Digital marketing is becoming the leader for businesses who are looking to increase visibility and build a larger, and more loyal, customer base. In fact, according to stats from imForza, SEO is a great tool for doing so. Their research has found that an increasing number of businesses are recognizing SEO’s importance to success and longevity and some 60% planned on increasing SEO spending last year. However, businesses that fail to adapt to SEO’s changes will find that it is not helping them grow. What worked just a year ago has become largely outdated, so online marketers will have to use contemporary advanced SEO techniques geared towards 2014 and beyond.
With Google updates like Penguin, Panda, and the highly influential Hummingbird, website owners now more than ever need to focus on being able to create high quality content that provides value to end users. In the past, articles packed with high keyword densities and dozens of links might have worked to earn top rankings, but they no longer have a place as one of the best SEO techniques. Jay Baer of Convince and Convert says, “”customers are more curious and more suspicious than ever. The only way to succeed in that environment is to tilt the marketing objective from selling to helping.” That might be the be best approach in 2014 for using SEO to earn new customers.
Stats from Unified Social show that mobile devices are the primary access point for social media in many countries, and mobile traffic actually accounts for a full fifth of all web traffic today. So no matter what new SEO techniques a company chooses to use, posting them on a site that features a responsive web design that can be viewed easily on mobile devices is a must. That will help businesses make sure that the investment they make in great content will be noticed by a high number of consumers.
Of course, considering the fact that millions of people use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other sites every day, businesses should work to develop a strong social media presence both as a part of and as a supplement to the best SEO techniques. The distinction between social media and SEO is becoming increasingly fuzzy and social media is a great place to share content and interact with both current and potential customers. As a result, learning how to use social media is always wise for SEO marketers.
Knowing and being able to execute the best SEO techniques for 2014 are two very different things, and building a robust and successful SEO campaign can be quite challenging. But making both the time and financial investment in SEO will always prove to be worthwhile. For more about this, go here.
