The best of the best SEO strategies from the best SEO experts for 2019

If there’s one thing I know it’s SEO. I subscribe to the very best SEO newsletters on the internet, and I tirelessly research the skill in search of advantages I can finagle to support search rankings and topple traffic limits. There is no shortage of SEO “experts” out there, so I can compare one expert’s sage SEO counsel against another’s astounding SEO discoveries.

Since we have nearly arrived at 2019’s point of mezzo, why not aggregate some of the loftiest lessons into a sizzling smörgåsbord of SEO strategies? I will write a series of articles of articles showcasing the best of the best SEO strategies of strategies from the many SEO newsletters in publication. This will be the cream of the cream risen to the top of the top. Don’t mind if I do.

This series can be considered a list of lists, and I do vouch for the SEO writing expertise of all of these stupendous SEO superheroes. Although, it’s spooky how much the experts (have to) repeat themselves and copy each other. It’s make them look so un-expert at times. Maybe I’ve been reading SEO articles and watching SEO videos for so long I’m jaded and have become de-sensitized to the uber-SEO hyperbole. It happens.

Below is the first in the series of “2019 SEO strategies” lists of the many I have read since the start of 2019. I’ve added my own little notes beside each of the strategies to summarize, help explain, and, if possible, extend the knowledge. You can still read the full articles by clicking on the organization name responsible for these glorious 2019 SEO strategy articles (eyes-rolling emoji omitted). First up, CognitiveSEO.

Check back to my Journal for fresh additions to this anthology. This is a fantastic list of strategies that are relatively easy to implement, can make your site look younger, and can remove un-site-ly wrinkles to your website.

21 Effective Low Effort & High Return SEO Techniques for 2019 by CognitiveSEO

Optimize Your Titles and Headings

Basic optimization of HTML like TITLE, heading tags, keyword research and adding alt=”” text to images is so fundamental that it is often overlooked. Nobody stops at stop signs anymore.

Add Breadcrumbs to Your Pages

Breadcrumbs may be annoying on websites you frequent often, but for publishers and online retailers they are essential because they create structure and order. Moreover, breadcrumbs make it easy for users to find products and things they are looking for. Ease-of-use is something search engines like Google have built into their services as they are always thinking from the perspective of the user and visitor

Implement Tracking on Your Site

Tracking, metrics and analytics goes without saying, but more often than you might expect, it goes without being used properly and adequately. Google now has the defacto analytics standard for website metrics, even though there are literally thousands of website analytics solutions out there. As CognitiveSEO says, “You can use Google Search Console and Google Analytics…They’re fairly easy to install…I recommend using Google Tag Manager to implement all tracking codes. They will be easier to manage afterwards.

Install an SSL Certificate

4. Once again, SSL certs are not just a basic function of good SEO, in 2014, SSLs became a major factor of SEO rankings. That’s when Google made it official by calling SSLs on websites a “ranking signal.” The problem webmasters have had with SSLs is updating the URLs of their pages and content from http to https.

Secure Your Maps Listings

5. Local SEO strategies are big for small and localized businesses. As CognitiveSEO implores, local SEO through Google Maps means you “claim ownership” of your brand through Google’s local business tool, Google My Business, but I would go a step farther. Claim ownership of your business on one of the most important local platforms of them all — Yelp!

Compress & Optimize Your Images

Image compression and optimization is another basic, but vital function of website management. Personally, I use the panda to compress my images. That’s the cool and very fat mascot from the online compression tools, TinyPNG and TinyJPG. You can compress your images while having a good laugh.

Increase Site Speed

CognitiveSEO suggests using PageSpeed Insights and GT Metrix to monitor website speed issues. These are great tools which should be lodged in every webmaster’s toolkit. I’d like to suggest a couple more — page speed insights on the developers.google.com site, and one of the first page speed testing sites, WebPageTest. There are many factors to a low-performing website. Discovering what those can be the important insights of them all. A visitor bored with bad content might come back for another try later. A visitor who falls asleep by a slow site might never come back.

Interlink Your Pages with Keyword Rich Anchor Texts

I learned early that Google places a higher value on a site that links to other pages and content on the same site, than external links. Its called “interlinking”. And, CognitiveSEO provides a free and valuable guide on how get the most out of your interlinking endeavors.

Link to Relevant, Authority Websites

The new content marketing and social media buzzword these days seems to be “influencer.” An influencer is someone who has authority, clout and credibility within an industry or community or subject. It is good advice to link to these people, companies and authorities. Everybody wants friends in high places, even your website visitors.

Secure Your Social Media Profiles

Just like you want (and need) to claim ownership of your business on local SEO platforms like Yelp!, you want to take the same approach and secure your business on the main social media networks as well. CognitiveSEO suggests, and me too, that if you don’t plan to invest a lot of money with social media marketing, take the time to claim ownership of your company, brand and identity on the major social media platforms, before a troll or brand squatter steals your idea on a social network before you. It happens all the time.

Increase The Shareability of Your Pages & Posts

11. Good content and ideas are “shareable”, and as CognitiveSEO points out, “If you want to get more traffic to your website, you have to use social media to get viral. Even if people read your content and like it a lot, they might not bother sharing it if you don’t facilitate the process.” As annoying as they sometimes can be, social media share icons and buttons are used by publishers of every size on articles, news stories and other forms of content. Readers won’t share your content unless you help them share your content.

Share Other People’s Content

For me, ideas are things that inspire me and I like telling people are good ideas that may benefit their lives and work. Like this this article, or another article I wrote about one of my favorite books. Its human nature to share ideas that inspire us. If your content is inspirational, people will share it.

Ask Friends and Customers for Reviews

As CognitiveSEO points out, “reviews are a local SEO ranking factor, the higher your (Google My Business) listing ranks, the more value it will provide to your website and business.” But, “users are more likely to leave a negative review, so you have to work a little more.” So, ask your closest friends and family, and your best customers for reviews. These are the people who will say nice things about you instead of mentioning your pecadillos.

Custom Design Your 404

CognitiveSEO offers a great idea and insight into using 404 pages to direct users to offers instead of losing visitors on negative 404 messages. Here’s the CognitiveSEO 404 page design. It’s a great idea when “people land on those 404 pages, they will inevitably leave, costing you a lot of money. One way to fix this issue is to create a custom…404 page with a Call-to-action (CTA) in it.” Thanks CognitiveSEO, don’t mind if I do! Good lookin’ out!

Post Fresh, High Quality Content

I read an article called “Content Envy” by a law firm boasting about how other law firms are envious by the high quality content they post on their website. Great ideas and writing is not something to trash talk about, but it is art — business art. The difference between high quality and low quality content is not subjective at all, but this is my opinion. If you can produce high quality and high quantity content on your website, posting new content on a weekly clip, with a little SEO you are virtually guaranteed higher search rankings. So, find a content artist! CognitiveSEO summarized the value of repeated content posts with, “Google trusts websites that post regularly.” Nuf said!

Update / Improve Existing Content

I always tell people: information has a shelf life. CognitiveSEO suggests avoiding writing new articles targeting your existing keyword family because this will create “keyword cannibalization” which occurs “when multiple pages will be competing for the same keyword (and probably none will be ranking).” The solution is to, “Simply improve the existing article by adding new content to it.” And, there’s an app for that, CognitiveSEO’s Content Tool. “Just search for the keyword you wish to target, add your title and content and hit optimize. The tool will provide you with a bunch of relevant topics and keywords you should add to your article in order to rank higher.”

Repurpose Existing Content

Although content as a shelf life, if its instructional without being too salesmany, you can repurpose it by converting it into a PDF and adding it to an e-mail newsletter. Or, as CognitiveSEO suggests, “You could even use that content to share it directly on social media as a story. It’s known that a longer text without links gets more reach on platforms such as Facebook. Different audiences prefer different types of content format, so expanding to more than just text is a smart move, especially considering that video content demand is on the rise!”

Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

This is one of those elementary webmaster priorities since such a large volume of website traffic continues to grow from the use of smartphones and mobile devices. I agree with CognitiveSEO assessment that it’s not easy to implement a fully-responsive website after your site has remained un-responsive for years. The look-and-feel of websites, regardless of the device, is largely controlled by Cascading Style Sheets, CSS for short. I won’t go into a long explanation of CSS, but you can see the basics of responsive website design through Media Queries, a CSS code section that should be added to the bottom of every website’s CSS file.

Invest in advertorials with nofollow backlinks

Advertorials, backlinks, nofollow and follow links are SEO mechanics that require go beyond the scope of this list. I’ll delve into advertorials and backlinks a little later

Acquire Your Competitors’ Backlinks

It’s true, as CognitiveSEO says, “Backlinks are very hard to get, but also very effective. Link building opportunities are not easy to found. However, there are some easy OffPage SEO strategies that allow you to acquire high quality backlinks that are proven to work.” Once again, CognitiveSEO offers another great tool so you can perform a “backlink audit” on your site.

Prioritize Pages in Website Navigation

CognitiveSEO wisely advises grouping important pages into easily accessible navigation. As the image below describes, “pages optimized for some of our most important keywords are linked to right from the navigation menu. These links are found on every page on the website, making those pages look very important in Google’s eyes.”