Delivering a positive experience for customers that find you through mobile searches is already an expectation. A couple years back it might have been a way to distinguish yourself from competitors, but at this point, if you’re not providing a site that’s optimized for mobile you’re way behind the curve. With mobile searches now ubiquitous, voice search is beginning to take flight. As Search Engine Land pointed out this month, voice search is experiencing unprecedented growth and offers a new set of challenges for businesses looking to stay competitive.

When it comes to more traditional tactics, there were plenty of great tips being shared for engaging customers, improving your site’s rankings, creating high quality content, and getting more people to link to your site. Here are the top articles you might have missed while you were busy working last month:

• Search Engine Land published a piece on common misconceptions when measuring SEO performance. By understanding that bounce rates, time on site, and pages per visit aren’t always indicative of whether your content is connecting with customers you’ll be able to make better decisions about how to optimize your site.

• As discussed last month, Google’s recent update to a “local 3-pack” has made local search results even more cutthroat. Avvo’s Lawyernomics featured an article on how lawyers can stay competitive in Google’s 3-pack.

• Is your ad copy effective? Have you given it much thought? If not, Search Engine Land’s post on influencing with ad copy: how to truly drive action is required reading before crafting your next campaign.

• If you’ve ever experienced a drop in traffic and struggled to course correct, Quicksprout’s recent article featuring 10 tried and true tactics that will pull you out of a traffic slump might be exactly what you’re looking for. Even if your traffic is right where you’d expect, some of these tips could offer a boost over the coming months.

• For anyone interested in maximizing your time spent on SEO, Search Engine Watch published an article showcasing 9 SEO techniques that take less than 15 minutes. Even the busiest among us should be able to carve out at least a quarter hour each week to work toward optimizing our sites.

• Link building can be a real chore sometimes (okay, most of the time). Search Engine Land recognizes that difficulty and featured an article on link building outreach and how to persuade other sites you’re offering something of value.

• Also on the topic of link building, Search Engine Watch broke down which kinds of links are most valuable for high rankings. As you already know, not all links are created equal, but you might be surprised to find that even some high ranking sites feature very low quality backlinks. The study featured in the article is a long read, but definitely worth a look.

• Finally, on the content front, Search Engine Land took a comprehensive look at what Google considers “quality content.” There’s no single “right way” to write compelling content, but some of the ideas featured in this article create a nice framework for almost any project.

There’s a lot of depth in the articles I linked to this month, but even if you don’t have time to read them all, a quick skim through the most relevant links should give you plenty to focus on over the next few weeks.

About the Author: Jason Arango is the Director of Marketing for GJEL Accident Attorneys. He’s been involved in online marketing since 2007, and has consulted on a variety of projects from early stage startups to established brands.