When it comes to SEO, many people think the process revolves around keywords, backlinks, and some basic technical fixes. Those are a huge part of the equation, but there’s more to focus on if you want to outrank competitors.
SEO companies use more advanced strategies to help your website rank higher and attract organic traffic. In this blog, we’ll explore three lesser-known advanced SEO strategies that can give your site the competitive edge to climb the rankings.
Table of Contents
1. Leveraging Schema Markup for Rich Snippets
One of the more technical yet highly effective ways SEO companies improve rankings is by implementing schema markup. Schema markup helps search engines better understand your content, allowing it to be displayed more attractively in the form of rich snippets.
Rich snippets are the additional information you sometimes see in search results — such as star ratings, FAQs, or images. By enhancing your content with structured data (or schema), search engines are more likely to display your website in a visually engaging way, which can increase click-through rates.
For example, a local restaurant that uses schema to mark up their hours, menu, and reviews might appear at the top of local search results with enhanced details. This structured data makes it easier for users to find relevant information, leading to higher engagement and, ultimately, improved rankings.
How SEO Companies Do It: SEO experts use various schema types, including product reviews, recipes, events, and more, depending on your industry. Tools like Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool help ensure the schema is correctly implemented and recognized by search engines.
2. Optimizing for User Behavior Signals
User behavior is a critical factor in how search engines rank websites. When users interact positively with your site — staying longer, navigating multiple pages, or returning later—search engines interpret this as a sign of high-quality content.
SEO companies optimize user behavior signals by focusing on dwell time, bounce rate, and click-through rate (CTR). For example, if users are leaving your site too quickly (high bounce rate), an SEO expert might recommend improving your landing page experience, simplifying navigation, or speeding up your page load times.
How SEO Companies Do It:
- Improving Dwell Time: They focus on engaging content, like interactive elements, videos, and more in-depth information that keeps users on the page longer.
- Reducing Bounce Rate: Enhancing the site’s usability by making navigation intuitive, improving mobile responsiveness, and aligning content with searcher intent.
- Increasing CTR: Creating enticing meta descriptions and title tags that attract more clicks from search results.
3. Maximizing Evergreen Content for Sustained Growth
Another strategy SEO companies employ is the creation and optimization of evergreen content — content that remains relevant and valuable over time. Unlike trend-based content, which has a short shelf life, evergreen content continuously drives traffic long after publication.
Examples of evergreen content include “how-to” guides, tutorials, industry glossaries, and FAQs. By focusing on timeless topics, SEO companies help you maintain a consistent flow of organic traffic, even months or years after the content has been posted.
How SEO Companies Do It:
- Content Updates: They periodically review and update evergreen content to ensure accuracy and relevance, adding new statistics, examples, or related keywords to maintain search rankings.
- Internal Linking: Linking new blog posts or product pages to older evergreen articles to increase the visibility and authority of both types of content.
SEO Companies: Final Thoughts
These advanced SEO strategies — leveraging schema markup, optimizing user behavior signals, and focusing on evergreen content — can significantly improve your website’s visibility and search rankings. While they may be less discussed, they provide powerful benefits that go beyond traditional SEO techniques.
Ready to explore how these advanced strategies can help your website rank higher? Reach out to our SEO experts today to discuss how we can tailor a plan that drives results.