This is a complete list of 17 advanced SEO strategies, techniques, and tactics. In fact, these exact strategies have helped my site bring in over 571K visitors per month from Google.
If you’re sick of reading the same old beginner advice (“just create great content!”), you are going to really enjoy this list.
1. Rank for “Journalist Keywords”
As the name suggests, Journalist Keywords are terms that journalists actively search for when writing articles. They are a super powerful way to build backlinks at scale.
For example, when a journalist needs a specific statistic or industry metric, they head to Google. If your site ranks for that data point, they will cite your study and link back to you right as they publish their piece.
2. Use Animated Images to Improve Time on Site
Recent search engine ranking factor studies show that Time on Site (Dwell Time) strongly correlates with higher Google rankings. A simple way to improve this metric is by using high-resolution animated images (like animated SVGs or high-quality GIFs). These dynamic visuals stop users from skimming, encouraging them to read more of your content and spend significantly more time on your page.
3. Create Content Hubs
Content Hubs are essentially mini-Wikipedias focused on a specific, broad topic (like “Technical SEO” or “Link Building”). Each entry within the hub is optimized around a single keyword and written to perfectly match search intent. Because all the entries are strategically linked together, it creates incredible internal link equity and drastically boosts the time users spend navigating your site.
4. Target Comparison Keywords
Comparison keywords are search terms that pit two things against each other (e.g., “Ahrefs vs Semrush” or “Webflow vs WordPress”).
- Why target them? People searching for comparison keywords are further down the sales funnel. They already know the landscape and are close to converting. Plus, these keywords typically have much lower Keyword Difficulty scores compared to broad head terms.
5. Use Dynamic Parameters for Pagination
If you have a massive site, crawl budget issues can prevent Google from indexing your new pages for weeks. Instead of using standard folder pagination (e.g., .../page/2), switch to dynamic parameters (e.g., .../?page=2). This helps Google’s spiders figure out your URL patterns so they spend less time re-crawling old pages and more time indexing your fresh content according to Google’s official crawl budget guidelines.
6. Build Backlinks With Podcasts
Podcasts are the new guest posts! To publish a single guest post, you have to pitch, draft, edit, and wait. With a podcast, you simply show up, share your expertise, and the host will almost always include a high-quality backlink to your site in the show notes. Start by pitching smaller, niche-specific podcasts, and invest in a high-quality microphone.
7. Forge a Content Alliance
A Content Alliance is when you team up with another business, site, or YouTube channel on a single piece of content. For example, you can partner with a massive data provider like BuzzSumo; they provide the raw data, and you write and promote the analysis. It is a win-win that gets you access to exclusive information and puts your brand in front of tens of thousands of new readers.
8. Maximize SERP Real Estate
The #1 organic result on Google gets roughly 32% of all clicks. But you can get more clicks without higher rankings by taking up more “SERP Real Estate” (the physical pixel space you control on page one). You can do this by optimizing for:
- Featured Snippets
- YouTube Video Carousels
- Rich Snippets
- Top Stories
9. Embed Original Images in Your Content
SEO experiments have proven that duplicate images (like cheap stock photos) can actively hurt your rankings. Go the extra mile to create custom charts, graphs, and high-resolution screenshots. Not only does this improve user experience, but other bloggers will embed your original visuals into their own posts—generating passive backlinks to your site as the image source.
10. Optimize Your Content for Keyword Relevance
Google wants to see quantifiable signals that your page is highly relevant to a topic. One of the best ways to prove relevance is by naturally including LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords. You can use advanced content optimization tools like Clearscope or Surfer SEO to scan top-ranking pages and uncover the exact related terms you need to include in your content.
11. Create a Comments Section on Your Blog
Comments are user-generated content (UGC) that Google actively crawls, indexes, and ranks. A vibrant comments section gives users more to read, drastically boosting dwell time. Just make sure you aggressively moderate the section to ensure 100% of the comments are high-quality and spam-free.
12. Uncover “People Also Ask” Keywords
According to Semrush data, over 57% of all Google search results now contain a “People Also Ask” (PAA) box. Click the accordions to reveal hidden, long-tail questions your audience is actively searching for, and answer them directly within your content to steal those valuable snippet rankings.
13. Add “Content Features” To Your Page
Giant walls of text cause users to bounce. Break your content up by adding highly visual or interactive “content features.” Things like custom calculators, comparison charts, pros and cons lists, summaries, and stylized quote boxes keep readers engaged and moving down the page.
14. Publish Topic + Year Content
Searchers want the freshest information possible. By creating guides optimized for a specific year (e.g., “Best SEO Tools in 2026”), you target users with high intent who are actively filtering for the most up-to-date information in your industry.
15. Get Backlinks From Unlinked Brand Mentions
Sometimes publishers will mention your brand, product, or original research without actually linking back to your site. Use brand monitoring tools to track down these unlinked mentions, reach out to the author, and politely ask them to turn that plain text into a clickable backlink.
16. Optimize for Google Discover
Google Discover is a massive driver of mobile traffic that pushes content to users before they even search for it. To get featured in this feed, focus on publishing highly engaging, newsworthy, or trending topics, and ensure you use high-quality, high-resolution feature images.
17. Find Low-Competition Keywords From Reddit
Reddit frequently ranks high on Google for long-tail questions, but Reddit threads are often messy and hard to read. You can steal this traffic by finding keywords where Reddit ranks on the first page, and creating a blog post that is significantly better by:
- Organizing the information into actionable steps.
- Adding helpful multimedia.
- Including external links to helpful resources.
- Providing more up-to-date strategies and techniques.
Bonus Strategy #1: Visualize Your Sitemap
Visually mapping out your site structure helps you easily spot “orphan pages” (pages with no internal links pointing to them) and fix your internal linking architecture to ensure link equity flows properly.
Bonus Strategy #2: Find Hidden Terms With Google Keyword Planner
Instead of typing a basic seed keyword into the Keyword Planner, paste a competitor’s URL! Google will scan their page and spit out hidden keyword ideas you might never have thought of.
Also Read : Long-Tail Keyword Optimization for AI
