The 5 considerable SEO and Content Shifts You Must Know

by SEO Ninja Best Digital Marketing Services in USA

In the past five years, Google has kicked out a lot of marketers. Be it major algorithm updates or mobile first technology, the goal of everything is common — providing best search experience to users.

It has been observed that some marketers find it difficult to keep up with and adjust to these changes. On the other hand, there are brands that are doing great. Want to know why? Because they know how to stay ahead of Google’s changing algorithms via content and quality.

To dominate the corporate world and move ahead of competitors, it is important to figure out where Google is going to be in the coming months, years and beyond. Check out 5 SEO shifts that are a must to master for every business and industry type.

1. From SEO to SEO and content convergence

Just as content alone can’t assure SEO success, SEO alone can’t assure that the content will engage the massive audience.

How to master this shift?

Ensure content creation is data based: Always define the engagement, audience and conversion metrics that are important for the brand. Tracking them is useful to get the insights that are needed to create meaningful content that is audience-centric and helpful to better the content marketing efforts.

Promote search, content and social interaction: To achieve the goals and objectives, organic search, content and social platform are very important. Hence, it is required to create high-quality content blended with SEO to boost the search visibility. This should be followed by promoting the content on social media.

Maximize search engine results page footprint: Focus on creating and optimizing high-ROI content such as videos, articles, and infographics as they connect people with trendy topics and news. Once this is done, help your brand stand out in search engine results page through images, related questions, videos, site links, tweets, etc.

2. From mobile to mobile-first

Optimizing for mobile search and devices is not only optional but mandatory in today’s challenging scenario. To capitalize in mobile micro-moments, it is necessary for the brand to be mobile-ready.

How to master this shift?

Accept that it’s a mobile-first world: As per reports, brands that are not mobile-optimized get 65% less traffic. Ensure your mobile experience do justice with expectations; else you will lose market share and revenue to your competitors.

Make mobile SEO fast & efficient: Besides being impressive and easy to navigate, the mobile website should be fast. More than 50% of users leave sites that take more than 3 seconds to load. Make sure this doesn’t happen with you.

Consider contextual mobile content: Provide content that relates to users and provides them the needed information. Make sure to influence the audience when they are ready to convert. This usually takes place on the desktop or in store as compared to a smartphone.

3. From local to hyperlocal

The hyperlocal opportunity has never proved great for marketers. However, it helps in reaching people depending on their location. This is helpful for brands to benefit from searches such as capitalize on “near me” searches and “I-want-to-go” micro-moments and turn hyper-relevant as well as hyper-valuable.

How to master this shift?

Own local search: Ensure that contact details searched by people are easy to find and prominent. These details include name, phone number, address, directions and hours.

Hyperlocal optimization is equivalent to hyper important: Google’s hyperlocal results give visibility to small geographic locations. Hence, keep your My Business page optimized, build localized content & landing pages, use local business Schema markup and track the performance of local keyword rankings.

Understand the connection of local and mobile: It has been concluded that people who search locally on smartphones have higher intent. In other words, about 50% of smartphone users visit a business or store every single day. These people have their own needs that differ from those involved in local searches on other devices.

4. From text to voice

Reports say that about 20 to 25% mobile queries are voice searches. Though this does not mean calling text searches dead, voice search is a growing area that is needed by marketers to head forward. It can be said that future of voice search is promising and it will continue rising as consumer acceptance of virtual assistants increases.

How to master this shift?

The more the voice searches, the more the answers: Voice search brings various types of search results as maximum voice searches are the question like what, who, when, why, where and how. These questions tell about user intent. Therefore, it is useful to identify high-intent keywords and optimize content that gives answers for such queries in order to enable the brand being found in the changing SERPs.

Urge to voice search is increasing: Reason as to why people are shifting to voice search is that it is accurate and more useful than ever. Besides, it is easy and fast as compared to typing. Looking at the coming years, 50% of all searches will be voice searches. Hence, it would be good to identify and provide content in a way that it meets the needs of such searchers.

Turn smart about intelligent agents: It is beneficial to know that most of the voice searches happen at home as compared to anywhere else. Such intelligent agents depend on semantics, user interests, search history and behaviors to come up with the best results. Hence, ensure the content is aligned with the goals and interests of customers.

5. From data to machine learning

Google depends on machine learning in the form of Rank Brain in order to make sense of the huge amounts of data. It also helps in delivering the best search results for users. For marketers also it is necessary to turn to machine learning as it helps in understanding the aim, interests, and behavior of audience, which further helps in delivering & personalizing the content that’s in demand.

How to master this shift?

View data as a source of truth: To capitalize on demand, spot patterns and surpass the competitors, it is important for the marketers to go beyond the ‘what’ and understand the ‘why’ and ‘what’ of analytics.

Utilize AI & machine learning: Machine learning is very beneficial for marketers as it assists them in spending less time analyzing data and getting more time to create content that is effective in engaging and influencing prospects & customers.

Define metrics and measurement: Data is effective in allowing marketers make better and accurate decisions. It is important to define the metrics that matter to the brand, iterate and better the content production along with organic search optimization. This is a call for greater visibility and share of voice.

Follow these 5 points and measure the results to create engaging, effective and fresh content that’s truly worth the investment.