Mobile > Desktop
It was a trend an year or so ago. Now it's a reality. Go mobile, or go
home - that's the mantra most businesses are now following. According to
a study, 74% of mobile users used a search engine during their everyday
purchasing process, with 83% wanting to make a purchase that day, and
55% within the hour. This means that your small business needs to focus
on optimizing for mobile. Google is putting far more emphasis. It's
about time you did the same.
Relationships vs Links
Relationships are the new backlinks. Your goal for successful SEO should
be focused on creating meaningful relationships with industry
influencers. Reach out to them and ask for their opinions. Identify
opportunities to praise their viewpoints. Follow them through social
channels and like, retweet, or +1 their updates. Just like you would in
person, people are more apt to help you if you show sincere respect and
appreciation towards them.
Semantic search
Keyword targeting is a thing of the past now. Semantic search refers to
one way that the Google algorithms are changing. Google is starting to
put a larger emphasis on the fact that users generally search in a
conversational tone, so context is going to be more important than the
specific keywords someone types in the search query box. This means that
you need to start thinking about search queries and focusing on the
context around the keywords you use in your content.
HTTPS > HTTP
In 2014, Google started giving a slight SEO boost to sites that were
secure. Even though it might only affect 1% of global searches, we can
definitely see the writing on the wall that this percentage will likely
increase. Google has publicly said that they encourage all website
owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web.
Author Rank
Google always tries to identify ways in which they can provide their
users the best search experience as possible. One way that they believe
they can accomplish this is by providing a way to grade writers. They do
this through the use of the rel=author tag which has been in use since
2012.
It used to be that the determination of content being ranked was highly
dependent on the site in which it was written on, and it still is to
some extent. However, Google believes that if a writer has a great
following and produces content that many people find
valuable/interesting, then that content should rank higher regardless of
the websites overall authority.
So in 2015 if you want your content to rank in Google, build your author
authority now. If you need to learn more about how to build your
authority, you can do that here.
Of course, there are still many SEO best practices that haven't changed
and will not change in 2015. The question you should continue to ask
yourself is: "How can I improve my website to offer more value to my
visitors?" If you are continually working to do this, you will likely be
rewarded as such in the Google search results.
Good luck :)
