SEO is always changing and will evolve invariably. New updates are released, new trends come in and new strategies are developed. Last year in 2014, more than 10+ updates to Google algorithm were made, according to Moz’s change history.

We at 5Pixls, are constantly aligning the SEO strategies for our clients based on updates and other key factors. The SEO team at 5Pixls recently did a brainstorming session on some of the biggest and key points need to adjust for our clients in 2015. Here are some of the key points we discussed:

Develop and optimize for mobile

As per the COMSCORE prediction mobile traffic will exceed desktop traffic in 2014, and they were right. Google has been encouraging responsive websites and they provide a better user experience, and lately starting including a “mobile-friendly” tag to websites in mobile search results.

Optimizing for Yahoo and Bing

There might be a possibility in 2015 that some other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo start to increase their market share. Google is currently in talks with Safari for making Google as a default search engine, and news is both Yahoo and Bing trying to secure that spot too. Recently, Firefox kicked out Google and made Yahoo as default search engine for their browser. With other search engines becoming popular and accepted it is important to have visibilities across these search engines in addition to Google.

Focused social media approach

People initially believed social media is just a platform to share images, content, videos etc., so lot of businesses would sign up for any and all channels available. Times have changes and social media is now a marketing channel along with a customer service channel. Now the audiences expects to the brands to engage with them on a personal level. We always suggest our clients to focus on two or three social media platforms and be very engaging and accommodating. This will help you increase your loyalty as well as sales. This can introduce your brand to new people and present opportunities to earn links via shares.

Earning links

All the updates and algorithm modifications that has happened over the years and months, they have one still not changed the importance of inbound links as the most influential signal of trust and authority. Earning a single link from a high-quality relevant website is far more valuable than earning mass links from irrelevant blogs and websites. The advantages of high-quality inbound link are SEO, lead generation, sales, referral traffic and branding.

Targeting long-tail keywords and phrases

The period of targeting broad keywords is almost coming to an end. They definitely tend to have high search volumes, but they are not successful in attracting highly targeted traffic and they are expensive to rank. The advantages of targeting long-tail keywords and search phrases are high quality buyer targeted traffic and less competition. A good research along with understanding the user behavior of the target consumers can help you distinguish search terms and keywords you should target for your business.