Key SEO Tips to Improve Your Rankings in 2016

It wasn’t long ago when the concept of SEO was foreign to most business owners. However, as more of everyone’s lives have shifted online, the value of having a website that ranks highly in Google for targeted searches has become clear. While Google isn’t the only way to reach potential customers online, it offers a level of intent matching and targeting that’s hard to beat.

Although SEO isn’t a new concept, it has continued to evolve over the last few years. One of the ways SEO has changed is it’s more competitive in 2016 than ever before. Given the widespread understanding among businesses of all sizes of the benefits that go along with attracting targeted Google traffic, ranking well for certain search terms can seem like an impossible task.

If you want to improve the SEO rankings for your business website but aren’t sure where to focus your efforts, we want to highlight a few of the strategies that are most effective in 2016:

Be Mobile Friendly web design

Google is well aware that over half of Internet traffic now comes from mobile devices. That’s why the company has updated its algorithm to reward sites that are mobile friendly. The best way to achieve this objective is with responsive design.

Make Your Website Load As Quickly As Possible

In addition to mobile friendliness, Google currently places a lot of emphasis on ensuring the websites it sends users to load quickly. Website speed is often something that can be significantly increased in a relatively short amount of time, which is why it’s worth putting at the top of your to-do list.

Start Optimizing for Rich Answers Now

Rich Answers are chunks of data that Google places near the top of organic search results. As much as 20% of Google’s results include Rich Answers. While results of this nature are primarily limited to things like song lyrics, it’s likely that Google will continue to expand the prevalence of these results. That’s why it’s a good idea for businesses to take steps now to optimize the beginning of their target content for this type of result.

Create Great Content and Promote It

You’ve likely heard about the importance of publishing content like blog posts. You’ve probably also heard that if you focus on publishing content that’s unique and engaging, it will improve your search engine rankings. While there is truth in that statement, what often gets overlooked is the importance of promoting the content you publish. Without a consistent promotion strategy, it’s unlikely that content will move the needle for your rankings.

This is the syndicated copy of an original article posted at WebStrategyPlus.

I am Michelle Hummel, a passionate internet marketer with an internet marketing degree and 15+ years of successful online marketing experience. I am the owner of WebStrategyPlus.com - web design, web development and digital marketing company