In online marketing and SEO, the one constant is change. What worked yesterday may not work as well today, and what works tomorrow may not even exist today. Part of a marketing manager's job is to simply stay up-to-date on trends in the industry, and adjust strategy accordingly.
With that in mind, here are five current trends that you will want to keep an eye on moving forward.
- The growing influence of social media on search results. Search engines are turning more to the social networks to help determine rankings and relevancy. Social network links, or "shares," for instance, provide the search engines with a quick measure of how popular a page is with the masses. Google is going further, though, by using public social media profiles to help measure the popularity of different content authors, and using that AuthorRank to help determine the search ranking of the author's online content. It also now includes Google+ recommendations in search results; if someone you follow recommends a page, that fact will be noted in your search results.
- Social media search. Besides the influence of social media on traditional search engines, more people are using the social networks themselves as search engines. The clearest example of this is Facebook's Graph Search, which is in Beta mode in advance of its full roll-out. Social media search delivers results based on the recommendations or activities of the people using the platform.
- Quality over quantity. As search engines become ever more sophisticated, the true quality of your content and links has a bigger impact on results. For example, getting linked to by a social media user or by a well-respected, popular site will carry more weight with the search algorithms, because such links are harder to fake and are usually indicators of quality content. Of course, that means marketers have to provide high-quality content in order to attract high-quality links.
- Visual media is even more important. Videos, photos and infographics were already important, but there is a clear trend towards placing even more emphasis on visual content. The two main image-only social media sites, Pinterest and Instagram, have grown exponentially over the past year. And for marketers, it is useful growth; Pinterest in particular was noted for driving more traffic to retailers than Twitter, despite the latter having far more users. Perhaps in response to this trend, Facebook has announced changes to its news feed that will allow images and videos to take up more real estate.
- The world is going mobile. Besides the rise of smartphones, tablets have started to replace laptops (which themselves replaced desktops). However, whereas laptops are simply smaller PCs, tablets are more similar to large smartphones. The result is that mobile devices are now responsible for a hefty chunk of Internet traffic, particularly on social media sites. And as their use grows, so does their usefulness; many people now shop and buy on mobile devices. Marketers, therefore, need to focus on making their websites more mobile-friendly.
By considering these trends and their impact on your business, you can keep your business ahead of the curve--and ready to tackle the next changes that come down the online pipeline.
*Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
