September 10, 2018
Is Your Website Up-To-Date on the Latest SEO Trends?
The world of SEO is constantly evolving. Every year brings new algorithm updates and other new challenges to solve – all in the name of staying competitive online.
Here are just a few of the latest trends our Orange County SEO company experts at GreatLike Media discovered in SEO:
Mobile-Friendliness
What makes a website mobile-friendly? The answer is actually changing quickly.
It used to be OK to offer an alternate, mobile-only version of your website (usually something like m.yourcoolwebsite.com), one that was structured and styled with smartphones and tablet displays in mind. More recently, the search engine giants have decided that dedicated mobile sites often serve up a frustrating user experience – there are often mismatches, for instance, between the content available on each version of a given site. A better alternative is responsive design, to dynamically display your website a bit differently depending on the screen size available to the visitor.
Google is already prioritizing mobile-optimized results over desktop-optimized ones, which makes sense given that mobile devices are now responsible for the vast majority of all searches. Make sure that your website is ready for this trend by focusing on the factors that are most important to mobile visitors: site speed, pleasant visual design, and concise, straightforward content.
Preparing for Voice Search
There’s a new way to search – by voice. Virtual assistants (VAs) like Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana may use fledgling AI to understand the questions you ask them, but they’re still using web searches to actually answer those questions. And that means your website could be where they source their answers.
Voice search isn’t huge yet, but it’s growing fast. ComScore anticipates that by the year 2020, over 50% of searches will be voice-based. There’s a shift towards conversational search – using technology to recognize not just the literal words in each search query, but also the context and meaning behind them to deliver more accurate results. Traditional SEO tactics won’t quite cut it here.
Because voice search is so new, and still evolving, the SEO strategy around it is still a little hazy. But there are a few tips and tricks that can be employed today. One example might be structuring your on-page content in such a way as to earn featured snippets – placement in the answer-boxes and carousels that appear after certain Google searches, which attempt to answer users’ questions without the need to click through to a new website.
Focusing on Click-Through Rates
It’s not enough to get on the front page of search results for your target keywords – you also have to convince searchers to actually click-through and visit your website. And while this has always been an important part of SEO, it’s now perhaps more critical than ever to master.
Organic click-through rates are down across the board right now, thanks in part to Google’s new focus on the previously-mentioned featured snippets. Many web searches are now answered right there on the results page, with little need for users to actually visit a new page. If you want to turn those users into your customers, you need to get them to your website first. Your search results need to scream “click me!”.
SEO changes fast, and staying on the cutting edge isn’t easy for small business owners – who already have so much to do. Fortunately, GreatLike Media is here to help. Our Orange County web design and SEO experts deliver custom web solutions to keep you ahead of the pack. Contact us today for more information.
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