Some of us are still enjoying that post-holiday buzz and putting away those ugly Christmas sweaters, but that’s not to say that 2016 isn’t already in full swing. And of course, nothing’s as ever-changing as the web. At Black Tie Digital Marketing, staying on trend (the Melbourne FL SEO trend, that is) is always the trend, no matter the season.
That being said, let’s start the year off right with the top five SEO trends we’ve been keeping an eye on:
Who Runs the World? Google…and Social Media
Google’s got the internet wrapped around its fingers for sure – with over 40,000 search queries being processed every second on average, who’d deny that controlling this massive search engine is the key to success? Social Media platforms, primarily Facebook and Twitter, have made deals with Google to increase the overall value of their content. So, if you see a few tweets or a Facebook post atop your searches this year, you’ll start to see the lines between the two blurring even further from an SEO perspective.
Video
While most of us still understand the importance of written content (hey, where would we be without this blog?), it is suggested 2016 will be the year of the video, which is expected to outpace written content in all the best places: reach, engagement, effectiveness, and overall ROI (return on investment).
Patent, Patent, Patent
And we’ll say it three times, because Google’s got just that many on the way that’ll impact the way this Melbourne FL Web Design group handles their business. Back in 2013, Google made the decision to stop updating Pagerank, which uses values between zero and ten to determine a page’s importance, reliability, and authority on the web. With a recent patent, it seems that it may be returning in one form or another. With it once being a former center for trust in searches, this potential growth is something to look out for.
Additionally, Google is looking to reduce duplicate content in their results as much as possible using a simplified outline in order to optimize what they deem relevant. As a result, our searches could be grouped together around one entity, or removed altogether. The goal here is to create a more personalized search result for the user, but what does it mean for Black Tie? It means we’re going to be working just as hard to get our clients sites to the top of those results, where they belong!
The third patent focuses primarily on “question” Google searches (I.E. Why is my tie so black?), and it involves what’s referred to in the biz as “rich answers”. A “rich answer” is any attempt by Google to answer the searcher’s query in search results in a way that doesn’t require clicking through to a website. While these have been relatively prevalent in the last few years, the number of rich answers has been dramatically rising. Stone Temple Consulting researched this in February of 2015 and then again in July of 2015, and saw that the amount of rich answers jumped from 19.45 percent to 31.2! Keep your eyes peeled, because before you know it, Google could be directing your questions to their own sources, whether it’s video, images, graphs, charts, or snippets.
Digital Assistants + Verbal Searches = Added Bonus for Conversational Content
Whether you’re asking Siri for directions or Cortana for a new recipe, the recent emergence of spoken language queries adds a whole new dimension to an already complex searching experience. We don’t always type and speak in the same manner, and components like accents and slang may lengthen keyword queries in an attempt to mimic spoken dialogue. This, however, has the potential to reward pages that make use of more colloquial, conversational content. Sounds familiar, huh?
Content is King!
There’s a major shift happening with what Google prefers. And since they run the world…well, we’re here to bow down. Google is gravitating to a “quality-over-quantity” ideal. Think about some of the shorter content that’s out there (blogs, for example). Previously, blogs have been shorter, but they were in abundance. What’s fueling some of our in-house decisions is the fact that Google’s pulling blogs that are longer, draw the reader in more and for a longer amount of time, and leave them satisfied. Longer blogs are appearing higher on search rankings, so of course, we’re adapting this with our own clients. They deserve the best, after all!
Staying on top of these trends is vital to a company like Black Tie. We’re here to best serve our clients, and knowing what’s going to happen before it does is more than just a year-long resolution, it’s part of our promise. Hopefully these trends will help you stay on your toes longer than that new gym membership, and exercise your right to optimize your searches responsibly! 😉