Search Engine Optimization is all about strategy and plans. If you are on the internet then you have to glide with the SEO. It seems to change fast and keeping up with it could be a challenge. We have just bid adieu to 2016 and in order to stay afloat on the internet, you need to be ready with your campaigns for the SEO Challenges that are coming up in 2017. Documented below are the challenges; buckle up with the ordinances to meet them.
Intrusive Interstitials
People witnessed the prioritization of mobile websites when the mobile-friendly label was introduced by Google but now they seem to be tracking the mobile website whose user experience are subnormal. Everyone is aware that one is barred from exploring a site unless you click on a link or certain pop-up, this undoubtedly is infuriating yeah!
Google emphases on user satisfaction and the users detest interstitials. It favors the websites that accentuate user experience and condenses the prominence of the websites that fail to take care of the users. The ad-monetized sites have already made hay but now the interstitial pages will be treated equal to the content pages with less gravity. If you have influenced your site with interstitials then it is one of the SEO Challenges of 2017, keep it in your priority list.
Secure Your Website: Move to Https
Websites seem to be increasingly moving to Https and the browsers are now beginning to mark Http sites as unsafe. According to a recent security blog rolled out by Google, all the websites that fail to provide a protected Https connection will be labeled. The pages that contain credit card details, password logins etc. will all be considered as non-secure pages. Google generously has rewarded the websites that have taken the initiative of switching to Https, by boosting their ranks. Websites seemed to convert steadily last year and according to one of the transparency reports of Google, a surprising 70% of the pages that are loaded on Chrome OS have now become Https. The other OS too have also witnessed a fairly visible growth.
Although moving to Https is one of the SEO Challenges for the year 2017, there is a word of caution that cannot be ignored. Considering safety, speed and privacy to be the most important tools to survive in the web world there could be several technical snags that one would have to go through. Nevertheless, the pros seem to outbid the cons. If your website has forms that require personal information, you should be moving to Https. It is one of the priorities for this year and you should be moving soon if you wish to overcome this SEO challenge.
AMP Pages for Speed
Simple ideas and tricks put in together can make a huge difference in the performance of a website. AMP is a platform that has been designed purely for speed and readability. AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages improve a site’s speed by things such as not loading the images unless they are scrolled down to be viewed. Google has AMP in its list and expects the websites to comply with their requirement.
To make things more apparent there is a supporting proof of data that shows the importance of AMP. As per the data of ‘Slate’ there was a monthly rise of 44% in their new visitors, ‘Washington Post’ revealed an increased 23% in the users with mobile searches who returned within a week, ‘Gizmodo’ found 80% of their AMP traffic to be new while ‘Wired’ has an increase of 25% in their click-through rates from SERP’s.
Another study in 2016 of DoubleClick, which equated ad performance on non-AMP and AMP mobile pages on 150 publishers established that over 80% of these publishers realized advanced viewability rates, and more than 90% of them attracted higher engagement with increased click-through rates.
Voice Search
Adding to the list of SEO Challenges for 2017 is – Voice Search. Voice search and other digital assistants similar to it are going to change the way of browsing completely. Siri has been seen giving way to Alexa Echo, by Amazon, and one needs to prepare his website for voice search or other changes that would be required for its implementation.
Some points that could help you in the prep work can be listed as under:
- Long tail keywords or keyword phrases with three or four words should be optimized.
- Schema markup.
- Content should contain words like where, who or what.
- Question and answer service in your website is a great way to deal with this challenge. The customers can put up their questions for which you can give answers later on.
Mobile First Index
The release date of Mobile First Index is yet to be declared by Google, however, when would go live it could attract great losses in terms of convertible traffic and ranking to the websites that have not been appropriately designed. Some of the points which could be highlighted are to apply performance optimizations strategies that are specifically designed for mobiles, ensure that the content is available and can be completely accessed by the users, integrate structured data to be viewed on mobile, etc.
In short, your site should be mobile friendly.
Http2
I know we have already had a discussion above on how important it was to move to Https, however, Http2 happens to be equally important and is one of the SEO Challenges for this year. Why? Well, if you move to Https without doing Http2 your website would be quite slow as you would not be using the new protocol.
Http2 happens to be the best thing that has happened in the web, browsing will now be safe and fast. Combining JS/CSS files would not be required, no sprites and much more.
There are several websites that are facing problems while making the transition to Https and Http2, ensure you have yours done correctly.
How Will You Take on these SEO Challenges?
‘Ignorance is bliss’, if you wish to stand a chance in the big bad world of the internet make sure you are updated with what is buzzing currently before you make the changes in your website.