The 3 Big 2016 Search Trends we foresee
What does 2016 Hold?
2015 brought SEO countless new introductions like our new friend RankBrain and the further refinement of Facebook search. Here we will cover where search engine optimization is likely to go, and what you can do about it.
Online click path and site structure increased importance Whe ou la d o a e site a d do ’t k o hat to li k or ha e trou le navigating a site, your reaction is most likely just to click back or close that tab. The likelihood of isitors si pl lea i g a page e ause the a ’t fi d so ethi g has been steadily increasing over the last 5 years. Right now, it is estimated that 50% of all online sales are missed due to customers not finding what they were looking for.
This is multiplied by the fact that Google is heavily recording the way people interact with your page, and closing your page quickly after arriving on it is a large factor with heavy ranking significance.
This is ’t the o l etri i ol ed o our site’s li k path a d stru ture, though. Overall visitor engagement with your website is also measured by Google and assigns your site a placement in search results.
To opti ize e er isitor’s experience on your website you need to look at its organization. Subcategories and dropdowns are excellent additions, but become overwhelming for visitors if there are more than 20 dropdown items. If your site has a wealth of data stored in it, adding a search bar is a necessity.
A d do ’t ig ore those o a pho e, ha i g a li k-to-call and a fully responsive site is the only option in 2016.
Higher significance of digital footprint rather than traditional web ranking factors This trend began only a few years ago. Traditional search engine optimization ideas like page rank and other ways of calculating the value of a page with a set formula are becoming less impactful. Although they are still the basis of e er thi g “EO’s operate off of, the eed for a ore o erar hi g i tegratio ith the internet in general has become apparent.
A e a ple of this, is the laser fo us a “EO’s put on only Google search . Facebook search has become a strong competitor and is rapidly becoming more refined, thus, becoming fully optimized on Facebook is something no one can ignore any longer.
A i porta t a to adapt to this tre d is to ha ge the a ou thi k. “ilo’s that hold ideas separate like website maintenance/development and social media should be just as important from an SEO perspective, as they both boost the digital footprint of a brand.
New emphasis on structured data due to machine learning As of last year, we had the opportunity to learn about and research the way RankBrain works.
This machine leaning system that Google implemented into its ranking process is the third most important ranking signal that Google uses, so it has changed quite a bit during its lifetime.
The biggest result, in terms of search engine optimization, is that we can manually send signals to RankBrain through structured data markup tools like scheme.org. Doing this makes sure that web crawlers know exactly what is on a site instead of leaving it to them to interpret it.
As web crawlers have become more refined, structured data markups have similarly become more important. Now, missing or inaccurate data could be fatal to a e site’s i terpretatio through a e ra ler.
The best way to deal with this is to simply make sure your website has been correctly marked up using a structured data testing tool.
An added bonus of doing this is that you could potentially capture a rich snippet that Google indexes to directly answer a query in search results, especially if you use structured data to markup videos and bulleted lists.
Do you feel prepared for these trends? We sure hope so! Ho e er, if you’re not so sure, let us kno here that you’d like an SEO audit and e’ll get right a k to you.
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/sea-sailing-vessel-ocean-sunset-1101168/