Without an online presence, most businesses simply cannot live up to their potential. The vast majority of consumer research and shopping begins via search engine inquiries, and people use the internet to find everything from reviews and hours of operation to prices and locations. Whether your business is exclusively based in the physical realm, operating online or a combination of the two, it is important that you embrace search marketing tactics as a way to maintain or improve your relevance in an industry. As the internet continues to grow and evolve, various trends are always becoming apparent. Below, we’ll talk about a few search marketing trends that you do not want to ignore in today’s highly-competitive environment.

Content Marketing Improves Search Rankings

While technically separate actions for the time being, SEO and content marketing are quickly becoming intertwined with respect to how they each affect one another. When you produce ample, quality content that answers readers’ questions and integrate that with solutions such as social media, your message will naturally spread further and wider than it would using just one of these tactics. As search engines continue to weigh concepts like social signals more and more, driving interaction, discussions and sharing via multiple platforms will only strengthen your existing position.

Ads and Content Will Become Integrated

We already see that pinging search engines with blatant advertising copy no longer works – study after study shows that people reject blatant advertising, which results in a waste of money for those with the strategy. Instead, advertising will not only need to be focused on benefit-boasting ad copy, but will also increasingly incorporate itself with detailed content where possible. Rather than resorting to banner ads and the like while on-site, a new wave of integrated content that is sandwiched between various forms of quality content will become the norm (this trend is already quite pronounced on many websites). A strategic placement of ads in content is the future, rather than a blatant approach.

Niche Local Content is Booming

If your brand has been focused on entertaining a particular audience with which it shares an interest, then you’ve been doing as expected. The future, however, will take this to the next level, as audiences, search results and social media audiences all become more localized than ever before. Businesses that have a local influence in particular are already feeling the pinch with search engines ranking local content ahead of non-location specific content. If you are a restaurant, real estate agency, law firm or similar local business, then be ready to embrace content that specifically addresses both your industry and your location.

Plan to Re-purpose

One additional trend that has been observed as of late is the near unanimous sentiment of content creators who want to re-purpose their existing content. While pinging search engines with near-identical content can cause trouble, there is nothing wrong with taking a piece of content and wholly converting it into something a new. That well-written piece you published last year might do even better as a new infographic. An old podcast could take on a new life as a video in the future. Truly, the possibilities for re-purposing your old content into something new are endless.