When it comes to creating an SEO and link building strategy, you have to get to basics down and a solid system set in place before you can start to get creative. Your strategy will constantly need to change because Google is constantly changing, but it’s more the “how” of what you’re doing that will change as opposed to the “what.” After a few solid years of getting thing in place and knowing how to react to change, it’s important to try and set yourself apart from the competition by getting creative.
Understanding some less-popular SEO strategies is a great way to bring something new to the table. Although some of these ideas might not be the most effective, they just might be that small push you need to move up a few rankings on a SERP. The question then is simple: What are some less popular SEO strategies, and how can my small business get started?
Less Popular SEO Strategies Not to Forget
Landing Pages
- Personalized Landing Pages for Guest Posts. The idea here is that every time you guest post on a particular site, you link back to a custom-landing page in your author bio instead of your homepage. You won’t be able to do this for everything, but if you contribute to an authoritative blog as often as once per week, creating that custom landing page could leave users who click your link very impressed. This article by ConversionXL goes into more detail about this point.
- Email Signature Page. Instead of sending readers to your homepage if they click your email signature, consider sending them to a page where they can learn more about you. This will strengthen your relationship, which has likely already begun if you are emailing back and forth.
Link Building
- Be a Guest Speaker. Work hard to setup different gigs where you can hopefully gain visibility and earn links online. Consider going to your old University or speaking at a local event about your business. If you offer to speak for free, you’re more likely to gain some good opportunities. The local website or website of wherever you’re speaking should give you a link back to your site if they do a write-up on your speech, and you have a good change of getting a lot of social attention.
- Work with Complimentary Companies. Google does not recommend link swapping, but you can try to work with other companies in your area to earn a few links. You can offer free services and tell the company if they like your services they have to link back to your site on their website.
- Get Involved with SlideShare. This is becoming more and more popular, but it’s still considered unconventional to many. If you ever give a presentation to your coworkers, at a conference, etc. put that presentation up on SlideShare. It’s a good way to gain more visibility because Google likes SlideShare presentations, not to mention this site gets a lot of traffic.
- YouTube Keyword Tool. This is a tool that many businesses are still missing (I only just discovered it in the past few weeks). What you can do is type in a keyword and then find a keyword that doesn’t have a lot of data listed. Use that keyword to see how many videos are on YouTube covering that topic. There won’t be many, but you sure won’t have much competition. You can visit this article to learn more.
Social Media
- Create a Comic Strip. This is definitely one of my favorites because it is so unconventional, yet so much fun. If you have an artist in your company, see if he/she can draw a comic strip and then try to get that placed on authoritative sites (if not your own site). It’s a cool visual way to inform your readers that isn’t the popular infographic, so it has a good chance of doing well on social media (not to mention earning a few backlinks along the way).
- Google+ Ripples. This is a really cool tool that is a part of Google+, yet many people still aren’t using it to its full potential. Google+ Ripples shows you the influencers who are in your circles and what pieces of content are getting the most buzz. If you learn to analyze these ripples, you can figure out how to get one of your posts shared by an influencer, which you can learn more about here.
Are These Less Popular SEO Strategies Underrated, or Just a Waste of Time?
As with most things in business, it depends completely on your company. In most situations at least a few of the unconventional tips are worth trying; especially if your company already has the basics and the popular strategies set to go. Fortunately, most of the items discussed above are free or very inexpensive, so you can give them a try and see if they work well for your company without much risk.
Are there any SEO tips or tricks you know about that might not be overly popular? Have you found that using lesser known strategies can be helpful? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.