5 Ways on Keeping Your Site Relevant This 2018

We may be two months already in the new year but it’s never too late to start updating your site to keep it relevant this 2018.

Updating your site becomes even more important, especially if you haven’t done any major changes and improvements during the past year–or years.

Not only has web design evolved, but so has optimisation, user experience, and content creation, all of which play a big role in building a website that your target audience would want to go to and stay in.

So what does it take to transform your site and keep it all the more relevant this 2018? We’ve listed 5 key factors for you to work on starting today.

Mobile and Beyond

When we recommend that you improve your mobile site, we don’t just mean making it mobile-friendly or responsive. At this point, your site has to be mobile optimised as well, especially in preparation for Google’s Mobile-First Index that’s bound to come out this year.  

This time around, it’s not just about adjusting how your desktop site appears on mobile devices or being content in simply having a mobile version of your site. To keep your site relevant–and ranking–this year is by optimising your site to carve out a seamless user experience for your customers.

It’s making sure that the way customers navigate through your site would be so much easier and accessible, that it’d only take a few clicks for them to go from one page to another or even browse through products, hit add to cart, and then proceed to checkout. Not only that, but it’s in never losing sight of what your goals are, which is to engage your site visitors and keep them locked in through the design, format, navigation, and so on.

Video Content

It’s been predicted that by the end of this year, more than 80% of traffic will be directed towards videos–and it’s not hard to see why.

Videos are an elevated form of content that proves to be more effective in conveying a particular message in comparison to just using words. Brands that utilise video within their web content, whether it’s in blog posts, landing pages, product demos, or even client testimonials, tend to garner higher click throughs, engagements, and conversion rates.

Best way to go about it is to know how to diversify your content and what type would best suit different messages that you want to deliver to your audience. Of course, don’t drown them out with a barrage of videos. Choose which information would engage your target audience more if it is done through video and go for that.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is a term that gets thrown a lot these days, especially in the realm of startups and tech. It’s quite daunting to even think about integrating AI into your website if you don’t know anything about it. But before you panic, what AI mostly means for your website–at this point–is having chatbots and live chat for better customer experience.

It’s a common practice for more modernised sites these days to have that small pop-up, usually on the lower right, that comes with a friendly message asking if you need help. Having customer service automated right on your site makes your products/services all the more accessible to those who step foot on any of your landing pages.

Just be careful in implementing a chatbot on your site. At some point, it may get too annoying for your customers, which would then make them just want to leave your site, proving your efforts to be more counterproductive than beneficial.  

Data Security

It’s been reported by Marketing Profs that 2018 is the year where data security would be a primary concern among site visitors. This is even more relevant for sites that require visitors to provide their personal or financial information.

There were quite a lot of security breaches that were made public last year, even involving companies from the big leagues. This makes visitors wary of just how much they can trust various sites with their privacy, which then directly affects the chance that they’ll turn into paying customers.

There are many ways to work on securing information on your site and you can start with using HTTPS to keep online transactions safe, as well as information forms. You’ll also need to have trusted certificates and compliance put on display on your site such as the Payment Card Industry Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), basic SSL-Level security, as well as other pertinent certifications to keep your site secure and maintain your customers’ trust.

Voice Search Optimisation

Another factor that experts predict to become more prevalent this year is voice search and the need for voice search optimisation. This arises from the increasing dependence of users on mobile devices or voice assistants (e.g. Amazon Echo, Google Home), as well as the call for a much more convenient user experience.

Compared to traditional SEO keywords and phrases used for text optimisation, voice optimisation requires a more coherent structure of words and phrases. This pertains to questions that their target audience might ask or certain inquiries that they may need in relation to the products and services that your business is offering.

Before you worry about having to deal with even more optimisation for your site, all you need to do is conduct a general search for common queries and assess how they would be structured when done through voice search. Do take note that voice queries tend to be more conversational in tone and have a longer format than your usual keywords and phrases.

Conclusion

These five factors are just the tip of the iceberg in enhancing your site to keep it relevant this 2018. The most important thing is to always stay in the know of all updates and changes happening this new year in order to not get left behind the optimisation game.

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How to Be a Successful Content Hacker

If you’ve been keeping in the know within the world of startups and digital marketing, then you’re most likely familiar with the term growth hacking/hacker. But have you heard of the new type of hacking, which is content hacking?

In this day and age where content remains king of everything, a content creator has to continuously evolve in order to keep up with the ever-changing times. A content marketer can’t be stuck with old, tried and tested ways to craft content and instead, they’d have to continuously search for ways to hit publish on pieces and posts that get better and better every single time.

This is why simply being a content creator or marketer isn’t enough to sustain a business nowadays. What your business needs to thrive and succeed is to have a content hacker on board. But what is content hacking in the first place? Let’s go find out!

What Is Content Hacking?

To understand what content hacking is and what it takes to be a content hacker, we first have to go back to its roots, which is growth hacking.

It was Sean Ellis who first coined the term growth hacker, in which he describes it as “a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.”

He continued saying that, “An effective growth hacker also needs to be disciplined to follow a growth hacking process of prioritizing ideas (their own and others in the company), testing the ideas, and being analytical enough to know which tested growth drivers to keep and which ones to cut. The faster this process can be repeated, the more likely they’ll find scalable, repeatable ways to grow the business.”

That description may be too much of a mouthful but simply put, a growth hacker is someone who utilises creativity and analytical thinking to find new and disruptive ways to promote and sell products/services, while making use of social metrics to measure their efforts as well.

So how does growth hacking contribute to what content hacking is all about? Simple. Content hacking is the result when you combine content marketing and growth hacking. And it is through being a skilled content hacker that businesses and brands can thrive in today’s competitive game of content creation.

What Does it Take to be a Content Hacker?

It’s true that it is in utilising the skills of a content creator and having the mindset of a growth hacker that makes a successful content hacker. But what other characteristics are needed to be a content hacker?

We’re breaking down the key elements of how to be a successful content hacker and why you’ll come to realise that it’s more of a mindset, rather than a toolset.

Growth-minded all the way

When you say that someone is “growth-minded,” it means having the vision, drive, and creativity that it takes to increase traffic, leads, and conversion rates.

A content hacker doesn’t just create content for the sake of creating. They create content with purpose and measurable goals in mind. The content they craft has to amount to something–perhaps increased foot traffic, virality, more likes/follows, or what have you–that would spell growth for the brand or company they represent.

Takes advantage of every opportunity

Content hackers see every step they take as an opportunity for growth. Suffice it to say, they are very much opportunistic, in the sense that, they take advantage of contacts, networks, meetings, and leads and turn it into solid connections that they can benefit from in the future.

Of course, this is done by offering something in return as well. For example, turning a contact into a connection can be done by offering to do a guest post on another business’ blog and in return, you can have inbound links for your site.

SEO minded and data driven

SEO should be far ingrained within a content hacker’s arsenal. Even as a content marketer, SEO is an important element that should always be involved in creating content. And as a content hacker crafts and works on producing content, they should be able to properly assess the best optimisation techniques needed to give their business that extra boost.

On top of this, a true content hacker doesn’t just stop once they’ve hit publish on their content. They continue the work by measuring the reach and effectiveness of what they’ve created, identifying which aspects to replicate and which ones to improve on. Scalability is of utmost importance for content hackers and it’s a continuous cycle they embark on in order to come up with the very best content to produce.

Makes sustainability the goal

In line with having a growth mindset, a content hacker also makes sustainability their goal. This means that in creating their content strategy, a content hacker is rightfully focused on planning not just for the near future and immediate results, but also for long-term success of the brand through content creation.

Having sustainable content means that they’ve managed to identify content that’s tailor-fit to their target audience, which in turn allows for continuous engagement from readers and customers.

True north is sharable content

So what is the bottomline mission for a content hacker? It is in having sharable content.

Having sharable content entails different factors that play into creating a really engaging piece of content. This includes, but is not limited to, having supporting graphics and images, creating customised or localised content, putting in videos, having a higher word rank of up to 2,000 plus words, headlines that start with numbers, and so on and so forth.

All of these are part of continuous building on the benefits of their content, even long after they’ve published it.

Conclusion

Think of a content hacker as a content creator on steroids. And those steroids are comprised of growth, metrics, and sustainability.

More than relying on tools, being a content hacker is all about having a focused mindset. A mindset that’s eating, breathing, and living growth day in and day out as they plan, craft, create, and publish content targeted to engage their audience.

Therefore, in saying this, being a content hacker is not so much paying for software programs or increasing knowledge. Those are just a part of it. What it truly takes to be a successful content hacker is in changing and upgrading to having a growth mindset and apply that to every step of the content creation process.

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Quick and Easy Guide to Writing In-Depth Content

While content remains king in the world of SEO, Google has become much smarter in measuring its relevance.

This makes content creation an even bigger challenge, especially since it’s not just about infiltrating what you wrote with keywords from the title to the H1 tag and so on. In order to make it the very best there is, you’ll have to come up with a more in-depth content.

So what exactly does an in-depth content have? Compared to your normal blog posts that focus on a simple topic, an in-depth content comprises of pretty much all the necessary information they need clearly explained in one cohesive, albeit lengthy, post.

It may seem daunting to even begin crafting this type of content but don’t worry ‘cause we’ve got some quick and easy tips to get you started!

Tip #1: Craft your content with context in mind

As what’s been mentioned, Google now looks into more of how connected and elaborate your post is as opposed to stuffing it with keywords as much as you can.

With that in mind, your goal now shouldn’t be just about writing up a post for the sake of having fresh content. Your goal should be aimed towards delivering on extensive information that would make Google think that your post should be at the very top because it has the most substantial information in relation to a certain question.

Google wants to give users the very best results and being the best doesn’t mean it only has the right keywords. It has to have the most relevant, extensive, and informative content to satisfy a user’s query.

Tip #2: Make your content longer–like, at least 2000 words long

So what does it mean to have an “extensive” in-depth content? Well, it takes about at least 2,000 words.

Don’t be surprised because long-form content has been gaining momentum for some time and readers are actually partial to it, especially if it’s well crafted and has all the information that they need.

However, this doesn’t mean that you have to stretch out a post for the sake of reaching the two thousand-word mark if it’s good enough to only have 500 words. What this simply means is you’ll have to come up with topics that are multi-faceted enough for you to segment into several sub-topics.

Just an added tip to make your lengthy content more readable, is to chop the paragraphs into shorter chunks. This way, your readers would have find it easier to digest the information and scan through the whole article without their eyes giving out. Shorter paragraphs also look better when viewed on mobile devices as well.

Tip #3: Insert LSI keywords to your content

In crafting your in-depth content, don’t forget to include LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords into it.

LSI keywords are supporting words and phrases that are semantically related to your main keyword. Take note that these aren’t just synonyms or other terms for your primary keyword. These keywords should be strongly associated to your main topic, which would help in signalling the relevance and depth of your content to Google.

For example, if you’re talking about the trendy Ketogenic Diet, your LSI keywords should include the words nutrition, high fat, weight loss, meal plans, low carb, ketosis, and so on. Once Google crawls your content, it’ll verify the strength and context and think, “Great! This post clearly cover what the Ketogenic Diet is about.” Then off your page goes to the first page of search engine results.

If you’re wondering on how to get the LSI keywords for your primary keyword, you can start with using the LSI Graph, which is a free tool that provides several keywords you can add to your content. You can also use good old Google Keyword Planner or even just the Google results and go straight to the bottom where you’ll find “Searches related to..” words and phrases that you can use as LSI keywords.

Choose your LSI keywords wisely and use them appropriately within your content. Again, don’t just stuff keywords for the sake of doing so. Make sure that it makes complete sense and that it supports your main topic with the right information.

Conclusion

SEO is a constant game of stepping it up and taking it to the next level. You know what they say, it’s either you innovate or die. And this time around, it’s about upping your content game in a way that would bring some serious value to readers and customers.

While it’s true that you’ll need more time and effort to come up with in-depth content, the return proves to be well worth it, especially in terms of ranking higher and getting more backlinks–not to mention, a very probable higher conversion rate compared to shorter posts.

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How to Prepare Your Site For Google’s Mobile-First Index

Gone are the days when desktop traffic is viewed as the priority. Mobile browsing has long surpassed desktop browsing years ago and Google is on the move to making adjustments in how sites are ranked.

Lo and behold, 2018 is the year that Google is making it official by launching a mobile-first index algorithm, ultimately making mobile sites and pages as the main basis for indexing and ranking.

So what does this all mean? Simply put, the mobile version of your site should be your main priority because it’s what Google will use to assess your ranking in search engines. Sounds scary? A bit. But is it a surprising move on Google’s part? Not at the very least.

This has long been an expected update from Google. The tables have finally turned and mobile sites aren’t just an afterthought anymore; it’s become the priority.  

With all that said, it’s pretty easy to determine your proper course of action, which is to focus on improving (or creating, if you don’t have one yet!) the mobile version of your site. We’re listing down important steps in preparing your site for Google’s Mobile-First Index. The first step? Don’t panic and just read on.

Step #1: Ensure that your site is truly optimised for mobile browsing

More than being mobile-friendly, your site has to be mobile-optimised.

There’s actually a difference between the two. Saying that your site is mobile-friendly means that you have a working mobile version of the site, meaning you can simply view your site using a mobile device. However, saying that it is optimised for mobile means that it offers a seamless user experience and has a truly responsive mobile design.

Having a mobile-optimised site doesn’t just mean that you have a shrunken or slightly rearranged version of your site. It means that your users would be able to navigate your site with the same ease (or more!) as they do with the desktop version.

Good news is a lot of website platforms provide an automatic mobile version of the site. However, it would still be best to make sure that it’s the best possible design for mobile and not just a slightly adjusted version. This is why a lot of developers opt to build it from scratch to ensure that they hit the mark in mobile-responsiveness.

To check if your mobile site is up to par, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test as a starting point. They’ll either say that your site is mobile-friendly or come up with a report that would highlight the main points for improvement and repair.

Step #2: Adjust content for mobile viewing

It’s not enough to simply adjust the design. You may also have to look at how you craft your content and see if it works as effectively for mobile viewing as well.

Content remains king and one way of how marketers deal with this is by coming up with at least a thousand, or even three, words and complete with supporting images and graphics. The thing is, these highly informative and wordy content may seem fine to look at on a desktop screen but doesn’t translate as smoothly to a mobile screen. One remedy to this issue is to slightly adjust how you write. It doesn’t mean that you have to shorten your posts. Perhaps you can cut them up into shorter paragraphs and sentences, as opposed to piling it all up in lengthy chunks.

Google’s mobile-first index shouldn’t push you into a corner and restrict you from coming up with quality content. Remember that quality content remains a strong ranking factor above everything else.

What this algorithm update should do is to push you into paying more attention on how your desktop site and pages translate to mobile. This applies not just to text content, but also to images, graphics, videos, and other content formats.

Step #3: Consider other mobile-first index factors

Achieving a seamless user experience with your mobile site comprises of several factors that come into play. It’s not simply about the display or adjusted layout. There are other mobile-first index factors that you strongly pay attention to. These include the following:

• Site speed: Did you know that Google has stated that 53% of mobile users would leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load? This makes site speed an even more important factor for mobile browsing. To check on how your mobile site is faring, you can go ahead and do so using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It’ll give you a clear idea if your site is on the safe zone or if it requires major speed improvement.
• Intrusive interstitials: Interstitials are what you call those pesky pop-ups that come up when you visit a site. It’s described as “a page that is inserted in the normal flow of editorial content structure on a website for the purpose of advertising or promotion.” Google has cited that there’s an existing intrusive interstitial penalty–and trust us when we say that’s something you don’t want to receive. You may want to reconsider adding interstitials or perhaps adjusting its size or frequency.
• Sources of mobile site traffic: Remember that with the launch of the mobile-first index, where your mobile site traffic comes from would matter even more since it would also affect your desktop site ranking. Apart from using social media to drive click-throughs and traffic to your mobile site, you can also consider using guest posts, videos, podcasts, email newsletters, influencer marketing, PPC, Quora, and so on.
• Link building: Backlinks still matter. And it also matters if these are quality or spammy backlinks. Apart from consistently checking to see who links back to your site, it would also help to monitor who links back to your competitors and use that information to create your own linking strategy as well. Of course, also make sure to get rid of bad links to avoid getting penalized by Google.
• Schema markup: Having a schema markup is your way of helping Google understand what the content of your site/page means. A schema markup is described as a “code [semantic vocabulary] that you put on your website to help search engines return more informative results for users.” This is something that should be added to the backend of your site to ensure that Google recognizes what your data means, not just what it says.

Conclusion

As we’ve already said, there’s no reason to panic because you still have time. But that time is getting shorter with each day and if you still haven’t gotten around to at least having a mobile-friendly version of your site, then it’s high time that you make the move.

Should you have a mobile-friendly version, then kudos to you! But the job’s not done yet. Your goal is to truly optimise it for mobile browsing by paying attention to several factors that affect user experience.

Make the most out of the time we’re all waiting for Google to finally launch the Mobile-First Index to focus on making several adjustments and improvements on your mobile site.

Simply put, prioritize your mobile site starting now and by the time Google announces its launch, your site is up and ready to rule the search engine rankings on both mobile and desktop.

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Small Business’ Guide on Doing SEO on a Budget

Starting a business can be quite daunting for a lot of reasons. One being the proper allocation of capital and where to invest your limited resources into.

In today’s digital landscape, SEO has become an integral part of growing one’s business online. You simply cannot do without it if you want your business to be known to your target market.

Good news is, you don’t have to go all out in paying for your site’s optimisation.

There are several ways to go about successfully implementing various SEO tactics while keeping in line with your budget. We’re giving you three solid tips to start with, so take out your pens and prepare to take some notes!

Tip #1: Assess which tasks you can do in-house–and do it well!

SEO is comprised of a wide range of tasks and techniques and a lot of it can be done by in-house employees even without having an extensive mastery of SEO–and do it well.    

All it takes is a bit of research, practice, and dedication to growing the business. In fact, some of these tasks should be rightfully done by in-house employees given their first-hand insight into the business.

So what exactly are these tasks we speak of? It includes content creation and keyword research. You can even count technical SEO if you dare.

When it comes to crafting content, there’s really no better person for the job than the one who knows the inside-out of the business. The more niche the business, the riskier it is to outsource content creation to an agency that most likely doesn’t have the same level of extensive knowledge as an industry insider.

In connection with content creation, keyword research can likewise be done within the company. There are so many tools–both free and paid–that can be used to come up with proper keyword strategy. A person from within the business would be able to effectively conduct competitor research, as well as identify terms that would be most useful to optimisation.

Tackling the “technical” aspect of SEO may seem a task for experts, but there are parts of it that can be done by in-house employees. Some of which include working with developers to perfect the mobile responsiveness of your site, as well as doing page indexing, site crawlability, audit of internal links, and so on.

With the resources and information about SEO that’s made available and accessible online, in-house employees can arm themselves with the basic techniques to pull these tasks off with ease. These tasks can also be collaborated on by several employees, making it even more effective and sustainable long-term.

Tip #2: Automate simple tasks that take up your time

Once you’ve figured out the tasks that you can do in-house, it’s now time to analyse and see which among these can be automated to save on time and manpower.

Rather than having to do it manually, you can check to see if there are online tools you can make use of to take care of tedious and time-consuming tasks.

Most of these tasks have to do with analytics and reports. These information are integral in assessing how your site is faring in comparison to competitors. It will provide you pertinent trends and highlight any issues that you may have to improve on to get better foot traffic and ranking.

For example, you can use Seomator or DeepCrawl to have scheduled monthly audits of your site. Getting this bird’s eye view of areas to improve on gives you a better insight of what you need to focus on in terms of your SEO efforts on a monthly basis.

Tip #3: Admit when you need help and outsource specific projects

Sometimes, even your best efforts aren’t enough to fully implement a successful SEO strategy. And when this time comes, you have to be humble enough to admit defeat and ask for help–also known as outsourcing.

There are several agencies that focus on helping small businesses with SEO efforts at an affordable and budget-friendly cost. Good thing about hiring an external partner is only having to pay on a project basis as well. For some tasks, it proves to be more costly to hire a full-time in-house employee than paying off an agency on a monthly or case-to-case basis.

Examples of these tasks that may be better off outsourced to an external agency include link building and advanced SEO strategies.

You may think that link building should be easy enough to do in-house. However, there are aspects of it that would be better handled by experienced pros. Just consider the fact that they normally have more streamlined and tried-and-tested practices to get you more links in less time–and do it in an ethical manner. It can also be a pain to continuously monitor your links, so it’s better to just have it effectively managed by an SEO agency instead.  

Another reason to pay for SEO services is to put advanced strategies into effect. From having a robust one-off analysis of your site to an extensive optimisation strategy plan, a team of experts may be able to handle it much better than putting the burden on yourself or on your team.

Conclusion

Maximising your budget doesn’t have to mean that you have to scrimp on the majority of your SEO efforts. Sometimes, it may even cost you more if you opt out of paying for professional SEO services.

What you need to focus on is properly assessing which aspects of optimisation efforts would benefit your business if it’s done in-house, by use of automating tools, or by outsourcing such tasks to professional agencies. Through this, you’ll be able to fully make use of your allotted budget wisely and you can likewise expect a profitable return on your investment as well.

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Top 3 Key Ways to Build Your Brand Through Content

Starting a business can be quite daunting. Growing it is even more overwhelming and requires grit, drive, and a dash of creativity.

One effective way of building your brand is by creating content that will inform, entertain, and engage your target audience. Remember that in this day and age, content remains king. And knowing how to harness its influence can work wonders in growing your brand furthermore.

So how do you do it? Here are three key ways that you can start with to build your business through content creation.

Identify Your Audience

Who do you intend to reach? What demographic are you trying to appeal to?

These are some questions you need to ask–and answer–before you even begin crafting content. Defining your audience aids in knowing what types of content you need to develop. This can be done in doing market research, developing buyer personas, and so on.

The point behind identifying your target audience is simple: if you know who you’re talking to (or should talk to), you’ll know all the right things to say.

Also note that your audiences may vary depending on the products and services you offer. Should this be the case, you’ll need to tap into proper segmentation to appeal to varying interests of your market.

Set Your Brand Apart From Competitors

After identifying your target audience, it’s now time to define what differentiates your business from your competitors.

Through this strategy, you’ll be able to come up with branded content aimed towards highlighting that certain edge that you have, which allows your business to be known amongst competitors. Knowing this information can help improve your conversions and search engine rankings. In short, a lot relies on this tactic.

You may think that given the oversaturation of today’s market, it would be hard to identify what sets your business apart from all others. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be big. It can even be your business’ key locations, or perhaps crafting content that would highlight all services or products that you offer.

Of course, don’t just push out branded content whenever you can. A good mix of brand and non-branded content released consistently would help improve your online standing, as well as in getting paying customers out of readers.

Repeat and Diversify Your Message

Most of the content that you’ll create will pretty much say the same thing. But in doing this, make sure to diversify your message and make it fresh.

This is even more so the case for niche businesses, in which you’re basically stuck with the same topics and themes. Good news is, a little creativity and resourcefulness can go a long way in crafting new content that would continuously engage your customers and make them trust you.

Do note that it’s not just the way you craft and write your content, but it’s also in the way you present them to your audience. We’re talking about using different formats. If you’re talking about SEO techniques, you can come up with a written blog post, an infographic showing key steps and statistics, colorful visuals to highlight important steps, or even videos that narrate everything about your message.

Suffice it to say, your goal is to tell your audience what you do and how you can help them over and over again, but a little differently every single time. Not only does this guarantee that you’ll reach a wider scope, but it’ll also help in building your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness.

Conclusion

Content creation is an integral part of growing and promoting our business. Expect to encounter a couple of hits and misses before you finally nail what content will be well received by your customers.

What you need to do is to use these three solid tips to start creating the foundation for your brand’s content and from there, analyze, adjust, and refine all the way through.

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5 SEO Tasks to Cross Off Your Checklist for 2018

With every new year comes a new set of trends and tasks that you have to check off your list to make sure that your site stays on top this 2018.

Good news is, we’re not talking about trends you’ve never even heard of. A lot of what’s likely to get big in 2018 is also derived from the changes and updates that happened in 2017.

Suffice it to say, this new year combines tried and tested SEO tactics that you have to reinforce, alongside new trends that are sure to come up this year. And to help you reflect on what to prepare for, we’ve compiled 5 of the most actionable SEO tasks to cross off your checklist for 2018.

1. Optimisation for Mobile Devices

The rise of mobile search has steadily been on the rise over the years, and 2018 is the year that we will officially see Google implementing a mobile-first indexing. So what does this mean?

According to Google, they “will create and rank its search listings based on the mobile version of content, even for listings that are shown to desktop users.” This just means that as a developer and site owner, you now have to pay so much more attention to how the mobile version of your site is crafted.

It’s not enough to sit back and relax, thinking that you have a working mobile version of the site. It has to provide a seamless user experience. Best way to go about it is to have a website audit done on your mobile site to know points for improvement in terms of speed, layout, design, user experience, and so on.

2. Local Search Rankings

Both on-site and off-site optimisation for local searches have become more relevant than ever. In order to ensure that your site doesn’t fall out of the game, you have to constantly work on improving your local search optimisation.

Not only should you monitor your site’s activities and analytics, but tracking that of your competitors should also be on your checklist. Knowing how customers are finding your site or the site of your competitors would work wonders in winning the local rankings game.

3. Voice Search Optimisation

Did you know that about 55% of teens and 40% of adults use voice search daily? Those numbers are straight from Google’s reports and it could only mean that voice search may as well be the future of SEO.

But while this may be the prediction of many experts, it’s not something that you should be wary of. Take note that what sets voice search apart from your regular search engine optimisation is the format of keywords used.

Those who use voice search use normal and conversational questions, as opposed to oddly structured phrases that’s the norm for SEO keywords. Start looking for most commonly asked questions or sentences in relation to your main keywords and go from there.

4. Keyword Grouping

Nowadays it’s not enough to simply rely on a set of main keywords. What’s become more effective is the intelligent use of primary, secondary, and other related keywords–also known as keyword clusters or groups.

Having these related keywords present in your text content helps prove to Google that your content is actually relevant to searchers’ queries. There are keyword grouping tools that you can use, or you can do it manually, as tedious as that may sound.

You’ll be surprised at how well it pays off in the end, especially in proving your site’s relevance in search engine results.

5. Improve Site Speed

Are you even surprised that site speed has become even more necessary this year? Your site’s speed is not just an important ranking signal, it’s also a major UX factor, which of course impacts rankings as well.

To give you an idea of what your standards of site speed should be, Google expects your pages to load in under 3 seconds. Just three seconds.

If you’re not up to par with that, first thing you should do is to know your site’s speed using Google’s page speed test. You can check on individual pages there and identify problem areas that you should fix as soon as possible.

Conclusion

The new year is a chance for you to revisit your SEO strategies to see what’s been working, what’s lacking, and what you can improve on. At the same time, you have to be aware of the updates that are coming your way, so you can prepare for it ahead of your competitors.

If you feel overwhelmed, you can start with these 5 SEO tasks we’ve provided and go on from there.

Awareness is half the battle and since you’re already in the know, consider it as a small victory! Of course, just make sure to follow through in executing these tasks and strategies to win over the SEO game this 2018.

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