In 2020, what I’m calling “the year of desensitization” I find it’s best to keep myself up to date with the latest and greatest methods to keep performing at my best. Especially in markets like SEO and digital marketing. Below I’ve listed some SEO and digital marketing tips that I’m noticing are having a positive impact on my marketing campaigns in 2020.
Mobile/UX/Speed Optimizations
Not in all cases but in general I usually consider (User Experience) UX and speed a combined focus area since dealing with problems in one can impact another. Page not loading fast enough? Well you increase your speed and you’ll probably perform better on mobile and user experience will likely improve.
Nearly 60% of all searches are performed on a mobile device. Despite that, there are still a lot of websites out there that are almost criminally under-optimized for mobile. Although they might have a responsive site, they are plagued with things like small text, buttons, and menus being cut off loading issues, or a really annoying organization scheme. Luckily, there are a lot of resources in the developing world that are making upgrades more accessible than ever.
Annoying mobile UX/ issues you can test for on your phone right now:
- Long loading times – Make sure you have a good internet connection on your phone first of course. A website that loads slowly can cause you to lose traffic at an alarming rate. If your site doesn’t load right up on your phone, you probably have some work to do. You can do a more official test using GT Metrix or Google Insights. Personally, if I think the loading time or performance of a site would annoy me, I start acting. If it loads great but doesn’t get perfect scores on the tools I mentioned, I usually will come back to site speed issues later. This is a good place to start.
- Wonky navigation/menus that get cut off by the edge of a screen or don’t properly resize. I bet you’ve seen this. You go to a site and it’s so annoying to navigate you just go back to your Google search and use another site. Resizing your browser window or using a mobile emulator can help you evaluate your navigation on several devices making it easy to see if something isn’t quite right. It’s also good if you know people who own different brands of phones so you can ask them to help you assess any potential problems your site might have.
- Text sizes – Open up your site on your phone and if your text is either too small to read or so large it’s basically 2 words per line, this can create a really bad user experience. Your text may look great on a desktop but be sure to test on different devices or emulation tools to ensure your users are having a great time on your site.
Content
Yes, “content is king…..” The words of almost any competent digital marketing sales rep. If you know anything about SEO, you’ve probably heard this before. What you might not know is how to align your content with your optimizations.
First, make sure that your content is engaging. Go to a competitor’s site or a site you really think is doing a great job with its copy and content organization. Take some notes on what you’re seeing and then base your content structure and direction on what Google is obviously taking a liking to. You don’t want to leave it at that though. You want your content to outshine what is already online so take your time and make sure you’re providing the best content possible about your subject.
How do you provide the best possible content?
Well aside from the most basic checklist of 600+ (I would say more in the range of 800-1,000. For some businesses that might be overkill for certain markets though) words per page, nicely spaced content with easy-to-read paragraphs, easy-to-digest short sentences that set a good pace, visual text aids (boxes or balloons that feature key highlights), sometimes bullet points, and a well thought out and clever point.
Not that great of a writer? Then you’ll probably need to hire someone. Fiverr and Upwork are good places to start. Although, you usually have to do the heavy lifting when it comes to reviewing and editing the work. I would highly suggest that if you have an SEO team already, you use them to review and optimize any content that you receive from a third party. Alternatively, Infront just so happens to offer content services.
If your business deals within a geographical area, write content that includes references to the city you do business in. For example, if your business is located in Colorado Springs, your Colorado Springs SEO, and content should mention it within the context of how you do business.
From there, be conversational in your tone when writing. Listen to common questions that your business receives and answer them within the text on your website. You want to be as helpful with your information and design your website so that information is easy to find.
Here are a few more digital marketing tips to make sure your content stands out.
Value propositions
Does your content feature something illustrating the value you are going to provide and what you have done before? If not, that should definitely be added to your site. Are there numbers or comparisons you can showcase? Is there a video you can place on your page or can someone (i.e. an employee, a nephew, your cousin Pete) have one made?
More SEO and Digital marketing tips – Keyword placement
It’s not enough to simply throw your keyword in the title, meta, header, content, interlinking, link and nav titles, image tags, etc., and call it good (let us know if you want videos or blogs about any of those specific topics too BTW). You should be making your keyword placement make sense and ensuring it doesn’t seem forced. In most cases, you should also make sure that you are setting yourself up for interlinking opportunities to other pages you have on your site.
I hate to say this, but I think it needs to be here if I want to give good advice on keyword placement and not just blow smoke up Google’s oos like most other people in the SEO industry. Sometimes Google searches still seem to favor content that doesn’t follow their own advice.
Although Google pushes for organic content, sometimes that’s not what you’ll find in their searches. For some reason, you’ll still see sites with obvious keyword stuffing, that are hard to compete with, rank well, and get traffic. Keep that in mind if you’re having trouble getting a page to rank and see that kind of thing.
Don’t use questionable tactics
Although I always try to stick with great engaging content and I’m not suggesting you use questionable tactics, sometimes you have to compete with what is featured in searches and it’s not always great….. Google if you ever read this, you can do better in some cases. That being said, you’ve come a long way too.
- Images that make sense with your content
Google has been able to identify images for quite some time now and with so many sites using the same 20-30 Pixabay images, it’s probably not helping anyone. If you are using the same or similar images as your competitors, you’re not really providing any extra value aside from being able to add keyword metadata. A website is like anything else in life you’ll only get out of it what you put in.
Diversify – Digital marketing tips
Being on as many platforms as possible is a great way to get some really quick gains. Even if you only have the most basic of profiles with a single photo or video.
Where should you make sure to post? Well, it depends on what you do and what’s relevant but here are the main ones I would suggest for most cases:
The rest of this list is probably more on a case-by-case basis.
- Linkedin (more for b2b than b2c)
- Tumblr
- Snapchat
Now, it’s important to keep in mind those gains won’t continue if you don’t continually nurture your profiles and engage your users. It’s a lot of work, which is why people hire marketing companies.
Research
This has been one of the most important parts of most marketing for quite some time and a lot of people don’t take the time to do this right. With how many popular platforms are out there now and how quickly people are changing their focus it’s best to keep your marketing focus up to date. Google Trends is a great place to start if you just need some quick ideas on what you should be updating on your site.
Video Marketing
Everyone with a camera these days can get their voice heard and face seen pretty easily online. With a little time and effort pretty much anyone can make a video. As long as that video is informative and focused, it almost doesn’t matter how bad the quality is.
We hope you enjoyed our list of SEO and digital marketing tips for 2020. For help with anything I mentioned above, please contact Infront for all your online marketing, video editing, and web dev needs.
Allan Todd is CEO of Pagecafe Digital Marketing. In 2022, Allan teamed up with Infront Webworks to provide digital marketing, website design, content marketing, SEO and strategy and solutions to local businesses. Allan lives in Colorado Springs.