Happy New Year! It’s time for my annual installment of the SEO predictions word cloud – updated for 2017! This is the post where I make a word cloud out of a blog post about 2017 SEO predictions. This year, I will be using this SearchEngineJournal post, which features insights and opinions on SEO trends from 44 leading SEO experts.
2017 SEO Predictions & Trends Word Cloud
This year’s Top 5 is the same as 2016’s SEO predictions word cloud. And, honestly, There are no surprises here. These are the words that we tend to use when we talk about SEO year after year:
- search
- mobile
- content
- user
Additionally, there are also several important words that jumped into the top half of the list this year:
- Amp
- keywords
- voice
- intent
- speed
Those 5 keywords are not too much of a surprise. We are hearing more and more about Google AMP and voice search. We are also tuning our strategies to align more and more with user intent and UX-related factors, such as site speed. In some sort of irony, the most surprising word in this list is ‘keywords‘. In many ways, keywords have been the building block of SEO from Day 1, so it is interesting to see that word appear so frequently in the conversation this year. It feels like we are going Back to the Future, which is my favorite movie trilogy ever, so I’m fine with this direction. 🙂
Here is the list of Top 50 words from the SEJournal post:
2017 SEO Predictions – Top 50 Words
For me, this list seems a fairly accurate representation of the words that we read and hear about these days. I was glad to see ‘mobile-first’ in the list. Over the last several years, many brands have been re-defining their website experience as ‘mobile-first‘. It’s good to see that terminology being used more and more in SEO discussions. I am sure much of that has to do with Google’s mobile-first announcement back in early November. When Google goes all in on something, SEO’s tend to follow suit.
One more interesting point to this list is the appearance of ‘amazon’ and disappearance of ‘facebook’. I have heard a lot of talk about Amazon in the last year, primarily as Amazon has had a major impact on search behavior, primarily when it comes to product search:
More than half of U.S. online consumers begin their product searches on Amazon.com Inc.’s website or mobile app, a survey found. (Bloomberg)
Regarding the absence of ‘facebook‘ in this year’s Top 50 list, I can say anecdotally that I have heard less and less about Facebook in terms of SEO. The conversations around Facebook tend to be focused heavily on audience building and other audience-related topics.
For further reading, here is a list of 2017 SEO prediction blog posts and articles:
- MOZ – SEO and Digital Trends in 2017
- SearchEngineLand – SEO trends to prepare for in 2017
- SearchEngineWatch – Preparing for SEO in 2017: yes it’s that time already
- SEMRUSH – 5 SEO Predictions to Improve Your Results in the New Year
- Forbes – 7 SEO Trends That Will Dominate 2017
- Entrepreneur – 3 Unstoppable SEO Trends To Look Out For In 2017
- TheNextWeb – 4 top SEO trends for 2017
- LocalSEOGuide – Yet More 2017 Local Search Predictions…
Enjoy!