SEO Guides, Tips & More!

It’s a new year – 2017 has arrived, and with it a new horizon of ever-changing SEO trends. As the year begins, now is the time to prepare to get informed on new SEO trends that will impact your firm’s website and other digital marketing efforts. There are some important items to be aware of including the continued prominence of mobile marketing and the need for a responsive website. These trends show where the discipline is going and is essential to understand so plans can be made to enhance the firm’s approach to accommodate them. To help accounting marketers and others prepare, we have provided a brief summary of the topic trends for this year.

1. Mobile First Index
   Many are aware that mobile has already surpassed desktop for searches conducted on Google. At one point searches on both types of devices was the same but Google has stated that this is no longer the case. Due to the shift in what devices are used to conduct searches, Google recently announced its mobile first index. This is very big news! What it means is that Google will begin crawling the mobile/responsive version of your site first to rank your site in search results. Previously, desktop versions were crawled first for ranking.So how will this affect your firm? If your firm already has a mobile/responsive version of your site, then you are well positioned to be take advantage of this change. However, if the firm does not have a mobile/responsive version of the desktop site, then rankings are going to be impacted. Now is the time to look at solutions for addressing this issue. Consider having the firm’s website changed so a responsive version can be implemented. Google’s increasing preference to mobile websites will eventually spell disaster for those firm’s that fail to act.
2. Video Content
   It’s difficult to deny that video content is becoming more and more important. Many believe that video will become the main website medium in a just a few years. While I don’t think the shift for the accounting industry will happen that quickly, it’s important to be aware of the trend. While written, content remains king it would be a good idea to consider how to integrate video into the website marketing plan for the future.Determining what content to feature in video can be a challenging task. When I speak with firms, they tell me they just don’t know what to turn into video content. Since its new ground for most firm’s the apprehension is understandable. However, don’t let that stop you. A few ways to generate video content include webinars, step-by-step tutorials, Q&As, etc. We recommend trying a piece or two and see how it goes.
3.  Voice Search
   Voice search is not a new trend, however with the growth of mobile and new and improved technology, voice search is definitely expanding. In fact, more than half of web users conduct voice searches and enjoy the ease of it. With that stated, it’s apparent that this trend will continue to evolve in 2017.The reason to consider optimizing for voice searches is that users conducting voice searches are not going to be entering the same phrases and keywords that a user on would type on a desktop or mobile device. Voice searches mimic spoken words. To optimize for voice search, try using question words such as who, what, where, when, and why. You can even try reformatting headlines into questions using these specific question words.
4. Structured Data and Schema
   You may be asking exactly what is structured data and schema? Google defines it as “a specific vocabulary of tags (or microdata) that you can add to your HTML to improve the way your page is represented in SERPs.” This is not a new technology and web developers have been using it for a while. What makes it new is that Google will begin implementing it more and more to crawl sites. After all, the mission of a search engine is to crawl websites faster and easier.By implementing schema markup more and more on your firm’s website, you are telling bots and spiders exactly what your data is all about. The result is more effective data being provided to users, not to mention the boost in both your firm’s website traffic and ranking.

Conclusion

SEO is an ever-changing landscape to keep your marketing eye on. Taking the above trends into consideration and making sure you optimize your search marketing strategies to account for these changes will help ensure your SEO efforts.