2014 SEO Predictions: Get Your Self Prepared

Another year to unfold! Let us all welcome 2014 with a smile and more preparedness. We must have learned our lessons in 2013 perhaps, the most eventful year in SEO. We have struggled through Panda and Penguin and we have expanded our wings of wisdom with Hummingbird’s existence. We also experienced Google’s keeping us the keywords used by the users. Thought we were falling into pieces, but SEO is backed up and SEO experts around the world shared how to conquer it.

For the past years, we have heard about the death of SEO. Yet, still it is here, more challenging, fun and enjoyable to deal with. More so, businesses have realized and acknowledged the needs for online presence. With the year on the dawn, what do you think will SEO be next year?

2013 for SEO is still relevant yet amplified…

Everything you have learned in 2013 will be used in 2014 and it will be leveraged. Link building, social media marketing and content marketing will become bigger. There will be less adjustments to Panda and Penguin that will still target link quantity and content quality. However, marketers must be keener about their link profiles. They must perform periodic audits that will allow them to identify and remove unnatural inbound links. More so, investments with high quality contents will be critical for every business.

On the other hand, success will not be anymore reflected by Google rankings but by traffic, conversions and revenue. Rankings can be deceiving, you get the position #1 but you got few visitors. The problem is not with Google, it’s your page and you strategies using the social media.

In 2014, you have to look into every detail of SEO. You have the users, the website and the strategies. So, let us say you are focusing on your users.

What should you do in your SEO for 2014?

Proper research about your target market to gain page centric SEO.

• You have to be more precise in targeting the market segment you are catering for. You have to research on who they are, what they are looking for and how they get the information. Creating a persona will bring your audience to life and you can think about them beyond clicks and visitors.
• You have to optimize multiple keywords or synonyms. Users are now smart enough to see that there’s more than one way to say the same thing.
• Analyze the landscape of the competition. You can’t afford to lose in the market just because you are blind of who ranks and what keywords are getting into the spotlight. Keywords are keeping the keywords but there will be a way to find which keywords you should use.

Content and Social Signals are still in the Game

• Content marketing will remain big. From buzzword it will evolve into a mature marketing movement. Google will be looking into companies that contain robust marketing efforts and will likely be supported.
• Contents should remain targeted at your audience. The changes will depend on where your company stands now in terms of content marketing.
• Social signal still counts. Your participation in Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter still counts.

Going Mobile

• Since 2013, it has been an advocacy but not everybody seemed to be convinced. In the year 2014, expect something big from the mobile industry. There is a tremendous mobile traffic growth.
• According to Google, mobile traffic growth is driven by the ease and convenience (81%).
• When going mobile you have to consider content relevancy because users want to see their needed information in the top of the page.
• Mobile SEO will allow you to drive transactions. Most mobile viewers are converted into shoppers in lesser time than desktop online shoppers.

There’s a lot of things you must be prepared with SEO in 2014. You also have the new knowledge graph and even the new Google SERP. Google Plus will about to rise as authority is one way to capture a better ranking in Google. Bing will also have some innovation. Definitely, SEO will still be a fruitful year for SEO. It won’t die but will live long with a few changes in the platform. Just before vacation comes, be excited about what else SEO is to offer in the next year to come.

Have some thoughts? Don’t forget to share it here.