Optimise Like Cleopatra is an ancient SEO strategy.

Search engine optimization (SEO) enables you to maximise the effectiveness of your most valuable marketing asset. It improves your brand’s visibility without requiring you to spend money on advertising. A smart SEO plan may transform a URL dead-end into a visible part of the online environment. To do this, you must stop thinking about your site as a keyword factory and instead consider it to be something else: a site worth visiting.

An Ancient SEO Strategy

• Turn Your site From Wasteland to Wonder
• SEO Secrets of the Ancients
  • Build an SEO Pyramid
  • Create Lighthouse Content for an SEO Pharos
  • Use The Low-hanging Long-Tail To Grow Your Garden
  • Become A Search Engine Colossus
• The Eighth Wonder Of The World
• SEO Strategy

SEO is becoming an important component of digital marketing and communication. The idea is to make your online material as visible to those who need it as feasible. Marketers do this by researching Search Engine Ranking Factors and optimising their websites to appear in the Results Pages for important phrases.

Google is responsible for more than 90% of all internet research. This is due to the fact that it regularly produces positive outcomes for consumers. Google experts adjust their ranking system on a regular basis to ensure that they continue to offer these results. Over 200 distinct criteria are currently used to rank web content.

Turn Your Site From Wasteland to Wonder

Regardless matter how many times digital marketing professionals claim to have cracked the code, Google’s ranking algorithm remains a well guarded secret. There are, however, several characteristics that regularly create high-ranking content.

Ranking Factors and SEO Strategy

• Quality, relevance and length
• Traffic
• Loading time
• Mobile friendly
• Multimedia content
• Link structure (especially external backlinks)

Unfortunately for SEO marketers, Google’s rankings depend on more than a list of important features. Alongside the standard ranking criteria is an Artificial Intelligence system called RankBrain.

RankBrain prioritises criteria for a specific keyword based on search data and user behaviour. For example, results for technical queries are likely to be based on quality, relevance, and keyword density, but results for consumer searches are likely to be based on traffic volume, brand strength, and security.

The Highest Authority

One type of data provides more insight into what searchers need than any other: Behaviour

The value Google provides to a site is heavily influenced by how visitors interact with it. Achieving the mythical “long-click” is one technique to improve ranks, but having a high bounce-rate will lose you money. Google evaluates the value your site delivers to its users based on data from user behaviour.   

SEO Secrets of the Ancients

You need your content to be as visible as possible…but how?

Marketers have employed a mix of black hat (i.e., tactics that work around Google’s algorithm) and white hat (i.e., methods that work around Google’s algorithm) (like keyword placement and link building.) The impact of these techniques is limited. Why? Because the user has the ultimate authority. Regardless of how effectively you optimise, user behaviour will ultimately determine where you rank.

With this in mind, there are a few SEO tactics you may do to complement Google’s ranking algorithm. Users and user experience are prioritised in these tactics. They also share another trait: they’ve been around for thousands of years…

There are some things that can’t be overlooked. These are the Seven Wonders of the World, which have attracted people to a single location for thousands of years. What if you could do the same thing on the internet?

Build An SEO Pyramid

Used by: Content Marketing Blogs SEO Strategy History/Myth: History

By far the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Pyramids of Giza. They were designed to be as large and visible as possible. You may improve the ranking (and visibility) of high-priority content by using the pillar-cluster approach to structure your site.

HubSpot introduced the pillar-cluster model of content marketing for the first time in 2017. The technique is straightforward, and the way it builds your material resembles the Great Pyramids.

The “Pillar” content is where you need to rank for high-value keywords. The “pillars” are bolstered by “cluster” material, which takes the shape of shorter, more focused articles. This “cluster” serves three purposes.

1) Increasing the number of keywords in your keyword list 2) Enabling you to reach a larger audience 3) Including up-links to your “pillar” material.

Writing expert articles around your “Pillar” subject and answering the questions people frequently ask about it is how you create “cluster content.” Find the “People also ask” and “Related searches” recommendations by typing the term from your original “Pillar” into Google. Using them as the focus of your clusters will guarantee that you address the concerns that people have.

What makes the Pyramid So Great?

The Pyramid strategy of pillars and clusters has a number of advantages:

• The link structure boosts the ranking of your main content (a big advantage for high-value keywords).
• The structure is intuitive, improving User Experience
• The simple structure helps Google to index your material
• Defining your priorities makes it easier to produce content

There are also disadvantages. It is important to maintain the integrity of your pillars, so that there are almost no links between your pillars. If your themes are closely related, this can impact on User Experience. It also means you lose out on some prime linking opportunities.

Create Lighthouse Content And Become a Pharos

Used by: SAAS, Marketing Experts SEO Strategy History/Myth: Uncertain

Why instal additional lighthouses since shipwrecks nearly invariably rise in the waterways around them? The lights altered navigational paths, urging ships to sail along certain routes where they could verify their bearings using sightings. To put it another way, the lights attracted marine traffic.

You may drive traffic to your website by creating information that people can freely use and carefully placing it. One of the most frequent SEO methods employed by marketing specialists is the lighthouse technique. It takes use of the notion that increased traffic and user interaction enhances SERPs.

Lighthouse Optimization

Have you ever been perplexed as to why there are so many free materials available on the internet? There are several free guides, tools, and resources available on the internet. Many of these aren’t supported by advertising. So, what exactly are the publishers hoping to gain from these pages?

Usable materials drive traffic and promote participation. If the resource page has links to other material, the search engine ranking of that content will improve. It will also boost the number of visitors to those secondary pages.

There’s also additional benefit of using lighthouse material. You have complete control over where your traffic goes.

Do you want more people to read all the way to the bottom of a skyscraper article? That’s where your lighthouse should go. Do you want to improve the page rankings of a whole URL folder? Make a page for your key resource and place it there.

Use The Low-Hanging Long-Tail To Grow Your Garden

Used by: eCommerce, SEO marketers SEO Strategy History/Myth: History

According to tradition, King Nebuchadnezzar II gave his wife Amytis the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as a present (who missed the green hills of her homeland.) The Babylonian monarch constructed increasing terraces of vines, bushes, and trees that reached nearly as high as the city’s doomed tower. Despite the fact that the hanging gardens were constructed of organic materials rather than solid rock, they seemed to be a man-made mountain.

So, how does this relate to your SEO strategy?

The Long-Tail Keyword Strategy

If you’ve ever produced SEO content, you’re familiar with the term “long tail.” A graph like this may be used to illustrate the keywords associated with any particular subject:

Long-tail SEO focuses on keywords with a high level of relevance and low competition. Even if the search volume for certain keywords is lower, the odds of ranking for them are higher. Your visitors will be better targeted to your content as well.

Assume you’re a search engine optimization (SEO) marketing firm. Now have a look at the keyword ideas provided by the Google Ads keyword tool:

It would be extremely tough to rank for the terms “SEO” or even “SEO Agency.” It would be simpler to rank for “Website Optimization,” but visitors searching for this phrase may also be seeking for other types of content. Focusing on “eCommerce SEO” will almost definitely be the most beneficial of these alternatives.

An SEO Strategy Built From Low-hanging Fruit

Another benefit of the long-tail plan is that interaction is likely to be higher because your traffic is more focused. When someone searches for “eCommerce SEO,” they are more likely to click on and read relevant information.

You won’t need to worry about the more basic search phrases that most SEO methods are built on if you gather these high-performing long-tail pages. Instead, a super-structure of organic keywords that spreads out like a botanical marve. l will make your website more visible in less time.

Become A Search Engine Colossus

Used by: Online business, content marketers SEO Strategy History/Myth: History

The Colossus of Rhodes was a monument dedicated to the Greek deity Helios that stood at the island’s major harbour’s entrance. It became a symbol for the Mediterranean trade station, appearing in art on the island and on antique coin designs.

Google engineers and executives were reminding advertisers as early as 2008 that a site’s ranking was dependent on its usefulness to consumers. “The primary method to raise your rank is to increase your relevance,” Eric Schmidt, the company’s CEO at the time, told a group of journalists.

He also mentioned something that has stayed with digital marketers for a long time:

Building Your SEO Strategy Around a Brand

Producing content associated with a strong brand has a few advantages:

• It drives traffic through direct searches and increased CTR
• It encourages backlinks
• It encourages mentions 
• Google assigns “brand authority” to your content

Despite these useful factors, there is one thing that matters more than all of these advantages (and you should already know what it is).

• Branding helps the user

Consistency, not messaging, imagery, or metaphor, is what makes a brand trustworthy in the long run. Buying branded items ensures quality, and the same is true for internet information. The key to making a branded link magnetic is a track record of helpful, engaging, and dynamic content.

How To Build a Brand Colossus

The basic steps to building a content marketing brand are simple:

1. Your brand should appear in your URL (usually because it is the name of your website)
2. Brand names often feature in the content title (usually at the end, to avoid obscuring the keyword)
3. Brand visuals should appear above the fold, at the start of your content
4. You should retain a consistent tone-of-voice and editorial perspective.

These three Search Engine snippets are from some of the biggest SEO brands in Singapore:

1) Keyword: SEO Techniques Branded URL? Yes Branded Title? Yes Tone-of-Voice? Yes

2) Keyword: SEO Marketing Strategy Branded URL? Yes Branded Title? Yes Tone-of-Voice? Yes

3) Keyword: SEO Brand Authority Branded URL? Yes Branded Title? Yes Tone-of-Voice? No

While it may look straightforward, maintaining a brand’s integrity is difficult. For starters, a successful business must invest more time and effort in its consumer relationships.

Furthermore, creating a brand demands a high level of quality control. While competitors may use minor SEO tricks and hacks to get a competitive edge, branded content must prioritise user experience and transparency.

The Eighth Wonder of the World

You can apply all four of these SEO strategies to your website. Doing this will allow you to:

• Work with Google’s ranking factors
• Become a feature of the Results Page landscape.

You will almost certainly find yourself ranking alongside another website; one that can truly claim to be a modern Wonder. 

Wikipedia is more visible in search engines than any other organisation. It accomplishes this without using sponsored advertising or profiting from the service it offers. Why has it risen to such a high position?

Pyramid Structure:

The hierarchical content structure of Wikipedia, along with its superb search bar, make it an extremely user-friendly resource. The seamless integration of links to similar articles into the text makes it apparent how the material is connected. The site’s true genius is the way it organises complicated topics into easy-to-understand sections.

Lighthouse Content:

Wikipedia is the ideal example of lighthouse content since it is a resource that anybody may utilise in nearly any situation. This page, which details the site’s “Vital Content,” demonstrates why visitors keep coming back.

Low-Hanging Fruit:

Wikipedia is the authority on nearly every issue because of the depth and detail it can give. This page on Google PageRank, for example, illustrates the vastness of Wikipedia’s long-tail dominance.

Colossus Branding:

In terms of search engine optimization, Wikipedia is ranked third. This is something that even the finest SEO marketers in the world (and Google itself) fail to do. On Google’s results page, the entry looks like this:

Keyword: Search engine optimization Branded URL? Yes Branded Title? Yes Tone-of-Voice? Yes

Wikipedia uses both its brand name and the keyword in the page’s title and URL as a regular practise. The keyword comes first in every single meta-description the website provides due to the layout of the pages. 

SEO Strategy

The fact that you can Google nearly any phrase and find a Wikipedia article is due to the fact that Wikipedia does not prioritise SEO. Instead, it concentrates on the most important authority in Google’s ranking priorities: users.

Because it follows the most essential concept of content marketing, Wikipedia has become an indisputable part of the online landscape. Give people a site worth seeing.