It has been an incredibly eventful season with regards to up-dates from Google. Important 2013 changes included further produces of Penguin and Panda, Hummingbird getting flight, and the move away from providing keyword and key phrase information thanks to secured look for.
Many have gone so far as to ask whether SEO as a career is dead: for one interesting viewpoint, see my latest Forbes interview with Sam Roberts of VUDU Promotion. My own take is fewer alarmists: Google has taken major spam-fighting steps that have moved the stage for SEO experts and anyone trying to get their website on the map in the season forward.
At one time, the need for an internet business has never been more powerful, while the scenery has never been more competitive. The prospective to create a real ROI impact with your organization's on the internet marketing effort is greater than ever. But defaulting to so-called "gray hat" techniques no more works. Instead, SEO experts need to step up and accept a more efficient perspective of our specialty.
You might call it a move from tactician to strategist: the best and most efficient players in our space will continue to perform to predict Google next goes and reply to them with laser concentrate. In a sense, the unlimited electronic activity of poker that is SEO will proceed, but the rules of the experience have become more complicated.
Through a mix of what I'm monitoring and studying and what I'm seeing working out in the area these days for my clients, here are some suggestions for organizations and SEO experts that are thinking forward to 2014 for their electronic techniques.
Everything you learned in 2013 is Still Relevant, Just Amplified
When you look closely at the objectives of the 2013 up-dates (i.e., websites that deceive their way to the top of the positions or provide no value to visitors), I predict seeing these carried forward throughout 2014. We can keep anticipate small improvements to Panda and Penguin that keep concentrate on both web link great quality and material great quality.
Smart promoters will benefit from keeping an eye on their web link information, and performing regular audits to recognize and remove backlinks developed unusually. Top great quality material investment strategies will stay crucial.
A strong SEO performance in 2014 is going to be developed on a base of really understanding what occurred in 2013, and what these changes mean both tactically and logically for SEO. SEO really has changed in crucial ways.
Content Promotion is Bigger than Ever
Content marketing will move from buzzword to older marketing activity in 2014. From an SEO viewpoint, Google will be looking at organizations that have efficient material marketing initiatives as a sign that they're the kind of company Google wants to support.
Think of all the advantages of a excellent material strategy:
Regular, helpful material targeted at your viewers.
Social alerts from frequent discussions and involvement.
Freshness or signs that your website is in existence and growing.
Increasing power connected to your human body of perform.
Sound familiar? It's the very strategy to SEO that all of Google latest up-dates have been developed to shape.
What changes you need to create in 2014 relies upon mostly on where your company stands now in regards to an efficient material on the internet marketing technique. Companies with current material techniques will need to evaluate the part of cellular, specifically.
If you've just started to move towards material marketing, it's a chance to really make and broaden. If you haven't started yet, it's a chance to take the drop.
Social Press Performs a Progressively Noticeable Role
Social media has been an important player in the on the internet marketing scenery for the last few decades. First we saw the increase of super systems like Facebook or myspace and Twitter. In the last few decades, visible materials from systems like Pinterest, Instagram, and various micro-video services has taken through.
Today, variation is an important trend: based on who you're focusing on, it's no more enough to be efficient on a single network. In fact, The Content Promotion Institution lately released a research that the most beneficial B2B promoters are efficient on an average of seven systems. Companies and SEO experts will need to be asking the following questions in the season ahead:
Are we getting our public networking seriously? Are we employing the support beams of strong information, excellent material, reciprocity, and engagement?
Is simple public discussing allowed for all of our content?
Does our material technique consist of a distribution stage that includes increasing its prospective for submission through public networks?
Are we efficient on the public media sites that issue in our industry?
Are we efficient on the public media sites that issue to our customers?
Are we efficient on the public media sites that issue to the look for engines? (See below for more thoughts on making that ideal investment).
Does our public internet on the internet marketing technique activate the level of public alerts required to achieve our goals?
Google's up-dates are likely to increasingly rely on public alerts as efficient human curation of excellent material.
Invest in Google+
In addition to building up your overall public on the internet marketing position, it's going to be definitely crucial that you are investing in your Google+ existence.
Moz's most latest research of position factors verifies that Google+ is enjoying a more and more part in a strong SEO position. The immediate places to concentrate on include:
Establishing Google Authorship of your material, and attaching it to your Google+ account. Authorship, which brings your human body of material together, will play an important part in the SERPs as well as building up your Author Position.
Those +1's add up. It isn't clear exactly how much Google +1's directly play a role, but it's reasonable to say that it's an important component in the "social signals" component of Google requirements. I anticipate this to increase in the season forward.
Hummingbird Was Just the Tip of the Mobile Iceberg
2014 will be the season of cellular SEO. Hummingbird was just the very small visible tip of a very large iceberg as Google battles to reply to the quickly moving scenery where half of all People in America own mobile phones and at least one-third own pills. Those researches will probably move way up, maybe considerably, after the 2013 holidays.
As an outcome, your website's cellular performance matters to your SEO positions. Qualities that you're trying to position need to be developed first for cellular and then scaly up for the big screen. If you don't have a mobile-optimized website, this needs to be your top concern with regards to SEO and design investment strategies for 2014.
Some actual changes that occurred with Hummingbird, such as the improving importance of both semantic look for and Knowledge Chart will keep growing in influence. Practically speaking, this is to help get ready the on the internet look for engine for the increase of voice look for associated with cellular. But it also has direct effects (which we're still learning about) for wider SEO. This is one place that you should concentrate on, from how you structure your material to what material you choose to put out.
The Lengthy Compared to Brief Debate
Which is better, long material or short content? The response relies on who is developing the material, who is studying it, what it's about, in what perspective it's being absorbed, and how you determine "better."
For the reasons of this discussion, which form of material will help you best get ready to position well in 2014? Frustratingly for some, the response is more "both/and" than "or."
Vocus lately mentioned a research that revealed that the top 10 results for a particular keyword and key phrase look for maintained to be more than 2,000 conditions long. The credibility of that research has been discussed, but it's probably reasonable to say that duration is a proxies for detail of skills and value sent to the reader.
Google principles both skills and value. Consequently, we've seen a pattern where the "minimum suitable length" for text-based material has moved from something in the variety of 550 conditions to articles in the variety of 1000-plus conditions.
Yet we're also encountered with the reality of the cellular device: if I'm studying about something I'm only somewhat interested in, there's a excellent venture that I won't want to search through 2,000 conditions on my iPhone. That simply leaves material promoters faced with the task of producing mobile-friendly material, which tends to be (in a capturing generality) much, much shorter.
Proposed solutions have run the range from material blends to website architectures that allow you to point visitors to particular editions of material based on their devices. This is great for the consumer experience, but where it all comes out on the SEO requirements front continues to be to be seen. For now, I'll just recognize that it's a place of concern that will keep develop and that it's something you should keep your eye on.
Advertising and PPC has a Shifted Relationship with SEO
Since Google determined to secure many its queries, our ability to accessibility keyword and key phrase information for research reasons has been limited. However, there's a loophole. Keyword information is still available for promoters using PPC on Google system.
More SEO costs may be motivated toward PPC simply because accessibility the information may otherwise be limited. It's also possible that we'll see the release of a top quality Google product to provide us accessibility that information through another route from Google in the season forward.
Guest Writing a blog Remains One of the Most Effective Tactics, with a Caveat
Guest blogging is growing in the past season, and it's going to stay one of the most beneficial means of building great quality backlinks, traffic, and marketing exposure in 2014. However, it's definitely crucial that you're developing great high quality material, and using extremely strict requirements when selecting your concentrate on sites.
In other conditions, you need to apply the same great ethos strategy to visitor blogging that you do to the rest of your SEO initiatives. If you dip a toe into spam rich waters where visitor blogging is basically scattershot article promotion with a 2014 upgrade, you're likely to be punished in a future Penguin upgrade.
Conclusion
This has been a season of great change in the SEO market. Even thinking about techniques for 2014 can feel incredible.
The fantastic news is that looking back, it's simple to see which route the styles are heading with regards to the decades forward. Staying the course on strong white hat techniques and focusing on a few concern places that are moving quickly should provide you with the ideas needed to improve your look for exposure in 2014 and beyond.
What styles do you predict seeing from Google in the season ahead? How are you preparing?