3 Hot SEO Topics You Missed in 2016!

One of the perennial SEO tasks that hits in January is the usual debate over which of the hundreds of search signals you should pay attention to for the coming year.

2016 has been interesting for a lot of reasons, and in search there have been some trends that might have passed you by.

Firstly, though, I'd like to pull out the usual advice that I give clients in January: make a search engine marketing plan. That includes, as always, three things that you didn't do last year, and will do this year, and disposes of three things that didn't work out.

If tyou don't find three things that didn't work out, then either you weren't paying attention, or you haven't been tracking your SEO and SEM activities.

At least that gives you something to put on the 'To Do More Of' list in 2017.

Here's the three things that are most common to my search clients for 2017 and which everyone should continue to do, or start doing in earnest.

Mobile & Local

Right off the bat, making web pages mobile friendly has to be a priority if, like many, you have sidestepped the topic over the past year.

It's more than just moving to a responsive theme on your blog; embracing mobile properly also means:

• checking the mobile-friendliness of advertising network partners;
• double-checking plug-in mobile compatibility;
• creating content with mobile in mind, selectively published for mobile devices.

This last goes hand in hand with local search.

There are a lot of searches that tend to be done on mobile platforms that are also local. The image I like to use is that of a person in the street, using their mobile device to compare prices and make bookings for beauty treatments at neighbouring, competing salons.

It happens. It will happen more frequently in 2017 than 2016, so get used to it.

User First

For 2017, everyone needs to put their users (readers, customers, clients or audience) first in their SEO and SEM activities.

Not the search engines. There are still too many people who look at this as a technology issue, when it isn't any more. The symptom is putting search engines first (i.e. white hat optimisation and near keyword-stuffing) and the cure is user-first SEM.

That means:

• better content;
• responding to needs;
• testing the balance of information-to-sale.

The first one is easy. Have a content plan, based on keyword research, using the full plethora of tools available, and apply it every step of the way. Make it interesting, personal, and relevant.

That means responding to the needs of the audience. If video works best, give them video. If it's how-to PDF files they're after, then create a content plan around that. Check out the questions they are asking, and then give them best-in-class content to answer the questions, and a best-in-class product to go with it.

Of course, that means paying attention to tracking results. It's time to install trackers, pay attention to Search Console and Analytics and make sure you know what works every step of the way, and then replicate it across the content delivery platform.

Keyword Research for RankBrain

Google's gotten smarter in 2016.

The introduction of RankBrain means that your content has multiple meanings to a search engine. The best bit about this is that you don't need to create different pieces of content for different audiences, when they are semantically close in search space.

The slightly troublesome aspect is that you should be a lot more attuned to concepts for your content, and concentrate much less on exact words to represent it.

Yes, you can still use keyword research to uncover your audience's needs, but when it comes to content creation, use the full richness of language to get your ideas across, rather than trying to target a single phrase. It's a tricky balance, but with practice one that is fairly easy to get right.

So, as you go into 2017 with your content marketing plan rolled up under your arm, keyed to topics that you have proven will attract traffic, just remember that it's about the end user, not trying to get free organic traffic at any cost to quality content delivery.

If you want one-on-one help building a search engine marketing plan for 2017, then please use this form to request a free web site evaluation.

Keyword Selection Strategies for Your Keyword Research & SEO Projects

One of the questions that comes up from people following the free Keyword Research & SEO Tutorials is "How do I implement a keyword selection strategy?"

This article comprises top tips from the Niche Blogger Content Blueprint book, with a slight twist to help you apply the theory regardless of whether you're:

Strategy: Keyword Selection

• a product creator
• an author
• a store owner
• blogger, niche marketer or affiliate...

These are tips for everyone, whether they have an offline or online business; or are playing the hybrid game -- taking offline online and vice versa.

The Volume Strategy

This is, on the face of it, and easy one.

If you are looking for volume, then just pick the keyword phrase with the most searches (on average) per month, right?

Wrong. Or, at least, half wrong...

For a start, keywords are seasonal, and so your target keyword selection needs to be seasonal, too.

(You can download monthly keyword statistics right from within Keyword Planner.)

Then, keyword search volumes differ by geographic location; remembering that you have two geographies to take account of -- your own, and your market's -- and so, keywords have to be selected from a pool that makes geographic, as well as seasonal sense.

Get these two right, though, and you'll be making the best start.

But what if volume isn't your only priority?

The Value Strategy

There are two values in this strategy, both linked to the Suggested Bid calculated by the Keyword Planner.

The Low Value strategy places the emphasis on the cost of advertising to a group, whereas the High Value strategy looks at a niche that has a relatively high advertising spend as one that offers potential riches.

If you are an advertiser, the balance is towards a wide reach (Volume) and low cost (Suggested Bid, or Cost-per-Click). This is the Low Value strategy, which is a bit of a misnomer, because if you get it right, it can bring in a great ROI.

The trick is to make sure that you do the keyword research properly to identify a high-converting phrase (not just a high click-rate, but a high conversion rate once the visitor hits your page)  with a relatively low CPC.

The other side of the coin is to look for niches with a very high value (Search Volume x Suggested Bid) and make that the basis of your keyword selection. However, I would caution against using these keyword phrases in an AdWords campaign because, unless  you have a very high conversion rate and margin, it can become an expensive project!

The Competition Strategy

Anyone who has hired an SEO specialist has probably heard the term "KEI" (Keyword Effectiveness Index) which is a weighted calculation that tries to take account of the fact that not many people read past the first 10 results of a search, and of those that do, the click rate tails off noticeably...

(If you want proof of this, just look at your GWT / Search Console data, and order it by SERPs, and watch the click-through-rate plummet! To take advantage of this "lost traffic", check out my Zero Traffic Keyword Research post.)

The theory behind the KEI is that the more competition you have, the less attractive a keyword.

Up to a point, I agree.

However, as keywords become more and more long-tail in nature, this may well change, and a more modern index might be in order.

For a start, if you are going to try and evaluate the competition, use an appropriate search context:

• the correct search domain (i.e. google.co.uk/.com/.fr etc...);
• keywords "in quotes" (narrow match);
• PTB (phrase-to-broad) ratio, where available.

The first two are pretty obvious, but the last one is a specific ratio that some of the bigger automated tools provide and which is tough to calculate on your own. Your best bet, if you're doing the job manually, is to construct a query:

• using the allintitle: option (Google-specific, sorry!)
• break the phrase into "quoted" "sections" that represent the "long-tail"

If you apply these two in conjunction with the correct context, then the estimated number of pages returned by Google should fairly represent the competition.

Just remember that the value is relative and so the absolute number is irrelevant. My advice would be to put the results on a logarithmic scale, and use that as the basis for your keyword selection process.

Your Keyword Selection Strategy

Of course, you can use these principles to roll your own keyword selection strategy; we do that every time a client buys one of our keyword research services.

It's an easy thing to do using a spreadsheet. For example, if you have the search volume in Column 'B', and the CPC (suggested bid) in Column 'C', then a value-weighted strategy might use a formula such as:

• =B * (C^2)

On the other hand, if you want to skew by volume:

• = (B^2) * C

Other factors, such as the Competition Index (KEI or equivalent -- free download from Launch2Success here) can be built into the formula, too, so that you get the best keyword selection strategy for your own specific use.

To see the keyword selection process in action, check out the Niche Blogger Content Blueprint or one of our free tutorials (links at the top of the page.)

Keyword Research for Hotel SEO Strategy

With direct bookings both more profitable and becoming more frequent, it pays to have a keyword research and SEO strategy specifically tailored to the hospitality industry. There are two drivers for this:

• Search engines become smarter and attuned to local search;
• Consumers becoming more comfortable booking online.

While sites like TripAdvisor and Expedia are also key to a hotel's success and cannot be ignored, more and more consumers are turning to Google first to find their perfect getaway location.

Along with some excellent advice in the Hospitality Net article "How to Jumpstart Your Hotel's Direct Bookings Through Search Engine Marketing" there are some surprising figures to back this up. According to the article 61% of potential customers come through a search engine with a 20% year on year increase in relevant searches performed on Google.

This would indicate that SEO is going to be a deciding factor in a hotel's long-term direct booking success.

Hotel SEO Strategy 

While it is entirely possible to reduce the SEO process through concentrating on "7 Steps for Your Small Business Survival" (NuWireInvestor web site) including local search, social engagement and creating attractive, valuable content, many experts seem to gloss over the keyword research strategy as part of the marketing process.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) both rely heavily on an integrated keyword management strategy, and so it is surprising that it doesn't seem to get the emphasis that it richly deserves.

For example: while a long tail keyword research policy can help identify a good starting point for SEO and SEM activities, unless it becomes part of a test, measure and adjust cycle the research will always be second hand.

Keywords are the communication conduit between your target market and your hospitality offering, so properly researching them ought to be a priority: and conducted by a keyword research specialist rather than consigned to being merely part of the SEO/SEM process.

Keyword Research for Hotels

For those who have the time and confidence to go it alone, here are a few salient tips from the trenches of keyword research strategy.

Firstly, local search is highly important. Search engines can not only deal with hyper specific local searches (such as "hotel near <landmark> in <city>") but also there is a rise of the "near me" syndrome: as in "hotel near me".

However, this last is also very location-specific, so the key takeaway here has to be to remember to use geographic targeting when researching keyword usage using a tool such as the Keyword Planner.

There is a big difference between a search conducted locally ("hotel near me") and a search conducted for a location ("hotel near new york grand central station"), and this difference needs to be reflected in the SEO/SEM strategy and in the keyword research.

Next, review local restaurants, landmarks, museums, events and places of local interest in order to generate useful, valuable, attractive content, but make sure you concentrate on those that qualify in one of two ways:

• high search volume
• long-tail low-traffic low-competition

The first is obvious; it takes very little effort to create a piece of content highly optimised towards a very popular attraction, and if it has a very high number of requests you may find yourself with a (small) piece of a large traffic pie.

The second might not be so obvious. However, if your hotel is the only one where a visitor from out of town can get a great idea of what the event (restaurant, attraction, landmark, etc.) has to offer, then you will naturally score highly and attract high conversion rates.

Finally, remember to go for social sharing and engagement with other local businesses. For example, consider writing a piece that is highly optimised towards your chosen long tail keywords (i.e. "hotel near conference center in miami with sauna" -- I made that up, by the way!) and encouraging other local businesses to publish it, and link out to your site from theirs.

At the same time, use social keyword research to find out what conversations people are having about hotels and facilities in your area, and then jump in on the conversations with opinion (and links to your hotel booking facility) as well as using that keyword research to fuel content creation.

All of this takes time, granted, but is worth the extra effort. While The Keyword Coach has some very reasonable plans (you can take us for a test drive for $5!), there's no reason why computer literate, internet savvy hoteliers with time on their hands can't use the information in our keyword research and SEO tutorials to make a start on their own.

Just remember: Research, Test, Track, Adjust.

The Rise of Guided Search and Autocomplete

In a recent article "The Rise of Organic Search", Equities.com writer Brian Bridges of Lumentus pointed out that "majority of every company’s website traffic now comes through organic search". While this might not be news to hardened SEOs, it raises a couple of important points related to autocomplete, which I call guided search.

• The first is that there is a decline in the hit rate on destination sites; places where you know the URL and type it in directly to the address bar;

• The second is an anticipated rise in finding brands and companies by sentiment and intent rather than by a purely factual search query.

Explaining these phenomena is not trivial, but has its roots in the advent of autocomplete, a feature offered by virtually all search engines.

What is Autocomplete?

Autocomplete is a deceptively simple service: it merely suggests search terms that the user might be about to type based on previously used search terms, and the user's own input.

However, one has to wonder what the proportion of autocomplete to organic search actually is. 

While Google doesn't provide any statistics, autocomplete behaviour coupled with the claim by Bridges that "77% of users only click on the first three links" of a results page, could well be distorting true organic search in favour of something I call guided search.

The Rise of Guided Search

There are two places that Google (for example) suggests keyword phrases for users to pick as their search term.

The first is in the box that appears under the search term box, and is a result of typing a term into that edit field. This is the traditional autocomplete or auto-suggest location.

Users can simply click one that was either the term they were looking for anyway (the convenience argument), or pick one that looks interesting. The latter is an example of guided search, and it comes with the risk of contamination of the user's original intent.

The other location is under the first set of (usually 10) results, as a double-column wide list of suggested searches, which the user is free to pick from. Again, this could be argued as helpful, or convenient, but is also a good example of a guided search.

It's the same for retailers such as Amazon, who routinely suggest extra items that the customer might be interested in: that could be termed "guided shopping".

Why is this Important?

Guided search, at its worst, leads to a kind of mob mentality when it comes to finding online resources.

It's a feedback loop of sorts, rather like the kind of feedback loop you get when you use only those keyword phrases identified in your log files to create new content. It's only a matter of time before two things happen:

• you start to repeat yourself;
• you paint yourself into a (popular) niche.

Guided search suffers from the same issues. The more search users click on the first, second or third proposals the engine makes, the more that engine reinforces its opinion that these are things that people are searching for -- to the exclusion of everything else.

It can't be helped, and the best that we can do is anticipate the effect of guided search by using keyword research.

How Does Keyword Research Help?

If you type in your brand or company name, Google (for example) will suggest various options to elaborate the search, and these options represent queries that have been previously executed by search users.

They can be captured manually, simply by going to the search engine and performing the queries; but it is much more efficient to use a tool such as KeywordTool.io to reveal en masse the various combinations of keywords that have been used with your brand.

On the one hand, it's a good way to gauge both sentiment and intent by seeing what words are used in combination with the brand, and the brand's product lines.

Alternatively, it 's an excellent way to see what people are searching for, so that you can react to it.

Taking this one step further is the AnswerThePublic service; which specifically links questions, sentiment and intent through matching your root keyword phrase with various question-words (what, where, why, etc.) and prepositions.

Evaluating the results is an important part of maintaining your brand identity and reputation.

To learn more about keyword research, head over to the Keyword Research & SEO Tutorials page, and learn the ins and outs of running complete keyword research campaigns for your brand.