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Advanced SEO is a set of techniques that requires a more complex understanding of search engine algorithms and how to influence them. Once you cover the fundamentals of optimizing your website for search engines, advanced SEO strategies can give you greater influence over where and how audiences connect with your brand.
The right SEO tactics for your website could include everything from content strategy and link building to more technical SEO techniques like structured data.
1. Audit your website’s SEO
An SEO audit is a process of checking how well your website is optimized to show up in search engine results. You can work with a professional to run an audit for you, but you can also do a basic version on your own.
Plug your website URL into a free SEO tool like Google Search Console to get metrics on:
How mobile-friendly your website is
Page speeds
Traffic to your website from search
Whether pages are being picked up—i.e., indexed—by search engines
You can also use Squarespace’s keyword analytics and connect your website to Google Analytics to get an idea of what search terms are already sending users to your website. The audit results will help you find where your website needs improvement.
2. Find new keyword opportunities
Use the results of your SEO audit to find relevant keywords you haven’t covered on your website yet. Filling these content gaps builds a better case for your expertise in your niche and helps more searchers find your website. If you don’t have a blog, see if you can work them into your website copy.
Return to the list of keywords that are already sending organic traffic to your website. Use those as a jumping-off point to find new keywords, more specific keywords, and other questions you could work into your copy.
There are also free keyword research tools to help you identify untapped keywords for your website. Or think about your target audience and the search phrases they might be using or questions they might have. Dig into the SERPs for those phrases and see if any new terms come up.
3. Make your site fast and mobile-friendly
Page speed and mobile friendliness are important search ranking factors. Improving both also ensures a good user experience for your visitors. Page speed refers to how quickly your website pages load. Mobile-friendliness refers to whether your website loads quickly on mobile devices and whether it’s easy to view and navigate on a smaller screen.
Use your website builder or a free tool to check your page loading speeds. If they’re loading too slowly, consider removing animations, videos, or large files from some of your pages.
To test how mobile-friendly your site is, try using it on different devices. Do images show clearly? Is the text readable? Do buttons work and can you move from page to page easily? Squarespace’s website editor has a device view that lets you preview the mobile device experience as you edit. If your website builder uses responsive design or adaptive design, your page should work well on mobile.
4. Size up the competition
You need to understand your competition to set yourself apart from them. Get a sense of how your peers approach SEO. Look at their website, their content, and the keywords they’re ranking for. Are they paying for search ads on a specific search phrase? That’s a good indicator that it’s a higher-priority keyword for that business.
When you have a sense of how your competitors position themselves, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your brand.
For example, if you’re launching a clean beauty makeup line, make your brand stand out in search by emphasizing that your products are vegan and cruelty-free. Use related target keywords in your website copy.
Not sure who your competitors are? Search common keywords for your niche and see which brands pop up first.
5. Use image alt text to your advantage
Alt text is a written description of an image that assistive technologies can read. Adding alt text to your images makes your website more accessible and makes it easier to discover in search—especially if your images are original.
The descriptive text you add becomes part of your website’s code and can be picked up by search engines. If your description includes relevant keywords, it strengthens your website’s presence for that keyword. It also creates an opportunity for your image to show up in image search results for those keyword terms, getting more eyes on your page.
6. Set up internal linking
Internal linking refers to the practice of linking from one page on your website to another page on your website. A common example is when one blog post links to another one. But you don’t need to have a blog to set up internal links.
Linking between pages on your website makes it easier for visitors and search engines to navigate. Internal linking can also suggest to search engines which pages of your website are more important.
If you have a navigation menu or links in your website footer, you’ve already started to build out your internal linking. Look for other opportunities to link between pages. Think of it from the perspective of naturally guiding people through your website highlights. For example, add category pages to your ecommerce store or a link to your portfolio on your About Me page.
7. Prioritize link building
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to your own site—also known as backlinking. When other sites link to yours, it signals to search engines that your website provides information or products that are relevant to searchers within a specific category.
Link building also creates more opportunities for searchers to find your website outside of search engine results. There are a few ways to approach link building.
Link to your website from other platforms. Think of this as creating digital breadcrumbs for search engines and users. Add your website URL to your social media accounts, professional directories, and public bios to connect those pages.
Create shareable content. Making content or high-quality infographics that people want to share will naturally build links for your web pages.
Actively seek backlink opportunities. Pitch content ideas or submit your brand for features on relevant platforms and request a link back to your website in the article or your bio. Or try cold outreach to websites in your focus area.
The more links that point back to your website from other authoritative sites, the more search engines will take notice.
8. Compete for search page real estate
Search rankings are just one way for your website to show up on a search results page. Other sections of the results page, like the “People Also Ask” dropdowns or Shopping results are all extra opportunities for your site to show up on page one.
Set yourself up to compete for those spaces based on what you specialize in.
Add common “People Also Ask” questions to your FAQ page.
Answer questions well and succinctly to compete for the featured snippet spot at the very top of the results page.
Collect reviews and show them on your website.
Connect your products or services to Google so they show up in Shopping and search results at the top of the page.
Create a business listing so you show up in local search results. These usually show up in the knowledge panel at the top right of the results page.
Getting your website linked in any of these sections pushes you to a prominent spot on the first page of search results. That gives you a competitive edge even if your actual web pages are ranked much lower than your featured result.
9. Learn how to use structured data
Search engines index your website by crawling your site’s code, metadata, and the content on your landing pages. Structured data is an advanced SEO technique for organizing your website’s information so that search engines can easily understand your website’s content. Structured data lives in the HTML of your website, so your visitors can’t see it.
Using structured data helps create “rich results,” which search engines are more likely to feature in special sections like those referenced above.
On a blog page, structured data can look like clearly labeling the blog title, author, date of publication, and other information with callouts in the HTML. With a good website builder, you may not need to personally add these callouts to your website code. All Squarespace website templates come with built-in search engine optimization that make it easy to get your website indexed.
There are many standardized structured data markups for web pages, so you don’t have to start from scratch. Use Schema.org to find markups to use on your website.
10. Create content clusters
Having a content marketing strategy for your website is key. Including blog content in that strategy is one of the most effective ways to increase traffic and integrate advanced SEO into your website. Launching a blog that speaks to searcher intent will help the right people find your brand online.
Refer back to your keyword research. First, write content based on those keywords. Then, think about how to organize related topics around that first piece of content. This is referred to as creating content clusters or topic clusters. These clusters help your website visitors naturally progress through a topic and also signal your authority to search engines.
As search engines pick up more signals from your website that you’re writing great content around this specific topic, they’ll start to recognize your authority in the space.
For example, if you run a design agency and people find your competitors by searching “website design consultations,” you could publish an in-depth guide to preparing for a website design consultation. Then, write more articles about how to choose a website designer and where to find a designer.
You can also poll your audience about topics of interest as you develop a content strategy for your brand. Search engine keywords are informed by the language people use to find specific topics and information online. Going straight to the source can help you identify the wording and content that will resonate most with your target audience.
Over time, you can update blog content and landing page copy to stay relevant to searchers. Search engines like Google prefer content that’s been recently published or updated because it ensures they’re surfacing the most up-to-date information in their results. A good content strategy will continually signal topic authority to search engines, clearly direct visitors to take a desired action on your website, and ultimately support your website goals.
11. Optimize your content for search visitors
Searchers are generally looking for quick answers to their questions. If someone can’t find what they’re looking for on your website, they’ll click away quickly. Search engine algorithms take that as a signal that your website content isn’t helpful for the search term that led that person to your page. The less helpful your content is for that term, the lower you’ll rank for that search phrase.
Keep searchers engaged by delivering what they’re looking for fast. For writers, that means putting the most important takeaways from your content high on the page. This is called putting content “above the fold” or “bottom line up front (BLUF)”.
For other types of websites, that could mean putting a product, pricing, or sign-up link above the fold on your pages. Or it can mean making your pages easy to navigate and skimmable for someone casually browsing.
The best way to do this is to consider what the end goal of each page on your website is. As you’re updating your website, make it easy for visitors to figure out how to accomplish that goal within a few seconds of landing on each page.
This post was updated on April 20, 2023.