If you own a business, then you care about SEO…or at least you should! For years, businesses both small and large have been competing in a world of keywords, search traffic, paid search, long tail terms, link building, and a variety of other SEO-related techniques. All this has been done in an effort to boost search engine result rankings for the terms they hold dear – the terms that they believe will bring the warmest leads their way.
But the past few years have seen significant changes made on the SEO playing field. These changes, initiated by Google, which is the largest and most dominant of the engines, have reshaped the way businesses are looking at their methodologies and even their goals when it comes to SEO in 2014.
Making Plans for SEO in 2017
We know that making the most of your online presence is an important part of your overall marketing strategy. As we move into this new year, we’d like to help you plan accordingly. So we’ve accumulated some summaries and tips from some of the top authorities on SEO to help you get a grasp on what’s new and what’s important in 2014.
Wise Words from Search Engine Watch:
The experts over at Search Engine Watch believe that 2014 is the year for page-centric SEO. They advise that companies should align their SEO and content marketing to produce one, unified approach.
In a recent blog, Search Engine Watch stated that 2013 was the “year SEO changed forever.” They cite Hummingbird as the quintessential point at which the focus on quality content became non-negotiable.
Crazy Egg Explains It All:
Crazy Egg expands on what Search Engine Watch began. With an in depth discussion of the importance of semantic search, one of their recent blogs stated that Hummingbird has changed it all – from the way sites develop content, to the way they determine keywords and the importance of Google’s Knowledge Graph.
They suggest that for your efforts in SEO in 2017, it will be imperative to focus on being mobile friendly and ensuring that your content is tied to writers who have established authority through Google Authorship.
Search Engine Land Lays It Out:
The experts over there put it in plain and simple words, outlining exactly what the Knowledge Graph is all about. They explain that Google’s goal is now “matching the intent of the query to the suitability of a page that matches that intent.” So now SEO is not so much about particular words searched as it is about the intent of those words.
While this may be a strange adjustment for the marketers who have been keyword obsessed for years, Search Engine Land encourages business owners to focus more and more on semantic search. They even go as far as to say that giving up the #1 spot on SERPS could be to your advantage…if it leads to more traffic and a better bottom line! After all, isn’t that the end result anyway?
