Predictions for the Future of SEO
Unless you’re a search engine optimization expert, odds are you’re not familiar with what awaits the SEO strategy in the future. Media marketing is constantly changing and therefore marketing strategies have to conform and adapt in order to stay on track.
Now that Google is on the top of the search engine pyramid, the search engine techniques have heavily leaned toward pleasing Google’s algorithm.
Let’s go Back to the Start
In case you are new to the SEO industry, here’s a little information: Google’s core algorithm foundation are backlinks. Page rank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. However, in the early days of SEO, many webmasters abused this system by building low-quality and non-authoritative links going back to their site.
Fortunately, Google is smarter than that, so it wasn’t abused for a long time. They caught on and penalized sites which were using these methods. So for example, if you used links that are founded on unrelated and untrusted sources, you’d be penalized. Sites that have been penalized and those that are violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines can have a negative impact on your SEO.
What ranking strategies have worked so far?
There are many strategies webmasters can take in order to increase backlinks and traffic. SEO experts claim that you can achieve that by simply producing content that will resonate with an amplification-likely audience, then sharing it in front of these groups. It can build high-quality links and lead to rankings. The content you create needs to be top-notch quality or else it will be ignored or penalized. Google serves only the best possible results to its users, so tailor your website according to these demands. Never underestimate the importance of a title tag or strong internal linking either.
The Built-in SEO’s Fate
Most built-in SEO solutions automatically help you build websites in a way that’s seen and favored by search engines. However, built-in solutions can’t replace knowledge. Most built-in tools and apps are out-of-the-box solutions. They don’t offer much customizability to cater to businesses or organizations with different goals, or from different industries. They can have handy content analysis tools, but it’s still a speculative and subjective area. You can’t use built-in SEO to evaluate your performance or learn how to get better results over time. This is challenging because these tools aren’t “aware” of what your goals actually are. It can be a good tool if you learn how to use it well, but you needn’t rely on it too much because some data you acquire might be wrong.
Future of Backlinks
Backlinks are the most powerful factor in promoting your organic search rankings. Although that method was abused a few years ago with spammy and black hat links, the uprise of Panda and Penguin search engine algorithms has eradicated all websites that were abusing the system. Google bots have become more sophisticated over the years and manipulative link building will probably vanish as a SEO strategy very soon. As for the far future, it seems uncertain for link building. They might become insignificant if Google starts to understand actual language more, but that’s not for sure. For now, the links that drive referral traffic to your website will remain important.
User Experience
Although SEO has many technical elements to it, it’s basically an art form – not only do you need to get to know the technical aspects of optimizing websites, you also need to have a deep understanding on how people interact with the web. Google favors the user – and so should you. Working the other way around will never bring you more revenue, as user experience is becoming more and more important throughout years.
To better position your site now, invest time in learning your users inside and out. Then, create content that not only helps them but engages them as well. If you want to build a long-term sustainable business, then you’ve got to rely on repeat customers. That’s why relevant content that fulfills user expectations is going to take center stage. The future of SEO heavily lies on user experience and you need to invest as much as you can into it for better results.
Conclusion
While the future is not clear for SEO yet, you need to take time and evaluate what benefits you can reap from the SEO today – add some of the aforementioned things to your strategy and you will surely see better results. Backlinks are relevant and will stay so for a long period of time. So, instead of sitting at the desk, try going out into the local community and start forging relationships. You will be able to cross promote with other businesses and get new potential clients or customers by introducing them to your product or services.