Top 3 SEO Trends to Watch Out for in 2014

SEO is one of those fields that seems like it moves at the speed of light. The online world moves quickly. This means both Internet marketers and the businesses they serve have to pay attention and keep up.

Optimizing for Mobile and Tablets

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that mobile devices are taking over our lives. Across the planet, more people own phones than have indoor plumbing. Mobile devices have become what’s known as “leapfrog” technology, meaning that even people in developing countries can skip the whole desktop/landline/technical infrastructure thing and move directly online with cell phones.

Where the market is, marketers go. There are many exciting possibilities for mobile marketing —  the winner that emerged in 2013 is Responsive Web Design, or RWD.

RWD is Google’s choice for optimizing content across platforms. Although only a small fraction of sites are built with RWD, with Google’s weight behind it, that will definitely change in the coming months and years.

Algorithms Grow Ever-Smarter

Although the shakeups of Panda and Penguin rattled marketing cages in 2012 and 2013, there’s no reason to think this isn’t a good thing for the industry as a whole.

Although many people are finding their links devalued and are scrambling for new places to link to, it’s all to the good, eventually. You see, for years, in order to get good results, you had to give “the bots” what they wanted. This resulted in webpages so saturated with keywords they were nearly unreadable. But with all these updates, Google’s algorithm is starting to think almost like a real person — which means that we can build content that appeals to real people. That’s a lot better than writing for bots and potentially alienating customers, don’t you think?

Local Search Competition On The Rise

As a logical consequence of trends one and two, search competition for local listing is getting fierce. However, there’s a lot that can be done to improve local business rankings on local search that most businesses are not exploiting. Early adopters have the biggest advantage, but like most things in this world, taking the time to do things right will have a lot more effect in the long run. If you’re lucky enough, though, you want to do both.

That’s why we look for the trends on the horizon. These three trends are what we think will change the digital landscape this year, and we plan to take advantage of them. To explore your digital strategy in 2014, contact us today.

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