411 Presents Some Noteworthy Tips For Digital Marketers
Google has made quite a few changes concerning marketers during the last five years. The focus of the changes, from major algorithm updates to the shift towards mobile-first was to improve the quality and performance for users showing them the right content, at the right time, and on the right devices, as quickly as possible.
Brands that have learned to stay ahead of Google’s constantly evolving algorithms by concentrating on quality and content are thriving. These marketers have learned to provide content that engages, resonates, and converts, no matter when, where, and how the customer will discover it. 411Locals is one of those brands. In this post, we present 5-new trends in SEO and content marketing, and what marketers should do to master them.
- The Convergence of SEO and Content:
Neither content nor SEO alone guarantees people will find and take an interest in your content. Data helps marketers understand the consumer’s intent, and also helps them with creating intelligent content aligned with the customer journey to deliver a memorable and successful experience.
Tips on mastering this change:
- Create content based on data. Identify the engagement, audience, and conversion metrics that are most important to your brand. Measuring and tracking these metrics identifies ways to create the meaningful content people will want to read.
- Encourage the synergy of search, content, and social. These, when combined, will assists brands in achieving their goals. High-quality content created with SEO in mind from the start increases search visibility. Further amplified by social media, this content will create the demand you can later harvest through search data.
- Maximize the footprint of your search engine results page (SERP): To do this, create and optimize high-ROI content, such as articles, infographics, and videos which will help people answer significant or popular questions or provide practical information. You can also capitalize on the topics currently trending. Other beneficial things include things include: featured snippets, site links, related questions, images, videos, and tweets.
- Mobile Comes First:
For years Google reported about this – the shift to “mobile first” – and it finally happened in 2015, which revealed a larger number of mobiles than desktop searches for the first time. Now, the optimization for mobile search, devices, and usability is a must. It prepares your brand for capitalizing on mobile micro-moments.
How to master this change:
- Admit that this world is mobile-first. Brands not optimized for mobile have 68% less traffic. This means that you should fully understand mobile user behavior and intent. The mobile experience you deliver should meet and exceed expectations, or you risk losing market share and revenue to the competition.
- Above all, increase the performance of your mobile SEO fast. It should not only be attractive and easy to navigate, but also fast! Users tend to leave sites that take more than three seconds to load. To enter today’s digital world follow technical mobile SEO best practices, such as image optimization, Java-Script, CSS, and redirects, etc.
- Contextual mobile content: Create the content mobile users want and find valuable. Usually, mobile users are doing research – looking for the information necessary for inspiration. If your brand is present when they search for this information, it will influence their decision when they are ready to convert, which, however, is more likely to happen on a desktop or in the store, and not on a smartphone.
- Go hyperlocal:
Hyperlocal targeting helps you reach people based on their location. This way, brands capitalize on “near me” searches and “I-want-to-go” micro-moments, thus becoming hyper-relevant and hyper-valuable.
How to master this change:
- Own local search. Make the critical contact information that people search, easy to find! Make name, address, phone, hours, and directions prominent.
- The hyper-importance of hyperlocal optimization: Google’s personalized hyperlocal results make smaller geographic locations more visible. Therefore, you should optimize your Google My Business page, create localized content and landing pages, and also use local business Schema markup and monitor the performance of your local keyword rankings.
- Know the intersection of local and mobile: The people doing local searches on smartphones have a higher level of intent and are more likely to visit a business or store within a day of their mobile search, according to Google. When you optimize for local, you also optimize for people on the go.
- Voice Searches:
Voice searches have an increasing share of the total percent of mobile queries. Although it is too early to say that text searches are dead, the “voice search” is emerging as an area where marketers need to pay attention.
How to master this shift:
- The increased number of voice searches is associated with more answers. Different types of search results will come from voice search. The good news is they are more specific (who, where, what, how, why) and reveal user intent. Identify High-intent keywords, and optimize content that answers these questions to make sure your brand will be discovered in the changing SERPs.
- People adopt voice search more often now, as it is currently more accurate and useful than ever. Its share of the total searches is predicted to increase in the future. So, provide the content in a format that meets their needs.
- Learn about intelligent agents: Intelligent agents use semantics, search history, user interests and behavior to deliver the best results. Align your content with the intent and interests of customers at the right moment of the decision journey.
- From data to machine learning:
In part, Google relies on machine learning (RankBrain) to understand the huge amounts of data and to deliver the most relevant results to users.
How to master this shift:
- Understand that data is a source of truth. This means you should analyze and understand, not only the “what” of data, but also the “when” and “why” of it.
- Utilize AI and machine learning: This is helpful, as it reduces the time spent on analyzing data, and leaves more time for creating engaging and influential content to target prospective customers.
- Define metrics and measurement: This will help you make better and more accurate decisions, faster! Identify the metrics that matter to your brand, and monitor your search and content data. This will allow you to keep track of your progress, iterate, and improve your content production and organic SEO for improved visibility and voice share.
Conclusion:
When you understand the five points above, and always measure your results, you will be able to show that creating effective, engaging, intelligent content is the way to increase revenue and is worth the investment. Just like 411 Locals has shown.