5 hot SEO trends from the SMX East conference

1. Google’s AMP- just another fad or the future of mobile?

Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP for short) is a new Google initiative to build a better, more user friendly mobile Web by introducing a new “standard” for building web content for mobile devices. Basically, this new standard is a set of rules that form a simple, lighter version of HTML. And pages built in compliance with AMP are sure to load super-quick on all mobile devices.

Sure, you wouldn’t expect someone who’s just built a new product to say it’s not gonna last long. However there’s a number of other reasons why you might want to consider using AMP in your strategy:

1. Ultimate user experience

It’s no secret that speed matters. Multiple research has shown slower-loading webpages are associated with higher bounce rates, and up to 40% of visitors are likely to abandon your site if it loads longer than 3 seconds.

Will AMP pages really solve the speed problem? You bet!

Thanks to the “lighter” HTML and CSS they use, and the fact that AMP content is cached in the cloud and delivered not from your server, but from the Google-hosted cached version, AMP pages load 30 times faster (the median load time is 0.7 seconds for AMP and 22 seconds for non-AMP pages).

2. Positive effect on rankings and CTR

AMP pages tend to perform better in search both in terms of rankings and CTRs. Even though this improvement is not going to bring your floods of traffic straight away (we have to understand that the majority of mobile search traffic still comes from non-AMP search results), it’s quite likely that getting AMPed will pay off soon — AMP already dominates fresh content and its share will only grow.

2. 301 redirects can prevent your pages from passing topical relevance

If you are in SEO for quite some time, you definitely remember the golden rule: don’t overdo with redirects — they are a PageRank leak.

However two months ago Google announced that redirects no longer result in losing PageRank and you are free to use any type of 3xx redirection without the fear to lose your rankings.

Keep in mind because of LinkResearchTools, 301 redirects might actually harm your SEO by intervening in how pages pass their topical relevance via anchor texts.

3. HTTPS is eating up your referral data. Any ways to fix that?

It’s been two years since Google started its active campaign for Web security and announced HTTP to be a ranking factor in its algos. The Web blew up with the idea of switching to HTTPS to improve rankings.

Could we still hope to see a ranking boost thanks to the switch? Nope. Truth be told, it’s highly unlikely that HTTPS can help you up with Google rankings.

Referral traffic is also a reason not to switch to HTTPS. Because if your website is making money by sending referral traffic to other sites (think affiliate, directories, niche magazines), you need referral data to prove your value.

4. Still building citations for your local business? It might be just the time to stop!

It turns out citation building might be the most overestimated factor for local SEO. A recent study showed that the strength and volume of local citations don’t seem to matter much for local rankings.

Looking at ~3000 local searches, the Local SEO Guide team analyzed what factors correlate with higher rankings in Google’s local packs. And the surprising finding of the study was that citations showed much less correlation than other factors, while the unquestionable leaders are backlinks.

5. Optimizing for voice search — your chase for featured answers

A featured snippet — also known as a “rich answer” or “direct answer” — is a summary answer to a searcher’s question that Google shows in a special block at the top of its SERP.

Featured snippet usually includes a link to the page from where the data was taken. And thus it has a great traffic-attracting potential you can utilize.

Could you possibly need any other reason to target featured snippets in your campaign?

Well, it turns our featured snippet listings have even greater potential for voice search— even more rich answers are returned for voice queries (43.3% vs 40.6% for text queries).