5 SEO Trends for Your Brand in 2016

The vacillating nature of SEO has led to an environment where a process that produced results last couple of years may no longer produce similar results when replicated today. Other lesser known processes could equally become the cornerstone pretty quickly. As 2016 unfurls, what are the SEO trends that have remained relevant?

Use of value based content

One SEO trend that is almost guaranteed to never go away is content marketing. It is the heart of SEO.  The problem however is that some brands still don’t understand what types of content are valuable.

Valuable content is one that offers information, anticipates questions from readers and provides answers to questions that are unresolved. Apart from this, the content should give the reader a clear roadmap of actions that need to be taken.  Such content is shareable, therefore providing an SEO benefit for your brand.

More attention on Local SEO

Local SEO has been around for a while.  The rise of geo-specific keywords in 2015 however, has only led to an increase in importance for it. Local businesses are paying more attention on location specific kewords and phrases to be sure their businesses appear in the SERPS when target audience use such phrases and keywords. 50% of mobile visitors get leads from local searches and more than 60% seek local information in advertisements. It is only natural that brands find a way to cater for this audience.

Focus on keyword metrics

Keyword ROI is now more important than actual keywords. How is this measured? “Keywords that bring in similar amount of search volumes are compared against conversion rates” says Chandler from Moxie SEO.  “If 20% of the traffic brought in by Keyword A leads to sales and only 5% of traffic brought in by Keyword B brings sales, Keyword A is the better performer and attention will be focused on it”.  Longtail keywords usually bring in more sales and brands are therefore laying more emphasis on them.

Focus on voice search

The rise of Siri, Google Now and Cortana as digital assistants has led to an increase in the importance of voice search. Brands are therefore focusing on addressing likely queries from users of these instants instead of only targeting keywords. A desktop search user looking for sea foods in London will likely type “sea food London” in their search bar. A voice search user will elongate the search term into something in the mould of “what are the best sea food restaurants in London” or “Where can I go to for quality sea food in London”. Targeting voice search terms is a trend that will grow this year and well into the future.

Increased emphasis on the use of video

Videos make up 62% of all Google searches globally. They also get 50 times better organic page ranks in Google when compared against plain static text results. Throw in the fact that media consumption has been shifting in favour of videos for a while now and you will understand why many more businesses are including videos in their SEO strategy. Here is another interesting stat to get you thinking: video searches get 41% higher CTR in comparison to static text content!

These are SEO trends your brand should not ignore over the course of 2016 and beyond. The current landscape favours businesses that incorporate these into their SEO strategy.