The end of the year is near! For search engine optimization (SEO) this means reviewing site performance and search trends to finalize strategies. In recent years, search engines like Google have made algorithmic and technology changes that place greater weight on site speed and content depth.
These trends are expected to intensify into 2017 as the SEO landscape adjusts to reflect these changes. Here’s some of what you can expect to see in 2017:
- The Faster Site Will Win the Race
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project has been on the radar of digital marketers since its release in 2015. The AMP project was a leap forward in placing user-experience through stronger loading times as a top priority for search engine optimization. According to Google, AMP can improve loading speeds between 15% and 85%. While AMP is only available for mobile windows, Google has persistently pushed SEO professionals and webmasters to optimize their speeds with trimmed, user friendly sites. Recently, Google added mobile-friendliness as a major ranking factor that greatly disrupted the search engine landscape – otherwise known as “mobilegeddon”. 2017 will be no exception to this trend as the landscape continues to prioritize user experience with faster sites. In addition to site speed, SEO professionals and webmasters will need to evaluate how well their search traffic responds to the growth of mobile search. In 2015, Google announced that more searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.[2] For many digital marketers, this was the spark that made them take the optimization mobile pages seriously. Earlier, we mentioned site speed as a factor that will grow in importance for search rankings in 2017. In addition to site speed, other user experience features like content readability, page design, and workflow will become weightier in search rankings. High quality content has always been the foundational factor to earning a favorable search engine ranking. This year has seen the rise of “epic content”, where content developers focused on publishing lengthy in-depth articles over bite-size pieces. Longer in-depth articles give visitor more bang for their click, earning the domain a share or better – visitor loyalty. The publishing of longer in-depth articles doesn’t appear to stop anytime soon. A recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute found that compared to one year ago, 62% of B2B marketers in North America believe their organization’s content marketing has been successful.[3] In fact, it’s expected to continue growing well into next year with more content developed at a faster pace. When organizations where asked if they would produce more original content in 2017, 70% of organizations surveyed said “yes”.[4] Heading into 2017, content will continue to be king. If you’ve been keeping up with the latest in search engine technology, chances are that Google’s RankBrain has crossed your path. It’s their latest machine learning system that helps process search queries for more accurate listings. In an interview with Search Engine Land, Google confirmed that RankBrain helps process more than 2 trillion queries per-year.[5] The RankBrain system works by refining ambiguous search queries for better search results. The system uses an advanced understanding of language semantics to develop knowledge on how and why people search, creating search conditions for future queries and listings. For example, if a query is received as, “best taco truck in ATX” it may refine the query as “best Austin taco truck”. The search term, “ATX” is used less frequently than “austin” when searching for Austin, Texas. Refining this query will return a more popular search listing, increasing the likelihood that the visitor will find what they’re looking for. To SEO professionals and content developers, this means developing focused content that will generate return visitors. RankBrain will eliminate the long-frowned upon practice stuffing of odd keywords to umbrella a variety of search queries. Quality content is king! Indexing social media posts has been a subject of interest for organizations that heavily market their brand. In recent years, search engines like Google and Bing have made more ambitious attempts to index popular social media posts. The challenge, however, is in distinguishing which posts have valuable information to users out of the “firehose” of posts. As it stands, search engines like Google aren’t prioritizing social media as a factor for search ranking. This doesn’t mean social media may not serve as a factor in the future. Instead, Google believes social media could be used as a tool to build brand reputation, an outlet for customer service, and a source for traffic. These indirect factors are currently used as factors for search ranking.[6] Search engines are in a constant state of change, pushing sites to up the ante in their performance and content offerings. 2017 will see these trends grow and mature into stronger user-experience. How will your site respond to these changes? Stay ahead of the curve and learn more about how SEO services can help you reach your digital marketing goals by filling out our form! With 10-years of experience in developing successful digital strategies, Strongpages has generated significant results for clients in a variety of competitive industries. Don’t forget to follow our Twitter: @Strongpages & LinkedIn: Strongpages for more insight on successful SEO and PPC strategies! [1] Malte U. “A new approach to web performance”. AMP Project. https://www.ampproject.org/how-it-works/ [2]Jerry D. “Building for the next moment”. Google Inside Adwords. https://adwords.googleblog.com/2015/05/building-for-next-moment.html [3]Joe P. “Content Marketing Take a Turn for the Better”. Content Marketing Institute. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/09/content-marketing-research-b2b/ [4]Ibid. [5]Danny S. “Google now handles at least 2 trillion searches per year”. Search Engine Land. http://searchengineland.com/google-now-handles-2-999-trillion-searches-per-year-250247 [6]Barry S. “We Don’t Use Social Media For Ranking”. Search Engine Roundtable. https://www.seroundtable.com/again-google-doesnt-use-social-media-for-ranking-22200.html