Top Six Untapped SEO Techniques for 2021

Let's be honest. It's getting tougher to rank on the first page of Google these days. With more websites gunning for Google's prime real estate, finding competition isn't too difficult regardless of your business niche. While many people look to hire an SEO service (and that is the smartest choice if you're competing with the best of the best), there are quite a few things that you can do to give your business website that much-needed edge on the SERPs.

1. Optimizing Favicons

Favicons have been a thing for a while now, yet surprisingly, not many folks know about it. Google uses Favicons to display search results on mobile devices, and according to studies, these favicons can influence the viewer's decision-making process. While the difference is not drastic, every advantage matters when you're up against the competition.

Make sure the favicon file and home page are crawlable by Google. Use the favicon as a visual representation of your brand, which will make your website easily identifiable by users. Also, Google rescales images to 16x16px on its search results, so it pays to ensure the favicon looks good at that resolution. PS, you do not have to design a 16x16px favicon.

It is also important to maintain consistency with your favicons across the various web pages on your site. Those who do not have a favicon for their website in 2021 (and beyond) will only get a dull-looking globe next to the website's listing, which does not look appealing. The good news is, there are many free tools, aka favicon generators, that you can use to create a suitable favicon for your website.

2. SEO for Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs play an important role in helping your website get noticed on Google. Along with tweaking the favicons, you should also focus on breadcrumb optimization since Google uses it for both mobile and desktop searches. Keyword-rich breadcrumbs can make a big difference in the click-through rate of your website.

Since Google pulls breadcrumbs from various sources, such as the actual breadcrumbs on your website, your website's URL, and schema markup, the only thing you need to make sure of is that Google uses the breadcrumbs you want it to, which includes the keywords you're targeting.

One of the ways in which you can do that is by including breadcrumbs on every page via links to the schema markup, preferably using the same URL structure.

3. Optimize Meta Descriptions

While this is an old-school SEO tactic, it still works. Even though Google has grown far more intelligent over the years to a point where it can now rewrite meta descriptions, that doesn't mean your meta descriptions don't matter. In fact, one of the reasons why Google rewrites meta descriptions 70% of the time is because it doesn't contain keywords.

However, if you include a well-crafted meta description that includes your target keywords and tells readers (and Google) what to expect, you will encourage more clicks, and possibly, a higher rank on Google.

4. Adding Numbers to Titles

Studies have revealed that dates or numbers, when added to a title, produce better CTR as compared to those titles that do not include dates or numbers. However, these need to be organic and not spammy. While you're at it, test your title boilerplate to gauge its performance. It has been found that boilerplate can actually lead to more clicks along with a higher ranking, but that's not always the case, so a boilerplate audit is in order.

5. FAQ Schema

FAQ schema is a gift for search engine optimizers, and while it's hard to get, it is definitely worth the effort if you do succeed. This is why you should expand FAQ schemas out to make them more visible to readers and influence them to click on your website. As a rule of thumb, when using FAQ schema, you need to make sure you use it for pages that actually have a FAQ section.

6. Create Awesome Content

This is, by far, the most important tip for increasing your site's SEO, so if you haven't already, it's time you showed some TLC to your content. There are many reasons why you should hire an SEO service to get the right content; the following are just some of them:

• Updating Old Content - Content on your website tends to go stale over time. Things change, and so do trends. What's hot last year isn't necessarily going to be worth a mention this year. So, why mention it at all? Professional content writing services can help you tweak those old, stale web pages, giving you fresh and relevant content that's useful to your target demographic.
• Write New Content - One of the reasons why people hire an SEO service is so they can get creative, relevant, and SEO-friendly content for their website that's easy to read and crawlable.
• Invest in Long-Form Content - Long-form content is the way to go, with lengthy posts consistently out-performing short-form content. However, it is crucial to make sure the content is relevant and does not fall victim to keyword stuffing. A professional SEO service can help create content that is creative, informative, and relevant while being optimized for Google.

Businesses nowadays have no choice but to leverage their SEO to rank higher on Google because everybody else is doing it. Regardless of how much you spend on your website's design, it won't matter if nobody can see it. Using the aforementioned SEO tips is a great place to start once you've decided to tweak your SEO strategy for 2021.

This guest article was written by Dan Brown, an experienced digital marketing expert and content developer who has worked on dozens of projects for clients in diverse fields and industries. Dan currently manages a team of experienced content developers, SEO specialists, and digital marketing experts that work tirelessly to deliver an exceptional level of content writing services to ensure brands get noticed online.