17 Advanced SEO Techniques for 2026

6 Steps to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand

This is a list of 17 advanced SEO strategies, techniques and tactics.
In fact, these strategies have helped my site bring in 571K visitors per month from Google.

So if you’re sick of reading the same old beginners stuff (“create great content!”), you’ll really enjoy this list.
And for some added material, I recommend getting familiar with these actionable steps for ranking on Google.

1. Rank for “Journalist Keywords”

As the name suggests, Journalist Keywords are terms that journalists search for.
And they’re a super powerful way to build backlinks at scale.

For example, a while back we published [this page speed study](/content/page-speed-stats "Page Speed Study"/index.html).

Take a look at the referring domains data for that page.

See how there’s a spike when the content was first published? Then it flattens. And then it spikes again?
Well, that second spike came because that page starting rankings for a bunch of Journalist Keywords, like this:

2. Use Animated Images to Improve Time On Site

Our recent search engine ranking factors study found that [time on site correlates with Google rankings](/content/search-engine-ranking "Search Engine Ranking Factors Study"/index.html).

And I recently figured out a simple way to improve it: animated images.
Specifically, high-res animated images (like animated SVGs).
Here’s an example:

For example, this post from Backlinko has a handful of animated images.

3. Create Content Hubs

19% of Backlinko’s organic traffic comes from content hubs.

What’s a content hub?
It’s basically a mini Wikipedia on a given topic.
For example, I published [our SEO Marketing Hub](/content/hub/seo "SEO Marketing Hub"/index.html) a while ago.

Each of those categories has a handful of “entries”:

4. Target Comparison Keywords

Comparison Keywords are terms that compare different things, like:

These keywords don’t usually have a ton of competition.
For example, this keyword gets 500 searches per month with a $6 CPC. Not bad.
The best part? The [keyword difficulty](/content/hub/seo/keyword-difficulty "What is Keyword Difficulty?"/index.html) on that term is only 40/100%.

5. Use Dynamic Parameters for Pagination

One of the things that helped us get out of this mess?
Using dynamic parameters for our paginated pages.

In other words, we went from this: 

https://explodingtopics.com/business-topics/page/2

To this 

https://explodingtopics.com/business-topics?page=2

6. Build Backlinks With Podcasts

I’ve appeared on over 120 podcasts, including several popular SEO podcasts.

This is why I like to say: “podcasts are the new guest posts.”

7. Forge a Content Alliance

A Content Alliance is where you team up with another business, site, blog, or YouTube channel on a single piece of content.
For example, I recently teamed up with Fractl on a post that they ended up publishing on the Moz blog.

8. Maximize SERP Real Estate

The #1 result in Google gets [about 32%](/content/google-ctr-stats "Google CTR Study"/index.html) of all organic clicks.

9. Embed Original Images In Your Content

It’s no secret that high-quality images make your content better.
So, what kind of images should you use on your site?
Well, a well-done SEO experiment discovered that “duplicate images” (like stock photos) can hurt your page’s rankings.
!

10. Optimize Your Content For Keyword Relevance

You already know that there’s more to [on-page SEO](/content/on-page-seo "On-Page SEO Guide"/index.html) than cramming a keyword into your page 187 times.

11. Create a Comments Section On Your Blog

Comments can help your SEO for three reasons:
First, comments may actually be a direct ranking factor.

12. Uncover People Also Ask Keywords

According to Semrush, 57.47% of all Google search results contain a People Also Ask section.

13. Add “Content Features” To Your Page

Content Features are things like:

14. Publish Topic + Year Content

Topic + Year Content are blog posts that cover key trends happening around a given topic.
For example, every year I publish [a definitive guide to SEO for that year](/content/seo-this-year "Definitive Guide to SEO This Year"/index.html).

15. Get Backlinks From Unlinked Brand Mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are just like they sound: they’re mentions in blog posts and news articles that don’t link to your site.

16. Optimize for Google Discover

Google Discover is Google’s version of a social media newsfeed.

17. Find Low-Competition Keywords From Reddit

Here’s an easy way to find super low-competition keywords.
First, pop a subreddit into Semrush.

Then, look at all of the keywords that pages in that subreddit rank for.

Bonus Strategy #1: Visualize Your Sitemap

A [flat website architecture](/content/hub/seo/architecture "How to Setup an SEO-Friendly Website Architecture"/index.html) is super important for your site’s technical SEO.

Bonus Strategy #2: Find Hidden Terms With Google Keyword Planner

Most people type seed keywords into the [Google Keyword Planner](/content/google-keyword-planner "How to Use Google Keyword Planner"/index.html).