The winds of change continued to sweep through the world of search engine and social media marketing in 2015. Below are some of the essentials that are important moving forward and a few actionable items to help you plan your digital marketing strategy for 2016.
Mobilegeddon & The Google Mobile Friendly Update
In April of 2015 Google made changes to how it ranks websites in regard to how well they are optimized for mobile. Some people felt “Mobilegeddon” was overhyped but there is no question Google, Facebook and pretty much everybody in the digital world considers mobile optimization to be of utmost importance.
Mobile searchers surpassed desktop searchers in 2015 and a website that is optimized for mobile phones and tablets will be better for users and search engines.
Mobile testing tools
- Google’s mobile friendly tool
- Responsive Design Testing
- GTmetrix | Website Speed and Performance Optimization
- WebPagetest – Website Performance and Optimization Test
Below is a GTmetrix free mobile test example with recommended fixes. Sorry AOL, you still need some help in a few areas.
Rank brain and artificial intelligence
RankBrain is part of the Google algorithm and uses artificial intelligence to learn how humans search. When people search for ambiguous queries, RankBrain is said to be more effective than the human crafted algorithm.
It’s safe to say that search keeps getting smarter, even in the absence of people!
The Google Penguin real-time update that never came
For those suffering from a Google Penguin penalty, 2015 was like waiting in purgatory. Even though Google indicated that they were going to implement the real-time Penguin update before the end of the year, I wasn’t shocked when they delayed it. I wasn’t surprised partially because I thought that would be a nightmare for e-commerce sites that might have lost rankings – and maybe their minds – if it was released just before the holiday season.
All indications are that it will be released soon and hopefully in January.
Google Quality Raters Guide now available to the public
EAT, an acronym that stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness is prominent in this document which Google has now made public. It’s not a secret roadmap on how to beat Google but it sure does spell out the philosophy pretty clearly in regard to what they find important.
Jayson DeMers, a Forbes Contributors says that “Expertise typically comes from your on-site content contributors—are your writers listed along with their credentials? Do you convincingly prove why you’re entitled to post about a certain topic? Authoritativeness functions much the same way, but for the entire domain—how long have you been around, and how much have you done in that time? As for trust, these signals come from the type of content on the page—would you trust a site with flashing pop-ups, ridiculous claims, poor grammar, and hundreds of exclamation points?”
Will your website pass the EAT test in 2016?
Also in the document and new to the 2015 Google Quality Raters Guide, is the concept of know queries and know simple queries. If you provide simple and brief answers to complex questions you may get more search engine traffic when people are searching on know queries and know simple queries.
Quantity versus quality: how often should I post blog content?
In some ways the age-old debate was settled this year in regard to whether you should post more frequently or only high quality content. HubSpot, Rand Fishkin and Neil Patel posted the following fascinating data in regard to quantity versus quality.
HubSpot: How Often Should Companies Blog? [New Benchmark Data]
“Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5X more traffic than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.” Lindsay Kolowich | @lkolo25
Rand Fishkin of Moz: Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die – Whiteboard Friday
“We need a process to choose, to figure out how we can get to 10x content, not good, unique content, 10x content.” Rand Fishkin
Neil Patel: 5 Simple Steps That’ll Help You Determine How Often You Need to Blog
In this post, Neil Patel shows that the same strategy won’t work for everyone. Some people like Jon Morrow can get thousands of subscribers before posting much of anything while others do well posting daily or more.
Search engine marketing industry surveys
Here are a few of the hot search engine marketing surveys of 2015:
Content promotion and sharing
It’s no longer enough to pick longtail keywords but you have to create “10x” content worthy of sharing. This article from BuzzSumo, highlights some of the viral content marketing lessons of 2015.
BuzzSumo: How To Go Viral: Lessons From The Most Shared Content of 2015
Steve Rayson of BuzzSumo says “There are four different elements that contribute to shareability as follows.”
One of my main goals for 2016 is to never produce any content without at least a small plan of who will share it and why. I also plan on spending as much or more time guest blog posting as creating content.
Conclusion
The good news is that there are 6 “simple” steps for a perfect digital marketing strategy. The bad news is here they are…
- Create exceptional content that blows everyone else out of the water on a regular basis. You don’t have to post several times a day on your blog but 16 times a month or more would be a good start, according to HubSpot.
- Buffer got 100,000 users by doing 150 high quality guest posts in 9 months. Do some that fast or your little long tail blog posts will be like trees falling in the woods that almost no one hears.
- Don’t focus on keywords and links but you need to do a good job with both of them while also covering topics comprehensively. To be a topical authority you need not only services and/or product pages but resource pages and blog posts deeply covering a topic from many perspectives across dozens or thousands of pages.
- Be the number one expert in your space that is regularly featured in the media and have stellar reviews. Bonus points for publishing not only an e-book but a book and doing public speaking and having some kind of spin, tool or quiz that gets you on at least local TV.
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly, loads fast, has phenomenal usability and is visually pleasing. Bonus points for lots of great images, videos and bullet points.
- Internet marketing tools can make your life easier, so make sure to learn lots of them in great depth such as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, Hootsuite, Optimizely, usertesting.com, Buffer, MOZ, SemRush, HubSpot, MailChimp, Photoshop, WordPress, SpyFu, Compete, Alexa, Link Research Tools, BaseCamp, Evernote, Salesforce, Excel macros and Screaming Frog.
Simple right?
While my touch of sarcasm is clear, this is a list of things I am working towards and I am by no means doing all of them well, yet.
Content marketing is popular and highly competitive because people have realized that great marketing is about helping and not interrupting.
If you want to stand out from the pack, being average will no longer cut it.
What are some very small and simple steps you can take from the list above and apply in 2016?
