About Me and Ignite • CEO of Ignite Visibility • 1 SEO consulting company in USA, UK and Canada by Clutch.co. • Clients included Tony Robbins, Morgan Stanley, WeddingWire, BTO Sports • SEO, social media, paid media, conversion rate optimization, email marketing and Amazon • Digital marketing teacher at the University of California San Diego since 2012. • Author of the book “Digital Influencer: A Guide to Achieving Influencer Status Online • Writer for Inc., Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, Search Engine Journal, Marketing Land and Search Engine Land.
Goal Today Show you what is working in SEO now and what to plan for this year
What I’m covering 21 need to know Items that will help you drive more traffic and revenue to your website
Section 1 Understanding Content And SEO Today
1. Articles are showing more in Google Search this year • Content showing up for more eCommerce related queries. • Good idea to have a content marketing strategy. • You can integrate it with your eCommerce site. ACTION ITEM: Develop content that addresses pain points that users may have.
2. Fresh Content Improves Rankings • Fresh Content improves rankings • It gets indexed by Google and the page ranks higher • Recently increased clients SEO traffic by 900% by adding all new content to site • Same strategy news sites use ACTION ITEM: Keep building new fresh content and repurpose old content! https://ignitevisibility.com/92-ways-torepurpose-old-content/
#1 for “Fish” constantly updated
3. Longer Content Is Ranking Better in Google • Content that is 2,000 words ranks the highest in Google • Most content is positions 1 through 4 are near 2,000 words • Make sure you are creating long content and updating it overtime ACTION ITEM: Add longer content to your site. Update it over time.
Video on Best Ranking Pages
Video
4. Optimizing Images Gives Each Page A Boost • Make sure to optimize each image • File name, alt text, caption • Try to have one optimized image for every 100 to 300 words • This helps each page rank • For eCommerce sites make sure each image is optimized
ACTION ITEM: Every image on your site should be optimized
5. Google Listings With Higher CTR Rank Better • Create better click bait headlines • This is a report in Google Search Console • Shows impressions and CTR • It can help you improve CTR • Find worst performers and improve them • This helps with rankings ACTION ITEM: • Review pages with worst CTR in Google Search Console. • Improve the page titles and descriptions. • Use AdWords data for this. Work on it overtime.
Section 2 Technical Elements That Really Matter
6. AMP Will Become More Important A new format for coding pages online. Supported by all the major sites. Makes pages fast. • Accelerated Mobile Project • Ignite increased traffic 30% after switching to AMP • It makes a new page on your website that lives at example.com/amp/ • Start with your news/blog section • More sections are also possible • Will be more heavily adopted in future ACTION ITEM: Make your news, blog and information areas AMP ready https://ignitevisibility.com/amp-project-seo/
Video on AMP – Watch Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrpkFROqR0Q
Demo on AMP – Watch Now
Video
7. Schema Is Helping With CTR, AI and More Markup that goes in your code. Tells Google and other sites what the page is about. • Helps Google better understand the page • Logo schema, review, product, breadcrumb, local and so much more • Helps with rich snippets and Google knowledge graph • Will help with artificial intelligence ACTION ITEM: Get proper schema on relevant pages. https://ignitevisibility.com/need-know-schema-org/
8. HTTPS Is Helping Websites Rank Makes your website secure. HTTPS is a ranking factor and it is predicted that over 50% of the pages on the first page of Google will be HTTPs by June. • Update all internal linking to point to https • Update all external links to point at https version of your site • Make sure images and fonts are secure • Put in 301 redirects and set up a new Google search console ACTION ITEM: Switch your website to https, you will rank better! https://ignitevisibility.com/guide-to-switching-from-http-to-https-for-seo/
9. Google Is Getting Better At Ranking Ajax and Javascript but it Has Not Yet! • Google no longer supports the #! Optimization • Google crawls and indexes AJAX and Javascript about 60% of the time • It does not rank very well • You need to have an HTML base that is optimized ACTION ITEM: • Focus on ranking the HTML portion of your site • AJAX and Javascript may work, but it is iffy
10. Google Mobile-First Update is Coming: Get Ready Now! • • • • • • • •
Google will start ranking websites by mobile first later this year Currently they are ranking sites by desktop first If you are not mobile ready, you could lose lots of traffic Recommending responsive design Test in the mobile testing tool A great report in Google Search Console Have fast page speed and good user metrics Content can be under a read more button
ACTION ITEM: Responsive design! Compress images! The mobile-first indexing is upon us. http://searchengineland.com/google-beginsexperimenting-mobile-first-index-hopes-expand-upcoming-months-262527
Section 3 Big Changes You Cannot Ignore
11. Backlinks Will Lose Strength • Recent studies show backlinks are less important for rankings • http://www.searchmetrics.com/kn owledge-base/ranking-factors/ • https://ignitevisibility.com/backlin ks-losing-strength/ • However, they are still important now • Do not buy them • Earn them ACTION ITEM: Shift from backlinks to content marketing. Keep acquiring links when possible. Focus on high domain authority, content links.
12. Rise of Artificial Intelligence • Google releases RankBrain • Machine learning system • Matches content to searches • 3rd biggest ranking factor ACTION ITEM: Have great content that answers all the users questions! http://searchengineland.com/faq-allabout-the-new-google-rankbrain-algorithm-234440
13. Social Factors Have More Weight • Heavily shared articles rank well • They don’t even need any links • Articles can be brand new • Get social shares for your content • The search engines look at this • Bing and Google • Lots of social signals for your website help the site overall ACTION ITEM: Increase social activity on channels that work best for your business. Develop content that leads to social sharing. http://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors
14. Get Your Products Ranked In Amazon, Now the Top Product Search Engine • Amazon is surpassing Google as largest product based search engine • Billions of orders a year • Need to be there • How To • Get reviews • Make sales • Optimize products ACTION ITEM: Ecommerce websites should get to know Amazon. Focus on product optimization – Amazon has it’s own ranking algorithm.
Demo on Amazon
AMZ Tracker – Watch Now
15. Searching In Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest
• • • •
Local business Products Services All are being searched
ACTION ITEM: Publish on these sites, use hashtags and opengraph on your site
16. Rise of Voice Search • Now about 30% of searches are voice search • Amazon Echo and Google Home • Google Assistant and Siri are also getting people used to voice search • This is a growing segment • Google maps long tail queries to keywords ACTION ITEM: • Make sure your content answers questions. • Structure pages as an FAQ in some cases.
18. Searches Are Now Happening for Home Devices But We Have No Data • People are now searching on home devices • We do not have data on this yet • We do know Google us using instant answers for much of this • Siri has specific data feeds • New advertising options are sure to come ACTION ITEM: • Make sure your content answers questions • Use Schema markup • Get in feeds that populate these databases
Video on Artificial Intelligence
Section 4 Things to keep in mind
17. Brand Searches Helping Rankings (Get Some) • A strong brand helps, no matter how creepy your mascot is • The more people who search for your brand, the higher you rank • Creative campaigns really help • Other types of marketing, radio, tv • You need to keep a buzz going around your company ACTION ITEM: • Have a marketing plan, Keep a buzz going, Do offline ads • Run social media campaigns, Run brand awareness campaigns • I really like YouTube ads here
19. Better Design and User Experience Helps With Rankings • Google loves websites that offer users a positive experience. • Website needs to be easy to use • Google artificial intelligence matters and looks at this • Example bad site ACTION ITEM: Improve your site architecture and user experience
20. International and Multi-Lingual SEO Will Be Very Profitable • • • •
Translate website into different languages Push website into different countries Can be much easier than the US Fairly inexpensive and large return
ACTION ITEM: Translate pages to new languages to increase user base and traffic to the site.
21. Large Increase in Search for Video and Multimedia
• More people are searching for video an multimedia • Video is fastest growing type of content • YouTube has over 1 billion videos watched a day now • Easier and faster to digest than reading
ACTION ITEM: Content is not just copy! Be sure to weave video, graphics, images, audio into your new content plan.
Last Few Things I’m Excited About Conversion rate optimization • SumoMe (pop ups) • Hot Jar (heat map) • Big Changes to Mobile CRO • Tap targets top of page Paid Media • Big Data: Better targeting • Facebook: Great gains • Programmatic: New and exciting Reputation Management • BirdEye.com
Social Media Marketing • Instagram Follower Program • YouTube Ads: Very cheap and excellent reach