The year 2015 will be a big year in many respects. 2015 will be the year Marty McFly travels to the future (and the year the Cubs finally win the World Series), the 25^th anniversary of “Ice Ice Baby” being released, the 20^th anniversary of the release of Toy Story, and 15 years since Y2K.

A lot has changed since the Y2K panic, especially in the world of technology and the Internet. In the year 2000, we were still using dial-up modems to access a text-heavy Internet that provided only the basics. As we approach 2015, simple is still chic, especially when it comes to SEO.

SEO fundamentals have remained constant despite the various changes in ranking criteria and search algorithms. While search engines like Google have gotten smarter and more adept at providing users with the highest quality results for a given search, the same basic fundamentals will continue to be effective for businesses.

Here are some simple SEO tips to remember for 2015 and beyond:

Customize title tags & description tags:

Before you worry about content or linking, creating accurate and original title tags and descriptions is very important. By creating unique title tags, search crawlers can accurately crawl every page on your site and rank it accordingly. Quality and unique description tags provide users with a useful explanation of what the content on the page will provide them.

Make your site easy to navigate:

While this is forgotten and not easily quantifiable, user experience is always going to be important to your site’s SEO strategy. If your site is clean, easy to use/navigate, and loads quickly, users are more likely to stay on your site and interact with it. Websites that are of poor quality (very slow, clunky, outdated, misleading information, poor content quality) will have high bounce rates and the lack of quality will hurt your chances of improving your visibility in search.

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly:

According to Pew Research, 63% of adult smart phone owners use their phones to go online and 34% of mobile Internet users go online primarily on their phone. By not having a mobile-friendly site, you can be losing out on a lot of potential visits/leads because you’re providing users a poor experience when using your site on a mobile device. As search engines evolve, mobile-friendliness will become an increasingly larger factor in how your site ranks against search competitors. If your site is mobile-friendly and/or has a specific mobile website, it will provide a clean, useful experience for the user.

Finally, content will remain king:

SEO can be boiled down to something as simplistic as providing users with the best content. If you create unique, engaging, and high quality content, your site will be popular with users and search engines. As search engines like Google take into account social sharing, content that is shareable and informative will boost your site in search because it is what users want.

The ultimate goal for a search engine is to provide users with the most accurate and relevant information based on the search query. By providing accurate and relevant content for users based on what you’re looking to show up for, you will rank well. Continue creating quality content and you will continue on your path to SEO success. Remember: write your content like you’re writing to another person and not to a machine.

By sticking to the basics, businesses can make 2015 a banner year, even if Marty McFly doesn’t come flying in on his DeLorean.

About the Author

PCG Digital Marketing is an award winning digital agency headquartered in Eatontown, NJ. We help our clients get found online through innovative search, social and online advertising campaigns.