Now that 2017 is a distant memory and we are well into 2018, it is time to take a look at the marketing strategies that worked and the ones that failed to bring in results. Marketing is one of the most critical aspects of your business, and it is responsible for strengthening your brand’s foothold in a highly competitive market.
The online arena is even more competitive than the physical one with countless businesses vying for the users’ attention. In such an intense scenario, it would be unwise not to evaluate your strategies and let your online marketing efforts continue performing as it is currently doing. Instead, you must consider the market trends to get a better idea of user behaviour and competitor practices, and design a new strategy based on the best online marketing tips to get the best possible results.
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You must optimise for RankBrain
Google had announced that RankBrain is one of their most important ranking factors. The algorithm takes note of how people are interacting with search results and ranks them accordingly. It mainly has two defining criteria that help it function. These are:
- How many people are visiting a link
- How long they are staying on the webpage
Since your website is inevitably going to be put under the radar by this algorithm (which is likely to get an update soon), you really cannot ignore RankBrain. The best way to fair well in this exam is to generate quality content that provides visitors with the information they are looking for. It must be beneficial to your visitors, and only then can it be of value to you.
Improve click-through rate
An industry study revealed that organic CTR is down by 37 percent since 2015. You must have already noticed that Google is crowding up the place, previously allotted to organic search results, with ads, carousels, answer boxes, ‘People also ask for’ and many other things. So, if you are still waiting for your organic CTR to improve, you are avoiding the obvious fact. You must have a solid CTR strategy with compelling ads that drive people to click on them.
You cannot ignore the importance of in-depth content
Previously, Google used to scan content to see how many times a keyword had been used in it, and the content was ranked accordingly. At least, keyword usage used to be a huge factor as far as search ranking was concerned. While Google still checks the keyword usage in meta title, content, H1 tags and so on, it is much smarter than it used to be. Today, Google’s motive is to provide users with the best results. Thus, it attempts to present the user with the content that has the maximum amount of relevant information. The content that provides in-depth and comprehensive information to the user, therefore, has the best chance of ranking well on Google.
Pay attention to Google’s mobile-first indexing
Google has switched over to ‘mobile-first index‘. Given the fact that more than 60% of Google’s searches come from mobile devices, this move makes quite a bit of sense. It means Google is going to consider your mobile site the most important one, and that too, even when a user accesses the site from a desktop. Optimizing to improve the mobile performance of your website is mandatory now. If your site is not mobile-friendly, the chances are that Google is going to move it further down the search rankings.
Finally, note that SEO is always changing. With developing technologies, it is continually evolving. Previously, a technique may have worked for a few years at a stretch before experts felt the need for new technology. However, now each SEO practice is prone to change every year. It is critical that business owners and marketers adapt to the changes very quickly to provide the corporate website with the edge that is needed to beat the competition. In fact, being agile and responding fast to changes can make the difference between winning the race and facing an existential crisis. Also, remember to focus on quality content creation and copywriting fundamentals, and stay on top of technical aspects such as backlinks, schema and site speed.
If all of it sounds too overwhelming to you, just pause for a bit and take a deep breath. Even in 2018, reading, researching and tinkering your way through the competition can take you very close to success. Persevere and keep up the good work.
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