The era of link buying, keyword stuffing content and over-optimizing meta tags is over. All previous search engine optimization practices that marked the first decade of the industry’s development were replaced by the rise of content marketing, social media marketing and the switch to mobile search.
Today, RankBrain and changing technologies are slowly altering the SEO landscape. Preparing for the future of SEO should rely on producing evergreen content and adapting to the platforms that your target audience engages with most. Maintaining white-hat SEO practices will build trust with search engines over time and ensure that your website is protected against any future algorithm changes.
SEO experts should not fear the future of SEO. Link building will not die anytime soon and content marketing will only increase in demand, no matter what medium it's served over. With all new technologies (i.e. Google’s AI) people fear that automation will slowly displace their jobs within their industry. As Max McKeown stated, “All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.”
Below are a few changing technologies that will have an impact on SEO.
The Mobile Spike
Five years ago, mobile search was beginning to rise as a major game changer in the search world. We had to start adapting our websites for mobile friendliness and we soon realized that mobile search would rapidly outpace desktop search. This was inappropriately named ‘mobilegeddon.’
By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will own a smartphone. One report from 2016 found that nearly 58% of all U.S. searches were mobile. The substantive volume of mobile searches led Google to create its mobile-first index last year, which is indexed and refreshed more regularly than the desktop index.
Creating a mobile friendly website or responsive design is last year’s news. I believe Google may include accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) into its algorithm in a few years, if awareness grows enough. AMPs are already displayed in a carousel above organic listings and provide nearly instantaneous results, which is great for UX. AMPs are typically used by established brands, so utilizing AMPs early on will help make your content more competitive and gather greater visibility in AMP listings.
Consider switching from a mobile site and developing an app; 86% of mobile consumption is completed over applications. Apple recently built out its own PPC network with Apple Search Ads and its own search engine with Apple Spotlight. Both promise a high ROI and both deliver content that is both highly relevant and of high quality to its customers. In the coming years, Google may be displaced by other search networks and the popularity of apps is only growing.
Voice Search
Google has been serving personalized results for years and the rise of voice search reaffirms the importance of semantic search to Google’s core algorithm. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 30% of searches will be screenless. This presents broad implications for SEO and social media marketing; PPC will most likely be unaffected by this change.
Personal assistants such as Echo, Alexa and Cortana mine for specific answers to spoken searches using Google’s featured snippet box. This will place greater emphasis on content to answer as many questions as possible while researching incredibly relevant keyword-based questions. Unfortunately, many competitors are already sniping featured snippets for both informational queries and branded search terms.
Content creation will have to take syntax and natural speech into account as a result of voice searches. This will place a greater importance on reaching out to real people for topics and questions important to them, which will place less importance on keyword research.
I expect to see voice searches steadily climbing for the next few years, but I do not think its effect on content marketing and SEO will be anything substantial. On the other hand, Google’s Hummingbird and RankBrain have paved the way for semantic search to displace keyword research and interpret search queries based on natural language.
Virtual Reality
I mention VR because it’s gained increased exposure in the SEO world in the past year. VR may or may not be a fad, but its utility does not apply to every industry vertical. Regardless, the same rules for most visual content production apply to VR.
Create immersive storytelling experiences surrounding your brand and provide avenues for users to engage with your brand. The video game industry has been remarkably successful in this aspect. One interesting aspect of VR revolves around the ability to bring user experiences directly into their home. Optimizing ads and content that can be physically envisioned provides a powerful competitive advantage.
The Silver Lining
The medium may change but the fundamentals always stay in place. Just as print media was taken over by TV and soon digital media, the same rules of writing and demands for content quality persisted. From paper advertisements to social media contests, pull marketing has evolved for years but never truly changed in principle.
Throughout all of these changing technologies, producing consistent, high-quality content remains the best practice to remain relevant and a leading brand in your industry. Whether it’s content displayed in an AMP, pulled from a featured snippet or adapted for VR, search engines will still connect users with the highest quality and most relevant quality to user intent. Fifty years from now, I wouldn't be surprised if the phrase “content is king” still rings true.
