How Will 2017 Change the Face of SEO?

The beginning of the new year always raises multiple questions as to exactly what will happen on the SEO landscape over the coming 12 months. SEO has changed radically over recent years, but remains every bit as important and potentially powerful as it ever was. Search engines aren’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future, meaning exactly the same can be said for SEO. So as far as the experts are concerned, what are the main predictions for the year ahead when it comes to SEO?

1. Better Mobile Experiences

The first and most important priority looks set to be relatively similar to that of last year. That being, to provide increasingly superior mobile experiences for the growing mobile market. The difference this year being that simply satisfying mobile customers with a basic responsive website just won’t be enough.  Indeed, the future of your site’s SEO prowess could depend entirely on enhanced mobile focus.

2. Intensive Measurements and Analysis

Along with SEO tools and techniques in general, available methods for measuring and analysing the success of SEO strategies are more sophisticated than they have ever been. Which in turn means that one key SEO trend in 2017 will be to consistently and meticulously monitor every effort made, as and when it is made in real-time. This way, no time is wasted on SEO strategies unlikely to deliver results.

3. An Increase in Long-form Content

Along with long-form keywords and keyword phrases, long-form content in general represents a fundamental element of contemporary SEO. Along with satisfying the requirements of the major search engines, long-form content instils a sense of trust and authority among site visitors. It means having to put more effort into the content produced, but what you can expect in return will more than justify the outlay.

4. Responding to Customers' Experiences

While SEO may traditionally have been entirely objective – i.e. focusing on numbers and statistics – SEO in 2017 is likely to see much greater focus on the overall customer experience. Not just creating what is perceived to be a quality experience, but instead using actual customer encounters to create effective strategies. The reason being that these days, the longer visitors stay on your website, the more pages they visit and the more frequently they come back, the higher the rankings you can expect as a result.

5. Regular Audits

Last up, simply revisiting an SEO strategy once every six months or so to gauge its effectiveness really isn’t enough. The trouble is, the fact that search engine volatility has been reduced significantly as of late has led many businesses and web developers into a false sense of security. They develop an SEO strategy that appears to be working and leave it to its own devices. Nevertheless, the only way to remain ahead of the curve is to implement an audit strategy on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, in order to eliminate anything from the equation that you may be wasting time and money on.