So 2012 is as begun, what does this year have in stall for us? Lets have a quick look at what my predictions were for seo 2011.
1) Integration between ppc, seo and social media
There is definitely and has been more of an integration between seo and social media last year. From my personal experience with the panda update we did far more blogger outreach as a way of link building. The social media team in my last agency doubled in size from mid 2010 until the end of 2011. SEO predictions for 2011
2) Local search
With the introduction of Google Places in September 2009 and then the merger of the local business centre in April last year, local search played a very important role in 2011. A client at my last agency was keen to ensure for every store they had a Google Place. Therefore we had to get all their stores whitelisted in order to automatically verify all the new shops.
3) Mobile
Last year I said that people have been jumping on the mobile apps and mobile site bandwagon. I mentioned that mobile would be increasingly important in 2011 and it did. For our clients, we had to have a mobile ppc strategy as well as a desktop strategy. We had mobile ppc ads with our own ad groups and campaigns.
So after reviewing 2011 predictions, we can now move onto 2012
1) Less spam
2011 we saw the Panda updates in an effort to crack down on the content farms on the web. This will mean there will be less spam out from these content and article syndication sites and therefore they will be less important in terms of link building. Google will continue to role out alogirthms to make sure users are getting quality search results, making sure that very low quality links to a site have no weight.
2) SEO and Social will be one package
Link building through social media will be paramount to an seo strategy. Blogger outreach where clients have content placed on third party authorative sites will have far more weight than using article sites. An agency that offers seo without a social media strategy incorporated within it will find it harder to compete in the market place. Updates from Google such as Google + means seo needs to use social media if it wants to stay ahead as Google added Google+ brand pages in the search results in December last year.
3) Personlised and local seach
This was a prediction for last year and will continue to develop in 2012. Personalisation of serach results is one of the many reasons us in SEO have difficulty in explaining rankings to clients. Now with the tablet, more users will be searching away from their desktops. Google will give users more relevant results based on the users’ search history and location.