5 SEO Trends You Need to Consider for 2015

Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/5-seo-trends-you-need-to-consider-for-2015/

I hope you’re not buying into the latest hype that “Search Engine Optimization is dead,” and “social is the new search.” SEO is far from dead. In reality, SEO is evolving into an amalgamation of tried-and-true SEO techniques, content marketing, and social media optimization. It’s grown more complex, but no less valuable. So with all that in mind, here are five SEO trends you need to plan for in 2015.

1. Semantic Search

In September 2013, Google released its “Hummingbird” update. Unlike the previous Panda and Penguin updates, Hummingbird was a complete overhaul of the algorithm, based on semantic search.

Semantics is a sub-discipline of linguistics that focuses on the study of meaning. Semantic search attempts to understand the meaning of the query and searcher’s intent. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land explains it like this:

Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query—the whole sentence or conversation or meaning—is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few [key]words.

Growth of Conversational Queries

Over the past decade-and-a-half, Google has trained us to type in keywords that describe what we’re looking for. But now search is becoming conversational. Google Now and Siri are teaching us to ask questions. If I type, “where is the nearest Apple store” into the search bar, Google understands “where” as the location and “nearest” to mean in relation to where I am at that moment. But it also realizes I’m not looking for a store where I can buy fruit.

When I ask Siri the same question, she assumes I may be on the move and offers to call or give me directions.

Google Trends showing increase in conversational queries

Google Trends showing increase in conversational queries

In 2015, targeting “conversational queries” to capture users’ actual search intent will become crucial if you want to rank well. Your keyword research should identify both long-tail keywords and LSI keywords.

Long-tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases consumers are more likely to use when they’re further along in the buying cycle and closer to making a purchase.

The concept behind long-tail keywords is quality over quantity. I once had a client who sold gift baskets. Ranking well for that term would generate a lot of traffic, but she’d have to compete with some top brands to do so. Ranking for longer, more specific terms like “homemade chocolate chip cookie gift baskets” will be less competitive and generate a smaller amount of higher-quality leads.

LSI Keywords

LSI stands for “latent semantic indexing,” which is a fancy term for synonyms and plurals of your main keywords. So if I’m a dentist, I also want to use keywords like dental and dentistry.

Latent semantic indexing also tells Google how keywords are related to one another. So when it sees a webpage containing “apple,” along with keywords like “iPhone” or “Tim Cook,” it understands the page to be about Apple, not apples.

Read more on SitePoint.

Continue reading this article on SitePoint

5 Likes

Aside from that, content is also important. People get drawn with fresh and unique topics, it’s also one way of elevating your domain authority and maximizing your traffic.Mobile will also contribute a huge part in SEO. Since people like to browse things in the internet, they use their phones. These views will be indexed by search engines next year, and it would result to a tremendous change with the websites’ ranking.

Good post with lots of useful tips for all optimizers. Good to see that structured data is included in this list along with mobile friendly sites. Both are so much important these days. Another important onpage factor is LSI, It really helps in optimization if used and placed properly and wisely.
Most of the time and for most of the businesses the most difficult part of SEO is that coming up with interesting, informative and useful contents on their niches consistently for their prospective customers. But this is the most important for overall ranking, branding, marketing and ultimately sales.

Regards
Soumya Roy

To the point both of you made, yes good content is foundational to SEO. I agree with SoumyaRoy, that getting businesses to create content can be next to impossible. The primary obstacles are [1] businesses are not convinced of its value enough to hire someone and [2] requiring in-house personnel to write articles in addition to their regular duties is like pulling teeth.

Yeah, as an SEO company specialist, I was shocked when Cutts did the about face in 2014 from 2010. And yes, there is the correlation vs causation.

Good post! This was a very informative article about SEO. It is super important to understand SEO and improve in different areas.

I agree with your points mentioned for SEO 2015. I care when I do SEO for my website. Nice post

There’s another great piece of advice about SEO in 2015: http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/seo-in-2015-how-search-has-changed-how-marketers-tactics-must-shift [PRESENTATION, 83 slides]

Focus is on the tactics we must change in 2015.

With all the talk about “content is king” and forget the black hat stuff, why do black-hat strategies still seem to work? The fact remains that you need links more than anything and if those links don’t come from other people spreading the word, you’ll need to do it yourself. It’s incredibly hard to get people to spread the word about a for-profit company unless you have something innovative, or simply creative enough that people want to talk about it.

That’s like saying if you aren’t getting noticed enough, you should stand in the middle of a busy road. Yes, you will get noticed, but you’ll also get run over.

2 Likes

I guess it is like that :slight_smile: But I think the point is that, depending on the niche, Black Hat techniques are almost impossible to beat using white hat methods. The risk is getting caught of course. But I think Google has proven that they can’t stop the black hat world except by applying manual actions - a practice that is not being spread across the board evenly as it requires a manual intervention.

very great post i use this tips in my site and get good result
with best regards

Good post, I will use these tips in my next project. Thank you Mate

Really nice article!!!
Very helpful. As a digital marketer I am sure this article will help me to improve the ranking of the web sites.

Thank you for sharing this.

It is really nice post johntabita. Every business now follow the SEO trend to grow their business in their relevant market. The point you described in your post is really effective. But, with that we should focus on the quality content and backlinks.

very well, elaborated, and it is well perceptible.

thanks for the information shared i defiantly maintain good techniques and good key words for my site,

Great article ! Thanks for taking the time to make and share. But can you or anyone explain me about broken link building in detail?

Here are a few resources that will help:

MOZ, Broken Link Building Bible: The New Testament

QuickSprout: Black Belt Broken Link Building