Key Opinion Leaders for SEO? 4 SERP Score Strategies That Don’t Include Link Building

Intro

The constant battle to gain a higher search engine ranking continues in 2024. For many businesses, the fight for a top SEP score starts and ends with backlinking building. While gaining external links helps boost site authority and visibility, those who focus only on acquiring link partnerships could see their SEO strategy begin to sink.

With more link-building partnerships and packages dominating the SEO scene than ever before, it is becoming increasingly harder to gain organic backlinks for your business.

For smaller businesses in particular, singlehandedly shaping your SEO strategy around link-building could be more effort than it’s worth.

With that in mind, we’ve delved into the statistics behind link-building trends in 2024 and compiled a list of SERP strategy alternatives for those looking to reinforce their SEO strategy.

Has Traditional Link Building Become Too Competitive?

For some, link-building seems to have lost its charm. What was once a method of acquiring a backlink from a reputable website that was happy to link out to valuable content, has become a plethora of link mills, ABC partnerships, and agency outsourcing.

Link-building has become less about creating and sharing topical content and more about scoring a place on the site with the highest ranking, relevant or not.

Simply acquiring links has now become so important to rising businesses that they pay upwards of $300 per backlink if the placement will score them some traffic.

In 2024, a staggering 41% of companies believe that link-building alone is the most difficult aspect of SEO.

(Image Source: Conductor)

The process of successful link-building now requires building continued relationships with brands, offering SEO-boosting services in return, and of course a lot of manual outreach.

Link building either drains your own time or your pocket when you outsource it to SEO professionals.

The question is, could you substitute your backlink strategy for a new SERP score booster? While we wouldn't suggest abolishing link building altogether, there could be a few new ways you can acquire them without using traditional methods.

Are There Other Ways To Build Your SERP Score?

There are plenty of methods you can use to boost your SERP score. While link building is also an essential component, for smaller businesses it doesn’t need to be at the forefront of a successful strategy.

“Let’s move the topic away from link building and towards authority. That’s the conversation businesses should be having,” says Alisa Scharf, Director of SEO at Seer Interactive.

With that in mind, here are four ways to boost your SERP score without creating link partnerships.

Building A Site Reputation Using Key Opinion Leaders

Key opinion leaders also known as KOLs are influential figures that drive traffic for a website. Bridging the gap between an influencer and a topical expert can help gain organic backlinks, traffic, and on-page engagement for a website just by featuring there.

Working in the same way as an influencer on Instagram, KOLs help drive brand visibility and could easily shape the discourse of your SEO strategy.

Here are just some of the ways you could use a KOL to improve your SERP score:

• Creating Sharable Content: KOLs will often be a big name within your industry and amongst your consumers. Creating content that features their name, quote or picture is likely to be shared on other competing websites, social feeds, and more, in turn, driving off-page backlinks.
• Boosting Site Authority: If your website is associated with a KOL that is known for their groundbreaking research and vocal power within your community, your brand will also be established as a thought leader and an authoritative player within the industry.
• Hybrid Influencing: A KOL is a hybrid influencer. They have brilliant levels of expertise that can be used within your content, but they are also well-known faces, making them the perfect person to then share your content on their social feeds.

Key opinion leaders are also more common than you think. The key here is to search for the pioneering voices within your industry that are actively releasing research, hosting lectures, and rising the social ranks.

Optimize for Mobile Accessibility

Google is a mobile-first ranking engine in 2024. With mobile users now representing more than 50% of all online searchers, it’s no surprise that their experience on your website is important.

“Traditionally, Google has used desktop crawlers to rank pages. This means its ranking system explores only the desktop version of a website to evaluate the user experience, content, and relevance to any search. This was causing issues for mobile users in cases where the content and design didn’t align across the mobile and desktop versions of websites,” says Summit Ghimire, the Founder of SEO Agency Outpace. “Google now crawls the mobile version of the website first to evaluate its content and design and determine its relevance to numerous searches. With this approach, Google aims to correct the discrepancies across mobile searches.”

The key here is making your website mobile-friendly by simplifying your page layouts and navigation as well as optimizing your targeted keywords for mobile searchers. With over 88% of mobile searches now regarding a ‘near me’ keyword or a local topic, it’s time to optimize for local engagement if you want to improve your mobile indexing.

(Image Source: Search Engine Watch)

“Mobile-first indexing has a direct impact on how your website ranks and how much organic traffic flows through your website. With mobile-first indexing, you have the opportunity to connect with even more people actively searching for your business on a mobile device. As the algorithm is shifting toward a mobile-friendly system, you may need to fix a few issues to improve rankings,” continues Ghimire.

However, while you should take note of mobile optimization when crafting your SEO strategy, ensure that you’re always on the lookout for new search trends, such as the new introduction of vocal search for example.

Add a Schema Markup To Your On-Page SEO Strategy

Another way to improve your SERP score without actively link-building is to add a Schema markup to your on-page strategy.

For those who don’t know how a Schema markup works, this is the definition provided by Schema.org:

“Most webmasters are familiar with HTML tags on their pages. Usually, HTML tags tell the browser how to display the information included in the tag. For example, <h1>Avatar</h1> tells the browser to display the text string ‘Avatar’ in a heading 1 format. However, the HTML tag doesn't give any information about what that text string means — ‘Avatar’ could refer to the hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture — and this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display relevant content to a user.”

Schema is otherwise known as a set of microdata and structured data tags that are inserted into your web page’s HTML code to supply more information about the content on the site.

This allows Google to better understand your page’s content, therefore ranking it in the relevant category. This is even more important on the back of the rise of voice search. When users submit a query using their voice, the more information Google has about your content, the quicker it will crawl and use it as an appropriate answer for a user.

Secondly, a Schema markup will make your SERP listings twice as visible by inserting a rich snippet under the title of the listing. This in turn boosts your chances of ranking for a specific phrase and helps consumers notice your listing quickly in a search result.

Prioritise Evergreen Topical Authority

Did you know that more than 40% of marketers believe that content marketing alone is the easiest method of generating passive links?

While building new links is essential for SEO success, sometimes the more passive approach to link building is the most prosperous.

As one of the only white-hat SEO approaches left, building topical authority is a great way to raise the reputation of your business organically. This process consists of earning links naturally by establishing yourself as a topical leader with your content.

The key here is to become the go-to resource for a particular topic/industry. To do this, you should either find a niche topic with little competition or approach something popular from a new angle. This way, when people search for your chosen topic, you’ll be the thought leader that appears at the top of the search.

Better still, if other publications write a similar piece in the future, you’re likely to be referenced and linked out without acquiring a partnership with the publication.

For continued exposure choose an evergreen topic or a long-tail keyword to dominate. This way, your article will be relevant for many years to come and will score you continued links over time.

How To Ensure Continued SERP Success

The world of SEO is always changing, so it’s important to stay on top of the newest trends if you want continued SERP success.

While link-building will play a large role in the future of search engine strategies, it shouldn’t be the only tactic used by online businesses. Prioritizing topical authority, mobile optimization and the use of key opinion leaders all contribute to building both backlinks and business reputation.

To see your SERP score rise, businesses must combine all of their SEO efforts into one for a victorious result in a competitive search market.