by Have you heard the chatter that SEO might be dead?
While some marketers may claim that SEO doesn’t work nowadays, a strong search marketing campaign will still deliver huge results. Nevermind the naysayers. Instead, pay attention to these stats that prove that SEO is still very much alive and kicking.
- 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results
- Google gets over 100 billion searches a month worldwide
- SEO is the most popular marketing tactic among terms searched by people
To be real, more and more people are using this marketing tactic to drive traffic to their website and increase their sales. The numbers don’t lie.
You can always buy SEO services, and if you’re worried about how this will affect your budget you can take a peek at this guide on SEO cost. That being said, if you want to succeed while you’re going it alone it would be in your best interest to learn from some of the most influential SEO marketers.
A List of Tips from 10 Successful SEO Marketers
It’s no secret that the Google algorithm changes many times a year, and adapting to its changes requires time and effort. Therefore, even a successful SEO marketer can face penalties and lose everything in the blink of an eye.
However, there are a number of truly successful SEO marketers that prove SEO is alive and worth the time and money. If you want to stay competitive, follow all recent trends, and see your website ranking – read on and learn from these gurus.
1. Neil Patel
“If you are trying to grow your qualified search traffic, you have to combine your content marketing with your SEO efforts.”
Content marketing plays an important role when it comes to SEO, especially if you create high-quality pieces that grab a reader’s attention and holds it. Neil preaches content curation and I’d second his sentiment that it’s a crucial piece to running a successful SEO campaign.
2. Brian Dean
“There was a brief time in SEO history where you could build thousands of spam links and watch your site climb to the top of the first page. Those days are long gone. SEOs that do well today dedicate serious resources (time, money, and skilled labor) towards their link building campaigns.”
The bottom line? SEO is not a simple or easy endeavor. While the number of websites is growing rapidly and the market is getting increasingly competitive, you need to devote a lot of energy to stay on the right track.
Always put quality over quantity, and your website will never be penalized by Google.
3. Rand Fishkin
“Guest blogging, guest posting, in that classic SEO for a link fashion, is not a great idea. But it can still be a great channel to earn brand awareness and attention.”
People still use the tried and true guest posting technique to build links to their websites, and there’s frankly no reason not to as long as you’re bringing something valuable to the table.
It’s really a win win when done right. The blog owner gets high-quality material to add to their content marketing machine, and the guest author gets a worthy mention that helps to build brand awareness.
The main idea is to craft great articles, strengthen your prose, and stay useful. Don’t hesitate to give it a try, but always focus on being relevant, unique, and interesting.
4. Gianluca Fiorelli
“The greatest trick SEO ever pulled… was convincing the world it didn’t exist.”
This one is dedicated to all those people who don’t believe in the power of SEO. Those that think it’s too tricky and esoteric.
Obviously, a veil of shadows helps to reduce the number of competitors who are also looking for your customers. But if you still believe that SEO is just a smoke show, you couldn’t be further from the truth.
5. Bruce Clay
“The return on SEO investments is generally massive, though not immediate. SEO is a marathon, not a dash.”
If you want to get good results from SEO, you’ll have to learn how to be patient. SEO campaigns will never be able to deliver immediate results (and if they do, you should be very suspicious).
Never give up if you think that search marketing doesn’t work. The main idea here is to analyze your efforts over a substantial period of time. This will tell you more about what you’re doing right and what you may be doing wrong as well.
6. Vanessa Fox
“True search strategy is integrated into overall product and business strategy, and too often whoever is responsible for SEO isn’t involved those parts of a company’s planning process.”
One of the most common mistakes SEO marketers make, is failing to integrate their product and business strategies.
SEO is not just about increasing your product sales; it’s also about budgeting intelligently in order to achieve better results. Think about your SEO techniques in a global sense: be sure to analyze both your product and business strategies.
7. Matt Cutts
“We’re making Google smarter and smarter. We’re going to keep trying to figure out how to add more value for users and for searchers.”
Well, Matt Cutts is nothing if not honest. Google definitely does improve day by day, and the search algorithm is growing increasingly effective at crawling content.
It seems there’s little chance of cheating and getting away with it. Thus, be ready to constantly adapt your SEO strategy to fit Google’s rulebook. Remember, create useful and unique content, forget about black-hat SEO techniques, and give it time.
8. Larry Kim
“Better organic search visibility will come from beating your competitors with a higher than expected click-through rate.”
If you regularly analyze your click-through rate (CTR), that’s great. If you do your best to get more leads that are expected, that’s even better!
Having a higher CTR is a key to success as it helps to build organic reach, brings increased revenues, and keeps budgets under control. Thus, you’ll need to be picky about which keywords you choose and be sure to base your ads on in-depth research.
9. Kristi Hines
“Once your small business has determined what keywords to target through keyword research, your next goal is to make sure your website is optimized for these keywords.”
Having a killer keyword strategy is a must.
If you know how your audience is going to search for your product/brand/service, you can optimize your website to help them find at just the right moment. What’s more, you can insert those keywords into your articles, providing evergreen and useful information that builds trust and loyalty.
Never forget about keywords – it’s a critical piece to improving your SEO results.
10. Ann Smarty
“We are not-so-slowly but surely moving away from the ‘free search traffic’ phenomenon. It was pretty stupid to guarantee rankings in the past — it will be impossible to do so in the future.”
The internet market is growing daily, and the number of competitors in your niche is probably growing as well. While it may have been previously possible to use free search traffic to improve rankings, those days are long gone.
Get ready to spend not only time and energy, but money as well. The competitive market requires all three, so ignoring any of those requirements would be ill-advised.
The Bottom Line
To achieve your desired results from SEO, you need to be up-to-date, creative, and willing to take a little risk.
Successful SEO marketers share incredible pieces of advice on almost a daily basis. These tidbits of wisdom can really help you stand out from the crowd.
Analyze what works well for you, experiment, and never stop doing SEO. It’s an always on piece of your business, and at the end of the day, you’re responsible for your own achievements.
Do you follow other SEO gurus that inspire you? What are some of the best tips you remember? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below!
Guest Author
Andrew Howe – Andrew runs AdverbLess, a tool to help people eradicate adverbs in their prose. He is fond of writing and learning, so he contributes to websites, writing on different topics such as marketing, studying, and traveling. Also, he started to work on Edubirdie as a content writer. Follow Andrew on Twitter.
