2015 SEO and PPC Strategies for Your Startup

Holiday shopping has started, but that doesn't mean the search engines are giving you a break. There have been a lot of deals in the last few weeks, as well as algorithm updates over the last couple of months.

Holiday shopping has started, but that doesn't mean the search engines are giving you a break. There has been a lot of deals in the last few weeks, as well as algorithm updates over the last couple of months. With everything going on, now is the time to think about your 2015 SEO and PPC strategies.

Whether you haven't thought about mobile, haven't tried optimizing for Bing/Yahoo! or you haven't reallocated your budget to spend more in another channel, you may want to get started. Here are a couple of reasons why:

PPC

As of two weeks ago, Firefox signed a deal to make Yahoo! its new default engine. Siri and Facebook are using Bing, and that means big trouble for Google. With a large portion of Facebook, email and social media users on mobile devices, and mobile device sales increasing with desktop shrinking, this opens up a huge opportunity to not be dependent on one PPC system.

Depending on when the moves take place, you should be planning to invest more into Yahoo! and Bing instead of the normal 70/30, 80/20 or 90/10 split. When these large sources of traffic have a new engine, and if the continued shift from desktop to mobile device continues, this is where your future traffic and sales could be. Make sure to look at how to convert Yahoo! and Bing better so that if they continue to gain market share, your website and sales funnels are ready.

SEO

If Yahoo! can continue to take market share or reach a goal of becoming the default engine for iPhone and iPad, Google could be in trouble. This means more Facebook, Twitter and other mobile traffic sources may be opening up Yahoo! searches instead of Google.

Google is also rolling out mobile icons next to search engine results for sites that it feels are mobile friendly. With these changes it is important to watch out for and take action on a few things.

1. Make sure your site is mobile friendly and optimized. If end users start to use the icon and you don't have one, it may mean your site gets skipped over and eventually gets a penalty for mobile search.

2. Pay more attention to ranking reports and positions in Yahoo!/Bing. Although the traffic doesn't come anywhere close to Google yet, with the current changes taking place, optimizing for these two could mean large rewards in the near future.

3. Find tools like UpCity.com which give you ranking reports by day/week/month in Google and also in Yahoo!/Bing so you can compare them. This is very important for the future of SEO.

If something was good for Google but bad for Yahoo!/Bing, you know to no longer do it if the traffic shifts change. If it was good for Google and had a positive impact on Yahoo!/Bing then you want to remember what the changes were and test them more.

Search marketing experts like Adam Riemer are also saying:

"Microsoft uses bing for clip art search, Siri uses bing, Facebook uses bing, Firefox uses Yahoo! as a new default, if you aren't prepared for a mobile search shift with a multi-engine marketplace with tools and by tracking your negative and positive effects from optimizing for Google on Yahoo! and Bing, you will be left behind!"

The SEO landscape has always changed with Google alone. When you throw the large new traffic sources into Yahoo! and Bing, the world of SEO just became a lot trickier. Moving into 2015, make sure you site is mobile friendly, and you have your Bing webmaster tools set up properly since Bing/Yahoo! are becoming players again.