Why You Should Get Excited About SEO In The New Year

Excitement and search engine optimisation aren’t the most common pairing of words. Spending time on your SEO strategy isn’t everyone’s version of a fun night in. Navigating the weird world of Google might make as much sense as the ‘cash me outside’ girl having a tv career. We’re confused why it happened and still hoping it’s a bad dream.

Regardless, whatever stage you’re at in your SEO journey, as long as you’ve accepted you need it, you’re on the right track. Prepare to have your mind blown because SEO can be fun these days. The years of attempting naughty stuff in the backend of your website to manipulate engines or trying to hide as many keywords as you can throughout content are well behind us.

SEO has evolved, and the changes are nothing to fear. As opposed to the techniques of previous years, the latest updates mean businesses no longer have to concentrate on the technical stuff they don’t understand. And they can now prioritise the fun stuff they do. Nowadays, it’s all about creating cool articles, videos and social media content that your audience loves. In the coming year, your business will be able to focus less on the boring stuff and implement fun strategies for online visibility instead.

This Is Why You Should Be Excited About SEO In The New Year:

VOICE SEARCH IS A THING

Voice search is officially a thing, and we’re totally here for it. Who wants to bother with that typing crap when you can say stuff, and like magic, our smartphone will instantly find the information we need? Whether you’re all about Siri and her sarcastic quips, Google Assistant or Microsoft’s Cortana, voice search is going to implode in the coming year.

As a business, optimising your SEO strategy for voice search is relatively easy. If you haven’t claimed your Google My Business listing then get onto it. Stat. Voice searches are generally local in nature, so your Google My Business will help you show up in a voice search category related to your business and its location.

Add “conversational” keywords to your keyword strategy. These are phrases or keywords that actually mimic how people speak. Think about the sort of questions you get asked by your clients on the phone or face to face daily. Start creating content around these and use structured data markup to help voice search devices with more information.

VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO

Google loves video. Who doesn’t? If you’ve spent any time innocently looking for a tutorial and ended up nose deep in a ‘cats being jerks’ marathon, you’ll understand the internet’s a wonderful place. Video helps to make it so special.

The popularity of video will continue to skyrocket in the coming year. Ensuring you create videos for your business will engage your audience. And Google will recognise you as an authority and rank you accordingly.

However, there’s no point creating them if they offer no value for your consumers. As much as I’m willing to watch a video on your site of goats jumping on trampolines, if your brand doesn’t sell goats or trampolines, I’ll soon leave. It’ll have no benefit to your business.

Also, ensure the videos you create are optimised for SEO by hosting the video on your domain, as opposed to Youtube. Create interactive and engaging stuff, add the correct meta information, optimise for your keywords and ensure it’s shareable with your audience.

MOBILEGEDDON IS HAPPENING

Mobilegeddon is here, you guys. This shouldn’t be a surprise considering smartphones give access to anything we need quicker than you can say, “desktops suck”. Mobile usage surpassed everything else this year. It’s the number one way to get online and it will continue to be in the years to come.

As the Google Gods are all about the user and how they access information, a mobile first-index algorithm is coming. This means that Google is going to consider mobile-friendly sites before those that aren’t.

We’ve already mentioned the importance of mobile optimisation to you numerous times. But if you’ve been procrastinating doing anything about it, just like I’ve been procrastinating on how to adult my whole life, now’s the time to start making changes.

Before you get in a complete panic, if you have a responsive website design you’re already optimised for mobile. If not, start implementing what needs to be done to make your website mobile friendly now.

YOUR AUDIENCE COMES FIRST

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Everything you do for your SEO strategy should be tailored towards your audience, not for a search engine. Yes, you are optimising for search engines to rank you, but their most important ranking factors are whether your website is optimised for humans. Confused yet?

Consider the internet is only a quarter of a century old. Previous to this we all lived like savages and had to talk to each other instead of getting online. The original search engines were invented when it was recognised a system was needed to reach the information we required. As opposed to it all floating around the online space in any order it liked.

Google was one of the first search engines to understand the needs of the user. They started to develop ways to ensure the information being presented to them is what the consumers were actually looking for.

When marketers began to understand search engines they came up with shortcuts to manipulate them. So Google invented bots and algorithms to stop the manipulation. Recognise this dance? The cycle still continues to this day.

Your priority for your SEO strategy is to get customers to your site. Everything you do should be focused on these customers, not on getting Google’s attention. Focusing on your customers will get Google’s attention organically anyway.

Sure there are the technical elements of SEO to make it easier for Googles bots to find you, but the priority has, and always will be, supplying the answers to the questions your target audience is asking. If your priority is creating engaging and informative content your audience responds to, then Google will also respond to it as well.

If you really want to get ahead with SEO in the new year, why not talk to our team at What The Fox? We offer many SEO optimised services to help you get online visibility and drive customers you need to your website. Book in for our latest workshop or contact us today to see how we can work with you.