5 Advanced SEO Techniques & Strategies for Success in 2023.

Advanced SEO refers to a set of techniques that require a deeper understanding of SEO, search engine algorithms, and marketing technology.?

These tactics and strategies go beyond SEO basics and can give you an edge over your competitors.

Here are 5 of the most effective advanced SEO strategies in 2023.

1. Improve Your Content’s Time to Value

Time to value in SEO is the time it takes for a user to get value from a piece of content.

The time-to-value of your content should be short.

Short time-to-value enables your users to get what they’re looking for as quickly as possible.

But with hero images, author bios, and long-winded intros, many websites have poor time to value.

Poor time-to-value can negatively affect your bounce rate, dwell time, and session duration.

And this could affect your traffic and rankings.

So, how do you improve time to value?

By putting the most important information and elements at the top of the page.

Ideally, above the fold.?

Use the BLUF (bottom line up front) or journalistic inverted-pyramid approach. In other words, put the information users are looking for at the top.?

Keep your introductions short and get to the point.?

Don’t waste anyone’s time.

2. Build Out Topic Clusters

A topic cluster is a group of articles or pieces of content that share a central topic and strategically link to and from one another.

Topic clusters provide comprehensive coverage of a topic.

This coverage improves topical authority and enables your readers to have their queries (as well as any follow-up queries) satisfied on your site.?

Typically, topic clusters revolve around a pillar page, which is a page that targets a broad topic.

Content that covers related topics makes up the cluster and is used to link to and from the pillar page.

Topic clusters are an effective SEO tactic because they help you create content that demonstrates topical authority, relevance, and expertise.

Think of it this way:

If a website only had a single piece of content on a topic, you probably wouldn’t consider them an authority or expert on it.

But if it had a whole cluster of related content that used internal linking to demonstrate the topical relevance between them?

You’d probably think the site knew what it was talking about.?

Your users (and Google) feel the same way.?

Migrating your site's content into a topic cluster structure may not be the simplest of tasks.

But it's one that will pay dividends and can contribute to your site’s long-term success.?

Long gone are the days of thinking about ranking for single keywords.

In 2023, you should be thinking about how to rank for topics and satisfy your users’ queries before they even search for them.

Building out topic clusters is a great way to get into this mindset.

3. Leverage Strategic Internal Linking

Internal linking is one of the most underrated SEO tactics.?

While adding internal links to your pages is beginner SEO stuff, using internal links strategically to boost relevance and authority requires nuance and advanced SEO knowledge.

Good internal links help search engines better understand your content and site structure.

They also help users navigate your website.?

The strategic part comes from knowing how and where to link to which pages.?

You should be linking to your most important pages from other semantically and topically relevant pages.?

You should also be using descriptive anchor text that has the same search intent as the primary keyword of the page it points to.?

One impactful way to start improving internal linking is to base your strategy on your site's most linked-to pages.

Look for opportunities to link these pages to topically related pages that need a push in organic visibility.

And think carefully about the anchor text you use.

This tactic works and should be evaluated regularly.

You should also use this technique when you launch new content and look for opportunities to link to it internally.

4. Maximize Your SERP Real Estate with FAQ Schema

You can increase search visibility and take traffic away from your competitors without improving your rank.

How?

By increasing your SERP (search engine results page) real estate.?

A great way to do this is to integrate FAQ schema as part of your advanced on-page SEO.

FAQ schema makes it possible for questions you answer in your content to appear in the SERPs.

It's a tactic to consider if your page includes question-and-answer style content.

Even if you're already ranking well, you'll be able to push your competitors further down the first page and take clicks away from them.

5. Leverage Paid Ads for Link Building

Link building is one of the most difficult, time-consuming aspects of SEO.?

Yet even in 2023, it’s still one of the most important.

But what if there were a safe way to get backlinks without spending a ton of time?

Fortunately, there is. And it’s Google-approved (and encouraged)!

Results at the top of the front page typically get more backlinks than other results.

Why?

Simply because they get more clicks and traffic than other results.?

Assuming everything is equal, more people reading your content means a higher chance of getting links.

If you have a budget for link building, you can take advantage of this reality with Google Ads.

First, find keywords in your niche that have informational intent and serve up search ads in the SERPs.

Then, use the filters to display only keywords with informational intent that serve up Google Ads at the top of the SERPs.

Choose a keyword from the list that you have great content for that satisfies the search intent and doesn’t already rank at the top of the SERPs.

Alternatively, you could create a new piece of content that targets one of these keywords.

You’ll also want to choose a keyword that is likely to get backlinks.

Think of definitions, statistics, facts, and tips.?

These types of keywords often serve up content that gets linked to in other articles.?

Run your ads for at least one or two months at a budget that makes sense for you.

Monitor the quality of links you get and determine a cost per link.?

You’ll probably need to try different keywords and bids to find a strategy that works for your business.?

This strategy can be effective on Google, Bing, and even Facebook.