SEO Prediction in 2014

Happy New Year! It was a crazy Q3 and Q4 for me but gladly we hit our company target, thanks to the efforts of all! While new targets are rounding up for different companies, we digital marketing professionals should have some insights to guide us as we move forward with our craft.

I say:

• More Knowledge Graph data
• Some redesigns for Adwords ads
• More mobile results appearing in the results page including (in app content)
• Better overall UX and UI in Google results
• More personalized results and targeted results to seamless UX with Google's acquisition of Behavio
• Guest blogging will have lesser impact or correlation to ranking
• Mobile sites will be a default

With all the changes (versions of both Penguin and Panda and Hummingbird) and these predictions, "Search Engine Optimization" will seem to veer towards to be more of "Search Experience Optimization" in 2014.

How about you? What's your prediction? :)

Hummingbird: Google Algorithm Update

Hummingbird update today (9/26/2013). Google announced that this update will be optimizing for Voice Search and long search queries. According to Moz "Hummingbird has been compared to Caffeine, and seems to be a core algorithm update that may power changes to semantic search and the Knowledge Graph for months to come." Amid Singhal, search executive of Google, said that users can now be comfortable searching for long queries instead of breaking the thought into keywords. I think this is a real game changer for Google and another step to help those who were left behind in using their search.

Another thought for me is that Hummingbird tells me more that SEO is not dying - instead, it's just moving to a path towards Content Marketing. The reason is that Google keeps on telling SEO's to create compelling content and with this update, it beats how SEO's battle it out on a keyword basis. Google hasn't announced how this update would affect sites that primarily rely on target keywords but nothing has changed as to how websites should do their SEO and content marketing: Link Naturally and Provide Great Content.

How do you think this update can impact you and/or your business?

SEO Updates 2nd Quarter of 2013

Wow, time flew fast for me this July. This was a challenging month for me since the Penguin 2.0, Panda Dance and the Multi-Week update effects. True indeed that it has affected some of the sites I'm currently managing. Tests and recovery plan had been implemented. To this point, I'm working closely with top management to get us back and stronger on this cruel web competition.

May 9 update 
- gigantic drops reported but no confirmed update from Google's webspam team.

May 21 (pre-Penguin  update) 
- update that lessens domain crowding. This opened up a room for sites not ranking and decreased some of the top guys showing multiple pages in one query.

May 22 (Penguin 2.0) 
- a webspam change that targeted more of the pages instead of sites trying to kill Black Hats.

June 11 algorithm update 
- otherwise know as the Payday Loan update. Targeted spammy results.

June 11 Panda Dance 
- this was a 10 day roll out update

June 27 Matt Cutts tweeted the "multi-week" update

July 18 Panda Recovery 
- A first aid for those affected by Panda.

Did I miss anything? Feel free to share!