SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the most vital yet overlooked aspect when it comes to generating quality leads.
There are business leaders who have argued that SEO isn’t a part of the success recipe for businesses anymore.
But, there are 60+ stats to prove this statement wrong!
Simply producing or offering quality products through various paid promotional channels won’t do the trick.
How can a shopper explore an outlet without entering it? So, driving relevant traffic to your website exposes it to the users, and increases the chances of conversions.
In this blog, I would like to highlight 5 SEO tips that are the most trending ones for the upcoming year. They are –
1. User Experience (UX) – The First Impression
2. Mobile-first Approach
3. Valuable Content Rules the Charts
4. Google’s E.A.T Update
5. SEO and Social Media
Let’s get started –
1. User Experience (UX) – The First Impression
UX is by far the first (and probably the ultimate) deciding factor when users visit your site for the first time.
The site should be well-structured and easy to navigate. Additionally, it should load within a span of 3 seconds (maximum). After all, who likes to wait in this busy world?
People (online searchers) love to explore sites that are designed well, and end up spending more time on it. And, it might lead to a sale!
2. Mobile-first Approach
Well, you might have come across Google’s mobile-first indexing update in recent times.
It basically says that Google will index mobile-friendly websites and pages and consider it as the real website. So, such sites will be given a priority while ranking them on SERPs.
Now, there are certain things you can do so that your site scores well on mobile –
A. Write mobile-friendly content. For example, you may use accordion displays.
B. Make sure your site is good to go on mobile devices using the Mobile-friendly test from Google.
C. Optimize mobile snippets.
Overall, just focus on the design (UX) of your site and the rankings will improve gradually.
3. Valuable Content Rules the Charts
Traditionally, Google would delve into your site’s HTML and analyse stuff like title tag, URL, image ALT text, description tag, H1 tag, etc.
With time, Google’s algorithms have become smarter. They now give priority to the quality of the content over its quantity.
And Google Rank Brain is one of them!
It helps in sorting out the topmost results that appear in the search listing by measuring users’ interaction.
Rank Brain focuses on two things:
1. How long someone stays on your page (Dwell Time)
2. The percentage of people that click on your result (Click Through Rate)
Original content, which are at least around 2000-words long, are come across as valuable content by Google (and other search engines as well)
By content, I don’t only mean text! Infographics, stunning audio visuals, rich snippets all make the cut. Another way to catch the attention of Google’s web crawlers is by using LSI keywords in your content.
A free tool called LSI Graph can be used for the purpose. Just enter your target keyword into the tool, and it’ll show you a bunch of LSI keywords that are associated with that term:
Here is a snapshot –
4. Google’s E.A.T Update
This major update was rolled out by Google on August 1st. I am attaching a snapshot of the announcement –
So, E.A.T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. You might think that these three parameters were always a part of Google’s ranking algorithms. Then what’s new? So, the emphasis was on training their ‘raters’ for identifying duplicated content.
Again, quality content wins!
5. SEO and Social Media
There is an important link between SEO and social media that business owners tend to ignore at times.
Majority of the audience (potential customers) hang out on the popular social media platforms.
Social selling is a trend that is picking up pace. Social channels also act as a form of search engine for that matter.
In a brief video, Google’s Matt Cutts had clarified that social signals and metrics (likes, shares, retweets, etc) DO NOT affect search rankings.
But still, social media can be used to your advantage!
Social profiles do rank in search engines whenever a user searches for a specific company. So, businesses should focus on keeping their social media handles up-to-date and compliment it with engaging posts.
Designing an effective SEO strategy that connects with the social networks could be a bit confusing. But, no worries! There are professional digital marketing agency that can take care of everything for you while you just sit back and relax.
Take Home Message –
SEO strategies, if implemented the right way, can work wonders for your business. Nevertheless, it will bring in more quality leads and ultimately boost the sales.
All the best for your SEO efforts in 2019!
