The start of a new year is a time when we reflect on the year past and what we were able to achieve, while we are setting new goals for the year ahead. As a website owner, whether you are developing a personal or a company website, these goals are recommended by SEO professionals:
- Aim for long-term website development goals
- Follow SEO technology trends
- Stay on top of algorithm changes for Google and other search engines
- Improve and adapt featured snippets
- Improve page loading speed
- Produce high-quality inbound and outbound links
- Work on conversion rate optimization
- Focus on personal, product or company branding
Aim for long-term website development goals
During the website development cycle, you should work on long-term goals. Spend some time to think about your website from a customer perspective and you will develop a vision which will show what are weak points of your website. Set long-term goals for improving these weak points, with priorities to the ones you should focus first. This will enable you to measure your success and progress toward finishing these goals.
Follow SEO technology trends
Have one finger on the pulse of the SEO industry. All of the industries are being radically reshaped by AI and in the web industry, there is talk about AI for title tags and meta descriptions. Clearly, we can expect AI will impact SEO but we still do not know how exactly.
Stay on top of algorithm changes for Google and other search engines
Frequent changes in Google and other search engine algorithms mean we have to adapt our website SEO to keep the pace. Features such as the new Google Photo app enable users to search by using a picture taken with a phone. This means our websites need to be optimized for image search as well.
Improve and adapt featured snippets
The year behind us was full of SEO updates focused on websites that offer useful information – informational sites. The rise of data collection devices will induce demand for direct answers where featured snippets offer a quick answer box. In a way, Google wants us to provide information and answers which SERPs can collect and use, and feature snippets can provide this.
Improve page loading speed
Even the birds outside the window by now know that a website with loading speed over four seconds will be penalized by search engines, and receive negative SEO from Google. Stay diligent and try to improve page loading speed for all your pages, not just the homepage.
Produce high-quality inbound and outbound links
Backlinks are a know SEO factor. While strong backlinks from relevant websites to yours will significantly add to your website domain authority, outbound backlinks to another website will have a certain impact too. This should lead you to optimize outbound backlinks and keeping the strong ones while removing the weaker ones.
Work on conversion rate optimization
Your website has a reasonable amount of organic traffic, but your website conversion is suboptimal? The main reason is that your website content is not engaging enough and the visitors have nothing to do once they are there. Work on your conversion rate optimization (CRO) and you will improve your website profit.
Focus on personal, product or company branding.
Having a generic website is not enough to make a substantial profit. Your website must be working under a brand that is built-up with other online aspects such as social media presence and online community. Communicate regularly with your online community through social media and tell a story of your brand.
I hope we have inspired and motivated you to acknowledge and pursue some or all of these goals in 2019.