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SEO has never been easy. One has to play around with multiple variables while keeping one eye on the results at all times. Some even refer to it as a high form of trial and error.
Whatever be the case, as we power through the first quarter of 2018, SEO has transformed into the most crucial marketing tool ever created.
So let’s look at some leading SEO strategies that will help us be at the top of our game this year:
- Link Building
Link building is as old as SEO and will continue to hold importance this year. The number of backlinks a website receives adds to its SEO score and improves its ranking. Quality Backlinks are an indication to Google algorithms that the page contains something of value for the particular keywords.
Notice that the focus here is on ‘Quality.’ There was once a time when ranking authority was dictated by the sheer volume of backlinks. But today backlinks from higher authority websites in your niche are worth a thousand lowly ones.
So build backlinks accordingly.
- User Experience
Surprised?
Why on Earth would Google care about UX if content is the end-game?
As it turns out, a smoother UX would engage customers, making them spend more time on the web page. This increases the usefulness of the page and makes it more relevant for the visitors.
Here are some factors to take care of in this regard:
- Load time or speed of the web page
- Ease of readability
- Design and Navigation structure
- Optimization for Mobile
- Featured Snippets
Being hailed as ‘Position 0’, Featured Snippets have taken the world of SEO by storm. You must have noticed how, at times, Google displays search information right below the search bar. Statistics suggest that this constitutes almost 30% of the SERPs today.
So how do you rank on Position ‘0’? By focusing on creating content in scannable formats like:
- Answer Boxes
Google has also been focusing on Answer Boxes lately. Content that is created in a ‘how’ and ‘what’ format often appears in the form of Answer Boxes.
Statistics suggest that these boxes see a CTR of 32.3%. This is quite significant and a great opportunity to tap if you’re rooting to increase your domain authority.
- Mobile First
While the focus in the previous years has been to go mobile friendly, 2018 calls to give priority to mobile over other devices. The reason is simple. The popularity of devices like smartphones and tablets have exploded in the past year, and more than 50% of Internet traffic is dictated by these devices now.
A focus on mobile automatically emphasizes Local SEO Services Miramar, since Google often takes into account the GPS location of the searcher while showing the results.
Here are some actions points to take care of in this regard:
- Optimization for Voice Search
- Responsive Web Design for varying screen sizes
- Accelerated Mobile Pages for 4x faster load time
- Virtual Assistants
As Virtual Assistants like Siri and Cortana become more powerful, Google searches made via them are increasing by the day.
This calls for optimizing content accordingly since there is a stark contrast in searches made through assistants and text.
Since people tend to use longer sentences while searching with voice, optimizing for assistants translates to optimizing for long-tail keywords.
All such searches and more are taken care by Rank Brain, Google’s deep learning algorithm. And as capabilities of RankBrain become more prominent, so does its relevance in SEO.