Top 7 SEO Trends in 2015

A couple of weeks ago we featured the TOP 7 Online Marketing Trends in 2015. We noted the importance of mobile-optimization, budget on social media marketing will increase, and that content marketing will be bigger. Email marketing will also change while the lines between social media marketing, content marketing, and SEO will be blurred. Next year, brands will continue to strive to humanize and find new ways to make native advertising more relevant and less promotional.

These trends are mainly for online marketing as a whOLE but SEO specifically will still be significant in 2015. That is why we are looking at the top SEO trends that will dominate next year. Year 2014 has been tough for the SEO industry compared to the previous years and it’s expected that there will be a number of changes in the practices. The changes will then have an effect on how companies execute their marketing and SEO campaigns.

Forbes once again was quick to note predictions for SEO trends in 2015. Allow me to share them with you:

1. Content marketing will drive search rankings while SEO will focus more on technical elements
You can no longer use the terms SEO and content marketing interchangeably because they are all too different from each other now. SEO will be considered as more technical. It will include keyword research, indexing, and meta tags. Meanwhile content marketing will mainly drive search engine rankings. The two strategies should work together. Don’t just focus on SEO if you don’t have a solid plan for content marketing.

2. Websites not optimized for mobile and user intent will not succeed
Mobile usability is important these days. It’s a trend that will remain for as long as mobile devices are widely available. See how site performs on mobile devices. Remember that Google has started to penalize websites that generate too many errors for mobile users.

3. Citations and brand mentions will be powerful as links
Google still looks at links and they actually still matter. Mentioning or referencing a brand will matter too so make sure you go viral and get people linking or talking about you. You cannot manipulate legitimate links because Google places emphasis on quality and real citations and brand mentions.

4. Google will look at social signals from Facebook and Twitter
Google+ Authorship may have failed but the search giant will still look at what Twitter and Facebook will say. The Google+ the Authorship program didn’t really take off so Google decided to end the latter, no thanks to low adoption rates.

5. Search rankings will be less about technical strategies but more about building relationships
Businesses should focus on creating relevant content and they must humanize their brands more. This means more focus on interaction by engaging on social media, reaching out to influencers, building relationships with brand advocates, and launching blogger outreach campaigns.

6. Negative SEO will be a bigger threat next year
Spammy SEO are unwanted but fact is, we cannot stop spammers and black hat SEO. Spammy links that point to website of a competitor, hoping they will cause search rankings to go down, will threat business owners more in 2015.

7. SEO will be integrated with other aspects of marketing
Like we earlier mentioned, SEO will still be significant but it must work hand in hand with other strategies like social media marketing and content marketing. All three –SEO, social media, and content marketing– must work together to achieve the same goals and succeed.

SEO is still changing. It won’t bid goodbye anytime soon but it will only evolve. All online marketing strategies must be fully integrated with each other for better results.

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