Ability to predict the future of SEO?
-
I just finished watching a documentary on Ray Kurzweil, Transcedent, and began to familiarize myself with his book, The Singularity is Near. During Ray's explanation of prediction through data gathering and extrapolation, he predicts that by 2029 AI and humans will have merged. We can debate this at another time, but I was wondering if any of the statistics/data is used by SEO professionals to predict where SEO may be going in the next 12-48 months.
It has been my experience that SEO is very reactionary, and very few put their neck out on a limb to predict where it is going.
I was just hoping that some of you may share your thoughts on what you are focusing on and where you are steering your clients in order to be ahead of the curve without hurting current placement.
Anyone care to share?
-
Speculating about the next couple years of SEO is one thing. The further out you go, the more variables you introduce and the less relevant the ideas become.
A few years ago most people could not predict the impact twitter and facebook would have on SEO. Many still don't understand and need to be awoken with clear visual charts.
I am not willing to speculate further then what I have, but I will watch your question and hope it spurs other ideas.
-
Hi Ryan, So what do you think the best future content and interaction with search engines will take us? Ray Kurzweil spoke about the fact that he uses his models to predict the future of technology before we have the ability to create it.
While some might see this as a pointless exercise, it has kept him on the cutting edge of tech, and allowed him to hit the ground running as our technology advances. Social Media and Web 2.0 are ones that seem to be currently at the forefront but may not be 100% utilized by everyone. This seems apparent to me, and I wouldn't consider it "chasing" Google by implementing the use in an SEO or marketing strategy.
This is also not predicting, but simply following a logical game plan of what should be done based on Matt Cutts comments and testing. I personally see the use of optimized video as playing a major role in the future, and many people who have been utilizing it for years already are just ahead of their time.
I am wondering what impact the "Semantic Web" or Web 3.0 will be playing, and how to prepare appropriately, and possibly in advance.
-
Matt Cutts talked about this subject.
The summary was, don't try to chase where Google is going. Try to focus on providing web users with the best possible online experience. That is what Google is chasing.
I think that idea is perfectly valid. People will always need a way to obtain information quickly. Google will seek to offer that information. How can we help?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Drop
Over the last few months my rank has dropped by around half and for the life of me I can’t see why. There are no warnings on Google Console. Am I missing something? Website: thespacecollective.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Old Website Build Effecting SEO
So this is a bit of a strange one. My latest website was built on a different domain, then transferred over (as opposed to being built on a subdomain). I was told that the domain which my site was built on wasn't indexed by Google, but looking at the Google Search Console I can see that the old domain name is showing up as the most linked to domain name of my current site - meaning it was indexed. The domain (and all of its pages) does have a 301 redirect to the new website home page (as opposed to their individual pages), but could this be causing me a problem with SEO? Additionally, my website has a sister (UK and US websites), both link to each other on the footer (which appears on every page). Could this be pulling my SEO efforts down if it is a do-follow link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Is it possible to predict the future DA of a site?
Is there a method to predict the future DA of a site if I know the DA and PA of x sites that will be linking to them in the future? All inbound links will be pointing to the home page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richdan0 -
SEO Best practice for competitions
I am considering running a competition and wanted to get some feedback on SEO Best Practice. We will have a unique competition URL - following the completion of the competition it will be 301'd to home page Every entrant will be given a unique URL for the competition to share, if someone enters using there URL they get an extra ticket. This means we will create a large number of new unique URL's over a short period of time, the pages however will have the same content. Is this potentially bad for Duplicate content?Any advice? Perhaps a canonical tag on all unique competition entrant URLs? Any other considerations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Is the eCommerce site Shopify SEO friendly?
We ave a prospect client that wants to start doing SEO for his Shopify site, we are unsure if this will be SEO friendly. Will we have enough control to get great placement? Are we better off rebuilding the site for the client in an OpenCart?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Hyphen domain effect SEO?
Hi Guys, I am looking to buy some domain that have the keyword I want in - but my question is; Does using hypehns in a domain effect your SEO? Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Are External Links Really Bad for SEO?
I have a quality site with good PR and we have very few outbound links. We are always looking for good content since it is a blog, and I get frequent requests from "guest bloggers"–some of which actually provide really high quality & unique content. But, of course, to get their content I have to give them at least 1 link. I have always been taught that external links really hurt your site and that basically 1 outbound link cancels out 1 inbound link because they balance each other out. Is this true? I always wondered why we must get penalized for linking out to good sites? It makes me get very "stingy" with my outbound links, whereas if my site would not be effected, I would want to be more generous. Any suggestions & info would greatly help! Thank you, Afshin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold0