7 Things Industrial Marketers Will Need in 2016

What will it take to make online marketing campaigns successful this year? Our SEO team sat down and made this list:

1. Expert writers. Google is trying to stop people from taking bad medical advice from articles they read online, so in the coming year, the search engine will prioritize articles written by medical experts over those written by quacks, chiselers and arm-chair physicians. This change doesn't just apply to the medical field. It applies to all industries -- including yours. In 2016, you're going to need writers who have experience writing about your products and services. Hiring the cheapest writers you can find isn't going to help you get ahead this year.

2. A DuckDuckGo strategy. Moz predicts that DuckDuckGo will be the fastest-growing search engine of 2016. While you will still need to optmize your site for Google, a plan to optimize for DuckDuckGo would make a smart addition to your 2016 marketing plan.

3. Longer pages. For many of our clients, pages that top out at 1,000 words perform best. Of course, this doesn't mean you cram just any words on to your page and it'll perform well. You have to have 1,000 words of solid, well-written, relevant content. (See #1!)

4. Continuous SEO tune-ups. It used to be that when Google made updates to its algorithm, they happened semi-annually and were much-touted events. Google has changed this somewhat -- now algorithm changes roll out continuously. That means you need to be on top of your SEO game all the time.

5. Local SEO. If your business has multiple locations, you can rank in each one -- but only if you optimize your site for them. If you haven't done local SEO in the past, make 2016 the year you go all in.

6. Structured data. Highlight specific items located on your products page such as: name, price, model number and images. This creates a much more robust search engine result that offers users more information at a glance. Structured data is important because it's leading us to the next big thing: In-SERP conversions.

7. Marketing automation. Is 'streamlining my marketing efforts across multiple channels' one of your New Year's resolutions? No? It really should be. With marketing automation, you can make all of your efforts more efficient, consistent and effective.

Questions? Contact Ecreative today. Photo credit: t-miki via Foter.com / CC BY-ND