5 SEO Challenges Business Owners Will Face In 2015

Getting your website and content to rank in the search engines has always required a keen understanding of SEO guidelines and best practices. It’s also required awhole lot of work in order to properly carry out these best practices.

2015 is no different. The SEO landscape has changed over the past year, and staying on top of the changes and knowing exactly what they mean – practically speaking – is the key to higher rankings.

Following are 5 of the biggest challenges you’ll face this year as you attempt to get your content ranking in the search engines.

1. Recalibrating your keyword strategy: Semantic search has overtaken keyword search

In the past, keyword research was the foundation of any SEO strategy. It would look something like this: Using various keyword tools, you would find high-volume, low-competition keywords, and then include these keywords on your site in a variety of ways. And while on-page SEO remains an important way of letting Google know what your content is about, this strategy alone isn’t likely to get you very far.

Since the release of Google’s Hummingbird update of 2013, semantic search has overtaken keyword-based search. Google’s algorithms have become increasingly sophisticated, evaluating queries based more on user-intent and less on the specific keywords that are used.

Despite Google’s emphasis on semantic or conversational search, many (many!)business owners remain stuck in the pre-Hummingbird mentality and practices (“Plug your keywords into the Yoast SEO plugin and you’re good to go!”). This year, a challenge for business owners will be to learn new ways of optimizing their content for semantic search:

• Focusing on answering questions; particularly questions mobile-users may be asking.
• Offering helpful supplementary information along with your base content: info like reviews, maps, travel info, etc.
• Creating content that aims to provide all relevant info on a particular topic or theme. In this way you’ll be including a wide variety of thematic keywords rather than potentially over-optimizing for a few specific terms.
• While nearly every business has an SEO strategy of sorts, local SEO optimization is still being underutilized by many businesses and brands. The fact is that 50% of mobile users who perform a local search visit a store within one day. In other words, if your site and content aren’t ranking in local search, you’re missing out on a huge influx of wallet-in-hand visitors.
  
  
  3. Shifting your mindset from link building to relationship building
  An important element of the SEO of previous years was requesting and acquiring links from a variety of sites; years ago, many businesses found success through the use of automated directories, article marketing and link exchanges. Keyword-rich anchor text for internal links was another popular strategy used by many sites; in other words, linking to pages on your site using the keywords you hoped to rank for.
  Link building could be successfully accomplished by “playing the game” right.  The problem, of course, is that it was relatively easy for low-quality sites to rank simply by winning at the link building game.
  We’ve seen a huge shift in how Google treats and values links, and this has meant a corresponding change in how marketers gain and attract links. I’ve outlined some of theses strategies in my post Link Building Post-Penguin 3.0: 6 Ways to Earn High-Quality Links.
  But the long and the short of it is this: Most forms of link building in 2015 will involve first creating amazing content, and then relying on relationship-based strategies to give your content legs. Strategies like reaching out to influential bloggers, nurturing connections with brand advocates and engaging on social media.
• 4. Figuring out how to attract citations and mentions
• While it’s undoubtedly a good thing that old school link building is a thing of the past, it’s hard not to miss the straightforward, predictableness of it: reach out to website owners, gain inbound links, increase your search rankings. Simple, right?
  Over the past year, we’ve learned that Google is placing more significance on implied links and brand mentions. To put it simply, implied links are mentions of your website or brand that aren’t in the form of a hyperlink (for instance, simply writing Forbes rather than linking to it with www.forbes.com). While traditional links aren’t obsolete, these other non-hyperlinked mentions should also be an important part of your plan to increase the authority of your site.
  The question, of course, is how does one plan for implied links and brand mentions? Some ways you can keep the mentions flowing are to contribute high-quality guest posts on respected sites, syndicate your content, and actively share your content on social media. And of course, consistently producing extremely high-quality content – on your own site and on other sites – will naturally lead to organic inbound links (both implied and expressed) and mentions.
  For more on the shift away from traditional link building strategies, see my postImplied Links, Brand Mentions and the Future of SEO Link Building.
  5. Readjusting to the mobile-first mentality
  Being mobile-friendly is no longer enough. Having a responsive site or mobile app is the minimum requirement for being mobile-friendly, however being “mobile-first” is so much more. With mobile having surpassed desktop usage in 2014, understanding how and where internet users are accessing information is critical.
  Designing and implementing a mobile-first content strategy will be a significant challenge for many marketers this year. Among other things, it will involve:
• Acknowledging the tension between short and long-form content. While long-form content is critical if you want to rank highly in the search engines (particularly for Google In-Depth articles), short-form is often preferable for your mobile readers.
• Understanding your audience’s mobile habits: What types of content are they accessing most frequently? What activities are they performing on your site? Are they more likely to consume visual content?
• Focusing on attention-grabbing headlines and lead-ins
• Using mobile-friendly formatting
• SOURCE LINK:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/01/16/the-beginners-guide-to-remarketing-all-the-basics-and-a-few-secret-tricks/