As we enter 2017, current trends and techniques in search engine optimization may change or get updated. Businesses will need to follow and keep updated with the latest trends in SEO in order to maintain their top spot in search results, or to further improve ranking. In an interview, Garry Illyes (Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google Switzerland GmbH), said that three things are going to be of utmost importance in 2017:

1. Machine Learning

2. AMP

3. Structured Data

Let us have a look at each of these important factors:

Why You Should Care About Machine Learning?

In the SEO industry, it is widely acknowledged that Google deploys machine learning to improve the quality of search engine results. Machine learning, which is a branch of artificial intelligence, is used to spot search patterns like a human expert. Thus, it can tell the difference between spammy content and compelling content, and makes it hard for spammers to succeed at SEO. Machine learning gives SEO experts the opportunity to make SEO process more effective. To understand the industry, target audience, as well as the competition read ‘Seo Investment Inspired by Warren Buffett’.

Garry Illyes says in the interview:

You can guess that we are going to focus more and more on machine learning.

How is AMP Important?

For making the Web more mobile-friendly, Google, along with some platforms, content creators, and publishers, created the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project. The loading time of AMP is very less. They load four times faster compared to regular web pages. This helps in enhancing the mobile user experience.

Advantages of AMP:

• It encourages users to view more content, which results in higher ad loads and effective cost per mille (eCPM).

• An online order can be completed faster, and future purchases are made easier.

• It helps audiences access data and information through micro-moments

• Improves brand awareness and loyalty by allowing users to consume more content

According to Garry Illyes:

The other thing is that there is a very strong push for AMP everywhere. And you can expect more launches around that.

Why is Structured Data Important?

Structured data is the information organized in a way, such that it can be understood and categorized easily by search engines, and displayed in creative ways in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).

Structured data is built using a text-based markup that uses schema.org vocabulary, which is a result of a collaboration between Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Yandex. The aim of schema.org is to clarify what information the search engines need to understand to give the best search results to users.

Advantages of Structured Data:

• It lets search engines crawl your website

• Structured data helps search engines in understanding what your page is about

Garry’s quote from the interview:

Structure data, again this is getting picked up more and more by the leads. So that would be another thing.

So, to yield good results and rankings in 2017, you should take into account the three important things explained above.