What SEO tactics are most critical in 2015

When it comes to marketing your business, SEO is an essential component to growing your online presence. From web page design to content creation and social media, how your business utilizes SEO best practices directly correlates with how much intent driven traffic makes it to your business’ website.  SEO still provides the best ROI of any online marketing strategy.

However, SEO isn’t something you leave to chance.  As search engines evolve and refine the user experience, the best SEO services evolvewith them.

• A recent report finds that search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by 300%

• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.

When you want the best SEO services, choosing a company that knows your business, that knows your customers and knows what current SEO strategies will increase visibility and demonstrate your expertise is important to getting the online exposure your business needs. Here we review SEO techniques that will take your business up a notch in 2015.

1.) On-page SEO is crucial

On-page SEO refers to code and other strategies your business can implement to gain ground in search engine results. One of the most important of these strategies is including keyword phrases into your site content and metadata, which is descriptive information about your site and its pages written in your site’s code that is only visible to search engines.

Optimizing for keyword phrases is one of the most important SEO concepts. What are keyword phrases? They are what your customers and clients use when they search for relevant content online. When the phrases they search for show up in the titles, copy, and metadata of your content, as long as it’s user-friendly and beneficial, your business is going to be ranked higher by search engines such as Google.

• On-page optimization makes up approximately 25% of your entire SEO factor.
• 70% of search traffic comes from keyword phrases.
• Click through rates increase as keywords become more specific.

The technical side of SEO matters and that’s why on-page optimization efforts such as title tagging, URL structure, creating a site map, and metadata are so important.  A good SEO service provider will take all of these factors into account, and they won’t take any shortcuts such as inserting a bunch of keyword-rich anchor text into your site code or buying links. Those tactics do not work anymore and are a waste of your marketing dollars.

2.) Speed impacts rankings

It’s simple; the faster your website loads, the better your search engine rankings. If your website takes forever to load, it kills the user experience and your chances at startingany conversions. This doesn’t just mean your site has to load quickly on just desktop computers. Since Google has prioritized site responsiveness and mobile-friendliness, optimizing your site and content to load quickly over 4G and even 3G cellular networks is a priority, and it matters to your customers and clients as well.

• 52% of consumers state that quick page loading is important to their site loyalty.
• 40% of consumers abandon a website that takes more than 3-seconds to load.
• 73% of consumers using mobile devices for Internet state that they’ve experienced a website that was too slow to load.

When a 1-second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, the importance of speed optimization cannot be overlooked. To speed up your site, make sure your hosting provider has fast servers, well optimized visual assets, and clean, efficient code. There is no reason for media and external scripts to slow down your business’ website. Here at Pixelcarve, we know that proper SEO implementation requires speed optimization and we do everything to ensure your website loads quickly on computers and mobile devices.

3.) Make your site mobile

As mentioned above, making your website easy to view and navigate for mobile users is a key driver of search engine rankings. That’s because search engine algorithms increasingly take into account how easy-to-use your website is on mobile devices. If your website is not responsive and is hard to read for visitors using mobile phones, tablets, and wearable devices, you are missing out on reaching the largest segment of Internet and search engine users.

• According to Google72% of consumers want mobile-friendly sites.

• 70% of mobile searches result in action being taken within an hour, as opposed to a week for desktop searches.

With the continued growth in mobile search engine traffic, the bestSEO servicesalways include strategies that are focused on improving the mobile user experience. They willmake your business more competitive both on and offline.

4.) Contentcreation

Probably one of the most useful SEO techniques for increasing your business’ website ranking is content creation. Content for your business needs to be consistent, authoritative, and reinforce your brand voice. Developing astrong content marketing plan will help your business provide the in-depth content-driven experiences that search engines and visitors are looking for.

• According to Demand Metric 90% of organizations now market with content.

• According to Content+, 60% of customers say they feel more positive about a brand after reading custom content on its site.

Content creation that is focused on user-friendliness, quality, and providing beneficial information that people can use will help grow your business, generate leads, increase brand awareness, and have a positive impact on your business’ brand perception. Here are some things to avoid:

• Duplicate content– If you have a high percentage of duplicate or plagiarized content on your business’ website, your rankings will suffer.

• Weak content– If your website content is weak and written purely for SEO reasons, visitors and search engines such as Google are going to know. Quality content should take precedence over quantity.

• Content length– How many words are your blog posts? If it’s not long enough, you’re wasting your time.  Google prefers websites that contain at least 2,000 words.

At Pixelcarve, we understand that search engines are constantly evolving to provide the best results to users and that the best SEO services need to be responsive to these changes.

5.)   Link Acquisition

And let’s not forget links!   Links are still one of the most critical factors affecting search engine rankings.  A recent 2015 study, published by MOZ on ranking factors, shows that links are still a primary driver of rankings.   The intricacy of link building is a whole other topic we will leave for a separate blog J   Acquiring quality inbound links to your site is critical and cannot be left out of any SEO campaign to be successful.

Let’s put it another way that may be easier to understand – if you walk into a party and announce to everyone that you are awesome, you likely won’t get a lot of traction. Sure, after some people have gotten to know you they may discover that you actually are, in fact, awesome. But if you walk into a party and several other people announce that you are awesome, then it’s more likely to actually be so. This is how Google works – it essentially looks around the web to see what others are saying about you, who is linking back to you, and in what context.

This is why backlinks are so important because they say more about you than you could ever say about yourself.

If your business seems stuck with low page rankings and gets very little traffic, having a professional team that can provide intelligent SEO services allows you to take advantage of the latest SEO techniques, while giving you the time to stay focused on your business.  If you are unsure about the next steps on leveraging SEO for your business, get in touch for a complimentary 20-minute strategy session.