Geetha Pradeep

What to watch out for in 2017 in SEO, SMO, and Digital Marketing? SMO or Social Media Optimization and Digital Marketing have become the lifelines of online existence for businesses. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is what supplies the life to these important ways of reaching out to a global audience via the Internet and Social Media. The potential of social media in marketing was rightly estimated in the beginning of 2015. That was the time, social media networks were getting more popular via the smartphones and companies were already extracting a large amount of information on the influence of behavioral patterns and its impact on the purchase decisions of most of the social media users. This information proved to be critical and many companies benefitted from social media campaigns during 2016. That’s when SMO got recognition as an important tool in overall Marketing. The benefits of SEO, SMO and Digital Marketing have long been discussed in various platforms time and again. Here’s an insight into the trends of 2017 to watch out for in SEO, SMO, and Digital Marketing. Changing Search Engine Algorithms Search engines are getting more intelligent and hence, in 2017, the context or intent of the content is what will matter more than the keywords. So if you have been optimizing hard for the keywords, it’s time to invest in the quality of content. User Intent will surpass the Keywords in 2017. Richer SERP The Search Engine Result Pages that showed hardly a line or two of the page details will now be richer. Now you will see more detailed information in the SERP listing itself which is more useful for the user. Mobile SEO and Voice Search Desktops and Laptops are no longer being used by the majority of the people who are more used to working on the go using their smart devices. Hence, mobile optimization and voice search will be more used in 2017. Infographics to Video Content As search moves from text and keywords to voice, content also matures from plain text to infographics and video. Videos and infographics, that are already quite popular among the youth, will gain more popularity among a wider audience in 2017. Live Streaming will gain more popularity as even Facebook’s live streaming is catching up among the users. Video content is more catchy and efficient in containing customer attention. Data Analytics Big Data and other technologies offer a large volume of varied data available to the information analysts. Search engines will rely more on this analytic information to evolve in par with their users and technology. Precision and macro-level information will be such available which can even be a little scary to the users! Artificial Intelligence As everything becomes more data driven, Artificial Intelligence or AI will be the technology behind search engine optimization algorithms. Importance is given to customers and context rather than machines and keywords. In effect, intelligent technology that checks on the context of the content which is more shareable and easier to comprehend will be key to sustain in Digital Marketing in 2017. IoT and other channels will be utilized for data mining and cross-marketing. Accurate personalization and recommendation using proper data analytics will win more customers in 2017.