2015 was a very quiet year for SEO. There were no major updates to Google’s algorithm and the social media space was quiet. 2016 on the other hand is expected to be an interesting year for SEO according Search Engine Land.

The first change we can expect to see are brands wanting to increase their exposure on search on several platforms. They point out that brands are now starting to ask questions like: “Why am I not ranking #1 in Amazon?,” “Why is my business not on Google Maps?” or “Why can’t anybody find our videos on YouTube?”

Social search is also expected to rise. They go on to add that Facebook is investing heavily into its internal search: “This will become a crucial part of most SEO engagements, as brands use search to regain the organic reach they lost due to Facebook (and other social network) algorithm updates.” Facebook search will still be limited as individual privacy settings will get int the way of content availability.

They also expect technical SEO engagements to be on the downward trend: “The fact that creative and development shops have started to hire SEO experts and are making it part of their offering now. In reality, it’s always better to build it correctly first, as opposed to patching it later.” This is true, even more so where even CMS templates are designed to be SEO friendly.

All in all it looks like 2016 is going to be a very interesting year for those in the SEO and SEM fields.