4 Ways to Make your SEO in 2016 a Walk in the Park	1.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Charlie Brown January 18, 2016

SEO is one of the most dynamic online marketing strategies, with the rules having shifted seismically over the last few years. It is no longer enough to have great content, although this is important. In the coming years, the most effective marketers are those who will be able to leverage their content and the current SEO practices to maximize benefits and returns from SEO in 2016.

The days when SEO was all about keyword packing are long behind us! Today, the driving force behind SEO success is simple: user experience. Most SEO strategies that are still applicable and timeless revolve around giving users great site interactions.

Search engines today are much smarter than they were before and as a result, simple strategies like keyword focus won’t be helpful. In fact, as a site owner today, you have very little control over the kind of queries your content shows up for. However, by carefully applying the following expert ideas, you can easily cement your place on SERPs for your most valued queries, and hence maintain or improve your ROI from SEO in 2016:

1. Search is based on intention

Google and other search engines have been making continuous improvements on their search algorithms with one goal in mind: to be able to decipher user intentions much better. As such, simply filling up your page with exact keywords may not land you as many clicks as it did before. Today, search engines can monitor how users interact with your site and hence determine whether your site is a good match for the user’s query or not. This information is then used for future rankings.

Therefore, when using SEO in your marketing strategy, you are not only interested in high click-through rates from SERPs. Rather, it will be more important to understand and satisfy user intent and hence get their post-clicking data vouching for your site. To do this, focus on answering specific questions within your niche, rather than targeting keywords and creating content around them. The more details you provide, the better.

2. The Age of the short-tail keyword is gone

This cannot be stated too many times: Google can now interpret user meaning, and it’s getting better at it with each algorithm update. Keyword stuffing on headlines and content now serves little purpose, unlike before. In the past, if you wanted to rank highly for “bestcoffee shop” all you had to do was have the phrase in your headlines and three or four times in your content.

Now, this is not to say that keywords are no longer useful. On the contrary, we don’t anticipate a time when keywords will completely serve no purpose. However, the focus of your keyword research must change from targeting specific phrases to the semantic meanings and ideas behind those phrases. In the above example for instance, you can focus on talking about the best coffee items on your menu, and search engines may still pick up on your site for related searches.

Depending on the type of query a user types in, search engines can decipher specific words expected to be in the articles. For instance, if you are sharing a piece on Sony PlayStation, Google might expect your article to include words like ‘Sony’, ‘PlayStation’, ‘Video games’ and ‘gaming experience’ among others. If these are found in your article, this sends a signal that your article is pretty good for that subject.

The advent of Google Now and other voice search capabilities are another reason to change your keyword strategy. The power of voice search lies in conversational speech, which should also be part of your keyword research and targeting. If a person is looking for a chiropractor in Newton USA, they are more likely to say “Find good Chiropractors near X in Newton USA” as opposed to “best chiropractor Newton USA”. Short-tail keyword targeting is definitely in your past; good content creation should be focused on understanding and addressing user intent in commonly spoken language.

3. User experience is everything

Pause and reflect on this: Google makes about 500 changes to its search algorithm every year. You see, they too are interested in providing users a great experience, and this can only be done if a user gets exactly what they are looking for without having to sift through everything in the first five pages of search results.

Whether you do it yourself or hire services such as http://webds.com/, if you approach your SEO with the “how shall I trick Google” mindset, you’ll soon be putting out more fires than you can afford to have. However, by aligning your site’s SEO goals with Google’s SEO goals – i.e. great user experience – you can be sure to remain in Google’s good books amid all the changes and updates.

Original content is more important now than ever before; the more original work you have – and not necessarily in form of text – the better your chances of being ranked for the queries you care about. While people are often attracted to easily digestible headlines and content, search engines look much deeper, and your content creators must work with both.

It is not enough to simply use numerals and adjectives in your headline, whatever comes after your “7 top ways” must be value-adding and useful. One method may be to create an editorial calendar covering the most appealing topics for your audience. Then, focus on research to relate original content around this topic. Even if you’re a content curator, you should have a few sentences detailing why certain content is relevant to your topics. Of course, make full attribution for all non-original content.

4.  Length matters too

Longer, more detailed articles perform better on searches than shorter ones, according to research. The threshold for long form content lies between 1200 and 1500 words. Such articles are capable of sharing more details and hence are likely to rank higher in SERPs. It’s very difficult to fully address user concerns in say 300 words because you can only tackle one aspect.

However, because longer content is more difficult to digest, use subheadings, images, charts, bullet points and other relevant separators to make it easier for a person to scan through the content and determine whether his/her needs will be met.

Conclusion

When the rubber meets the road, user experience should be the start and end of your SEO effort. You don’t do SEO to rank first or second and hence make more money in the process – this is simply a fringe benefit. SEO should be intended to give users the best site interaction. It won’t serve your ends to get the highest rankings for your target queries if users go to your site and leave unhappily.