Five SEO Trends That Can Impact Your Website’s Rankings in 2017

Google introduced the RankBrain update recently that is already causing reverberations around the internet world. Mobile friendly design – judging from the way updates are headed – is all set to become a crucial factor in determining a website’s rankings. If you want your site to have high rankings in the future – not only for Google but also Yahoo and other search engines – you need to plan for the future, beginning now!

Here are some trends that you need to take into account while updating or building your site:

Voice Search Will Play a Bigger Role

A lot more users are using Apple’s Siri and Google’s Cortana voice assistance services to find content on the internet. Full phrases like “Italian food near me that serves amazing pasta” will become more relevant than keywords like “Italian pasta.” The keywords used will, consequently, become longer.

AMP Will Rule The Roost

The accelerated mobile pages (AMP) technology allows websites to load in 2-3 seconds. Google is also likely to make site load times on mobile devices an important criterion while assigning search engine rankings. You can make your website future-proof by making it responsive.

Lengthy Content Is No Longer Relevant

People don’t have the time to do more than skim through content. You can blame YouTube or the on-the-go lifestyle. Sites with easy-to-understand, small posts with bulleted content and catchy subtitles will become more relevant in the future, while lengthy content will become less so.

Security is Still Important

Sites that comply with the HTTPS protocol will be ranked higher than sites that don’t. Even if you have amazing content but lack secure hosting or an encrypted connection, you will get ranked behind your competitors with the HTTPS secure protocol.

The New Machine Matching Feature

Google has now introduced a machine matching feature. When a user searches for content, it will no longer use only the keywords but also the “meaning” behind the keywords to generate results! That means you can pay more attention to your website’s design and services instead of worrying about if you have used the right “keywords” in your content.

It’s a good idea to update your website from end-to-end every few months (at least once in two years) to comply with the latest search engine standards, if you want to stay ahead of the competition and achieve high rankings.