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It’s time once again for the annual tradition of getting out our crystal ball and looking into the future trends for SEO in the coming year. It looks like it is going to be a very tech mobile driven search year. Here are four trends we recommend that you prepare your site for in 2017.
Video is back in a big way
Google has been investing heavily in Video and Image Startup Companies as they are seeing a trend towards Video and Image Searches becoming more of an important factor for their Search Engine. In such 2017 could become another year where video plays a large role in your Search Traffic. If you aren’t currently producing videos for your website we would suggest that you start now. Keep in mind that Google enjoys informative content the most (Tutorials, Webinars etc.) So concentrating on that over fluffy feel good videos would be a good idea. Facebook also believes that the future of Search will be very video driven.
Mobile First Search
This is something that has been coming for a while but Google plans to fully implement in 2017. For the first time Google will start crawling the mobile version of your site before it crawls the desktop version. This won’t be a large issue for you if you already have a responsive version of your website. The bigger trend here is that Mobile has taken over a large portion of the Search Market and it is only increasing and not decreasing. So that means you want to make sure your mobile version of your site is at least as good as the desktop version if not better.
Voice Search
I am sure that you have encountered younger people speaking directly into their mobile devices all the time without anyone else on the other end talking back. This is because younger technology users are very used to voice commands and Google is adapting. Voice Search is likely to be a bigger deal in 2017 and into the future as these users become more of the Search Market. Think about how your keyword phrases would be different when someone was speaking them out loud as opposed to typing them. Create content around the “Who, what , how” spoken word crowd and benefit from this new trend.
Relevance of Local Search
With Mobile first predicted in the first few months of 2017 we can expect Local Search to play an even larger role in Search Traffic. With more people using mobile devices and Google placing the Mobile snack packs up before any other listing (except for Paid of course) this means that local optimization will be even more important in the coming year. Make sure that your local listing information is correct across different sites and reap the rewards.
These are just some of the trends that we are seeing for 2017. It’s hard to say what other trends might arise in that time but we recommend focusing on your mobile site, optimizing your site with video and voice based content in the New Year.
