SEO 2015, Part 2: Revised, Renewed, Refined, and Recast

The revamp in still on.

Hitherto, we have talked about mobile search optimisation, content marketing and the importance of social signals. Now here’s the second instalment of what’s cooking in the Search Engine Optimisation kitchen of 2015:

1st Part - SEO 2015, Part 1: Your Recipe Must Make Use of Newer Ingredients

Keywords should not be peas in a pod.

They need to be varied. Break the shell of picking singular keywords. The words you choose have to be relevant, true. But, more than that, they have to comply with the user’s intent.

You have to focus on why people look for things online, rather than how to make them look for things online. And, the mainstream is too boring. You have to discover the most suitable verbiage and the most powerful phrases to install the website on a top search position.

Long tail is staying. Rather than stressing out on a high competitive term like ‘smartphones,’ you would like to focus on a phrase like ‘smartphones with Android M.’ The latter will have lesser search and greater sales.

An even better phrase would be ‘budget smartphones with Android M.’ At this point of the search, your customers know what they want, and you are providing them exactly that.

The mantra is to be unique, and not run-of-the-mill.

But, how would you do it? How would you know what people are looking for? Of course, it can never be guesswork. Use online tools like Rank Tracker to find the perfect phrases.

Remember, you are putting in a lot of effort and money – right from content creation to page updating. So, make sure that your actions bear fruit.

What’s in a link? Co-citations and brand mentions are more important now!

Google sees ‘expressed links’ and ‘implied links’ as two separate things for Search Engine Optimisation. The former directs you back to the webpage of interest.

The latter, however, is not the traditional ‘link’ you know. In fact, it is a reference or a mention about a brand or website, which lacks a hyperlink.

Brand mentions are a better way to win traffic rather than the overly abused, conventional link building strategies. Google, too, seems to be happy with references and co-citations, for they are less likely to be exploited or manipulated just for the heck of higher search engine ranks.

And yes, do not underestimate the power of ‘nofollow’ links. 2015 is welcoming it will all heart. The future of every SEO service in India is soon going to get a huge change of course.

The other Search Engines are coming!

Google has been the granddaddy of Search Engine Optimisation all this while. But, beware! The other search engines, too, are coming for your website. Yahoo!, Bing, and DuckDuckGo might soon scrape a huge space out of Google’s pie this year.

And, this is slowly becoming so evident. Firefox has already accepted Yahoo! as the default search engine. Safari’s deal with Google is coming to an end this year, and Yahoo! and Bing are trying to exert themselves on the browser.

So, if Google’s the only search engine being hero-worshipped, you would soon have to refine your preferences.

And, there’s more to come. Let’s keep it for Part 3.