Some marketing advice has held true for decades, but not SEO! The rules for search engine optimization constantly shift as search engines tweak their algorithms to be more effective. Here is some of the most recent SEO news to help keep you on the cutting edge.

Website Magazine Offers Guide for Local SEO

Without the right local SEO, you may be missing out on potential customers looking for a business like yours. Some of the tips in this Website Magazine guide include:

• Making sure to incorporate voice searches in your SEO strategy
• Keeping your business address, locations, and contact information consistently updated and verified
• Make sure your website content is relevant to what users search for
• Track reviews and respond to complaints in a timely manner
• Use backlinking with other local businesses

Don’t Let Your Website Design Undo Your SEO

You might have a slick, SEO-optimized website that your graphic designers are proud of and your executives swoon over. But what if your actual users hate it? In this article from Search Engine Journal, the author explores website design details that can actually counteract your careful marketing efforts.

Some of the worst offenders include:

• Drop-down menus where you have to choose a sub-category and cannot click on the main category (a personal pet peeve of mine!)
• Accordion navigation, where a stacked list of headers can be clicked to reveal or hide their content
• Infinite scrolling
• Lack of SVG (scalable vector graphics) fonts
• Site redesigns based on opinions, not analytics

Check out the original article to learn more about how to prevent disconnect between SEO and website design.

How your SEO Strategy Can Avoid Google Penalties

Even when it’s not releasing major overhauls to its search algorithms, Google is constantly tweaking them. Any changes may leave marketing experts and web designers terrified of penalties for poor SEO. EIN News offers some SEO tips to avoid a major faux pas. These include:

• Creating, not just any website content, but high-quality content that engages users
• Having a long-term mindset for SEO, since it can take time to build up your SEO, and most short-term solutions could backfire
• Focus on building your brand around your website, establishing trust and authority

Content Marketing is the Key to Good SEO

This article in The National Law Review focuses on content marketing for law firms, but it can apply to most other service providers. Many potential clients use search engines like Google to help them answer particular questions. If your SEO is strong enough that they can find your website, you need to have enough quality, trustworthy content to keep them there.

My favorite quote from this article: “SEO without compelling content is like having a spotless kitchen but no food to offer your guests. Content without SEO is like cooking a nice meal for your guests but forgetting to give them your street address. You need both to improve your ranking.”

If you need help creating great content that follows SEO guidelines, let’s talk! Feel free to send me an email or visit my website at emjwriter.com to learn more.

As always, thanks for reading. If you find this post helpful, I’d appreciate if you shared it.