SEO Tips to Prepare for Your Success in 2018

SEO is always changing and evolving, and with it being a new year, let's take a look at a few of the key items to look out for in 2016 to help keep your company visible in the search engines.

Social - including social sharing - is a big deal with Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Google Plus, Pinterest, and so on, and they can go together when it comes to SEO. People do more research now than ever before in addition to just taking to a search engine. They often look over reviews and your website, but they will also take a look at your social media pages. They will look at what content is there, your replies to your clients, and the overall upkeep of those pages.

Having a great social media presence can help to augment what you do in SEO as people like to share content they like on social media; however, the opposite can be true as well for people who will yell from their digital rooftop about a bad experience with your company. There are times when going to a search engine can directly take someone to a social media page, so definitely think of having a strong social presence as an extension of your SEO.

1. Higher Google rankings no longer mean more organic clicks.

When optimizing a webpage for search engines, do not let keywords take up more than twenty percent of the page’s total content. This is a cumulative figure, including every keyword incorporated in the page. Primary keywords should not make up more than five percent of content, and secondary keywords should be limited to two or three percent.

Paid ads, local packs, carousel results, knowledge graphs and rich fragments– all of these eye-catching SERP elements can strain away the clicks from your # 1 ranking business website.

2. Keywords are not the be-all and end-all.

When optimizing your website, be sure to optimize your description meta tag as well. Some experts believe that keyword meta tags are nearly worthless today, as search engines no longer use them, but that descriptions will usually show up under your page title on the results page, and they are also involved in the indexing process.

There are so many great tips that you’ve discovered in this post. Some you may have known, but hopefully others will offer you new opportunities. With them, you can really make your SEO mark.

3. Your Social Media Marketing

One rule of thumb to avoid with social media marketing is to not annoy your customers. Some marketers over do it by constantly sending their customers messages they really do not need or want. This can annoy your readers and cause them to not want to visit your site, especially if you’re always bombarding them with messages!

Develop quality content targeted for social media. If you are just haphazardly flinging words, advertising or any number of mundane snippets at your customers, then you are wasting your time and losing their business. Be as concerned about your social content offerings as you are for the content on your business site.