Google Continues To Rule
Google is still the search engine king. By constantly focusing on the user experience, it will remain to be so.
To fight off attrition from minor search engines and social media sites, Google has some major refinements in store for the coming year. These refinements all designed to offer the best user experience, when embraced can soar organic ranking through the roof but if ignored will see sites sink into oblivion. So what are the trends for 2017? Read on …
Get Social.
Google is already indexing more and more social content blurring the lines between traditional SEO and content relevance.
Next year this indexing will accelerate and social links to Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn to name just a few, will be used as a key indicator of relevance and credibility so boosting organic rankings.
Put Your Business In Lights.
The popularity and effectiveness of video cannot be ignored with 80% of video results in organic search coming from YouTube, 50 times visibility compared to standard text based results and 41% higher click through rates than standard listings.
Webmasters are increasingly using video to boost organic results in SEO and it is a trend others must adopt to remain competitive.
What Did You Say?
Voice search is on the rise. 40% of adults use voice search for directions and a staggering 60% of teens use the function whilst watching television!
Site content must be voice search friendly to appease Google and cater for demand.
Read All About It.
As the pace of day to day life continues to accelerate, more and more users are looking to find all their relevant information in just one place. Google identified this trend very early and as a result now index authority sites with greater priority.
Emphasis needs to be placed on providing websites with a blended mix of relevant content from both internal and external sources to enhance ranking.
Going Down The Local?
Dominating local search must also be a main focus. 50% of local searches lead to a place of business visit the same day, 50% of mobile searches are for local businesses and 60% of consumers have used local searches direct from adverts.
It is important to give Google accurate information on your specific location and range of goods and services to capitalise on this trend. This can easily be done by visiting https://www.google.com/business/ where you will find everything you need to set up your local information on Google.
What’s ‘Appening?
Of the 3.2 billion internet users over 2.5 billion access the web from a mobile device. As mobile devices become cheaper, more sophisticated and user friendly, this proportion will undoubtedly rise.
Some other statistics must also be taken very seriously. Mobile apps accounts for 52% of user time spent on digital media.
Mobile apps are now relatively inexpensive to commission and can form a pivotal back up for SEO and deliver content to users in their preferred manner.
Are You Upwardly Mobile?
This massive mobile usage to access the internet has caused Google to redefine search rankings for mobile. A stripped down version of a site for mobile users just does not cut it anymore.
Google has split rankings for desktop and mobile into two completely different indexes. Dependant on device, mobile or desktop the user will be shown a completely different set of results. Poorly formatted mobile sites are immediately penalised.
There are a couple of options for an immediate fix. One is to create a pure mobile site on a subdomain for indexing in the mobile listings. This does not impact on your existing site and is the most common way to get a mobile site up quickly. Another is to incorporate responsive design which resizes content according to device. It will keep all the content but can be time consuming to implement.
Either way it is important to offer quality content and not trim down your content for mobile for the sake of faster loading time. Google views content in exactly the same way and will offer higher rankings to quality, relevant content that addresses the user search query.
2017 is going to be a spectacular year for those website owners who adapt to these trends. Implementation of a full market approach with relevant, optimised content coupled with multiple channel syndication and mobile optimisation will yield outstanding results in online exposure on Google for years to come.
