SEO has been around in its current form since 2007, when the term was coined, and is a familiar concept to business marketing strategies. That said, business could be doing far more, as shown by USA Today statistics showing that 61% of marketers want to optimize SEO as a business priority. Fine tuning your SEO through adherence to search engine algorithms and trends is one step towards an effective SEO strategy, but getting ahead of the competition is a whole different ball game. Given the ubiquitous nature of SEO and the uniform requirements it places on those wanting to be successful, honing in on that killer strategy is challenging.
Your digital marketing strategy should be inclusive of the realities of SEO. A strong mix will contain other mitigating factors, and utilize PPC and SEM. For the all-important search rankings, there are a few key trends that you can employ to make sure your business is smart and efficient for the modern web.
You need to focus on voice search
Voice search has labored for many years as being clunky and imprecise. The frustrating nature of automated phone bots can be blamed for this suspicion of voice activation, but tech companies are unrelenting, and smartphone manufacturers rely on voice activation. Search operators like Google are well aware of this, and in February 2018 Forbes reported that John Mueller, Google’s webmaster trends analyst, had placed an important focus on voice search in terms of what webmasters were looking for. Digital consultants are seizing on this, and the fact that 41% of adults and teens now use voice search, when offering e-marketing advice and consultancy.
Being cross compatible is absolutely crucial
Globally, 52% of internet use is on mobile, according to the most recently available statistics. With both a plurality and outright majority using the internet, it’s crucial that your optimization efforts are directed to a cross-platform target. How is this achievable? Broadly speaking, mobile SEO has more of a local focus; the idea is that people are actively on their feet, seeking products in their locality. Focus your SEO strategy to be able to provide to a small, local level, whilst retaining a generalized appeal for your desktop efforts.
Learning to employ technology
SEO is very much a developed system – most of the strategy changes concern tweaks in the algorithms that Google and their ilk use, and paying attention to changes in the digital demography to ensure that your strategy is reaching as many users as it possibly can. Moving into the future, the real key to how SEO will change is through the technology used to deploy it. This is the view of Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers, who has suggested that automation will overhaul SEO by vastly reducing the amount of time that tasks take. Email campaigns and basic analytical processes can be processed by sophisticated machines and AI that haven’t been available in years preceeding our current decade.
SEO is the gateway for your business to a wider market, and the right research and aggregation can lead your business on links through the web to the right people. With the right people come more sales, and growth for your business. In a nutshell, keeping your SEO modern is a case of staying on top of the news, embracing technology and observing cross-platform suitability.
