SEO Factors for 2015 that will Become Less Important Over Time

Page Rank/Domain Authority: More authoritative (PR) sites will not (automatically) dominate search engines in the future as they often do today. Why?

Site (Domain) Age: This goes hand-in-hand with Page Rank but it comes down to this: New and future websites should NOT be punished because they weren’t around during the golden age of SEO and search engines. This “first mover advantage” shouldn’t hold so much weight, but unfortunately, it does.

Social Signals: Many SEO pundits think social will play a bigger and bigger role on search rankings going forward. I do not share this belief. Sure, it may happen for a time, but eventually it will be eliminated because social shares can be too easily manipulated to make a piece of content “appear” worthy of a higher ranking. Furthermore, platforms like Facebook and Twitter come and go, which makes building metrics around said platforms problematic. And finally, because Google and Facebook are becoming massive competitors, do you really think Google will want any part of their algorithm to be impacted by a competitor??

Inbound Links (Backlinks): Although I think the number of Inbound Links/Backlinks a webpage has pointing to it will always be somewhat relevant to SEO, I foresee it becoming less and less of a factor. Why? For starters, it can be manipulated. Also, as stated above, inbound links favor older content, and as searchers seek out the “latest and greatest” info within any field, search engines will be forced to give less and less weight to inbound links in an effort to keep content as fresh and up to date as possible.