SEO trends: what to expect in 2014?

The online competition is growing stronger and keeping up with old trends won’t be enough for 2014. It’s now time to get ahead of your competitors by anticipating the coming up SEO trends!

A picture is worth a thousand words

Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat: 2014 is all about helping your content stand out with great pictures. Get your data out on infographics, write richer content by adding pictures to your blog posts, use videos, take advantage of the new Twitter update and add pictures to your tweets, and make sure you keep strengthening your content with relevant alt attribute labels for SEO friendly pictures.

Social media strategies

In 2013, most companies jumped on social networks. Now is the time to build your strategy and put these platforms to work. It’s no secret anymore, social networks are playing a major role in organic SEO. Search engines are looking for dynamic and high quality content that is widely shared across the Internet and platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are the answer to that trend. So get your content out there, share it, and let it drive your organic traffic!

Mobile is growing stronger

Mobile is growing stronger than ever and even Matt Cutts says so: “Google queries on mobiles skyrocketed from 6% in 2011 to 40% in 2013”. Mobile web is even expected to overcome desktop usage by 2015! Keep up with the trends and adapt your website with a brand new responsive design for a better ranking.

Less is more

A year ago, Twitter introduced Vine, the 6 seconds video clip service. A few months later, Instagram updated its app to let users record short videos, too. 2013 was also the year of digital curation and with content being created everyday, there is a real need for curation to organize better and greater content. Our advice: focus on content creation and value simplicity!

Storytelling to please Hummingbird

Google’s new algorithm is centered on the user’s query and will promote content in a human way for more direct interaction with the user. The results provided by Hummingbird will be based on the way we speak: that’s when storytelling comes into play. Storytelling drives traffic, social shares, improves user engagement and is key to content marketing.

Google Plus is the new Facebook

We felt it already in 2013, but Google + is growing stronger and is now playing a big part in SEO.
Did you know Google Authorship improves click rates up to 150%? So if you haven’t already, sign up for Google Authorship and get your picture by your articles. Google + Communities is a great way to share your content to those in your industry, to get it shared and linked back to your website. Google is looking for quality and notoriety for better results and so they’re turning to their people so jump on board and be active on Google +!

Rich snippets for new search experience

Rich snippets will lead search results in 2014 thanks to additional data: recipes, movie reviews, businesses, star ratings, prices, events, etc. And because users are more likely to click on a colorful result displaying a video and other additional data, being ranked first on Google is not what matters anymore, as long as you’re being seen on search results. Rich snippets increase click-through-rates up to 30%, so you should really consider using structured data. Visit schema.org to know more.

Based on these trends, is your SEO strategy ready to face 2014? What other trends are your anticipating for this year, how are you preparing?