Future of Search Engine Optimisation

 Once upon a time, the Internet seemed like such a simple place. You’d launch your website and, hopefully, appear at the top of Google in no time. Of course, that never really worked, and so search engine optimisation became a cornerstone of the modern web – but Google has never made it easy.

So, in 2016, we’ve reached a situation where SEO exists at the intersection between art and science as experts like us bob and weave to stay ahead of Google’s latest algorithms. That means not just being reactive, but proactive also and casting an eye to the future of SEO. But what are the trends which are likely to define 2017 and beyond? Join us as we share three.

 1) Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) 

 Back in October 2015, Google introduced a novel new concept called Accelerated Mobile Pages to the world. The concept, and reasoning behind it, was simple. Slow loading websites lead to a significantly worse mobile experience and turn people away, so launch a framework which enables superfast mobile pages for everyone. The result is Accelerated Mobile Pages and in February 2016, Google began to feature pages with AMP enabled at the top of mobile search results. Today, they’re in organic results and have been adopted by everybody from Facebook to eBay, along with millions of publishers. Google are placing more and more emphasis on AMP enabled sites, so don’t get left behind.

 2) Local and Hyper-Local SEO 

 At its most basic, SEO is about getting your website found for the things you do. So, if you’re a plumber, you might optimise for “plumber”. The issue with that, however, is that there are millions of plumbers all over the world doing the same, and, well, if you’re based in Gloucestershire, you don’t want to fix a pipe in Nairobi, do you?

 Local and Hyper-Local SEO is about optimising your business to get found for your local area. So, instead of optimising for ‘SEO’, you’d optimise for ‘SEO Cambridgeshire’ or ‘SEO South West’. For smaller businesses, you can (and should) optimise down to the street level, helping local residents get in touch with good local businesses.

 3) The Knowledge Graph

 Perhaps without knowing it, you’ll have used the knowledge graph. It’s that little box which appears at the top of search results when you ask a question like ‘How old is X?’. Google now serve well over 100 million answers to questions, and it’s only going to become more important in the future. As a brand, the information Google serve up about you becomes crucial, so managing the Knowledge Graph becomes an essential SEO practice.

On-page optimisation tips

On-page SEO is as important as off-page SEO especially after the latest updates. The following tips are very useful while focusing to improve ranking through on page changes.

The title tags in a web page can be strengthened by including searchable keywords more relevant to the page.Each page of the site should contain more than one viable keyword to maximise potential 

searches to make sure each page title is unique and explicit. The title should reflect the content on that page. The title tag should contain between 10 and 70 characters including spaces.

 The Meta description should  hold a strong sales message.Each web page should have a unique description.Meta descriptions allow you to influence how your web pages are described and displayed in search results.The Meta description should contain between 140 and 160 characters including spaces. To view these and the page titles more easily input the following into Google : site:yourdomain.com

 You should make sure there is  only one H1 tag per page that ideally contains the keyword that the page is optimised for.Other headers should be H2,H3 etc. The H1 heading tag is the most important of the heading tags and helps search engines understand the main focus of the page. 

The Alt tags are also important and the alternative text attribute allows you to 

assign a specific description to each image. 301 redirect is another important on page SEO factor which permanently redirects traffic from the original domain to a new address.

 New and regularly  updated content is becoming an important element these days and 

Google is putting a lot of emphasis on this. Therefore, the blog or latest news page should be updated frequently to ensure that fresh content is being added to the website on a regular basis, this could be in the form of special offers, industry news or any other relevant stories of interest. 

Also, creating a Google plus business page is vital than ever before. 

Google penguin update, Did you change your SEO approach ?

The Penguin update was launched on April 24. It was considered as a change to Google’s search results that has been designed to punish those web pages that have been spamming Google.Some of the spam techniques are keyword stuffing,link schemes,cloaking etc.

Google penguin update has started to impact 3% of search queries as Google began it's fight against Spam.Google advised webmasters to create high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.Google likes a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.Google want web developers and web owners to create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe one's content.Google also released an update to its Panda algorithm, Panda 3.5, on April 19 2012.

 White hat SEO techniques are recommended by search engines and there is no fear of your website being banned by search engines.