Which SEO techniques will you be focusing on in 2015?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is an ever-changing, what’s-the-latest, keep-up-or-get-out business; this we know. Every year (and every week) seems to bring world-rocking changes to Google algorithms, what’s 'in', and what’s 'out' in terms of best SEO practices.While the core SEO success factors shown below remain constant, changes to Google's algorithms and webspam filters will mean that we should always be pushing the boundaries by testing new techniques.
In this post I have picked five 'predictions' for SEO in 2015 that are not only already gaining momentum, but which I think will help online success.
1. Long-tail keyword searches will play an increasingly essential role in SEO.
Long-tail keywords offer the opportunity to give users content that is more specific based on their searches. Queries made by users are becoming much more accurate and focused. For example, what used…
Is Google favouring long-form content in its results?
Something rather strange happened recently to the results for one of our major keywords 'copywriting' - see SERPs. For the past 12 months or so, our homepage has consistently appeared in the top 10 results for the term – the largest volume search term in our industry.
This page has been replaced with various other landing pages, most recently settling on a guide we produced titled 'How to become a copywriter.' This is despite the fact that this page does not include the term 'copywriting' in the meta data or header tags on the page and has no external back links.
I suspected that the replacement of this page may have been due to an algorithmic penalty due to overzealous use of the term in link building to the homepage. However, …
Examples of developing your brand in 2015 by building your Digital Knowledge Centre
SEO technology provider, Searchmetrics, recently released a white paper: SEO Rank Correlations and Ranking Factors 2014 – Google U.S., evaluating factors impacting organic search results and an analysis of search engine algorithms. This post highlights some of the findings for organisations SEO brand strategy. I have condensed the 83 page document into some of the key factors brands need to be aware of.
The searchmetrics report provides some good news for brands. Whether an established player or an emerging start-up, brands need to wake up to the opportunities the ever changing search landscape offers.
There has been a fundamental shift in the types of brands monopolising the search landscape along with the rapid growth in content marketing, the brands winning this game are the brands that have re-defined their…
What are the biggest challenges for enterprise SEO?
Today's consumer buying process for many consumers starts with on-line activity - often involving search to find the relevant reviews or price comparisons. Since research has shown that across industries 'organic traffic accounts for 94% of clickthroughs' on the search results, it's clearly important for larger businesses with a complex product portfolio to compete through SEO.
In this research conducted by Conductor with Ascend2, ROI from Enterprise SEO and the challenges and tactics considered are reviewed.
72% of respondents were positive about their ROI from SEO strategies, and 54% contributed this to content creation.
So the majority of respondents were positive, but here we pick out the challenges of Enterprise SEO. As the graph shows, companies who were not seeing the benefits, felt that their challenges were around a lack of in-house SEO skills, limited budget and difficulty in optimizing content with keywords.
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A review of technical SEO in the Cruise industry
ClickThrough Marketing conducted mini technical SEO audits on the top five cruise travel agent sites in Europe, and found that all five could boost their search performance with SEO tweaks.
This isn't an industry-specific problem – it's an all-round epidemic. We have carried out countless SEO audits for companies of all sizes. And if we’ve learnt one thing, it’s that the size or position of a firm has little bearing on its technical SEO performance. We've seen huge, popular sites with critical SEO problems, superbly optimised sites from struggling brands, and vice versa. To demonstrate this, we conducted mini audits on Europe's top-five cruise travel agents (by reach according to Alexa), looking at 12 key factors that can affect search performance and usability.*
We hope this research shows the type of checks that are relevant and worthwhile for businesses…
A reminder of the latest thinking on copywriting for SEO and conversion
If you're not an SEO specialist, but are involved with writing or reviewing website copy, it can be tricky keeping up with the latest approaches to writing for SEO. We can't all afford SEO agencies or in-house experts! If this describes you, this infographic from ContentVerve could be a useful reminder. It gives a good summary of the latest thinking if you are simply looking to become familiar with the current top level SEO tactics, without it getting too techie.
Remember though, as the introduction to the infographic says, write for humans first, SEO second, keep it natural!
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An example analysis of Groupon's traffic showing a signficant proportion of direct traffic could be SEO-related
Gaining organic traffic from SEO is a significant inbound marketing investment for many businesses, so making the business case and demonstrating returns from SEO is important. The typical approach for this is naturally to use Google Analytics to report on the organic traffic segment. Since Google Analytics can no longer reliably provide SEO keyword data due to the growth in keywords marked 'not provided' we have written about how to use Google Webmaster Tools keyword data to determine keywords.
We're alerting readers to this example, since it shows that you should make colleagues (or clients) aware that significant additional SEO traffic may be hidden as a referrer.
Case shows that 60% of direct traffic is actually organic search
This research summary of Groupon visitor referrers from Conductor summarises the importance of SEO to Groupon based on their standard analytics. They comment:
'Groupon recently…
7 things marketers need to know about the impact of Google’s latest change on SEO
Importance: [rating=5]
Recommended link: Google announcement - Helping users find mobile-friendly pages
1. Google will now give more prominence to mobile sites in the search results (SERPs). More prominence will occur thanks to a ‘mobile-friendly’ label:
2. This label will only appear in mobile search results. Which is what we would expect.
3. The change has been rolled out. We didn’t see this yesterday, but it is now visible, e.g. for a brand search for this site:
4. This isn’t a ranking factor change. Google has previously stated that mobile sites with errors may lose ranking, but this announcement just relates to the label. However, we can expect that this change will increase clickthrough rates on sites that have this label and decrease…
Using Google's 'Fetch as Google Render" feature to assess mobile SEO suitability
63% of today's mobile phone users use their cell phone to go online and 34% of mobile phone Internet users only go online with their cell phone rather than any other device, according to the latest Pew Internet Mobile Technology Fact Sheet. Numbers like these demonstrate the power and importance of the mobile experience, and some big names have taken notice - including Google.
Google research has shown that 61% of users would not be likely to return to a mobile site if they had problems accessing the site on their mobile phone the first time. Because Google is committed to ensuring the best possible experience for its users across the web, these lackluster mobile experiences may have an effect on SEO and where a website ranks in search engine results pages. Google has also stated that…
Analysis of content CTRs shows the impact of video and images
BrightEdge has reviewed the types of content that perform best in delivering organic traffic. These charts show the desktop click through rate (CTR) in the search results (SERPs) for different ranking positions compared to classic written web content. The text results compare to other research on clickthrough rate on organic results with position. However the results for images shows that clickthrough rates are higher overall for different tanking positions.
The effect is less evident for video where the CTR with position curve is more similar to that for classic text result.s
You can download the full report Cracking the Content Code from Brightedge.
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