3:27.

SEO site audit post – Average session duration

 

3. Create Content Hubs

28% of Backlinko’s organic traffic comes from content hubs.

Backlinko hub – Percentage of traffic

What’s a content hub?

It’s basically a mini Wikipedia on a given topic.

For example, I published our SEO Marketing Hub a while ago.

Backlinko – SEO Marketing Hub

The SEO Marketing Hub is a collection of SEO resources organized by category (like “Technical SEO” and “Link Building”).

Each of those categories has a handful of “entries”:

Backlinko hub category entries

As you might expect, each entry is optimized around a single keyword.

I should also point out that entries are NOT written like normal blog posts. Instead, each entry is more like a Wikipedia article.

Why?

First off, this style is a better search intent fit for these types of keywords.

For example, someone searching for “LSI keywords” doesn’t want my opinion on it.

Instead, they’re wondering what it is. Why it’s important. And some first steps to get started.

And these content hub entries are strategically designed to perfectly match that search intent.

SEO hub – LSI keywords entry

Second, the entries are all strategically linked together.

SEO hub – LSI keywords entry – Sidebar

Needless to say, these internal links are great for SEO.

But these internal links also help boost dwell time.

Someone reads entry A. Then, they see a link to entry B. Click on that.

Which means they end up spending a ton of time on my site before going back to the search results (if they go back at all).

4. Target Comparison Keywords

Comparison Keywords are terms that compare different things, like:

  • Content marketing vs SEO
  • iPhone vs Android
  • Webflow vs WordPress

Why are these keywords worth targeting?

First off: people that search for Comparison Keywords are relatively advanced.

For example, somebody that types “SEO tools” into Google is probably new to SEO.

But somebody searching for “Ahrefs vs Semrush” has a feel for the SEO tool landscape. They just want help deciding between two different options.

Also, comparison keywords don’t usually have a ton of competition.

For example, this keyword gets 500 searches per month with a $6 CPC. Not bad.

The best part? The keyword difficulty on that term is only 34/100.

Ahrefs vs SEMrush – Keyword difficulty

In fact, I recently targeted that exact keyword with this post. And I was able to quickly get it to rank in the top 3.

Backlinko – Ahrefs vs SEMrush

Pro Tip: Create content optimized around “you vs competitor” comparison keywords. Drift has a bunch of these pages.

Drift – Drift vs Intercom post

And they tend to rank super well.

Drift vs Intercom – SERPs

5. Use Dynamic Parameters for Pagination

Exploding Topics ran into a serious technical SEO issue pretty much from day 1:

It was taking days (and sometimes weeks) to get a new page indexed.

The reason? Our crawl budget was getting eaten up super quickly.

This means that Google spiders would take weeks to crawl new pages.

One of the things that helped us get out of this mess?

Using dynamic parameters for our paginated pages.

In other words, we went from this:

https://explodingtopics.com/business-topics/page/2

To this

https://explodingtopics.com/business-topics?page=2

This new format helped Google figure out our paginated page URL patterns.

That way, Google spent less time re-crawling our paginated pages. And more time finding and indexing new stuff.

It also seemed to push Google to crawl more of our pages in general.

Pages crawled per day

(Plus, if we run into crawl budget issues again, we can use the URL Parameters tool in Search Console to stop Google from crawling our paginated pages. Which only works with dynamic parameters.)

I’ve appeared on over 120 podcasts, including several popular SEO podcasts, as a guest.

Brian Dean podcasts collage

And pretty much all of them have linked to me.

Radiopublic backlink

This is why I like to say: “podcasts are the new guest posts.”

Actually, going on a podcast is in some ways BETTER than writing a guest post.

To publish a single guest post you need:

  1. Find a site that will accept your guest post.
  2. Pitch them.
  3. Write a draft.
  4. Go through rounds of edits.

Then you finally get your guest post published.

With a podcast, all you really need to do is show up. And you’re good to go.

In fact, going on podcasts was one of the first link-building strategies that we used to build backlinks to Exploding Topics.

I advised my co-founder Josh to reach out to podcasts in the startup space.

Josh podcasts email

And because Josh had an interesting story to share, a bunch of them said yes.

Josh on Product Hunt podcast

The question is: how can you get interviewed on other people’s podcasts?

I could write an entire post on this. But here are some pointers that I’ve picked up over the years.

  • Pitch for their audience: Your outreach needs to emphasize what specific things the podcast’s audience would get from your interview.
  • Get a mic: Legit podcasts care about audio quality. So I recommend investing in a high-quality mic.
  • Level up: Start with the tiniest podcasts you can find. Small podcasts are more likely to say yes. And you get good at being a guest (which is a real skill). Then, you can leverage those early appearances to go on bigger and better shows.

7. Forge a Content Alliance

A Content Alliance is where you team up with another business, site, blog, or YouTube channel on a single piece of content.

For example, I recently teamed up with Fractl on a post that they ended up publishing on the Moz blog.

Moz – What readers want during COVID post

In that case, I provided data from Exploding Topics.

But you can also partner with someone that has the data that you need.

For example, I teamed up with BuzzSumo for this content analysis.

Backlinko – Evergreen content study

This time, BuzzSumo had a bunch of fascinating data lying around. And they happily shared it with me.

In exchange, I wrote up the post and promoted it to my audience.

Overall, this single content alliance was a huge win-win.

I got access to raw data that would be pretty much impossible to get on my own. And BuzzSumo got in front of tens of thousands of people.

In fact, that single post brought in 20,545 visitors in its first month.

Evergreen content study – First month traffic

8. Maximize SERP Real Estate

The #1 result in Google gets about 32% of all organic clicks.

Google organic CTR – Breakdown by position

That said: there’s another way to get more clicks from the SERPs… without higher rankings:

Take up more SERP Real Estate.

SERP Real Estate is basically how many pixels you control on Google’s first page.

And the more pixels you control, the more organic traffic you’ll get from that keyword.

For example, ranking in a Featured Snippet puts you to the top of the page. But it also triples your SERP Real Estate for that keyword.

Featured snippets triple your SERP real estate

How about another example?

I once got one of my YouTube videos to rank on the first page of Google for an important keyword.

Which gave me a pretty big chunk of SERP Real Estate.

Google SERP – Rank #1 in Google

Besides videos and Featured Snippets, here are some other ways you can take up more SERP Real Estate:

9. Embed Original Images In Your Content

It’s no secret that high-quality images make your content better.

Which can (indirectly) help with rankings.

So, what kind of images should you use on your site?

Well, a well-done SEO experiment discovered that “duplicate images” (like stock photos) can hurt your page’s rankings.

Which is why you want to use as many original images as you can.

For example, we work with a graphic designer to help us create super professional screenshots.

Off-page SEO guide – Post screenshots

It’s obviously much easier and faster to just take a normal screenshot. But going the extra mile makes our images original. And more helpful.

We also create several custom visuals and charts for every post.

Lead magnets post – Visual

Again, these visuals aren’t cheap. But they’re worth it for the direct and indirect SEO benefits.

As a bonus, people might start to use your visuals in their blog posts.

For example, this chart from one of our posts has been embedded on dozens of different blogs.

Long form content generates more backlinks than short blog posts

And the vast majority of people that use that image link to Backlinko as a source.

Seocopywriting – Visual link to backlinko

10. Optimize Your Content For Keyword Relevance

You already know that there’s more to on-page SEO than cramming a keyword into your page 187 times.

In fact, Google’s “How Search Works” document explains that they look at “quantifiable signals to assess relevance”.

Specifically, Google wants to see relevant content on the topic that page covers.

Google – How search works – Relevant content

Question is: how do you give Google the “quantifiable signals to assess relevance” that they want to see?

One strategy is to include LSI keywords on your page.

When you do, you’ll confirm to Google that your page is highly relevant for that query.

Include the right LSI keywords on your page

Which can give you higher rankings for your target keyword. And help you rank for more keywords.

If you write in-depth content you’ll probably use a lot of these LSI keywords automatically.

But you want to double check, there are tools out there (like Clearscope and Surfer SEO) that can help you find the right LSI keywords to include in your content.

These tools work pretty much the same way: they scan content that already ranks for your keyword.

And they bubble up terms that those pages use most often.

Clearscope – featured snippets

11. Create a Comments Section On Your Blog

Comments can help your SEO for three reasons:

First, comments may actually be a direct ranking factor.

Seroundtable – Comments help with ranking

Second, comments give users more stuff to read and do. Which can boost dwell time.

Third, a comments section is actually content that Google crawls, indexes and ranks.

In fact, a Google rep stated that they count all content on a page (including UGC).

Google rep JohnMu Twitter status

Which is why I put a lot of effort into Backlinko’s comments section.

Not only do I reply to pretty much every comment. But we have someone that spends over an hour every day just to moderate them.

That way, 100% of the comments that end up on the site are high-quality.

12. Uncover People Also Ask Keywords

According to Semrush, 41% of all Google search results contain a People Also Ask section.

SEMrush – People also ask occurrence

Which means they’re worth optimizing for.

The only problem is that it’s a pain to find these questions at scale.

Obviously, you get see a set of 4 questions right away.

Keto diet – SERPs – People also ask

But you need to open up the accordion a bunch of times to get access to more questions.

Fortunately, you can use a tool like Answer The Public to find questions related to your topic.

Pretty cool.

13. Add “Content Features” To Your Page

Content Features are things like:

  • Calculators
  • Comparison charts
  • Feature breakdowns
  • Pros and cons lists
  • Summaries
  • Quote boxes

Basically: they’re things that you add to your content to make it more compelling and useful.

And Content Features can, directly and indirectly, help improve your Google rankings.

In fact, Google’s own Quality Rater Guidelines state that Supplementary Content is “important”.

Google – Supplementary content

Here’s a recent example of how much of a difference Content Features can make.

Last year I added two Content Features to my guide to becoming an SEO expert.

Specifically, I added a table that compared the different ways to learn SEO.

Different ways to learn SEO – Table

And a bulleted list of skills that SEO specialists need to have.

SEO expert post – Bullet list

Not long after, my page shot up to the #1 spot in Google.

SEO expert – SERPs

Which boosted organic traffic to that page by 36.9%.

SEO expert post – Organic traffic

(Google uses 200+ ranking factors in their algorithm. So I can’t say for sure that Content Features made all the difference. But in my opinion, it was the main reason that my rankings improved).

14. Publish Topic + Year Content

Topic + Year Content are blog posts that cover key trends happening around a given topic.

For example, every year I publish a definitive guide to SEO for that year.

Backlinko – SEO this year

And that post is optimized around the keyword: “SEO 2023”.

As you probably know, “SEO” is an insanely competitive keyword.

(Even for me… 🙂 )

But “SEO 2023” isn’t super competitive. Even though thousands of people search for it every month.

This brings in a decent chunk of traffic every month (especially early in the year).

SEO this year – Organic traffic

Note: I should point out that this is VERY different than adding year to the end of a title tag.

For this strategy to work, your content needs to be focused 100% on the year in question.

For example, my annual SEO guide covers trends that are happening in the world of search engine optimization.

SEO this year – Chapter

 

Unlinked brand mentions are just like they sound: they’re mentions in blog posts and news articles that don’t link to your site.

Here’s an example:

Backlinko mention on Fatstacks blog

And all you need to do is email the person that mentioned your brand. And ask them to add a link to your site.

In my experience, the conversion rate on this approach is fantastic.

That’s mainly because you’re not reaching out cold to someone that’s never heard of you.

Instead, you’re emailing somebody that already mentioned your site in a blog post.

Which means they’re primed to add your link.

The key here is to reach out fast.

For whatever reason, people are much more likely to edit a brand new post.

So the faster you send your email, the more likely you’ll get a link.

BuzzSumo’s “Brand Alerts” feature is perfect for this technique.

Buzzsumo – Brand alert feature

In fact, they even have a filter just for finding unlinked mentions.

Buzzsumo – Brand alerts – Filter mentions

16. Optimize for Google Discover

Google Discover is Google’s version of a social media newsfeed.

Google Discover

But instead of featuring posts from people that you follow, Google shows you high-quality content that they think you’d like.

And I’ve found that Google Discover can bring in legit amounts of traffic.

In fact, Google Discover once sent me 6k visitors over a 90-day span.

Visitors from Google Discover

According to Google, it’s impossible to optimize for Discover.

Google – Impossible to optimize for Discover

But that’s obviously not true.

In fact, a few paragraphs later they state that high-quality images can help you rank in Discover.

Google – High quality images help you rank in Discover

That’s because every result in Discover has a big image next to it.

And if that image stands out, people are going to click on it. Which can help you show up in other people’s Discover feeds.

So you want to make sure that every post that you publish has a super high-res og:image.

With that, here are a few things that I’ve found help with Google Discover SEO:

  • Content freshness (you get most of your Discover traffic the day a post goes live)
  • Original, high-quality images, charts and graphs
  • Engagement on Twitter (which Google indexes)
  • High level of traffic to a single page
  • Content about popular topics (Discover content suggestions are based largely on that user’s browsing history)

17. Find Low-Competition Keywords From Reddit

Here’s an easy way to find super low-competition keywords.

First, pop a subreddit into Semrush.

Semrush – Reddit – SEO

Then, look at all of the keywords that pages in that subreddit rank for.

Reddit – SEO – Organic keywords

And just like that, you have a list of super low-competition terms.

Reddit – SEO – Organic keywords – Low difficulty

Yes, Reddit has a higher Domain Authority than you do (that’s why they’re ranking in the first place).

The thing is, most Reddit threads are super unorganized. And include lots of useless comments, like this:

SEO subreddit – Useless comment

Which means there’s plenty you can do to make your content better than a Reddit thread, like:

  • Organize information into steps
  • Add multimedia, like images and videos
  • Include external links to helpful resources
  • Include more up-to-date techniques, strategies, or information

Basically: any well-written post > Reddit thread.

This means your post has a good chance of outranking the original Reddit thread.

Pro Tip: Most subreddits rank for lots of keywords that you don’t want to target in the first place. A quick CPC filter makes it easy to find legit keywords. I recommend setting the minimum CPC to about $2. That way, you can filter out the junk.

Ahrefs – Organic keywords – CPC filter

Bonus Strategy #1: Visualize Your Sitemap

A flat website architecture is super important for your site’s technical SEO.

(Especially if your site has lots of pages)

The problem is: it’s really hard to know if your architecture is flat (good). Or super deep (bad).

This is why I recommend visualizing your sitemap.

You can do this using the SEO site audit feature in Semrush:

Semrush – Site structure

Or with a cool tool I recently found called VisualSitemaps.

VisualSitemaps – Backlinko

Bonus Strategy #2: Find Hidden Terms With Google Keyword Planner

Most people type seed keywords into the Google Keyword Planner.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if you want to find even MORE keyword ideas, put a URL into this field.

Google keyword planner – Enter URL

When you do, Google will scrape the page. And generate a list of keywords that they don’t show most people.

And you’re set.

Now It’s Your Turn

There you have it: my list of 17 advanced SEO strategies that are working super well right now.

Now I’d like to hear what you have to say:

Which strategy from this list are you going to try first?

Do you want to get a visual of your sitemap?

Or maybe you want to optimize around “People also ask” keywords.

Either way, let me know in the comments section below.

258 Comments

  1. Sam Avatar Samsays:

    First!

    Good stuff as usual Brian.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Sam 👍

  2. Excellent content, I have a Joomla site if would not mind having a look as you the number 1 in my opinion .

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Chris. Joomla isn’t ideal for SEO. But it’s very possible to make it work.

  3. Great I will definitely try out the Journalist Keywords method today.. Thanks a ton Brian!!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Rocco.

  4. I totally agree with you on the use of animated images to increase users stay time on the website.
    Thank you for such a wonderful post, I will be implementing many other tips you shared now on my blog. You have been of great help to me!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Joan, for sure. It just makes sense. These animated images catch your eye as you scroll down the page.

  5. Brian I appreciate all this information, all your content is pure gold.

    Thanks for sharing, and I was applying some of your tips 🤩

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Lesther. Let me know how these advanced SEO strategies work out for you.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      👍👍👍

  6. Do you have any resources/websites about creating custom animated images?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I don’t. I work with a graphic designer who makes them for us. But I’m sure there are tutorials on YouTube.

  7. Great tips as usual. ‘Finding low competition words from Reddit’ is an idea I have heard for the first time. Will definitely try. Thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Seems, no problem. I’ve found some keyword GEMs on Reddit. So I hope you also have some luck with that approach.

  8. Hey Brian

    Amazing stuff! Thanks for sharing this.

    Have a great day!

    Sanu

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries 👍

  9. Super list .. really helpful for my SEO strategies. Bookmarking this post.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Daman.

  10. Hey Brian,

    Amazing article, literally help me a lot.

    Specially about journalists keyword.

    Thanks for sharing!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries, Glan.

  11. Hi Brian,

    That is really helpful. I’ve never tried most of these.

    So I’m gonna try these right away.

    Thanks!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Deepak. Let me know how it goes.

  12. Thanks for such valuable information Brian. I’ll be sure to make the most of it & apply to my site.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Darshana, you’re welcome. I really tried to share some fresh stuff in this post.

  13. Gene Avatar Genesays:

    Hello
    Can you help my website bring organic traffic?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      What do you mean?

  14. Hi Brian, thank you for the great article, it’s on the point as always!
    The animated SVGs impressed me the most as starting point!
    I think I try them 🙂

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Jans, sounds good. Yup, SVGs are pretty cool.

  15. Thanks Brian, another great and enjoyable article. Particularly of interest for me are: the Google Keyword Planner tweak, the People Also Ask tool and the recommendation about Dynamic Pagination!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Pauline. Let me know how these strategies work out for you.

  16. Abhinav Avatar Abhinavsays:

    Do you have any plugins or suggestions to create a content hub.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      I don’t but someone should definitely make one.

  17. Thanks for the great tips as usual, and I like the Reddit tip, especially where we can easily get some low competitive keywords. TBH, already applying the same.

    Also, I don’t like the lazy loading images thing, and It is kinda distracting for me.

    I hope I get the reply😁

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Kevin, thanks. Quora is also good for the same sort of thing.

  18. on another note, when I go to share your article via the Twitter sharing button on the left, the URL doesn’t get copied over. Maybe it’s just me but I thought it might be no harm mentioning it. Thanks again and keep up with the great work!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Pasquale, thanks for letting me know about that. We’ve made some changes to the site recently, so it might be a bug. I’ll let our dev know.

  19. Excellent content, Brian. Full of ideas and solid research as always. Reddit is a goldmine if you know how to search -but it always takes time. I’ll make sure to search for unlinked mentions, didn’t think of it so far. Thanks for sharing, once again, your tips.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks George. Glad you learned some new stuff that you can try (like recovering unlinked mentions).

  20. Brian, awesome as always. Can you share the link where all of your back issues are housed? I would love to spend more time reading the ones I missed

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Nick, thanks. Do you mean old blog posts or old email newsletters?

  21. Amazing stuff as always. I really enjoy reading your stuff Brian.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Russell, no worries. Glad to hear that.

  22. Hi Brian, love the article. It’s super informative and helpful just like all your other content. My personal favourite strategy is #3 Create Content Hubs. I do mini versions of it for a few client projects and they work really well for a specific set of keywords within the same topic.
    Your Skyscraper method of creating a super content is still one of my default go-to technique whenever I want to rank a bunch of keywords though.
    Look forward to more insights from you!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Alva, thanks! For sure: it’s funny how The Skyscraper Technique still works well as these years later. I originally revealed the strategy in 2013.

  23. Once again Brian an awesome post and engaging read. I have been a fan and paid subscriber from SEO university to STW and a lot of the success we are getting I can attribute to following your advice.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Lloyd, thank you! I appreciate that. Happy to hear that you’ve got so much value out of STW. I’m actually working on a huge update to that program right now.

  24. Great content, and good strategies to generate traffic to our sites.

    The one I liked the must is the Podcast Route, it’s a great way to generate Links + Content + Social Media assets + Recognition + some sales if you do it right.

    Lot to do to get more traffic.

    Saludos

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Gabriel, absolutely. I don’t go as many podcasts as I used to. But I still try to sneak one in now and again because it’s such an easy way to get the benefits that you listed above.

  25. Hi Brian!

    If I use stock photos editing it with my own ways such as adding some texts then will not it be considered as an original image?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Dora, good question there. I haven’t tested it but I think making it a little bit unique would probably do the trick.

  26. I like the one on reddit to get some fresh ideas. Does that mean you would even include “reddit” in your content to rank for that EXACT keyword?

    Anyway great list with nice and actionable suggestions. Totally agree that statistics (“journalist keywords”) are way more quotable than most other stuff. Similar to infographics.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Alex. I definitely wouldn’t include the word Reddit in your content unless you think people are specifically searching for “keyword + reddit”.

  27. I do like sites with hi-def animated images, but aren’t you risking page speed for this? Which is the preferable of the 2?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Jake, you’re right: high res images come with slow load times. There’s no way around it. In my opinion, I’m OK with the tradeoff. But other people think that site speed is more important than sharp images. There’s no right or wrong answer. It depends on you and your business.

  28. Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to all your posts!
    Carry on the excellent work!

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Sumon, thank you 👍

  29. As usually stunning findings. I am particularly impressed with the Custom graphics and Reddit threads strategies. AnswerThePublic is also a great place to find LSI and People also Ask keywords.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Romeo. For sure: AnswerThePublic is a really cool little keyword research tool.

  30. Hi Brian Dean,

    Really great post with a lot of information, thanks for sharing. In this post, you explained about SVG animation if you could explain, how to create that would be mor ehelpful.

    Thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Gopi. I would but I don’t know how to make them myself. Someone from my team takes care of that.

  31. I love your content very much. Always new.
    You have any advice for beginners
    I am one of them 😁

  32. I would definitely be trying the “People also ask” tool, it would definitely help me to know more about my prospects and would help me to optimize my site for those keywords. Also, be using the keyword planner and animated images. This article was really great insight into SEO. This helped me with more strategies to look into. Thanks, Brian Dean for this amazing content piece. Looking forward to learning more actionable steps from you.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Sounds good, Ankit. Let me know how it goes.

  33. Very well written strategies and surely are upto date. Personally, I liked the use of animated photos as they can significantly increase the user retention time.
    Thanks for this amazing post Brian.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      👍👍👍

  34. Wow, these are some really advanced SEO tips, Brian. Hats off to your knowledge and SEO skills. I will definitely be implementing some of these on my blog.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Aarav.

  35. What a great piece of content. Love the Reddit strategy most of all.

    Thanks

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Marcus, thank you. Yup, that’s a great way to find long tail keywords.

  36. Hi Brian,

    Thanks for this great post as usual. Journalist keywords strategy sounds crazy – I never thought about publishinh this content before. I will definitely try this out. Hopefully, it works. And did you notice any ranking glitches lately? Is it due to the latest Google update?

    Thanks 🙂

    Best Regards,
    Himanshu Tyagi

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey Himanshu, thanks. Yup, Google had a rare glitch yesterday but everything seems to be back to normal now.

  37. Chris Dunne Avatar Chris Dunnesays:

    Some great tips here. I hadn’t heard the Reddit one before. Will definitely be using that. Awesome post.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Chris. Yup, that Reddit approach is helpful for sure. Can also do the same thing on any forums out there in your space.

  38. Brian,

    I’ve been learning from you for a few years now-and I continue to do so. Thank you for your valuable SEO tips and strategies.

    I especially like the tool you mentioned, “People also ask.”

    The Franchise King®
    Joel Libava

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Joel, no worries. Glad to hear that. More SEO tips on the way.

  39. Raju Verghese Avatar Raju Verghesesays:

    Thank you Brian for the excellent post. I really learnt a lot.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries, Raju.

  40. Hi Brian,

    I’ve been using a few of the techniques but the content hub technique really drove my attention. I’ve read your content hub for a long time and i think it does not just help in SEO but also helps a lot of user experience and brand building.

    I’ll definitely try out the content Hub Technique.

    Thank you for sharing this amazing piece of content.

    Cheers!
    Tushar Dey

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Tushar.

  41. Yemi Avatar Yemisays:

    Thank you so much for this great piece. I have a lot of questions but let me ask the most important to me right now.

    Which is the issue of crawling and indexing.

    I also have a new site that takes forever for Google to come and crawl and index even when I use fetch on console.

    Please can you be more detailed about this dynamic parameters for pagination. Thanks so much.

  42. Thanks for all these tips, really useful as usual! I’m going to try the “People also ask” tool right away.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Blanca, you’re welcome. Keep me posted on how that goes.

  43. I can’t really thank you enough. First of all, the monthly organic traffic I saw at the top was mind-blowing and I couldn’t help reading through the whole content.

    For me, I have got serious work to do on topics 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 17 to really get a bump on my SEO. The bonus is awesome!

    Thank you, Brian.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Irene, sounds good! Executing all of those strategies is a lot of work for sure. But you should see a nice bump in your organic traffic from it.

  44. David Warner Avatar David Warnersays:

    Hi Brian,

    It it possible for you to share your content hub code?

    Please sir 🙏

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hey David, unfortunately it wouldn’t even be that helpful. It was coded to work with Backlinko’s code. Which is kind of unique to begin with.

  45. Great insights. Some very unique strategies. Thanks 🙂

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No worries, Himanshu. I really tried to focus on new strategies that haven’t been repeated 100x already.

  46. Hi Brian,
    Thanks a lot again for this amazing guide. I have a small question though. Recently I have shared my post on Twitter before requesting for index. And it helped me to index the post in less than a minute. Is this something that we can do again and again ?
    Regards
    Chayan

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      No problem. That’s sometimes worked for me too. But in my experience, the GSC still gets things indexed the fastest.

  47. Rahul Avatar Rahulsays:

    As usual – Superb content piece Brian Dean. Its clear, depth, easy to skim through and enticing as well.

    I will definitely use few of the awesome advance SEO tips for my client websites.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Thanks Rahul 👍👍👍

  48. Great tips as usual. Thank you so much!
    We’re using Dynomapper for visual sitemaps. Have you used that? If so, how does it compare to VisualSitemaps? I reckon they’re fairly similar.
    Thanks again for sharing this information.

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      You’re welcome, Edwin. In my experience they’re both similar.

  49. Great Content Brian. But I have one question for you. Will Animated Images not increase the load time of my webpage?

    1. Brian Dean Avatar Brian Deansays:

      Hi Pepe, yes they will. So it’s definitely a trade off between dwell time and page speed.

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