The Internet greatly influences how marketing is done in today’s advanced and connected world. Modern marketing is shifting from traditional push methods to more affordable inbound strategies like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which can attract specific audiences to your websites—many of whom could be potential customers.

Quick snapshot on the 8 SEO trends this coming 2015:

1. Content Still Reigns Supreme – When Penguin was first launched, many websites were affected by the new algorithm. Penguin was introduced as a tool for Google to fight against spam, low-quality content, and black-hat link-building methods that break the search engine’s link rules. Today, producing high-quality, accurate, and genuinely helpful content for your target audience is essential.

2. Social Signals Will Become Even More Important for SEO (controversial) – Correlation studies from third parties like Searchmetrics’ SEO Ranking Factors of 2014 report placed social signals as second to content as a top ranking factor – and this will continue to be the case in 2015.

3. The Rise of Security as a Ranking Signal – Google confirmed that they are already considering https as a ranking factor. So if you have a budget, technical capability to implement full https to your site then you can do this.

4. Mobile Friendly SEO – Aside from content and security, mobile user experience is rumored to be another important ranking factor in Google’s search engine algorithm. This is not too farfetched as it may seem now that mobile Internet has already surpassed desktop Internet in 2014 and will practically create a big impact for SEO in 2015.

5. Increased Focus on Conversational Keyword Phrases – When Google rolled out its Hummingbird update back in 2013, it officially opened the door to semantic search. This serves as a level up to search algorithms trying to interpret the meaning and intent of the words used in a search query instead of merely matching keywords.

6. Brand Mentions Takes Center Stage in Link Building – Links building is still a very important factor for SEO in 2015. What changed however is how search engines interpret backlinks. Now, search engines focus more on the content of the pages from where the backlinks were generated, taking into consideration the relevance and social popularity of the source content. It will even take into consideration brand mentions, which are basically relevant information the source website is discussing about your brand or website and does not necessarily require a hyperlink.

7. Visual Based SEO – High quality original content that contain visual media elements like video, graphics and images are high performing assets that are top ranking SEO factors for 2014 and will continue to do so in 2015 and in the coming years.

8. Bye Keyword Rankings…. Hello ROI… – Finally, SEO in 2015 will switch its primary focus from mere keyword rankings and focus on more important elements that would impact your ROI greatly. Ranking number one won’t matter if it does not translate to conversions and eventually sales.

Want more? Then view the infographic below!

Embedded from CJG Digital Marketing.