Search engine optimization has come a very long way – from web designing to filtering a clean link profile and now mobile optimization. SEO has caught people’s attention and now more and more people are interested in the topic. What they know today could be an entirely different scenario in the following year. Let us show you what SEO trends we are predicting through statistics in this coming year.

The biggest and most important trend starts from last year, in 2015; the industry got hit by one of the most significant updates it has seen. This update was known as the Mobilegeddon update. Businesses and owners who did not have their website optimized for mobile devices were dramatically challenged. Those who ignored this update sank while the rest made it to shore. We believe only more tiers will only be added to the Mobilegeddon update.

A quick history about the Mobilegeddon update was it came into effect on April 21, 2015. The update is a Google ranking algorithm change that’s designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in the SERPs.

Here is why the mobile update is such an impact on search engine optimization. SEO relies on organic traffic which comes from the search engines, and we all know Google is the biggest one of them. Not being on the first page of Google could mean a massive loss of traffic and revenue. Ranking on the first page is fine with Google but at the same time they want their search engine to be user-friendly and here is why.

A shocking fact revealed, which only some people in the industry knows, was at the end of 2015, mobile searches surpassed desktop searches – so pretty much the majority of people are making their searches through their smartphones, tablets, etc. We’re not kidding, and if you owned an SEO company and did not know about this information, then we feel sorry for you.

Simply said, a website or page that is not properly mobile optimized might not show up in a high spot in the search engines.

Due to this reason, we believe that Google and other search engines will trend into the optimized mobile topic. If you’re servicing search engine optimization in 2016, then your website will have to become mobile-friendly. Keep an eye out for add-ons to this update.

Additional updates that we have noticed come from social media. Social media used just to be social media but know it looks like it has become a trust factor in SEO. Some individual use this method to rank and others don’t. Likewise, we would like to keep others reminded that Google wants to become more user-friendly, and we find that social media is indeed user-friendly. So it makes sense to apply social media methods along with the rest of SEO. Social media is still new, but it’s better to get started than getting left behind.

Video content seems also to be a trending factor. People are engaging more time with videos than they would with written content. Just be honest with yourself, would you rather watch a cool short video about SEO or read a 1000 word article. It’s true, video content is a trend but nothing to worry about at the moment.

There are many more 2016 SEO trends you can find on the internet. The ones we’ve provided are some of the top trends we’ve been noticing. Of course, mobile looking to be the topic of the year, we suggest observing weekly news about any new add-ons. In fact, at the date of this article, for an extra tip to take home with, we see trends in AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). We won’t know for sure if the update will happen. We just want to caution our readers if Google does indeed roll out the AMP update. We hope this has helped others prepare for upcoming 2016 trends.