Monday, December 15, 2014

5 SEO Trends to Look Forward to in 2015

If you are hearing that "SEO is dead" then you are wrong, my amigo. While search engine optimization is constantly changing, it is far from dead. SEO is a beautiful mix of SEO techniques, content marketing, and social media marketing

In the coming year, we can expect to see several things happen, when it comes to SEO. 
  1. Better semantic search. When Google released its Hummingbird update in September of 2013, it was a rebuild of the algorithm to favor semantic search. Semantic search attempts to understand why someone searches for something via analyzing possible meanings and intent. Hummingbird looks at each word of the query to hopefully grasp the whole meaning. 
    1. This means more conversational style queries will be made. Instead of searching solely for, "Chicago SEO firm", we might search for, "Who is the best SEO firm in Chicago?This also means more long tail keywords. So, instead of keywords that are only one or two words, keywords will be more in the range of 3-6 words. 
    2. LSI keywords- LSI keywords are "latent semantic indexing" keywords, which means that they utilize synonyms and plurals of your main keywords.
  2. SEO for mobile search.  According to Google, half of searches made by someone on a smartphone are made with the intent of making an in-store purchase. However, not every mobile search has local intent:
    1. 17 percent of mobile searches are in the store but complete the sale online. 
    2. 44 percent research online & complete the sale online. 
    3. Over 75 percent happen at home or work. 
    4. 17 percent are done while in motion. 
    5. 81 percent of smartphone owners research products on their smartphones. 
    6. 50 percent of smartphone owners purchase via their phones. 
    7. 66 percent of all the time in 2014 that was spend with online retail was done so via smartphones instead of computers. 
      1. Mobile search is growing; by the end of 2015, mobile search is expected to be more powerful than computer. Everyone has a personal computer right in their pocket, these days. 
        1. 43 percent of US adults use their phones & tablets as primary search tools. 
        2. 46 percent of adults don't use their laptops or desktops for pre-purchase research. 
        3. 33 percent of online shoppers used their phones & tablets for the whole purchase process. 
        4. 58 percent of US adults researched prices of prices of a product while in-store for that item. 
  3. Social signals will lose power. While retweets, shares, and +1s have power in rankings, their power is not what we likely believe them to be. The confusion here is that there is a difference between correlation and causation. While a high ranking social media profile may have lots of these social signals, it may be something on the page (something deeper) that is causing the page to rank well. Some studies have shown that when a company gains 100 Google+ followers, they tend to increase in rankings by 14 percent. 
    1. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are high authority sites, this means that your company's profile on these sites can outrank your website. As a Chicago SEO firm, we have seen this actually happen, many times. 
  4. Earned links will be even more important. Earned links are in contrast to paid links. Earned links are going out and placing your links places, writing blogs, and social media. Paid links are a sure-fire way to get your site penalized. 
    1. This means that content marketing is still king. 
  5. Getting brand mentions and citations. A citation is mentioning your business name, address, and number on a website that is not your own website. There are three types of citations to recognize:
    1. Local- Local businesses such as dentists, attorneys, restaurants  being listed in places like internet Yellow Pages, Yelp, Google Business, Google+ , etc. 
    2. Industry- Being listed with industry-specific citations. 
    3. Niche- Get brand mentions and citations on industry websites that appeal to their target markets. 
To be successful in local SEO and SEO as a whole, an SEO company needs to be able to see ahead. If your business wants to be found on the internet, then hire an SEO company that knows what to look for. Talk with Integraphix

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