It is difficult to predict what Google will do in the future, even as little as a year ahead. There are some trends pointing in certain directions, and based on those, one can make qualified guesses. Since a post with predictions for 2015 has actually been requested, we at Brath will do our best—here goes.
More shakeout. More crushed dreams, fewer SEO agencies. Google keeps raising the level of difficulty. Building links today the same way they were built before Penguin is a model that does not lead forward—except perhaps for a short while. Building large, thin sites no longer works. There is a long list of such examples, and Google is far from finished with this work. Each such change primarily makes the job harder for amateurs. The threshold becomes higher, and we have already seen examples of SEO professionals who claim that search engine optimization no longer delivers good results.
Search engine optimization is a zero-sum game—if one player loses the top position, someone else takes it. SEO therefore cannot stop producing results; it can only become more complex to achieve them. During 2013 and 2014, a number of SEO dreams were crushed. One major company in the industry has laid off its entire SEO department, and many companies are shifting toward delivering other services. Either there is more focus on paid search advertising (which almost all SEO agencies already offer as a side service since it pairs so well with SEO), or agencies move toward becoming web agencies or “full-service agencies.” There will be fewer agencies in the industry, at least if you do not count the very smallest solo operators working out of a basement and calling themselves an agency.
Google still the biggest. This may not sound like a shocking idea, but it is still worth mentioning, especially since Google lost four percent of the U.S. market during December. There is much to suggest that this is merely a statistical anomaly within normal data noise. When the January figures are released, I believe Google will have reclaimed what belongs to them. Google was relatively quiet during 2014; not much happened that affected us in SEO. A tiny Penguin update showed its face toward the end of the year, and Google has confirmed that Penguin will be rolled out in the future in the same way as Panda—continuous updates rather than large, periodic rollouts.
We expect another calm year of the same kind in 2015. Google currently feels somewhat paralyzed when it comes to improving the quality of search results.
Matt Cutts even more on leave. Something that is widely speculated about in the industry is Matt Cutts’ extended leave of absence. When will he return? He has previously announced that he is extending his break, and if we were to guess, Matt—like Penguin and Panda—will move to a rolling leave model in 2015. Instead of announcing at regular intervals that he intends to remain on leave, the vacation will simply be extended day by day, indefinitely.
