7 Expert Strategies to Beat Every Google SEO Update
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Optimizing your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) is an ongoing process. Every new Google Core update – as recently as August 2024 – can cause significant changes in keyword ranking and traffic.
Maintaining top search rankings requires SEOs to systematically review and adapt their practices in the ever-changing internet search environment.
Here are seven advanced SEO strategies that can help you improve your search visibility to 2025, following Google’s latest update.
Related: Here’s The SEO Combination You Need To Win The Google Algorithm
Focus on topic groups
First of all, there’s a key strategy that’s worth its weight in gold when it comes to Google’s Helpful Content guidelines in particular – organizing your content around topic groups.
According to Google’s guidelines, your website needs to demonstrate knowledge, authority and expertise in your niche in order to achieve top positions in search results. One way to do this is to develop an integrated strategy to organize your content and provide a great experience to your website visitors.
Say you run a business that provides graphic design services, and you have a blog to attract new clients and showcase your skills and expertise. Instead of posting on different topics throughout the year, you can build your posts around carefully selected main ideas or target groups.
For example, you can write a long piece of cornerstone content on how professional graphic design can help startups create a cohesive brand identity. Then, you can publish a series of short “satellite” posts, where you go into aspects like the nuances of company logos and website color schemes.
This integrated approach helps you make sure you’re providing complete information to one target group before moving on to another.
Remove content that isn’t performing well
Another advanced SEO strategy is to eliminate content that isn’t performing well, either by updating it or removing it from your site.
Having content on your site that is outdated or doesn’t resonate with your audience can have a negative impact on SEO. At the very least it can significantly increase your bounce rates, which sends the wrong signal to Google’s algorithm.
To fix this problem, you should go back to your posts and pages and dig deeper into the analytics to check their performance. Which of them sees no traffic at all? What was doing well, but has stopped? And what topics are no longer important? What does the backlink status look like for each of them?
Once you’ve done this analysis, take the time to decide which pieces of content to take offline and where to invest time in updates. Trimming dead wood takes time, but it’s well worth it.
Related: 9 Key Tips to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Link Building Efforts
Use a variety of visuals
Next, the third SEO strategy for your website content is to differentiate your visuals. Most SEOs know that well-optimized images (think alt text!) are helpful when it comes to attracting traffic.
It’s time to take a step further and mix things up. GIFs and video content can be even more impactful when it comes to grabbing the attention of your website visitors. This increases time on site and increases click-through rates – all good signs of an algorithm.
Let’s take the example of cloud communications provider Nextiva. In their blog post on Unified CXM, they link to their YouTube channel and an explainer video that goes deep into all the different aspects of the topic that are of interest to clients.
This is a great way to not only increase your engagement and SEO in general, but also to clearly demonstrate your expertise in your niche.
Adjust the search by clicking on the egg
Moving to the top level, there are several recent innovations in the way Google displays results that you need to incorporate into your improved SEO strategy.
Most importantly, you need to optimize your pages to get zero click searches. In recent years, Google has fine-tuned its search results pages (SERPs) to display all the information needed to answer a particular search. This eliminates the need for users to click through to sites – but there are still opportunities here.
For example, let’s take the question below, asking how old business dog Warren Buffett is. As you can see, SERP answers this question a lot. It is unlikely that someone will click further.
However, you can still optimize your content for zero-click search. For example, you can target the “People also ask” section by adding FAQs to your articles, or by using questions from SERPs to organize your website’s content sections.
This increases the chances of you appearing in a prominent position. Although people’s first questions have been answered, many will follow because their curiosity has been piqued.
Captions are included for the target
Another important way to target SERP prime real estate is provided by featured snippets.
Featured captions appear higher in search results. Unlike other types of zero-click searches (AI answers, for example), they tend to encourage people to click through for more information.
Let’s take the example of video editing agency Tasty Edits — and their blog listing the best video editing services in 2024. They have optimized their content to benefit from these included snippets by placing the summary table very high, making it easier for Google’s algorithm. data aggregation.
In addition to smart table layouts, you can also increase your chances of using featured snippets by using subheadings to target individual snippets, as well as by using structured data schemas such as recipes or recipes.
Related: Outrank Competitors in Your Niche With These SEO Tweaks
An important point
SEO work is never done and silent. In order to keep your site always in the top position, you need to continuously update and adjust your strategy.
By following the advanced SEO tactics mentioned above, you will be able to secure your position as a top competitor in 2025. Combine collections of different topics and visuals, optimize search by zero-click and featured snippets and remove content that isn’t performing well.
That way, you will be able to provide outstanding information to your website visitors and win Google’s algorithm.
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