So, we’re well into 2015 and all of the New Year’s resolutions have either been blown already or should be within another week or two. So, while you’re thinking of excuse number 23 as to why you SHOULD eat a piece of cake or skip the gym this afternoon, start seriously thinking about your SEO and Digital Marketing. You’ll want to stick to these 5 SEO and Digital Marketing tips in 2015.
SEO is, of course, a moving target, and Google changes its mind whenever and however it wants with alarming frequency. How can your brand secure Google rankings? How can you beat up your competition this year and grow your digital footprint?
Consider these 5 things to do differently this year with your SEO.
1. Content Explosion.
Writing 2 blogs a quarter and posting them to your blog that’s buried on your company website is NOT going to move the organic SEO ranking needle. You will need to think of rich, amazing ways to share the good news about your brand through rich content and media.
It’s not enough anymore to simply keep that content confined to your owned web properties (your website) because content needs to get distributed and shared amongst your rented (social media channels, etc.) web properties in order to get your audience and Google’s attention.
On Target Pro Tip: Create an editorial calendar centered around your brand’s sales cycle and stick to it. Create rich content, infographics and unique videos to help your brand stand out.
2. Socialize.
For the past few years, brands have been trying to crack the ROI nut on Social Media channels. I’m here to tell you that Social Media plays a substantial role with your SEO efforts. Think about it like this: Google pays attention to sites that have a tremendous amount of activity, engagement, trending topics, etc. like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Your brand needs to be actively engaging, sharing, creating and socializing in order to get Google’s attention off site.
On Target Pro Tip: Schedule out your social media via an easy-to-use tool like Hootsuite for maximum coverage. Plus, be certain to actively partake in conversations where you can share your expertise with your social media followers. From time to time, drop a URL back to your owned web properties, so that Google and your users can visit.
3. Structured Data.
Google wants their search engine users to find ‘stuff’ with ease. This requires a tremendous amount of data organization on Google’s part and is now becoming a responsibility of webmasters / SEO types to help Google organize that data. If your website isn’t using structured data, it needs to start, ASAP. You can learn more about structured data and how it works in this quick video from Google:
On Target Pro Tip: Be sure to use Google’s Webmaster tools to validate and make certain that your structured data is built properly. Tiny syntax errors can render your markup language useless.
4. Link Building.
Be careful with link building when it comes to an SEO campaign. Google keeps tightening the noose with every algorithm update to penalize sites that have an unnatural pattern of inbound links pointing to them.
On Target Pro Tip: Links DO matter, but the links have to come from an authoritative /
like-minded, important resource. This is where content marketing shines. If your content is truly unique, shareable and amazing, you can garner some nice inbound links from sites simply pointing to your content.
5. Mobileize.
Google is now so mobile-centric that it’s sending out snotty grams to webmasters who have not conformed their website to responsive or mobile versions. Google search results will now indicate whether or not a site is mobile friendly, thus elevating websites that are responsive in the search rankings.
On Target Pro Tip: Before you start adjusting your mobile website strategy, determine if your site would be useful to mobile consumers as a mobile version of your website or as a truly responsive site that conforms to browsers / screen sizes of all ratios. It’s important to note that there’s a distinct difference between the two.
The Bottom Line.
If you are serious about growing your brand online, SEO should be only one part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. Be certain that you are combining content marketing, social media, responsive web design, on- and off-site SEO considerations, etc., to drive your brand farther because one simply won’t work without the other. Putting SEO and Digital Marketing at the top of your resolution list will generate results that will benefit your business now and in the future.
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