By just looking at how search engines return search results nowadays, one can notice how it became diversified when it comes to relevance matching, which includes not only content but also online reviews, image results, videos, news articles, maps, snippets, and even social media content. These give significant clues for businesses on what to incorporate into their website’s optimization initiatives.
It was observed that search engines have become more user oriented from being programming oriented. The technicalities of SEO tips and strategies, which include keyword optimization and link building, are slowly becoming “weaker” when it comes to impact. Instead, since the internet is becoming a more popular source of information and community building, search engine results are being influenced by social media and content marketing. Such prevalence implies a more human oriented nature that when combined with technical strategies can yield a complete and satisfying customer experience for you (business), your clients, and the search engine’s reputation.
Modern SEO Best Practices and Trends
Recent Google algorithm updates include the incorporation of artificial intelligence to its backbone structure and the call for websites to apply mobile optimization. Can we see that the modern SEO trends are heading the same way?
Here are what SEM Rush sees as the most essential best practices that one should use when conducting SEO in the modern world:
- Striking a Balance Between Keyword Targeting and Relevant Content
With modern SEO, it has now become more critical for businesses to conduct keyword targeting technique without being understood as a misuse by search engines. The use of content that is relevant, accurate, and unique can drive real traffic that can still be complemented by the use of keyword targeting techniques to better emphasize relevance.
The challenge for keyword targeting is that the feature was already dropped by Google Analytics. It has now become difficult to know what keywords will work best without having to complement your SEO with PPC (pay per click). There must be a stronger purpose for this move for Google – either they wanted SEO to fully concentrate in enhancing the customer experience by providing relevant content or that they wanted to strengthen the impact of PPC the way SEO does. Yet one thing’s for sure: we are seeing that the SEO game is indeed changing.
- Implementing Targeted and Localized SEO Strategies
The trend for SEO techniques is heading to a more localized and geographical-based search. Thus, we see that businesses are incorporating localized elements like maps (and how to navigate), images (establishment and products), and customer reviews. This way, there is less yet maximized efforts to execute but with better results.
- Using Backlinks Wisely
In traditional SEO, including backlinks is a way for a website to attract the same traffic from another website going to yours. But some have actually “missed the point” of backlinks that search engines started to regulate its use.
Today, with modern SEO, it has become more critical to use backlinks. For an online marketer to become successful in using it as an advantage, he or she must be wary of the website’s reputation before linking to it that is why it is a lot safer if you will choose an authorized website instead. The consequences of linking to a non-authorized website may harm your own, or the non-relevance may alert Google and penalize you as well.
Google now would like to emphasize the importance of giving out relevant information rather than working through your way up to the search rankings by carelessly using backlinks that only aims for traffic but does not focus on the responsible way to inform or educate (which is one of the “missions” of search engine creation).
On the other hand, you can strive to become an authority website that is worthy to be linked with by creating unique, targeted, concise, and relevant content. It is also best to narrow down your choice of topics to tackle in your website or to make it more industry specific in order to achieve a sense of authority and expertise. You may also be creative in presenting facts by turning it into infographics or by reporting about a research study or a survey that you yourself have conducted. Content SEO in the modern world is a chock full of hard work, but the rewards will pay off.
- Sharing Your Content to Social Media
The social media is a great way to showcase and share anything and everything. Businesses can actually take advantage of this by sharing its own website content so that it may reach more of your audiences who may see it in a different perspective because it is staged in a social setting. Social media is another way to engage your audience, and it might prove to be an effective marketing strategy for some types of consumers. This, in turn, will give your website another way to be promoted.
Anything informative and worthy to be shared will always circulate in the social media. Your search engine optimized content will not only thrive in the organic results but also in the social media, and it will, in turn, further boost your traffic.
- Using Rich Snippets To Enhance Click-through Rates
You can further your customer search experience by using rich snippets that don’t just give your viewers a preview of what is your content all about but will also provide diversified information that displays online reviews, prices, ratings, NAP, and maps. Results that are reviewed by many will most likely be clicked on first.
- Having a Responsive Website Design
As the trend is going mobile, the more reason for website owners to integrate to mobile-optimized elements and design to their websites, yet maintaining one website for desktop and another for mobile use requires more work. Making a website design more responsive can ease website developers with their work and saves them time while at the same time, enhance the user’s experience.
Today is the era that customers react and decide by how they are influenced by their experiences. We can see this through innovations like 4D cinema, virtual reality devices, interactive apps, and 360 degree videos. Online travel and food bloggers are gathering a lot followers. Travel blogs also strengthened tourism in most countries, and food blogs encouraged more entrepreneurs to venture into experimenting with food that are not only innovative but is also worthy for social media sharing. Online reviews are achieving a sense of trust for consumers, which base from actual customer experiences rather than what businesses claim in their advertisements.
We see that SEO, to become successful in the modern world, must aim to enhance the overall experience of the customers, which are also the ones who will influence how businesses will get better search engine rankings based from their reviews and shareability in social media.
Do’s and Dont’s of Modern SEO
Avid internet “surfers” may have noticed, but Google is continuously evolving how it returns results. We can see YouTube videos up in the results, and snippets are dominating the SERP as well. One can also notice an “answer” box on top of the results, which makes it easier for a searcher to see the answer to the question he or she typed. These are the products of the continuous efforts of Google to make each user experience a satisfying one.
In a web developer’s perspective, the evolution of the algorithm comes with stricter measures and sanctions for violations over the search engine’s protocols. That is why one has to be very careful in observing only the best practices for SEO in order to be successful with their online marketing initiatives, as well as to avoid being penalized.
The SEO do’s list only includes white hat SEO strategies, which are technical, but remains faithful to the aspect of consistency, accuracy, and relevance when it comes to content. The best practices for SEO include the use of social media for wider and better visibility and mobile device optimization in order to attract added traffic from mobile internet searches.
On the other hand, the don’ts in SEO are the ones that involve black hat practices like spamming, keyword saturation, and irrelevant link building techniques. Passing the importance of social media marketing and mobile optimization can also dramatically impact the performance of your SEO campaigns.
Investing on the right and appropriate practices can render more benefits in the long term for SEO. SEO has now become an indispensable element of websites and online marketing that is why it is important for businesses to maximize its potential in order to stay relevant in the modern market.
Modern SEO Tools
Google found out that as of 2015, Google mobile internet searches has now surpassed that of desktop searches in 10 countries, which include USA and Japan. With these, recent algorithm updates revolved around mobile search engine optimization.
The SEO of today is now more complex, which also needs to be adaptable with modern internet search devices like smart phones and tablets. Apart from the best practices, one should also deploy SEO tools that will help businesses to thrive in the ever changing nature of online market behavior.
One important feature of an SEO tool is to incorporate analytics, which can effectively measure the performance of SEO KPIs that help one to maximize the results of its SEO efforts.
An SEO software can also help enterprise scale organizations to manage their campaigns better and encourage collaboration among their SEO teams.
Educate yourself about the latest benefits and enhancements with the top SEO tools available, see CrowdReviews.com’s SEO tool reviews for the list of the best SEO tools as reviewed by a number of actual clients through ratings and narrative feedbacks.
Trevor Price
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