4 Advanced SEO and Content Marketing Strategies Working Right Now
In this post I am going to share several strategies I have been deploying on my sites over the last few months and the results these tests/case-studies/strategies have been able to achieve.
All of the strategies listed below are being discussed from experience and not theory. Each of the example sites are from my portfolio. For the four strategies below I highlight 5 sites that are in my portfolio that represent what these strategies are capable of.
I am certain there are many many other strategies that work but these are the 5 I have been having the most success with lately…
ONE – 1+1 = 3 or Post Number Reconciliation for Large Sites
- Overview:
- I have grouped two but very similar strategies into one. The idea with this strategy is that you reduce the number of posts you are trying to rank for any keywords and combine multiple pages on long tail keywords into 1 MONSTER resource on the given topic. This strategy I believe plays into Google Hummingbird algorithm layer and there seems to be more people talking about a similar strategy validating what I wrote about this strategy here. My theory on why this is working now is because it helps keep the organization of the site easier for Hummingbird to understand the theme of the site. In addition it plays into another strategy working right now – long content 1,000-5,000 word epic resources!
- Consider This Strategy If:
- You have A LOT of posts with many titles being similar
- You have a post which ranks better than your homepage for your sites main target keywords
- Step by Step Strategy:
- 1+1 = 3
- Identify If you have a post outperforming your homepage for your main keywords by checking your Google Analytics top pages and plugging both the homepage and most popular page into SEMRush.
- Make the popular post the homepage article and 301 redirect the popular post URL to the homepage
- See detailed strategy here
- Post Reconciliation
- If you have A LOT of posts and many of them don’t get much traffic this strategy could apply
- Go into Google Analytics and look at pages that get minimal traffic (your bottom 20% at least)
- For each post in the bottom identify another similar post that gets more organic traffic on your site
- Move the content from the low traffic post to the more popular post (however it naturally makes sense & keeping the old content) and 301 redirect the old URL to the more popular post.
- Case Study Results:
- In the example shown below a post was outperforming the homepage for all the main keywords we were wanting the site to rank for. The content on the page was moved to the homepage and upgraded and the old URL 301 redirected to the homepage. The result was a net increase in rankings and a net 40% traffic increase to the site in a 2 week period of time.
- 1+1 = 3
Keyword “Best DC” – 5400 volume keyword moved from 17 to 3 & settled at 5
Conversion Rate Increase to 3.24%
Traffic Increase by ~40%
TWO – 301 Building Block Strategy
- Overview:
- I often get asked “can I build a money site on an expired domain?” my answer is always the risk I don’t believe is worth the reward when you have the stratey I am going to talk about now as an alternative. With this strategy you build a small ~5 post site on a powerful expired domain that is relevant and then watch how it responds in Google. If the site starts to rank nicely move the content from it to form a silo on the main money site and 301 redirect over the powerful expired domain. The benefit of this strategy is that you don’t risk linking an expired domain that had previously been penalized to your money site while still being able to get the sandbox skipping benefit of building on an expired domain. The downside to this strategy is that is is expensive and can be distracting. Each site does not always work and it can be costly to find buy and build up multiple expired domains.
- Consider This Strategy If:
- You are building a large site, have funds to invest and want to shorten the typical growth time.
- Step by Step Strategy:
- See VERY detailed post here
- Find extremely high quality and clean relevant expired domain and purchase it
- Set up a simple 5 page site and monitor how it responds in Google
- Identify a niche you can build a silo around and map out the silo structure
- Build silo structure including Epic Niche Dominating Post
- Confirm Google is viewing the expired domain positively based on traffic and ranking
- Move articles and 301 redirect expired domain to the Epic Niche Dominating Post
- Case Study Results:
- This strategy was heavily used last year to build up my “six figure challenge” website and it is still working now. Here are the results of 3 “building blocks” that were built to help jump start a larger authority site.
Each of the 3 sites above were then used as individual “building blocks” to build up a larger authority site from my Six Figure Challenge in 2015 that set it on a successful trajectory for the last 2 years…
THREE – PBN Links
- Overview:
- Whether you love them or hate them people have to admit they work! They are not the only source for generating links but they are the most easily scaled source for links across a portfolio of sites. What I will show in the results below is the results to a site that had a 10 and 5 site Done For you PBN built to it and then 2 Use My PBN links per month.
- Consider This Strategy If:
- You have a portfolio of sites or your time is limited and pure “white hat” link building for multiples sites is not practical
- You have some understanding of the risk vs reward of using PBNs and you choose to use them to boost your rankings
- Step by Step Strategy:
- Build a PBN yourself – see this do it yourself PBN guide
- Purchase PBN Links
- Case Study Results:
- For this site there we have 2 links going to it every month and on two occasions decided to spin up another 5-10 site PBN.
FOUR – Consistent Content Focusing on Low Competition Keywords
- Overview:
- A strategy I hope to share more details about that people are having success with is building a site with VERY thorough content focusing on low competition keywords.
- Great keyword research and great content is enough to still built a successful site and the ongoing success of this strategy is a large reason for the launch of ContentRefined.com which produces great content with in-depth keyword research consistently for members.
- Consider This Strategy If:
- You have experience with keyword research and have access to an advanced tool (such as SECockpit)
- You can or have access to people who can create great content consistently or are prepared to spend for a content marketing service
- Step by Step Strategy:
- Do it Yourself – See last weeks in depth post here – Content Marketing Strategy
- Keyword Research (I am currently using SECockpit)
- Create great content (either yourself or outsource it – here is how I outsource article writing)
- Publish with proper formatting (I use Thrive Editor when I want to make a post really “pop”)
- Complete Done For You Option – ContentRefined can be your in-house content marketing team taking care of everything including keyword research, content creation, custom image creation and post publishing.
- Do it Yourself – See last weeks in depth post here – Content Marketing Strategy
- Case Study Results:
- The first site shown below is a site that has had a lot of strategies listed above applied to it but the main focus was on identifying low competition keywords and getting the best article on the web created for it. The compounding growth of the site has been great in only ~7 months!
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- The next site shown below is a pure example of this strategy with consistent long content being created and in under one year it was built with no external links up to 73k visitors per month making over $1k/month. Just great content targeting low competition keywords was enough to push this site in my portfolio up.
Summary
These 4 advanced SEO and content marketing strategies that are working now and 5 case study sites hopefully have provided you with some ideas of what you can do to grow your sites.
Like I said at the start I am sure there are many other strategies that are working well right now but these are the 4 I can share from my portfolio with real results.
Moving forward into 2017 I plan to continue doing much of the same for my sites.
My main concern with posts like this is that I over-complicate the process. In the end what matters when it comes to ranking a site is Content + Links. I believe if I can get those two right than success with my portfolio getting organic traffic will continue.
Jon, since you wrote about the 301 building block strategy I have used it and it has worked amazing for my site! Thanks for the tip and I plan to continue to use it to build up my sites. I will have to give the other ideas a try, especially the 1+1=3 post strategy… looks pretty cool and I think I have a site that could really help! As always thanks for sharing so much!
Great to hear you were able to use the 301 building block strategy!
Thank you Jon for sharing this knowledge. I have very much enjoyed this post and will use these strategies to help grow my site.
Question – what metrics do you look for when you talk about the 301 building block strategy?
I like to see Metrics that make it worth my while but also I am very very focus on ensuring the site is relevant and has authority. In the end I like to see sites that get above my standard metrics of TF 15 DA 15 and ideally super relevant and super clean.
Hey Jon!
Is it snowing yet? Lol
Actually, I built two websites last year following the steps: low keywords combined with informational articles and the results are amazing, I didn’t mention? No links at all, 0 Nada 🙂 i just started a new one last month and im having the same success. Traffic keeps going UP. Cheers
Snowing as I type this! Congrats on your success, glad the process is working for you.
@azedine, do you have a minimum volume for the long tail keyword? thx
hey john,
great article,
when you say “low competition” what are you considering low competition? <3000 search/month , <1000 or <500 .
thanks
For the competition it is seperate from the search volume. In SE Cockpit I like to look into items below a keyword score of 30%
Jon, thanks for the 301 Building Block Strategy! i had added to my testing list!
What do you think of buying expired domain and make 301 redissolution for the money website?
Awesome content man! Quick question…how do I find and isolate “long tail” keywords using SEMrush? I have the subscription but not sure how to leverage it for long tail. Also – do you use Yoast SEO plugin to ensure your content is optimized for SEO? Thanks in advance man!