Planning for SEO in 2017
Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? Sure, many of us make the standard resolutions to exercise more, eat healthier, quit smoking, etc.; things that will improve our physical and mental well-being. But what about your business’ health? There are several resolutions you can and should make to improve the health and profitability of your company, and planning for SEO in 2017 should be at the top of the list.
One of the factors in improving your business health is increasing the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) status of your online searches to get your business found by the right clients and for the right reasons. SEO is evolving and changing quickly, so you need to keep up with it in order to stay on top of search engine results. What worked in 2016 may not work well in 2017.
Sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with the changes in SEO, especially if you don’t have a dedicated staff working on it. However, adjusting your strategy based on search ranking algorithm updates or changes in the way search results are displayed visually can be incredibly impactful on business results. And that doesn’t mean just pumping out high-quality, keyword-optimized content.
In HubSpot’s new e-book on 18 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in 2017 (available for free download), they describe misconceptions on what many believe is a great SEO strategy (and which may have been just a short time ago), but now are a thing of the past. You will learn about things like:
- It’s quality, not quantity of links.
- How important that little “s” is in your url address (http vs. https).
- Ranking in the top of search results is great, but you’d better have great content once they get to your site.
- Are pop-ups always bad?
- Best ways to optimize your keyword phrases.
- Optimizing your website content and pages.
- And more!
Mobile-Friendly
Google values and rewards sites that are mobile-friendly. Mobile searches are climbing at a steady rate, as the chart below depicts.
Source: Smart Insights
Your site MUST accommodate mobile users to capture this growing market. Here are some reasons why:
- Searchers using mobile devices enter keyword queries differently than they do with desktop applications. They use shorter tail phrases and their searches are often more local in nature, so it’s important to have these short phrases optimized.
- Mobile users want to be “entertained”. Including social media links in mobile sites makes them more appealing to the audience that generally uses mobile devices for finding what they want.
- Mobile screens are smaller, with an increased likelihood for “fat-fingering” on links. It’s advisable to make sure the links are positioned to avoid this; vertical menus can help.
- Mobile users don’t want to go extra steps to contact you. A click-to-call link will enable them to dial your business with one click. A link to your main desktop site is also a good idea.
- Images and videos are slow and difficult to load on mobile devices. Reducing file sizes of rich content ensures those pages render properly on users’ mobile devices and give this highly shareable content better visibility.
- Studies show that approximately 85 percent of people use mobile devices to “pass time,” “be amused” or for “entertainment reasons.” Develop mobile versions of your website with these aspects in mind for full engagement value.
Above all, focus on your audience.
Search engines are always striving to deliver what the searcher is looking for. There will be more than 500 Google algorithm changes in 2017, requiring sites to be more customer-focused and providing them with the information they actually want without relying on “tricks” to get them to click on, like or share pages. Google is becoming more organic and natural when it comes to SEO. Hopefully, that could mean businesses can concentrate more on delivering a quality product and experience to their customers.
At St. Louis SEO for Growth, we build content-driven websites that get you leads and will help you get found in search engines.