This is our 100th blog post! To celebrate (whoohoo!), we thought we’d take a look at the future of SEO. The world of digital marketing is constantly changing, so it’s hard to predict what tomorrow will look like, let alone two decades from now. From a heightened reliance on AI to a completely different type of social media, here’s what we think we’ll be doing in 2045. We’ll time capsule this baby and whoever comes closest with their prediction will get an RMG-sponsored trip to the moon 😉
Victor Lopez – SEO Specialist
I truly believe that in the next 25 years SEO will continue to grow and become one of the most essential parts of any business’s marketing mix. As we see the next generation of business leaders, who are the first to grow up in a world where modern broadband technology has always existed, take charge they will know how important it is to have an optimized website for users and search engines.
On a personal level I will probably find myself complaining about how the latest Google Algorithm update completely tanked localized rankings and how the SERPs are completely wrong and keep showing Earth-based results to users on our Moon and Mars colonies. This will probably lead to me tweeting in anger, from the now Facebook-owned Twitter platform, and getting into an argument with Google’s John Mueller based AI social media bot.
Mariah Muller – Content Manager
When we think of the future, I think most of us naturally think of technology and automation. But it’s hard to imagine content marketing being any more mediated by technology than it already is! From keyword research to keeping up with trending interests to running content through a plagiarism-checker, much of my job already depends on algorithms and AI.
But as other people’s jobs get more and more digital in nature – a process accelerated by COVID-19 – I think that’s where we’ll see a difference in digital marketing. With people spending more and more time on screens, content marketers will have to be extra creative in grabbing and holding audiences’ attention. Who knows, maybe instead of uploading content into WordPress, we’ll be optimizing content to be “read” aloud by an OS like in the movie Her.
David Roy – Co-Founder & Account Lead
25 years from now, I think AI (either Google’s RankBrain or some other, new form of AI technology) will completely run search, determining both relevance and sentiment for a web page. My job at that point will be more marketing-oriented than dev-oriented. Technical site enhancements aimed at helping Google crawl your site won’t be as high a priority (it won’t need much of my help at this point). There will also be less of an emphasis on link building as we know it today, as Google won’t be as dependent on looking at backlinks to determine relevancy and trustworthiness.
The focus will shift (as it has been shifting for some time now) to making sure you’re doing everything you can to keep the user engaged, as well as finding creative ways to get more people talking about your brand online. This shift will have SEO more closely resembling a traditional marketing channel, requiring more art than science on the part of the practitioner.
Stephanie Fehrmann – Co-Founder & Head of Content
Right now a lot of my time is spent managing freelance writers and not only ensuring that their content is grammatically correct but making sure it matches the client’s preferred tone and voice. Some of our content tools are already incorporating tone features into them, but I anticipate that 25 years from now the tools will be nearly perfect and editing things so intently will be a thing of the past. I’m imagining a scenario where I feed a piece of content into an online tool that spits it back out with all grammar errors fixed and tone improved. (Like a 2.0 of our tools now because, to be honest, some of the grammar improvements they suggest aren’t improvements at all – they make no sense!)
I also think content written by AI will finally be at the level of a human writer. Right now content that’s written by a robot is super obvious (it’s bad!), but 25 years from now maybe I’ll be assigning work to a bunch of robots instead of people. (Which kind of makes me sad because I enjoy getting to know my freelancers on a personal level- it’d be weird to ask a robot how their mom is doing.)
Also, I think personalization is going to be super important. Maybe we’ll be producing 10 different variations of the same piece of content to account for all the different kinds of people in this world. Moms view products differently than dads, and millennials use different lingo than Gen X, so why should they all be reading the same content?
Last but not least- the fight against “fake news”. As content becomes more personalized and we rely more and more on AI, how are we going to be able to verify the accuracy of each and every piece of content that’s produced by AI. At some point the Russians are going to hack AI content writers and will try to slip conspiracy theories and propaganda into the content hoping we won’t notice, so maybe a brand new tool will be introduced that’s sole focus is to identify hacks.
Jason Martinez – Marketing Coordinator
Link Building
In 25 years, email outreach is going to get much easier and smarter. I think we are just seeing the beginnings of smart email composure with the release of Gmail’s Smart Composure feature. Surprisingly, it almost seems like the feature has already gotten pretty smart in the short period of time it’s been out. So in 25 years, I think Gmail (or another outreach tool) may suggest email structure or word usage that drives open and response rates.
Social Media
In 25 years, assuming the concept is still around (which I think it will be), we will see a whole new wave of social media apps or platforms. Possibly, social media platforms that don’t require smartphones in which we can automatically stay connected with our friends and favorite brands just by opening our eyes. This will foster a whole new wave of creativity in advertising and marketing. One that combines the real world and the digital world seamlessly.
Michael Gomez – Content Marketing Specialist
My big concern for the future of my role and a content marketing specialist is how much reading will people actually be doing?
We already see a shift towards “digestible” content like catchy headlines, bulleted lists, attention-grabbing headers, infographics, and video content.
People aren’t reading as much. They need content that they can absorb at a glance. Google highlights the text from a featured snippet in an article now. 57% of millennials get their news from social media – essentially news in 240 characters or less. More and more, the name of the game will be optimizing concise text.
TL;DR In 25 years, people will read less, and content must be concise and informative.
