One of the many challenges of a small business is maintaining a steady stream of organic traffic to their website. With billions of websites out there, the competition is very tough. It isn’t easy being relevant without site visitors and stable traffic.

That’s why SEO plays a very important role in boosting one’s traffic. Almost all of Google’s top searches are powered by SEO. And you can do the same as well.

This article will introduce and teach you the best three SEO trends that can help even a small site receive a good stream of visitors. With simple and easy steps for you to follow, this article may even help you become an expert. And after applying the trends given, get ready to soon notice how they can impact your website traffic.

 

Reduce Focus on Keywords and Search Rankings

‘Keywords’ have always been at the forefront of significance. However, the most significant aspect is to know that the digital world is always evolving. When Google launched its search engine, there weren’t any other platforms then. But as evident as it can be now, most consumers engage mostly through their mobile devices.

Take a look at the increase in mobile device users’ percentage and the decrease in Desktop use or other devices.

share of web traffic by device January 2020 Hootsuite

There is a significant effect on search user experience by the type of device in use. And since 2013, Google has taken a significant shift from how it ranks web pages.

Through engaging psychologists, skilled programmers, and developers, Google has taken the step to understand and experiment with what people expect from the search engines. And this has been a game-changer for artificial intelligence. To be clear, Google search engine does rely on keywords for specific searches, but it does not do so regarding the relevance or usefulness of the content.

Here is an example:

roller blades maintenance SERP

You’ll notice here that the search engine results of ‘roller blade maintenance’ did not show any product pages. The results may have very well shown skating depots or workshops that provide maintenance for rollerblades. But it didn’t. Instead, it shows blogs, articles, and videos on how to do maintenance for inline skates.

Through the collection of behavior data and user insights over a long time- Google has found that when people look up for ‘roller blade maintenance’- they aren’t searching for a garage or skating shop owners to fix their roller blades but to know how to maintain the skates themselves.

Now, when you type just ‘skateboards’- what does the result show? You’ll notice that the results are not blogs or articles, rather of product shopping sites.

skateboards SERP

See in the next picture how a search for ‘write a good poem’ shows the results. There is no word like ‘rules’ or ‘fundamentals’ in the search engine, but they appear in the top 10 search results.

write a good poem SERP

Or the next picture that indicates a specific place, i.e., Pinterest on the search result. It does not show articles that teach how to make gift cards because the search engine understands what people are looking for.

hand made gift cards SERP

And take Ikea, for example; notice how they have their presence on social platforms. That’s the kind of brand visibility you want to build for your site as well. Provide a rich experience for your customers, and they will spread the word for you.

ikea usa SERP

Google search engines are no longer the one-dimensional search page, which means that the keywords aren’t the only thing important for your site to come on top 10.

Search engines now study the consumers and contents alike, collects data across various social platforms and devices to present the results. If the content is liked and linked by users, those sites will likely pop up top on search results.

The two important factors to remember are- not to focus on keywords alone for SEO and to build brand visibility across all search and social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.).

 

Increasing the Value of Earned Links

New bloggers and many content writers believe that it is more than enough to build a website if one writes good content alone. However, experienced bloggers and SEO experts will agree to the fact of it not being entirely true. The fact is that aside from writing good content, promoting the content to leverage your public presence and earning links are way important than many creators realize.

Link building is still an important factor to generate organic rankings, don’t get me wrong there. It is only the way through which the link comes to you that matters here. In today’s digital space, if you do not have a proven strategy to bring you ‘earned’ links rather than just a strategy for link building– then your site might not have the capacity to generate organic traffic.

So, to clarify what is an earned link, let me illustrate it for you. You earn links when there is a link to your content or site without your active participation. To earn a link, you need to have good content in which someone (not associated with you) will link to it because they find it useful for their content.

When we talk about link building- it is those links that are made to you through a guest post. Simply put, you invite and pay a commission to a guest to link your site through theirs. Google still has miles to go in differentiating between earned links and built links. Although, so far, it still does a pretty job in separating the two. So, my suggestion to you will be to not worry too much about it.

What you want your focus to be is to make sure that you keep writing good useful content and, at the same time, plan a strategy to place them in the hands of popular sites and influencers. This way, you are building a public presence to make people aware of your content. And in time, it will help you earn links and generate organic traffic.

 

Broken Link Building

Imagine clicking on an interesting or a seemingly helpful link only to find yourself on a 404 error webpage. It is such a letdown. But believe it or not, these often ignored broken links are a boon as well, especially for those of you trying to increase your traffic.

Broken link building is also among the easiest SEO trends for generating leads through website. And you don’t even have to be or become an SEO expert to master this amazing technique. Plus, if you are not a very active content creator and you find the previous trend a little too challenging, then building broken links might just be the

The trick is quite simple. All you need to do is, find websites and web pages that are similar to yours in their content matter. Then filter out the broken links in them. After this step, you can contact the concerned website’s owner. You can let them know about the existing dead links and how replacing it with an inbound link to your site will be a good decision.

Step one- Using keywords and key phrases, you can look up websites that share similar content. For example, if you aim to find sites on designing, you can type “designing + resources”.

designing+resources SERP

From the top ten suggested sites, you can choose the more suitable one. For example, here we will look for the broken links in Shillingtoneducation.com.

There are so many free and paid online SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google analytics, etc. available for you to identify the broken links.

Tools like SEMrush can also help you format a letter to send to the concerned website’s owner. However, it will require a paid membership. So, make use of all the free online SEO tools to get your work done efficiently. Here, we shall use the free online dead link checker to get the required details.

Paste the link of the earlier webpage, and within a few seconds, the results will display. Here, we can notice that shillingtoneducation.com has five links with error, out of which three are broken links. And remember, the links that we are looking are 404 error links.

dead link checker

Now that you have identified the broken links, you can connect with the owner of the site. Keep the message clear and start getting inbound soon.

 

Key Takeaway

From the 3 SEO trends that we’ve gone through so far- it is clear that digital marketing has come a long way from what it had been eight years ago. The consumers, as well as artificial intelligence, have changed and shifted simultaneously. With the examples, you might have understood how important it is for digital assistants and SEO experts to move with the times rather than sticking to the same strategy which had worked for them in the past.

The main takeaways that you can have are to diminish the focus on just the keywords, increase the value of earned links, and focus on broken link building.

Not only will these trends help you in generating leads through websites and become an SEO expert, but you will also establish you as a brand in the digital market.

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Alex is the Founder and Digital Marketing Manager of Reliablesoft, a digital marketing agency offering SEO and digital marketing services since 2002. He also authored the Digital Marketing Full Course. Connect with him on Twitter.