20 Underrated SEO Strategies that Yield Significant Results for Businesses
In search of the most underrated yet effective SEO strategies, we turned to twenty industry professionals, including Heads of Content and founders, to share their insights. From leveraging SEO content creation to targeting keywords with downloadable content, these experts reveal the strategies that have significantly impacted their businesses. Dive into their valuable insights to enhance your SEO game.
- Leverage SEO Content Creation
- Reveal Data via Google Search Console
- Utilize Parasite SEO
- Harness Blogs and Articles
- Repurpose Your Content
- Take a Content Pruning Approach
- Prioritize Low Competition Keywords
- Improve SEO with Schema Markup
- Focus on Foundational SEO Elements
- Transcribe Rich Media for SEO
- Aim for Featured Snippets
- Implement Local SEO Tactics
- Remove Non-Indexed Filter Links
- Gather Links Through Statistics
- Create Visuals for Authors
- Optimize Internal Linking Strategically
- Build Links via Manufacturers, Distributors
- Accept and Utilize Guest Posts
- Localize for Better SEO
- Target Keywords with Downloadable Content
Leverage SEO Content Creation
SEO content creation, in the form of landing pages and blog posts, is absolutely essential in any SEO strategy.
By creating high-quality content to answer your target customers’ questions and issues every week, you will grow your website’s online presence substantially over a period of a few weeks and months.
Even better, as your content gets indexed by Google and ranking higher, you can spend less on Google Ads. You can move this spend elsewhere in your marketing. You may even be wise to move your saved paid spend into your content creation to further scale your content and SEO.
Tom Blake
Head of Content, TJ Creative Marketing Limited
Reveal Data via Google Search Console
An underrated yet effective SEO strategy I’ve employed for clients involves optimizing internal linking with a data-driven approach.
In a recent project, I used Google Search Console data to pinpoint ‘low-hanging fruit’ keywords for a client’s service pages that were ranking just outside the first page of search results. By integrating these terms as anchor texts in high-authority blog posts, we established targeted internal links that enhanced site navigability for users and directed search engine crawlers to our strategic pages.
This careful orchestration of internal links led to a significant increase in search visibility for the service pages.
Adam Berry
Founder / SEO Consultant, Adam Berry SEO
Utilize Parasite SEO
This year, one of the most underrated, but definitely solid, SEO strategies that helped our websites to quickly rank for desired keywords was Parasite SEO.
This technique involves leveraging the authority of established platforms, saving you years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars on link building and SEO.
How does it work? You publish an article with your website link on a trusted and high-authority website (and, I must say, it’s not as easy as it seems), and then start building links to that article. You might have 10, 20, or more publications on various trusted websites. The more, the better.
With this approach, it is possible to start seeing significant improvements in conversions and sales from SEO within just 2-4 months.
Dmytro Sokhach
SEO Expert, CEO and Co-Founder, Editorial.Link
Harness Blogs and Articles
This is a no-brainer for us—blogs and articles! These seem to be missed in so many SEO strategies. If you’re not writing and publishing optimized blogs and articles, you’re missing a whole 50% of your potential audience who don’t yet know what they want. They can click on those blogs to find the answers and become what statistics have shown to be a more loyal customer.
These customers also have a higher chance of ordering more, or going for a higher value service. For us, they have been pivotal in the results our business has achieved.” – Aled Nelmes, founder & CEO of Lumen SEO, the 100% transparent SEO agency based in Cardiff.
Kate Jones
Account Assistant, Lumen SEO
Repurpose Your Content
One SEO strategy that I find to be highly underrated is repurposing content.
Much of SEO is focused on text content for landing pages. Producing amazing copy is essential, but don’t stop there. There’s so much more value you can squeeze out of your content efforts, which can often result in more SEO benefit, such as additional backlinks.
YouTube is a search engine too, the second biggest in the world in fact. Don’t sleep on it. Turn your content into informative videos. Also, if your products or services have high review counts, analyze them and turn the common points into a content piece.
You don’t always have to look for new things and ideas. See what you can repurpose too.
Ben Poulton
SEO Consultant and Founder, Intellar
Take a Content Pruning Approach
One underrated SEO strategy that has yielded significant results for my business is the “Content Pruning” technique. Content pruning involves identifying underperforming or irrelevant pages on your website and either improving them or removing them altogether. This strategy helps in two significant ways.
By removing outdated or irrelevant content, your website becomes more focused and relevant to your target audience. This, in turn, improves the overall user experience and can lead to higher search engine rankings. When search engines see that your site offers highly relevant and up-to-date information, they are more likely to rank it higher.
Search engine bots regularly crawl websites to index content. When you have numerous low-quality or irrelevant pages, these bots spend time and resources on content that doesn’t contribute to your site’s ranking. By pruning such content, you make your website more efficient for search engines to crawl.
Bruno Gavino
Founder, CEO, CodeDesign
Prioritize Low Competition Keywords
I run a personal website, which I monetize using different means, including affiliate marketing. I write a lot about creator and SEO tools on my website. If someone purchases software products through my links, I make affiliate commissions.
As an SEO specialist, I create optimized tool reviews with the goal of ranking in the top 10 search results and generating organic search traffic.
But, how do I choose keywords my website ranks for without link building?
I only target keywords with low competition and decent traffic potential (100+ per month). These are mainly new or less-known tools that let my website quickly jump to top positions.
Victoria Kurichenko, SEO Expert and Content Writer, Self Made Millennials
Improve SEO with Schema Markup
Schema Markup is one aspect of SEO that many websites fail to take advantage of. By properly implementing schema markup, one can improve the site’s SEO by boosting click-through rates and driving more organic traffic.
We have seen a significant improvement in CTRs, along with getting listed on the SERP features, thus increasing the organic traffic. In some cases, there was a 20 to 30% increase in click-throughs after fixing the schema tags.
By effectively communicating what content is on your pages to search engines, schema markup helps ensure that your website is displayed in relevant searches. This can lead to better engagement and potentially higher rankings over time.
Praveen Kumar
Chief Decision Maker, Wild Creek Web Studio
Focus on Foundational SEO Elements
One underrated SEO strategy that has worked great for both my business and clients is focusing on foundational elements. Many SEOs make the mistake of trying to boil the ocean. Sometimes, it’s trying to reverse-engineer Google.
Other times, it’s getting way too hung up on the one thing the dev team can’t fix. All the while, there’s a proverbial field of opportunities being ignored. Consistently executing against a simple SEO strategy that focuses on on-page and technical best practices is often the best way to go. Prioritizing low-hanging fruit has yielded great results for me and my clients throughout my career.
Ken Freel
Freelance SEO Consultant, Nuaveu
Transcribe Rich Media for SEO
Transcribe videos, Twitter chats, and podcasts. With the growing popularity of the Internet, there has been a dramatic shift in the sorts of content created, saved, and exchanged online. Rich media—which includes podcasts, videos, Twitter conversations, and other content—is becoming more and more popular and can significantly boost your website’s search engine ranking.
Most search engines cannot decode rich media, so to use its contents, you must transcribe and publish the transcriptions on your website. This method also improves accessibility to web content by providing alternate ways for people with hearing or vision impairments to interact with rich media.
Oliver Andrews
Digital Marketing, OA Design Services
Aim for Featured Snippets
These appear in the “Position 0” above the first organic search results and provide direct answers to search queries. By structuring content to target these snippets, such as including clear, concise answers to common questions or step-by-step instructions, businesses can significantly increase their visibility and click-through rates.
This strategy is often under-utilized but can lead to occupying prime real estate on the SERPs with no traditional organic ranking.
Harry Boxhall, Shopify SEO Expert, Swirl SEO
Implement Local SEO Tactics
Businesses that deal with a service or product on a local scale need to implement local SEO tactics. You need to target your local markets, as it is one of the more important strategies to implement into your marketing plans.
Update your Google My Business with accurate, current information and list your business on local online directories. You need to create high-quality, relevant content for your local markets. By leveraging this content, you will establish yourself as an authority in your niche and it will also boost the authority of your website.
When optimizing your site, ensure that you do accurate keyword searches that are relevant to your niche and include nuances that local users will include in their queries. Ensure that your site is optimized for mobile searches as well, as many users use their mobile devices for local searches.
Ashwin Ramesh
CEO, Local SEO Checklist
Remove Non-Indexed Filter Links
If your e-commerce product listing pages have filters/facet links that aren’t indexed and shouldn’t be indexed, remove the “a href” links and put the filtering behind a JS on-click event.
Consolidating massive amounts of PageRank that were previously bleeding out to pages that do not have search value, and sending that PageRank to other URLs on the page that are meant for indexation, can be beneficial. It also shrinks the internal link count and makes crawling your website much easier, as well as easier to understand for Google.
A bonus tip is to make those same filter/facet links utilize a # where the filter is behind the # on the static URL. That way, if someone links to a facet on another website, that PageRank flows to the product listing pages and isn’t lost on a no-indexed/no-followed URL.
This can be a game-changer for larger e-commerce sites.
Christopher Smith
Head of Content, Help In Homework
Gather Links Through Statistics
Building links through statistics is a great approach for passively building backlinks over the long-term. Journalists and publishers love to quote industry-specific stats. If you can create the resource for this, then you’re naturally going to attract links from high-authority sources.
Gary Warner
Marketing Manager, Joloda Hydaroll
Create Visuals for Authors
We’ve seen some SEO success by creating visuals that authors can use in their own articles. For example, we have a growing library of sales and marketing cartoons. The cartoons are free to use, so writers can include them in their articles and hopefully bring some levity to otherwise serious topics. We add new cartoons every month, so the number of topics covered continually increases.
Matthew Murray
Managing Director, Sales Higher
Optimize Internal Linking Strategically
Look beyond the largest keywords! One underrated SEO strategy that has yielded significant results is the optimization of internal linking. This strategy is often overlooked, but it can have a significant impact on a website’s SEO performance.
Moreover, internal linking can be used strategically to boost the rankings of specific pages. For instance, you can add internal links from your most potent pages to those that are stuck on pages two and three of search results, thereby giving them a boost. However, it’s important to note that internal linking should be implemented thoughtfully and strategically. Links should be relevant and provide value to the user rather than being added randomly or excessively.
Inemesit Ukpanah
Digital PR Specialist, GreenMatch
Build Links via Manufacturers, Distributors
So many e-commerce retailers spend hours building links to their websites when they first launch. They buy links, use sites like HARO, or hire third parties overseas to get low-quality links.
One of the easiest ways a startup or seasoned business can build links for free is by reaching out to their manufacturers or distributors. Many of these companies list the businesses that sell their products right on their website, along with a link. It’s such an easy way of getting some high-authority links to help your overall SEO strategy.
Jeff Michael
Ecommerce Business Owner, Tanzanite Jewelry Designs
Accept and Utilize Guest Posts
Accepting guest posts, guest posting on third-party sites is a great way to earn backlinks to your website. However, there are also benefits for the blog or website accepting guest posts. Giving others opportunities to share their expertise helps you grow your own brand awareness. It also drives free traffic to your website via guest writers sharing their content with their network.
In my experience, my guest writers will also backlink to their own content when they have opportunities to do so. It’s truly a win-win for both sides, and many of my guest articles rank very well in search results.
Alli Hill
Founder and Director, Fleurish Freelance
Localize for Better SEO
One SEO strategy that has consistently yielded good results for us is localization. We currently operate in about half the states in the union, so we’re well on our way to becoming a truly national brand. However, we’ve achieved this by focusing on one major metro area at a time.
By creating localized landing pages for high-demand areas, we’re able to rise to the top of search results for those areas. It takes more than just inserting the name of the city in the title bar; you need to provide relevant, authentic content for that area. This is something we’ve achieved with a lot of research and content creation effort. At this point, we have it down to a science, and we add a new area every few weeks.
Nick Valentino
VP of Market Operations, Bellhop
Target Keywords with Downloadable Content
I’ve had some success targeting keywords containing phrases like “example,” “template,” “sample,” “checklist,” etc., and then creating downloadable or visual content based on those keywords.
For example, I created an article called “Transcript Example” that attracted a handful of .edu links and, interestingly, even got me cited as a source in a book. These types of keywords can also be a steady source of traffic from Google Images. Since I partly monetize my site with ads, these keywords have helped boost the site’s ad revenue besides improving its SEO.
Chloe Brittain
Founder, Monday Roadmap
Submit Your Answer
Would you like to submit an alternate answer to the question, “What’s one underrated SEO strategy that has yielded significant results for your business?”