IT has been an eventful year in the world of SEO (search engine optimisation) and we have learned some very important lessons this year.

With Google’s changes search engine experts around the globe are planning the adjustments they will need to make in the upcoming year in order to stay ahead in the search engine results. We know that the front page spots that we hope to see our websites displayed on mean that we need to constantly study Google’s latest trends and changes.

1. SIRI AND CORTANA

Digital assisted search is not going anywhere. In fact, more and more we will see this vocal search type rise to the fore and as a result the searches will become more conversational. Mobile search will continue to rise above desktop in the months ahead.

2. A SHIFT IN THE WAY CONTENT IS INDEXED

Google signed a deal with Twitter early this year stating that they would index a large quantity of tweets as content for regular search queries. Facebook is now offering “instant articles” — this will force more people to stay in their app and if, moving forward, people are unwilling to change the way they look at content, they could just get left behind on this one.

3. THERE IS MORE TO SEARCH THAN GOOGLE

In 2015 we saw that although Google may still be seeing about two thirds of the search traffic, and it continues to release amazing updates, it is no longer alone and the updates being released are not the game changers they once were. Bing, Yahoo and even Facebook are also offering their search options and now that the digital assisted search is a major player all searches have blended to one “generic” search engine.

4. MOBILE HAS TAKEN OFF AND CONTINUES TO DOMINATE

Google made an announcement in May of this year that mobile traffic has officially surpassed desktop traffic in many countries around the world. Google’s Mobilegeddon penalised websites that were not mobile- friendly and even went as far as to say that a website didn’t need a dedicated desk-top version per se, as long as the site was navigable in mobile! Google then went on to change its own desktop search results to look more like they should on a mobile device. Mobile is here to stay and is growing rapidly.

5. MANUAL ALGORHYTM UPDATES TO BE REPLACED BY “RANKBRAIN”

Forbes.com stated that Google is moving away from intense and irregular algorhytm updates and has shifted to an automated system whereby more subtle and constant changes will be made. RankBrain is a “machine learning algorithm that works with the semantic-deciphering Hummingbird update to better understand user ambiguous and complicated queries and provide appropriate results”.

There are no SEO short-cuts. Search engine experts need to now, more than ever, stay on top of these changes to be able to be effective in getting results for their clients in search engine results in 2016 and beyond. This is a very dynamic and shifting space and there is no time to snooze!