2017 is still young.
In the midst of the possible resolutions and fresh starts to which you committed for the new year, it’s also a good time to take a look at your SEO strategy.
Great SEO strategy is commendable. But is it enough? Wouldn’t you rather have an expert SEO strategy?
Upon examination of your current strategy, there’s a good chance you’ll find there are ways to improve upon it this year.
Establishing an expert SEO strategy is not as difficult as it might sound.
Unlike those resolutions that ask you to shed all sorts of bad habits, resolving to boost your SEO presence starts with simply focusing on your business goals.
From there, you can determine what you need to do with your SEO to improve authority, value, and ranking.
In other words, what you need is to get expert SEO for 2017. There are quite a few places to explore.
Invest more time in your content
If there was anything that 2016 taught us about SEO, it was that search engines focus more on actual content rather than optimization.
That being said, spending a bunch of time on optimization is pointless if the content falls flat.
As you work to establish expert SEO, you’ll want to monitor the:
- Keywords
- Site stats
- Levels of engagement on each topic
Then, you need to figure out what users really expect from your page.
Think like the potential reader of your site. What super cool ideas can you formulate to appeal to them? What evergreen content would be relevant here?
Then, take it to another level and incorporate content repurposing.
As Ana Hofman, Consultant at TrafficGenerationCafe.com says, “if content is the reality of SEO, then content repurposing is the new reality of content.
Content repurposing is what puts your message in every format and on every platform your audience is looking for it.
It builds brand awareness, subject authority, and expertise.
Content repurposing makes your content more linkable and much more likable to search engines. It does what straight-up content alone cannot. It gives your content legs, as it were, to travel to where your target audience is and bring them back to your site.
And all of that equals more traffic and sales.
Once your content is up to snuff, you’ll want to take a look at the user experience you’re offering.
Create a seamless user experience.
User experience is crucial.
And when operating in tandem with quality content can have a huge impact on your SEO ratings. Make it part of your expert SEO plan to test how it affects the traffic to your site.
Figures show that 93% of online experiences start with a search. That means that user experience starts long before the user visits your site. So here are some actions you need to take to create a better user experience:
- Minimize error pages by fixing broken links.
- Consider readability and crawlability in terms of your content.
- Be sure the navigation is smooth and enables the user to browse the pages without problems.
- Remember to test a page’s speed from time to time and get rid of any large images or drawn-out scripts that may be slowing it down.
- Consider experimenting with using AMP to start pages. Google seems to prefer these.
Keep your online presence current.
Have you thought about how your online presence extends to all of the different platforms you’re using, and no longer using?
Maybe not. But you should.
Because your online presence expands far beyond your site.
So, yeah, go ahead and use new platforms to promote your presence. But then keep them up-to-date. Even if you stop using them.
Say you have a Facebook page, but you’re not using it anymore – perhaps because the current state of affairs is too much to handle. At any rate, you’ll want to update information that’s no longer accurate. Especially information regarding your business.
Consider creating a spreadsheet that monitors your online presence, then check every month to ensure that the information is up-to-date.
Get mobile friendly.
David Schneider, Founder at Ninja Outreach says, “By 2017, everyone should have had their websites optimized for mobile already. Google has already repeated how mobile friendliness now adds to a site’s SEO score.”
You have to be mobile friendly. Google will penalize you if you are not.
In January, Google made major changes to the way non-https sites are handled so if you haven’t already, you’ll want to be sure to switch to HTTPS.
If you haven’t yet done this, users to your page via Google Chrome are receiving security warnings.
And nobody wants that.
How about some Virtual Reality?
Schneider goes on to say, “As for upcoming trends, I see an incoming rush for Virtual Reality (VR). There are actually existing VR coverage for things like that VR coverage that the New York times did of the war on Syria, or that VR coverage chronicling that music festival, etc.”
Virtual Reality is some next level stuff. It’s a new frontier for those seeking SEO since it allows for getting noticed and ranked while the content is fresh.
Most feel that it won’t be long before users start wanting more of this.
Optimize visual content.
Visual content that supplements – or even replaces – text is a big deal these days and it certainly can affect SEO.
While it can take some time to streamline your visual content to optimize it for search engines, it’s not nearly as involved to boost its SEO performance.
Here’s your checklist for optimizing visual content:
- Create relevant and meaningful titles
- Add alt text, metadata, and keywords
- Pay attention that the file’s size is not too large
- Create a video to facilitate your content’s discovery from search engines
- Consider the idea of hosting the video to not just YouTube, but to your own site as well
- Show your own unique personality/brand to make your visual content shareable
With these steps, you can infuse some serious SEO into your 2017 website plan.
