Over the last several years, we’ve seen the typical search engine results page (SERP) change a great deal[1].
It was once primarily a list of blue links.
To that, we’ve seen direct answers added — sometimes replacing a list of links entirely.
We’ve seen video answers added, we’ve seen the advent of the local pack, the knowledge graph, and tools built directly into the top of the page (e.g., calculators).
And while it’s important to evolve for the changes we’re seeing today, what we really need to do is focus on what’s coming next.
The common thread that runs through all of these consumer options is data. The public-facing information about your business, website, products, services, and people within your company.
You need to identify all these points of data (sometimes also referred to as entities), catalog them, and mark them up so the engines and services can easily identify, consume, and trust the information they provide.
If you want to remain on the radar with consumers, this should be a critical focus moving forward.
Here are some of the changes we can expect to influence the SERP of tomorrow: in the immediate and not-to-distant horizon
1. Voice assistants and companion apps
In a very real way, this is our here and now.
This category can be best thought of as “voice and…” since it’s not only about voice assistants — and there is a less-than-clear path to ranking in voice search.
Voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant are being built into any number of third-party products[2], and it’s become increasingly important to figure out how to optimize to rank as