Five Tips for SEO

Every year, search engine optimization seems to change in some ways. Here are five helpful tips for you to keep track of how to best optimize your content in 2014:

1) Don’t slack off on your company’s social media presence

Although social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ have been around for years now, that doesn’t mean they are irrelevant. If anything, your business needs to have a strong social media strategy now more than ever to help build awareness for your brand and to drive web traffic.

Also, remember people want to share relevant, quality content that relates to your audience’s lives in some way—don’t just create things for the sake of sharing. SEO optimization for your website isn’t just about creating and sharing content—it’s about creating and sharing content that people will care about.

2) Keep your writing natural

In the past, Google may have been more likely to pick up word-for-word keywords. Now, though, with the introduction of Google’s latest search algorithm Hummingbird, natural writing is taking center stage. This ties back to your company having strong content that drives traffic. Instead of focusing on writing around a keyword, make your keywords flow more naturally—if a few words are separating a keyword phrase, that will be OK. Google now recognizes ideas more so than just words, allowing your writing to really shine.

3) Don’t forget about local search optimization

Local content and search engine indexing will not be slowing down this year. More and more, Google is localizing search results to better cater to users’ needs. Look more into Google+ Local to see just how powerful localized results can be. In fact, the more you can use localized long-tail keywords and build out your local listing profiles, the better.

4) Keep your sites responsive

In the past, web and mobile sites largely lived in separate worlds—sites looked and performed completely differently on mobile devices and desktops. Now, though, if a company wants to not only look fresh but be indexed well in search engines, it should create a responsive site that can be viewed on all of today’s modern devices: smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. This not only creates happier users because they get a consistent, functional website, but it can also increase your search engine visibility and shares on social media.

5) Establish yourself as an expert

Whatever your business’s focus is, you’ll want to come off to your clients as an authoritative voice in your field of expertise. To do this, continue to create content for your blog, but make sure you can provide your viewers with helpful information. When you can provide practical tips for your readers, your website will be more valuable, as will your search engine optimization. Your viewers will begin to trust your voice more on important industry issues, and you can become their one-stop shop for important information.