It’s January, which means that digital marketers all over the world are hastily penning their predictions for what changes we can expect from search engine optimisation. Symbolically speaking, January is the most logical month to hold up the proverbial telescope and stare into the horizon, so let’s get on that bandwagon.
What marketing trends will send us all into a tailspin this year?
We Really Need to Stop Doing This
Whether it’s accelerated mobile pages (AMPs) or Google’s tightening of local SEO, our industry is always buzzing about something that will take over and affect our rankings. And yes, perhaps the newest major Google update will completely dislodge your rankings, but it’s unlikely. As far as we can see, nothing SEO-related is headed our way that we don’t already know about and haven’t already been doing.
If you’re following the best SEO practices and working with an experienced SEO team, you probably won’t be too heavily affected by a major update…let alone the constant updates that happen every day.
SEO Predictions from the Past Three Years
It’s always fun to flip through cracked and dusty yearbooks to see what sort of nonsense our past selves thought were important enough to immortalize in these literary time capsules.
The same can be said about old SEO prediction posts.
In 2021, we were told the landing page UX was going to be an even bigger deal
And guess what? Optimising your landing pages for user experience still is a big deal. This prediction was based on the March 2021 Core Vitals update, which gave page speed and accessibility more ranking weight.
To be fair to our on-page SEO experts, we’ve never not optimised our clients’ landing pages for UX and accessibility. We go by the adage, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” In other words, when you optimise for user experience, you’re also boosting SEO—so don’t ignore one for the other.
In 2020, Forbes warned us to produce high-quality content
We’ll just go ahead and shove this in the folder labelled Same Old, Same Old. If we have to hear the term “content is king,” one more time, we’re going to start questioning the king’s self-esteem.
I guess we’re tired of hearing it because it no longer needs to be enforced…content is king, but if you’re just learning about it now, you shouldn’t be reading this post for SEO tips and advice. You should be hiring an agency that’s way more dialled in—hey! We’re one of those. Give us a shout!
Why was Forbes still reminding us to produce high-quality content in 2020? Because Google was rewarding high-authority domains with better rankings. Building trust and getting backlinks are kind of only possible if you have high-quality content.
So yeah, it’s still a thing. Long live the king!
In 2019, Moz predicted that Google will make organic rankings even more competitive
And that’s exactly what happened. Google has made it increasingly difficult to rank at the top of their result pages, simply because it has taken up so much real estate—from People Also Ask boxes to ads to featured snippets and other Google properties, you might have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page before you find your first organic search result.
It’s definitely still relevant in 2022.
Which has led many people to ask: is SEO dead? Actually, it’s the opposite. It’s more important than ever to outrank your competitors with a solid keyword strategy and page optimisation.
How Will Technology Change in 2022?
Talking to Jo, Geeky Tech’s crowned prince of data science, has made me realize that the most exciting “2022 predictions” are happening in the technology world, and we can’t wait to see how it’s going to trickle down and affect the way users search the internet.
So let’s take a look because the future is now.
Facebook’s Stake in the Metaverse
Learning about the metaverse reminds me all too much of the film Ready Player One, in which the real world is a hopeless urban wasteland of steel and rust and Detroit-flavoured favelas and morally bankrupt citizens, all of whom are addicted to OASIS, a virtual reality that offers an escape from the Mad Maxian junkyard that is real life.
You know what they say about life and art?
At the risk of sounding bleak, it makes perfect sense that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is publicly emerging at a time when the real world kind of seems like a neverending newsreel of doom and corruption.
What is the metaverse? It is an alternate reality in which users can work, play, travel, and connect using VR headsets. The metaverse already exists, but now that Microsoft and Meta have some skin in the game, you can expect the metaverse to become more mainstream.
Even as I write this, I remember what my nine-year-old nephew has asked Santa for Christmas: two VR headsets—one for him and one for his half-brother. My prediction is that if Gen Z is the first generation that won’t remember life before the internet, then the next generation (apparently dubbed the Alphas) will be the last to remember life before the metaverse.
More People Will Bet on Cryptocurrency
In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal currency, which represents a huge shift from the fringe, Wild Wild West, no-man’s land perception of the crypto market.
Yes, other countries are doing their best to distance themselves from crypto, but there’s no denying that it’s an exciting time for bitcoin, which is predicted to reach $100,000 by this Q1. There’s even some speculation that by the end of 2022, at least five countries in the developing world will have adopted bitcoin as legal tender.
What else is new in crypto? Well, Solana, Ethereum, and Shiba Inu will continue to climb, and Ethereum may actually catch up and overtake bitcoin as the top cryptocurrency.
At Geeky Tech, we’ve even started a crypto club, where those of us in the know are teaching other would-be crypto traders about how to get started trading and investing. As tech Geeks, we’re really excited about the future of crypto.
And I’m also relieved to report that mining crypto will likely become more sustainable.
What Else is New, 2022?
Unfortunately, we are entering year three of a global pandemic that seems to have outsmarted and outlived all of our attempts to defeat it. Who knows what the next quarter, the next season, or even the next year will bring? All I can say is that I really hope that by next year’s predictions post, we’ll be talking about Covid as a thing of the past.
What we can predict with absolute certainty is that the fundamentals of search engine optimisation won’t be changing any time soon, even with a major Google algorithm update. Now is the perfect time to reassess your marketing goals for the upcoming year.
