10 Effective SEO Techniques to Drive Traffic (Updated – 2021)

ByGarry Thompson

Years come; years go. But the importance of Search Engine Optimization never dwindles. This is a field where things don’t stay the same for a long time. You have to keep yourself constantly updated on the latest changes happening in the SEO world. So, you have to realign your SEO strategy every now and then.

Here are the latest working SEO techniques to drive traffic to your website. Use them to get tangible results.

1. Incorporate FAQs In Your Content

There are 2 reasons to include the FAQ section in your content –

i. In the Google SERP, you must have noticed the ‘People Also Ask’ section. If you incorporate FAQs into your content, your content is more likely to appear in this section. People, these days, do not just type in the search keywords, they type in a full-fledged question into the search bar. So, the content having a question-answer format is going to rank in the PAA section.

ii. Including FAQs will give your content the likelihood of being used as a voice search result for SIRI, Alexa, etc.

2. Aim for The Featured Snippet Section

Neil Patel has rightly observed that content that appears in the featured snippet section of the SERP has 2 times higher CTR than that of others.

Your content should be able to be used as an answer to ‘how to,’ ‘why,’ ‘what’ etc. questions. Added to this, your content should be able to explain the topic within 40-50 words. Organize your content using bullets, h1 and h2s. Sometimes, in the case of list-based searches, Google takes the bullet list from the content to display it as a featured snippet.

3. Optimize Your Website for Local SEO

Google has been focusing more and more on Local SEO. Make sure that you have your Google My Business profile set up if you have a local business. My Business is tightly integrated with Google Maps. Contact Google to get control over the Google Maps listing of your business. Regularly update the My Business profile. Showcase your products. Add a professional website to your profile. Also, when you write blog posts for your products, make them relevant to the local people.

4. Google Loves Authority

Google will rank those pages that it thinks have higher page authority. So how do you increase authority? By making the content as informative as possible. Include information that other web pages do not have. Along with that make do not just write just a single post on a topic. Write multiple posts on related topics. MOZ calls this a topic cluster.

5. Check The Core Web Vitals

Google also takes into account the technological quality of the website while ranking it. From 2021 onwards, Google will focus more on this technological aspect. Google terms the overall technological SEO health of your website as CoreWeb Vitals. The main content of your web page should load within 2.5 seconds (LCP). Also, the content of your web page should not change abruptly – the resources of your web page should load in an expected pattern.

6. Mobile-First

Majority of the website visitors, today, use smartphones to access websites. Google uses mobile bots to crawl web pages. So, make sure that your website has a working mobile version. Are all the elements appearing on the smartphone screen? Are the links and buttons easily clickable? Is the UI too cumbersome? In short, make your website mobile responsive – meaning that it will automatically adapt to the screen size where it is being displayed.

7. Leverage Videos

Using videos along with text can do wonders. You have probably already heard that people hate reading long posts. But they will click on the video explaining the same topic. Videos help your website reduce bounce rates by making visitors stay longer.

8. Passage Ranking

Suppose you wrote a post on Android phones. Along with everything, you have also included how Android is different from IOS. Now, if somebody searches for the difference between Android and IOS, Google can send him to the exact portion of your webpage where you have mentioned the differences. This is called passage ranking. This is a new feature. To be eligible for passage ranking, organize the different sections of your blog post neatly. Treat each section as a mini webpage.

9. Backlinks Still Matter

Getting backlinks from reliable websites will obviously improve your ranking. E-A-T is an important part of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. And each of these three depends on the overall reputation of your website. In the SEO world, that reputation is defined by the number of backlinks you get from reputed sites.

10. Don’t Just Depend On Google

SEO and Google are, in a way, synonymous. However, in 2021, there are more channels for your website to reach newer people. For example, if your website is new and doesn’t have much domain authority, posting updates on Medium will give quicker results. LinkedIn has a world of its own. You can get leads if you regularly post there – independent of Google.

As of 2018, 27% of all internet users installed ad blockers. And the figure is increasing. Thus, the effectiveness of paid ads is dwindling day by day. It is in this scenario that Search Engine Optimization can save the day for businesses wanting to promote their products. Used smartly, the above SEO strategies will work wonders.