So its 2017. Happy New Year!
Its time to look forward to what is in store for the next 12 months in the ever changing world of SEO. The world is ever changing but also no-one can predict exactly what will happen as its all a little bit black magic in places. That being said I'm going to look in to what might well be useful additions to your online marketing strategy if you aren't already.
As well as the usual good practice of having great, up to date content, and a targeted online marketing plan the other elements which could play a large part in the coming year are probably Social commerce, Mobile devices, Email marketing and personalisation. Lets take a look into these sections and see what they all involve.
Social Commerce
Facebook have recently launched a feature for their business pages which allows you to upload your products direct to Facebook and to be able to sell through the platform. This means that the possibility to either solely sell or at least supplement your online sales directly through social media is very close this year.
Mobile Devices
Mobile design and its importance is not new. Its been around a few years but the start of search engines emphasising the importance of mobile design and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) this topic is only going to get bigger. The worldwide smartphone market grew 1.1% year over year in the 3rd quarter of 2016, with 363.2 million units which can only mean one thing for the mobile web.
Email Marketing
Another not new concept, email marketing has been around for years but with Google introducing tools to enable customers to pay directly through emails, this is only set to grow bigger. With this change, targeted sales emails could easily become shops of their own. This leads on to the final point of what could be big in 2017.
Personalisation
Who doesn't love seeing something less generic and more personalised? It makes it easier to find what you want, and also makes your customers feel more cared for. Using social media and customer data allows you to target products and promotions to your customers to give them a very personalised approach to your products and services which results in a much higher rate of sales and a better reputation for you with improved customer relations.
As I said earlier, no-one can predict exactly what will be big in SEO in 2017. Some of these ideas above may flop, other unseen elements may well crop up but the above will give you a great idea on where to take your online marketing strategy. If you feel your website can go places this year then get in touch with me to see what we can do.