Always a ever changing landscape, SEO is an area that has to adapt to new trends in what the search engines do. What worked yesterday or a year ago may not hold water tomorrow or by the end of the year. Experts look at the changes and the market and try to predict what the search engine industry is going to do.
It’s tough because the search engines like Google have massive assets to hire the best in programming and introduce new technologies that others cannot fathom. Try as they might, even the best SEO experts and be caught off guard and that means they have to scramble to catch up on the latest techniques and technologies. Google for example, has the suite of advanced algorithm software that is beating down spam and unethical SEO practices. The Black Hat industry is reeling from the changes and that means the ball is in the court of the honorable SEO experts and web masters. The coming year will see changes that will upend a lot of the SEO world, but it’s not a doom and gloom scenario by any means.
First of all, the emphasis on keywords and keyphrases may take a major hit. Reason being is because there is a cottage industry for this kind of SEO. So much so that the little guy cannot compete anymore. Some SEO experts charge upwards of tens of thousands of dollars in keyword and keyphrase marketing, far too much for the small business to even hope to get a keyword in edgewise. This damages results because the public only gets the results of the rich in wealth instead of rich in content. Expect Google to focus on what the public says about a site or service. This is where social networking comes in. Because of social networking, Google’s software will be able to scan people’s responses to a service or product and see that as a value to a website’s ranking instead of just keywords.
Desktop optimization is another thing to watch out for. The reason being that mobile has totally taken over. With new mobile devices on the rise and more people using the devices, the search engines are tailoring things for that platform and leaving desktop in the dust. If your site isn’t mobile friendly, you’ll soon find yourself so far in the back of the pack that you won’t be able to see the meat at the table.
Text or written content only may take a hit. No big surprise there. It’s a matter of just combining written text with pics, videos, and other dynamic media. So there won’t be such a reliance on one form of content, written will still be viable but to what degree, we’ll have to wait and see.
Manual link building might take a dive as well. Going around putting your links up on other people’s blogs and so on may be rejected by Google and work as a detriment to your overall SEO strategy. This may be because it’s tough beating the spammers and marketers who make a killing with false link building claims. What’s more more likely to happen is that Google’s algorithms are going to look for organic linking to your site as an indicator that your site has been useful.
There are other long used techniques that will probably die out within the year so it will be best to keep your finger on the pulse of the latest SEO news to come. Another thing to do is watch your stats. Scrutinize every single piece of data no matter how small. The reason being is because those changes in your stats will indicate changes in search engine traffic. This data you and your SEO experts can analyze and determine what it is you should change in order to stay on top of the game.
It’s not a matter of if these old tactics are going to wane, it’s a matter of when and yo had better be prepared for it.