Search engine optimization is an established component of any successful website, and has been a bit of both a science and an art for many years. As more and more businesses and brands have made names for themselves online, the battle for recognition, reach and success in the world of SEO has become more difficult and time-consuming. Strategies have evolved that require businesses and brand spend copious amounts of time building successful SEO plans in order to grow and prosper. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some low-hanging fruit to grab for your brand. We’ll review a few straightforward and relatively easy SEO options you can consider for short-term SEO improvement.

Convert Mentions to Links

If you’re aware of other brands who have mentioned you in the past, then you definitely want to take a second look at those mentions. Many websites and brands have mentions all over the web that do not link back to them. This isn’t necessarily on purpose, but merely an oversight on the part of the content creator. By using a tool to find all of these unlinked mentions, you’ll be able to then organize an email or a tweet to each content creator, politely requesting that they link back to your website through the mention. Most are more than willing to do so, and this sudden increase in backlinks can help your SEO campaign by pinging URLs from new and authoritative domains.

Increase Content Length

If your brand is churning out short-form content in order to satisfy the short-term impulses of your audience, then you may feel like you’re doing what is right. However, in the world of intense SEO competition, long-form content is much more appealing to search engines. If you’re trying to increase your visibility in search engines, then delivering more blog posts and pieces – particularly 1000 words in length or more – can help you quickly boost how search engines view you. Since a general rule of thumb with Google and others is “the longer the content, the more authoritative”, you can spend a bit more time elaborating on subjects you’re already covering and gain huge rewards from doing so.

Uncontested SERPs

While you may already be targeting a handful of SERPs or more, there are other, more obscure keywords and phrases out there that remain relatively uncontested. Many of these are often initiaily overlooked because of their obscurity or because there’s a belief that adequate traffic cannot be derived from them. However, pinging URLs that are optimized to reach these obscure SERPs can gradually increase traffic and substantially accumulate when used across multiple SERPs. If you can be the first to truly optimize content for these low-volume SERPs, then you’ll be able to enjoy a notable advantage in each that delivers a bit more traffic each month – with relative ease.

If you’re looking for short-term boosts in SEO performance where the name of the game is usually long-term, then there are a few options to consider. By focusing on relatively uncontested SERPs, increasing the length of the content you already produce and getting link credit for those linkless mentions, you’ll make some serious progress with relatively little effort.