It’s that time of the year when all bloggers look back and reflect the rights and wrongs of the blogosphere, and see what might’ve been done to correct some mistakes we made. It’s also time to look ahead towards the new year and predict what’s going to happen in our own little big world of blogging:
1. The death of (subpar) guest blogging
Beneficial as it is, Matt Cutts have recently revealed his displeasure at the growing abuse of guest blogging. In his video, he has identified several mustn’t-dos, or commandments, when it comes to guest blogging :
- Thou shalt NOT focus on guest blogging as your ONLY link building or SEO strategy
- Thou shalt NOT send mass emails and spam webmasters’ inboxes begging to write guest posts for their sites
- Thou shalt NOT automate guest posts and let software create them for you
- Thou shalt NOT self-plagiarize and use the same guest post on different sites, or rehash/spin existing content
- Thou shalt NOT post poorly-written articles and stuff it with keywords
Many SEO and search marketing industry experts have seen this coming for a while now. With the recent Hummingbird update still humming in everyone’s mind, Google may take steps to weed out this spammy strategy and the last thing everyone wants is to have it outlawed by major search engines. In 2014, I foresee a possible algorithm update that will help weed out or devalue low quality guest blog posts.
You have been warned.
2. The reign of superior authorship
Thanks to low quality guest blog posts flooding the Internet, major search engines may soon scrutinize authority sites more seriously in the effort to weed out guest posts that hold no value to readers.
Don’t want to be penalized? Then perhaps it’s time you build your Google Authorship seriously and take it to another level to show the search engines that you’re genuinely interested in offering valuable content, and that you’re not just another spammer who abuses guest blogging.
I foresee bloggers (as well as digital firms) who want their guest posts to go far will work doubly hard to spruce up their social networking profiles. You may want to consider taking a short break from guest blogging once in a while to work on your Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles so that you appear a genuine, authority figure in your niche.
3. CMS-based blogs continue rule supreme
For years now, WordPress has ruled the blogosphere as the CMS that powers most blogs and websites. This trend will continue in 2014, but unfortunately there is a possibility that lesser-used CMS like Joomla and Drupal may die a slow death.
After all, WordPress has wrested the CMS crown away from them, and while both of them still hold a strong fanbase, it is apparent that bloggers are migrating to WordPress. And why shouldn’t they? With 28,465 convenient plugins created, netting 564,216,320 downloads (and counting!), it’s clear that WordPress offers better accessibility, ultimate social network shareability and search engine magnetism that draws tons of bloggers daily to migrate to this platform.
4. Large photo backgrounds a.k.a the world is your canvas!
In 2014, blog designs will take on a bolder approach. Gone are the days when only photography bloggers would utilize full-page photo-based backgrounds on their sites. This coming year, more and more bloggers (personal and those who represent brands) will see the merit of replacing plain or tiled photo background with full-sized images that allow their audience to immediately identify with them.
Marketing-wise, corporate blogs will also take advantage of this trend, counting on the stunning full-page imagery to wow their audience and convince them to stay on their page.
As usual, you can count on WordPress to provide excellent themes to coincide with this trend of installing full-page photo backgrounds.
Check out some examples of awesome WordPress themes with full-page sliders featuring some really beautiful photos here.
5. Micro video blogging, anyone?
First there was blogging, and then there was video blogging (vlogs anyone?), before microblogging took the world by storm. Now, coming up in 2014, micro video blogging will be the IN thing to watch out for.
With the popularity of micro video solutions like Vine (Twitter) and Instagram Video, more and more bloggers will record tiny masterpiece clips and embed these short videos on their blogs. This may prove to be a more engaging storytelling solution than conventional text-and-image blogging.
Embedding these little nuggets of looping joy is easy. If you have a WordPress blog, all you need to do is to copy the video’s URL and paste it on a line of its own once you compose a new post or edit an existing one.
P.S: If you love Vine, you’ll love alternatives like these:
- Keek
- Klip
- Mobli
- Video on Instagram
6. Infinite scrolling blogs will be all the rage
Infinite scrolling may have existed quite some time ago but it was its emergence on Pinterest or viral sites like Cutest Paw that really made bloggers sit up and pay attention. This coming 2014, bloggers will see value in giving their audience the pleasure of seamless browsing that comes with the infinite scrolling feature.
What do you think, did this post hit the nail on the head where blogging trends and predictions are concerned, or is it completely off the mark? What particular blogging trends you foresee coming true this year? Let me know in the comments!
By Guest Author – Bernadette Silver is a blogger by day and a, well, blogger also, by night. She fancies herself a superhero of sorts, writing about the latest blogging news and spreading them so that everyone can benefit from it. She’s also an avid fan of beautiful handmade clothing and home-cooked food.
