SEO is dead: Long Live SEO is a borrowed term echoed from loyal British subjects that swear by emphasizing their faith in Royalty. In other words, it means that a king may kick the bucket today, but the monarchy will remain forever (a new king will take over the reigns tomorrow). Similarly, (yet in more technical terms), older SEO techniques may become obsolete today, but newer updates will soon cover the void – making Search Engine Optimization the most essential process for websites to survive and prosper.

Despite all the challenging updates carried out by Google in course of the preceding few years, some of the following trends will continue to put SEO on top of everything when ranking matters most in terms of higher ROI. Even though the year 2015 has already sailed through half of her maiden voyage (end June, 2015) Crescentek (www.crescentek.com) considers that some of the following trends will hold much water for the remaining half of the current year.

 >> Semantic Search is going to stay

Ge, as you would remember, released its “hummingbird” update way back in   September 2013, thereby bringing about a sea change of its algorithm, accentuating more on semantic search than anything else. Semantics, incidentally, refers to the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with the meaning. However, there are two distinct areas in this regard – Logical Semantics and Lexical Semantics. While the former concerns matters such as sense, references, presuppositions and implications, the latter concerns analysis of word meaning and relations between them. To be more precise, let us hear what Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has said about it. Hummingbird, according to Danny, ‘is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the entire query – the whole sentence or conversation or meaning – is taken into account, rather than particular word or words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching a few words (keywords).” In other words, it indicates that henceforth, search will become mostly conversational.

>> Mobile Search has almost reached the zenith

Even though Google insists that 50% of all mobile searches have local intent, which means someone is searching for a local business to make an in-store purchase, not all mobile searches have local intent. In fact:

• 17% of mobile shoppers research in-store, then purchase online (Google/IPSOS OTX MediaCT)
• 44% of mobile shoppers research online, then purchase online (Google/IPSOS OTX MediaCT)
• 77% of mobile searches occur at home or at work; only 17% are conducted on the move (Mobile Search: Creating Moments that Matter, Google/Nielsen)
• 81% of smartphone users have done product research from a smartphone, and 50% have made a purchase via their phone. (Prosper Mobile Insights)
• 66% of time spent with online retail in September 2014 occurred on mobile devices—a 14% increase from the previous March (comScore).

Nevertheless, the growth of Mobile Search has gone up apace and will continue to do so in course of the next few years in online SEO. And rightly so, too for the simple reason that today’s Smartphone not only has more than 100 times the computing quality of an average satellite but also is a powerful Personal Computer that can be carried in the pockets of potential customers. Here are the stats if you do not believe me.

• 43% of Americans use mobile devices as their primary search tool (Mobile Marketing Association)
• Mobile search has already overtaken desktop search through 2015
• 46% of adults do not consult their desktop PC as part of the pre-purchase research, relying exclusively on smartphones or tablets (2013 US Mobile Path-to-Purchase Study)
• 33% use their smartphones and tablets throughout the entire purchase process (2013 US Mobile Path-to-Purchase Study)
• 58% of U.S. adults participate in “showrooming”, that is, comparing prices on a smartphone while browsing in-store, then buying online (Parago, June 2013)

>> Social Media Pages will rank well

Needless to say, social media do impacts search. However, here is what Google’s Matt Cutts has to say in this context.

“Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index; so if something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook, and we are able to crawl it, then we can return that in our search results.”

Nevertheless, social media sites are no doubt maestro sites and so there is little wonder that Facebook or Google+ business page will have the potential to rank better than the actual site.

 >> Earned Links will be considered more significant

“I see the world of SEO continuing to be focused and even reliant on links in a lot of ways, but not reliant on the tactics we’ve used to acquire them in the past. So I think that link earning is going to replace link-building.” – Rand Fishkin, Moz

However, DED or Domain Equity Development is considered as the new link-building strategy. “This approach utilizes many elements of traditional link-building, yet the techniques and outcomes are totally different. For instance, DED leverages techniques and strategies from a vast number of marketing channels to provide equitable value to an organization’s domain.” In fact, it is link-building for those who can adopt integrated approach to digital marketing.

>> Site structure will matter a lot

As of now, the more a website appeals to Homo sapiens (human visitors), the more will it be liked by search engines. Sites with streamlined URL structure and clear cut navigation will win over any day sites with chaotic structures and grubby content organization. So, webmasters are becoming even more cautious to keep URL structures as straightforward as possible.

Conclusion: To be precise, the SEO has currently evolved with a renewed focus on presenting content in ways that are agreeable both for humans as well as search engines. The rise of semantic search, the mobile web and the indirect relevance of social networks mean making sure people see your content is more involved and difficult than even before. But while a lot of things change, some stay the same: A focus on relevant high-quality content, well-presented, will always serve you well.