With the new year upon us, it’s the ideal time to look towards the future of SEO. These are the top 7 potential trends in SEO for 2017:
- Video Content Will Surpass Written Content in ROI for Business to Consumer Website
Written content is traditionally considered to be the most essential element on every website, even by those who believe that utilizing many different methods is also important. Images, infographics, videos, and other visual mediums typically serve as asides to written content, but a surge of new technology will shift this, allowing video to soon outpace written content in efficacy. The increase in popularity for video apps is partially responsible for this, with Google jumping on the bandwagon and starting to experiment with video ads in their search results
- Mobile Optimization Will Be Deemed More Important than Desktop Optimization
In 2015, mobile searches outpaced desktop searches for the first ever, finally placing mobile and desktop traffic on equal footing. Continuing on into 2016, this trend is expected to continue, rendering mobile traffic far more important, with desktop traffic virtually fading out over the next 5 years.
- Voice Digital Assistants Will Change the Way Search Queries Behave
Search engines are receiving an increase in queries from digital assistants like Siri and Google Now, adding another layer to the complexity of searches. Voice queries tend to be phrased differently than typed queries, which means a whole new level of longer keyword queries – especially ones that mirror spoken dialogue – will become the norm. This could boost pages that contain more conversational tones in their content.
- Aggregate Content Will Override Individual News Sources
With aggregate sites increasing in popularity, more and more people are turning to them to witness the live unfolding of news events via posts, images, and videos all in a single place. Because of this, the power of an article that does not get automatically sourced is diminished, narrowing the field of content for everyone.
- Social Content Will be Indexed
Google is working with Facebook and Twitter already to bring searchers social media posts and tweets when searching for relevant terms. In 2017, we’ll see an increase in platforms represented and posts will become more heavily indexed for the search engines to access.
- Deep Links in Apps Will Increase in Importance
App optimization will grow in importance this year as Google continues to shift its focus towards mobile users. “Deep links” to apps–links that point to a specific section or page of a designated app–will begin to have more weight, similar to deep links on the web. If your business doesn’t have an app yet, you should strongly consider getting one, and if you still don’t believe it makes sense for your business yet, try to get listed on as many apps as you can.
