21 SEO hacks that nobody will tell you in 2021

21 SEO hacks that nobody will tell you in 2021. Maybe you have a website or a blog that doesn’t seem to be growing. Or if we are honest, you might not be putting extra effort to make it grow. So, if you are looking for stunning SEO hacks, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post, we’ll take you through 21 SEO hacks that nobody will ever tell you in 2021.

We know there are tons of guides already floating on the internet, but none of them are updated. This guide stands from others as it has updated tips, trending strategies, and 100% proven advice. Besides, by following these tips for 6 months or more, you’ll see a spike in your rankings and organic traffic.

So, without further ado let’s start.

1. Start creating content around keywords

You already know that keywords are vital when it comes to SEO. After all, they determine the success and failure of your SEO campaigns. Because of this, after choosing your main and secondary keywords, you must start creating content around them.

For example;

Let’s say your main keyword is “SEO tips”

From it, you can go with secondary keywords such as SEO tips for beginners, SEO tips for 2021, local SEO tips, WordPress SEO tips, and so on.

Doing so will help you keep the right balance between main and secondary keywords. Also, your content will look natural, readable, and SEO-friendly.

2. Focus on long-tail keywords

The truth is that long-tail keywords work like a charm and nobody tells you this. In fact, whenever someone asks us for our best SEO tip, we always mention long-tail keywords.

They are not only easy to rank but also very highly conversational in nature. So, by targeting long-tail keywords, you won’t only increase your traffic but conversions as well. For this, you can use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. You can also use free tools like Google keyword planner, autosuggest, and answer the public.

3. Go for local SEO

Local SEO is growing day after day. Ever since Google introduced the Pigeon update in 2014, webmasters and SEO experts are focusing more on local SEO.

If you don’t believe us, take a look at some local SEO stats:

• 80% of local searches convert well.
• 46% of all searches on Google are local in nature.
• 55% of customers use voice search for finding local businesses.

These stats prove that local SEO will keep growing in the future. So, if you are serious about improving your rankings, you must start targeting local keywords.

Example:

If you run a digital marketing company in Chicago, then you must target the following keywords.

1. Digital marketing companies in Chicago.
2. Digital marketing agencies in Chicago.
3. Chicago-based online marketing companies.
4. Digital marketing services in Chicago and so on.

4. Start a blog

We can bet that blogging isn’t on your to-do list. If we’re right, then you are going to lose tons of opportunities in terms of traffic and better rankings on Google. Blogging is probably one of the best SEO hacks to take advantage of in 2021.

Demand Metric did research and found that blogging can offer you up to a 434% increase in indexed pages and a 97% increase in indexed links. Also, companies that regularly blog get 67% more leads than those that don’t.

That’s the true power of blogging.

Apart from this, blogging can also help you earn money online via affiliate marketing and Google AdSense.

Cool, right?

So, start taking advantage of blogging in 2021 and take your SEO campaign to the next level.

5. Improve your crawl budget

Next in this list of SEO hacks is to improve your crawl budget.

For those who don’t know what crawl budget is, let us explain. Crawl budget refers to the number of web pages or URLs that Google bots crawl and index in a given time.

Since there are billions of web pages on the internet, Google’s bots don’t have enough time to crawl each and every web page. As an SEO expert, your job should ensure the crawling of the most important web pages of your site by Google’s bots. This will help you get a better rank and organic traffic as well.

You can improve your crawl budget in the following ways;

1. Avoid long redirect chains.
2. Create a Robots.txt file and allow google to crawl all-important web pages.
3. Improve the speed of your site.
4. Start internal linking.
5. Avoid HTTPS errors.
6. Keep updating your sitemaps.

6. Keep building backlinks

Google comes up with several algorithm updates every year. But backlinks were, are, and always will remain as the top-ranking factor.

Backlinks are nothing but the hyperlinks that one website uses to point to another website. This is what Google takes into account when ranking any given web page or content. Besides, they help pass on the link juice or so-called SEO value from one website to another. That’s why you should start focusing on building high-quality links right from day one.

Here are some tips that you can use to build backlinks in 2021:

1. Guest blogging on high DA PA website.
2. Creating epic content that drives natural links.
3. Profile and forum link building.
4. Reaching out to authority bloggers in your niche.

7. Create short URLs

The next important SEO hack is to create short, simple, and easy-to-read URLs. URL optimization is a not-so-technical way to take your on-page SEO game to the next level.

Creating SEO-friendly and short URLs can also help you improve your rankings and traffic. Moreover, this is a technique that anyone, even a newbie SEO master, can take advantage of.

Here’s how you can create SEO friendly URLs;

• Your URL should include one or two of your target keywords.
• It should be very easy to read and understand for users as well as for the search engine bots.
• Short URLs work the best. Try incorporating not more than 60 characters in your URLs.

8. Create long content

Backlinko analyzed 912 million blog posts and found that:

• The ideal length of content for getting maximum social share ranges from 1000-2000 words.
• List posts and how-to posts get high-level social shares.
• Content with 2000+ words gets more links than any other content.

This research was highly extensive and revealed that long-form content works well. This is especially true when it comes to improving your organic traffic and SEO rankings.

So, start creating long-form content from now on. For this, you can keep the following things in mind:

• Don’t create long content just for sake of better rankings.
• Don’t stuff your keywords.
• Make it look natural and focus on user experience.

9. Secure your website

HTTP is now a ranking factor as proven by Google in their webmaster’s developer’s forum. After all, the search engine giant is keen on giving the best experience to its users. That’s why they have made website security a ranking factor.

In the early 2000s, only e-commerce sites had an SSL certificate for their site. Today, you’ll hardly find any website on top of Google without an SSL certificate. Because of this, you must first enable your SSL certificate before launching it.

An SSL certificate won’t only improve your rankings but also help you win over the customer’s trust.

10. Speed up your website

This is yet another SEO hack that will take your SEO game to the next level. As you already know, Google wants to give the best experience to its users. To achieve this, it takes into account the loading speed of a website to rank it.

If your website takes too long to load, your bounce rate will be high and there will be fewer sessions on your site. Moreover, you’ll also struggle with conversions and sales. That’s why you need to pull up your socks and level up your website speed in 2021.

Here are the tips that will help you improve your site’s speed:

• Switch to managed cloud hosting.
• Get CDN.
• Get rid of used CSS and script files.
• Reduce your page size.
• Get cache plugin for WordPress.
• Compress your images and static content.

11. Avoid duplicate content

Duplicate and copy content is a big no and major turn-off for Google. If you create duplicate content then Google will place a small penalty on your website. This penalty may de-rank your website or even hamper your organic traffic.

To avoid this issue, you must always focus on creating unique, fresh, and 100% genuine content. Unique content will help you stand out from other websites in your niche. That’s why websites that publish original work always tend to get better rankings and traffic from Google.

12. Create and submit a sitemap

Sounds too technical, right?

Let us take a minute and explain what is a sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the important web pages that your site has. You can create a sitemap and submit it to the Google search console too. This way, Google’s bots will be able to easily crawl and index your website.

Remember, you don’t necessarily need to create and submit a sitemap. After all, it’s up to Google whether to crawl and index your site.

However, creating and submitting a sitemap will improve your crawl budget. This way Google’s bot can crawl and index most of your web pages. More indexed web pages = better rankings and traffic.

13. Create robots.txt file

The next SEO hack in this list is to create and submit a Robots.txt file. This is the file that instructs Google about which areas of your website are to be crawled and which are to be ignored.

This file is part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) which indicates search engine bots whether to crawl a particular web page or not.

It may sound a bit technical but it’s very easy to step up and process. In fact, if you use WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin can help you easily create a Robots.txt file. Or, you can use any Robots.txt file generator and place the file in the root directory of your website.

14. Keep auditing your site

This is one of the most important SEO hacks and it’s also often overlooked.

An SEO auditing of your website will help you diagnose its overall health. By doing an audit, you can easily fix any critical errors that might be hampering your website’s ranking and organic traffic.

More often than not, there are four important components of site auditing:

• On-page auditing.
• Off-page auditing.
• Technical SEO auditing.
• Keyword analysis.

All these four factors are very much critical for auditing a site.

The goal of SEO auditing is simple: To improve the overall health of your website to allow it to rank better on Google and get more traffic.

15. Never forget about internal links

Boom!

Now here comes our personal favorite SEO hack for instant ranking. Yes, instant ranking.

Internal links help you pass on the link juice from the web page of your site to another. This can then help you improve the rankings of low authority web pages on Google. Apart from this, internal links also help Google’s bot to better crawl and index your web pages. Plus, they also help lower your bounce rate and improve the user experience.

So, make sure that you create sufficient internal links and get the maximum benefit out of them.

16. Create content for users first

Creating search-engine-friendly content does matter, but satisfying the need of users via content is just as important.

While your content needs to be SEO optimized, you should also focus on making it informative and easy to read.

In our opinion, you should first create content for your users and then optimize it for search engines.

17. Meta title and descriptions are still important

Yes, you should include your keywords in your content. But did you know you should also use them in your meta title and descriptions?

Today, most of the so-called “SEO gurus” say that meta titles and descriptions aren’t important in 2021. However, we disagree and say that they are important. In fact, we at BluCactus have seen a spike in organic traffic by including keywords in title and meta tags.

One needs to keep in mind that these elements appear on SERP. Because of this, users consider these titles and meta tags to decide whether to click on a particular web page or not.

Hence, the need to play your cards wisely while creating such tags.

18. Keep your website light

As you already know, your website’s speed is a ranking factor. So, to improve it you should revamp all the unnecessary elements that might affect its loading time.

A slow loading web page may affect your SEO and make visitors spend less time on your site. This then will increase your bounce rate and give a negative indication to Google.

As a result, do yourself a favor and review the speed of your site and remove all the elements that might be hampering its speed.

19. Study your competition

One of the biggest benefits of SEO is that you can study what SEO hacks and techniques your competitors are using. If they are getting results, then you can replicate their strategies on your site as well.

 Check for which keywords they are ranking, what type of content they are creating, and most importantly their link-building strategy. For this, you can use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs. On the other hand, if you have a limited budget, you can use Ubersuggest.

20. Create epic content

This is one SEO hack that can take your website to the next level. Epic content is a gift and works like a charm. This type of content will give results both today and 10 years down the line. Such content gives long-term value to your readers while also bringing continuous organic traffic to your site.

Epic content is something better, comprehensive, in-depth, and covers one topic in extreme detail. Such content is also backed by original research, stats, and facts. So, try creating such content.

Of course, it will take time but it will surely give you results in the future.

21. Put consistent effort

The last in this list of best SEO hacks is to put consistent effort. SEO is an earned media and not a paid media. As a result, it takes a significant amount of time to get results via SEO. So, you need to be patient and keep on putting in efforts every single day. That’s the only way in which you will get amazing results via SEO.

No matter how many tips, techniques, and strategies you use, if you aren’t honest and consistent, you won’t get results via SEO.

Conclusion:

SEO is a very important part of any digital marketing strategy. It can help you increase the organic traffic on your site at no cost. That’s why every marketer should know something or two about SEO.

These 21 SEO hacks are very easy to use and implement. Even a beginner in SEO can use them and start to grow their website. Besides, even if you use 10 or 15 of these SEO hacks, you’ll see quick changes in a month or a two.