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
-
Server update to ipv6, SEO consequences
Hi all, I read the article from 2014 on MOZ regarding ipv6.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdenaSEO
https://moz.com/blog/ipv6-cblocks-and-seo Our technical department is about to change our server from ipv4 to ipv6.
Are there any things we have to consider regarding SEO / rankings / duplicate content etc.. with this transition? I hope you have a little spare time to answer this question. Regards,
Tom1 -
WhoIs, SEO & Privacy
Is WHOIS data used by Google as a ranking signal? We had a website that had some bad SEO work done a while ago hence took a knock, If I use the same WHOIS data on a new site is that likely to cause an issue? Also I don't like the idea of providing too much information for privacy reasons, so have tended to stick to general email addresses and department names rather than actual personal information. Is that a bad approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Negative SEO penalty, new domain?
One of my clients has just been hit with a Penguin 3.0 penalty. They have been subject to a negative link building attack for the last 5 months and despite my best effort it appears I haven't disavowed enough, someone was building a lot of links to them and all really low quality spam and a lot of forum profiles. They still rank for their brand, the site is in the index but the only rankings I can see are in Google Local. My advice to them for the quickest way back into Google is to get a new domain and relaunch on this new domain. The challenge is, the domain they want to buy used to be used as a domain in the 'erotic video distrubution' industry. It currently has 17 backlinks from 9 domain and the anchor text is mostly brand related but I can see that 70 links have already been deleted. I would consider this to be too high risk but would be interested to see if everyone agrees with me, it would be an awesome domain name if the history wasn't there!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Page Speed Factors For SEO
Hey Guys, I have developed a page and optimised it. I have got a dilemma, I have 2 variants of the optimised page I could use. The page is responsive and uses bootstrap from an external CDN. The 2 variants: External CDN - This is adding an an extra request and is delivering the entire framework (not ideal for mobile) I've looked in the node/grunt.js route (+unCSS) to remove redundant CSS, which led me to my next variant. Inline CSS. After doing some grunt.js work I shaved out the redundant code from the framework then added it inline. I will also point out that all assets are optimised, all CSS/JS/HTML is minifed. In terms for score the 1st variant is less than the second, but I believe that most users of the internet already have bootstrap cached due to it being so common. The ultimate question comes down to ranking, I'm not entirely sure where I draw the line between development and SEO (I will also ask in Stack Overflow). Which one would rank better? all other factors being equal.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AkashMakwana0 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Local SEO and PO Boxes
What is the best way to do local SEO when the business has a physical address, but the mailing address is through a PO Box. Can you still list your business on Google Maps, Google places, yahoo, bing etc... with the physical address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | melen0 -
SEO vs 301
I have a website about "Download of games" and im planning open one about "games online" i know that "games online" its super hard to get good ranks, soo im thinking and do a 301 from my website of "download games" to my new website, do you think that is a good strategy ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nafera21 -
Are dropdown menus bad for SEO
I have an ecommerce shop here: http://m00.biz/UHuGGC I've added a submenu for each major category and subcategory of items for sale. There are over 60 categories on that submenu. I've heard that loading this (and the number of links) before the content is very bad for SEO. Some will place the menu below the content and use absolute positioning to put the menu where it currently is now. It's a bit ridiculous in doing things backwards and wondering if search engines really don't understand. So the question is twofold: (1) Are the links better in a bottom loading sidemenu where they are now? (2) Given the number of links (about 80 in total with all categories and subcategories), is it bad to have the sidemenu show the subcategories which, in this instance, are somewhat important? Should I just go for the drilldown, e.g. show only categories and then show subcategories after? Truth is that users probably would prefer the dropdown with all the categories and second level subcategories, despite the link number and placement.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | attorney1