4 Trends SEO and Digital Marketers Need to Adapt in 2014 to Survive

Focus on high quality content, build credible backlinks, reach out to the mobile audience, etc. are some of the commonly found advice on digital marketing platforms.

But there are a few other things marketers need to focus their attention this year.

They include:

Data Driven Approach
It’s all about how well you can understand and use data to improve marketing strategies. A report on Forbes quoted research company Gartner that there could be around 4.4 million data related jobs within the next two years.

Specialized services where a client’s data is gathered and analyzed to optimize sales, optimize price strategizing, suggest new services, or customize existing packages are the trend today.

But before this could be offered as a service, data study culture should be first incorporated within the company.

This can be done by;
a) Training Staff to Study Basic Study: If a culture of data based approach is to be integrated within the company, everyone has to be trained to understand basic tools like Google Analytics.

This helps them converse better with clients or streamline their work. It also helps to reduce the burden on qualified data reporting staff- they need not be inundated with request from other staff.

b) Identifying qualified staff to understand and interpret deeper data: Needless to say, important data need not be shared with everyone.

This job can be entrusted to a team of experts who work on multiple reports required for the company.

Customizing Content:
We all know that high quality content can never become outdated. But marketers will have to make the shift from promotional content to valuable content. Companies can use their knowledge in their niche to produce information relevant to their consumers.

This information in turn becomes a promoting tool for the company. The idea is to create content that resonates with the audience and get them to react.

Visual Content:
This could include videos, infographics, social media photos, etc. A scientific study has pointed that our brains are trained to process around 75% of visual information.

The figures are much less for information that’s processed through content presented without visual effects. An average internet user, they say, watches around 35 videos per month.

Also, the compulsion to buy a product is far more effective when presented through a video or through a photo. Information shared through an infographic stays in the mind for a longer period.

Shift Focus from Link building to Brand Building:
All these years, we’ve been told that link building was the sole purpose of SEO. But after a series of Google updates, the SEO segment is much more mature than it was earlier.

The focus has now shifted towards brand building.

Some effective brand building strategies could include;

a) Brand building through employees: How are your employees talking about your brand online? Is there something unique about your employees that help them identify elsewhere?

b) Google Authorship: Google prefers to rank content written by certain authors than others.

It’s no longer enough to focus on straightforward strategies like social media marketing or content marketing. The idea is to identify individual needs of companies and come up with a strategy that is customized accordingly.