If 2016 is anything like 2015; we will continue to hear that the need for search engine optimization (“SEO”) is dead. Perform a Google Search query for “Is SEO Necessary?” and the first results page is replete with articles such as “Don’t Waste Money On SEO” and “Why Your SEO Agency’s Ranking Reports are a Waste of Time”. And for the moment we’ll put aside the question as to whether the producers of such content optimized it for search engines.
It would make one think that writing about anything having to do with SEO in 2016 is also a waste of time. Again, put aside for the moment that there is no shortage whatsoever of articles predicting important SEO trends for 2016. And that “tension” (for lack of a better term) doesn’t necessarily translate into a one school of thought is right and therefore the other side is wrong result.
There is simply more of a nuance involved than days gone by. No doubt that past SEO tactics such as key word stuffing and using link farms are indeed wastes of time (if not injurious due to the potential for a dreaded Google Penalty). But the fact that to “Google” something is as ubiquitous as the sun rising every day points to the reality that a small business must keep an eye on properly showing up in search engine results.
Where much of SEO is today is making sure that your website conforms to current SEO best practices and continues to do so as search engines change how they rank sites for search engine results pages (“SERP”). There was a time when a website using “Flash” technology was like covering your website with Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, whereas proper use of Flash on your site is no longer an automatic SEO no go (not saying that SEO disadvantages shouldn’t be seriously analyzed when the use of Flash is contemplated).
An SEO “must have” that will continue for small business websites is that they must be mobile friendly. Despite the SEO community warning of the SERP consequences when “Mobilegeddon” (aka “Googlegeddon”) took place on April 21, 2015, not all small businesses heeded those warnings. You may recall that Mobilegeddon was an adjustment to Google’s search algorithms so that sites that aren’t mobile device friendly are ranked lower in search results. Such sites didn’t disappear from the rankings and so many small businesses thought that the benefits of becoming mobile friendly weren’t worth the costs involved.
In 2015 searches on mobile devices surpassed desktop computer searches for the first time. That was reflected in Google’s Webmaster indicating at the time of Mobilegeddon that mobile and desktop searches would be equal factors in the ranking algorithms. And the common wisdom in the SEO community is that the change toward mobile factors will continue in 2016 (some even predicting that desktop search will be a non-factor within half a decade). A Google Webmaster of trends analysis bolstered such predictions by noting in late 2015 that a desktop specific site wouldn’t even be necessary in the near future.
As mentioned above, for something that many claim is dead, search engine optimization sure does get talked about a lot. Or to use the overly used (as well as misquoted) yet very apropos Mark Twain quote, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
LAD Solutions has a team of professionals that can assist you with ensuring that your small business website is mobile device friendly and that it conforms to search engine optimization best practices. To learn more about these services, please call (888) 523-2926 or submit your request and one of our representatives will be in touch with you shortly!
