2019 is drawing to a close, and the digital marketing world is priming up their analysts. Why? Because, with a new year come new digital marketing trends, as Google keeps updating its search engine, and one needs to adapt to these new trends to stay afloat. With that in mind, we collected a few points you ought to pay attention to, to keep your search rankings at acceptable levels. Check 'em out!
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Create Engaging Content
First and foremost, one needs to have content to attract customers before you even start thinking about conversion. Content is king, and having versatile, engaging content will make your visitors stay on your website a little longer, and some might even decide to use your services.
To that end, we encourage you to use a wide variety of content, from blogs, over videos, infographics, charts to quizzes and other interactive content.
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Optimise for Mobile
In the words of Blizzard spokesperson, we all got phones, right? Yes, we do, and we make frequent use of them, mostly to watch cat videos, but, also, to scour the web.
With that being said, investing in mobile optimisation of your websites will give you a great bit of edge over your competitors who choose not to invest. Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) are topping the rankings year in and year out, so make sure that for every page you have on the web, you optimise it for use on a mobile device.
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Use Backlinks
One of the strongest SEO trends nowadays is using backlinks. A few years ago, Google’s search engine was much “stupider” than it is now, so keyword stuffing was the way to go. However, nowadays, stuffing an ungodly amount of keywords in your blogs will get them flagged, and their ranking will drop significantly, as the search engine will consider it spam. To avoid this, companies and businesses heavily invest in link building companies for their expertise by introducing high-authority backlinks into the content.
So, what are backlinks? Basically, they’re hyperlinks anchored in your content that refers to other websites. Likewise, other websites may use backlinks to refer to your website, and, the higher the ranking of their website, the more authority it has, and this, in turn, boosts your own ranking (and vice-versa).
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Webpage Optimisation
Just like you need to optimise your websites for mobile, you need to optimise them for the use on PCs. You know this to be true because none of us will bother with a website that takes more than 10 seconds to load. There are plenty of ways to optimise your website, and Google offers a number of tools you can use to analyse the performance of your website and offer suggestions on how you might improve it.
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Get an SSL Certificate
Another major impact on your Google ranking is the presence of a secure channel. Any company or business worth their salt will definitely invest in website security, thus making sure they don't get infected with viruses, spam, or become a target for data theft. There is no greater stigma for a website than to have their user's data stolen, something users have become very aware of since the Facebook data leak fiasco.
In order to avoid all these problems, high-ranking websites utilise the SSL certificate, a cryptographic key used to open a secure channel between the user’s device and the Google server. SSL certificates are especially important for websites that require some kind of personal data (like when creating login accounts), as unsecured channels can fall victim to cyber theft.
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Generate a Sitemap
One of the smaller, but important, strategies to increase your website's ranking is creating a sitemap. Sitemaps allow Google to better index your page, which, in turn, adds relevance to your page, and allows the users to gain quicker access to it.
But, what are sitemaps? Basically, sitemaps create a “map” of your website’s links, pictures, vids and other media. Creating a sitemap is quick and easy, and there are plenty of free tools you can use to create one quickly and painlessly.
Conclusion
And, with that, we're going to wrap up our little guide. Hopefully, you'll use these six quick steps to get yourself started in the coming year or keep up the good work if you're already got a website up and running. Until then, cheers, and see you at the top!
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David Koller is a digital marketing consultant for a Brisbane based SEO company which provides professional assistance to help small businesses grow big. In his spare time, he loves to play the drums and play sudoku.
