5 Tips For Effective SEO in 2017

If you want to succeed with your SEO in 2017, then you can't continue using the same outdated tactics your used too.

The world of SEO is rapidly shifting and evolving. The techniques are going to have change for this year, and the problem is many developers might not even be aware of new search engine demands. Below, you will find five tips and techniques involved in staying ahead in SEO for 2017.

Improve Engagement to Improve Rankings

Engagement is your site's ability to hold the visitor's attention. In SEO terminology, it is how long a user spends on your site. The reasoning behind this important SEO criteria is if a visitor spends more time on your site, it is because they found the site to be useful. Google only wants to deliver the best results to stay the number one ranked engine, so it will promote the sites with the best engagement in the results. Here are three ways to do improve engagement:

  • You can make your posts easier to read.
  • Use something called Bucket Brigades.
  • You can lace your content with images.


If you want to learn more about engagement, what the terminology means, more tactics or hiring an SEO expert consultant to manage content, then get in contact with Joel House. 

Make Your Existing Pages Longer

According to a study done by Backlinko, the longer your site content, the more likely it would be ranked higher on search engine result pages. Writing over 2000 words per blog post is simply not doable for everyone, and it demands a labor intensive and time consuming process. One thing you can do is, increase the content you have already written because your content already has established readership and authority. A good alternative and first step, is to find posts ranking well already and increase it with new info and content.

Set Your Sites on YouTube SEO

According to Tubular Insights, 55 percent of searches on Google will return results containing at least a single video. 82 percent of the videos returned on the keyword search are YouTube videos. YouTube is a popular search engine, and it surpasses Yahoo and Bing combined, so concentrating on YouTube SEO will improve your site's ranking. You can research more about YouTube SEO independently, but the complexities of this kind of SEO combined with other techniques may better be left up to an SEO consultant.

Improve Site Speed

Google announced it was going to start using loading speed to determine page rank in 2010. Since it first announced this, it has continuously placed emphasis on how important it is for a site to load and move quickly for page ranking. It has helped site developers along the way with tools like PageSpeed, Accelerated Mobile Pages Project and Think. Google wants your site to move quickly on regular personal computers and on mobile. It wants it faster than it is right now too. How much faster is yet to be determined, and there are various ways to make it quicker too.

Focus on Topics Instead of Keywords

Google and its algorithms are constantly evolving, so in 2017, do not expect your site to end up at the top of the page because of keyword-centered content. Developers should stop looking at keywords and more at questions for searches. Basically, you have to try and anticipate the answers to users questions. The best way is to know your desired audience inside and out, and you should try and make your content more thematic.

These are only five tips, and they probably only scratch the surface. The world of SEO takes intensive study, and it is a specialized field. I strongly recommend hiring an SEO consultant.