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Search Engine Optimization is an ever-changing field, consistently adding brand-new metrics at the forefront of value. Depending on what the search engine companies are doing and what the consumers are reacting to, it's our duty as internet marketers (if we desire to make any money doing this) to stay on top of the newest trends and calm the dynamic search engine and consumer gods. Here's exactly how to do it for the rest of 2014 (and perhaps into 2015).
Are You Managing Your Website Effectively?
1. Website or blog speed is a big issue, not merely for consumers, but now also with the search engines. With mobile websites being more and more popular, if your websites aren't loading fast (and optimized for mobile site visitors), you are getting to find yourself with less traffic. Google has stated as much in a roundabout step, informing us that these guys are looking forward at website speed a lot closer, particularly as mobile searches become predominate.
2. Branding for the lead spots on Google search performs pretty well if you're hitting the one, two or 3 spots on the SERPs, but right after that, it's all about keywords and relevance. If no one in your niche is branding their efforts, you might consider making a run for the top and executing a logical branded message into your marketing.
3. Internal links ongoing to be a hot topic, even though now that we have some returned information on the Google updates and what they think about “ideal,” we now understand that 180 internal links is the remarkable number. This number was derived as the standard across meta data gathered from thousands of websites, so try to keep your own customer's in thoughts when internal linking. What you really don't want is to overkill with the web links so that they end up being overwhelmed.
4. Full web content is in, with higher-ranking websites featuring not just longer content on average, but also content that was meaningful. Aggregate content is dropping tons of ground therefore don't be empty and short, but even more, don't be empty and long. Try to keep the keywords relevant and mix in your LSIs. Also, we're starting to see a more educated subscriber base, meaning the traditional rule of “write to a third grade level” is out the window. Compose to your target audience, whatever that is. Don't be scared to get smart.
5. Social shares and Google +1's are actually a good sign that you are crafting good material. Make use of that as a metric to see exactly what road you're headed down: good or bad. Of course, if you're receiving the social shares and still not ranking, chances are you really should look into the back end of your website with off-page SEO.
6. The metrics that influence your ranking have transformed. Click through rates are huge ranking weights while bounce rates have very small impact on your website's ranking. You must also pay attention to time spent on your website as that has a slight affect on your ranking as well.
What Else Should You be Doing?
Aside from working to get your site ranked, we're anticipating that Google Authorship from your Google+ account is finally going to start getting a big impact on your rankings since some of the bugs were worked out with the help of the Panda 4.0 release. Aside from that, it's practically smooth sailing and keeping an eye out for updates and new releases. Watch for Google My Business, which was just launched, as was Google Analytics' Universal Analytics Integration.