13 Actionable SEO Techniques You Can Use Right Now

People that succeed with SEO do two things very well:

First, they identify SEO techniques that get them results.

Second, they put 100% of their resources into executing and scaling those techniques.

But you’re probably wondering:

“How do I find SEO strategies that actually work?”

Well today I’m going to make it easy for you.

All you need to do is carve out a few minutes of your day and tackle one of the 21 white hat SEO techniques below.

1. Find Broken Link Building Opportunities on Wikipedia

Broken link building has it all…

Scalable.

White hat.

Powerful.

There’s only one problem: finding broken links is a HUGE pain.

That is, unless you know about a little-known wrinkle in Wikipedia’s editing system.

You see, when a Wikipedia editor stumbles on a dead link, they don’t delete the link right away.

Instead, they add a footnote next to the link that says “dead link”:

This footnote gives other editors a chance to confirm that the link is actually dead before removing it.

And that simple footnote makes finding broken links dead simple.

Here’s how:

First, use this simple search string:

site:wikipedia.org [keyword] + “dead link”

For example, if you were in the SEO space you’d search for something like this:

Next, visit a page in the search results that’s relevant to your site:

Hit ctrl + f and search for “dead link”:

Your browser will jump to any dead links in the references section:

Backlinko reader Danny pointed out that Wikipedia actually has a list of articles with dead links. This makes finding dead links in Wikipedia even easier.

You can also use a new tool called WikiGrabber that allows you to search for dead links on Wikipedia pages.

Once you’ve found a dead link, now what?

Well you could re-create that dead resource on your site and replace the dead link in Wikipedia with yours.

But that would only land you a single link (and a nofollow link at that).

Here’s how to get the most out of the dead links that you find:

As you may expect, a resource that get linked to from Wikipedia usually has A LOT of links from other authoritative sites.

That’s why you want to take your broken link and pop it into ahrefs (or your link analysis tool of choice):

And you’ll get a long list of sites that you can contact about their broken link:

For example, the dead link I found on the SEO Wikipedia entry has 380 backlinks from 152 referring domains.

And it took me about 30 seconds to find.

Easy, right?

2. Discover Untapped Keywords on Reddit

Reddit is a keyword research goldmine.

Where else can you find a community of millions of people discussing every topic under the sun?

And when you read these discussions you’ll often stumble on awesome keywords that you’d NEVER find in the Google Keyword Planner.

Let’s say you ran a site that sold headphones.

Head over to Reddit Search and search for “headphones”:

If there’s a subreddit in that space, head over to that subreddit.

If not, just look at the search results that Reddit shows you for that keyword.

Keep an eye out for threads where people tend to ask a lot of questions (like an AMA or Q&A thread).

This one looks promising:

Next, scan the thread for potential keywords. Terms that pop up again and again are perfect.

For example, I noticed this model of headphones mentioned a few times in a headphone Q&A thread:

Sure enough, the keyword “Beyerdynamic DT-770” gets 2,400 monthly searches:

Trust me: you could spend the rest of the month playing around with the Google Keyword Planner and you’d never find that keyword.

But I found it after about 5-minutes on Reddit.

Invest an hour or so digging for keywords on Reddit and you’ll nab enough keywords to last you through 2018.

3. Find Link Prospects on Delicious 

If you’ve been in the SEO game for a while you know that the best link opportunities come from people that have shared similar content in the past.

And the popular bookmarking site Delicious.com is one of the best places to find people that have shared content in your niche.

Here’s how:

First, head over to Delicious and search for a broad keyword related to your industry:

Find content that’s similar to yours and has a lot of bookmarks:

Then click on the bookmark link.

Now you’ll see all of the people that saved the link:

Next, look at one of the profiles to see if they have a website listed:

If so, head over to their site to find their contact information:

Finally, reach out to them to let them know about your similar piece of content.

Shout out to my friend Jason from Kaiser the Sage who introduced me to this technique in one of his blog posts.

4. Copy Adwords Ads to Make Killer Title and Description Tags

It’s no secret that compelling title and description tags get more clicks in the SERPS.

(In fact, REALLY good copy can actually steal traffic from the top 3 results)

But how can you possibly know what people want to click on?

That’s easy: look at that keyword’s Adwords ads.

You see, the Adwords ads that you see for competitive keywords are the result of hundreds (if not thousands) of split tests. Split tests to maximize clicks.

And you can use elements of that ad to turn your title and description tags into click magnets.

For example, let’s say you were going to publish a blog post optimized around the keyword “glass water bottles”.

First, take a look at the Adwords ads for that keyword:

Keep an eye out for interesting copy from the ads that you can work into your title and description.

In our “glass water bottles” example, we have phrases like:

• BPA-free
• Keep you hydrated
• Durable
• Reusable

Here’s how the title and description tags might look:

As you can see, these tags include words that areproven to generate clicks.

5. Find A+ Link Prospects on AllTop

What if there was an up-to-date list of blogs in your niche that you could use to find quality link opportunities?

I have good news. There is. And it’s called AllTop.

AllTop is a modern-day directory that curates lists of quality blogs in almost any industry under the sun.

To find blogs in your niche, just go to the AllTop homepage and search for a keyword:

Next, find the categories that fit best with your site’s topic:

And AllTop will show you their hand-picked list of quality blogs in that category:

Now you have a long list of some of the best blogs in your industry.

And these bloggers are the exact people that you want to start building relationships with.

6. Use Benefit-Focused Content Curation

Let’s face it:

Most content curation is pretty weak.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that I’ve read enough “top 100 posts you need to read” lists for a lifetime.

So how can you make your content curation stand out?

By tapping into Benefit-Focused Content Curation.

Benefit-Focused Content Curation is similar to most other types of curation, with one huge difference: it focuses on the outcomes that your audience wants.

I’m sure you’d like to see an example.

Here you go:

This is a guide I put together a while back called, Link Building: The Definitive Guide.

This guide has generated over 19,000 visits from social media, forums, blogs and search engines:

(I should point out that the guide’s design and promotion contributed to its success. But it all started with how the content itself was organized)

What makes this guide’s curation unique is that it’s organized by benefits, not topics.

For example, chapter 2 is called “How to Get Top Notch Links Using Content Marketing”:

Note that the title isn’t, “Chapter 2: Content Marketing”.

And most of the other chapters follow the same benefit-driven formula.

Why is this so important?

When someone sees a list of curated links they immediately ask themselves “what’s in it for me?”.

And when you organize your content around outcomes and benefits, that answer becomes really, really obvious.

In other words, answering “WIIFM?” makes the perceived value of your content MUCH higher than a list of 100 random resources.

7. Link Out to Authority Sites

With all the talk about Hummingbirds and Penguins it’s easy to forget about an important Google algorithm update from 2003.

Despite being over 10-years old, Hilltop still plays a major role in today’s search engine landscape.

Hilltop is essentially an on-page SEO signal way that tells Google whether or not a page on the web is a “hub” of information.

How do they know which pages are hubs? Based on the quality and relevancy of the outbound links on that page.

If you think about it, this makes total sense:

The pages you link out to tend to reflect the topic of your page.

And pages that link to helpful resources also tend to be higher-quality than pages that only link to their own stuff.

(In fact, Moz’s ranking factors study found a correlation between outbound links and higher rankings)

In other words, pages that link out to awesome resources establish themselves as hubs of helpful content in the eyes of Big G.

Bottom line: Link to at least 3 quality, relevant resources in every piece of content that you publish. That will show Google that your page is a Hilltop Hub.

8. Send Juice to Pages Sitting on Page 2 or 3

I’m not sure how else to say this:

If you’re on page 2 or 3 of Google’s search resultsyou might as well be on page 58.

So how can you give those pages a boost so they hit the first page and get send you some traffic?

Use one of my all-time favorite SEO techniques – throwing some internal links their way!

Here’s the 3-step process:

Step #1: Use Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console) to find keywords where you rank on the 2nd or 3rd page.

To find them, log in to your Google Search Console account and click on Search Traffic –> Search Analytics:

Make sure to check “position”. That way you’ll see the average ranking for each keyword.

Sort the results by “avg. position”:

Next, look for keywords with an average position of 11-30.

If you’re getting clicks from a keyword on page 2 or 3, you can be pretty sure that it’s a keyword with some decent search volume.

For example, this page from Backlinko is ranking #12 for the keyword “SEO checklist”.

Even though I’m on the second page, I still get 550 impressions per month for that keyword:

Sure enough, according to the GKP, that keyword gets 720 monthly searches with a suggested bid of almost $5.00

Step #2: Identify authoritative pages on your site.

You can easily find the pages on your site with the most juice to pass around using ahrefs.

Just enter your homepage URL into the tool and click “Get Started”:

Then click on “Top Pages” in the right-hand sidebar:

That will show you the most authoritative pages on your site:

Step #3: Go to those pages and add internal links.

Finally, add internal links from those authoritative pages to the pages that needs a boost.

9. Use the Word “Because” In Your Outreach Emails

When someone sees an email pop into their inbox, two questions enter their mind:

“Who is this person?”
and
“What do they want?”

The faster you answer these questions in your outreach emails, the better your response rate will be.

But how can you do that?

It’s easy:

Use the word “because” very early in your email.

Believe it or not, the word “because” has surprisingly powerful effects on human psychology.

Research by Dr. Scott Key of Northern Illinois University tested whether people waiting in line to use a copy machine would let a stranger cut in front of them.

When the stranger asked: “Can I use the copy machine before you?”, only 61% people said “yes”.

But when the stranger asked: “Can I use the copy machine before you because I’m in a rush?”, 89% said yes

(That’s a 45% increase!)

Why such a huge difference?

It turns out that the word “because” makes a request — ANY request — seem more legitimate.

In the world of outreach, legit messages get better responses.

(Just look at all those lame guest post pitches that flood your inbox. If they actually took the time to look legit, they’d perform a lot better)

Here’s an example blogger outreach pitch that leverages the word “because” early on:

The person receiving that message knows why I’m emailing them after 2-seconds of reading.

But more importantly, the word “because” cements my reason for reaching out as more legit.

10. Write Mini Blog Posts for YouTube Descriptions

I don’t need to tell you that YouTube video results are dominating Google’s first page.

And considering that Google owns the popular video site, it’s a trend that’s not likely to change anytime soon.

But did you know that there’s a dead-simple technique that can get your YouTube videos to rank higher for competitive keywords in both YouTube and Google?

Well there is: write 200+ word video descriptions.

When most people upload a video to YouTube, they mindlessly toss a few words into the description box:

That’s a HUGE mistake.

Remember that Google can’t watch or listen to your video content.

Instead, they rely on your video’s text-based title and description to determine what your video is about.

Not only does this extra text-based information help you rank better for your target keyword…

…but it also ranks your video closely related long tail keywords.

For example, check out the description for my latest YouTube video:

That’s a high-quality, 200-word description.

Not only has this helped my video rocket to the first page of YouTube for the keyword “SEO Strategy”:

But it’s also pushed my video to the top of YouTube for long tail keywords, like “infographic SEO strategy”:

If you want to learn more about YouTube SEO, check out this step-by-step guide.

11. Reverse Engineer the Results on Page 6

Fun fact:

Reverse engineering pages 2-10 will often hook you up with top-notch link opportunities…

…opportunities that you’d miss when you only reverse engineer Google’s first page.

But you’re probably wondering:

“Is there really anything good to reverse engineer on page 6?”

The short answer: yes.

As Wil Reynolds points out, the idea that pages 3-10 are littered with low-quality sites is a myth.

He says that a lot of the results on Google’s inner pages are made up of people that started cool sites…but eventually gave up when things didn’t work out the way they planned.

Here’s the thing: before they moved on to the next project, they published some awesome resources.

Because these resources tend to be neglected, you can easily improve them and steal their links using The Skyscraper Technique.

For example, I did a quick search for “weight loss tips”.

Sure enough, I found this heavily linked-to resource on the 6th page:

As you can probably see from the screenshot, this page has A LOT of room for improvement.

However, because the author of this page used to care about his site, he was able to land links to this page from sites like eHow.com:

Other pages on this neglected site have attracted links from Livestrong.com (DA87) and LifeHacker (DA93).

Think you could take these outdated resources and make them better?

I know you can 

12. Embed Long Tail Keywords In Title Tags

Here’s the deal:

If you only include one keyword in your title tag you’re leaving A LOT of search engine traffic on the table (and no, I don’t mean keyword stuffing).

Here’s what I mean:

I recently published a post called “White Hat SEO Case Study: 348% More Organic Traffic in 7 Days“.

My target keyword for that post was, “white hat SEO”. And I obviously included the keyword “white hat SEO” in the post’s title.

But I didn’t stop there.

I realized that the keyword “SEO case study” alsogot some decent traffic:

So I decided to embed that long tail keyword into the blog post title:

Within days I was ranking #1 for “SEO case study”:

As you might expect, the keyword “SEO case study” is MUCH less competitive than “white hat SEO”.

Because of that, I got traffic almost instantly from the keyword “SEO case study”.

And as that page has accumulated links, it’s made its way onto the first page for “white hat SEO” as well.

(But it took a few weeks to hit page 1)

If I had only optimized for “white hat SEO”, I wouldn’t have received ANY traffic until I hit the first page for that term.

Fortunately, my embedded long tail keyword “SEO case study” hooked me up with traffic right away.

Bottom line: Find long tails that you can embed into your titles.

You’ll get search engine traffic faster…and eventually rank the page for more than one term.

13. Hack Wikipedia for Keyword and Topic Ideas

Want to find untapped keywords that your competition doesn’t know about?

Then stop using the Google Keyword Planner and use this SEO technique instead.

Sure, The Keyword Planner is nice for monthly search volume and CPC information…but it’s HORRIBLE at generating new keyword ideas.

Why?

Well, the Keyword Planner only gives you VERY close variations of the keywords of your seed keywords.

So if you enter a seed keyword like “weight loss”, it will spit out keywords like:

• Weight loss tips
• Healthy weight loss
• Fast weight loss
• Weight loss diet

(You get the idea)

If you want to find keywords that are closely related to your seed keywords — but not straight-up variations — you need a human mind.

Or better yet, the thousands of human minds that contribute to Wikipedia.

Here’s how:

Head over to Wikipedia and enter a seed keyword (I’m going to use the keyword “insurance” in this example):

Next, keep an eye out for sections on the Wikipedia entry that display closely related keywords and topics.

These sections are…

The “Contents” box:

Callouts and sidebars:

Internal links:

And “See Also” sections:

You’ll usually come away with fistfuls of keyword and topic ideas from a single Wikipedia entry.

If you want to find even more keyword ideas, click on an internal link.

Then simply follow the same process for that Wikipedia entry. Rinse and repeat.