Search engine optimization is in many ways a game of tug-of-war between SEO professionals and search engine software developers. As SEO techniques evolve to maximize search rankings, developers consistently modify algorithms in ways that fundamentally shift the equation.
In the current landscape, loading pages to the brim with keywords has become an outdated approach as new algorithms pick things up smarter and more effectively. Quality is consistently trumping quantity and article lengths continue to get longer.
On the Horizons
Quality ranking is becoming an increasing metric in Google’s algorithm, signaling SEO strategists to prioritize relevance and usefulness. A smaller number of effective pages are more effective for raising search rank than an army of questionably useful ones. The Google algorithm also now factors in mobile pages in a huge way, which means that mobile is mandatory if you’re trying to climb up in queries. Readability and design for mobile browsers are a key element of present-day SEO. Finally, there’s a general shift towards increased imagery on the web that can increase user satisfaction.
Getting the Most out of Your Site
On-Page optimization is a sure-fire to affect your visibility. Good content and linkability are the name of the game. Your webpage needs to supply a genuine demand of your market. Questionable landing pages and spam simply aren’t going to cut it. While images are the general trend, it’s also still a golden rule that the best content is useless if it’s not linkable. Your content has to be able to be reproduced and shared. Title tags, descriptive URLs and adherence to best practices are also major pain points for effective on-page optimization.
Harnessing Social Media
Social media presence has become a huge factor in website visibility. From Twitter links to page likes on Facebook, social media is a tremendous source of incoming traffic. Whereas aggregators like Reddit and Digg used to be the primary avenue of link sharing on the internet, one of the major activities of Facebook users has become sharing links and liking content, often to the point of eclipsing their own personal profile submissions and activity.
Summary
The big three words of SEO in 2016 are quality, quality and quality. With the current direction of search algorithms, spam is only going to hurt your efforts for visibility. The websites currently rising in search rank are the ones that play by the rules and deliver users with content that they’re actually looking for.