Important SEO Factors To Focus On Today

According to columnist Pratik Dholakiya the four pillars of the future of SEO are as follows:

• RankBrain
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• The Knowledge Graph & rich answers
• Real-time, integrated penalty filters

His conclusion concerning the future of search engine optimization is:

“It is clear that Google will focus on machine learning, understanding of semantics, connections and patterns and user experience in the future.

SEO at the moment is very closely tied to content marketing. While Google can interpret content and derive its relevance to search queries with a very high degree of success, it is constantly focused on making refinements to improve how timely, contextual and useful this content is to the searcher. The Knowledge Graph, rich answers, RankBrain and AMP all serve this purpose, while integrated penalties maintain the quality of results.

I see bright days ahead for SEO.” Read the full article here.

I’ll discuss each of these in a moment, but first I want to mention that search engine optimization is always changing, as search engines improve their algorithms. It is of course the goal of these services, such as Google, to provide the best search results possible to their searchers.

So, as business owners in Georgetown, or other parts of Texas, what does this mean for us? Let’s discuss each of them.

RankBrain is essentially a growing, but current, comprehensive knowledge accomplished through machine-learning. It is a vast topic, and one that has caught the public eye. However, in terms of traditional SEO you cannot optimize for it, according to Gary Illyes at SMX Advanced, essentially because there are no scores associated with this third highest ranking factor. This discussion was with those that be at Google, so you might want to read more about here.

AMP pages have started showing up in desktop search as well. He also mentioned that this would be having a bigger and bigger impact for search, so keep your eyes open for more on that.

The Knowledge Graph is included frequently in searches whereby more “authoritative” answers are displayed by Google. It is, for practical purposes, Google’s version of Wikipedia, again, an accumulating comprehensive knowledge set. It will be more and more important to understand how this works, as schema markup grows and knowledge bases connect towards AI mentality. You will want to keep up with this as well.

One big suggestion is to be using Google plus, and Google my business as a part of your marketing strategy, and of course, as always, keep your NAP up-to-date and accurate. Citations will play a large role in this as well, on review sites, and elsewhere.

Regarding real-time, integrated penalty filters simply note that good quality content will be worth the effort in a big way going forward, though it has always been important.

Your sites will be reindexed more frequently and so will the sites of others. This means poor-quality links will be more likely to disappear and good ones will stick.

So, it is my suggestion that you focus your SEO efforts on good quality content and good quality backlinks. We of course can help with content creation and other SEO services for your Texas business. Please give us a call to discuss options.

Brent Csutoras suggests that Voice Search is already having a huge impact on SEO because voice search is more typically done in natural language. This is why Google and other search engines are so focused on grappling with the meaning of language in all it’s glory.

By way of example he notes:

“What we’re going to see happen is people expect to be able to do all of that inside the search engine, so I’m going to say, “Show me a list of fridge/freezers that have a capacity of 40 liters for the freezer section or more,” and Google is going to have to be able to start answering those queries.” Read this whole article to learn more.

Here is a very informative video, How Google’s RankBrain Artificial Intelligence Will Impact SEO, that should help you considerably.

As the holiday season approaches and the following New Year it’s important that businesses start honing in on the most impactful SEO strategies. Let us know if we can help.