seo trends — SEOPartner

This Week in SEO: “SEO Isn’t Dead, But It’s Under Threat”

February 8, 2017 By SEOPartner

This week at SEOPartner, we’re sharing: SEO updates that can deliver significant impact to your results, exciting changes in the marketplace to watch out for, good-to-know studies and information, and tips to try based on recent findings on search, online marketing and more.

Google Report: 1.7B Bad Ads Removed in 2016

In its continuous effort to build a free and open web, Google said it took down 1.7 billion misleading, inappropriate or harmful ads in 2016.

Some of the “bad ads” that Google took down last year included:
– Ads for Illegal products and activities
– Ads that intentionally mislead people
– Self-clicking ads on mobile
– Ads that try to game the system
– Tabloid cloakers, “a new type of scammer that tries to game our system by pretending to be news.”

Google is fighting these ad violators by either blocking the ad, suspending the website being promoted in the ad, or terminating the publisher’s or advertiser’s account.

The search giant said this monumental task was made possible through the technology they built to speed up the work, expanded ad policies and better detection systems.
Source: https://blog.google/topics/ads/how-we-fought-bad-ads-sites-and-scammers-2016/

3 High-Impact Trends SEOs Should Prepare For

SEO isn’t dead. But digital marketers need to understand the following trends that can pose serious threats to the SEO industry:

1. New, better ad formats – These can provide better user experience than organic search results, and can therefore reduce the traffic captured through organic listings.
Examples: Google ads that provide information directly in the SERPs.

2. New search interfaces – These can affect SEO since users won’t need to type in search terms and click through to a result anymore.
Examples: Voice search, other “search engines” such as Wikipedia, Yelp and Amazon, and “pre-search” such as Google Now that generates results based on user preferences.

3. Improved Google – Google is poised to become better at understanding websites than SEO, which can make good user experience completely indistinguishable from good SEO.

The takeaway? SEO isn’t likely to be obsolete anytime soon. But for SEO practitioners to survive, they need to broaden their skillset and be in tune with market changes to offer more relevant and holistic results.
Source: https://moz.com/blog/3-not-so-seo-friendly-trends

Study: AMP in Google News Results Shows Sudden Spike

AMP results that appear in the Google News section for mobile searchers have shown a sudden spike and doubled just recently, a study revealed.

A report from RankRanger reveals the following:
– “[T]he number of AMP optimized news articles appearing within Google’s Top Stories on mobile has skyrocketed across the globe.”
– Mobile News Box results in the U.S. showing as AMP hit 70% this January 29.
– Among all 12 countries in the study, only Japan shows less than 50% AMP results in the News Box search results.
– AMP within Google’s mobile News Box increased 15x in Australia, 7x in Italy, 6x in Germany and more than 50% in the U.K.
– For India, Google’s mobile News Box now shows 100% AMP articles – a huge jump from 0% just this January 1.

It is still being confirmed whether the sudden spike is simply a glitch or a result of an algorithm change.
Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-amp-results-google-news-doubles-268346

Facebook Reveals New Way to Rank News Feed Videos

Facebook has come up with a new way of ranking videos that users see on the News Feed. Their method is quite straightforward: they will rank videos according to completion rates.

“One of the signals we look at is ‘percent completion’ — the percent of each video you watch — to help us understand which videos you enjoyed,” Product Manager Abhishek Bapna wrote in a Facebook Newsroom post. “If you watch most or all of a video, that tells us that you found the video to be compelling — and we know that completing a longer video is a bigger commitment than completing a shorter one.”

He added that the changes won’t be too significant now, but shorter videos may experience a “slight dip” in their visibility. The change applies only to organic videos; video ad distribution will remain as is.
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-facebook-ranks-videos-changes/184650/

SUMMING IT ALL UP

Here are the top headlines in this week’s SEO news roundup:

Google Report: 1.7B Bad Ads Removed in 2016. Some 1.7 billion misleading, inappropriate, harmful ads and other ads that violated Google policies have been removed in 2016.

3 High-Impact Trends SEOs Should Prepare For. SEO isn’t dead, but it can be threatened by three trends that digital marketers should know about.

Study: AMP in Google News Results Shows Sudden Spike. The number of AMP content appearing in Google News Box has doubled across the globe in such a short time, a study reveals.

Facebook Reveals New Way to Rank News Feed Videos. Facebook announced it will be ranking News Feed videos according to completion rates.

Reliable Search Engine Optimization help here

This Week in SEO: It’s ALL About The User ? (Data & Experts Say So)

December 14, 2016 By SEOPartner

Study Reveals Google Top Ranking Search Factors of 2016

Searchmetrics recently unveiled the findings from their annual study of Ranking Factors & Rank Correlations.

The most influential search ranking factors this year include:

– Content relevance and user intent

– Technical factors such as loading speed, use of HTTPs, file size, content architecture and mobile-friendliness

– User signals such as click-through rates, website visit length and bounce rates

– Social signals, with Facebook having the highest weighted signals among all networks

– Internal links, to help search engines and users gain more understanding of the site

Meanwhile, the study’s key insights show the following:

– Content continues to be increasingly influential than ever, while links are losing strength as a ranking signal.

– Google ranking factors have become more personalized than ever, driven by the advance of machine learning algorithms.

– Backlinks are no longer a primary factor in defining search engine rankings; in certain niches, “it is now sometimes possible for a website to achieve a high Google ranking even with far fewer links than its competitors.”

Source: http://searchengineland.com/searchmetrics-google-ranking-factors-study-says-content-gaining-links-losing-importance-265431

WordPress 4.7 Now Available

WordPress recently launched its latest 4.7 version which can now be downloaded or accessed through an automatic update on users’ dashboards.

Here are some of the new features you can look forward to:

– New Theme. The new Twenty Seventeen theme can be tweaked with the usual WordPress customization options such as social menus, widgets, navigation, logos, custom colors and more.

– Video headers. Videos can now be used as media for headers instead of just images.

– Smart menu building. You can now create new pages on the fly when making navigation menus.

– Custom CSS. Instead of refreshing the page over and over, you can now add custom CSS to the site and get live previews of what changes will look like before the page goes live.

Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-4-7/180377/

Demo via: https://wordpress.org/news/2016/12/vaughan/

Google Simplifies Branding, Drops “Work” from Android and Play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADlMHFdmXKU

From now on, there will be no more Android for Work and Google Play for Work – in name. Google announced that they are rebranding these two services which will now simply be called Android and Google Play, respectively.

Android for Work, launched in 2015, stores work and personal data separately on personal devices to protect company data and user privacy. Meanwhile, Google Play for Work is designed for enterprise customers.

Now that the enterprise features of Android for Work and Google Play for Work are available on most Android devices, Google sees the separate branding as no longer necessary.

“Android for Work and Play for Work have become a core part of Android and Google Play. We think this change better reflects the built-in nature of enterprise features of Android and our commitment to enterprise mobility,” Google software engineer Adam Connors and product manager Travis McCoy wrote in a blog post.

Source: https://blog.google/topics/connected-workspaces/update-android-and-google-plays-progress-enterprise/

Experts Forecast SEO Trends for 2017

Search Engine Journal rounded up 44 SEO experts to discuss the big trends to expect in 2017. Some of the highlights from the SEO pros’ answers focus on the following:

– The increasing impact of AMP on e-commerce and search rankings

– Search powered by machine learning and mobile

– Stronger organic link building

– The importance of technical and structural work

– User’s content experience to increase ROI

– Targeted content that focus on the specific segments of the customer’s journey

– Understanding the customer when building and implementing entire digital (not just SEO) strategies

– More unified SEO and content teams

– Continued SEO work to align with the real-time Penguin algorithm

– The shift to voice search

– Optimizing for topics instead of keywords

– Keyword research that addresses the target audience, not search engines

Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-trends-2017/181003/

SUMMING IT ALL UP

Here are the top headlines in this week’s SEO news roundup:

Study Reveals Google Top Ranking Search Factors of 2016. Search data reveals Google ranking factors continue to become increasingly personalized.

WordPress 4.7 Now Available. WordPress launches its latest version featuring a new theme, video headers and more.

Google Simplifies Branding, Drops “Work” from Android and Play. From now on, it’s just Android and Google Play (no need to add “Work”).

Experts Forecast SEO Trends for 2017. SEO thought leaders weigh in on what’s in store for the coming year.

Reliable Search Engine Optimization help here

The Road Ahead For SEO

January 25, 2016 By SEOPartner

While 2015 has proven to be a very interesting year in SEO as evidenced in the penalization of sites that have failed to be mobile-friendly and in the introduction of the local snack pack and other algorithm updates, you can look forward to even more exciting trends in 2016. The experts are foreseeing several major shifts in search, so it’s best to be prepared. What are these predicted movements?

The path to effective SEO

1. Mobile SEO will overtake desktop SEO. The mobile device is going to get priority. While mobile searches have already surpassed desktop searches in early 2015, Google insists that mobile and desktop traffic are still pretty much on equal footing. The shift from desktop to mobile will continue, however, and, soon, mobile will gain even more importance while desktop, in turn, will eventually fade into obscurity. As a matter of fact, Google has averred that the change to the local three-pack or snack pack is a reflection on their commitment to a “mobile experience” across all kinds of devices.

2. Video content will make a more worthwhile investment for B2C industries and brands than written content. Video is set to overtake written content, which is the current standard, since SEO experts see 2016 as the year video outpaces written content in reach, engagement, and, hence, effectiveness. For this, you can blame or thank video apps such as Vine, Snapchat, and Periscope. Internet users are becoming conditioned to expect visual content. Google certainly seems to expect the shift to transpire soon, considering its experimentation with video ads in search results. This is something that businesses should take note of. B2C brands should definitely factor in this point in crafting their marketing strategies.

3. The use of smart assistants and voice searches will increase, changing the way we perceive search queries. Since mobile Internet use has become prevalent, search engines are getting more and more searches from digital assistants. Understandably, typed queries are different from spoken ones, so this brings a whole other dimension to SEO. They say that Google’s desired end is to come up with something like the Star Trek computer. You can instruct it and converse with it as you would a normal person. With these upcoming trends, that certainly seems to be the direction we’re heading.

4. Social content will regularly show up in search results. Posts on Facebook and Twitter will be more readily indexed. As it is, Google already has an agreement with Facebook and Twitter, so you can probably spot Tweets or Facebook posts when you search for news items. Social posts will continue to carry weight, and soon the line separating the rest of the Web from social media will fade.

5. Local search will intensify. Instead of referring to city or state, searches will actually allude to your neighborhood, perhaps even your very own street corner. This is made possible by the onset of wearable devices such as the Apple Watch combined with the increasingly sophisticated indexing powers of Google.

Something that you should keep in mind as well, although search engines claim we actually haven’t gotten quite to the point yet, is the influence of user behavior on rankings. If user signals still don’t figure at the moment, logic will tell you that they will at some point in the not-so-distant future, so it’s wise to be ready for that as well.

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Top 5 SEO Trends 2015

August 11, 2015 By SEOPartner

Source: http://www.itproportal.com/2015/08/11/5-seo-trends-every-entrepreneur-needs-to-know-for-2015/

If you compare the difference in SEO industry today compared to the SEO industry from 2011 to 2014, remarkable changes can be noticed especially in content strategy and digital marketing. To help you cope up with these changes, here is the top 5 SEO trends for 2015:

Social Engagement Optimisation

This is a trend of optimizing your website on search engines with the use of social media. The following are factors that contribute to optimising content with social engagement:
- Social queries
- Traffic generation
- Search queries
- Correlation

Brand mentions

This is the next milestone in link building. The relevancy and trend-setting on social media will be advantageous in building implied links and improving your search engine ranking by brand mention technique.

Semantic Search Optimization

With the Hummingbird update released in 2013 by Google, semantic search or semantics has become the new form of content analysis.

Mobile-friendly SEO

With mobile e-Commerce and mobile research growth, having a mobile-friendly and optimized website for mobile search SEO strategy has become vital. Ignoring this order can cause severe setbacks to your business.

Increased online security is a less-known must-have factor

It’s important to keep your customer’s information safe and secured so keep a check on the security systems being used by your support team.

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