Guessing at the Future
2016 was a volatile year for digital marketing, especially SEO. And 2017 has already had a tumultuous start. As mobile search matures and buying behaviors change, let’s examine a few digital trends that will shape the year.
Our Top 5 Guesses
Content for Content’s Sake is Over – The concept of content marketing is no longer about producing quantity. In-depth articles will replace “filler” blog posts. As such, brands will focus on producing less, higher-quality content that focuses on conversations and conversions.
Mobile All the Way – The rise of the mobile device was a big feature of 2016. It promises to be equally big in 2017 especially with Google splitting the search index showing different results for mobile and desktop searchers. Mobile-first web design will no longer be a luxury but a necessary in order to remain relevant and visible in search.
AMP Guiding the Mobile Charge – As part of the continued rise of mobile devices, and Google push for everything mobile, we anticipate AMP taking off. At the moment accelerated mobile pages haven’t been widely adopted. Features are fairly limited for some types of website. However, from our initial experiments, they are gaining traction in SERPs.
Visual Searches and Visual Content – Changes to the way search itself will also continue. Last year saw a large rise in the number of voice searches carried out on Google or on personal assistant tools like Siri. 2017 looks to be the year of visual searching. Amazon’s app already allows you to take photos of a product and search for it in their database. Cool products like TapTapSee, a visual description application for the visually impaired, will only help with the development of visual search tools.
Permission and Taking Things Slowly – Permission-based marketing has been around for a long time and as time goes on, it seems to become more and more relevant. With things like Google’s ban on intrusive interstitials helping to clean sites for mobile usage, the user experience is once again king. Instead of getting in people’s faces and shouting, 2017 will hopefully be about persuasion and nuance.
Digital Trends in 2017
What do you think? Do you think we’ve missed something big that’s going to influence 2017? Do you think this is the year that wearables really explode? Will we be using voice search for all of our search engine queries by this time next year?
What is Semantic SEO?