SEO tips for 2017.

Today is already 1 December. The time to evaluate the past year is drawing near again. What did I do well, and where am I dropping the ball on my website? And how could I have done it better? But of course December is also the month to look ahead to the new year, and you can start it off well with our SEO tips for 2017. We’ll give you a number of big tips but also small ones so you can get started right away.

Key SEO Tips for 2017

Looking at 2017, we immediately see one item stand right out. An SSL certificate. By now everyone knows the green padlock in their address bar that shows you’re dealing with a secure website. You can also recognise it by “https” in your address bar. Google has indicated that it will rate https websites better, since it places a high priority on security.

Website with SSL

Websites with SSL handle trustworthy information better. Think of forms you submit with your personal information — you’d rather have that sent securely. With an SSL certificate you guarantee that data is safe and cannot be intercepted by wrongdoers. For webshops an SSL connection is now even mandatory! Do you have a webshop? Then it’s incredibly wise to choose an SSL certificate. For most websites, the cheapest certificate is sufficient.

The spider’s web

Internal linking. It’s still done far too little. Yet it’s an SEO tip for 2017 you should put high on your list. Not only do you add value to a word you link, your visitors can also move straight on to the extra information you offer. Forget “click here” links and use words and pages that connect to each other. Writing a piece about online marketing? Turn online marketing into the link, like we did here. Google will see that you’ve made a link from an important keyword to a matching page. That way you create a spider’s web on your website where people can move straight from one page to another.

Practical tips

SEO doesn’t just happen, it’s a continuous process that goes hand in hand with hard work. Don’t have much time? Then at least make sure you’ve got the basics right. That means:

• Use your most important search term in the URL (web address).
• Also use your most important search term in the title of your page.
• Write inviting meta descriptions. An inviting text can bring in more visitors and works positively for your position.
• Make your texts easy to read, for everyone.
• Quality content, make sure you answer the question that’s being asked.
• Make sure your entire website is responsive.
• Use images with ALT tags.
• Google Rankbrain! More on this further down.

Local SEO

Does your business operate locally? Then you can make big strides. Because of the still-increasing number of mobile searches, local businesses are highlighted sooner. A third of these mobile searches are locally oriented. What’s more, research shows that in 18% of cases it leads to a direct purchase. We smell opportunity! Google My Business can be the perfect partner here. You’ve surely seen a search result like this before. When searching for a company name, they’re placed on the right of the search results. For a more general search term like “website”, directly below the paid results.

Google My Business

So make Google My Business as complete an overview of your business as possible. Add address details (obviously), post relevant and inviting photos, list your opening hours and also place the most important search term next to the company name. Also collect reviews about your business to stand out further. That way you can take your local SEO to a higher level.

Google Rankbrain

Everyone knows Google develops at lightning speed and keeps developing. Now there’s Google Rankbrain, perhaps the most important thing for 2017. Search results are being lifted to a higher level through “machine learning”. Google’s self-learning machine is fed input/training data with the best and most popular websites that score well in Google. Based on this, Rankbrain builds its own algorithm. Rankbrain will look at the website as one whole, rather than a hundred separate factors. Based on that, you’re assigned a position in the search results. On top of that, this self-learning machine is becoming extremely important for voice processing and recognition and predictions.
In practical terms you can take a number of factors into account:

• Quality content
• Answer the visitor’s question
• Time spent on pages
• Mentions of your business on Social Media (likes, shares, etc.)

Usability

This is often forgotten, but is your website actually user-friendly? Can you sit back at a distance and still read everything clearly? Can you think like a visitor and find the answer to the possible question? Also think about the following points:

• Is it immediately clear what a page is about?
• Does a visitor know what they can do after reading the text? Think of a call to action, other articles, etc.
• Does the content match the visitor’s expectations?

These are and remain important SEO tips for 2017

SEO is hard work

Want to score in 2017? Then it is and remains a matter of working hard. Invest structurally in your website, for instance plan half a day (or even a whole one) each week to work through all these SEO tips for 2017. The time you’ve invested will pay itself back with an easily findable website!