Everyone writes a predictions post in December, most of them are safe enough to be useless, and I am not above joining in. I will try to keep mine grounded, which mostly means admitting where I am guessing. Here is what I think 2015 has in store, based on the way this year has gone.
Mobile stops being a separate conversation. For the last couple of years mobile has been the thing we bolt a strategy onto, a special case with its own section in the plan. Watching the traffic split this year, and especially over the Black Friday weekend, I think that framing is on its way out. By the end of 2015 a lot of sites will be seeing more mobile visits than desktop, and Google has been steadily pushing sites to take the small-screen experience seriously. I would expect that pressure to keep growing. If you are still treating mobile as an afterthought going into next year, that gap will hurt.
Paid social becomes the default, not the extra. Organic reach on Facebook fell all year and I see nothing that reverses it. The same logic will reach the other networks as they mature and need to make money. Budgeting for paid distribution of your own content stops being optional. The brands still hoping free reach comes back will spend 2015 being disappointed.
Secure sites become normal. Google made HTTPS a lightweight ranking signal this summer and was fairly open about wanting to strengthen it. I would not be shocked to see more sites move across next year, driven as much by the direction of travel and general nervousness about data as by the ranking nudge itself.
Content marketing gets a reckoning. Everyone piled into producing content this year. A lot of it is mediocre and getting no distribution, and I think 2015 is when more people work out that making the thing was the easy half. Expect more talk about getting content seen, and less noise about simply churning out more of it.
The prediction I am least sure of is anything to do with the specifics of the next algorithm update, because that is a mug’s game and the people who claim to know are usually selling something. The safe bets are the slow trends: mobile up, paid up, quality bar up, patience down.
On a personal note, I suspect next year is going to be one of some change for me, though I am not going to say more than that while things are still up in the air. Whatever else 2015 holds, I do not think it will be uneventful. Happy Christmas, and I will see how many of these I got wrong in twelve months.
