People tend to either love or hate SEO predictions.
Every year, the SEO industry puts out prediction list after prediction list. This strategy is going to have your website traffic soaring! This stupid tactic is finally going to tragically go boom.
In any of these lists, you will always see the same cliches.
More video content. This is the year of Voice Search. SEO is dead.
Well, don’t believe for a moment that we wouldn’t let another year go by without our own beautifully crafted SEO predictions post.
But guess what? We did it differently. We at least tried to add a little humor.
Reaching out to 45 people across our industry, we got a wide variety of snark, outrageousness, and brilliance.
I asked my colleagues to provide a BORING and a RIDICULOUS prediction for 2022 and they did not disappoint.
Watch the summary of the SEO Weekly and dive into all of the great submissions from the SEO community.
There were a lot of general predictions in the boring category that covered a range of the basics.
What would a discussion about SEO be without content? These ‘BORING’ predictions focused around how people will/should approach content in 2022.
Social and SEO? That can be BORING and RIDICULOUS. Don’t worry, we’ve got both possibilities covered.
Many would argue that links are one of the most important ranking factors in SEO. So of course we want some ‘BORING’ predictions that reassert the dominance of LINKS.
Sure. Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) are relatively new-ish in the world of SEO, but surprisingly there was only one E-A-T ‘BORING’ prediction.
Local SEO has had some major shake-ups at the end of the year between the name change from Google My Business to Google Business Profiles as well as the major unannounced Local Search Algorithm Update that happened over the first week of December. Naturally, there were a few quality ‘BORING’ local SEO predictions.
For most, a website migration is BORING. Guess it makes sense that we’d encounter a BORING prediction related to the epic responsibility of an SEO.
Honestly, what would a BORING SEO predictions article be without a reference to voice search? It’s inevitable.
It’s practically BORING to predict that John Mueller, an advocate on the search relations team would have something SEO-related pop up. Don’t worry. John appeared in both BORING and RIDICULOUS fashion.
AI has really been the rage over the past 12-24 months in the world of content and SEO. I’m not surprised that we had a few RIDICULOUS predictions on what to expect going forward.
Google will be able to identify unskillful AI-generated content and will not index that. Lots of affiliates will run crying about why their awesome content is not indexed and the website’s rankings are tanking. Not so new though…
With the rise of AI and Machine Learning algorithm updates, SEOs will have to shift to intent-first strategies. They will have to be robust enough to cope with changes and the increasing content demand. They should have an AI strategy in place and work on adopting advanced content strategies like:
We didn’t see anything about taking a rocket to Mars, but when you’re making a prediction about the future, there are some amazingly RIDICULOUS tech-related SEO predictions. Thank you internet for stirring our imaginations. There’s also VOICE SEARCH.
Is it RIDICULOUS to be optimistic about our industry? I hope not! That said, it’s hard not to poke fun at how far we have to go. Fingers crossed our industry improves for the better and exceeds expectations.
The behemoth search engine always has something up its sleeve. Does it have too much power? Yes. Is anything going to change for the better? We’ve got some RIDICULOUS Google predictions.
I think A/B testing is going to be bigger than ever. As an industry we’ve evolved and more SEO folks are ready to level up beyond strategy and fundamentals, so we should see more tests happening. This will also lead to tons of knowledge building.
Google is going to take on another vertical in the SERPs. My wild guess is that it will aggregate financial products next and a cute little module, allowing consumers to compare directly on search results.
Believe it or not, Google isn’t the only search engine. (Gasp!) We’ve got one RIDICULOUS prediction that suggests that the ‘other players’ could see some wins in 2022. Maybe if the anti-trust lawsuit plays out?
RIDICULOUS? Is this the year that SEO finally dies? Can the death of SEO and Voice Search get a room? Sheesh…It wouldn’t be an SEO Predictions post if a couple weren’t included.
Thanks, Claire. Thanks.
We can say with 100% certainty that 2021 Prediction Lists are alive and well, even if they BORING or RIDICULOUS.
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