Upcoming SEO Trends in 2013 & 2014 – Predictions & Strategies

All of you have already known about latest Google penguin 2.0 (released on May 22, 2013) and Panda 26(confirmed on July 18, 2013) updates which already adversely affected many search queries in search results. Do you know only penguin 2.0 update has already noticeably affected 2.3% English search queries in SERP? Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Web Spam, already confirmed that Google will be more strict and rolling out more updates for preventing spamming on web and for enhancing user experiences.

So it’s high time, you decided what SEO strategies you will follow to keep improving your search engine ranking or at least get rid of de-ranking in search results before rolling out next algorithm updates.

What We Have Learned from Penguin 2.0 Update:

After rolling out penguin 2.0 update, it’s now clear that:

• Google is discouraging buying and selling links (paid links) and also paying lesser weight on paid links than before.
• Google is not going to tolerate spam anymore and that’s why will deal with more harshly with spam link building
• More weight is being given on compelling contents.

Predictions about SEO Trends in 2013-2014:

SEO trends in 2013-2014 would be mostly influenced by what will be the next Panda & Penguin updates.  But it’s not possible to exactly forecast what will be the SEO trends in 2013-2014.

Though it’s quite difficult to anticipate what Google will announce in their next updates, but it’s sure that those updates will be more comprehensive and deeper targeting than the previous iteration of algorithm. Although the upcoming SEO trends can’t be exactly estimated, but here I am going to share some most probable estimates that will always be pretty effective for getting your desired outcomes, whatever the algorithm updates would be.

“Complete Content” Continues to Play an Important Role:

Unique and valuable content is a must for better ranking and this would be the same for 2013-2014 season. If you really want to attain authority value for your website and wish to rank in the 1^st position of SERP, you have to ensure that you have not only unique, but also detailed contents in your website. Your contents must be able to answer all the WH questions (what, when. Where, how, etc.) that might arise in your visitors’ mind. Otherwise visitors will go to other websites to know more about the topic. You may add expert’s opinion, testimonials, related videos and whatever else in your website to make the contents ‘complete articles’ to your audience. In a word, your contents should reflect your expertise on the topic.

Backlinks are Still Important, Though Quality Parameters are Getting More Strict:

Google has clearly mentioned that it dislikes unnatural and massive link building. This search engine giant has also confirmed that they are working on creating more effective tools for analyzing link quality. Google likes to see websites having natural backlinks from related sites. Analyzing algorithm updates of last couple of years, it seems like natural links would get more weight than paid and irrelevant links in 2013-2014.

More Focus on Diversified Contents:

Contents can be of texts, images or videos. You might already have seen that Google has different search parameters for displaying text, video and image contents. So don’t focus only on articles, but also try to use high quality videos, images and infographics (high quality in terms of usefulness, not high resolution) to get better ranking of your site.

Social Media Popularity Continue to Be Important:

Social engagement and popularity is one of the crucial ranking factors in these days and hope it would be the same in the year 2013-2014. Social media make Google believe that the contents of your website are really useful and that’s why they are being shared over social sites which help obtain better ranking in SERP. So you should concentrate on branding your site’s social media pages and groups for improving your websites social ranking in the upcoming days. Adding social media buttons in your website will make it very much easier for people to share your contents in various social media.

Diversify Keywords Used For Anchor Text:

You shouldn’t use a single keyword again and again as your anchor text while linking to your contents. The same is applicable to both internal as well as external linking. For example: if your website gets 100 backlinks using the same anchor text whether they are from different domains, Google would consider it as spamming or unnatural linking. If you are working on single keyword ‘hair oil’, for instance, you may use diversified keywords like ‘best hair oil’, ‘hair oil for men’, ‘hair oil for all’, etc. This practice will definitely work in this 2013-2014 season.

Presentation and Design to Support Your Contents:

User experience (UX) plays a vital role in better ranking of websites in these days. If your website contains unique and detailed contents but with unprofessional or bad presentation, this is not going to work anymore in these upcoming days. If you have useful informative contents, you should concentrate on having professional design and presentations too to enrich your website users’ experiences. If you do so, this will automatically work for enhancing the users’ experience of Google, you know what I mean.

Mobile Compatibility of Your Site is A Must:

Do you know that approximately 45 million people are using mobile internet in these days? According to some web researchers, more than 1.9 billion people will be accessing websites using mobile internet within next couple of years. That’s the reason why having responsive web design is a must for your website. You have to ensure that your website is accessible and perfectly viewable from various devices, whether it is tablet, smart phone or any other devices. Otherwise, your website users won’t be able to access or satisfy with your site and may leave the site which ultimately negatively affect your ranking in the upcoming days.
Yap, there are some other methods that I should discuss apart from what I already have discussed in the above section. I would like to hear from you about any other SEO strategies or techniques that you have already applied or you think should be considered. Thank you.