Alison recently had the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Brighton for BrightonSEO 2017 and, as always, it was an insightful conference.
As one of the most popular and respected natural search conferences in the UK, it gave her the opportunity to discover what’s new in the world of SEO and to see how we, as a creative agency, can help you apply changes and developments to your business.
There was a lot of great information to take in, but our handy list gives you an idea on the key points that were discussed.
Intelligent search is the future
Voice search and AI are taking over; 12% of households already have voice assisted search and this number is growing. With regards to communications, and especially content, this means we should be focusing on writing content that answers problems and questions.
Knowledge Graph
Everyone is so focused on being on page one, but focusing on being the authority of your knowledge and aiming for the knowledge graph is even better. The way to do this is via structured data and accommodating your website structure for it.
Go further than website optimisation
Wherever your brand is present, aim for consistency. Social channels, Apple maps and even review sites and forums are equally, if not more powerful than your website, which means it is crucial to control your data across all of these.
These services make more decisions about your brand than your website as they contain user-generated content.
Reviews
Good reviews work. Did you know that 60% of users say a star rating is their biggest purchase decision? And a whopping 87% of users won’t consider a business with a low review rating. Your online reputation is important, and if you take the time to manage your reputation, alongside trusted design and structure, you’ll be able to understand what pulls you apart from the competition and use that to your advantage. Avoiding the overuse of adverts is another key consideration when it comes to successful SEO.
Images
People are visual – and the images we see matter. Ensuring your content is more visual is important, as well as categorising images and optimising so search engines understand what to look for. It sounds complicated but with a little help from us, using the right images will help propel your brand forward.
Website Speed
We want websites to load in an instant – nearly 50% of people expect their website to load in less than 2 seconds and those quick to load pages will always have higher conversion rates. Other factors, such as prediction and pre-fetch tagging can also increase page load by 30%. And then there’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) those key landing pages or websites mainly driven by a blog or news, or for websites which are used in slow speed areas.
Stay Secure with HTTPS
80-90% of a HTTPS website will appear in the top 10 links on google, but what is HTTPS and how can it improve speed? HTTPS is short for secure hypertext transfer protocol and it’s there to ensure that the data on your site reaches the user in good form and time. For more information on HTTPS and what it can do for you, take a look at our dedicated blog.
Re-purpose and clean up content
Did you know that an astonishing 80% of content is wasted? But it doesn’t need to be, as you can easily re-purpose what you have if you know how. Update it (don’t leave it out of date) or clean up / remove content that doesn’t capture any traffic.
Content length
Content only needs to be long enough to answer the question. Quite simply, this means you should only write as much (or as little!) as you need. Avoid being too wordy and stick to the point so that your audience can find what they need quickly and efficiently.
Google Tag Manager
GTM (Google Tag Manager) is a powerful tool to use to demonstrate more insight and behaviour, and you can also input APIs (Application Programme Interface) to specify how your software components should interact.
Micro-moments
Capture those essential ‘micro-moments’ such as: I want to know, I want to do, I want to buy. Understanding and meeting these needs is the future of search success, especially if you tell a story, tap into an emotional response, use topical events, and unique data to create hooks.
Think local
Search loses the joy of discovery, help people to find it again by using local knowledge and information about an area, place or product to talk about local trends and recommendations. This can also apply to bigger brands who serve and segment different areas.
BrightonSEO 2017 certainly gave us a lot to think about, especially when it comes to expanding upon the ways we support the SEO strategy of all our clients. If you would like to know more about how SEO can strengthen your business, contact us today and let’s talk SEO.
