The one thing with running an online business is things change very quickly and you have to stay up-to-date with the trends. Each year, we face new obstacles and try to find creative ways to ensure our conversions stay high enough to generate a profit. For example, one of the hardest things right now is the continuous updates being made to the search algorithm. This completely effects the way we’ve done SEO in the past and slows down our productivity. Essentially, what used to work a few months ago might not work today and we have to go back to analyze where we can make changes.
I’m sure we’ll see many more changes and I’ve compiled a list of my predictions. I’m hoping you guys will agree and if you have your own feedback, please leave a comment below.
Guest Post Increasing
Guest posting has always been an awesome strategy to build brand awareness and generate targeted traffic to your blog. I believe it will continue to be powerful as we move forward. Guest blogging is a great way to build your credibility and increase the changes of someone linking back to your content because of the value you provide. If you’re making money through your blog, then you’ll require high value content and someone to write it for you. This is where you as a guest blogger will take advantage of other peoples’ blog and traffic.
Finding authority blogs is a great way to increase social engagement, traffic, brand awareness, and link profile.
SEO Becoming Harder
Each year, Google makes changes to their search algorithm and people always find a way to manipulate the search engine. What does this do? It forces Google to keep making tweaks to their search engine, making it harder for us to do honest SEO on our pages. I believe, going forward, Google will continue to tweak their search engine, making it harder for us to rank our pages. They’ll put factors into place that we can’t manipulate. For example, I believe the following will matter even more….
- Your credibility
- Domain age
- Domain authority
- Page authority
- User search preferences
- User search pattern
- LSI keywords
- Long tail keywords
Increase PPC Marketing
Because SEO is becoming much harder as time goes on, I believe businesses will increase their marketing budgeting, focusing more on PPC. This is a great way for them eliminate hiring a SEO company to make adjustments to their organic campaign. Investing in PPC will be quick and can drive targeted traffic to their website, immediately generating money along the way. The only problem is the initial testing and tweaking of PPC campaigns will take time, but once they’ve optimized their campaign, they can generate enormous leads and income.
Link Building “Still†Relevant
As SEO becomes harder, I still believe traditional link building will be important because it’s the entire system of Google search engine. Linking between authority websites will still be relevant but Google might add some elements into how link building will be scored. For example, relevance will be important and traditional link building, where you have to earn a link, will be important. SPAMMY strategies will be “blacklisted†even more and the consequences will be more severe for anyone caught manipulating the SERP’s.
If you want to succeed, then start by doing the following…
- Use manual link building
- Focus on relevance
- Focus on authority
- Write high quality content
- Keep it natural
- Be creative but legit
Social Media Will Dominate
Right now, we can already see the effects of social media on brand awareness and building user engagement. There are certain reasons certain blogs outperform others and 50% has to do with high value content. The other 50% has everything to do with social profile and followers. For example, imagine having an account with 100,000 Twitter and Facebook followers. A simple tweet can drive 70k-80k traffic to your content within a few minutes. Don’t forget some of these people will share with their followers, which causes a chain reaction. By putting this reaction into motion, you’ve not only increased user engagement, but also the chances of converting traffic into profits.
The truth is, companies have continued, and will continue, to see value within social media. They have a dedicated budget for social media and will continue to increase it until they feel their social accounts are big enough to dominate their niche.
Personal Branding Dominate
Because SEO will become much harder, the emphasis on creating a long lasting brand will become important. It will be your brand that will market your business going forward and can increase profitability quickly. For example, people will remember a name like “JohnChow.com†compared to “link building†because it stands out and has built a reputation for making money online. There can only be one JohnChow.com, but several blogs in reference to “link buildingâ€. Your objective should be to create brand awareness in everything you do, so, when your name is mentioned, people know you provide the best.
Creating a brand doesn’t have to be difficult, especially when you have tools at your disposal. Every time you promote content, do it using your brand name. Next, when you market your blog, your brand should be in front of it all. Remember, once you’ve established your brand, your logo will play an important role in your marketing so be sure to incorporate your logo into your social, content, and blog engagement.