The Biggest Shifts In SEO You Need To Know For 2015

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search-engine-optimization-411106_640If you are still running SEO the same way you were at the start of the year you are already behind the curve. SEO is constantly changing and proper SEO strategies need to be well-planned enough to stay on target over long periods of time while also flexible enough to adapt to the constant guideline changes, algorithm roll-outs, and new ideas about usability.

In the past year alone, Google has pushed out 13 updates to algorithms that the public knows about. That number is just the big algorithms that people might know by name such as Penguin and Panda, while there has also been a multitude of more incremental changes that have gone undocumented in the public.

You don’t have to rebuild your SEO plans from the ground up every time there are significant changes over at Google, but you need to keep the biggest changing trends in mind as you progress and refine efforts. As we head into 2015, consider the most important shifts in SEO thinking that have happened over the past year.

1. Focus on Mobile Traffic

This may not be the newest shift in SEO, but it is more important than ever and all indications suggest mobile isn’t slowing down any time soon. Google has also shown their commitment to improving the mobile web with the introduction of mobile analytics tools and new warnings for users who are about to click on non-mobile friendly websites.

You can see if your site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test here, but don’t stop with that. Ensure your mobile site lives up the standards set by your desktop page and your company to keep mobile customers coming.

2. Optimizing for Alternative Search Engines

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that 2015 may be the year when Google’s iron grasp on search market share could start to crumble. Google has lost some major clout as Firefox replaced the search giant with Yahoo as the default search engine for the browser. Google’s agreement with Safari is also ending this year, and Apple seems keen to replace their competitor’s search engine with a more neutral option such as Bing, Yahoo, or even DuckDuckGo.

Even if Google maintains a strong majority of the market share (which they likely will) you should still make it your mission to be visible across all platforms, not just the most popular one.

3. Stop Focusing on Rankings and Start Looking at ROI Metrics

Rankings are so last year. Since all the major search engines have put a heavy emphasis on personalized search results that cater to users’ interests and location data, there is no guarantee your site will show as the top result for someone else even if it is the top result for you. Instead, turn your attention to return on investment. It offers a more accurate depiction of how your online marketing efforts are working, and gives a more direct understanding of the value of your SEO.

4. Emphasize Social Media

In the past, emphasizing social media basically meant blasting the same updates across every platform you can find. But, social media has matured and users won’t respond to your efforts if you treat every platform as the same. You should learn the unique demographics and behaviors of any social media platform you are considering sharing on, and ensure your ideas, voice, and medium match the crowd.

More importantly, social media users expect brands to more than just yell at them. Users expect ways to engage your brand and establish a more personal connection. The best solution is to isolate two or three social media platforms that best suit your brand and build on your efforts there. If you can really succeed there, you won’t need to be on the other social sites.

5. Earn Links, Don’t Hoard Them

You have most likely heard the routine proclamations that “links are dead!” more than once since Google began cracking down on weak or suspicious link portfolios. However, this is no truer now than when the internet first gained a foothold in our society. Links are still the most influential signal of trust and authority to search engines and that is going to stay the case for quite some time. However, the game has changed in a couple important ways.

Back in 2011, you could purchase countless low-quality links to masquerade as a reputable site. Now, Google has means of seeing through the mask. Google can analyze link quality and they don’t take kindly to poor quality, irrelevant links meant to boost visibility without effort. In 2015, earning a single high-quality link the right way is worth more than any number of links you could buy or collude to gain. Put your effort into proper SEO and you’ll find success. Rely on shady tactics and Google will be hunting for you.

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Google Maps Releases Overhauled Local Page Quality Guidelines

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Google-Maps-being-offline-doesnt-mean-being-lost-300x252Last night, Google Maps released massively revamped quality guidelines for local pages which could have a heavy impact on businesses who don’t ensure their pages conform. Jade Wang from Google shared the news in the Google Forums stating:

We’ve updated and clarified our quality guidelines for local pages. Please read the new version here, and, as always, feel free to contact our support team with any specific questions about your account.

You can see a screenshot of the old guidelines here courtesy of Barry Schwartz, but the most important revisions to the guidelines are highlighted below:

  • Descriptors of any sort are NOT allowed
  • Categories should be the more specific category and NOT the overarching, general category
  • Increased name and category consistency amongst multi location chains
  • Two or more brands at the same location must pick one name
  • If Different departments are to have their own page they must have unique categories
  • Practitioner’s pages, in multi-location practices should have their name only and not the name of the practice
  • Solo Practitioners only can use the format of Practice: Practitioner
  • Virtual Offices are NOT allowed unless staffed.

Many aren’t taking the update seriously as Google Maps local pages are far too often neglected, but the updated rules may be a sign that Google intends to clean up the mess in the near future. It is always better to be proactive than to find yourself smacked with a penalty.

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Facebook Sent 10% More Traffic To Publishers This Year

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According to Parse.ly’s quarterly Authority Report, Facebook is still the best social platform for publishers looking for exposure. The site saw a 10 percent increase in referral traffic to publisher sites this August, compared to the data from a year earlier.

Parse.ly analyzed data from over 10 billion page views and more than 100,000 posts across its network to track online reading trends in an effort to determine peak reading times and referral traffic patterns. The report found that reading times peaked at 12:18 p.m., at which point desktop page views outperform mobile.

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While Google was still the lead referral traffic, Facebook continues to hold the second spot making it the top social network to send traffic to publisher websites.

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Surprisingly, the report shows very little change in traffic patterns over the past year, with Facebook being the only site in the top 10 to experience a significant increase in the amount of traffic sent to publisher sites.

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Parse.ly’s report also noted that traffic from social sites had risen seven percent over the past year, while traffic from search sites fell by four percent. You can get more insights from the downloadable report here.

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Google Webmaster Reports Now Warns About Mobile Usability Mistakes

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Google has been emphasizing the importance of mobile design and usability over the past year and now the search giant has added mobile usability reports to Webmaster Tools. Many believe this could be a sign that Google may be making mobile usability a ranking factor sooner rather than later.

The tool is intended to show whether your mobile site has any of the common usability issues that degrade a user’s mobile browsing experience.

Currently, the tool included specific errors for showing flash content on mobile (which can also result in a warning on mobile search results for your site), missing viewport meta-tag for mobile pages, improperly small fonts which are hard to read on mobile, fixed-width viewports, content not sized to viewport, and clickable links and buttons spaced too closely together.

John Mueller from Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst team based in Zurich said they “strongly recommend you take a look at these issues in Webmaster Tools.”

Of course, Mueller could simply be encouraging this because it improves user experience, but there is strong evidence to suggest Google will eventually make mobile user experience a ranking signal within search engine algorithms.

You can see an example of the reports below:

Mobile Usability Reports

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How To Succeed With e-Commerce This Halloween [Infographic]

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Man people across the country are scrambling to get a last minute Halloween costumes as the holiday grows closer, and that means marketers are making their final Halloween ad push. This is especially true for e-commerce sites who make up are hoping to get their own chunk of the nearly $7 billion spent annually on Halloween costumes.

Thankfully, your e-commerce site can still reap its own piece of the pie, so long as you move fast and know what customers are looking for in the final days before ghosts and vampires wander the street for a night.

Nextopia investigated online Halloween purchasing behavior and shared their findings in a convenient, easy to understand infographic (seen below). So long as you know when and where people are spending the money, e-commerce can be a hugely successful market this time of year.

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Ranking First Matters on Mobile According to seoClarity Study

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Those who have been following search trends in the past couple years have likely heard that being the first result on the search engine results pages (SERPs) is not nearly as important these days, mostly because the results we see are now customized based on location and user habits.

This is absolutely still the case for desktop searching, but a new click-through ranking study conducted by seoClarity suggests the difference between first and second in mobile search results may be the difference between success and failure. Their findings show such a large drop-off between the first and second rankings that there was no notable difference between the second listing and those that followed.

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In the graph of mobile click through rates, you can see the first result receives nearly three times the number of clicks compared to the second ranking, while desktop rankings continue to show a more gradual slope following the first result.

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To conduct the study, seoClarity examined over 2 billion impressions from Google Webmaster Tools data over a 90 day period between June and August. You can download and view the full report here.

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Google Rolls Out New Penguin Algorithm Update Shortly After Updating Panda

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Image source: Lin Padgham

Image source: Lin Padgham

If you thought Google might be slowing down on updating their most well-known search algorithms, the past month may have been a bit of a shocker for you. First, Google rolled out the latest update to their Panda algorithm in late September, and less than a month later they have released the first update to their Penguin algorithm in over a year.

If Penguin and Panda aren’t familiar terms to you, they are the names of two major algorithms which determine what Google’s search results will look like for a given search. They help evaluate websites and reward those who are following guidelines while punishing those who bend or break the rules.

While the Panda algorithm mostly relates to the content directly on webpages, Penguin aims to take down those who try to cheat Google by creating unnatural backlinks to try to gain higher rankings. Both often these algorithms penalize webmasters and the businesses who run these pages when there was no malicious intent.

Unfortunately, with the complex system that makes up Google’s search algorithms and their ever-changing guidelines and many business owners have been shocked to discover their site is no longer appearing in the search results after an algorithm update.

While site owners can frequently bounce back after these penalties, they can also destroy any momentum you had and lose you potential customers. That’s why it is always important to have someone who is consistently up-to-date on all of Google’s latest policy changes to make sure your site is staying within the rules.

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Tulsa Is Recognized By Google As Oklahoma’s eCity for 2014

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Google Ecity Tulsa

To those who have never been here, Tulsa might not seem like the most technologically innovative city, but anyone who has lived in Tulsa knows otherwise. Tulsa’s companies leverage the internet to grow their businesses in inventive and practical ways every day, and the city is finally getting some recognition for their efforts.

Google named Tulsa as Oklahoma’s eCity for 2014, recognizing the city for having the strongest online business community in the state and celebrates those who have embraced the internet and its multitude of ways to connect with new and existing customers alike.

“Our eCity Awards recognize the new ‘digital capitals’ of America,” said Dave Barr, Google’s hardware operations manager for the Oklahoma data center. “We’re proud to recognize this growing entrepreneurial spirit—and the role that it plays in both creating jobs and sustaining local economies. With 97 percent of Internet users looking for products and services online, it’s clear that success is about being connected.”

“Tulsa is honored to be named the Google eCity of Oklahoma, the digital capital of our state,” said Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr. “This award speaks to the strength of Tulsa’s online business community, as organizations are embracing the power of the Internet to find new customers, connect with existing clients, and create twice as many jobs with their online presence.”

“Already recognized by Forbes as the nation’s top city for young entrepreneurs, Tulsa has quietly become a nationally-recognized hub of innovation — a place where fresh ideas thrive and businesses find success in embracing the future,” said Mike Neal, president and CEO, Tulsa Regional Chamber. “Tulsa’s new distinction as Oklahoma’s ‘digital capital’ is further proof that its enterprising small business community has set the standard for how to grow business in a new era.”

Not only have Tulsa’s startups and young entrepreneurs been using the internet to expand their businesses and reach out to where customers are, we are using the internet in new ways never previously imagined to connect with audiences in more meaningful ways than ever before.

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Google’s John Mueller Says HTTPS Is Only a “Very Lightweight Signal”

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Much has been made out of the announcement that Google would include switching from HTTP to HTTPS in their ranking algorithm. Despite clearly stating that the factor would be lightweight in the initial announcement, the possibility of a relatively easy rankings boost drove lots of people to make the switch immediately.

In the aftermath studies from analytics groups such as SearchMetrics have suggested that any effect of switching URLs might have is largely unnoticeable. Now, Google’s John Mueller has basically admitted that the signal currently too lightweight to have any noticeable effect but that may change at some point in the future.

At 22 minutes and 21 seconds in a recent video hangout, Mueller explained that HTTPS is a ranking signal but it is only a “very lightweight signal” and there aren’t any plans to change that in the future.

Jennifer Slegg was the first to report Mueller’s statement and transcribed it:

I wouldn’t expect any visible change when you move from http to https, just from that change, just from SEO reasons. That kind of ranking effect is very small and very subtle. It’s not something where you will see a rise in rankings just from going to https

I think that in the long run, it is definitely a good idea, and we might make that factor stronger at some point, maybe years in the future, but at the moment you won’t see any magical SEO advantage from doing that.

That said, anytime you make significant changes in your site, change the site’s URLs, you are definitely going to see some fluctuations in the short term. So you’ll likely see some drop or some changes as we recrawl and reindex everything. In the long run, it will settle down to about the same place, it won’t settle down to some place that’s like a point higher or something like that.

You can see the video below:

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Google Rolls Out The Latest Panda Update

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Panda

Webmasters using “thin” or poor quality content may have seen a drop in traffic this week, as Google has announced that the release of the latest version of its Panda Update.

According to a post on Google+, the “slow rollout” began early this week and will continue into next week before being complete.

While those trying to do the bare minimum to improve rankings may have reason for concern, the new update could also be a relief to many who say they were improperly affected by previous updates as this update is intended to be more precise. As the announcement says:

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

Those who were affected by previous updates may also welcome the latest release, as it means anyone who has made the right changes since the last update finally have a chance to bounce back.

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