Martin Laetsh, director of online marketing at Act-On Software Inc., says “Historically, the recommendations around SEO have been to focus on keywords. But, the reality is search engines are getting much smarter. The content creator is having a lot less control over how their pages are showing up and what words they’re showing up for.
A survey shows that the year 2016 will see some drastic changes in terms of SEO. The most important factor for SEO in 2016 will be mobile-friendliness, users’ dwelling time, design features and readability. Elements that will decrease in impact will include paid links and anchor text. Here are some tips that will help you use SEO in the best way possible to maximize your content marketing investments.
Keywords are no more strictly important
Earlier, it was important that you used keywords everywhere – in the title tag, in the meta description, in the heading and multiple times in the content. So, if you wanted to target the word ‘best boutique’, you would have to mention ‘best boutique’ in the content multiple times. But, no more. Now, even if you use semantic words like designer wear or customized garments, the search engines will relate with it.
Martin says, “Historically, we wanted to get a keyword in the body copy or in the meta description. Now that’s all gone out the window. As the search engines get smarter, they start to think about other words that you expect to be in that article that will signal that this is an authoritative article on the topic. If you were writing an article about the Apple Watch, you might have the words Apple, iPhone, Watch, apps and time. If those are in the body copy, it sends signals to the search engines that this is a pretty good article.”
Write long-form content
Earlier, short form content was preferred. But today, long articles that range between 1200 to 1500 words perform better in search. This is because there are more words to rank on the page. Obviously, reading a 1500 words article might get too tedious and dull. To maintain users’ interest, you can break up the content into short paragraphs with subheadings or bullet points and relevant images.
Martin says, “It’s significantly different than it was two or three years ago, when 300 words was a pretty long page. Longer articles are getting more traffic, and they’re ranking higher in SEO, especially for competitive terms.”
Use unique images
You might be seeing the same image being used on hundreds of places around the Web. Businesses in the same niche would be using the same or similar images for their similar content. Stay aloof from the crowd and set your own standard by providing relevant yet unique images for your content. Don’t use stock images; instead, create a custom image or unique photography. Uniqueness will have the users being satisfied with you. Earlier, it depended on marketers what they wanted to show to their audience. Today, it is the users who you want to satisfy by giving them what they want to see.
Martin says, “The reason we’re doing optimization and want to show up in Google, Bing or Yahoo is not because we make money because we show up No. 1 or No. 2. The reason we want to rank well in the search engine is so that our audience, the people we’re trying to reach, have a great experience. It doesn’t matter how high you rank if your target audience goes to your site and they’re not happy.”
User experience is important
You need to have content that justifies someone wanting to read it. Today, user experience is what is the most important. You need to make sure that your content satisfies the users’ needs and is sensible and useful to them.
Martin says, “Google, right now, is making 500 algorithm changes a year. Every change is focused on making sure that when someone searches on Google, if they get the right result on the first few pages, they’ve got a great experience. Your content has to be original and targeted to your audience. If you curate content, take a paragraph from another article or site, and give them full credit and add an attribution, but add a paragraph or two in your own voice, you’re adding a journalistic voice and making it your own.”