Top 3 Search Engine Marketing Trends to Watch for 2014

2013 has been the year of significant change in the world of search engine marketing. Numerous Google algorithm updates and the rapid expansion of mobile search has left many webmasters scrambling to keep up. And there’s no sign of this SEM evolution slowing down anytime soon. Watch out for the following three trends as the year rolls over into 2014:

High Quality Content That Sticks

It’s already common knowledge that keyword stuffing and low-quality web content don’t work for SEO anymore. However, the notion that content needs to be super high quality, relevant, and worth linking to is still a difficult concept for some people to grasp. Instead of creating a new 400-word blog post for every day of the week, it’s a much better idea to write one longer post a week that’s 1,000+ words and offers in depth information. It’s about creating value that real readers, not just search engines, will find useful.

Social Media Sharing

Getting on social media is essential for building brand visibility. Posting links to your latest blog posts on sites like Twitter and Facebook not only drive unique clicks to your content, they also give your readers the opportunity to share your content with their friends and followers. This ties into the first trend listed above–if you create high quality content, people will want to share it.

Mobile Optimization

As of May 2013, 46% of people are performing searches exclusively on mobile devices. If this growth continues on the same trajectory, it is expected local mobile searches will overtake desktop searches by 2015. Now is the time to get on board with mobile, if you haven’t already. This means creating a mobile version of your site or implementing responsive web design to ensure your content looks good for people on-the-go.

Search engine marketing is in flux, so be observant and be flexible. If you want to keep your site ranking well, you’ll need to adapt.