Google Maps latest update encourages the use of Local SEO strategies

Google Maps is automatically recommending the best local businesses to consumers. Without a local SEO Strategy, consumers will be choosing your competitors every day!

Google Maps has over 1 billion users and Apple Maps receives over 5 billion map-related requests every week. Could you even imagine a time when people were forced to use paper maps? The amount of trust consumers place on mapping applications to help them find new places (unbranded searches like “restaurants near me”) and take them where they need to go is amazing. Today’s customer surrenders all decision making processes to the opinion of a faceless, impersonal application. What does all this mean?  Leveraging today’s search engines and creating effective local SEO strategies will allow businesses to organically own their market.

86% of consumers are using Google Maps as a tool to look up local businesses. The popularity in digital mapping applications has turned maps that simply get us where we need to be into a thing of the past. Consumers are using maps as a single source for discovering, researching and comparing new businesses. Features such as nearby “Place Labels”, “Areas of Interest” and the ability to compare ratings and reviews for businesses directly within these apps have turned digital mapping applications into a one stop shop for choosing local businesses.

Consumers face so many options these days that they are overloaded with choices. They can rely on these tools to quickly narrow down their choices and give them only the most trusted and reliable options, allowing them to make quick and confident decisions about where to spend their money. This especially holds true for someone from out of town or who is otherwise unfamiliar with the area. Tools like Google and Apple maps can be a safe haven for finding where to grab a bite to eat, the best places to go shopping, or where to order a quick cup of coffee.

“Areas of Interest”: How are map updates changing the way consumers make decisions and can your businesses reputation withstand this new trend?

In mid 2016, Google (and it seems Apple as well) added a few new updates to their mapping applications, one of which is now helping consumers decide “what to do” and “where to go”. In addition to being able to queue specific searches for businesses nearby, Google’s new update allows users to explore the map and find nearby “Areas of Interest” (highlighted in orange) or places where there’s a lot of activities and things to do. You’ll find that In general, these areas include will include downtown and tourist areas with a lot of foot traffic.

Google Maps (San Diego):                              Apple Maps (New York):

                

These new “Areas of Interest” are a great way to help consumers explore the area and find local businesses nearby. Google wrote:

“Whether you’re looking for a hotel in a hot spot or just trying to determine which way to go after exiting the subway in a new place, 'areas of interest' will help you find what you’re looking for with just a couple swipes and a zoom.”

This new feature is another tool consumers have at their disposal for sorting through the masses of information and choices available to them. This update is especially valuable for travelers who don’t know the city; it allows them to quickly swipe through their trusted maps and find the most popular bars, restaurants, shops, and things to do in the area. Customers and tourist can spend less time thinking about exactly what they want to do or where exactly they want to go and instead let their web mapping applications give them the most popular and trusted options around.

As more users become aware of this feature and begin to incorporate it into their daily lives, it will raise a serious question: “Why does one business deserve to be an ‘Area of Interest’, while another-just a block or two away-does not?”

Google stated they will be using an algorithmic process to determine areas with the highest concentration of restaurants, bars and shops. In high density areas like NYC or San Francisco, they are using a combination of algorithms and a human touch to ensure they are highlighting the most relatively active areas.

91% of consumers regularly or occasionally read online reviews to determine whether a local business is good or bad.

Online visibility will immediately increase for those businesses highlighted as an “Area of Interest” which could either be a blessing or a curse. Either way, having a proper reputation management strategy will be crucial for winning over customers once they have found your business listing. For businesses with a great online reputation, the fact that “Areas of Interest” provide even easier access to your online profile and reviews will help your business thrive. In contrast, a business listing littered with poor ratings and reviews will be more easily dismissed by potential customers.

Not an “Area of Interest”, but still want to take advantage of popular web mapping services? Use Local SEO and Reputation Management to earn a “Place Label”!

Google’s and Apple’s “Place Label’s” work very similarly to the “Areas of Interest”. These are places Google and Apple recommend based on popularity, reliability and previous customer opinions. They allowing consumers to open up their mapping application and quickly swipe around to find nearby places that stand out.

These Icons highlight and draw attention to some of the most reputable and trustworthy businesses in the area and sit atop other great content such as landmarks and tourist attractions. All of the icons are clickable, giving users instant access to information such as business hours and address, ratings and reviews, and customer images.

Google Maps Place Labels:                       Apple Maps Place Labels:

          

The “Place Labels” are determined algorithmically through a large number of factors. However, Google has said that one of the major factors used to determine “Place Labels” is the accuracy of the business information and the richness of the content associated with the business. This means in order to earn a “Place Label”, businesses must have some of the most accurate and consistent listings all across the web (specifically business name, address and phone number). In addition to accurate and consistent listing information, to earn a place label, businesses need rich and engaging content tied to their listings; this includes a high quantity and quality of reviews (with responses), photos and videos. Put it all together and earning a place label can come down to having a great Local SEO and Reputation Management strategy.

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As consumers become more and more comfortable with local search and the power of web mapping services, businesses will compete for new customers based more off of what mapping applications decide to make available to users. Businesses with great online reputations and accurate listings will win more customers by encouraging mapping applications to recommend their business to users. Schedule a FREE brand audit with Chatmeter to ensure your listing accuracy and learn more about the most effective and efficient Reputation Management software available.

Wikipedia Link Rot – Broken Link Building

Wikipedia is not only one of the most reputable online encyclopedias, it can also be one of the most reputable link sources in terms of SEO. Caution is warranted though, because a very interesting paradox is at play here: the less Wikipedia is being used for SEO, the more credible and valuable it is as a link source. Furthermore, the more credible and valuable it is, the more appealing it becomes. But be aware: if you are now rushing to the crowd-sourced encyclopedia to insert your links in every article you can get your hands on, you will be hurting both Wikipedia and yourself.

 

Why Can Wikipedia Links  Be Great and Yet Dangerous?

In order to be effective in your Wikipedia Link Building campaign, you need to understand the context in which you will be working. First and most important, Wikipedia is nonprofit.

Not only that Wikipedia’s goal is not to make money but they’re also trying to actively discourage others to make money on their back.

That’s why, for instance, it does not give out link juice (all of their links are nofollow). So any “in-your-face” commercial/marketing endeavor is bound to fail. Secondly, Wikipedia is a crowd-sourcing effort, swarming with editors who are all extremely dedicated to keeping the encyclopedia as accurate as unbiased as possible. Test their patience and you might find yourself on a spam list. So any transparent SEO effort is bound to fail fast.

But because the reward can be so tempting, you might still want to try your luck. So how do you do it? Jon Cooper at Point Blank SEO offers some pretty good advice when he suggests that the number one rule should be to focus on adding content, not links. It might even be that in the beginning you will only add content (the links come later, maybe even much later). And when you finally do add links, you don’t add them in the article and you don’t add just links to one particular site (your site).

The Wikipedia Link Rot Advantage

You truly have to work in the best interest of the article and not simply pursue your self-promotion.

While this approach is sound, it is not the only one. There is also a more subtle approach to link building on Wikipedia: broken link building. This, in essence, means looking up dead links in Wikipedia articles and persuading page editors to substitute those dead links with other active, relevant links. Sometimes, it might just happen that one of the substitute links  be yours. But remember: it still has to be relevant to the article and relatively unbiased. This approach is perhaps less intrusive than straight-up adding new links, since it uses a “space” which already existed.

The disadvantage of Wikipedia is that by being so vast it is quite difficult to keep track of changes, even with an army of editors. But when it comes to dead links, that’s your opportunity. Because you don’t even have to waste too much time researching, since Wikipedia even has a page for articles with dead links . You don’t have to do a lot of manual work that would probably be quite discouraging and fruitless. Moreover, you can look exactly for the articles for which you might be able to provide relevant content and links.

Wikipedia Broken Link Building Process

Long story short, let’s look a bit closer at how the process works and see the exact steps you need to follow in order to be successful in your quest .

1. Identify Wikipedia Pages in Your Niche with Broken Links

The first step will be to identify the Wikipedia pages which are relevant to you and which have dead links. And what is the easiest way to find things? Just google it; not randomly but using a query that will help you spot directly the dead links in Wikipedia. If you search for dead links for a particular niche (let’s say cosmetic surgery) within Wikipedia, your search might look something like this:

site:wikipedia.org “cosmetic surgery” intext:”dead link”

And the magic is done!

We already mentioned the “Articles with dead external links” page on Wikipedia. You can also go into specific pages and look at the link references section at the end. Let’s take a closer look at the “Medical Tourism” page suggested by Google to contain dead links. As we access this page (and others of this kind), you will notice that broken or dead links are marked with a “dead link” label at the end. If you do try to click that link, it will lead you to a 404 page. Or, if you stumble upon an article with a particularly large reference list, simply Ctrl+F your way out of it by searching for “dead link” on that page.

2. Identify Broken Links with Multiple Referring Domains

However, just because this strategy is particularly useful for Wikipedia, it doesn’t mean that’s all it’s good for. If possible, you will want to leverage this as much as possible. This means you can extend your search for broken links to much more than Wikipedia.

You should actually look for broken Wikipedia links that have other links pointing to it. This way you can effectively scale your broken link building.

For instance, the page http://www.isscr.org/clinical_trans/index.cfm is broken, yet has a bunch of referring domains pointing to it.

Using cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer we see 43 potential referring domains that we can take advantage of, and we found this out with just a simple query.

All those domains have now become link-building opportunities.

3. Extract the Original Content of the Page Using the Wayback Machine

Next we need to recover the content of the original (now broken) page with the help of the Wayback Machine, which is an Internet archive dating all the way back to 1996 . Because you will be able to see the page as it looked when it still worked (and it must’ve been working at some point, right?) you will be able to access its content. Now you don’t just have alternative content. You have the original content plus new content you will want to add to make your page even better. Here is the search we made and below you can see the screenshot with the exact content that was posted on our link building opportunity from the cosmetic surgery niche,

4. Recreate the 404 Page on Your Site with Even Better Content 

What does it mean to recreate the page?

First and foremost, pick broken links in your niche.

It’s no use to recreating a page on mental disorder classification if you’re dabbling in fashion. The pages you recreate need to fit in nicely with the rest of your content. Once that condition is met, just try to focus as much as possible not only on straight lifting the old content, but on improving it. Look in all the possible places: has any new information about the subject surfaced? It’s best to add it or even replace whatever information is now known no longer accurate. Was the structure of the original page hard to follow or simply not attractive enough?

Play around with it until you’re sure the content on the page will be easy to read but also engrossing and useful.

Last but not least, this is still SEO, so the words you use still matter a lot.

Go to blogs and discussion forums and see what they’re interested in when they’re talking about what you’re writing.

Check out social networking sites and make note of the hashtags and comments of shared content. As much as  possible, try to incorporate all of this into your newly-created content.

5. Getting the Golden Link from Wikipedia

Now comes the trickiest part. How do you substitute your new, live content for the old, dead one? It’s actually not that tricky, but it might involve a bit of luck.

Most likely, it boils down to how well-intended you present yourself and how much good will can be assumed on your part.

There is no complex strategy or sneaky tactic: you simply have to contact the Wikipedia page or website editor or owner and let them know that one of their references leads to a dead page, but you happen to be able to provide an alternative link with even better content. At least that’s what Doug Cunnington suggests over at Matthew Woodward.

Brian Dean goes into a bit more detail in his Backlinko article and offers a more polished approach, suggesting how to create the afore-mentioned good-will image as well. He suggests, among others, offering reasons when contacting people about updating links (not just saying “do this”, but “do this because…”), doing research on keywords before choosing the best ones to attach to your content (and even creating your own keywords), as well as mimicking Wikipedia’s own style in your content so as to maximize the chance of updating your link in one of their articles.

6. Get Links from All the Other Referring Domains Too

If this doesn’t work for Wikipedia (and there’s still a chance it might not, despite best practices), you can still try to apply the strategy for other websites. If you decide to do this, writing outreach e-mails is still your best choice. But in order for it to work, it really needs to be unique.  You have to be unique and try to sound as unSEO-ish as possible. You know the SEO language: you’ve seen it in comments on blog posts or in posts in forum threads. Would you react positively to that kind of message? Probably not, or at the very least, you would be at least suspicious.

So don’t send outreach emails if you don’t actually mean them. Just as your content needs to be focused on readers and not on your website (or whatever you’re selling), your outreach needs to be focused on the person at the other end, not on you making your pitch.Get rid of empty language and tailor your message to your receiver.

Taking advantage of the broken link opportunities that lay out before you can be pretty rewarding, but only if you put time and effort into it.

Yet, finding all the contact info in order to outreach to hundreds of webmasters can be tiresome and resource consuming. For your wellbeing, you can automate the whole process using tools for contact extraction such as Rapportive , BulkWhoisFinder or Atomic Email Hunter.

The screenshot above is the BulkWhoisFinder in action. You simply import the list of domains/links and the tool automatically extracts the contact information from their website or other information sources. All the outreach tools mentioned above display the emails extracted for each link that you’ve imported, together with keyword and country of the owner, info that would have taken you a lot of time to find manually.

Conclusion

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. As NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia, you need to keep that in mind when trying to gain links from the well known encyclopedia. It’s true that Wikipedia presents itself as “the encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. Well, that is almost true. Anyone who plays along with Wiki’s rules and doesn’t lead to a conflict of interest.

Ranking for almost half of all searches, it may only be natural for any webmaster to dream of a Wikipedia link pointing to his site. And like almost any other good linking opportunity in the SEO world, this method has been highly used and abused. This made Wikipedia implement a  ”nofollow” policy on all outbound links, which means links from Wikipedia do not pass PageRank or anchor text. And although the controversies around nofollow links are still on fire, just because Wikipedia links are nofollow, doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable.

Getting links from the largest online encyclopedia might be a real hassle. Hopefully, this article has managed to draw some clear directions in this whole process and make things if not easier, at least more explicit and straightforward. Wikipedia is indeed an amazing resource that you can use to boost your own site. Yet, always keep in mind that it isn’t a shortcut to building your site’s digital marketing approach nor a replacement for content strategy. It’s definitely not a place to spam but also not a place to ignore.

HOW TO AVOID GOOGLE MOBILE POPUP PENALTY FOR WORDPRESS SITES

Many people find it difficult to stay updated with the latest Google updates and trends. This negligence is most unfortunate and must be avoided at all cost. In the context of the latest Google updates, it is important to mention about the Google mobile popup penalty, which came into effect since January 10 this year. If you are still unaware about it, better read on to save your site being hit by it. This update has started creating considerable dip in mobile traffic for many businesses. So, better mend things in time, than suffer from the negligence.

The update basics:

Many experts involved with providing SEO services in Portland opine that by introducing this update, Google has initiated a shift change in ranking websites on its organic search results. By virtue of this update, pages in which, content is not smoothly accessible to mobile users, may not rank high on SERP. Though it is just one of the hundreds of other page ranking factors, yet you should not ignore it and suffer from the consequences. Google announced the mobile popup penalty quite sometime back, in 2016 August.

More than a penalty, it is devaluing pages:

Technically speaking, the Google mobile popup penalty more than penalizing your site, devalues your pages. Most websites use meaningless popups, which frustrate users. The main reason to introduce this update is to help users from this frustration. Unfortunately, people who do not keep up with the latest SEO trends and practices will probably overlook it and suffer as a result. In other words, popups will appear no more for mobile users and they will have easier and faster access to page content. This Google penalty will be applied on every applicable page of a website. In other words, your entire website will not be devalued or affected by it. Remember, the Google popup penalty is not only applicable to popups, but also to all types of invasive interstitials.

Google tips to avoid inviting the penalty:

Make sure, there is no popup to cover the main content, after user navigates to the page from organic search results.

There should not also be any delayed popup or the one that appears after user has scrolled down to a certain point on the page.

Do not display a standalone interstitial that user has to dismiss, before getting access to the main content.

Never use a layout that makes the above-the-fold part of the page look similar to a standalone interstitial and making the main content inlined beneath the fold.

Popups that are acceptable:

• Push notifications are still accepted, as they take up a small portion of the screen.
• Using cookies for age verification and other legal information that need to be collected from users
• Exit popups can stay
• Make sure that a banner should not take up more than a quarter of the device’s screen space.

Impact on Google Adsense:

Google mobile penalty is not going to have any affect on Google Adsense, as Page-level ads (like, vignette ads and anchor or overlay ads) stay within the accepted guidelines. Vignette ads do not show up when a visitor reaches the page from Google’s organic search result, whereas anchor level ads take up just a tiny part of the screen and can be easily dismissed. Mobile penalty is only applicable to traffic that is directly sourced from Google.

Other traffic: If your web traffic comes from sources other than Google, it is alright to use popups and it will not devalue your page.

Effect of Google popup penalty:

Some websites that have been negatively affected by Google mobile penalty, lost some 10 or more positions in their mobile ranking. Considering the volume of your traffic, losing 10 spots may sum up to losing thousands of visitors every day. On the other hand, websites that do not use popups are experiencing a steady improvement in their ranking. The possible reason for this could be, their competitors are getting penalised or facing devaluation of pages by Google popup penalty.

A practical example:

A brand experienced a 20% drop in mobile traffic after the popup penalty came into effect. Actually, there was a bug with their popup plugin and they lost about 2,000 customers in a span of 3 days. Somehow, they could not disable the WordPress plugin that was being used for popup. As soon as the problem was solved, their traffic and ranking returned within a few days.

Tips to check mobile traffic:

If your website uses welcome mats, popups or invasive interstitials, use Google Analytics to check your traffic coming from mobile handsets. Some people, also prefer keyword rank tracker tool to meet the goal.

Step #1: Log into your Google Analytics profile and select the date range in the filter at the top with your preferred dates.

Step #2: On the left-hand side, there is “Audience”, under which is “Mobile>Overview”. On reaching here, you will see traffic coming from desktops, mobiles and tablets. In case, you notice a 15% or above drop in your traffic, then chances are high Google mobile penalty has hit your site hard.

Tips on resolving the problem:

If your site has been affected by Google mobile penalty, do not panick or get carried away. There are two options to overcome the issue. One, simply disable the WordPress popup plugin you are using. Two, just disable popups on mobile handsets and keep catering to visitors as if, they are from desktops. DubSEO is a renowned SEO company in Portland, which never uses popups on mobile handsets. At other places, where it does, it uses only at 50% scroll. This ensures, the site remains unaffected, as well as its visitors do not get annoyed. Most of the modern plugins come with the option, whether you want to use them on mobile.

In case, you are using WP Subscribe Pro plugin from MyThemeShop, it is better to disable the popup, as currently, there is a bug in it with detecting mobile devices. Although, these plugins come with the option of disabling, you should test on your own handset just to be absolutely sure. Welcome mats from SumoMe are also affected by the Google mobile penalty. However, if you are using these, do not get panicky. SumoMe has just added a new feature, named “Display Mode”. It is found in “Behavior” tab of the mats and this feature completely complies with Google guidelines. Moreover, you are always free to contact the developer to enquire about the popup or lead generation plugins that you are using.

Of course, you do not want your webapges to be devalued by Google as a result of its mobile penalty update. Just to play it safe, disable the popups, welcome mats and every other invasive insterstitials from your website. In case, your site gets affected by it, do not panick, things will return back to normal in a few days.

5 best user-friendly graphic tools to create your social media posts

These days, packaging information for daily consumption has taken the bite-sized form. This is a valuable practice for those who like to supplement their content with a touch of graphic design. Enhancing content with images is a vital habit for bloggers and content writers.

This involves using typography and infographics, creating panels and layouts to segregate content, templates, headers, and suchlike to make good images. These images can then readily be converted into the required dimensions for particular social media handles.

The following list of free and commonly used web-based graphics design applications. These can be immensely beneficial for content marketers as they are built to allow any lay person to create stunning images for social media.

Canva

This online graphic design platform offers an array of features that can help you create quality images for the web. With a user-friendly interface, Canva seems to be the quintessential design site. It has an assortment of layouts for making anything from holiday greetings and classy resumes to posters for your next gig and templates for your blogs. Its collection of ready-made templates is free and can be used for several purposes. It also has options for creating posts specific to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media sites. The end result turns out to be a quality image.

Fotor

Apart from the photo editing feature Fotor is known for, it also has several options to apply graphic design elements to the image. It is best used for its simple editing, and it also allows you to adjust the dimensions of an image to fit those of other social media handles as Canva does. It also gives you the option to save your images on Dropbox, a cloud storage facility, or on your computer.

Easelly

Ever needed some fancy infographics to pep up your presentation? Here’s your answer. Easelly is another web application that is best for making infographics. It has a variety of features that contribute to making detailed infographics with several templates. It also has an assortment of readymade layouts in case you have some starting trouble.

FotoJet

FotoJet is another browser based application and known to be quite a good alternative to Canva. It comes with options of creating collages, editing pictures, and creating images with graphic design elements. FotoJet comes with two modes: Creative and Classic. The Creative mode helps create designs with the built-in templates and layouts, and the Classic mode is used to create designs from scratch. This would mean choosing your own layouts and other things to create your own templates.

Pablo by Buffer

This application is very useful for creating posts and images for on-the-go editing. With Buffer’s Pablo, you can make posters, flyers, and posts for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest quickly. The readymade templates and layouts will do the job for you as you add the content. It can then be saved and uploaded onto the required social media handles.

Even though all these websites are free, they have a premium option where you can pay for certain extra features that could take your designing capabilities to the next level. Although, a huge drawback could be having a solid internet connection, without which there might be a constant lag or the annoying. Nevertheless, all of these tools have a very simple and user-friendly interface, and are built to keep you creative with your graphic designing.

5 free online apps to create stunning visuals for social media

Visual content is indispensable for every digital marketer today. Not only is visual content more appealing to viewers, it’s also 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content. Catchy graphics and images have the added advantage of propagating information in a quick and concise manner as compared to, say, blog posts which are time consuming to read.

Nowadays, marketers don’t need to rely exclusively on designers to create such visuals. A plethora of online applications, replete with pre-existing design templates and graphics, are enabling design novices to create engaging visuals with minimum effort. Here are five such free online tools which you can use to create stunning visuals for social media sites:

Canva

Canva is probably the most versatile free design tool a marketer can use. You can create visuals ranging from simple image posts and banners to detailed posters and blog graphics. It comes pre-loaded with a variety of pictures, vector images, and fonts, most of which are free to use. Canva also offers its users a multitude of templates which can be tweaked and personalised with ease, courtesy of a stellar UI. Once you're done creating what you need, you can download it in Instagram, Facebook or Twitter specific sizes with the click of a single button.

Pixlr

Using Adobe Photoshop requires a fair amount of practice from the user. Understanding the need for a simpler photo editing software, Autodesk launched a toned-down version of the Photoshop known as Pixlr. The online-only app, despite being completely free, does not miss out on Photoshop's most commonly used features which suffice for all but the most serious designers. In case you find using Pixlr to be a bit complicated, there's an even more scaled-down version called Pixlr Express for basic photo editing like adding filters, adjusting brightness, and creating collages, among others.

Recite

Sharing famous quotes has become quite the rage on social media, with posts bearing hashtags like #MondayMotivation and #WanderlustWednesday flooding Facebook and Twitter every week. Recite is a free online tool that caters only to those who want to create engaging quote-bearing visuals. Extremely simple to use, Recite uses a no-nonsense format that requires you to simply enter a quote and select a design template. You can't edit the visuals or upload your own background images, but, with the multitude of different templates Recite offers, you'll never need to.

Pablo

Sometimes, all you need to create an engaging piece of visual content is a captivating image with text overlaid on it. Pablo is a free online software that enables users to create such visuals with unbelievable ease. You can either upload your own photo or select one from its vast cache. After that, adding text, filters, and even your brand's logo, is an effortless task. You can also resize the images in an instant to suit your needs. And since Pablo is a tool by Buffer, a popular social media management app, you can post your creations directly to various social media sites directly.

Piktochart

Infographics, out of all the different types of image content, are the most useful for sharing a large amount of information in an easy-to-consume manner. They are also far more likely to be shared on social media than other content formats. Piktochart is a highly-rated online tool that lets you create captivating infographics with ease. The tool gives you freedom to create your own infographic from scratch in addition to ten varied templates that cover the most common infographic types. Piktochart can also be used to create visually engaging presentations and printables, like reports and posters.

These tools can be used by marketers to create social graphics and images for advertisements, announcements, blog headers, and a lot more. And not only do these online apps eliminate the need for a designer, they are extremely intuitive and simple to use as well.

Five Essential Tactics to Master SEO in 2017

2016 was a significant year in the realm of search engine marketing. While some of the updates focused on the paid side (removal of right column ads, expanded text ads, responsive display ads, etc.), other updates focused on organic traffic. Some of the key updates included the following:

• Removal of right-column ads. While this was more of a paid search update, the impact is felt on the organic side as desktop searches show up to four ads at the top of search results.
• Mobile-friendly update #2. Google launched a second algorithm update a year after “Mobilegeddon,” which gave mobile-friendly websites a boost in rankings on mobile devices.
• Local search algorithm update. Unofficially named Possum, this local search update (while unconfirmed by Google) made a significant change in local search results. Duplicate business listings are filtered out, and more relevant results are shown based on search queries.
• Penguin 4.0. Google *finally* launched a new major Penguin update after a couple of years. Penguin also now runs in real-time and is included in the core algorithm (like Panda).

With regards to 2017, there are a couple of elements you need to master to see a significant return on investment from SEO. Some of these are basic and have been known for quite some time, whereas others are related to recent trends and updates.

#1: Master Keyword Research & Content Marketing

Keyword research is more important now than ever before due to the updates that Google has applied to its core algorithm over the past couple of years. Additionally, RankBrain, Google’s machine learning artificial intelligence program used to process new search queries, helps the search engine giant put things into context rather than relying on metadata. By processing information on a contextual level, Google can serve more relevant results.

How does this help you when it comes to SEO? By utilizing keyword research tools and digging into search trends, you can base your content marketing strategy and website content around popular search queries, long-tail questions, and other terms that will help you capture more traffic. It’s also important to utilize phrase matches and synonyms within your content rather than using the same focus keyword continuously.

#2: Implement Schema Markup

An integral part of our auditing process for new SEO clients is to evaluate the schema markup used on websites. Often, we come across websites that have not yet integrated schema markup. What is schema markup? Schema.org is a collaborative project sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yandex, and (now formerly) Yahoo! with a singular mission to promote schema for structured data on web pages, email communications, and more.

This collection of HTML tags can help submit structured data to search engines so that the information appears as rich snippets. This type of onsite optimization is used to create rich snippets for products, videos, events, music, organizations, people, recipes, and ratings. As illustrated by the sample search below, rich snippets stand out for product searches by displaying price, stock availability, and ratings/reviews.

I’ve seen this luggage set in person – very impressive….note that this is not an ad for out client, but they do have an awesome site. 

3. Optimize Your Local Business Listings

As a general web user, nothing frustrates me more than coming across business listings that are either incomplete or display inaccurate information. I’ve had countless experiences where I have shown up to a local business that had either closed permanently or changed store hours without submitting those updates to Google. With mobile usage increasing month-over-month, local businesses cannot afford to ignore the digital realm anymore, especially with savvy marketing professionals and small business owners capitalizing on recent internet trends.

According to the Mobile Playbook, 20% of all searches made on Google & Google-owned properties are made with local intent. If you think that’s crazy, just look at the impact local searches can have on businesses:

• 94% of smartphone users search for location information.
• 51% of users visited a store.
• 48% of users called a store.
• 29% of users made a purchase at a retail location.
• 80% of mobile searches triggered store visits within five hours of the initial search.
• 85% of mobile searches triggered calls to stores within five hours of the initial search.

As mobile becomes more relevant for SEO and lead generation, it’s crucial to not only own your local listings but to ensure that it is updated with photos and contains accurate information. You can capture a great share of traffic on Google alone by optimizing your Google My Business profile and encouraging satisfied customers/clients to leave glowing reviews.

4. Build Relevant & Valuable Links

Search engines no longer put a value on the number of inbound links a page has to establish authority. These days, search engines expect you to earn any link pointing back to your site by investing resources into creating great content. There is often a debate about the importance of links in the future, but Google has stated that content and links are the top two ranking factors, so don’t discount the power of link building yet. Of course, spammy links are terrible, so please don’t attempt to circumvent Google’s guidelines and annoy webmasters like the guy below.

Sorry, RichardMn, I’m not publishing those links on my blog.

The best approach to link building is to create amazing content and linkable assets for your own website. The development of infographic, whitepapers, case studies and resources can lead to other websites within your niche referencing your site as an authority. Additionally, seeking out relevant sites and content publishers can help you find opportunities to submit content or generate a link back to your site that is legitimate and in accordance with Google’s webmaster guidelines. Stay away from link farms, sponsored links, or any other black-hat tactics, or else you may find your website in Google’s penalty box.

#5: Make Mobile a Priority

If “Mobilegeddon” and the subsequent update a year later wasn’t enough to convince you that mobile was important for SEO, here are a few reasons why you should make it a priority in 2017.

Mobile-First Index

Google’s mobile-first index is launching in 2017. Of course, this will not change much for websites that are responsive because the content is the same for both mobile and desktop devices. Additionally, this will not affect websites that are not mobile-friendly, as the content is the same on both types of devices. Issues will arise for websites that show different content on mobile and desktop devices. For example, if you have a regular website for desktop traffic and a “m.” website with streamlined content, Google’s mobile-first index will rank your website based on what it sees on mobile devices. This could mean Google is seeing less content than it would if it crawled the desktop version of your website.

Therefore, it’s important to prepare for the new mobile-first index and make sure that your mobile version is accessible to search engine bots.

Google AMP

Google’s open source initiative, Accelerated Mobile Pages, has been gaining traction over the past year. More publishers are jumping on board and implementing a stripped-down version of their website purely for mobile devices, which load quicker than the regular version and have a “AMP” label in search results. While it seems like only news-based sites reap the benefits of AMP implementation, it is expected that Google will display the AMP-enabled link of a page within organic mobile results if it’s available. For example, if you have a page ranking high on mobile devices and have an AMP-enabled equivalent page, Google may show the link for the AMP page instead of the original. The main benefit here is a potentially high click-through rate due to the AMP label. While this is not in effect yet, you should at least plan to enable AMP for any blog/news related pages on your website.

Penalty for Intrusive Interstitial Ads

As of January 10, 2017, content pages not easily accessible to users on mobile devices from an organic search may be subject to a penalty and may see a decrease in rankings. Google’s transition to mobile-first has opened fire on websites that push annoying interstitials and pop-ups on mobile websites that may harm the overall user experience. Keep the UX clean on mobile devices and focus on converting users naturally rather than shoving interstitials in their faces.

SEO Isn’t Dead

The claims of SEO being dead have been around for years, but time and time again, those claims end up falling on deaf ears. However, the world of search engine marketing has evolved quite a bit over the past 10 years, which is why it’s important to be aware of the latest trends. Mastering search engine optimization is no small feat. It takes several skill sets to rank highly: content writing, programming, email marketing (reaching out to publishers), analyzing data, etc. However, if executed perfectly and strategically, the return on investment can be immense. You just have to be patient, though. Search engine optimization is a long-term strategy, but worth it in the end.

Are you ready to get ranked in 2017?