Inbound Marketing SEO & PPC Blog | OneIMS

What Does the Future of SEO Hold in 2017? - OneIMS

Written by Solomon Thimothy | Jan 3, 2017 9:00:00 AM

SEO is as integral to businesses’ marketing plans as it’s always been, but it’s going to continue to become more important to modify and curate, with close cooperation required between SEO, marketing, and development teams throughout the rest of the year and into 2017.

Unlike the old days, SEO considerations should influence the marketing team’s efforts and PR, improving engagement, visibility, and reputation to increase site traffic. In many cases, SEO teams may want to conduct their own content marketing campaigns to improve both the website’s visibility and reputation.

Developers are also involved in SEO, garnering influence from SEO teams based on site architecture requirements, pages that require creation to meet various user needs, types of content that are ideal to achieve specific SEO goals, and more.

 

Increasing Website Visibility

It’s important for businesses to do what they can to maximize the outreach of their content, with proactive content marketing strategies in place. A solid content marketing plan will effectively reach and engage audiences, and it can also directly affect SEO as a result.

There are many ways for businesses to create and release engaging content, including:

  • Publishing data from either research studies or from data based on store or site activity
  • Publishing research studies
  • Creating high-quality infographics
  • Creating readable, engaging, fresh, optimized and original content
  • Writing guest posts that establish your business as an industry authority with placement on reputable sites

You don’t have to stick to one method of going about these steps, either, and there are many other ideas you can use for content generation, marketing, and publishing.

Avoiding Expensive Mistakes in SEO

Many brands wind up wasting too much time focused on particular tactics that are outdated and ineffective, usually because of their reliance on web teams or content management systems to do everything without any assistance.

The key to preventing potential mistakes in SEO is to focus on the bigger picture rather than a small portion of tasks. Google takes many aspects of a website into account when ranking it, with many different mysterious search ranking factors affecting them that most people don’t know.

Among the likely signals influencing search engine rankings are content quality and signs of user engagement, which makes top-quality content, PR and marketing efforts a necessity for improving SEO.

Optimizing for User Intent

A majority of businesses don’t put enough effort into optimizing specifically for user intent. While many companies may pay attention to the direct conversion rate of visitors to the website, they don’t often place any focus on leads who are at the very top of the sales funnel.

What helps is to acknowledge how users access the site and what they might want, including ways to get as much information as possible about a certain product or service, access to objective research and a way to receive notifications for product updates.

Providing potential customers and clients with these aspects can help draw more people to the bottom of the funnel as repeat customers. Content marketing plays a huge part in attracting these early leads until they’re ready to make a purchase.

Technical SEO, Content, and User Engagement Optimization

These three concepts are integral to effective SEO and will continue to be so.

If your technical SEO is bad, then you won’t be able to compete in organic search results. While completing and figuring out the framework can remove a lot of future work that you would otherwise need to do, getting the framework right can be a strenuous task depending on the company’s requirements.

User engagement optimization offers a superior user experience that many brands often ignore.

Last but not least is great content, which is key to engaging visitors and influencing their decision to step into the sales funnel. Great content can also get more high-quality links to your website and generate other signals of engagement.

Boost Your SEO Efforts for the New Year

2017 will see many changes and many similarities, but by taking advantage of each of these aspects in your SEO efforts, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the competition and at the top of your target rankings. You won’t need to worry about falling behind with high-quality SEO helping your business succeed where others may remain clueless and ineffective in their efforts to beat you out.

If you want help with your SEO and put your content and other aspects of your campaign in the hands of experienced professionals, consider contacting OneIMS for assistance today. We can offer a complete overhaul of your SEO campaign and work to help you rank where you want in your industry.