What we see from an end user’s perspective is the changes would be complicated and difficult to understand. But let’s take this as an example, when you would search for something that is specific and you can’t find it, it’s more than likely that what you are searching for is too specific or more abstract. With the changes that are going to happen to SEO, it will far be more effective in gathering the information that is very specific due to the implementation of semantic tagging. This would benefit the users over time.
Another example is the education industry, students often look for information easily through search engines. By understanding the changes of SEO, it can provide a good insight to educational sites to enable more effective ways to provide students the information. Always providing a
On the leaders’ perspective, SEO service has far been the most effective and efficient way in increasing their business and sites; by using search engine services like online shop has increased a countless amount of sales. This has been the core way in getting to the customers, as people are compelled to using search engines to buy their things. And the best part is the advertisement is for free. This type of service is crucial and would need the leaders to understand and let the IT department know how the changes that are going to occur affect the search engine ranking and what can they do to improve it.
SEO has been changing dramatically over the years. In the changes, some good, and some bad. Nevertheless, every change makes SEO more polished, more sophisticated and complicated and at the same time easy for the users to search for information.
Definition of SEO
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial,” or “natural” search results on search engines. All major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads. This is, in essence, a quality control for websites. Web pages that are designed specifically to rank high in search engines for a specific keyword and have no relevance to a user get in the way of true user experience. In this scenario, search engines give themselves a bad name by delivering inappropriate or irrelevant content. SEO and more specifically “white hat SEO” helps to eliminate this problem.
Importance of SEO in the digital landscape
In an environment heavily reliant on technology and smartphones, SEO strategies are becoming increasingly relevant for companies and individuals alike. The importance of SEO lies in the fact that every single online experience begins with a search engine; more than 70% of online experiences in the United States begin with a search engine such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. According to a statement made by Google, an unbelievable 1 trillion searches are made every year on Google alone, and with approximately 7.5 billion users worldwide, that equates to around 130 searches a month for everyone on the planet. This just shows the sheer magnitude of the importance search engines play in modern society. For companies and individuals that are not experiencing the results they would like from their online efforts, the digital landscape can be a turbulent and unforgiving place. Building a website is the easy part; drawing in traffic is a different story. People commonly turn to paid advertising (PPC) in attempts to see results on their website quickly, this can be effective in the short term, however is not the best strategy in the long run. PPC may or may not improve click through rates for your website, but 75% of users only click on organic search results. SEO strategies are aimed to improve visibility in the organic search results.
Current State of SEO
There are numerous aspects of the current search marketing landscape that could be described as the “state of SEO.” From one angle, it could be the vast structural changes happening to the search results page. From another perspective, it might be the ongoing discussion about the value of an organic search visitor. We could discuss a dozen different things and still not cover the gamut of “the state of SEO” as it sits right now. In the interest of keeping this on point, let’s focus on a few key issues, namely the changing landscape of the search results page, the value of an organic search visitor, and the increased emphasis on the purchase phase in organic search.
The current state of SEO is best captured by a phrase that Bruce Clay has been using for the last several years: “The future of search is always on.” What does that imply about the present situation? For one thing, it’s clear that achieving and maintaining visibility in the search results is no longer an “event.” It’s an ongoing, proactive process that requires constant maintenance and ongoing effort. This is true across both organic search and paid media. SEO has definitely become an “always on” discipline, one where the rule is adapt or die.
Key elements of effective SEO strategies
Of modern effective SEO strategies remains in question. The truth is, there are countless opinions on what the key elements are. The truth is, this can be a very grey area with no real solution. You’ll find that quite a few SEO professionals will disagree on what the key components are. This is partly the reason why a lot of SEO professionals tend to get lost and chase their tails when attempting to develop a solid SEO strategy. Let’s break down what has been proven to work and what has stood the test of time. The majority of modern search engines crawl the web looking for fresh, quality content. This is the number one piece to the SEO puzzle. How much time and money one is willing to invest into this step will determine how aggressive the campaign can be. There are countless ways to build content, but the true methods that can stand the test of time are: writing articles, press releases, video, and RSS feeds. The misconception here is the more the better. The choice here should really be quality over quantity. One informative article can be far more effective than a mass of sloppy web copy.
Trends and developments in SEO
The past two years have seen a great deal of change in search engine optimization. The search engines’ drive to turn their algorithms into definitive answer engines has led to the end of traditional SEO. Demand for higher quality content and a more ‘holistic’ approach is proof that the industry is in the midst of a radical period of transition. These changes have been a mixed blessing for the SEO industry. The rate of change has required companies and professionals to make frequent revisions to their strategies to maintain visibility in the search results. Developments such as the Knowledge Graph and Direct Answers have made on-SERP SEO an increasingly appealing proposition. Getting content featured in the answer box can result in a huge boost in traffic and visibility. This has led to a reduction in CTR for some keywords, making it more important than ever for SEOs to track the performance of their content in the SERPs. The ‘Mobilepocalypse’ – Google’s algorithm update favoring mobile friendly sites – was another event with a substantial impact. As consumers and searches continue to move from desktop to mobile and new technologies such as wearables and the internet of things continue to grow, mobile usability will remain a key consideration for search engines. A gradual shift is occurring towards more personalized search results. User location, search history, and behavior can all alter the search results a user is given, to the extent that ranking reports for keywords may become largely irrelevant. This change further reinforces the need for strong technical SEO and providing the search engines with the right cues to take the right content and retrieve it into the fold for the right users. This may act as something of an equalizer for smaller websites and businesses who historically struggled to compete with larger brands in the search results. Exclusive to Google, the growth in ad space and the effectiveness of the ads themselves has resulted in a reduction in CTR for organic search results and a ‘hollowing out’ of organic traffic. With the paid ads now looking more and more like organic results, there is an increasing level of ‘ad blindness’ from consumers who fail to differentiate between ads and organic results. The implications of these changes are still not entirely clear, but a natural result may be the return to more traditional marketing and brand building, with SEO as a means to support it.
Challenges faced by SEO professionals
This trend has been exacerbated by the increased efforts of Google algorithms to simulate human understanding. Although again this is largely positive and helps bring the right traffic to the right site, this also means it is no longer easily possible to manipulate the search results. Where once upon a time SEO was often a case of ‘gaming the system’, this is no longer a sustainable strategy and SEO is now more a marketing channel of its own. This is a tough challenge to convey to clients used to the old world of SEO and accustomed to seeing quick results, but the long-term benefits for those who stick to white-hat strategies are great.
A recent article on the challenges of SEO on SEOmoz discussed the issue of increased competition occurring in the industry. This is largely due to the reduction of search result real estate in recent years. Whereas Google once displayed 10 organic search results, it now displays 7.69. In the time period that this change occurred, Google increased the frequency of universal elements displayed in the search results such as paid search, local results, videos, and images among others. This means even if you are ranking number 1 for a keyword, your listing may still appear ‘below the fold’, or not at the top of the page. Reruns of eye-tracking studies have shown that the changes have had a detrimental effect for those outside of the number 1 spot. With result real estate continuing to decline, competition becoming a larger issue, and paid search results taking up listings even for commercial keywords, SEO is only going to get harder.
We discussed some of the key trends and developments in SEO in the previous section. In general, these trends are largely positive for the industry because most come hand-in-hand with increased user understanding and greater marketing effort. They do, however, come with their challenges, most of which revolve around the increased competition and narrowing of the industry.
Predictions for the Future of SEO
Emerging technologies such as voice search are also predicted to greatly impact SEO in the near future. While voice recognition software has come leaps and bounds in recent times, there is still quite a bit of room for improvement. AI implemented into platforms such as Google Home and Amazon Echo has garnered popularity and is also expected to increase in effectiveness as time goes on. It is predicted that in the year 2020 more than 50% of searches will be conducted through either speech or images. It is important that SEO specialists begin to research into how this may impact search behavior, what users are likely to search for using voice, and what kind of results they are then expecting. Voice recognition software is already impacting the way that users are searching due to its conversational nature, likely to result in a change of keyword strategies in the near future. This is also expected to alter the way that SERPs are displayed, potentially even only showing one result in some cases. The way in which users are interacting with technology to access media is constantly changing, and it’s important for the practice of SEO to evolve as a result. An increase in mobile device usage over the years is a prime example of this, and in a similar way to how SEO has had to adapt to this, so too will it have to do with the widespread usage of voice search. It’s important to stay ahead of the game where possible, and voice search is a prime example of something that marketers will need to keep an eye on in the coming years.
Emerging technologies and their impact on SEO
Voice search is still in its infancy, and companies need to stay keenly aware of its development. According to Google’s Micro-moments, 20% of all searches were made with voice in 2016, and in 2017, Comscore estimated that that number will increase to 50% by 2020. The implications here are simple: if a user is speaking their search aloud, they are more likely to use natural language than when typing a search. For example, where a user might type “best restaurants in Leeds”, that same user might ask “What are the best places to eat in Leeds?”. This switchover from the more stilted and awkward search language takes us to the next logical step – using conversational bots to assist a user’s search. To effectively optimize for conversational search, content will now not only have to be relevant, well written and contain pertinent information, but it will have to meet the needs of the user more directly and in a conversational way. We will start to see the evolution of chatbots and more intelligent customer service bots being used to better serve and assist the user, consequently leading to an increase in brand and product based searches through chat interfaces. These searches will create a new data stream providing brands with new insights on how to improve their product and better answer consumer questions. From an SEO standpoint, as chat interfaces increase in popularity, it will become essential to have the related content indexed and in a format that can be read by these bots. This creates a new arena for on-page optimization, and the need to keep a close eye on structured data mark-up and the evolving standards for things like Schema.org.
Shifts in user behavior and their influence on SEO
Given the trend of multi-screening, where people are using a television and mobile device simultaneously, the line between mobile and not is increasingly blurry. Mobile technology will continue to not only grow but become even more central to people’s lives, and mobile SEO is a complex and rapidly changing discipline. A key point to consider for the future of search and SEO is the difference in user behaviors and expectations between mobile and desktop. Currently, most mobile web use is “on the go” – people want quick information or functionality with as little typing as possible. This behavior is driving mobile search towards greater emphasis on local and voice search, and has further reinforced the need for web performance optimization; an area that is often neglected in the chase for rankings.
One of the single largest changes, and an element which could potentially transform the search market from the current landscape, is Google’s implementation of Voice Search in its native app for the iPhone. Voice recognition technology itself is not new – it’s been available on Android for over two years now, and as a native feature is older still. However, this…
When it comes to user behavior, the world has turned into a drastically different place than it was a few years ago. Smartphones, tablets, netbooks and other technologies are rendering the traditional desktop computer nearly obsolete, and consumers are increasingly expecting information to be available wherever they are and on whatever device they choose. Furthermore, people are dumping email and turning to social networks for interpersonal communications. While this is a topic broad enough to spawn multiple whitepapers in its own right, we’ll focus on a few key elements of user behavior and how they are likely to impact the future of SEO.
Evolution of search engine algorithms
With the rapid pace of technological advancement, many predictions for change center around the future of search engines. The consensus is that the sign of things to come will point in the direction of more individualized search results. This appears to be a direct response to the increasingly personalized online experience provided by many new technologies, namely social networking websites. Social network websites have grown millions and possibly even billions of users worldwide. This represents a large shift in the way people utilize the Internet, and it is only the beginning. The situation is serious enough that there is a Facebook movie in the works. This alone is a sign of the times; an indicator of a shift in the way people spend their time online. Imagine a future where a user who begins gardening as a hobby can receive search results that are influenced predominantly by a vast and relevant database of the user’s peers and their online behavior. Search results may or may not be delivered to the user on a traditional search results page and could range from anything to pictures and status updates. A shift of this nature moves control of SEO away from businesses and into the hands of the consumer. It will depend more on the consumers’ opinion of a brand or product, and will require more direct engagement of the target market. With individualized search results, data mining will become an even more essential practice and the concepts surrounding data mining will likely carry over to a practice often referred to as opinion mining. This is a means of tracking and influentially using the opinions of a target market as they are reflected in search data and various other online communications. It’s also worth noting that optimization for local search results will continue to grow in importance with greater implementation of individualized search.
Insights and Recommendations for SEO Success
Overall, these recommendations are quite specific and seem to be the type of tactics that SEOs will have to adopt in the near future.
From these predictions, the author derives several recommendations for SEOs. The first is to increase the visibility and accessibility of website content. It is thought that users with higher internet savvy will begin to favor organic search over sponsored links, as with the current trends of younger users and more internet-savvy people using ad-blocking software. A second recommendation is to mark up content to give it higher search relevance. This can be done through various markup specifications. The author recommends the RDFa, which is supported by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Data that is marked up can then be displayed in “rich snippets,” a method of displaying search results with microdata as a brief summary. Finally, the author recommends the creation of what he terms “comprehensive inter-referential content” and downside navigation. This is essentially creating content that referentially links with other content on the same site or leads to a different page and is easier to find or “linked up.” This type of content is thought to have a higher search value in the future, and linking content within the same site is an easy way to increase search relevance.
Focusing on the insights and recommendations of SEO, many scholars do their research in predicting the future of SEO and recommend the best way to ensure success in the future. In this review, we have selected three insightful papers that focus on the best practices for optimizing websites and content, strategies to adapt to the changing SEO landscape, and leveraging data and analytics for effective SEO.
Best practices for optimizing websites and content
The next insight is to build your website for the consumer. This may sound obvious, but it’s something that can be forgotten in the quest to rank well in search engines. Search engines are looking to provide the best user experience possible to the person using them. This means returning the most relevant and high quality results. If your website is not the best resource or most relevant answer to a user’s query, your content may not rank well. This is an important point to consider when writing and structuring your content. Another key to achieving the best user experience is to make your site easy to navigate. A well-structured site can spread link authority (PageRank) to the most important pages. This can be achieved by having a well thought out Information Architecture, and implementing a breadcrumb trail. On top of this, internal linking can be used to build relevancy between top and low level pages. This can be a valuable tactic, yet should be used with caution. Overuse can dilute the importance of the target page and incur search ranking penalties.
The first and probably most important insight is the importance of having an effective website in terms of search visibility. In the early days of SEO, simply having good HTML title tags and meta data on each page was enough to achieve good rankings. The game has changed. It’s more important than ever to ensure your site is accessible and can be ‘crawled’ by the search engine spiders. The use of (X)HTML and CSS is now crucial, tables should be avoided as a means of layout. Page load times can also affect your search ranking. It’s far more efficient to have clean coded, fast loading pages, rather than use bloated code and rich media as it can increase the ‘bounce rate’ of your pages.
Strategies to adapt to changing SEO landscape
2. Adapt to vertical search In the past year, a well-known SEO strategy was to optimize towards ranking in universal search results. While traffic originating from these verticals or the “second index” was lucrative, it was short-lived and success was varied. Vertical results continue to dominate the SERPs and result in less organic traffic for many standard search results. In some cases, Google often ranks its own properties or affiliate sites in these verticals higher than the organic result. Moving forward, the value and potential of ranking in these verticals is questionable. Depending on the query, some organic results are situated below the fold and there is much less value in top rankings when the result is further down on the page. With the PPC and competitive landscape changing for many standard queries, it may be best to assess and prioritize which vertical search results are most valuable for your site when making SEO decisions.
Focus on the user Google has made it clear that they value websites that are rich in content, and will reward them with higher rankings and potentially enable them to be displayed in the search engine results pages. By focusing on the user and creating great content, your site will naturally organically rank over time. This contrasts with the strategy of building links to “manipulate the engine” and is a more viable long-term strategy. With the advent of personalized search, user social graph, and the potential integration of buzz into search results, it is more clear than ever that the search engines will really want to know who your users are, and what is best for them when they hit your site. This personalized and customized approach to SERPs and SEO is best exemplified by this year’s whiteboard Friday on the future of on-page SEO.
The SEO landscape continues to shift, and staying on top of your search strategy means being proactive and anticipating what’s on the horizon. In the coming year, here are the best ways to not only react to the changes, but to predict them.
Leveraging data and analytics for effective SEO
Brand websites vs affiliate sites – Here’s an example of a drastic worst-case scenario for an affiliate site – In December 2007, under the pressure of a harsh unsolicited algorithmic review, Microsoft Live Search removed penalties that had stopped ranking the main Microsoft.com page for the term “Microsoft”. A brief mention of domain confusion aside, when are they going to benefit from that affiliate ad money instead of their own product? Someone searching “Microsoft” generally wants to find the main Microsoft website. Brand websites are already benefiting from their built-in perceived credibility – SEOMOZ will almost always rank for anything they want to, with a far smaller investment than a rough equivalent of an affiliate or small business that we want to undertake. What happens when the engines can correctly quantify site and brand reputation on a sliding ROI scale and quality, trust them, and predominantly aim inbound queries at established brands and credible information sources? SEOMOZ clients are brands and content sites; we need to make them deeply branded and deeply credible. Step one: rebrand as Microsoft. Step two: Raking it in.
Flippant PR comparisons aside, there is much evidence to suggest that the future of SEO is going this way. The increasing importance of trust and reputation to search engines penalizes tactics, devalues a website brand, dramatically increases the risk of implementing said tactics, and decreases the already diminishing ROI for them. Much of an SEO’s job is already based around the nebulous concept of credibility, and that will only increase in the future.
In the coming years, I expect dramatic changes in the way SEO is done. My most general prediction is that SEO will become more and more like a public relations campaign. Good PR, making a company interesting or newsworthy like linkbaiting for SEO, is simply the most cost-efficient way to develop a brand in a noisy market. And developing a brand is what the SEO client of the future will be looking to do. At some point, link building and traffic generating will not suffice as the measure of a successful SEO campaign; the goal will be brand penetration.