6 SEO Predictions for 2014

For those that thought that the digital marketing landscape would see dramatic change in 2013, the year didn't disappoint. Last year I made 6 predictions, and it is time for me to give it another shot. But first, let's see how I did last year!

Scoring My 2013 Predictions:

1. We'll get confirmation that steering anchor text in links you get is bad. Score a full point for this one. Google now discusses this in their Webmaster Guidelines
2. The relevance of a linking page will carry increasing weight. Well, no proof of this one. I maintain it is true, and that belief certainly is impacting the content marketing work we do with our clients. I will take a half point here.
3. People will finally accept that +1's aren't treated by Google like a link. I think the proof of this one is available, but there are still more people who believe that +1's are a ranking factor than not. With some reluctance, I will take a half point for this one, too.
4. Rel=author will become a ranking signal. Another area that people debate heartily. Many will say that I should take a full point here. However, I will take a zero instead, because I don't think it has become a ranking signal. For people who think I gave myself too much credit on #2 or #3, we can call it even, OK?
5. Google+ will begin to show some of its true influence in search results. Definitely happening. I take a full point here.
6. The industry will start to talk about the role of landing page optimization in SEO. People have been talking about bounce rate for some time, but that isn't what I mean here. I was talking about real management of the customer experience. Well that has in fact begun to happen. The driving factors for this one will be Semantic Search and Hummingbird. However, not as broadly as I had thought it would, so half a point.

2013 Score:: 4 out of 6

2014 Predictions

Now it's time for six predictions again this year, and the first one sets the stage for the remaining five! Once you're done checking these out, let me know your predictions in the comments, or argue with mine if you like!

1. Hummingbird Rising

Just ahead of their 15th birthday, Google let the world know that it had released a new platform called Hummingbird. In fact, it had been live for three months or so at that point and few people had noticed. This all changes in 2014.
Hummingbird was in fact a rewrite of Google's search engine. Note that this doesn't mean a rewrite of all of Google's code, just the function that executes searches.

As a platform change, the near term impact was in fact quite small. The specific algorithms, such as Panda, Penguin, and basic ranking algos weren't changed. Google restructured things so they can better bolt on new algorithms to the platform.
What does this mean? It could mean new algorithms for processing links. It could mean social signals starting to carry weight. It could mean lots of things.
The bottom line? In 2014 we start to see the impact of Hummingbird. It is quite possible that all of the predictions that follow are all only possible because of Hummingbird.

2. Author Rank / Publisher Rank (again)

Once bitten, twice shy! Or, older and a little wiser might be more appropriate. My 2013 prediction for Author Rank failed because I fell into that trap that is so easy for us all to do. Just because we can conceive of Google using a ranking factor doesn't mean they will, or that it's easy to implement:

Implementing new algorithms is hard. Google needs to do an enormous amount of testing of any changes they make, and more often than not those simple changes break something else. In 2013, Google launched in-depth articles, a feature that seemed to be more driven by Publisher Rank than Author Rank: