Search engine marketing has seen a lot of changes in the past few years. The right rail ads in Google have disappeared entirely and there is a prominent placement of Google Shopping Ad Units in the Search Engine Result pages.

Let us check out the most recent trends in the field of search engine marketing:

Shopping ad units have increases

Product listing ads on Google ‘shopping’ have done pretty well in the recent years and it continues to grow. The retailer’s share of clicks from Google has been on the rise for quite some time now. The main reason noted is that there was greater visibility for the Google Shopping results, especially on the mobile devices. On the desktops, these shopping results were bigger in size and occupied most of the screen, hence received a number of clicks.

Voice search and natural language

Digital personal assistants such as siri, cortana and Google Now have played a major role in paid searches too. These assistants cn pull a lot of data from your mobile and suggest the right shopping places.

Expanded app advertising

Mobile apps advertising is getting more and more popular. App indexing and deep links allows users to see and engage with apps content in the search results

Video advertising

Video advertising is by far the most popular means of marketing and the trend never seems to go out of style. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and search marketing without a video on YouTube is unthinkable. YouTube ads in AdWords and YouTube shopping ads are some of the most important channels for advertising you need to look out for.

Interactive advertising

Interactive ads help retain a user’s attention, especially, when users search via a mobile device, where an average user uses only one app out of four. Google has recently introduced new Google Ads for Apps. These apps allow the user to interact with the ads – for example, if the ad is about downloading an app, users are allowed to test the app and interact with it before actually downloading it to their devices. With greater interactions, users feel confident to download these apps to their mobiles. Interactive advertising shall be a growing trend in Search Engine Marketing.

Precise targeting

Search engines today are able to gather data that is more defined, targeted and personal. This helps in specific targeting of the ads.

Ad extensions

Ad extensions provide new ways to communicate and special offers as well as special services for targeted customers can be easily communicated.

Above all, mobile searches are getting more and more dominant. If your marketing efforts do not target the mobile audience, you are losing out on a huge customer base. Google and all other major search engines have made it clear that mobile friendliness shall be awarded while ranking. Well, all the recent trends point towards mobile advertising too. Ensure that your business has a strong mobile strategy while you prepare for search engine marketing.

Writing articles with more than one purposeful goal can be difficult.

The process of writing purposeful marketing style articles to promote your business, if well planned, can result in multiple layers of repurposed content that drives consistent, dedicated, and well targeted traffic to your website, and your business. Start with a list of concepts or steps and moves right on through the specifics required to increase the value of the content.

Every topic can be written using these same evergreen, and unchanging steps. By using a master template, or a selection of templates, you’ll be able to direct the flow of content, and master the essential elements of article marketing, resulting in well focused, targeted, and high-quality content that never stops generating traffic.

You’ll need to do some research.

Know your topic. If you’re not entirely familiar with the topic or you simply want some new information to include in your article, you’ll need to research. Read a few articles about the topic you’re writing, then close them before you write, unless you’re referring back to those articles. Citations and references are always a benefit to writing marketable content, and if you use a direct concept or quote from someone else’s writing, you’ll want to cite and reference their words.

Write some key concepts, perhaps a list of elements, and use those concepts to rebirth ideas that will help others to grasp value and relevance from your topic.

You’ll need keyword association.

To locate content on the Internet, people use search engines that seek out keyword elements to locate informative articles on specific topics. By using keyword phrases, and long tail keyword passages, your readers will be able to find your content online. When you write, including keyword association for your marketing articles, you drive organic traffic to your website, using top searched phrases in your industry.

Writing articles with high-quality keyword phrases can be as simple as selecting a group of keyword phrases, and using those frequently during the process of writing your content. Take a moment to use the search engine to locate possible keyword phrases, and find out if they match the topic you’ll be writing about, or if you need to fine tune your keyword phrases to be effective.

You’ll need to solidify your content.

Posting a selection of keyword phrases into an article is the first step, but the next step is to use those keyword phrases in logical, easily understandable, paragraphs that explain what the solutions you’re offering your reader, in ways they can apply to their problems. Random elements can only come together as a solution if you give them sustenance, value, and purpose. Those phrases won’t have any impact, unless your reader can apply them to their personal or professional situation.

Give the reader a valuable solution to help them, then direct them toward your website for the rest of the information. Once on your website, be certain there’s enough value driven content, and information, to fulfill any promises made to your reader.

When trying to rank your website in a search engine, focus is a key word. Without this it is likely that you will fail.

Modern search engine calculations (algorithms) focus on topics, not on individual keywords. It is not necessary to use every possible keyword variation on your web pages (for example ‘cheap travel insurance’, ‘cheapest travel insurance’, ‘cheap travel insurances’, etc.).

It is much more important that the content is related to a particular topic (‘cheap travel insurance’, ‘traveling’, ‘do I need a travel insurance’, etc.). Long tail key phrases (more than 2 words in the search string normally) are becoming more commonplace. Why? Well, some might say that Google is not as good a search engine as at it appears at first glance. Yes, it has market share but its searches are somewhat sporadic and meaningless in some competitive sectors.

To alleviate (or at least try to alleviate) this issue, longer phrases are seemed easier to return better results on the engine. Likewise, viewers who use services like Yahoo! answers are encouraged to use ‘where can..?’ and ‘what is..?’ style phrases, this has translated into Google and other engines.

If you want proof of the pudding you only have to look at search suggestions at the bottom of the Google listings. Most are more than 2 words long – suggesting this is led by viewer search patterns,

There will be a level of experimentation in this. There are many tools which can assist you in finding the right balance. Web CEO, Raven, SEMRush, IBP, are just a few of the myriad out there. Of course, Google has its own tools, but most of these are inextricably linked to Google AdWords and are not really focused on organic search positions, but they may give you some steer in the right direction.

Most of these tools will also offer competitor analysis, and provide you with an understanding of your competitors’ focus in this area. You should be able to see what delivery of traffic certain key phrases will bring to your business and assess whether you should spend time building authority on these.

Search patterns are forever changing, but what is not changing is the need for relevancy in the results. One can be extremely miffed if one searches for a particular product or service only to be bombarded with irrelevant results.

Focus online is everything.Understand your viewer, analyse your competitor, and experiment from time to time with longer tail key phrases and look at the delivery (or not) this provides using your analytics tools, and you should be moving in the right direction in the rankings.

Of course, if you do not have the time to carry out this type of investigation yourself, you may need a company which provides SEO services to carry out the work for you

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my local SEO tips. There is so much information floating around the net, it can be hard to determine what will help, and what won’t. Rest assured, the tips I will share with you in the short article will absolutely help you get off to a good start. Let’s dive in.

I am going to give you some local SEO tips that you can put to use, starting today. Here are the things you can do that will help your site start performing better in your niche:

Optimize your site. Don’t overdo it here, but you MUST tell Google what you do and where you do it. If you don’t have that information in your domain name, then use your site title to do so. If you are a plumber in Omaha, a well optimized site title could be Brand Name | #1 Omaha Plumbing Company. Optimize your title a little, then maybe add related keywords a time or 2 in your content. Sound normal, and don’t overdo it! Also, add your NAP info into your footer. NAP = Name, Address, Phone #.

Claim and Optimize you Maps listing. If you are a legitimate business, chances are Google knows about you. If you have not claimed your listing, do so immediately. You will want to have your NAP info be identical to your site’s here. Also, add hours, categories, and fill it out as completely as you can. A great local SEO tip here is to Geo Tag your images. There is a lot of info on the web about how to do this, so just give it a quick search and you will be good to go.

Get those citations! Citations will help your Maps rankings, as well as give your website a nice foundation of branded links. Most of these will be nofollow links, but do carry weight and are very important. These are sites like Yelp, Manta, YellowPages, CitySearch etc, and you can create FREE listings on all of them. They will definitely try to get you to advertise, which I think is unnecessary, but your decision. We are after the link we get from the sites. Make sure NAP info is EXACT here. If you don’t want to do this yourself, there are plenty of services available that build citations for you. I would be happy to help if you get stuck.

Get social! If you don;’t have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,and Pinterest, get them. You will want to get these done and filled out as completely as possible. All will provide a nice link back to your site as well.

These are a few of my beginner local SEO tips. If you follow the tips from above, you will be off to a great start. In low competition niches, doing this might be enough to get your site and Maps listing ranking very high!

Things change pretty fast online. What was working 6 months ago might not be working now, and what is working now might not be working in 6 months. It is important to stay on the ball, so you can keep your business website front and center. In this article, I will share a few tips to help make your website stand out in 2016.

Here are some tips you can start using to help make your website stand out more in 2016:

Get current. I see it all the time, where people are attached to their existing site for some reason. Maybe cousin Eddie built it for a case of beer one weekend in July, or maybe you did it yourself. Whatever the reason, stop. A website can and should have numerous overhauls throughout the course of it’s life. In the end, it is all about conversions, and if your site is so outdated it just won’t convert like a more modern designed site will.

Make sure your site is mobile friendly. In late 2015, Google unleashed Mobilegeddon. Basically, if your site was/is not mobile friendly, chances are good that it will not rank on mobile searches. This is a biggie, because over 70% of all searches now take place on mobile devices. We all do it, just grab a phone or tablet and Google search something. It’s fast and easy, and that trend will only continue to grow.

Get social. If you are not utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube you should consider starting right away. Setting up profiles on these sites helps you to secure your brand, and gives you a nice back link from a high DA (Domain Authority) site. Share your links on Tweets, posts, and videos as often as possible. This will help your site get more exposure and traffic, which is a big part of the game.

Get optimized. If your site does not clearly tell Google what you do and where you do it, they will have a hard time rewarding you with good rankings because they just won’t know! Google reads what you provide them with, so use that as an opportunity to do some basic on site optimization. If you are a dentist in Fresno, make sure you include that information in important places, like your URL or site title. If you don’t have them there, be sure you have that in your content somewhere!

There you have it folks. These simple to follow tips can help your website perform better for you in 2016. The question is, will you take and use the advice, or sit on your hands?