SEO Trends to Watch Out For in 2025
As we start 2025, a change in the SEO landscape is fast approaching. Search engines like Google, Bing, and others have modernized their algorithms to enhance user experience. As we look into the future, SEO will continue to be a major component of digital marketing, but the tactics you implement will start to shift. Here is what you should watch to ensure you remain a strong presence on search engine results pages.
Use AI as a Time Efficiency Tool
AI facilitated its presence as a useful tool for SEO this past year. In such a competitive landscape, generative AI has become an essential tool. For SEO specifically, AI has been proven to enhance keyword research, optimization strategies, and performance metrics monitoring.
Although revolutionary and efficient, falling victim to reliance on these tools can be a slippery slope. Overusing the tool can lead to unrelatable and repeated data from other websites, leading to a lower ranking overall. Given this problem, generative AI has started receiving more attention. This form of programming allows you to customize and personalize information to best suit your audience. In addition to gathering this information, it is vital to keep in mind using your personal touch to humanize your content.
Google’s E-E-A-T On the Horizon
E-E-A-T is an acronym that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Applied by Google, this approach is considered an element of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG) process. By incorporating E-E-A-T into your implementation, there is a higher chance that Google will flag your content as more relevant for consumers to interact with.
To work tangentially with this crawling evaluation, businesses must prioritize using their personal data archives and experiences. Implementing E-E-A-T can look like emphasizing customer reviews, providing original research content, and highlighting unique insights. Understanding your audience is the key to garnering success in this process. For many users, the amount of data and information on the internet is still a black hole of untrustworthiness. To counteract this narrative, verifiable information and emphasis on the human experience will allow your company to truly stand out as a trustworthy source for Google and its users.
Ensure Originality
Developments of exciting tools that do a lot of the time-consuming tasks for you, may leave you forgetting the importance of original and unique content. Search engines, specifically Google, program their algorithms to identify any form of duplicate information. If spotted, websites can be penalized with lower rankings on both their pages and, on rare occasions, their entire site.
More often than not, when users are searching for an answer, they are referencing various sources. If readers spot copied content, it may lead to questioning of trustworthiness. Using tools like plagiarism detectors, references of credible sources and authors, and an emphasis on a unique brand voice will reduce risks.
Relevance for Users Over Keywords
Although keywords will remain a consistent key tool for SEO experts, prioritization of user experience will rise to the forefront of ranking in 2025. Users tend to seek aid from search engines with a purpose. By prioritizing relevance for users over the focus of keywords, content will be able to better address the needs and concerns of the searcher. The more needs are met, the more users will trust and form loyalty to a search engine.
What this means for SEO experts is an emphasis on high-quality content that provides relevant and valuable information. Whether you utilize your humanistic thought processes or gather information on others, providing content that answers users’ challenges will help you rise above your competitors.
For further clarity, users tend to ask or state complete thoughts rather than short and keyword heavy phrases. This means content published should be able to not only answer these full-formed questions but also provide relevant insights to keep users on your page.
Anti-Trust Implementation
Google is currently facing an anti-trust trial over its search engine data. If it is declared that Google must release its algorithm strategies, the search engine world will be changed dramatically. Competitors like Bing and Yahoo will be able to utilize the once hidden data to further develop and enhance their search engine inquiries. Although not yet determined, all competitors will have an equal playing field on foundational data if information release is enforced.
What would this mean for SEO? Well, instead of developing a singular strategy approach, companies would need to explore implementing up to twenty different strategies to ensure relevancy. The landscape has the potential to be more competitive than what we have seen in the past. It will be vital to keep up with updates and preferences per search engine platform.
Although inherently stressful, the release of such data will allow SEO experts to have full transparency into how to best approach their strategies. In turn, this means that manipulating the algorithm may be simpler, but only in the short term. As of right now, the trial does not have a definite end date. Until we know the results of the case, it is unknown what this will mean for SEO. We recommend staying as informed as possible during this time. Stay tuned for updates.
Rise of Technical SEO
Technical SEO is a subcategory of SEO that refers to the practice of optimizing your site to be more easily crawled for amplified visibility and ranking. These efforts can look like optimizing site speed, internal linking to relevant sources, including sitemaps, and highlighting data privacy security settings. Having a well-organized site that is easy to navigate will make you stand out.
Another aspect that the rise of technical SEO will bring is the heavy reliance on Javascript for crawling assurance. Many modern websites utilize the help of Javascript to create interactive content, which may be difficult for search engine crawlers to recognize without optimization efforts. It will be important for SEO experts to stay on top of JavaScript issues to avoid risks of visibility limitation. Although not all data from Google is released, both Google and Bing have resources available to cross-examine your tactics.
How to Best Prepare For The SEO Transition
The digital marketing landscape is evolving at a rapid pace. To stay competitive experts will need to prioritize learning and adapting new skills. A quick fix and adjustment to previous strategies is not the answer. At BluShark Digital, we take the time to educate ourselves on what will help businesses stay competitive. SEO will continue to reign supreme as a digital marketing tool. Contact us today to discuss how we can pivot your strategies and lower your risk of becoming another lost site in the never-ending sea of search engine result pages.