Top 4 Trends Expected to Dominate SEO Sector This Year
Gone was an exciting year for SEO industry as we had witnessed many unexpected trends and technologies dominating. The long-awaited Mobile addon update came from Google, which cruelly penalised many top sites just for not being mobile compliant. There was also a sizeable overhaul in local search rankings with the ‘local three-pack’, which is an improved algorithm for quality content, and another dozen minor updates from Google.
Now, this year, anyone can blindly predict that the digital assistant technology and most advanced mobile devices are going to shape the future of search engine optimisation. Let’s look at some of such trends, which may rule SEO further.
- Mobile optimisation over desktop optimisation
“How many of you have heard that the count of mobile searches surpassed desktop searches for the first time in the history?”
Yes, it had happened earlier this year, which clearly points to the most groundbreaking trend of the year. With Mobile add-on, Google undoubtedly announced that the world should go mobile with no exception to SEO.
Google reiterates that having a desktop-specific site isn’t necessary at all, and the local three-pack also reflects the search engines’ commitment to the mobile experience in all types of devices.
- Cortana, Siri and more
“Do you know Cortana and Siri?”
– The first one is from Microsoft to offer voice assist to Windows smartphone users and the second one is the same from Apple for iOS users”
Digital assistants are already making life simpler for the new-age men and women. It is also predicted that these digital assistants will change the way we go about search queries. New-gen search engines will receive more queries from digital assistants, which can add a lot of complexity to the concept of search.
The simple reason for this complexity is that the spoken language queries are much different from typed in queries. Unlike the standard typing scripts, it will create a whole new set of unique queries with long-tail keywords, which may particularly contain colloquial and conversational content.
- Video content over text
It is expected that video content will overtake text content in terms of ROI, more so in B2C sector. For a general consumer, of course, visual content is more meaningful than to sit back and read through the entire thing.
Written content is considered as “standard” nowadays; however, effective communication is made possible with images, infographics, videos, and other peripheral mediums. You can see Google also is experimenting with including video ads in the search results. Over time, B2C brands, which lag in updating regular video feeds, may go behind times.
NB: B2B may also take this route, but not expected soon as it is a more serious affair by weighing worthy text (not until 2019 probably).
- Deep links in apps
“The hot news for SEO administrators is that Google already started indexing apps in search results.”
With the shift towards mobile usage, Google anticipate apps overtaking traditional websites in functionality and popularity in near future. Online marketers and search optimisers can also benefit by anticipating this change.
It is expected that the “deep links”, which point toward specific sections of the app or a page will be more meaningful. Starting to think in this line, it is the right time for you also to create your own app if your business doesn’t already have one.
It is also notable that Google sets forth deals with Facebook and Twitter to index relevant social content too in search results. The separation between web and social media is expected to blur this year, and it also can add more scope from an SEO perspective to plan and reap the best results.
