The SEO world changes very quickly, with new technologies and methods appearing every week and keeping the professionals busy in developing more sophisticated solutions for online businesses. Though some of the practices used by SEO professionals can be considered as critically important because they have been used for a long time, you will be surprised that many of them will be lost their significance next year to the crazy pace at which the field develops. It won’t be the first time when new technologies replaced the old ones that were thought to stay; for example in 2011, the Panda algorithm put an end to one of the most widely used methods in SEO – writing link-staffed texts that aimed to acquire new leads.

The recent years have been a blast in terms of new SEO and other technologies that impact the field. For example, mobile internet experience continues to become more and more important for online business, as 80 percent of internet users prefer smartphones to browse the sites. Because of trends like this, it is possible to predict that some of the current SEO practices will be outdated the next year. Let’s get to specifics.

1. Google optimization

Let’s face it, Google is the most widely used search engines out there. According to 2014 search engines rankings, more than 67 percent of Internet users preferred it to conduct a search via Google, which made it a leader with the closest competitor Microsoft with its Bing. To ensure that the business has the chance to reach a wider audience, online businesses optimized the sites for Google because of its leadership position and a never-ending supply of great technologies that the company provided. Clearly, other search engines struggle to keep up with Google’s success but this is about to change.

Before last year, Bing’s share of search engine market slightly exceeded 10 percent and occasionally increased to 15. However, in 2015 the engine was able to hit 20 percent market share and continue to strengthen its positions. Yahoo is quietly following suit, too, with its share at around 13 percent and rising because of its default search deal with Firefox, a popular Internet browser. Next, people who use smartphones are increasingly using their virtual assistants like Siri and Cortana to conduct a search, which also changes the odds. As the result, “Google optimization” will not be as significant in 2017, and more SEO professionals will start to focus on other search engines.

2. Desktop Optimization

Another solid trend that will make even more difference the next year is mobile optimization. As it was previously mentioned, people are increasingly using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to browse the net, almost 80 percent, to be more specific. When these devices became capable of decent Internet function, the term “mobile optimization” and “desktop optimization” were coined, to differentiate the view of the sites. Desktop versions were considered as the norm while the ones optimized for websites were seen as less important because more users were using PCs to browse the Internet. However, as the time went on, mobile devices become much more important than desktop computers and mobile Internet traffic surpassed the desktop traffic, thus showing that more and more people were browsing on the go.

This trend will definitely continue into 2017, so more and more attention will be given to mobile optimization rather than desktop optimization by SEO experts.

3. Focus On Written Content

In the recent decade, internet content has been dominated by textual material even though some studies have shown that multimedia content performed better in terms of attracting leads to websites. However, as described by the marketing specialist from admission service, now SEO professionals began to pay more attention to such findings, and we have seen the rise in multimedia online, such as infographics. These graphical materials were proven to be more attractive to Internet viewers than traditional text, so a lot of companies began to use them instead. It is safe to suggest that text will be important in the content sense in the next decade and further but its impact on the people will certainly change. To really stand out from the ocean of websites, a business needs to be creative, which cannot be really done with text. Images, videos, infographics, and other elements will continue to gain importance in SEO the next year, so be prepared for change from the written-only content to multimedia content very soon.

4. Keyword-focused Optimization

This has been an important trend for years and any SEO expert now knows how to perform keyword-focused optimization. However, in the recent years, the practice of including keywords into titles and body of the content became less significant because of the focus on content marketing. Even though it still considered critical in some businesses, this optimization will continue to decline because of the new technologies provided by Google and other companies. For example, the Hummingbird algorithm recently developed by the search giant does not consider keywords as important. At the same time, this update is known for returning better results, which means, bye-bye, keyword-focused optimization (eventually…maybe).

Of course, it will remain important, but the focus will certainly begin to shift to content marketing, which needs to be unique to be effective.

The Bottom Line

The next year will bring new trends in the SEO field, so following them will be critically important for online businesses. Some of the long-standing strategies will decline in importance, which may be surprising for some but the times change. Who thought that Google might be losing positions, right? However, as the statistics show the other engines continue to rise, so watch out for them. Moreover, the number of mobile Internet users continues to increase, which convinces SEO experts to shift the focus from desktop optimization, a strategy that was thought to be a norm previously. Use this information to stay up to date with the latest SEO techniques and make sure your online business flourishes.

Author:

Scott Ragin is a marketing specialist working in multi-channel marketing, content strategy and connecting social media to business initiative at College papers essay writing service. He loves guiding other people through their marketing practice and shares his ideas as a blogger.  Feel free to contact him at Linkedin.