4 Big Changes in SEO to Expect in 2015

Transcendent Man is a fascinating documentary following the frantic efforts of inventor, futurist, and author Ray Kurzweil as he races towards a predicted merger between technology and biology. In this striking and subtly tragic film, Kurzweil reflects on the exponential growth of technology; within 50 years, computers had shrunk in physical size even as they blossomed in power so that the modern mobile phone is now more powerful than campus-consuming computer systems at MIT. This theme of exponential growth applies to all modern technology today, and is especially relevant to the changes to SEO that will be experienced in 2015. Technology is changing more rapidly and consistently than ever, with business owners now forced to constantly adapt to changes in search engine optimization if they wish to compete in the internet marketing game.

In 2014, Google applied 13 different updates to their algorithm, with many smaller and less publicized changes having been made behind the scenes. Your team at ClickTecs is constantly working to help small business owners adapt, and accordingly would like to present to you four different ways to anticipate and adapt to SEO changes in 2015.

•  Optimize your website for mobile traffic and benefit from Google notation.

Mobile traffic now exceeds desktop traffic online. To further reinforce the industry shift towards the mobile users’ experience, Google continues to help mobile-responsive companies distinguish themselves from their competitors. Now introducing a “mobile-friendly” notation in their mobile search listing results for websites that pass a mobile-friendly test, Google is helping to steer users towards the best possible experiences, and penalizing websites that have not adapted to this mobile trend. Small businesses should seek assistance in locating and passing Google’s mobile-friendly screening tests in order to benefit from this new feature.  Here is a helpful link from Google to analyze a url and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

•  Increasing visibility for alternative search engines is becoming more worthwhile.

As of now, Firefox has disengaged from Google and chosen Yahoo as the default search engine. Furthermore, Google’s contract with Safari ends in the new year, with Bing and Yahoo vying to take that spot from them. Though Google has retained its stranglehold on the search engine industry, other options are becoming more viable, and small business owners may be well-advised to invest in securing some visibility using these other competitors.

•  Understand that keyword rankings are secondary to ROI metrics in 2015.

Keyword rankings will continue to influence uninformed marketers via fancy PDF reports, but without having a true understanding of how success in these listings translates into revenue, the decisions made will be misguided.  Marketing campaign success will now be measured not entirely by keyword ranking reports, but by the concrete ROI metrics that tell companies how many clicks, conversions, and dollars were generated in return for their marketing investment.  ‘Stickiness’ of your website, behavior of users as they navigate your site and conversion metrics are all an indicator of whether your site is working or not.  Rankings are a far second.

•  Social media customer service must continue to evolve.

No longer restricted to being a passive sharing platform, small businesses’ interactions with social media has undergone some drastic changes in 2014. Now, social media represents a channel for customer service, as audience everywhere begin to expect more and more engagements on a personal level in an era of globalization and inter-connectivity. Rather than blasting out free content sharing through every social media platform in existence, small businesses would be better served to focus on 2-3 platforms to build loyal followings through quality interaction and relevant content sharing.

Having only grazed the tip of the iceberg with these four upcoming changes, it is clear to see that Kurzeil’s notion of exponential technological growth holds true. With the constant evolution of Google algorithms, SEO in particular remains in a state of constant evolution, so that success in online marketing is never static. SEO experts at ClickTecs are well-apprised of the coming changes to SEO strategies, and are standing by to help businesses succeed in a dynamic digital age.