Publishing Companies are making transitional changes, and discoverability of Website content is key to growth. Laura Austin reports on 3 ways Publishing Companies can increase website traffic in 2012.

Google +

Get your Google + business page ready. Yes, Google business pages are still in early stages of development, but Google is currently working on a few feature called Direct Connect. If you are looking for information on a publishing company, you’ll soon search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Harper Collins) – Direct Connect will be key in 2012.

Although Google+ currently gets a lot less traffic than Facebook, it is still worth being one of the early-adopters as you are likely to get rewarded by ranking higher in natural search results on the platform.

Mobile Web

Mobile Web usage is increasing daily, so publishing companies need to be aware of how this alters their SEO and Website content.

Mobile Internet usage is more sociable than that of desktops, so publishing companies captivating users on social media will become increasingly important for generating site traffic.

On a mobile device users are likely to use predictive text to find key words, and these search terms are likely to be shortened. So rather than using the keyword ‘publishing company’ for SEO optimisation, perhaps a move to ‘publisher’ would be wise.

Google Fresh

Google’s new search engine update that favours fresh content means that it’s even more important for your web team to produce timely content. Rather than Google picking out the highest quality content, more often than not, the most recent updates will be ranked highly. So if you want to know about London Bookfair, you’ll automatically be taken to the 2012 fair; whereas previously an old Wiki might have featured high in the rankings. This change is affecting over 35% of searches, and you can help your rankings by:

• Releasing timely press releases on your own Website
• Including dates on all posts, reminding Google that the news is current
• Updating blog posts littered with your key words daily (increasingly important)