<strong><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1755" alt="seo-box" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/seo-box.jpg" width="136" height="168" />4 Search Engine Optimization Strategies For 2013</strong>
Search engine optimization is constantly evolving because of trends that change the way we live our lives. Businesses should monitor these changes and allow the evolution of SEO else the page rank of websites will fall. What follows are trends that suggest 4 SEO strategies for 2013.

<strong>Mobile Web Optimization</strong>
The use of mobile devices today to search the Internet has become an important part of our daily lives, and the need to incorporate mobile search results in search engine optimization is becoming more and more urgent.

There are many reasons why mobile marketing is well poised to impact SEO strategies in 2013. These reasons include such things as the availability of audio and image searches, QR codes, coupons, discounts, social media and location based marketing, a wide variety of smartphones and widgets and an abundance of mobile apps.

It has been estimated that in 2013, as many as 35% of all businesses worldwide, will be investing their advertising dollars in mobile marketing, its technology and optimizing their websites for the fast increasing mobile market.

<strong>Local Search Listings</strong>
Local search listings have increased greatly, and can be used effectively when included in a business’ search engine optimization techniques. Reduced local traffic and local keyword competition, will give a website an unfair advantage in the search engines.

An improved ranking and credibility on the local level would give an overall increased ranking for the website, even though the business’ main markets are on a national or on an international level.

There are many interesting statistics that show just how critical it is for businesses to optimize their websites for local searches.   It has been reported that about 35% of Internet searches result in local searches. The facts show that 51% of all local searches originate from mobile devices. 74% of the searches done in the US are for local searches, and as many as 61% of the local searches done will be followed by purchases of the products searched for.

These facts demonstrates how important it is for businesses to utilize the expertise of local SEO companies to help with developing strategies for inclusion in the local search listings, so as  to get the maximum benefit from the increasing popularity of local searches.

<strong>Social Media Optimization</strong>
Businesses today are enjoying great success in their attempts to create relationships with their customers through social media, and search results have increased significantly.  This is social media marketing at its best and a fast growing aspect of internet marketing today.  This form of marketing has been and will continue to be successful because of the rich opportunities it gives for creating backlinks for business websites, and for referral traffic, which are the corner stones for SEO marketing strategies.

It is essential that a business make the investment of time and money to develop SEO strategies for social media, and the businesses that become so involved are leaving their competition, who is not involving themselves in the social media, far behind.  The figures are quite staggering, for example, FaceBook alone has over 500 million users, most of whom are daily accessing their accounts looking for updates, posting messages to their followers, and re-posting messages they have received. A business only needs to be able to determine if their targeted audience frequents the social media, and then with expert help, create just the right SEO strategy to connect with them and join in their conversations on the social media platforms.

<strong><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-1756" alt="seo-girl" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/seo-girl.jpg" width="168" height="145" />Video Search Marketing</strong>
In this type of marketing, consumers have demonstrated their preference for a graphic and more interactive and entertaining way of locating what they are looking for on the Internet. This change has catapulted You Tube to being the second largest search engine worldwide.  This is a development that has had a major impact on web-based businesses which will be incorporating video search marketing in their marketing efforts. It means that search engine optimization will be expanded to include videos with SEO techniques for this medium.

Businesses have indeed been capitalizing on this trend and they are realizing the power video search marketing has to drive massive traffic to their websites. Webmasters are now creating videos that incorporate transcription SEO, and back-linking the video to the main website, increasing its credibility and so driving targeted traffic to its sites.

Attesting to the popularity of videos, in 2010 there was a tremendous increase in the use of video as a marketing strategy.   The trend has so taken the market by storm that YouTube has overtaken Yahoo as the second biggest search engine (2008) in the entire world.  Apart from YouTube, that are many other video sharing sites that provide marketing platforms for these videos and they include, AltaVista video, Google video, Windows Live Video , AOL Video, MSN Video, and many others.  These were just 4 SEO Strategies for 2013, but it should be remembered that SEO strategies are constantly evolving and can be spotted in the trends that affect the way we live our lives today. Businesses must attempt to stay ahead of the trends and be prepared to expand its SEO methods.

<strong><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1757" alt="seo-white-hat" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/seo-white-hat.jpg" width="168" height="105" />What are the New SEO Best Practices?</strong>

<strong>7 Search Engine Optimzation Best Practices for On-page SEO</strong>
SEO best practices should be put in place and followed consistently to produce well optimized web pages that will give you the advantage over other websites that are not so optimized.  Your gain will be better ranking in the search engines and a massive traffic flow to your website.   The two types of SEO are on-page, that deals with the optimization of the webpages themselves and off-page, which deals with the linking to authoritative, relevant sites and the number of them that are so linked. What follows deals with on-page SEO.

<strong>1. Include Main Target Keyword in the Domain Name</strong>
Having your main keyword as a part of the website’s domain name will provide a big advantage in terms of ranking high in the search engines. It the exact name of the domain has already been registered, a little creativity is needed to include it a little differently.

All too often, web masters will not include the proper Meta tags in their websites when doing search engine optimization. The following tips will describe the basics that should be included when using Meta tags for your websites.

<strong>2. Create an Optimized Title Tag</strong>
In SEO the title carries a lot of weight. It should be no more than 70 characters, and must contain the main keyword phrase. The title should not be stuffed with keywords else its effectiveness will be reduced. Other pages should be optimized with different keywords.

<strong>3. Create an Optimized Description Tag</strong>
In the description field use no more than 160 characters, and include the title of the content and a strong call to action for the visitors to come to your site. The description is displayed in the search engine results and will help the searcher decide which site to visit.
The description shows in the search engine results pages beneath the website’s title.  The best approach is for you to create a description yourself so as to properly describe your website content.  Your failure to do so will result in the search engines creating one for your website based on the content of the site.

<strong>4. Optimize Images with an Alt Image Tags</strong>
When using images on webpages, always us the ALT image description for the image and be certain to include a few keywords phrases. Doing so will emphasize the subject of the website and will facilitate indexing.

<strong>5. Create H1, H2, H3 Heading Tags on Your Pages</strong>
The use of the header tags, H1, H2 and H3 are primarily to help organize the text within the content of the webpages, and it also aims to show the relative importance of the different text on the webpages.
The H1 tag is by far the most important of all the tags and its purpose is to indicate to visitors and the SEs what the topic of the webpage is about.
Using the heading H1tags (used only once) and including the main keyword phrase gets that message across. Using the H2 heading tags (can be used more than once) that contain other keyword phrases will emphasizes the topic of the site. H3 heading tags can be used more frequently in the text also.

<strong>6. Keyword Meta Tags</strong>
At one time, keyword Meta tags were required part of proper on-page optimization. But because of spammers stuffing keywords values in this area, the search engines, except for Yahoo, no longer apply keyword Meta tags to their criteria for determining site ranking.
However, if you use a keyword Meta tag, be sure to use just a few keywords that are the most relevant to your website product, so that you are not viewed as a spammer.

<strong>7. Robot Meta Tags</strong>

These Meta tags are frequently used to instruct the search engines how to treat certain elements on your website. The default instruction for the crawling the website is written as “index, follow”. But you can use the robot Meta tags to instruct the SEs to crawl or not to crawl, to follow or nofollow, the content as you see fit.  You must consider however the period during which a website is under construction. It is very possible for a SE to crawl your website during its stage of construction, and for that reason you may take the initiative to include a robots Meta tag to indicate a “noindex” and “nofollow” so that the webpage does not get included in the search engine results pages with incomplete and outdated content.
Using these five SEO tips will produce a well optimized site that clearly tells the search engines what the site is about and that will put you ahead of your competition that did not optimize their webpages.

SEO best practices will work for your site as long as you can clearly identify the niche market and the popular keywords that are used in it.