Your Secret to an Enhanced Search Engine Ranking in 2016 - Expert Tips to Avoid the Traps

It is essential for a search engine optimizer to know the latest SEO tactics to make your website competitive in 2016. SEO is always going through a rapid change and the factors that worked for you in 2015 might become outdated in 2016. Hence, you have to keep on adapting yourself with the ongoing change. Since the last 4 years, the strategies which used to rank better have gradually evolved crucially and you probably know that by the end of 2016, there will be some more new Google algorithm updates coming to take away your night's sleep. There will be plenty of changes in 2016 and you have to prepare yourself in such a manner that you don't lag behind your competitors.

We would rather love to say that enhancing your search engine rankings is an easy job but it's not! SEO takes a lot of dedication, hardwork and also some skill. There's a distinct difference between black hat SEO and white hat SEO and if you're not careful enough to choose the right strategies, you might end up doing more harm to your website than good. So, below listed are some of the potential SEO traps that you need to avoid in 2016 in order to increase your search engine rankings.

Trap #1: Link Building

Way back in 2015 February, John Mueller of Google announced that the webmasters should totally avoid any kind of link building as this is unnatural and in one way illegal. However, it has been recently clarified by Google that selling, buying and asking for links is okay, provided you're not violating the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Hence, you're required to review your link building strategies to make sure you're not violating any of the rules lest you end up getting penalized by Google.

Trap #2: Anchor Texts

2012 was the year of the first Penguin update and since then it has become tougher to utilize exact match anchor texts in SEO. Whether intentional or unintentional abusing of anchor text can lead to penalization for the mistake of over-optimization in 2016. This is why the search engine optimizers would have only 5-10 links for a variety of anchor texts and some major keywords. Researches from Moz showed that you may have better rankings even when you use a few exact match anchored links from the websites which are pretty relevant.

Trap #3: Mobile-unfriendly design

Among Google's top SEO ranking factors of 2016 is the requirement of a mobile-friendly design. This clearly means that the appropriately designed mobile-friendly sites will definitely perform better than those which aren't optimized for all those mobile users. Some factors like small texts, closed links attached to each other can lead to a website being considered non-mobile friendly. You have to therefore optimize your webpage in such a manner that it caters to the mobile users. Due to the increasing number of mobile users, it has become more than important to make your website mobile-friendly.

Trap #4: Targeting specific or single pages

You should always remember that a better link profile can enhance your search engine optimization efforts for 2016. This is a much better approach to target specific or single pages in order to rank on Google. Without a good link profile, you can never rank higher in the search engine results. Hence, before it gets too late, start building your link profile through your Google Webmasters account.

Trap #5: Poor user engagement

It is definitely a huge challenge to engage the visitors on to your website and this can become a big threat for you in 2016. When there is very poor user engagement, this would definitely lead to a low search engine ranking. However, you could easily improve your user engagement by knowing the behavior and preferences of the targeted audience. Optimize your site in the perfect way to better engagement of the users so that you can rank higher in the search engine rankings and also increase visibility.

Trap #6: Not enough content creation

No matter how many changes occur in the Google algorithm updates, original and fresh content will always remains one of the major things that affect your SEO ranking. If you're of the notion that updating your website with maximum 1 or 2 content every month is okay, you're mistaken. Teach your users what you're capable of and post content within fast intervals so that the users get something new everytime they visit your website.

Therefore, if you wish to secure your ranking in 2016, ensure avoiding the above mentioned traps. Use Google rank tracker and the free rank tracking tools like Wincher in order to keep a tab of your changing search engine ranking with your changing strategies and efforts. Get help of an SEO expert if you need help.