Explore our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit

What you need to know about SEO into 2016

Author's avatar By Expert commentator 30 Oct, 2015
Essential Essential topic

8 Things You Need To Know About Search Engine Optimization to Stay Relevant in 2016

SEO is rapidly evolving. The same techniques you used last year are rapidly falling out of favor for more advanced and efficient models of search engine optimization. Google often modifies the techniques it uses to prevent people from exploiting the algorithm. While that’s great for preventing dishonesty and spam, it also means you’ll have to re-learn SEO concepts to adapt with the ever-changing model.

The Importance of Investment Return

Expertly selecting keywords that will help you jump in the rankings is wonderful, but a jump in your page rank doesn’t necessarily mean you’re maximizing your revenue. KISSMetrics, RJMetrics, or similar tools will allow you to track the movement of your customers and determine which search queries are ultimately leading to your financial success. Using this route to maximize the effectiveness of your keywords, rather than where you score in their relative popularity, will help you connect with people who are ready to buy.

Mobile Friendliness

It used to be that most people accessed websites from a computer, but that’s just not the case anymore. Everyone has a smartphone, and an increasing amount of individuals use their smartphones to conduct searches. Google takes that into account, and having a website that is less than mobile friendly will knock you down a few pegs.

Websites that aren’t optimized for mobile viewing will often load much slower on those devices, and your loading speed will affect your SEO. Be sure that all of your content is supported by smartphone and you don’t have anything that makes your site slower to enter, such as an overlay for your email list.

Go Broad

Mid-long and long-tail keywords have been the standard for a long time, but Google’s Hummingbird algorithm is a lot pickier than algorithms past. Hummingbird is a lot smarter, and it wants to make sure your website satisfies both queries. If you’re only employing mid-long and long-tail keywords, you’re squandering an opportunity to utilize broad keywords. Utilizing broad terms gives the new algorithm a better understanding of your content and its context, which will ultimately drive more traffic to your website.

Expressed VS Implied

Expressed links are clickable links that direct to you. Implied links are where your website is mentioned, but there’s nothing for the viewer to click on. These mentions are viewed by Google as an expression of your popularity, and will strengthen your presence. Think of it as positive gossip. Google will see how often people are talking about you, and this will largely weigh on your perceived importance. While you’ve likely only been concerned with expressed links, now is the time to be more concerned with implied links, as Google is using them to measure your credibility and user desire to find you.

Effective Content Marketing

Having a firm foundation is well-crafted SEO is absolutely necessary, however, it doesn’t matter how strong your SEO is if you can’t thoroughly market your content. Your website needs content, and the quality of that content will always take precedence over the quantity of it.

Using keyword statistics to boost the visibility of your content, offering to exchange guest blog posts with other sites in relevant niches, a long index of FAQs, and creating content that reputable and commonly used resources would feel inclined to link to are all effective steps you can take to market your content to its fullest extent.

Learn to Deal with Negative SEO

While you cannot necessarily prevent a malicious SEO campaign against you, there are certain steps you can take to contain the damage and have the offender penalized. Acclimate yourself to Google Webmaster Tools, where you’ll find the required forms to report suspicious activity.

Always monitor your links and statistics to check for any unusual behavior. The sooner you learn, the sooner you can fight back. Google penalties can destroy your website’s ratings, and allowing negative SEO to go unnoticed for an extended period can result in long term consequences that are next to impossible to recover from.

Building Relationships

It’s easy to find tons of places it would be beneficial to place your link. A lot of the times, these opportunities will rise out of guest blog posts. What you may not realize is that you’re far from the only person in your niche who has found these excellent link building opportunities, and everyone else is just as thirsty for them as you are.

Building a solid working relationship with others who are established in your niche will lead to your priority over others who are competing for the same spot. These websites are used to people emailing in droves about guest proposals, and establishing relationships will create an environment where site owner is more inclined to work regularly with you.

SEO

Keep At It

Mastering these SEO techniques and continuing to follow industry trends will help you succeed now and in the future. Using out-of-date SEO methods will allow you to fall far, and fall fast. Allowing yourself to fall behind is only allowing your competitors the chance to rise up in your place. Remember that SEO is not a one-and-done project, but an ongoing process that your success depends on. Detail your strategy and get to work.

 

 

Author's avatar

By Expert commentator

This is a post we've invited from a digital marketing specialist who has agreed to share their expertise, opinions and case studies. Their details are given at the end of the article.

This blog post has been tagged with:

2016 Digital Marketing Trends

Recommended Blog Posts