1. Mobile search and User Experience
If your website is not optimised for mobile then you’ll miss out on a huge proportion of customers. This will also play a large role in where you rank on search engines. Google recognises the shift to mobile usage, and ranks websites accordingly - so if your website is not mobile friendly, you won’t appear highly in searches either.
2. Youtube - the second largest search engine
By 2019, video will account for 80% of global internet traffic (Cisco). Youtube is now the second largest search engine, with over 6 billion hours of footage watched in a single month. Customers are tending to watch more ‘how to’ videos, which can be created easily by any company. Creating videos will add another channel for your services to be found, and will open you to a whole range of new customers.
3. Rise in ‘local’ search
72% of consumers who perform a local search visit a store within 5 miles of their current location and 86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps. (Junto Digital). You can benefit from local search by registering to Google My Business and inputting the relevant information. You’ll then begin to be discovered by local customers.
4. Google Algorithms
Google is often updating their algorithms, which can directly impact SEO - in fact, it is thought that Google changes their algorithm at least 500 times a year, with many changes going unnoticed by the SEO community. It is important to stay on top of the trends and change your SEO plans accordingly. A recent update encourages all websites to purchase SSL certificates and present their sites as 'Secure'. (Read more)
5.Responsive Websites
Your website should be suitable for all types of devices. This includes not only desktop but mobile and tablet devices too. 56% of all traffic online comes from a mobile device (source) which Google recognises. If your website is not responsive it’ll have a huge impact on your SEO.
6. Social Media - it appears in search
Social Media are one of the first ports of call for customers. In 2017, they want to know more about your company, beyond the services you provide. Social Media lets your customers know that you’re humans too - as well as boosting your SEO.
7. Rise in Apps on mobile
Offering an app to your customers will improve your SEO. App Indexing brings in millions of additional search results for search queries on Google mobile search. In 2017, this is a simple way to boost your rankings.
8. Website speeds
Website visitors are growing increasingly impatient and often won’t wait for a web page to load if it takes too long to load. Site speed has been a ranking factor to Google for 7 years, you can improve your compressing large pages, and optimise images. (Read more).
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