The New Year is here and SEO is changing just as fast as ever. To help you keep up MRS Web Solutions have come up with some SEO predictions for 2016. These are designed to help you keep up with the changing digital marketing landscape and avoid those nasty Google penalties.
Penguin Is Back, Check Those Links
It has been over a year and SEO professionals everywhere are preparing for the next big penguin update. Industry insiders are predicting that this new update will tackle some of the problems with links left behind by the 2014 penguin update.
If you are worried about this latest penguin update biting you, it is time to check those all important backlinks. A good backlink will be on a page relevant to your brand and ideally drive traffic to your site. If you have questionable links in your backlink profile, it may be time to get to know Googles disavow tool and let the search giant know you feel very bad about all those questionable links.
Of all the SEO trends in 2016 this may be the most important because it could prevent a significant penalty and, depending on the latest penguin update, provide an easy win for people with healthy backlink profiles.
Learn To Love Link Earning
Some SEO predictions in the past have said links will become less important but Google themselves say links are still an important part of their algorithm. The thing to remember when preparing your SEO for 2016 is the difference between link building and link earning.
Link building is a bad practice where you simply place a link anywhere you can. Link builders usually just try to get links on any page with a decent page rank. This gives their customers a questionable link profile.
Link earning is a more targeted approach. It is the practice of generating good content and sharing it with relevant sites. Link earning will create far fewer links than link building but each link is far more valuable and provides more long term benefits.
Google actually likes link earning because it relies on good content and only generates natural and relevant links. That is why any good SEO predictions will include link earning for 2016.
Social Is Sexy
Social media continues to grow in importance. Facebook is working hard on a better search experience, mobile traffic is relying heavily on social media apps and users are turning to social media to interact with brands. This means having a good social presence should be a part of any businesses 2016 SEO.
Think of your social media presence as your second website. You can show off products or services, speak directly to customers and make your business look more human. Mobile users might also prefer to use their social media apps to get crucial information about your business. That makes social a crucial part of our 2016 SEO trends.
The Review Revolution
Google is already using reviews as part of its algorithm and there are a number of sites that offer reviews. Google has its reviews, there are social media reviews on Facebook and there are review sites like yelp. All of these provide information that is trusted and widely valued by customers as well as being used by search engines. It is important to understand your reviews and where customers are talking about you as this is a huge part of your online reputation.
Behaviour Is Beautiful
Behavioural influence includes location, which is especially important on mobiles and with local search results. It also includes search behaviour like click through rate, bounce rate and time on site. Location, especially on mobile is a relatively new factor but all of these behaviours will grow in influence in 2016.
For location it is important to optimize for your area. This includes prominently displaying your location and contact details. Ensure there is location information in title tags and working on developing good local links.
When you review click through, bounce rate and time on site, it is important to keep in mind what you want your customer to do. If they are hitting page and bouncing, they may not have found what they were looking for. If they are only spending a small amount of time on your site, they could be finding what they want and leaving rather than buying. This means you are attracting the wrong type of users. Identify what you want your users to do then look at the barriers that could hamper that behaviour.
If you are worried about any of our 2016 SEO predictions, we can help. MRS Web Solutions have an SEO team that can answer your questions and provide help implementing any strategy you would like.
