DEV Community

Arpit Shrivastava
Arpit Shrivastava

Posted on

12 SEO Lessons. I Have Learned After Examining Countless Competitors!

One of the toughest hurdles right now is convincing small businesses that they need to step up and learn how the Internet can dramatically increase their sales and conversion. They are leaving a lot of cash on the table by delaying the process. Now lets explore my learnings!

  1. Most links are utter garbage: When you start to break websites down, you'll find that most links are rubbish. So don't be intimidated by big link numbers in the tools.

  2. Most content is terrible: The chances are you can build far better content than what's ranking online.

  3. Internal links are still one of the best sources of links, no matter what anyone says. It's common sense to link to your pages. Just don't overdo it.

  4. Content velocity is now what most SEO is about. Publish more content, more aggressively, and do it like your life depends on it. If it's not written it can't rank.

  5. You don't have to publish perfect content the first time if you don't plan on promoting it. It's perfectly OK to publish lean content and when it ranks on page 2 or 3 in time, then upgrade it.

  6. Google is carving up the SERPS, they don't want people to click on your site. But remember Google isn't the only search engine. While they only have a small % of the market DuckDuckGo handles an average of 98.79 million search queries a day and is growing fast. Expect other search engines to be launched soon, making SEO future-proof.

  7. Product pages can and should be sales pages. Most product pages are awful, yet we know that better pages rank higher and convert better. Invest in good product descriptions.

  8. Don't forget conversion and emails. Make sure you have a high-quality lead magnet and a follow-up email funnel. Grab those emails at every opportunity.

  9. Don't waste your money on dog shit PR link-building campaigns that generate links from nothing but foreign sites. Instead, invest in real PR. Be the expert, get featured on TV, and get people talking about you. Know the difference between REAL PR and the terrible link building disguised as PR.

  10. Create expected content and unexpected content. If I google tips for cleaning my computer, that's what I expect to get. But you must also create content that I don't expect, that intrigues me. It's this content I see after I read the expected stuff, and it's this content that makes me click on a second page.

  11. Leverage AI tools by asking yourself 'how can AI help with this?' Even if it handles intros and conclusions, it saves a lot of time.

  12. Smash ideas together to get fresh content topics. For example, superheroes smashed with SEO = "Stan Lee's Content Creation Template That Will Make You A Better Writer".

What are your learning from SEO? Where are we doing it wrong?

Top comments (0)