Some online marketing trends are going to take years to die, and some come-and-go within a matter of months. We are well in to the year 2014, so here are some of the most prevalent trends of the year.
Images are still becoming more and more search engine friendly
Image courtesy: Google Blog
Google still cannot read what is on a picture, but it can guess based on the text surrounding it, its Alt tags, its title, its file name and comments about it when it is shared on social media. It even uses an images keywords, if applicable, to figure out what the image is all about, and this may all be very helpful when building your website SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
There is also the fact that images may draw traffic on their own. People looking for answers on the Internet may skip the Google search engine all together and use the Google images search engine instead. It is far easier to search for some things with an image over a web page. For example, what does a Chinese clock look like? What is a Black Widow spider?
Content is still reigning as a high priority
Image courtesy: Rank me Local
Writers around the world are thrilled that the Google Hummingbird update put the focus back on content. Take a look on the Google search engine results and you will see many longer articles, (over 500 words) because Google has helped make longer articles more search engine friendly. Just last year, 2013, a 300-word article had the same search engine friendliness as a 1000 word article–but not anymore.
Simple, fast and concise marketing messages are more popular
Image courtesy: Search Engine Land
This is a trend that should have started a long time ago because people are not in the habit of spending hours reading online adverts. Still, it has finally gotten through to online marketers that shorter adverts are better. That is why YouTube offers an advertising program that gives an advertiser a 5-second window to make a pitch before allowing the user to click it off. If the point is not made in 5 seconds, then it won’t be made in 5 minutes either!
SEO and social signals appear to be even more entwined
Image courtesy: Socialable
Do not mistake this trend to thinking that Google is stupid. Google knows that having 10,000 Facebook likes on your website, or Facebook Fan page, does not mean you are popular, and it will certainly not rank you up based on them. However, Google does monitor social media, as you will see from your Google Analytics account, and there are patterns it notices in order to judge the popularity or usefulness of a website. There are still 200 other markers that Google uses to judge a website’s popularity and usefulness, but social media is still a part (a small part) that you shouldn’t ignore.
Mobile websites are still very popular
Image courtesy: Zeni Creative
Unsurprisingly, mobile-friendly content is still very popular. It is because mobile Internet is almost everywhere in the developed world, and is even present in the undeveloped world. Plus, Smartphones are getting cheaper and mobile-Internet tech is becoming more refined. Mobile websites are now easier to produce and accessing them is easier than ever. Whilst this technological trend lasts, then the popularity of mobile websites will last too.
