The near-term future of SEO is Structured Data
I’ve always said there will always be work for SEOs because the business of Search will never stop evolving AND search will always be important to the natural functioning of the Internet. Therefore it make absolute sense that the near-term future of SEO is Strukturierte Daten or Structured Data. However you choose to call it, Rich Snippets, Schema Tags, etc., the topic of structured data is the very definition of search engine optimization. Who says SEO is dead (again)?
