SEO – If It’s Not Working, It’s Time for Some Non-SEO Tactics

by SEO

Those pesky search engine algorithms. Marketers spend a lot of time trying to figure them out and develop content campaigns that will “hit the mark” and earn a first-page ranking. They spend money, if the budget allows, on Google Adwords campaigns. They do the research for the most effective keywords and phrases; they create tags and compelling headlines. Still, they are not achieving the results they want in terms of ranking and traffic.

And traffic is what it’s all about.

So, here’s a thought. How about moving in a new direction – using non-SEO tactics to increase your traffic.

And if these are successful, your page ranking will actually improve.

Here are 5 non-SEO strategies you can put into place right now.

Attract More Visitors to Your Site (and Keep Them There)

This is nothing new. But, what are you doing to achieve this? Re-visit your web design and content. Does it engage and compel visitors to stay a while? How long has it been since you have updated your web design? Do pages load quickly and provide a seamless experience to visitors? There are several things you need to do here:

  • Perform analytics and determine where visitors go on your site and what pages seem to keep them and which do not. Look at the places from which visitors are bouncing and analyze your content on those pages.
  • Check out successful competitors’ websites. “What are they doing differently that you can implement on your own site?” suggests Freddy Davies, an SEO specialist at FlyWriting.
  • What are you doing to incorporate the latest visuals and media? Videos are great ways to capture visitors, if they are engaging. And newer technology makes them very easy to produce. Consider the success of the explainer video on the Dollar Shave Club website. It cost $4500 to produce a number of years ago. And it has never changed. Why? Because it went viral with over 22 million views, and has substantially increased traffic. In fact, within the first 48 hours, the company had over 12,000 orders.
  • There are additional media technologies to be used as well, specifically augmented and virtual reality – two tactics that are attracting visitors by the droves, because the interactivity is just fun.

Social Networking

Of course, marketers understand the power of social media. The more engaging their posts, the more they are shared, and those numbers add up to website traffic.

Two lesser-used social networking strategies are groups and hashtags:

  1. Groups. Facebook has sector-based groups, as do LinkedIn and Reddit. If you can present yourself as an expert on critical topics, you can reach a highly-targeted audience. And if your content is ranked well within those groups, it will result in more traffic. Be careful and read the guidelines. You cannot be too promotional.
  2. Hashtags. A lot of marketers have not taken advantage of hashtags. And it’s true they are difficult to master. They cannot be used randomly. It will take some serious research to learn which words/phrases are trending. Then, you will need to scan through the posts/articles to see if they directly relate to your product/service. Once they do, start posting to them. Currently, a number of platforms support hashtags – Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, and Google+.

Find a Newsworthy Element that Will Gain Publicity by Other Well-Known Sites

“Sometimes, there are elements on a website that are unusual or unique enough that they are discovered and publicized by other websites/bloggers,” explains Elsa Davison, head of the marketing department at Best UK Writers.

Here is an example of this having happened recently:

Elastic Morty by Adult Swim: Adult Swim, news portal, dedicated to the explicit branch of cartoon industry, made a great page, that attracted loads of fans. There is nothing about SEO in this page (it is even made with Javascript, whose scripts are the enemies of optimization), but the amount of traffic driven to that page, along with the social shares, says it all.

Content is Still King

Not enough can be said here, though you have heard it before. Ultimately, your content will draw those who love to be educated, entertained, and/or inspired by what you produce. And they will share that content with their communities, if it has value. Spend the necessary time to be creative, craft amazing headlines, include great media, and even promise something for those who share what you have produced.

Brand Ambassadors/Influencers

Much has been said about this as well. But, it is still a major way to generate greater traffic. From satisfied customers who receive additional incentives to share you with their communities, to developing relationships with influencers in your niche, using others to promote your site and its product/services of your blog. You are not doing the selling, and that is a good thing.

In Conclusion

Your goal is traffic, whether that comes from standard SEO strategies or from other strategies you can come up with. The greater the amount of generated traffic, the greater the sales. And the greater the traffic, the more search engines will notice anyway and improve your page rankings.

Contributed by: Samantha Brannon

Samantha Brannon is an entrepreneur and freelancer. She is also a co-founder and writing editor at TheEssayTyper writing service. Samantha loves self-education and rock music. Connect with her via Twitter.