The fundamentals of SEO rarely change. But some of the details do.

Most of SEO can be covered by a few basics:

  • Frequently publish content that people like.
  • Format it so that people can read it easily, and search engines can figure out what it's about.
  • Get links to it from high-quality related websites.

If you do those things, you're 90% of the way there. But with so many webpages competing with you for the same keywords, 90% of the way there isn't the same as being at the top of page 1. For that, make sure you're staying on top of the latest things the search engines are looking for.

John Jantsch published and article recently about SEO tactics that are especially important this year. For example, optimizing for mobile has become much more important recently.

Optimize for mobile

Have you heard of Google’s mobile-first index? It’s exactly how it sounds. Google is now ranking search results based only on the mobile version of the page as opposed to taking both mobile and desktop versions into consideration. This makes sense from a customer experience standpoint as the majority of Google searches are done on a mobile device these days.

This is not good news for people who have put the majority of their time and effort towards desktop functionality.

Moral of the story is if your website isn’t mobile optimized, you’re going to take a hit when it comes to SEO. Some people think they can get by with their website being technically mobile friendly, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfectly optimized.

See the rest of the article for more timely tips.