There are plenty of new trends in every area of digital marketing, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no exception.
If you’re not effectively leveraging SEO for your business, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to cost-effectively grow your business.
There are some tried and true SEO methods (content marketing), as well as several new trends in SEO that will continue to play out in the next year or so. In this article, we’ll talk about some of the top SEO trends that will influence your SEO results and content marketing…
- People now search online using different formats, such as Voice Search: Typically, search involves typing a term into a search engine and then searching for that term. However, this is changing rapidly. Increasingly, you can speak directly to a search engine such as Google Home and initiate a search using your own voice in your own words. This is important in that the industry can learn more about its consumers and what they want in the context of where they are and what they are doing. Now, more than ever, people are searching online using a different platform and different formats. It’s your job as a marketer to figure out how to use search to optimize your business’s search engine results. This involves knowing your audience really well, including what they want, as well as when and why they want it.
- Link Building: It will be increasingly important to create a strategy that seeks out quality links. Your links should add value and help you build an authority in your target niche. A successful SEO strategy will move towards relationship building and helping a brand develop powerful contacts and links that will be beneficial in the long-term.
- Organic search will continue to be important: Organic search will take time, but has “staying power”. With SEO, you may not get immediate results straightaway. It often takes some time to work your way up in the key search results. But keep in mind that trends tend to die a quiet death, so it’s evergreen content that helps your site traffic and sales, often for a long time after publication of articles about your company and service or product. Your objective with SEO should be to build something that provides lasting results.
- Marketers will have to play for the long-term: With SEO, benefits are not visible straight away. You need to build a targeted, long-term content marketing strategy over time to create a foundation for your brand’s SEO results. SEO is more about brand building, based on carefully crafted content marketing rather than quick transactions.
- Paid Search is important: While most people think of organic results on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), paid search ads can also help drive search engine results ranking.
- One of the classic functions of SEO will shift: Increasingly, Google wants to give users as much information and content on Search Engine Results Pages, rather than forcing them to navigate to and from different sites. This is why content marketing should be truly engaging, valuable, and relevant to customers rather than simply a way to get them to a particular site. Also, when people land on your site through SEO, you need to give them a rewarding experience with high-quality content.
- Customer Reviews: Google rewards high-quality websites and businesses. One of the key ways to demonstrate this is by obtaining business reviews from your customers, particularly Google Reviews.
- Speed will be big: Not only is speed a ranking signal, it is also a major UX factor. And UX impacts rankings. But what is the right speed? Well, Google expects a web page to load in about three seconds. So, make sure your web page loads as quickly as possible.
- Searches through mobile devices: With the rise of voice search, over half of Google searches will come from mobile devices. Your content should be mobile-friendly as you simply cannot ignore mobile SEO anymore.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning: These are already changing the way search results are ranked. Machine learning can also facilitate the way that searches take place, helping users find contextualized results. This will lead to a more personalized experience. Google’s determination to develop this area will possibly lead to many more innovations on the horizon.
So these are just some of the key trends to be aware of when it comes to SEO and content marketing.
At IntellaSphere, we not only understand these trends, we help leverage them to come up with an SEO strategy that will work for your business.
Given the ever-growing and overwhelming numbers of digital marketing channels and mechanisms, you need an expert to help you navigate them. This is where IntellaSphere enters the picture. We are an experienced team of marketing, business, and technology professionals who have a passion for developing winning solutions for small, mid-sized, and enterprise businesses.
If you are thinking of crafting an effective SEO strategy for your business or a digital marketing strategy, get in touch with IntellaSphere and rest easy knowing the future of your business marketing is in safe hands.
For more information on how you can effectively create and leverage an SEO strategy, contact IntellaSphere at 425-283-9772 or at contact@intellasphere.com or on our website at www.IntellaSphere.com.
by Bruce Worrall, Feb-14-2018