Some SEO techniques are a little sneakier than others. Not sneaky because they work their way around search engine rules, but sneaky because so few other sites have thought of them. The more of these intelligent, outside-the-box techniques you can work into your search engine optimization plan, the more chance you have of sneaking up and overtaking your competition.

One of the difficult things about search engine optimization is that everyone’s aware of a set of techniques that will help them improve their position in the SERPs. When everyone knows how to get a better position, the value of these techniques diminishes. Not everyone can be at the top at once. Today’s SEO, and the SEO of the future, relies on a creative outlook, which is one of the many reasons to consult a professional when conducting your optimization. You can discuss this with us at SEO Consult Australia. Here are a couple of sneaky techniques that may be what you need to make it to the top:

• Obtain local domains. Most businesses don’t bother with local domain extensions, like ‘co.uk’ and ‘com.au’, but they can bring a number of side benefits. One of these is the ability to list in local directories. Getting local wherever you can is becoming a smart move, as Google becomes more specific with its local results. Every country you can be ‘local’ in opens up a new market for your business and a whole new area for your search engine optimisation plan. It’s important to note that you shouldn’t duplicate your site on your various domains. Redirecting is a better option.
• Seed links throughout archives. Your content is one of your major assets, particularly when it comes to your off-page SEO. Offering a piece of free content is a good way to build relationships with e-zines and industry blogs. Consistently doing this means you’re planting more and more links. As links often stay live even when a piece has been archived, you’re building a solid link profile.
• Mini sites. If your business covers a number of areas, it might be worthwhile thinking about creating a number of mini sites. This can work well if you have a series of topics that you cover strongly. The search engines will only list one or two pages of your site for a particular search term. Branching your topics out onto separate domains means that you have more potential listings. It also comes in handy when you’re trying to get listings in industry directories, which usually allow you to list only your home page.

Note that this only works if each topic can genuinely support a site by itself. Creating satellite sites is a borderline search engine optimisation technique that can get you into trouble. If the search engines deem you to have created the sites solely to provide link juice to your main site, you might get penalised.

• Title your links. People often forget that links can have a title as well. It’s another great opportunity to lay down your keywords and increase the relevancy of your pages.