Quite often, the small talk we have with the businesses we meet as well as with our industry colleagues revolves around the current state of SEO best practices.
From SEO experts to DIY SEO dabblers, everyone seems focused on making 2015 the year of discovery for small business.
For us, January has always been a time to reassess our client strategies for the upcoming year. This is when we take both a retrospective assessment of what has worked in 2014 as well as a futures look of what we think will impact small business visibility on search engines in 2015.
The following SEO tips are what we predict we will be prescribing to our clients for the upcoming year (or at least until the next algorithm change). We didn’t list them in any particular order, so while you read along try to envision how your business stacks up against these objectives.
Here’s hoping you discover yourself in 2015!
Citation Building
A citation is any mention of a business’s (complete) contact information, and for local businesses it’s one of the most important elements for local discovery. Citation building (think Yelp, Google Plus, YP.com) not only offers a direct link to your business, but it plays a vital role in quantifying your business contact information building online brand recognition and authority.
Content Marketing
Creating and sharing stories that drive purposeful action or provides intentful branding shouldn’t happen by chance or out of your control. The notion that social media would be the marketing bullhorn for business is so 2007. Content marketing in 2015 will need to have the end solution planned in advance of publishing. Shares and likes are too easy to game and haven’t been all that successful in driving significant monetary ROI. Effective content marketing in 15 will drive quantifiable lead generation, sales or branding.
Image & Video Optimization
Image and video sharing sites like Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo and the increasing importance in organic image/video search will continue to drive the demand for filename and property optimization. DYK: the filename of images and videos is the most important element impacting online discovery? (You’re not alone if you didn’t)
Keyword Research
As long as search engines answer search queries based on text or voice input (interpreted as text) using the right words to market your business will remain the most powerful attribute of any online marketing activity, on any channel, through any source. The axiom that “Content is king” is nearly correct for it is the (key)words of the content that truly rule the marketing world – online and in print.
Map Marketing
For brick and mortar businesses, online discovery is only half the job, driving that traffic to your door is the second part, and being listed on the most popular map and GPS services will be vital as personal-mobile and in-vehicle connectivity usage continues to skyrocket.
Meaningful Interaction
Receiving social engagement through keyword focused intentful wording will trump likes, shares, and RTs by chance in the upcoming years. And it’s about time too – we love caturday as much as you do, but social signals are just far too easy to game, so the value of their signal potential has so far been under-realized. Social interaction needs to focus on providing customer service and driving sales, leads and branding. Meaningful marketing with calculated interaction continues to add value to social marketing in 15.
Mobile Optimization
Having viewers squint to view your website in the tiny screen of a cellphone or tablet isn’t going to work in 2015. Having a website that serves appropriately for each device (responsive) is nearly mandatory today, and Google is recognizing sites who are responsive by marking them as being “Mobile-friendly” within mobile searches. How quickly websites load is also an increasing (ranking) SEO element to focus on – especially for mobile viewing. Check your mobile stats on Google Analytic to decide how eminent a mobile conversion is for your business.
NAP
In our experience, we find nearly every business has errors in their business citation (above) data. The data that matters most for local businesses is their Name, Address, and (local) Phone number – aka: NAP. Typical errors include business listing with old addresses and old phone numbers, call tracking numbers or inconsistent use of unit/suite numbers. Variations of a business name will also cause discrepancies in NAP. Like citation building – this is a foundational element of local marketing.
Old School is New School (again)
The basic elements of SEO never go out of style – META Title (ranking factor) and META Description (conversion element) optimization, keyword targeting, having a correctly formatted contact page, using the footer for your global address, images with unique filenames and alternate attributes, META robot usage – these (and more) need to be addressed for each primary page of a website. There are 200+ elements on each page of a website that Google uses as a ranking factor. We see hundreds of businesses each year with great looking websites and vibrant social media channels who struggle with online visibility because these 200 elements of website SEO were overlooked. Nail the basics before digging deeper into more advanced SEO techniques or digging deep into social and content marketing.
PPC & SEO Combined Strategies
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising like Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook Ads was one of our most requested service offerings last year, and we were not alone – 2014 was a banner year for the whole PPC industry. The success of PPC is largely dependent on three factors: 1. Keyword selection 2. Compelling copywriting 3. Synergy on the website landing page between 1&2. Managing PPC campaigns with knowledge of website SEO will continue to be a winning combination for business advertising in the upcoming year(s).
Schema
A relative newcomer and nearly unknown tool for non-professionals is structured markup code most commonly referred to as its standards name of “Schema”. This universal code works for the major search engines and adds additional data (in search engine language) for things such as contact information, products, services, product reviews, and business review ratings (think Zagat reviews). This simple code was a powerhouse for local businesses in 2014 and will continue in importance in 15.
#seo #seotrends
by Chris Sheehy
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