We are about to bid good bye to the year 2016, and have already arranged a great welcome party to welcome the New Year 2017.  In fact, it is the most wonderful time of the year, as we all are in a festive mood. And this year was one of the most important years for small businesses, as the SEO trend has been changed to a great extent in 2016.  Now we will discuss about the possible SEO trends in 2017 here.

If you run a small business and want to increase your revenue, you will surely want to know what SEO trends you should follow this year, in order to generate more traffic and increase revenue. You don’t need to worry, have a cup of coffee and check out what will be the biggest trends in organic search in the year 2017 and beyond. There are a number of SEO experts who have discussed about the SEO trends in 2017.

According to the CEO of SERP Consultancy, from the emergent behaviour of RankBrain, the SEO community is going to know a much more interesting stuff in 2017. In short, the SEO trends in 2017 may fall into the below discussed categories.

1. Future Algorithms:

Over the last few years, the SEO industry has been trying to optimise the content in a more technical way. In other words, it can be said that they are giving more importance to the search engine crawler than the people viewing the content. In 2017, may be, Google will make its algorithms a reflection of the mind, soul, heart and needs of the customers.

So, in 2017, the big trend can be a shift in mentality where you have to focus on understanding your potential customers and their requirements, in order to make your entire digital strategy. In order to better understand the customer, you can collect data from search engines. If you do something that your customers want, something that can solve their issues, you will be able to win the algorithm of the future.

2. Content optimisation:

This year, the approach of the SEO industry to the content experience will evolve to a great extent. Remember, your keywords must be subordinate to content, which aligns with your customers. In 2017, the user journey will be much more personalised than ever, which is a good thing for marketers.

After the hummingbird update, optimising content rather than keyword has gained popularity in the year 2016, but implementing it in 2017, will have big benefits ( especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence). So, make your mind, not to optimise keywords, but optimise content.

3. Accelerated Mobile Pages:

In 2016, Google has launched Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP in order to prevent a large switch away from mobile web browsing to different native apps. AMP helps in keeping people engaged on mobile devices for Google search. This is obviously a smart step of Google. Let’s wait and see how much popularity it gains. Will it be a long shelf life or it will just end up like one of the Google doomed projects? We will get the answer in 2017.

4. User Experience Optimisation:

To a significant extent, User Experience Optimisation or UEO has been an important part of SEO. Google generally prefers the sites, which are well optimised for mobile devices; that means Google favours the sites that load quickly and the sites where users stay for a long time and enjoy their experience. But in the year 2017, the scenery may be something different – there may be an increased emphasis on user experience in terms of mobile devices.

5. Personal Branding:

It can be clearly assumed that 2017 will be a great year for the small businesses. They will be able to boost their personal brand more securely through different social media platforms like Facebook. It can be anticipated that organisations and companies will take the advantage of personal branding. But before taking part into the competition, make sure that you have a perfect and strong strategy.

What you think will be, in the year 2017? Will it be considered as a golden era for the small businesses? Will it be a great opportunity for any organisation to promote their business online? Time will decide the answers. Let’s hope for the best. Happy New Year!!

Local search optimisation is a subset of SEO or Search Engine Optimisation as we know it. As its name suggests, it is chiefly based on targeting localised searches for a particular product or service. In this day and age, where it is increasingly becoming more and more important to discover a niche for one’s business, one needs to up one’s game as much as possible. In this connection, a few points are mentioned below which should get your attention:

Google Has an Affinity for Promoting Local Businesses

As the years have progressed, it has been observed that Google has a proclivity of displaying slight favouritism toward companies, which are newly springing up on the horizon of the internet world. Though a huge part of its ranking algorithm is related to brand history and reputation, Google also attaches a lot of importance to localised search preferences. Thus, it serves up more nimble and newer brands for viewers to feast their senses on.

This also means empowering the owners of small businesses. Since a majority of small businesses have very restricted access to the resources, there is more potential in breaking new ground. Google has always been known for providing free tools for assisting companies in getting trade and a customer base online. Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Webmaster Tools etc. make for a few good examples. All these exist for the sole purpose of helping companies in increasing their visibility online.

Results are Getting More Individualised as the Days Go by

Google also places a lot of emphasis upon providing the people with individualised results, which cater to their needs. It’s true that it’s customised and highly prediction-based search features are completely limited at present. Presently, the search engine can generate specific and highly particular results which follow the search patterns and search preferences of a particular person, who uses Google to search very often. As long as the person is logged into their Google account, their search history and the geographic location both are huge factors which decide the search suggestions that they receive.

Over the years and days, Google is slowly growing to be much more sophisticated and refined; and as is natural, users would start to demand results which are even more custom-made or individualised. Local search optimisation, thus, will grow further in scope and importance.

Mobile and Wearable Devices are Coming More into Vogue

Over the years, the number of Google searches done through mobile devices (such as Smartphones and Tablets) has grown by leaps and bounds. And as all of us know, the majority of mobile searches are normally done while one is on the go. With the advent of various wearable devices, such as the Apple Watch to cite an example, users will increase the frequency of the go-to searches a lot more; and with needs that are highly specific and urgent.

Therefore, it is inevitable that proximity-based searches would be increasing in terms of popularity, and all the localised searches would be based on super-specific and exclusively marked-out locations, compared to regional or neighbourhood-specific bases. In effect, super-specific locations should be searched and targeted in terms of optimisation; hence, devices would have to shore up on a more geographically relevant network of information and get rid of all the remaining barriers that exist between the physical and digital worlds.

Competition is Ever-Increasing

Competition is ever-increasing in the field of digital commerce or e-commerce. Every single day, lots of new sites are born, and new businesses emerge to become competitive enterprises. Therefore, potential search visibility is on the decline in many places. Features such as the Knowledge Graph are slowly and steadily taking over search engine results pages (SERPs) and blue chip brands are emerging as dominant.

In such circumstances, business owners are forced to target niches so that they can achieve the much-needed visibility.

If you were looking for reasons to concentrate exclusively on local search optimisation, then all the aforementioned points should provide you with the answer and more. As days go, local SEO will further grow in importance, in the face of increasing competition and enhanced demands for quality and immediate gratification.