In this article we take a look at some of the trends Google are looking for in 2015. Sticking to these trends is bound to help your SEO efforts, and avoiding them may even have some negative consequences.

We’ll be talking about the importance of mobile friendly websites, changes being made to support local businesses and also some details about the necessity for content.

Mobile friendly websites

If you’ve been keeping an eye on changes to Google over the last few months, you’ll already know that Google has added the mobile penalty – this is a form of search engine penalization that occurs to any websites that do not have mobile optimized web pages.

The penalty will only apply to searches made from mobile devices, but this is still a significant amount of searches and potential traffic. As a result, it’s incredibly important to create a mobile optimized website this year if you haven’t already and this is one of the biggest things that Google will be looking for in 2015.

Once you have a mobile friendly website your chance of being seen in mobile search results will increase- you’ll jump up the search rankings, landing higher than any websites that do not have the same level of mobile optimization as you do.

Local Searches – Potential for Local Businesses

Google is making it much easier for users to search for businesses in their area. Whether they’re looking for a particular restaurant, an accounting firm, a bakery, or absolutely anything else, Google will be showing more local results than ever before.

As a result, it’s incredibly important to get your local business on Google maps so that when people perform a search in the area they’ll be able to find your business. Google has named their local business searches to My Business and understanding the workings of it can be quite difficult.

With My Business you can list details about your business, put yourself on Google Maps and provide information about opening times. This kind of information is all you’ll need to get more attention via local searches, and it’s certainly becoming a very powerful way to bring in new customers. Amazingly, it can all be completely free to set up a My Business account on Google.

More & More Content

It’s become more apparent over the last few years that creating content for your website is one of the best ways to market that website. Content marketing is becoming more popular and is in fact being seen as a first choice for marketers all over the world now that older SEO techniques are proving to be less successful.

If you want to remain relevant online, it’s important that you provide regular content about your niche. Content can be press releases, blog posts or basic details about your business and your industry. The most important thing about content marketing is that it’s unique and it’s regular.

The length and quality of your content can play a part in the success of content marketing as well, but creating content regularly is arguably the most important thing you can do in 2015 to keep your business climbing the Google rankings.

Hopefully these pieces of information will help you to keep on top of improving of your online presence in 2015.

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