SEO Tricks : Search Engine Optimisation Best Practices

Looking for a collection of no-nonsense SEO tips, that you can easily implement to boost your site’s search engine rankings?
Then look no further.

We’ve created a list of over 100 SEO tips and best pratices and split them into logical sections to cover various aspects of search engine optimisation – from on-page factors, to user experience, link building and more.
For most tips you will also find a link to further reading; including official Google guidelines where relevant and a hand picked selection of some of the very best SEO guides on the web.
To jump to a specific section, use the quick links on the right, otherwise, let’s get started!
Part 1: Site Layout & Architecture

1. Ensure content is clear and upfront – Content should be front and centre on any web page. At a minimum the page’s title should be ‘above the fold’; that is visible without the visitor having to scroll. (further reading)

2. Avoid too many ads above the fold – While display advertising is an essential revenue model for many websites, too many ads above the fold may impact negatively on search rankings. Ensure any display advertising is non intrusive and clearly distinguishable from content. (further reading)

3. Create a content hierarchy – A well designed hierarchy keeps content organised and allows pagerank to flow effectively round a website, boosting key ‘hub’ pages. 

4. Ensure navigation is clear – Navigation should be easy to locate and intuitive for both search engines and users. (further reading)

5. Nofollow any paid/affiliate links – All paid links should have the rel=”nofollow” attribute added. This includes affiliate links. (further reading)
<a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">Paid Link</a>

6. Use SEO friendly URLs – URLs should be human readable and follow a logical structure. Short URLs which include target keywords (separated by hyphens) are considered best for SEO. (further reading)

7. Ensure you have clearly visible contact information – Contact details should be easy to find and ideally should include a physical address. (further reading)

8. Include privacy policy and about page – These are key pages which help with trust from both users and search engines. (further reading)

9. Minimise boiler plate text – Keep duplicated text in layouts (i.e. sidebars) to a minimum. (further reading)


10. If you are targeting local SEO include your address in layout – Add your physical address and contact details to your page layout when targeting local keywords . (further reading)

11. Use www. or non www – Whichever you choose, ensure your site is only accessible and indexable by either www or non www. Best practice is to also set the preferred domain in webmaster tools. (further reading)

Part 2: Keyword Research

12. Choose your keywords wisely – Keyword research continues to be an important part of SEO. Use Google keyword planner, or advanced tools such asLong Tail Pro, to evaluate search volumes and select keywords that you wish to rank for. (further reading)

13. Select one main keyword per page – Each page on your site should targetone keyword. Avoid keyword cannibalisation (i.e. targeting the same keyword on multiple pages). (further reading)

14. Consider user intent – While a keyword may have good volume, consider the intent behind the search and whether someone searching for that phrase is likely to be interested in your product/service. (further reading)

15. Check title competition – Perform a Google search for allintitle:”your keyword” to discover the number of web pages which currently contain your target keyword in the title.

16. Consider how ‘rankable’ the keyword is and how visible organic results are – There are a number of factors to consider here:
• How powerful is the competition – i.e. authority sites like Amazon, Forbes etc?
• How many links are pointing to the top sites?
• Are organic results pushed below the fold by knowledge graph, news, ads etc (see below)?

17. Steal your competitor’s keywords – Find out exactly which keywords are driving search traffic to your competitors using Ahrefs Positions Explorer.

18. Track your rankings – Monitor progress of your website’s  rankings in the search results for your target keywords. With Ahrefs Rank Tracker you can view historic data to keep track of progress of over time.

19. Monitor your click-through rate – If your web page is ranking for a target keyword you should expect to see a click-through rate (CTR) similar to the following:

You can use the Search Analytics report in Google Webmaster Tools to check impressions and CTRs across a range of queries. In the example below, a keyword ranking at average position 3.6 is receiving a CTR of 1.7%, which is considerably below what we would expect to see for the position (should be around 7%).

In this case it may be worth split testing the page’s meta description (more on this below) to see if we can improve CTR and benefit from extra traffic.
Part 3: Title Tags

<title>This is a title tag</title>

20. Front load your keyword – Try and include your target keyword as close to the start of the title tag as possible. (further reading)

21. Avoid truncation – Title tags have 512px to play with in desktop search results, after which they will truncate. A good rule of thumb is to keep the length of your title tags to 55 characters or less, which will generally fit into this area, however, in rare cases, capitalisation and search query may still result in truncation. (further reading)

22. Make it clickable – Headlines sell newspapers and page titles ‘sell’ web pages. (further reading)

23. Stand out – If all the page titles in your niche follow a certain format, then doing something different can make your titles stand out in the SERPs. (further reading)

24. Don’t bother adding your brand – Including your brand name at the end of page titles is unnecessary – Google will often add it automatically anyway – and takes up valuable real estate. However:

25. Optimise home page for brand – The exception to this is your home page, where your title should generally be optimised for your brand.
26. Minimise stop words – With limited space to play with try and minimise use of stop/joining words – “a, and, is, on, of, or, the, was, with” – in page titles. (further reading)


27. Don’t repeat yourself. Don’t repeat yourself. Don’t repeat yourself. – Annoying isn’t it? Use your keyword once in the title and don’t repeat it.
Part 4: Meta Descriptions

<meta name="description" content="This is a meta description. It can help your content stand out in search results and improve CTR" />

28. Sell your content – Your meta description is like your advert in the search results. Write a unique, compelling meta description for each page on your site, that communicates USPs/value, and entices click-throughs. (further reading)
29. Avoid truncation – Keep your meta descriptions to around 155 characters(maximum) to minimise truncation in the search results. (further reading)

30. Use your keyword in the meta description – While not having a direct influence on ranking, keywords in meta descriptions will be bolded in search results which can help to improve CTR.

31. Split test – Experiment with different meta description formats to optimise CTR. (further reading)

Part 5: Header Tags

32. Ensure each page has a unique H1 tag – Every page on your site should have a unique H1 tag.
33. Use your keyword in the H1 Tag – The H1 tag continues to be an important on-page ranking factor and should include the page’s target keyword. (further reading)

34. Include secondary and LSI keywords – Additional header tags (H2, H3) are a good opportunity to target secondary key phrases and LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords. (further reading)
35. Avoid using header tags in layout – Many templates use header tags in their layout with generic words/phrases such as ‘More Details’. These should be replaced with CSS styled divs.

Part 6: The Content

36. Use your keyword early – Where possible (without being forced), use your target keyword in the first paragraph of your page’s content to reinforce the topic.

37. Long content correlates with higher rankings – Numerous studies have concluded that there is a correlation between long form content and higher rankings, although the caveat should be that this may have more to do with quality than actual length. Either way, the takeaway is to go in-depth and createthe authority page for your target keyword. (further reading and image)

38. Forget keyword density – Don’t sweat keyword density. Write naturally and you will tend to use your target keyword several times within your content without having to think about it. Just make sure to include it at least once!(further reading)

39. Use LSI keywords – LSI keywords are words that are semantically related to your main keyword. They are useful for cementing a page’s topic and also for differentiating homonyms (same words with different meaning, i.e. “bark” the sound a dog makes, “bark” the outer layer of a tree) in search queries. When writing about a topic you will tend to use these naturally, but it can be an idea to do some research beforehand. (further reading)

40. Add multimedia – Adding multimedia to your content – images, videos , slideshows etc – makes it more engaging, shareable and linkable. There may also be some direct SEO benefit. (further reading)

41. Add internal links – Adding internal links to other pages from within content allows link equity to flow round your site and also encourages reader exploration, lowering bounce rate. An often criminally under-utilised aspect of SEO. (further reading)

42. Link out – Linking out to high quality, authoritative, and topically related content aids relevance and builds relationships with other site owners in your niche. Best practice is to open external links in a new tab/window. (further reading)

43. Keep content up to date – Regularly update old/archive content to keep it fresh, relevant and rankworthy. (further reading)

44. Prioritise quality over frequency – With the exception of large publications, and news sites (which require lots of daily content), most sites will get more benefit by focusing on content quality, as opposed to frequency. Publishing 1 great article a week is better than publishing 1 mediocre article daily. (further reading)\

45. Set up rich snippets/structured data – Set up and test structured data to benefit from rich snippets in search results. (further reading)

46. Include table of contents for long content – Include a table of contents with internal links to specific sections on long pages to benefit from wikipedia style ‘jump to’ links (below) in the search results. (further reading)

Part 7: Trimming The Fat

47. Set canonical URLs – Add the canonical link element to set preferred URL for pages with similar content.
<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/the-defacto-version-of-the-page/">

For example, eCommerce systems which allow filtering of categories by various attributes may automatically create multiple URLs with very similar content.(further reading)

48. Add noindex, follow to pages you wish to exclude from Google – Exclude thin/worthless pages from Google’s index by adding the robots meta tag with “content” set to “noindex, follow”.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">
Examples of pages you may want to exclude, include tag and author archives in WordPress, however, use this tag with caution. (further reading)

49. Block spiders from sensitive content with robots.txt – Exclude Googlebot and other crawlers from sensitive parts of your site (such as admin) by blocking them in robots.txt. (further reading)

Part 8: User Experience

50. Lower your bounce rate – For most sites (save for certain affiliate sites where you want the visitor in and out) a low bounce rate and a high number of pages per session is desirable.
While it is up for debate whether Google uses the bounce rate you see in Analytics as a ranking factor (I would say they don’t), what is almost certain is that they do use and measure ‘bounce’ time back to search results, and also whether a searcher then goes on to click other results. A reasonably fast bounce from your page, followed by a click onto another result, is a strong signal that your page either did not satisfy the user’s search query, or gave a poor user experience. (further reading)


51. Use scroll map – Scroll map software will show you how far down an individual page users are scrolling, helping you determine why they may be abandoning a page before reading to the end. (further reading)
52. Use heat map tracking – Find out exactly where your visitors are clicking and interacting with your pages to optimise conversions and place navigational elements. (further reading)

53. Minimise pop-ups – While popups can be good for conversions, too many of them can send a visitor straight to the back button.
54. Be careful with interstitial ads – Google has confirmed it may choose to penalise sites that display interstitial, full screen ads (below) to users on mobile devices. (further reading)

54. Be careful with interstitial ads – Google has confirmed it may choose to penalise sites that display interstitial, full screen ads (below) to users on mobile devices.

55. Ensure website is mobile optimised – If your website is not mobile optimised you are/will be missing out on a huge amount of traffic. Make it priority #1. (further reading)

56. Consider accessibility – Your website should be functional across a wide range of devices, operating systems, screen sizes, and should be accessible to users with a disability. (further reading)

57. Consider readability – Make sure text content is easy to read and well formatted. Proof read your copy for spelling/grammatical errors. (further reading)

58. Set up friendly 404 page – Create a user friendly 404 (not found error) page, which directs visitors to relevant content and minimises bounce. (further reading)

59. Minimise down time – Ensure you have a reliable web host with minimal(ideally ZERO) down time. Don’t skimp on hosting.
60. Implement SSL – Moving your entire website to SSL should be considered(Google gives a small rankings boost to sites accessible over HTTPS), however, at a minimum, any pages which capture user information should be safely encrypted. (further reading)

Part 9: Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console)

61. Look for ‘quick wins’ – Use the search analytics report, ordered by impressions, to look for keywords with a high number of impressions and average search position 11+. Adding some internal links to these pages, or even just making sure that the exact phrase is included on the page, can be enough to move the keyword into the top 10 and instantly boost traffic.

62. Check for errors – Regularly check for (and fix) errors in the ‘Crawl Errors’ report.

63. Submit a site map/site maps – You may want to add a sitemap, or sitemaps to ensure all pages on your site can be found, and to set crawl priority. (further reading)

Part 10: Google Analytics

64. Sign up for Google Analytics – Accurate traffic stats are essential to monitor the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
65. Regularly check stats and react to any changes in traffic – Check your stats regularly to look for changes in traffic, landing pages etc and react accordingly.

Part 11: Site Speed

66. Optimise your load speed – Page load speed is a ranking factor and, all else being equal, a faster loading page will outrank a slower loading page. (further reading)

67. Test your site’s load speed – Use a tool such as Pingdom to test your site’s loading speed.

68. Implement recommendations from Google Page Speed Insights – Run your website through Google’s Page Speed Insights tool and implement recommended changes where practical.

Recommended: Check out this excellent Page Speed test and resource from Varvy.com

Part 12: Image Optimisation

69. Use them! – Include images in your content to make it more visually interesting and shareable. High quality, custom images also make for excellent link bait. (further reading)


70. Add relevant alt text – Add relevant alt text to your images. (further reading)


71. Use descriptive file names – Use descriptive file names. (further reading)
Good: <img src="photo-of-a-clown.jpg" alt="photo of a clown" />
Bad: <img src="1550111.jpg" alt"" />

72. Optimise file size – Compress images to reduce load time.

Part 13: Link Building

73. Build them! – Inbound links continue to be one of the primary factors Google uses to rank web pages.


74. Links from authoritiative domains pass more power – The more trust and authority a domain has, the more beneficial a link from it is likely to be to your rankings. You can use the Domain Rating figure (DR) in Ahrefs Site Explorer to quickly assess the relative strength of a domain (high DR = high authority). Other metrics to consider include DA (Moz) and Trust Flow (Majestic).

75. Links from topically related sites assist rankings – Links from quality sites within your niche, or pages which are topically related to your content are beneficial for rankings. (further reading)

76. Links from within content are the most valuable – Editorial links from within content are considered to be the strongest links. (further reading and image)

77. Steal your competitor’s links – An analysis of your competitor’s backlink profile is a great starting point for any link building campaign. Use Ahrefs Site Explorer to easily uncover your competitor’s links and go ahead and grab them for your own site. (further reading)

78. Low quality link building may cause penalties – Low quality and automated link building may cause your site to be penalised by Google. (further reading)

79. Diversify your link profile – A strong link profile should include several different types of link. (further reading)

80. Diversify your anchor text – Keyword usage is anchor text is still a ranking factor, however, it is important to diversify it. A mixture of branded, generic, and keyword based anchors is desirable. (further reading)

81. Regularly audit your link profile – Conduct a regular audit of your link profile and look out for suspicious/unnatural looking links. While a small number should not do you any harm, large quantities of low quality links may be an indication of low quality link building by an SEO company, or even a negative SEO campaign from a competitor. If this is the case then you should consider removing or disavowing these links. (further reading)

Part 14: Social Media

82. Don’t ignore social media! – While officially not having a direct influence on rankings (although opinions vary on this), social media helps to spread your content and get it in front of potentially linking eyeballs. Additionally traffic from social may cause other factors that do directly influence rankings (i.e. traffic, buzz, brand searches, typed in URL searches). (further reading)

83. Use social media to share you content – Maintain active social media profiles on the major networks and share your content with your audience.

84. Show social proof – Displaying social share counts (although sadly Twitter’s is no more) acts as social proof and can lead to further shares.

85. Encourage sharing of your content – Display social share buttons in prominent positions on your web pages to make sharing as easy as possible.(further reading)

86. Include open graph data – Ensure your web pages are set up with open graph meta data for rich Facebook shares. (further reading)

87. Set up Twitter card – Enables enhanced tweets. (further reading)

88. Set up rich pins – Enabling rich pins on your website can lead to increased traffic from Pinterest. (further reading)

Part 15: Google Penalty Recovery

89. Manual penalties – Manual webspam penalties will generally be notified by email and a message in webmaster tools. (further reading)

90. Check traffic drops against Google update dates – Drops in traffic that align with Google updates are an early indication of algorithmic penalties.(further reading)

91. Remove/minimise thin content – For penalties which align with Panda updates identify pages with thin/duplicate content and either remove, ‘beef up’ or de-index. (further reading)

92. Remove bad links – Conduct a link audit, flag all low quality links and reach out to linking sites requesting removal. (further reading)

93. Disavow any links which cannot be removed – If no response to removal requests add low quality links/domains to a disavow file. You can manage multiple disavow files from within Ahrefs. (further reading)

94. Check for hacks/inserted links – Ensure your website has not been hacked and that there are no suspicious outgoing links. (further reading)

95. File reconsideration request – For manual penalties, you should file a reconsideration request once all identifiable issues have been resolved. (further reading)

Note: Recovery from penalties is not straight forward and you should be very careful when removing links, de-indexing pages etc. If in doubt consider employing the services of an experienced SEO consultant. It should also be noted that Google is expected to transition to ‘real-time’, continuous Penguin/Panda updates in the near future, which may make identifying specific penalties harder.

Part 16: Content Promotion

96. Find popular content in your niche and improve/update it – Take the guesswork out of content creation by finding previously popular content and making it even better. The great thing about this strategy is that you can reach out to those who linked to/shared the original content and point them to your own content. (further reading)
Here’s Tim showing how to use Ahrefs Content Explorer to easily find popular content in your niche and pull a report of all linking sites.

97. Spend at least as must time promoting content as creating it – Unless you already have a huge following, the ‘build it and they will come’ approach to marketing content just doesn’t cut it. You should spend at least as much time promoting your content as you do creating it, and indeed some content marketing experts, such as Derek Halpern of Social Triggers, argue that content promotion should take up the lion’s share of your time. (further reading)
98. Email outreach continues to be most powerful method – The best way to get your content in front of someone is to send them an email (but see tip number 108). 

99. Shareable assets = more links – Include high quality shareable assets such as infographics in your content to increase social shares and links. 
100. Share content from others – You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Leverage the power of the law of reciprocity. 

Part 17: SEO Housekeeping

101. Fix broken links – Broken links are bad for user experience and bad for SEO. Find them and fix them. 

102. Moderate comments/UGC – Be sure to carefully moderate any user generated content (i.e. blog comments, forums etc) to check for spam and links to low quality sites/bad neighborhoods. 
Part 18: General SEO Tips & Advice

103. Don’t put your eggs in one basket – A good internet marketing campaign should be multi-faceted and include a mix of SEO, social media, and paid traffic. Never rely on one source of traffic for your business. (further reading)

104. Learn as much as you can – Knowledge is power. There are a load of greatSEO blogs offering free advice, so learn as much as you can. Subscribing to Ahrefs blog below would be a good start  
105. Pay attention to updates – Things change in SEO, so keep up to date with those changes.

Referral - www.ahrefs.com

linkedin marketing strategy : Advanced LinkedIn Strategies for B2B Marketing

It hasn't been too long back that LinkedIn transformed from a small expert systems administration site to a colossal world power. Since the time that its starting, B2B advertisers have been attempting to figure out the code for B2B achievement. With every one of these a huge number of experts in one spot, unquestionably there's some approach to open up the conduits to leads, right? 

What's more, yes, there is an approach to open up the conduits to achievement. The traditional LinkedIn guidance isn't sufficiently definite: 1) Join. 2) Be dynamic. 3) Get leads. What?! All in all, what does one really do? 

Without a doubt, you may inadvertently get a couple falling leads, yet to truly win you have to do your own prospecting, LinkedIn style. How would you slice through the gaggle of occupation seekers, and locate the qualified individuals to work with? 

In this article, I'm going to show you 7 tips that will help you better influence LinkedIn to be a capable B2B showcasing device.

LinkedIn Works

Before I go all technical and start giving you killer tips, let me step back and do a little cheerleading number.

LinkedIn does work for B2B leads. Do Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest? Maybe, baby, but don’t bank on it.

Most B2Bs are using social media to get leads, as the research indicates. But how effective are these social media efforts?

Not very, says the data. According to InsideSales, social media is overused when we consider how many leads it actually gains.

Social media platforms as a whole aren’t scoring high on the lead awesomeness scale. But among the low-scoring social sites, there is one that stands out as a success marker. You guessed it: LinkedIn.

Image from Mediabistro.com

To put that into real numbers, LinkedIn is responsible for more than 80% of a business’s social media leads! All the other social media platforms put together only amount to 19.67% of leads!

Image from Business2Community.

The bottom line is this: LinkedIn works for B2B lead generation.

All that remains to be done is to leverage LinkedIn in the best way possible. These 7 tips will help you do just that.

1. Turn your company page into a lead generation page.

In order to make leads from LinkedIn, you have to be intentional. Leads don’t just fall into your lap. You work for them.

The best way is to turn your business or company page into a lead generation page. This is a course reversal from the typical company page, which shows basic information and facts about the company. Who reads that stuff anyway?

Your company page is a pipeline for LinkedIn leads to visit your actual company website.

What you can do is structure your company page in such a way that it leads up to a conversion action. The conversion action is a clickthrough to your website, either in the company description or Recent Updates.

First, use an image that gets attention or creates interest.

The header image is the first way to attract a user’s interest. This is what Hubspot does with their header image, in which they advertise one of their many guides.

The header image is a clear way of prospecting for those who are interested in learning more about personalized marketing. The header image is only where it starts. You want a response, and the next logical response is to keep reading. The image both grabs attention, and makes the user eager to find a way to get their hands on that guide.

Second, create a clear and compelling pitch in your company description.

This is where many companies falter. The company description should not be a dry explanation of how much you grew, and how many offices you’ve opened. That’s not the stuff of lead generation.

Instead, you want to speak directly to your target audience, and invite them to convert. (Don’t worry; the conversion part will come soon enough.)

The most important part of your company description is the first two-ish lines, because that’s all that LinkedIn displays. In order to read the rest of the description, the user must click “see more.” You’ve got to grab the user with your first couple of sentences, or they won’t read all that sparkling copy you created.

Here’s what StrideApp does with their description:

There’s nothing here about office locations, Forbes 5000 listings, or whatever else. This description puts the user at the forefront:

• “Lovingly made for small businesses and agencies.” BAM! Target audience identified.
• “Refreshingly simple and efficient.” Value proposition submitted.
• Sales tracking application…CRM.” Service provided.

Based on that hook, the engaged prospect is going to click “see more.”

Now what? Now, they can visit your website.

That’s the path of the user who is interested in finding out more about your company — a prospect. It’s up to you to make your company website as conversion-ready as possible.

Third, make your Recent Updates section clickable and conversion-focused.

Just in case prospects don’t click through your company website on the company information section, you want to get them in the Updates.

As long as you’re regularly posting updates, you’ll have an active and engaging feed. The best way to gain leads from this section is to post updates that are directly aimed at your target audience. You can post blog updates, link to your infographics, and share other information, but keep this in mind: You’re looking for clickthroughs from information-seekers.

Those are the basic steps to optimizing a company page. If you’re an industry that has broad appeal, you’ll probably see quite a few leads from this source. If you’re in a very small niche, your answers lie in the information below.

2. Create a showcase page.

LinkedIn created showcase pages for companies to promote individual brands that are extensions of the company.

Showcase pages are the perfect way to segment your inbound LinkedIn traffic. If you can create a business unit that is directly connected to a specific target audience, then you are in a position to create a Showcase page.

From your company page, click “Edit” and “Create a Showcase Page.” (See complete instructions here.)

Showcase pages were basically custom-made for B2Bs to better generate leads. LinkedIn writes, “It makes sense to create a Showcase Page when you want to represent a brand, business unit, or company initiative. These pages are intended develop long term relationship with a specific audience.”

Represent? Relationship? Audience? Sounds a lot like B2B marketing to me.

A Showcase page should target one customer segment, and provide information that is relevant to them. Your Showcase page gets a larger header image, more above-the-fold update posts, and places to link back to your company. In this way, it differs from company pages in several key ways.

This is what Microsoft’s Showcase page for Office looks like.

A massive company like Salesforce has several Showcase pages.

Here some tips for making your Showcase pages as powerful as possible.

• Make it conversion-primed, just like your company page.
• It’s important to keep the name of the page short, so it won’t be truncated in the display sidebar.
• In the Showcase page name, use a word that your audience will understand and relate to.

Showcase pages are simply another way to spread the net a little bit wider and to gain even more targeted leads interested in your product or service.

3. Use Advanced Search

So far, I’ve explained two inbound techniques for gaining leads. Now, I want to explain how to go out and find your prospects. They may not come find you, but you can go find them.

LinkedIn’s advanced search gives you an incredible way of identifying the exact type of people who you are targeting.

From the LinkedIn header menu, click the search people icon, and the advanced option.

Even without the upgraded LinkedIn membership, you have a great filter for narrowing down your search.

The most powerful aspect of Advanced People Search is the center column, in which you can filter your search by location, current company, industry, past company, school, profile language, and nonprofit interests.

Here’s how you might create an Advanced Search. This particular search is looking for people in my network who are in the Seattle area and the commercial real estate industry.

The results are focused, giving me a chance to connect with these people.

The great thing about these results is that I can continue to filter them, without having to go and rework my initial search.

The search filters are helpful, because I can instantly see how the search filters will change the results of my initial search. Plus, I can gain insight into how a particular company or area may be a better target for my prospecting. Notice the left sidebar:

Advanced search is the single most powerful technique for directly finding targets.

Keep in mind that the bigger and better your personal network, the greater your chance of finding warm prospects. While LinkedIn’s advanced search does allow you to search the network as a whole, the best leads will come from people to whom you are already connected at a first, second, or third level.

4. Save Searches

When you go through the work of creating a highly specific and targeted search, you’ll want to save it.

Saved searches create a way to stay active in your prospecting. You know that getting B2B leads isn’t a one and done activity. You have to maintain consistency in order to have a steady pipeline of sales.

Directly from your advanced search, look for the “Save search” option in the upper right corner.

When you create a saved search, not only do you get to find that exact search again, but you can also set up alerts.

Keep in mind that without an upgraded subscription, you can only save three searches.

5. Search Groups

Searching for people is a very detailed and granular approach to looking for leads. It’s a great approach, but there’s another one: Groups.

At the time of writing this article, I identified 2,058,816 groups on LinkedIn. You can be fairly confident that there’s a group in your niche.

A great way to find blocks of leads is to search for groups, join these groups, maintain some level of activity in these groups, and nurture leads in that way.

Simply perform a simple group search using relevant keywords.

Group searches do not have the same advanced features that people or company searches have, but you can narrow down your search according to relationship level, category, and language.

Look for groups with the following features:

Highly relevant. The group must be a nearly exact match to what you are seeking in a target audience.

Active. LinkedIn ranks groups according to their activity level, so all you need to do is pay attention to how active they are in the search results. Select groups that are “very active.”

Medium size. There’s no “ideal size” since that depends on the nature of your business and niche. Keep in mind that you don’t want to get lost in a huge group where no one will notice you. Neither do you want to join a group that has too few people to matter. LinkedIn allows you to be a member of 50 groups, so choose carefully.

6. Start groups.

LinkedIn groups offer a lot of great networking opportunities. One of the ways to get even more from the power of groups is to create your own.

As you join groups and interact with groups, you may identify an opportunity for another group to be formed. When you become the owner and moderator of your group, you gain leadership and recognition in the industry. As long as you position yourself authoritatively and not in a salesy way, you can form a place where your target audience can gather and interact.

7. Publish Content

LinkedIn has a powerful content publishing platform. Be aware that publishing has not yet rolled out to all users.

If you have publishing access, be sure to use this platform for even more exposure. LinkedIn members who are publishing report that they’ve experienced a lot of success.

Conclusion

This is a broad-level strategy that leaves you lots of room to trace down more precise strategies. LinkedIn offers a lot of opportunity, and is the ideal resource for B2B marketing.

But without the right knowledge, it becomes just another time-sucking social network. Next time you’re on LinkedIn, spend at least thirty minutes doing some advanced search or group search, and see if you don’t come up with at least five prospects.

It’s a start, and it could very well turn into your next B2B sale.