Stay up to Date on the Latest SEO Trends and Tactics

Improve your efforts by focusing on these four areas

Isn’t it great when folks come to your site by searching for a keyword you painstakingly researched and incorporated into your content? And if they make a purchase as a result, you probably think of yourself as an SEO Jedi master extraordinaire.

Well, not so fast. Just like anything else in marketing, SEO tactics, trends, and features are constantly changing. To stay in the loop, here are some important trends you NEED to know about:

People are talking

Whether it’s Siri, OK Google, or something else, people are now using their voices to search for things online. This means that you need to adjust your SEO strategy accordingly. Most of us don’t speak the same way that we write, so searches will be different depending on the mode of search that your audience is using. This is something you may not have previously considered but, now that we’ve brought it to mind, doesn’t it make sense?

You can tackle this issue by improving your listening skills. Try to get into conversations with customers, friends, heck, even talk to your brother-in-law—and really listen to how each person talks about your business. This can give you some great insight into the words and phrases that will be used during a voice search.

Experience is key

It used to be that if it took a minute or two for a website to load, you’d be fine with it; you would just use that time to go refill your coffee cup. But when’s the last time you waited for more than 10 seconds for a page to come up? Chances are you clicked away pretty fast and went elsewhere to find what you were looking for if you were faced with waiting. Nowadays, quick isn’t good enough; it has to be almost instantaneous.

So, what does this mean for SEO? While search engines aren’t penalizing (yet) slow-loading sites, the fast ones are starting to get preferential treatment. The same is true for websites that are optimized for mobile and have low bounce rates.

How do you keep your site top of mind, supercharged, running smooth, and aligned with an SEO keyword prioritization strategy? Incorporate you keywords:

• In the H1: the main title

• In the H2: the subheads

• In the intro paragraph

• In the closing paragraph

Social search is on the rise

By now, surely you know how important social media is for any business. However, if you’re not thinking about SEO in regards to your blog posts and social media messaging, you’re making a mistake. Social networks are only growing in popularity and, in fact, are also being used to search for things.

Quick: What’s the second-biggest search engine? Nope, not Bing or Yahoo. It’s YouTube.

Before you publish any social content, you need to figure out how to best use keywords naturally. Hashtags are also an excellent way to boost SEO, but they have to be relevant and shouldn’t be overused.

Content is (still) king

You may be sick of hearing this, but Bill Gate’s infamous line is still as pertinent as the day he first said it. This is why creating consistent content has to be at the root of your SEO. Search engines know when you’ve added new content, and they’ll reward you for it.

While content is nothing new for SEO, dense content is. What this means is that you’re offering the best value per word. Think about the last long article or blog post you wrote. While you carefully chose those hundreds–or thousands–of words, chances are you could’ve gotten the same message across by lopping off quite a few. Taking this approach has two distinct advantages: you can get to the point quicker (which is less work for you), and there’s a greater chance people will read it.

If you’re having trouble attracting customers, the above tips can help. And if you don’t have the time or energy to produce SEO-optimized content, just contact the pros at ContentBacon. We will kick your content into high gear in no time!