SEO is a constantly changing discipline. Let's see what we should be doing in SEO today if we want our website to attract quality traffic.
What is happening with SEO is that it is becoming the union of several techniques: Content Marketing, user experience, and optimization in Social Media.
In this more complex world, what are the practices to master today's SEO?
How to Master SEO Today?
We are going to review those points that we consider essential so that we do not miss anything in terms of positioning.
1.Mobile First
That the mobile is a fundamental part of any Digital Marketing strategy is not disputed by anyone. Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of our daily lives.
Ten years ago, mobile had a 1% global penetration, today, it has more than 80%. A trend that only increases year after year.
But if we think about the reasons that have led us to it, we will find the user experience. If the main purpose of a website is to deliver valuable content, we should first think about the best possible UX, and one of the techniques to give the best possible UX is through a mobile-friendly design.
2.site structure
If the user experience is important for SEO, the structure of our website is no less so.
Historically, bounce rate and time spent on the site have been relevant ranking factors. If users bounce on our site, Google robots are not going to be less. That is why it is important to have a clean and orderly web structure, facilitating tracking and benefiting ranking.
An XML sitemap can help search engines find and index our pages more easily, and help Google Webmaster Tools identify and correct crawl errors.
An essential tip: Use SEO friendly URLs such as http://www.domain.com/page-title, with as few directories as possible instead of http://www.domain.com/online-shop/product/ref4749472/ index .html
3.semantic search
Once we have identified a good UX as a base, and we have a good web structure, we will focus on a purely SEO factor that is currently gaining a lot of ground: semantic search.
Let's go by parts, what is semantic search? Since Google launched "Hummingbird", Google is able to identify if when searching for Guadalajara, we are doing it on the Spanish or Mexican city. That is, it attempts to understand the meaning of the query and the user's intent , ensuring that the entire sentence is taken into account, rather than, say, a few specific keywords.
4.New keyword approach
The change to a semantic search has meant that today, separately, the keywords have lost all the strength they had with previous algorithms. Although new keyword research has to start with specific terms, it must be developed with an eye to so-called “conversational queries”, both long-tail and slow-indexing.
Long -tail keywords were more likely to be used when the user was closer to making a purchase than throughout the entire knowledge and decision process. However, in today's SEO, they gain importance because a good ranking is capable of generating a large amount of quality traffic.
For its part, slow indexing keywords, known as Latent Semantic Indexing, is a term that is used so that there is a correlation of terms so that Google is able to know which keywords are related to each other. So if, for example, a web page contains Apple together with terms like iPhone or Tim Cook, it is understood that it is not a greengrocer, but the brand.
5.Social Media yes, but from Branding
That Social Media is one of the channels that have best adapted to the new SEO scenario is a fact, but it does not have the full impact that it seemed it would have. Although no one disputes that they are a powerful element to achieve a better position in search results, the truth is that although Matt Cutts said the opposite a long time ago , the first results of Twitter are beginning to appear in Google searches.
We cannot forget that both Twitter and Facebook are very authoritative sites. And that if our blog is the user's gateway, social networks are the windows through which the content flows .
What does this mean? That it is not that social networks are not important, but that it is the correlation between both disciplines that makes them so relevant separately. However, Social Media yes, but the more Branding is done, the better, in the broader context of a content strategy. Shared content, both your own and others, generates links and drives traffic , increasing brand inquiries. Unless we're only on TikTok , of course.
6.Build relationships, not links
With the large amount of content being produced daily on the Internet, link building is losing importance within an SEO strategy. Instead, Google is beginning to realize that if content and user experience is important, building relationships is no less.
An SEO must not only be a person with technical concerns, but must have a point of creativity when distributing their content: campaigns with influencers and their loyalty on social networks, among many other techniques.