If you are in the internet marketing industry, you know how unpredictable SEO is. With Google and other SERPS constantly changing their algorithms and with artificial intelligence becoming more prevalent, SEO is bound to change significantly in the future.

Here are some of the changes expected for SEO in the near future.

Link Building

For the longest time, building links has been the one factor that that has really boosted visibility on search engines. When you build many quality links, search engines recognize your website as a big brand and your rankings start to improve.

This already started to change with the Google RankBrain update that places more emphasis on relevance, context and quality. This is because the RankBrain algorithm focuses mainly on user intent. For your website to rank, it is best that it answers searcher’s intent and provide value first before you can even think about building links.

Optimizing Visual Content

With continued developments in artificial intelligence, search engines are becoming smarter with what is on visual content like images, videos and others. It is therefore, important that content creators start to optimize around visual content like YouTube Videos. This is done by optimizing the title tag, Meta descriptions, tags, considering the video length and so much more.

Building a Brand

According to Neil Patel, a global brand in internet marketing, the future of SEO lies in building a brand. Most brands like Forbes, CNN, Huffingtonpost and others dominate the market. If you provide exceptional value to your followers, your brand grows and soon you will find yourself ranking better on search engines.

When you are recognized as a brand, it becomes easy to build links and everything else about your SEO falls into place. You demand authority when the number of people searching for you online increases and gives you that authority.

Optimizing for Mobile and Voice Search

Most people now access the internet through their mobile devices. From the word go, your site needs to have a responsive design. This means that it should adapt according to the size of the device being used. Actually, Google suggests that your website should be made for mobile first, not for desktop.

Google penalizes sites that are not optimized for mobile by sinking their rankings. With smart home products and increase in mobile, voice search is on the rise. Cortana, Google Voice Search, Siri and Amazon Echo have become favorite virtual assistants for many people.

Voice searches are usually longer and more conversational; therefore, you should target such long words on your website. Become more conversational in your blog and do comprehensive keyword research for long phrases.

Google and all other search engines are getting smarter and therefore hard to beat with bad SEO strategies techniques. However, with AI and more information on user intent, if you provide value and answer to the queries that people have comprehensively, your rankings might just shoot to the first page of Google.

For businesses to grow and be successful they need a website since this is among the most effective tools to realize their goal. This is also the way to draw potential customers to the products and/or services they offer. In addition, this has a wider reach compared to other marketing methods without their high startup costs. Businesses can consider the following tips to create a powerful web design.

Take Advantage of Visual Hierarchy

The term visual hierarchy refers to the arrangement of website elements like the color, font size, white space and position to put emphasis on the primary point for every page. In order to complement a call to action (CTA), it is important to direct the eyes of visitors to something they want done by means of these visual factors.

To highlight their landing page’s central theme, they can do the following:

Make the font size larger.
Place the text at the top part of the window.
Choose a contrasting color since this stands out from the rest of the page.
Include a captivating graphic or video making use of the latest innovative web design trends.
Use white space so it will stick out from other text.
Use Minimalism

Businesses should use and integrate the above mentioned elements on the website but they have to keep in mind that this should be done in moderation. If this is overdone, this will cause cluttering, which will make customers confused or even worse, discouraged.

Also, they should not let visitors complete many tasks. They should minimize form fields as well as menu items and only focus on one CTA that has one goal per page.

According to a Google study, users do not like visual complexity. There are ways to simplify a site such as:

Eliminate the Sidebar – rather than have readers click on information on the sidebar, the process can be made easier by taking away this element and just create a very long page. In this way, they will be able to scroll through the content and scan everything, raising the possibility that the message of the brand will be conveyed.

Go for Familiar Layouts – while they may think that an unusual site design will set their domain apart from the rest of the competition, visitors are actually attracted to simple layouts with easy to understand icons and effects. Also, using a regular web structure can improve navigation on their site.

Prioritize Readability
Businesses should consider readability to make it easy for users to recognize and comprehend the text on their site. Prioritizing this factor will make sure that users will not have a difficult time in scanning their site and will remember the information they want to be retained. They should use the most ideal typeface, font size and contrasting colors for their brand.

Conclusion

Websites are important since these provide prospects with information on the business, which includes the office address, email address and phone numbers.

In addition, websites enable businesses to build and establish credibility in their niche of choice by being a source they can trust and rely on. The best SEO strategies and relevant content will help establish their authority in their industry making use of their domain and most especially, a powerful website.

When people click on a link to your website you want them to stick around. You want them to read your content, see your offers, and then finally take the next step to answer your calls to action. But, many people do bounce off the site.

Bouncing means they visited but left quickly. You can view your bounce rate in Google Analytics. So, how can you reduce your bounce rates?

Increase Speed

When you can increase the loading speed of your website, you’re going to automatically have fewer bouncing visitors. People are impatient and do not like to wait around for something to load.

Don’t Burn Out People’s Retinas

Certain colors, like blue and gold, do not translate well to online reading. In addition, you need to space out your paragraphs differently than you would for print. It’s okay to separate your text into more paragraphs for online reading.

Improve Your SEO

Search engine optimization is important for your website. If you have a lot of bounces you may be using the wrong type of content to attract your ideal audience. Or, worse, your content is boring. Improve the content and the SEO, and you’ll have fewer bounces.

Study Your Target Audience Better

Another factor in bounce rates is poor understanding of your target audience. If your advertisements, blog posts and content marketing (and any marketing for that matter) is not well-targeted to your audience, then you need to improve your targeting.

Create Natural Navigation

The best navigation is not very noticeable but naturally leads your visitors to where they want to go. Don’t be clever with link and button names. Instead, be direct about where the link is going to send your visitor, and use less navigation on the front page. Having fewer choices will avoid confusion.

Know the Reason for Your Website

If you don’t know the purpose of your website then no one else will know either. Ensure that you have mapped out the website before building it so that you know and your visitors know that the website is clear about its message.

Bounced traffic has a variety of causes that you need to research. You can use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to help you discover ways to reduce your bounce rate. But, one of the most important things is to ensure that your website speaks to your target audience so that you attract the right people in the first place.