Three Key SEO Trends for 2015

To look at 2014’s most important and widespread SEO trends is to view a landscape that is almost unrecognisable from that of just two short years ago. The way things are accelerating as of late is quite incredible and foreboding to say the least, at least from a web marketing perspective. However, there are those among the industry’s elite who now believe things have started to plateau. The reason being that Google’s war on spam has been all-but won, which in turn has left up with a new online world where little more than hard work and high quality will ever reap rewards.Or in other words, the days of black-hat or forced SEO tactics are over.  Which is all well and good, but going forward there will still be hundreds of thousands of sites and services all competing for the same high rankings, so what can be done for any individual site to ensure it stands out? If forcing better rankings in no longer possible, what kind of SEO trends will actually work in a positive sense throughout 2015?Content Marketing Rules the RoostWell, for one thing it’s pretty safe to say that 2015 will be the year of content marketing…or at least the year content marketing takes over as the most important SEO element of all. This refers to the practice of using a site’s content as its primary marketing tool, making sure that everything therein is created, curated and presented in line with the needs, tastes and desires of its intended target audience.In essence, content marketing is all about creating websites as they should have been created all along – with pure quality and relevance in mind across each and every page. Or as Forbes recently put it: “Businesses that continue to focus on SEO without having a strong content plan in place will fail, and will need to shift their focus to the creation and distribution of high-quality content in order to achieve significant search engine visibility.”Those Who Continue to Overlook Mobile SEO Are Doomed to FailureOne of the many things the Black Friday weekend taught us is how the mobile web-access revolution hasn’t just started, it’s in full swing. The overwhelming majority of consumers and general web users are now turning to their mobile devices either primarily or exclusively, bringing a colossal influx of traffic to those businesses that focus on mobile search. By contrast, those ignoring the mobile movement have already fallen dangerously behind many of their rivals and risk being wiped off the face of their respective industry should their habits be perpetuated into 2015.Back Links Waver as Brand Mentions Shown FavourLast but not least, Google was recently granted a patent in the US for a new form of algorithmic technology that allows the firm’s indexation systems to consider ‘implied links’ as well as the real things. What this means is that when a site, service, page or brand is mentioned or cited directly by another high-profile site or authority, the same or even higher credit may be offered as would be expected from a concrete link. So while the power of real links continues to waver, SEO may be influenced in a big way by simple brand mentions.