Time for planning, budgeting, and strategizing for your SEO success in 2017 has come. I’ve carefully documented the most important takeaways for you. Some of them are quite logical and expected, but others are true game changers!.
1. Voice search –
It has become one of the fastest-growing search options. The appeal is undeniable. It’s hands-free, fast and futuristic. Google’s director of conversational search, Behshad Behzadi, noted that the speech recognition error rate has been reduced from around 25 percent two years ago to just 8 percent today.
There’s no denying that voice search is a one of the biggest trends of the digital age. With massive improvements to Siri, Google Now and Cortana, SEO marketers would be wise to closely examine voice innovation and think beyond text-based queries in 2017.
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2. Google’s AMP –
Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP for short) is a new Google initiative to build a better, more user friendly mobile Web by introducing a new “standard” for building web content for mobile devices. Basically, this new standard is a set of rules that form a simple, lighter version of HTML. And pages built in compliance with AMP are sure to load super-quick on all mobile devices.
However there’s a number of other reasons why you might want to consider using AMP in your strategy:
Ultimate user experience.
Positive effect on rankings and CTR
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3. Switching to HTTPS to improve rankings –
With the announcement I addressed in the beginning, Google is now using HTTPS as a ranking signal. It is pretty clear from data analysis that HTTPS sites have a ranking advantage over http-URLs so this switch will now benefit all companies, confidential information or not.
Google claims that websites who use HTTPS will have a small ranking benefit because of these security aspects.
Still, HTTPS sites will only have the benefit of a “very lightweight signal” within the overall ranking algorithm, carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content.
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“If you’re a website who earns money by sending people to other sites, don’t forget switching to HTTPS will stop your website from sending referral data to HTTP sites.”
4. ALGORITHMIC MACHINE LEARNING –
Google RankBrain was released late last year, and opened the door to the possibility of algorithmic machine learning. The extension of Google Hummingbird functions as a way to gradually learn more about how users phrase conversational queries—and update its algorithm automatically accordingly.Google will probably start releasing more machine learning updates as the years go on, starting next year, and we may even see machine learning in other areas, such as data interpretation or marketing automation, as well.
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5. Personal Branding –
With a personal brand, you’ll have an easier time securing guest posts, building user trust, and driving more traffic to your website. However, a shockingly low number of brands have taken advantage of this in their SEO efforts. As social media platforms like Facebook continue refining their algorithms to favor individual posts over branded posts.
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6. User Experience Optimization (UEO) –
Over the past few years, small and medium-sized businesses have become increasingly concerned with SEO at the expense of what I like to call UEO, or “User Experience Optimization.” There’s been an unhealthy shift in the business world toward trying to get people to visit websites versus providing users with a valuable experience once they get there. There’s no point in trying to increase your search engine results with the goal of increased traffic to your website if, when visitors arrive at your site, they are uninterested, uninformed or unmotivated.
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7 – Dense content –
Content density can be described plainly as content’s “per word value.” So for example, even though you might write a 3,000 word article that explains all the nuances of Snapchat marketing, the actual amount of value you deliver per-word might be very low. However, by providing denser content that is focused more on function than form, you can deliver the same value in only 300 words.
Every major SEO authority agrees that 2017 will be the year where we see the rise of content density across the board. And this is a good thing.
