The internet and SEO are always changing as Google and SEO workers quickly adapt and dance back and forth as Google looks to promote real websites and content while SEO analysts look to maximize the advantages of Google’s updates and changes.
Here are five trends that will have a big impact on SEO in 2013. Keep up and stay ahead:
5). Local Reviews
Many customers are relying on yahoo, yelp, and online reviews when they make choices and purchases. For that reason, it’s essential to target your SEO practices towards local audiences. Work to optimize your pages within local searches to make your sites more accessible.
For this purpose it’s valuable to use software that reveals your rankings in different locations. Build pages tailored to different locations and searches to achieve higher visibility within those areas.
4). Personalized search functions
Now that Google generates hits for users based on their search history, brand building and keyword research are all the more valuable in tailoring your sites to the preferred searches of your target audience.
If you are successful in drawing traffic, search personalization will dramatically boost your site’s rankings. Those who effectively use SEO will find this to give them a huge advantage over competitors.
3). Mobile-friendly
The internet is becoming more and more personalized for individuals and adapting to meet unique requirements. Sites that fail to address the growing usage of mobile devices to conduct searches will fall by the wayside.
People use mobiles for searches that occur to them on the fly, to find directions or sites in an hour of specific need, and to kill time. As an example, for a restaurant it’s essential that their site be easily downloaded and accessed on a mobile device in order for them to draw mobile users looking up a place to eat on the road away from their home computers.
“Responsive web design” is a growing strategy to meet the growing demand for mobile-friendly sites that’s geared towards creating one website design that can fit virtually any screen size or type of mobile device. This can prevent users from having to type “M” before the URL to draw the mobile-friendly version of the site and to cater your site towards the shift.
Some people believe that by 2014 most web traffic will be on mobile devices. It’s better to make wholesale adaptations now rather than quick fixes that will fail to meet eventual demand for sites easily accessed by mobile devices.
2). Google+
Google is placing a higher priority on author ranking, drawing traffic to sites with content by writers who are deemed authoritative on their topics. To create “authoritative” authors, it’s necessary to use Google Plus and create author profiles that list the sites that the authors provide content for and links to their content. Focus an author on one particular topic and you can increase the value of their links.
Long articles stacked with keywords are now less valuable than quality content with authority provided by multiple links within the same topics.
It’s no accident that Google wants to make Google products more important to SEO practices in order to build their company, make sure to be ready to integrate Google products like Google+ profiles in order to work with them and not against them.
1). Video Optimization
The number two search engine in the world behind Google is now YouTube. As heavily consumed as articles are, visuals trump all and video optimization is now an important part of SEO. By creating video content and promoting it through Social Networking sites is a growing factor in building page ranks and drawing traffic.
Youtube channels allow 1 backlink to a site which can be extremely valuable, and proper tagging will help your videos rank well on searches. Ours is a visual culture and it’s important to take advantage of the growing video marketing to tap into traffic and audiences that aren’t reached as easily through articles and word content.
Keep up with these growing trends and you’ll find the modern web searcher drawn to your sites in 2013 and beyond.
Author Bio: IanB writes for US Reports weekly, a source for news on all modern topics.
