You cannot compare the SEO industry today with that of the yesteryears. The main reason being that there have been too many changes, and this year you should even expect more as the SEO decision makers will always be evolving to meet the challenges of the times. Here are some SEO trends to watch for in 2015:
SEO will tend to get more focused on technical elements
Although people have been using the words ‘content marketing’ and ‘SEO’ interchangeably, they are two different entities. This year, expect SEO to be more focused on all of the technical components of online marketing, while content marketing acting as the main driver of search engine rankings. Some of the things SEO will deal with include indexing, keyword research, penalty recovery and Meta tags, while content marketing will be the sole influencer of search visibility. If you want your business to achieve a significant search visibility, it is prudent to shift your focus to the distribution and creation of high quality.
Brand citations will be as powerful as links
Because there has been a widespread misuse or abuse of link building, Google appears to place more emphasis on brand citations and mentions. These two are less likely to be manipulated for the sole purpose of achieving the higher search rankings. In 2015, you should expect to see more businesses tracking and measuring brand mentions as well as ‘nofollow’ links. You will discover that brand citations and mentions are becoming as important as the ‘dofollow’ links.
Your website should be optimized for mobile SEO and user intent
It was just last year when Google was placing a great deal of significance on mobile usability. You have even seen Google adding a section for mobile usability and also testing mobile friendly icons that appear next to the search engine results so that users can see how their websites perform on the mobile devices. And the same Google has been penalizing websites that have been generating errors for mobile users. That said, if your business fails to tailor your website or content to the mobile user, it will see its conversions fall and will experience a significant plunge in search engine rankings.
Negative SEO will be a bigger threat
Malicious people have the tendency of building thousands or hundreds of spammy links that are pointed at a competitor’s website so as to cause their search rankings to fall. For webmasters, this is a serious problem that has been there for a number of years now. And chances are high that negative SEO will still be a big threat to businesses. Larger websites are the main targets for the negative SEO and Google should look for a better way of recognizing manipulative links that are meant to compromise websites.
SEO will become fully integrated with other all the aspects of marketing
In 2015, social media, SEO and content marketing will move towards becoming fully integrated with other marketing entities because they all converge to achieve the same goals.
All in all, you should note that SEO is not dying off, it is only changing and once the best practices are employed, businesses do not have to worry about the upcoming SEO trends. It will also be wise to engage a SEO specialist to help your business campaigns online so that he or she can always keep you ahead of the times.