SEO has been in the spotlight for a number of years now and there are no indications that this might change any time soon. Any business website needs quality Search Engine Optimization in order to grow, reach more visitors and eventually convert them into customers. It is a long process that is dangerously close to science nowadays.

Fortunately we have contacted some specialists in the field, who shared some top advises for future success. Now you just need to follow them!

 What You’ll Learn

• How 84 SEO specialists improve their SEO – you will read various options and probably figure up your own strategy.
• What you should focus on in terms of SEO – many of these specialist use the same approaches, and the ones that are mentioned the most – for sure work!
• What are the SEO trends in 2017 – the rules are changing constantly and we need to be aware of the new techniques we need to apply in our work.

What Tips Did 84 SEO Specialists Share With Us

We used HARO (our guide to this amazing tool) to gather information by just a simple question about the top SEO tip one would give us.

SEO Tip #1: Content Is Jet Fuel For Every SEO Campain

Rob Boston, President of Risr Marketing, said:

The biggest missed opportunity in SEO right now lies in content creation. Many marketers are talking about it, but a majority of brands aren’t leveraging it. Content is the jet fuel that pushes every aspect of an SEO campaign forward, while also being incredibly cost-effective. Start producing more content, and learn how to leverage it to expose your brand to new audiences.

SEO Tip #2: Don’t Neglect Video Content

Neil Andrew , Director at Piccana Ltd , said:

We all know that the web is moving towards mobile, but what a lot of people
aren’t aware of is that content is moving to video-based at a rapid rate.
We think of Google as the only search engine to optimise for, but did you
know YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world? To give your
SEO a boost and bring in more traffic, make sure you have a fully optimised
YouTube channel and post regular, informative content for the world to see.
Stop neglecting the world’s 2nd biggest search engine!

SEO Tip #3: Get Creative

John Liston , Manager, Strategy and Operations at All Set , said:

Breaking the mold is the only way to truly win at SEO in 2017. Google has
caught on to the quick win tactics of the past and is handing out stiff
penalties instead of authority. This does not signal the end of content but
simply the end of bad content. Get creative, be funny or provide incredible
value and you will be rewarded while everyone who sticks to their templated
posts and outdated content calendars will be busy bemoaning the death of
content marketing.

SEO Tip #4: The Importance of Content Promotion

Pat Ahern, Director of Traffic Generation at Junto, said:

Content promotion is the elephant in the room that marketers don’t want to
talk about. SEOs need to embrace the idea that success from a search
perspective comes from devoting 20% of your time writing content, and 80%
of your time promoting it.

SEO Tip #5: Improve Your Link Building

Matthew Turner, President at Boston Turner Group, said:

Many marketing people feel overwhelmed when it comes to link building
because reaching out to individual sites takes real time and effort.
Where do you start? Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to build a competitor
link profile with tools like Open Site Explorer. That way you can see
what links and anchor text your competitors have been successful getting
and reach out to those same site owners.

SEO Tip #6: Optimize the Key Images

Tim Weibel, SEO Specialist for SuperTeacherWorksheets, said:

Think about how you’ve used Google’s search this past year. If you’re
like most people, you search for images as much as you search for text
content. When I work on my company’s website and blog, I always take
some extra time to optimize the key images. To do this, I simply add
keywords to the file name, and I insert an appropriate image title tag
and an alt attribute. And most importantly, I make sure I’ve got
unique, custom images on the site that will attract clicks. I’ve been
finding that Google favors larger images over smaller ones.

SEO Tip #7: Point To The Right Direction

Michael Mignogna , SEO at Minyona, said:

Google likes showing websites that not only *contain *good information, but
also *reference* good information. In other words, don’t only focus on
adding good content to your site, but also focus on linking out to credible
content. You can be a good resource by both teaching *and *pointing in the
right direction.

SEO Tip #8: Quality Over Quantity

Nicolás, SEO Senior at Afax, said:

Do not write a new article until you fully SEO optimized the one you just wrote.
Having one article that can rank decently is better than having 100 articles that
Google doesn’t know about. Make sure everything is in place, and that you are aiming to the right keyword.

SEO Tip #9: Create Interesting Content!

Zack Gallinger, President of Talent Hero Media, said:

Creating content that generates links from high-authority sites can be extraordinarily challenging in a crowded industry.
Instead of writing 500 word blog posts that nobody will link to, consider creating content
such as comprehensive how-to guides, complex data visualizations and authoritative
whitepapers backed by real research. While it may take dozens of hours to develop a single piece of content,
these types of posts are far more likely to be linked to by sites that will boost your search rankings.

SEO Tip #10: Include a FAQ Section

Sam Warren , Manager of Marketing and Partnerships at RankPay, said:

One simple yet effective way to take advantage of this opportunity is to
include a short FAQ at the end of your most popular articles. Use a tool
like AnswerThePublic.com to find the most common questions searchers enter
related to your subject matter. Then answer each and every one of them
clearly and concisely.

Not only will you see improved rankings, but you’ll also be putting
yourself in a position to land some featured snippets in the SERPs!

SEO Tip #11: UX is Getting More and More Important

Ed Challinor, Founder and CEO at Smileworks Liverpool, said:

Recent Google algorithm changes mean the second half of 2017 is less about hammering your pages with backlinks and more about on-page changes and user experience. UX is an exciting new ranking factor that’s already putting better quality brands up there on the SERPs. If you’ve got a great user experience on both desktop and mobile then you’ll likely see positive changes. This will continue into the latter half of 2017 with mobile first indexing really shaking things up on the mobile. Plus social is finally sending verifiable signals with social shares correlating strongly with results.

SEO Tip #12: Use Pinterest and Reach Out to More Bloggers

Brita Long, Founder of Belle Brita, said:

You need to optimize your content for Google and for Pinterest at the same time. Too many bloggers forget
that Pinterest is its own powerful search engine. When you create that
perfect vertical pinnable photo or graphic, take another minute to create a
compelling description for the alternative text (alt text) of the photo.
The alt text will then auto-populate as the Pinterest description when a
blog reader decides to save your blog image to Pinterest!

SEO Tip #12: Video – Google’s Main Goal

Reilly Forbes, Content Specialist at Vendasta Technologies, said:

Video needs to be a focus for everybody putting content on the web.

1. At the most fundamental level, video content is in step with what’s
essentially Google’s main goal. Deliver highly relevant content that
enhances the user’s experience online. As a result, when Google sees video,
it rewards the page that hosts it.

2. Video enhances your sites metrics around page sessions and bounce
rate, both of which help significantly towards SEO.

3. Video makes your content more shareable, and shares lead to
backlinks—the backbone of increasing your rank.

Just a brief thought on this, too often it feels like SEO priorities and
creative ideas have trouble finding alignment. Lean too far one way and
your content loses its soul, lean too far the other and you’re left with no
audience. Learning that video can have a big impact on SEO warms my content
strategy heart!

SEO Tip #13: Bring Value To Your Users

Kenneth Burke, Marketing Director at Text Request, said:

Google has been doing everything in their power to squash brands who aren’t
creating value for Google users. Forget what’s going to benefit your
business in the short term! What’s going to add value to the person
searching through Google? Create helpful content and a helpful site for
those people, and everything good will come to you.

SEO Tip #14: Establish a Genuine Connection

Tim Jernigan, Head of Product Marketing at Badger Maps, said:

Engage with your market more. Brands don’t exist in a vacuum, they live
and breathe by their customers. Your best customers have lives and
businesses of their own. If you reach out and establish a genuine
connection, like contributing to their site, you aren’t just getting a
backlink – you’re creating a deeper bond with your customers.

Influencer marketing isn’t just a buzzword. Have someone in your marketing
department reach out and engage with your customers. You’ll improve your
SEO and attract more quality customers.

SEO Tip #15: Get Links From Quality Sites

Andrew Johnson, President & CEO at WP Hatch, Inc., said:

A lot of SEOs have been saying “PBNs are dead” for a few years, and while I don’t share that position, I do think that many traditional PBN techniques are losing their edge. Instead, I focus on getting quality links for our clients from authoritative sites on an ongoing basis. It’s more expensive and involves much more hustle, but the rewards pay off in the long term.

SEO Tip #16: Benefit From Your Customers

Ovais Ahson, Marketing Manager at Strategy Properties, said:

SEO is still being used as a way to improve website ranking on search engines for relevant keywords. But as time goes by, we all witnessed that it is not about ranking keywords, but it is essentially about converting visitors into customers. The most important SEO aspect right now is how your users engage with, and experience your website. That’s right, ‘User Experience’ (aka UX). Make sure your website is easy to navigate, have call-to-actions not more than three times on a single page, and loads fast. Ranking keywords and bringing in visitors to a website are also important aspects of SEO, but benefiting from the visitors, that is a primary goal (and expectation) of every business, should also be taken good care of.

SEO Tip #17: Create Semantic Content

Jarod Spiewak, Owner & Lead SEO at Spiewak Marketing, said:

One of biggest mistakes I see people make it optimizing a site like it’s
2007. Choosing 1-2 keywords per page and saying that anymore is over
optimization. Throw any good web page into SEMRush and you’ll see it
usually ranks for hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords.

There are two parts to this. *Topical authority* and *semantic content.*

Take an article about a car. Do you need a separate page for how to tell
if you have a flat and how to change a tire? While you could, it makes
more sense to have 1 authoritative piece of content on that topic.

Next is semantic content (fancy word for synonyms). Mention Car Vehicle
and automobile throughout the content to target those who search
differently. Don’t keyword stuff or go overboard with 600 terms that mean
car. It still needs to sound natural.

SEO Tip #18: Deliver the Best Answer

Catherine Simms, CEO at Web Dezine It, said:

Become an expert in your field and Google will love you! Google wants to deliver the best answers to its users. Therefore, you should write informative, relevant, in-detph articles on a regular basis. People ask questions to Google: How to…, What is…, Who is…, etc…If Google thinks that you have the best answer it will send traffic your way and you might even get yourself a Google’s Featured Snippet! Talk about prime cyber real estate!

SEO Tip #19: Monitor Your Search Queries

Justin Kerby, Founder Cave Social, said:

If you’re looking to improve your SEO, be sure your page titles line up
with what people are searching for. To do this, monitor your search queries
in Google Webmaster Tools, and try to find queries that are triggering your
pages to display. Then, adjust your page titles to match those queries.
This can double or triple your page traffic with just a few quick changes.

SEO Tip #20: Deliver the Best Answer

Ryan O’Connor, Co Founder of One Tribe Apparel, said:

1.) Be creative with how you build relationships. Most writers & bloggers
especially for big sites get pitched every day so you need to find a way to
stand out. This year we’re sending gift packages with some of our newest
and most popular styles along with a handwritten notes to writers who cover
our niche at top publications like Refinery29. We’re not asking for
anything in return but we did a test run of this strategy last year and the
response was amazing as they are very likely to reach back out and contact
us.

2.) Invest in content that can serve multiple functions. I want our big
content pieces to be valuable to our current fan base and email list, to
people coming to our site from general SEO terms and to serve as linkbait.

SEO Tip #21: Offer Unique Content

Sam Kessenich, SEO Specialist of RyTech, LLC, said:

There is too much competition to just create a website
& GMB listing, optimize for keywords, add schema and wait. Businesses have
to be able to offer unique content, whether that be a blog, infographic,
interactive webpages, etc. Content has to make users want to stay on the
page, and can’t be easily replicated if a website wants consistent, organic
growth in 2017.

SEO Tip #22: Optimize Your Titles and Descriptions

Dwayne Hogan, SEO Manager at Lucidpress, said:

You can use Google’s Search Console to find pages and keywords that are
under-performing in terms of clickthorugh rate and try new titles and
descriptions on those pages. For a more advanced version of title tag
testing, I recommend an amazing blog post by Ross Hudgens. His tutorial breaks down how to
conduct a test and goes into depth on the psychology of high-performing
title tags and headlines.

SEO Tip #23: Where SEO is Going

Kent Lewis, President & Founder of  Anvil Media, Inc., said:

SEO Is Going Deeper
SEO will continue to evolve to keep up with Google’s focus on user experience and improving context. That means successful SEO efforts will focus on optimization of deep content, as well as multimedia via schema markup/rich snippets. We’ve already seen the migration to deeper content (higher word counts) in Q1 of this year and expect the trend to continue.
SEO Is Going Native
With ad blockers becoming increasingly prevalent, SEO professionals will focus more on development of original content than ever before. While native advertising will increase in 2017 and beyond, many brands are focusing more on authoring in-depth blog posts, articles and ebooks as their own publishers.
SEO Is Integrating Further With PR
PR has ALWAYS been a key component of successful SEO efforts, per my articles from years ago. The evolution of earned and owned media have only made the trend more prevalent. We’ve been working with PR teams and professionals to create compelling stories, articles, events and press releases to positively impact SEO and reputation management for 16 years.

SEO Tip #24: Prioritize Quality Link Building

Matt Edstrom, Head of Marketing of BioClarity, said:

Build Links –
With 2017 almost half way over, SEO’s often begin to adjust, change, and add to their initiatives set at the beginning of the year.

One important SEO tip I encourage all SEO’s or business’ to either continue doing or add to their current SEO efforts, is to prioritize quality link building. Although many SEO’s shy away from link building due to its tedious and difficult nature, it is still one of Google’s major ranking factors.

SEO Tip #25: Gain Maximum Traffic Value

Aaron Lin, Director at Ignitive, said:

I highly recommend using Google Search Console to identify keywords that
you’re ranking for that are sitting on page 2 or 3. Those keywords are not
doing your website any favors, and they’re relatively easy to push those
keywords to the first page by building backlinks or optimizing the page’s
on-page SEO. It is by far the best way to gain maximum traffic value for a
amount of minimum effort.

SEO Tip #26: Use Relevant Keywords in H1, H2 and H3 tags

Stephanie Caudle, Freelance Copywriter at Caudle Marketing & Media, said:

Content is king now more than ever in 2017. One of the greatest ways to
increase not only your SEO ranking locally and nationally use relevant
keywords in your H1, H2, H3 tags. These relevant keywords can be found via
keyword research to determine what types of words or phrases your audience
is searching for in order to find you.

SEO Tip #27: Build a Mighty Homepage

Adam White , Fouder of SEOJet, said:

People have always been taught that your homepage is your most important SEO
page and because of that you should target your most important key phrases
there.
The new way to approach SEO is to use the power of your homepage to build your
brand. In fact 80%-95% of the links that point to your homepage should have your
brand name or some form of your URL as the anchor text.
This builds brand trust with Google and allows you to target your key phrases
much more aggressively on other pages in your site. Once Google trusts your
brand it is so much easier to rank your sub pages. Remember, focus on brand
building on the homepage, not key phrases.

SEO Tip #28: Focus on your Best Performing Content

Dustin Montgomery, Digital Marketing at Shippers Supplies, said:

I suggest focusing in on your best performing content. Explore additional keywords you might be missing out on and make sure to incorporate them. Combine that with another round of outreach link building to others in you industry and might be surprised how much more effective that content can become.

SEO Tip #29: Think About Search via Voice

McKinzie Brocail, Digital Communications & Marketing at McKinzieWrites.com, said:

The IoT (Internet of Things) in terms of tech that uses speech-to-text is
continuing to grow. Content marketers need to keep up! With searches being
done via speech using options like Ok, Google on Android, Siri on Apple
products and Alexa on Amazon products, there is a lot of room to improve
long-tail keywords. It will help to phrase (or rephrase) things the way
people actually say them aloud so that your content shows up at the top of
searches.

SEO Tip #30: Get Featured in Rich Snippets

Bradley Shaw, President of SEO Expert Brad Inc., said:

If you are selling a service, product or are
involved in any form of e-commerce, optimize your content for Google rich
snippets. By showing more informative results, including review star
ratings, it is easier for users to make a purchase decision instead of
clicking other results for more options.

SEO Tip #31: Don’t Stop Learning

Jessica Lovejoy, SEO Specialist at Postali, said:

When you’re in SEO, you’ll always be operating in a fluid landscape. If
you ground yourself in the same “best practices” that may have worked a
year ago and stop learning forever after, congratulations! You’ve buried
yourself and the rest of your team in the Stone Age of SEO. No matter how
much you think you may know about SEO, don’t stop learning. Stay on-top of
the latest news and read industry magazines. Follow top SEO experts and
business leaders like Danny Sullivan and Rand Fishkin. Tread carefully
around radical shifts and be open-minded to new ideas. And please, always
act ethically.

SEO Tip #32: Organic content will boost your SEO

Mike Koehler, Founder/CEO at Smirk New Media, said:

SEO has changed from the days of keyword-stuffing and voluminous
link-building, instead Google wants quality content. Here’s the trick: if
you run a business, write about how you do what you do and how you know
what you know. Then use keywords naturally in what you post on your site.
That organic content will boost your SEO.

SEO Tip #33: Use Longer Tail Keywords

Bob Bentz, President  of Purplegator, said:

Keyword research is becoming increasingly important due to the change in
the way people search today using voice search. Don’t just assume that the
keywords you set a year or two ago are still the best ones to target. Voice
search on Siri, Amazon Echo, and similar tools are changing the game and
longer tail keywords will become more popular. The good news is that
competition for those longer tail keywords should be less, thus resulting
in a cheaper pay per click price and a more targeted customer for
conversion.

SEO Tip #34: Increase the Speed of Your Site

Brian O’Connell, Owner of Asterion SEO, said:

Sometime towards the end of this year Google is going to move from a desktop index to a mobile index. This means that it is the how your site performs on mobile that will determine the rankings for both mobile and desktop searches.

Because speed is one if the most critical elements in mobile rankings and the majority of sites fail the Google Mobile Speed Test this is a massive opportunity to steal a jump on your competitors.

SEO Tip #35: Use High-converting Low-difficulty Keywords

Matt Bentley, CEO & Founder of CanIRank, said:

It’s extremely difficult to rank for competitive keywords, especially for
new websites. You have to pick your battles and know which keywords are
within your reach. High-converting low-difficulty keywords are the ideal
ones to go for when starting out. These are typically long tail keywords
with buying intent. When it comes to SEO in 2017, you will receive the best
ROI by pursuing keywords for which you can realistically rank for.

SEO Tip #36: We All Need Value

Jake Messier, COO, Principal at Mungo Creative Group, said:

To find SEO success, it all comes down to one thing: value. It’s important to create
content that adds value to your brand’s target audience. Brands should
focus on creating quality content that shows just how well you know your
audience’s interests, wants, and needs. Content that is useful will
typically rank higher in search results.

SEO Tip #37: Focus on Mobile

Christine Kilbride, Digital Marketing Associate at Sagefrog Marketing Group, said:

Everyday life continues to change at a rapid pace, thanks to ever-changing technology. Society’s biggest vice? The cell phone. According to Google, 90% of online purchase decisions start with an online search. Some sites are beginning to draw more mobile and tablet traffic than desktop alone. Therefore, in order to take advantage of the current landscape, our best advice for 2017 is to do everything you can to optimize your site for this mobile-first world. Use Google Search Console’s tool that tests your pages’ mobile compatibility: typical optimizations include making clickable items big enough for users’ fingers to press, decreasing load time for pages, and prominently displaying your business’s phone number. In 2017, user experience is king.

SEO Tip #38: Write Topics that are Interesting For Your Customers

Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation, said:

Small businesses should focus on producing interesting, valuable content in areas that relate to the businesses’ core products or service. To help vet sites, Google continues to rely more and more on human engagement in the form of shares and mentions on social media. Small businesses should write about topics that are of interest to their customers, partners and providers. A strong brand is playing an increasingly important role in SEO. With more interesting, easy-to-consume content comes more engagement and with more engagement comes higher rankings.

SEO Tip #39: Don’t Underestimate the Actual Quality of the Article

Eric Anthony, Founder of StreamingObserver, said:

The most important SEO tip I can give you is to never focus on SEO so
adamantly that the overall quality of the article suffers. Though knowing
which keywords are important to your industry at the moment is valuable,
remember to still produce an interesting article that your readers will
want to read. It doesn’t matter how many buzz words you pack into an
article, if it’s poorly written people won’t bother to read it.

SEO Tip #40: Make a Good Reliable Website

Fernando Jimenez, SEO/Search Marketing Director at The Advocates, said:

Quality content seems to still be the number one factor that will affect a
website’s SEO as well as a good backlinking profile from website that are
relevant to your content. The Idea is to not focus on how beat the system
(Google), but how to make a good reliable website for the system.

SEO Tip #41: Answer a Specific Question

Ishveen Anand, CEO + Founder at OpenSponsorship, said:

Write articles on your own blog that are authoritative and answer a
specific question. Think of a question that your customer might be asking
and then write a blog to answer this with a high density of key words and
referencing other good articles.

SEO Tip #42: Repurpose your content into infographics and videos

Damon Burton, President of SEO National, said:

Once you’ve finished posting your blogs for the week/month, repurpose your content into infographics and videos. Divide your blog into bite-size pieces and make a visually appealing infographic. Or, spend 30 minutes and narrate your article to repurpose it into a video using quick and efficient software like Content Samurai.

SEO Tip #43: Local Review Do Count

Bryan Clayton, CEO of GreenPal, said:

A common SEO misconception that as surfaced over the last couple years is that local reviews don’t really matter as much anymore , and there’s no definitive way to get reviews anyway.

Well we don’t believe that… Specially not in 2017, with 90% of our new customers come through local search engine optimization, and from our experience local reviews constitute 30% to 40% of how and why we rank for local keywords. It’s been my experience success in local search it’s kind of like dieting and requires a daily diligence.

One of the unique things me and my cofounder do is Reviews Saturdays

We spent an hour each Saturday reaching out to customers that week that we know had a good experience and ask them if they would leave they a review for us on one of the major review sites. We look at their customer details and if they have a dog or cat listed on their account we will send them a cat nap or a dog bone, or we will send them a GreenPal T-shirt to thank them for sharing their experience.

We’ve been doing to six months since we have been doing it we’ve noticed rankings improved on a local level on each of the nine cities that we are live in. Saturday’s work best because folks are home and in a pleasant mood, and It’s a great way to grind out reviews which is 25% of the local search game in my experience.

SEO Tip #44: Update your Local Business Page Profiles on the Popular Search Engines

Sean Horrigan, Brand Evangelist at PR Guy, said:

Make sure you have updated your local business page profiles on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This is essential. The search engines will prioritize their own listings on the page, and they don’t want to feature profiles without correct, useful information. Make sure you have claimed ownership of your pages and that they have a correct address, contact info, hours, etc. Listings that include photos tend to perform better than those without. Make sure you properly categorize your business. Business profiles that are not categorized often will not show up to searchers.

SEO Tip #45: Take NoFollow Links into Consideration

AJ Saleem, Academic Director at Suprex Tutors Houston, said:

My number one tip for SEO marketing is to focus on the search results that
no one else is. NoFollow links have started being valued even more by the
new Google Penguin algorithm, and I have been snapping these up while
everyone else is chasing those DoFollow links.

SEO Tip #46: Start Optimizing for Rich Answers

Andrew M. Warner, Founder of Content Ranked, said:

I would say to try and start optimizing for rich answers. These are the
results that usually show up before the organic search results. Having your
content, or even a snippet of it, show up there shows readers that Google
believes your content is the most relevant to what they’re searching for.
And even if you’re not in the top 3, but still on the first page, searchers
will automatically look for your post.

SEO Tip #47: Look at your Companies’ Social Media Profiles for
Keyword Optimisation

Jason Lavis, Managing Director at Out of the Box Innovations Ltd., said:

Most people focus on their website, and forget about
SEO for their social media accounts.

Make sure all of your important keywords are in the tag lines and
descriptions. This has a double benefit… Customers can find you by
searching inside the social media platform. Just as importantly, FB, G+
Twitter etc rank really well in the search engines, by having your keywords
in your page, you can overtake the home websites of your competitors in
search.

SEO Tip #48: SEO Trends

Adam Yang, Owner of Beyond marketing solutions, said:

Mobile First
Google has further pushed their shift towards mobile-first indexing. Meaning, that search engine results pages will be based primarily on mobile content from your site’s content. Google dives into more detail on their Central Blog. Google’s Mobile Index shift could radically change the way patients discover your practice, services, and brand. If you have neglected Mobile SEO, now would be the time to get into the game. However, if you do currently have a responsive and dynamic website, there is always room for improvement. This would be a good time to evaluate its performance. Ask yourself if your website is consistently driving new patients to your practice? Does it rank well on search engines? Are you optimizing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) or Schema (Structured Data)?If not, it might be time for a fresh website or an upgrade.

Video
Video content has been on the rise. Video marketing is not just a fad, especially with new technologies such as Snapchat, Facebook Live, and even Instagram. Create videos that highlight your office, values, and philosophy. Millennials today want to be educated and informed

Optimize for local search
1. Verify your Google My Business profile.
2. Make sure your information is complete, consistent, and accurate on Google and across other local listings (Yelp, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, etc.).
3. Generate reviews for Google and other listing sites. More positive reviews tend to have more visibility.

Create high-quality content
Well-written and purposeful educational content will continue to be important for rankings. Basically, you want to provide answers online.

SEO Tip #49: Customer Service is Important for Off-page SEO

Larissa Murillo, Marketing Manager at MarketGoo, said:

For off-page SEO, Customer Service is extremely important! Online reviews
play an increasingly important role in driving potential customers to your
website, and with the recent airline scandals becoming viral, you need to
make sure your brand mentions and online reputation stay positive. It WILL
help your SEO!

SEO Tip #50: Long Form Content is Better

Mikhail Khorev, Digital Marketing Strategist, said:

Focus on long form content that brings value to your readers and customers.
Stay away from vague 500 words articles and posts that are created with the
goal of having keyword reach anchor text and the hope of boosting your
organic ranking. I usually see those provide temporary results and loose
effectiveness with every Google’s algorithm update. Ask yourself, Will the
content you create worth the share with my friends, will it help solve
their objectives or teach them something? If the answer is yes, most
likely you will get search engine traffic, social shares, and backlinks in
organic way without promoting it, which at the end will help improve your
overall SEO performance and authority.

SEO Tip #51: Be patient

Steph Taylor, Founder & Director of Wildbloom Creative, said:

It takes time for your SEO efforts to be reflected in your rankings, so don’t feel as though your time or money has been wasted. Sometimes it can take a whole 6 months for your rankings to shift – particularly if your website is brand new. In fact, brand new websites will generally take a whole year before their rankings stabilise. With new websites, its not uncommon to rank in the top 10 one day, and then 100+ the next. Remember, it’s not because of anything you’ve done, but rather just part of the process. Sit, relax and wait for your SEO efforts to take effect. It’ll be worth it when they do.

SEO Tip #52: A Mixture of Good Practices is Needed

James Goodnow, Attorney at Fennemore Craig, said:

Big picture, there are several keys: siloed local, original city-specific content (and lots of it generated on a constant basis – landing pages are not enough); local, relevant links (particularly from the media); solid outbound linking to credible local sites; more local citations.

In terms of strategy, here are my top four tips:
1) Treat your website like a news organization. If you put out, non-advertising quality articles with a fresh perspective, they will be link-worthy.
2) Good content is nothing unless you have distribution channels. Don’t overlook traditional PR as a tool for pushing unique, interesting content. Good content marketing requires getting placement in key places, which can be blogs or social media – but that can also be the mainstream media. A placement on a major media outlets site can start a viral domino faster than most other mechanisms.
3) Infographics are not a panacea. Infographics are all the rage, and they can be helpful if used correctly. But simply putting an infographic on your site means nothing unless you have a way to drive draft to it.
4) Make everything you do audience-centric. The moment you start direct advertising, kiss your chances of content-marketing success goodbye. Never forget, your audience is always thinking, ‘what’s in it for me?’

SEO Tip #53: Good Backlinks Wanted

Dima Midon, Founder and CEO of TrafficBox, said:

Since Google started, back in 1998, SEO was always about having good
backlinks. Even almost 2 decades of major updates have not changed this
law. What changes may we expect in 2017? Big changes, and only if you will
concentrate on building better links than your competition. Don’t be
afraid, this it’s always working!

SEO Tip #54: Voice Search will Increase

Bastian Heynen, Online Marketing Manager at netzkern AG, said:

Voice Search will continue to increase in the second half of 2017. So it is important to optimize for natural language. Ask questions that people ask themselves and provide a well-researched answer that completely satisfies the user/searcher. Best case is you answering a question 10 times better than the top positions of the current Google search results page. This is the ’10x content’ method combined with voice search optimization.

SEO Tip #55: Connect with influencers

Amy Kilvington, Content Manager at Blinds Direct, said:

Identify the bloggers, YouTubers and social media influencers that are most relevant to your brand, and reach out to them to develop a relationship. Influencers hold serious value for brands, providing them with coverage to a much wider audience as well as generating high-quality content for you to reuse. They will also provide strong relevant backlinks to your site. You must understand that influencers are a lucrative form of marketing, and therefore you should dedicate budget towards honing these relationships and offering them a good incentive for their collaboration with you. Features from influencers will help to raise brand awareness, drive traffic to your site, and earn lots of valuable links to boost you up the search rankings.

SEO Tip #56: Be 100% Loyal to your Work

Lalit Kumar Sharma, Founder & CEO at ElkeesDeals, said:

Great Contents + Quality Backlinks derive to higher search engine ranking for any site. If you are genuine to your contents and posts quality and informative piece of work, you would definitely get backlinks from other niche sites but these process takes sometimes. The person with most useful content on his/her site generate highest quality links that becomes a Win-Win situation.

From the last few years, the SEO practices are still not changed a lot but a site owner need to be little smarter and must follow search engine guidelines to get notice from new subscribers.

Although there are other SEO tactics we need to worry in 2017 such as AMP, https, mobile pop-ups, etc but in the end if you’re focusing on best quality content with mandate quantity and backlinks you will beat your competition.

While creating great contents and links, On-Page SEO can’t ignore at all. You should also keep your eyes on on-page SEO and site optimization. Here are two major points to have a look.

Onsite SEO – it refers to the optimization of the complete website with configuring permalink structures, site-mapping, etc.

OnPage SEO – optimizing content for a target keyword with a blog post what includes placing keywords properly within content, headings (H1, H2, H3, H4), relative images & videos with insuring content quantity and other important factors.

According to me, Search engines are nothing but a set of algorithms. They look for various factors while ranking a site for certain keywords.

The sties that rank highest in the search engines that are most informative, engaging as well as useful for readers. So write not for search engines but write for readers, you will be rewarded. When your content love by your readers, search engines will love you too.

SEO Tip #57: Proper Keyword Research

Michael Lan, Digital Consultant at Glossika, said:

So often do people want to skip straight to the good stuff that they tend
to overlook the essential, fundamental principles that work to build a
strong and solid foundation for future SEO efforts. Proper keyword research
should be your number one priority if you want to set yourself up for
success.

My favorite method is using Google’s related keywords and autocomplete
functions to identify long tail keywords that are both highly relevant and
extremely low competition. Many of these keywords have respectable search
volumes and are exponentially easier to rank for than high competition,
high search volume keywords.

SEO Tip #58: Get the Gold Stars

Andrew Swindlehurst, Outreach Executive  at Piccana, said:

A recommendation we’ve made to all of our clients is to get the gold
stars on their search results. Although it doesn’t directly increase
rankings, it has been shown to increase click-through rate by around 25%,
which may be enough to set you apart from the competition. Over the last
few years, we’ve only seen the stars impact grow and I expect the rest of
2017 to be no different.

SEO Tip #59: Choose the Core Keyword First

Charlotte Lynch, Marketing and Operations Executive at Modern Retail UK, said:

Choose the keyword, or short phrase, that is the core of the text. For example,
if you’re writing an article on SEO – your key word would be
‘SEO’. You should have the word SEO throughout your article, have
it in a header, have it in the URL link, title, meta
description – so that Google knows that’s what you want your page
to rank for.  Search Engine Optimisation is a slow process but by
making these focused changes you’ll see results!

SEO Tip #60: Focus on the Customer Experience

Hannah Moore, Campaign Executive at Intermarketing, said:

I believe that a smart move for businesses would be to focus on the customer experience. What do they want to read? What will they share? What will they care about? Try to not become too consumed on how to do SEO and try to focus more on how to improve your business for the customer. For example, if you’re a flooring company, produce more content around installing floors, and make the guides interesting and informative. The end of the day, if you produce excellent content, interesting social posts and have a clean, easy to use website, you’re on the right path. To take it a step further, consider a creative campaign, something which will be interesting and grab the attention of your customers and the press.

SEO Tip #61: Content Navigation + Scroll Rate + Average Engagement Rate

Kal Dimitrov, Content Strategist at Fantastic Services, said:

1) Optimise your content navigation

Never leave a blog post without a table of contents, especially long-form
ones. This is how you will let your audience know what the article’s going
to be about and make it easy for them to navigate throughout your piece.

2) Leverage scroll rate

Tag and follow the scroll rate of your users. Then you can use that
knowledge to set up call to actions at key points of attention, such as
internal links, or booking/buying buttons.

3) Track actual average engagement rate

There’s a small but crucial difference between what you see in Google
analytics in terms of average engagement and a refined version of it. With
proper tagging, you will have an engagement rate that follows the activity
of the user on the page. That way, you will know whether the person
actually interacts with the page, or simply has left it in a background tab
of the browser.

SEO Tip #62: NAP consistency

Maria Hadzhieva, Digital Marketing Specialist at Local Fame, said:

It is really important to have up-to-date information about your business
online as if not so not only your customers but Google will be confused
which is the correct one too. So if you have new address, phone or name it
is necessary to change it not only in GMB (Google My Business) Dashboard
and on your website but on your social media channels and in directories
where your business is submitted. It’s best if your keep list of your
directory submissions with logins. You can also search for your old NAP
details in Google and edit/report the incorrect information.

SEO Tip #63: See Who is Mentioning you

Vinita Marathe, Sr. SEO Executive at Impulse Digital, said:

Register on mention.net to get an alert whenever someone mentions your
brand name/ company name on internet. Reach out to people who have
mentioned you in their post/ article but haven’t provided you any backlink.
Shoot them an email (use voilanorbert.com to find email id) and ask them
nicely to provide you a backlink. As long as the link is contextual, do not
bother whether it is dofollow or nofollow.

(This trick has worked for me really fine to get contextual links from
decent quality sites. I will gladly share snapshots of mention, outreach
mail conversation and backlink that we earned using this method, if
needed.)

SEO Tip #64: Create Engaging Content

Eric Bowen, Digital Marketing Manager at BroadbandSearch, said:

Continue creating content but make it as engaging as possible. The standard for great content is continually rising. In order to gain links from high authority websites, your content will need to reflect by creating eye catching designs and fresh ideas.

SEO Tip #65: Google Search Console

Patrick Pest, Digital Marketing Analyst at Imprezzio Marketing, said:

One thing I’ve been really paying attention to this year is Google Search Console. Search Console can give you an in-depth look into the health of your website and what you can do to positively affect its traffic and rankings. This is also the heart of your Sitemap and Robots.txt, both of which can help or doom your site’s future indexing and ranking. Ensure that both are setup correctly and are working efficiently. A one-time setup is not enough – continue with monthly checks to find any issues with, or penalties against, your site that could affect your ranking.

SEO Tip #66: Better Go WIth Long Form Content

Alex DiSebastian, Internet Marketing Director at PaperStreet Web Design, said:

Long form content (content that is 2000 words or more) is one of the best
SEO strategies in 2017. Generally speaking, most website campaigns engaged
in SEO have the knowledge of obtaining an authoritative backlink profile but
building relevant content that increases user engagement; increases time on
site; lowers bounce rate; and ultimately assists with conversions is key to
success.

SEO Tip #67: Use HTTPS

Jeff Moriarty, Digital Marketer at Moriarty’s Gem Art, said:

The one tip I recommend to everyone and is the main project I am working on
for every single client of mine is transitioning their websites from http
to having their entire site secure through https. It sounds daunting, but
it’s actually quite easy with the right developer. Google is giving a
ranking boost for it and even showing some of your pages as not secure in
their latest Chrome browser update. These two reasons alone are enough to
start working on this right away. Don’t be the last in your industry to do
this…unless of course you are one of my competitors!

SEO Tip #68: Hard Work Pays Off

Anna Martin, SEO Manager at Dentalimplantsfriends, said:

Incredibly hard and regular (!) work. Proper and as maximum as possible (and even
impossible) technical optimisation, unique content to satisfy users’
needs with amazing graphics/infographics, your own ideas/testing and
your heart.

SEO Tip #69: Focus on Mobile Strength

Swapnil Bhagwat, Senior Manager at Orchestrate Technologies, said:

The ever increasing frequency of updates from Google, (and other Search
Engines that want to keep pace with it) has completely changed the realm of
SEO. Moreover, the emergence of mobile as the device of choice for browsing
the Internet has also revamped the rules of the game to a great extent. As
mobile search results increase their say in SEO, the page speed, and the
responsiveness of the website will play a vital role. Furthermore, with
voice recognition algorithms getting better, enabling the users to take to
Voice Search, the websites would have to comply with new rules for
conversational queries to be on top of SERPs.

SEO Tip #70: Mark up Data Correctly

Mark Churchill, Digital Marketing Manager at Wealth Club, said:

The technical side of SEO is becoming much more important in 2017. There’s a trend towards voice search, which gives one answer instead of ten links. This is on top of infoboxes and SERP snippets (so-called “position zero”) which are already so important for traffic. So it’s becoming vital to know how to mark up data correctly, or liaise with developers to get this done. It could change who you recruit for SEO, or which agency you hire. Proper markup could mean the difference between a ton of traffic or none!

SEO Tip #71: Analyze your Competitors

Chris Hornyak, Editor at The Content Factory, said:

When it comes to SEO, your very first step should be doing some keyword
research and there’s no better place to start than analyzing your competitors. Once
you see what your competitors are ranking for, you’ll have a pretty good
idea of what they’re doing well, what you can do better, and what they’re
completely ignoring. At The Content Factory, we don’t consider a keyword
analysis complete until we’ve looked at a minimum of three industry-based
competitors.

SEO Tip #72: Come up With a Content Strategy

Donna Duncan, Owner / Consultant at B-SeenOnTop, said:

If you are blogging for SEO and feel like you’re not getting a good return
on your investment, then pause – pause to come up with a content strategy.
Writing random fluff with catchy titles earns the short-term attention of a
few new visitors to your website but it won’t bump your rankings or build
repeat traffic, trust or loyalty. You instead need to come up with a
thoughtful, well-integrated, and distinctive content strategy that uniquely
services a need in the marketplace and earns you a positive reputation. A
good content strategy is cement in the foundation for your success.

SEO Tip #73: Use Search Analytics Reports

Chris Hornak, Owner of BlogHands.com, said:

If you’re looking to generate stronger SEO results by the end of the year. The quickest place to find that kind of gold is right inside your Google Search Console.

Simply review your Search Analytics Report to identify keywords that you’re currently not fully optimizing for and/or expanding on a topic that has shown strong performance, or incorporating keywords into existing content, by reviewing your top performing organic pages.

SEO Tip #74: Monitor the Movement of your Site

Kean Graham, Founder & CEO of MonetizeMore, said:

Make a habit to visit Google Webmaster Tools to monitor the movement of
your site in search rankings. If your site is still not added to Google’s
free and very useful software then this is the time to do it. All of the
above tactics will be useful once you identify what pages and keywords you
wanted to optimize. Using Google Webmaster Tools helps you to identify
these pages/keywords which are ranking in the second page or below SERP’s
top 10 result. Use your best page to link to your low performing web pages.
Review the title tag and make sure H1 tag encapsulates the texts. Come up
with a tag line which are engaging to improve CTRs.

SEO Tip #75: Voice Search Again

Cari Bacon, Senior SEO Project Manager at SEO, Inc., said:

Voice search is where it’s at, so get used to answering long form search terms. Those searching are getting used to asking mobile devices search queries than typing. Be sure to include these longer questions and answers into your content.

SEO Tip #76: Check Relevant Industry Blogs

Carlos Crespo, Managing Partner at Motoza, said:

The Google algorithm changes hundreds of times a year, so it’s really hard
to do SEO. This is a common sales pitch digital marketers use to further
complicate what it takes to do well in SEO in 2017. However, if you do
things how you’re supposed to do, the frequent changes of the algorithm
should really only have a minor effect on how well you rank. My advice for
2017 would be the same as that of the past few years: focus on what
relevant industry blogs and news sources say about your brand/website.
Having content across the web that associates your website as a source of
information about your industry and keywords, will steadily and securely
rank you higher in Google. It essentially comes down to modern public
relations. It takes a concentrated effort so it’s not necessarily easy, but
the results can be very rewarding in the long run. Focus on your PR efforts
& building relationships with industry content sources. That’s the best
tactic for SEO in 2017.

SEO Tip #77: The Customer is King

Joshua Jarvis, Owner of Jarvis Consulting, said:

The best tip I can give to small business folks is to focus on their
customer. They should understand their audience, their avatar in order to
deliver the kind of content that can convert into clients and rank. The
current state of SEO in my experience involves all the usual technical
tasks that have been around but with so much more on focus. Don’t just
write about blue widgets, understand all the questions that a customer
might have around blue widgets. Provide deep and rich content. In doing
so, the SEO is so much simpler and your customers will thank you as well.

SEO Tip #78: HTTPS + AMP + Link Building

Vu Tong, Content Marketing Manager at Cocoweb, said:

Switch to HTTPS. No direct proof of this being a ranking factor.However, there’s a high correlation between sites using the secured protocoland top placements. It is good all around change as it increases trustfactor with your visitors, thus an increase in user experience. If yourusers are happy, Google will be as well.

Go AMP. Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages is a standout upgrade forfaster loading times, especially for news websites. Once again, happy users= happy Google.

Keep up the link building. Despite all the claims of Rank Brain andvarious other algorithms, backlinks will and still likely be part of theirmain factors into the rankings.

SEO Tip #79: Link to the Proper Websites

Dave Hermansen, CEO at Store Coach, said:

The best advice I can give is to stop looking for the easy link you can
place yourself. They are almost always worthless. Find websites in your
general niche that link to other websites, figure out the types of
things they like to link to and create those types of things for your
own website. Then, it’s simply a matter of reaching out to those
websites and letting them know about the content you have that they’ll
probably also be happy to link to.

SEO Tip #80: Concentrate

James Mawson, Content Marketer at Handsome Genius, said:

Concentrate your firepower. Instead of publishing a dozen articles on your
website of average quality that don’t really go very far, produce one truly
spectacular information resource and then promote the hell out of it. Once
you’ve created something that great websites will be genuinely keen to link
to, you can earn links to it over and over again.

SEO Tip #81: Always be Learning

Laura Hall, Markting Executive at Shiply, said:

Keep up with the trends by following SEO blogs that are regularly updated. What worked a couple of years ago may be outdated and potentially harmful today. Keep on top of what your competitors are doing and try not to fall behind! Don’t get too stuck in your ways. Keep the variety going and use many different channels to generate traffic. Vary your strategies between paid, owned and earned and don’t be afraid to try new things!

SEO Tip #82: Valuable Content Pays Off

Rohit Bisht, Sales & Digital Marketing Manager at XenelSoft Technologies Pvt Ltd., said:

When you are optimizing your site, you can’t compromise with the quality of content. Content is the core part of SEO strategy. Our goal behind doing SEO is to improve website authority, value and ranking.
Here are some quick tips you might find useful to improve quality of your content in 2017.
• Before writing your content, you must know your audience. Research who is your target audience, their likes, dislikes etc.
• The most important thing is adding value in your content. Your content shouldn’t be only for promotion but to give information to the visitors.
• Write appealing content and a catchy title to connect with your target audience.
• Do some keyword research and write keyword rich content not keyword dense.
• Your contents need to be crisp, smart and free of grammatical errors.

SEO Tip #83: Refresh Old Content

Tom Feltham, Marketing Director at Discover CRM, said:

We can glean, through Google patent filings, that freshness is likely to
have an impact on search results. As well as the age of a webpage, Google
takes into consideration changes to existing on-page content.

The advantage of using an established page is that there’s significant
traffic data to draw from, meaning you can optimize existing core content
to better align with user and search intent.

It’s easy to get caught up in the buzz of creating new content and forget
to audit older pages on a site. But, I think there should be equal priority
placed on identifying content which could be improved.

SEO Tip #84: It Pays To Be Prepared

Jason Stringfellow, SEO Manager at Smart Domain Group, said:

Watch Google like a hawk!

We’re not even halfway through the year yet and already Google’s making
waves with its latest rankbrain algorithms. The best tip I can give any
SEO is to continue doing what you’re doing for your clients (provided
it’s white hat of course!) but pay very close attention to what Google
is doing and the moment you believe a big change in the algorithm is
coming, make sure the website(s) you’re working on is/are ready for it.

Be mindful of the bigger picture

With the way internet searching is going, just having decent keyword
content isn’t enough. Designers, developers and SEOs need to be
conscious of far more; functionality, user navigation, fonts, colour
schemes, relevant information, mobile-friendliness and whether it’s
responsive are all things that you MUST consider when designing and
optimising a website in this day and age.

Take another look at the website you’re working on – if you’re confident
it’s functional, easy to use, correctly coloured, well written and
mobile friendly; that’s great. If not, work on it now and it will help
with the long term SEO.

Summary

As we saw, the good SEO practices include a wide spectrum of activities and work methods. Some of them like including videos, were rather new arsenal to the SEO managers but on the other hand writing high quality content will never get old. As we see many people include quality and interesting content as the number 1 tip even in 2017.

Now it’s up to you to take the most out of these refined opinions, use them wisely, improve your SEO and gain new leads!