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new-year-1904679_1280

As the new year draws closer, it is time to discuss what 2017 SEO best practices will look like! There were several big SEO changes in 2016, and we are going to talk about what will change in the landscape of SEO in the coming year. While some of this is speculation, one thing is certain, SEO will be the year you MUST ADAPT TO MOBILE thanks to a mobile-friendly algorithm change made this year!

2017 SEO Best Practices

2017 SEO Best Practices

1. Responsive Site

Making your website responsive means you are using the same template for desktop and mobile, and is probably the most important of the 2017 SEO best practices. While platforms do allow for you to enable a mobile template or theme, these are not responsive, but rather a different template altogether, and can, in fact, get you in trouble with Google, because they are not responsive.

2. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Accelerated Mobile Pages is a strategy to help allow content load more quickly, and we all know faster load times are good for SEO. In 2017, Google will make it even easier to view AMP’s and to share them. You can learn more about Accelerated Mobile Pages.

3. More Developed Content

Short amounts of content is just white noise nowadays. Writing longer and more developed content will help you stand out and build trust online, where most people are immediately skeptical of anything they read. You don’t have to write on as many pages, if you pick the right pages and develop the best content you can. It will be Hard. It will take Time. It is Necessary.

4. Videos, Videos, Videos

In the time of handheld technology and social media, if you are not taking videos and sharing them on your social media, you are missing out on traffic, sales, orders, etc. Facebook has even added a feature where you can connect to people with a Facebook Live feed. You can also use your phone to create a YouTube Live session as well. If you have a brick and mortar location in addition to an online store, you can take a video with your phone and use it as a free commercial! Upload the video to YouTube, and share it on Social Media and add a link in your newsletters! 2017 will be the year of Online Video.

5. Rich Snippets and Schema Markup

Rich snippets use schema.org and micro formatting to highlight specific attributes of content on your pages, which makes it easier for the info to show up on Google Knowledge Graphs on the Search Engine Results Pages. This is something small, but more important than ever!

Of course there are normal SEO best practices, like key terms in title tags, meta descriptions, etc. Onsite SEO used to be good enough to make an impact, but now, it’s just the foundation upon which these SEO strategies are built. Request a Free SEO Audit of how Google sees your site! Hope you had a Wonderful 2016, and here’s to a prosperous 2017!!!