The Future of SEO

SEO is essential to Google’s business model. Not only does the search engine giant make most of its revenue from paid adverts but offering good search results is key to keeping customers getting the information they need and coming back for more.

Google’s search algorithm has never been perfect and has always been a working progress, with regular updates to improve the user experience and with this in mind, we give you the future of SEO.

More Mobile

The world’s mobile penetration increases year upon year, both on Google, social media, apps and the entire Internet. Google have already acknowledged this by introducing the ‘mobile algorithm’ in April 2015 which encouraged webmasters to make their sites responsive in order to reap maximum search results on Google. This caused the entire world to flock to their developers and make sure their site was responsive – and several developers cashed in as a result.

In terms of the future, we could see a specific mobile SEO algorithm which rewards sites beyond whether they are just mobile-friendly but other factors, such as time spent on a mobile, amount of content on a mobile, quality of images, videos etc. So the search results between mobile and desktop could vary quite significantly.

Answering Questions

Google wants to answer your questions. AskJeeves was the original search engine that promoted this – you could simply ask a question and get the answer. But with 37% of search queries everyday being completely unique, it is always going to be hard to answer an individual’s question that jumps into this head.

Google’s knowledge graph is an example of how they are trying to answer questions, so no doubt we will see more and more of this and Google will eventually crack how to perfectly answer a question. Above all, they love the idea of being able to ask a question through your phone and getting the answer right away, so no doubt there will be additional triggers that can be implemented onto your site to make speech enquiries.

Tougher Stance On Links

With the introduction of Penguin updates, Google has clamped down on those websites using poor quality or spammy links in mass volumes to boost results. The impact of the algorithm changed the SEO spectrum overnight and kicked out a huge number of competitors.

However, some poor quality links are still slipping through the net and black hat SEO tactics can still beat the algorithm – so this is something that Google will certainly get tougher on.

More Behavioural

Google will use more behavioural analysis in its rankings. This includes rewarding those sites that get clicked on more in organic search or whether someone spends longer of the website. Eventually, those sites at the top will truly offer the best user experience possible and links and site age may have less of an impact.

Introduction of Apps

With the emergence of apps, we should see more apps enter into organic search results, especially from Android. So if you are looking for something, a product, a cure, a game, you will be shown a search result where you can go and download the app just one click away.

Conclusion

Google need to stay ahead of search to protect their empire. Getting the best search results for users is key and making sure that customers have access to information as fast and as accurate as possible is the future of SEO.