As a New Year beckons, website owners will need to keep on top of the latest trends effecting search engine optimisation and ranking. In order to avoid downranking in 2016, here are four essential tips to take on board.
Mobile Friendliness
This is hardly a new topic, but having a mobile-friendly website will become even more important in 2016. In fact, experts believe this will be one of Google’s top ranking factors for SEO in the coming year. If your website is not yet mobile-friendly, make it your New Year’s resolution. Aside from Google favouring mobile sites, there are plenty of compelling reasons to make your site mobile-friendly. According to Ofcom smartphones have overtaken laptops as the most popular device for getting online.
Focus on Content
Content has been king for some time, and in 2016, content is still set to reign supreme. If you don’t put effort into providing fresh, engaging and relevant content on your website, you can expect Google to duly downgrade your ranking over the next year. Content creation needs careful consideration, and before you can create your content marketing initiatives, you need to know what you want your reader to do. Make your copy targeted, and add content on a weekly basis.
Improve the User Experience
If you don’t want to see your website plummet down search rankings in 2016, ensure you are providing a great user experience. Google will be focusing on user experiences over the coming year, and if it gets a whiff of your site having a high bounce rate, and visitors clicking back to the search page result, it will find you guilty of providing a poor user experience, with a punishment of a lower ranking. There are lots of ways you can improve your service, including providing fresh, compelling content, easy navigation and a well-designed layout. It may be worth consulting professionals such as https://www.enovate.co.uk, who are Essex web designers, to find ways to improve the user experience on your website.
Interstitial adverts
Towards the end of this year, Google has started to punish those mobile sites that use interstitial adverts, such as blocking content with adverts to promote downloading the site’s app. If you don’t want to see your ranking downgraded in 2016, or lose your mobile-friendly status, ditch the use of annoying, interstitial adverts.
