SEO is one among the best facet in online marketing and it has been evolving a lot since its inception. In the current scenario filled with rapid changes, SEO professionals must stay abreast of all the trends and the changes in the industry to make sure that businesses gain maximum revenue through online search.
Let’s take a look in to what 2015 holds for SEO:
#1 – Organic Search will remain to be the largest channel for acquiring traffic
Even though the there is a rise in paid search to drive traffic, organic search has continued its position as the biggest channel to acquire traffic. As the search engines have begun to pay more attention to every word you type as a query, they offer search results based on the whole sentence.
#2 – The success and failure of the site will be determined by its mobile optimization and user friendliness
The prediction by Morgan Stanley for this year states that mobile search will gain an upper hand than computer search. We already witnessed Google performing a test last year on its mobile friendly features next to the sites in the results of search.
This indicates that the top search engine is ready to penalise those non mobile friendly websites. In order to be in par with the trends in online search, brands must enhance their speed of mobile ads. Those sites that do not have a mobile proposition must have to rectify their features immediately or pay the price.
#3 – Content is still the king
Content will have prime importance this year too in SEO as it has a vital influence in search visibility. This is because the technical elements of SEO use content marketing as a base to drive the ranks for search engines. The various points that support the trend this year are mentioned below.
- The content must not fully be of text but must also have audio and video content to optimize the search results.
- The main focus would be on multimedia contents like videos onsite and high clarity images that would engage the audience of the site while making the site enjoy a better perspective through the search results.
- In addition, the sites must also integrate with social media sites for better video sharing.
- With Google testing its knowledge graph, the contents that are only informational in nature will not be an effective one.
- This is because many sites have it to offer more information to their customers.
- With immense content volume and stiff competition to gain attention, it might be very difficult to get better visibility without opting for paid promotion.
- Focus on high quality content with long tailed keyword queries and LSI words would be of vital importance.
#4 – Branding is the key
Branding would not only create an image about the company while driving the message across but it would also be associated with the topics of online search. The citations of the brand will also have a bigger role to play as the ranking metric to underline the significant role played by social signals.
#5 – Facebook and Twitter emerge as winner while G+ fails miserably
Like before, social media sites will have a great influence and with Google authorship terminated last year, Facebook and Twitter are winners in the arena. As there are no SEO benefits arising out of G+, businesses have to lower their focus here and look forward to improve their presence on the winning platforms.
This in turn would help in segmentation of customer and analysis of the user. The signals generated by social media are expected to have good reach and tracking the brand movements, which is very essential for businesses. There are also some expectations prevailing about the disclosure about the details of payment for bloggers.
#6 – Earn the links than building them
Bid goodbye to building links on some blogs and chasing many to win the attention of search engine. Even if a single link is earned on the best site, it is considered to be highly valuable in terms of SEO, as it can now help in attracting branding, referral traffic, sales and leads.
#7 – Negative SEO: A huge threat in 2015
When a competitor creates many spam links to a site for hampering its rank, it can lead to negative SEO. The bad news is, Google has not yet found a way to curb this issue and this year this threat is expected to be much bigger.
#8 – Technology leads
As there is a lot of marketing taking place with hyper targets and consumer driven campaigns, it is essential for businesses to know the requirements of the consumer before offering them a personalized experience.
Technology would chisel such changes by promoting location tracking features, predictive marketing, mobile payments and enhanced mobile analytics. In addition, wearable technology is expected to change the way we use it and reshape our lives.
#9 – Target on search phrases and crisp keywords:
These days, broad keywords cannot acquire ranks to woo immense traffic to sites as they are replaced by search queries with long tail. Apart from being eligible for attracting buyer traffic, it also means lesser competition. Keywords based on search terms and phrases targeting the buyers can yield best results.
#10 – Faster loading sites gain momentum
Mobile users prefer to visit the sites that load quickly and this speed determines the success of a site. Based on the Google guidelines, a mobile site must load in 7 seconds at an average and it would take just a single second to load in a mobile with faster net connection.
So, if you have not yet made your site SEO proof then make sure to act now and offer a revamped look to your site. As 2015 has already set in, it’s high time that you begin to pay attention to the latest SEO trends for your site to stay ahead of your competitors.
