2012 has historically been a hot year for predictions. The finishing of the Mayans cryptic calendar has been touted as a sign of the ‘end of the world’ by many a pessimist, citing Nostradamus’ prophecies as the evidence they need that the end is nigh.
Luckily, not all predictions for next year have to be so gloomy; there are plenty of developments yet to come out in the tech world. here are our top SEO predictions for the new year.
Google service integration
Now the most used browser on the web, Google Chrome has always offered more than just a smooth and seamless web browsing experience. With Google having their fingers in a lot of pies, many of their services are becoming integrated with the browser.
Google services such as Google Docs, which is already proving itself as an excellent file sharing facility, and Google+ (which is covered as part of our Social Media training course), the rival to Facebook which is picking up steam, will find themselves more embedded with Google’s software, encouraging a growth in collaboration and sharing.
The ability to install a wide variety of apps and extensions to your browser not only gives you a tailored browsing experience it also opens the platform up to being more than just a browser. Expect to see these built upon, with Chrome borrowing from Google’s Android mobile operating system’s seamlessly customisable app and widget based set up.
The new social sharing revolution
While Facebook is still the daddy of the Social Media world, Google+ Business profile pages still have a lot to offer. Using these pages to share content will become a vital tool in your SEO tool box, especially with the potential of Google+ having more of a stronger bearing on Google’s search results in the near future. Read the rest of "SEO Predictions for 2012"
This guest post is about optimising websites for searchers before search engines. While you need to consider search algorithms to get your pages ranked, your optimisation should not affect the usability of your page. It’s all very well ranking for a popular search query but if it comes at a cost to how your site looks or feels or if your site is not related to the query then you may not achieve anything. Remember it is the searcher that spends money, not the search engine! Our 1-daySEO course only teaches sustainable White Hat techniques that boost your rankings but not at the cost of site usability, so come down to Brighton for the day and learn how to optimise your site for great rankings without losing visitors.
The term search engine optimisation is a very misleading one. It suggests to the online marketing beginner that SEO is all about pleasing the search engines through whatever means necessary. The average SEO amateur tends to begin their online marketing career believing that every decision they make and action they take should all be directed towards some sort of optimisation for Google. It’s a common mindset that can turn creative and enthusiastic web developers into number crunching accountants. It’s a real tragedy when a webmaster takes more pride in the number of inbound links they have attained than the pure quality of their website itself. If you don’t think I’m making sense consider my next point…
Image by Stéfan on Flickr
The only reason the major search engines deserve our attention as SEO’s is because they are able to provide their searchers with relevant and accurate results in a matter of milliseconds. It is their ability to win the praise and trust of their users that defines them as important to us. With this in mind it makes sense for us as SEO’s to base at least some of our marketing tactics around the needs of the searcher and not just the engines. The search engines only boast their authority because of their ability to learn and apply what their searchers want in a timely manner – if we strive to please our potential consumers we will inevitably optimise for the search engines. For example…
Searchers want to find websites that have authority > The search engines judge authority based on links > You build links to your website to please the search engines
The middle-man could easily be skipped out here don’t you think? In this case we recognise that searchers want a website that is authoritative and instructive in its field so we should try to ensure our website is just that. Links will be built naturally if you manage to achieve this aim. Read the rest of "Changing Your SEO Perspective – Putting the Searcher First"
When Google launched Panda in March 2011 many websites began to suffer and many were rewarded. It has shaken up the world of SEO. Since then there have been and will be many more baby panda updates. The last major one, Panda 2.2 update, being rolled out around mid June.
Just when we thought we knew how to get ranked; build unique quality content, put your Keywords in the title, url and content body and gather lots of lovely links to the page, everything changed. I’m not saying that these things are not still relevant, or important (they are) but the bar has been raised and the goal posts have moved. The user experience is now a bigger part of the mix. In fact Google Panda has radically changed they way we need to approach SEO.
Panda is designed to weed out content specifically written for SEO purposes. Panda is looking for content written for people, content that people want to share.
What Google seems to be doing is putting more emphasis on a different set of metrics, the user experience. Now Google appears to be basing the quality of a site more on the grading you get from Google quality raters. They (humans) quantify a sites quality on how much they like the site. These raters are hired as contractors to conduct in-depth Internet based research and evaluate websites based on a set of guidelines set by Google. Although these Google quality raters have been around for years, many SEO experts believe that Panda gives more weight to the information they provide in their algorithm than before and in a more sophisticated way.
Quality raters are asked questions like “Would you trust this site with your credit card? Do you think the design of this site is good?” Questions are based around the site’s trustworthiness, credibility, and quality, how much they would like to see it in the search results. Then they compare the differences between the human and machine results.
Since writing this we have attended Brighton SEO 2011, click the link to see our first blog post of the morning session and stay tuned for more to come.
Writing or blogging about trending topics can be a great way to generate traffic (and links) to your site, provided that your content is high quality and that you pick the right keywords to optimise on.
The second half of that equation can be the difference between loads of traffic and very little, so identifying what people want to read about (and more importantly, exactly what they are typing in to Google right now) is paramount. If you can be among the first to blog on a trending topic you can get your site on the front page of Google quickly, and bag the traffic (what’s more if you’re the first, you’re more likely to stay on the front page longer).
So – “how can I find trending topics?” At Friday’s BrightonSEO conference Malcolm Coles gave a very informative (and highly entertaining) presentation about how he used a variety of tools to discover trending topics when working on the celebrity news site HolyMoly, including some very interesting data on the searching habits of the Great British male!
Here are our video highlights from his presentation, along with a summary of the tools discussed (more information can also be found on Malcolm’s site here)….
News Search Tools: How to Find Trending Topics
We’ve split the video of Malcolm’s presentation in to two parts – the first summarises the News Search Tools used to identify Trending Topics. The second, which I couldn’t resist adding, is an example of how HolyMoly used these tools to exploit the search term ‘Karen Gillan Underwear‘, which reveals some interesting (and very amusing) trends in men’s searching patterns after they’ve watched Doctor Who!
#BrightonSEO Video: News Search Tools Summary
A summary of the News Search Tools mentioned is provided below, but do watch the video as Malcolm puts them nicely in to context with examples…
News Search Tools Summary:
Which of these tools you use will depend largely on the sort of content you publish…
On Friday (April Fools day!) I went along to Brighton based SEO conference BrightonSEO. Silicon Beach Training has attended all three #BrightonSEO conferences so far, and the event has grown impressively from a small group of people in a room above a pub, to a large-scale event which attracts SEO and Search professionals from across the country (congratulations to Kelvin Newman of SiteVisibility for his efforts in making the conference such a success).
Today we attended Brighton SEO 2011, click the link to see our first blog post of the morning session and stay tuned for more to come.
The common factor at every BrightonSEO so far has been the impassioned debates (and sometimes controversy) that it always generates – and Friday was no exception.
Brighton SEO 2011 opened with a debate entitled “Is SEO Doomed?“, which set the tone for the day nicely.
Below you’ll find my edited video highlights (with apologies for the quality – the camera focused on the screen rather than the panel!). The debate kicked off with introductions from the participants and some general discussion about whether SEO is ethical. We’ve picked things up when the debate came back around to the main question of whether SEO itself is doomed.
I haven’t provided a full transcript of the video (mainly because it would have taken me all day to type) – however my thoughts (for what they’re worth) and conclusions from this debate can be found below the video.
#BrightonSEO Video – Is SEO Doomed?
I think that there was general agreement that as long as there are search engines, SEO will continue to exist in some form (although perhaps not by the same name). A lot was said during the day about how SEO has already changed and how it will continue to change – and by far the biggest driver for this is Google, via its ever changing algorithm, and to a lesser extent via its Webmaster Guidelines.
The editors of Search Engine Land have been busy organising the schedule for the next SMX advanced program in London on May 16th and 17th . Search Marketing Expo has now been going for more than 10 years and has been attended by tens of thousands search marketeers.
The advanced expo in London is designed for professional or knowledgeable SEOer’s – the line up will be discussing cutting edge contemporary theory and tips, no wasting time going over the beginners SEO basics. They promise “Sessions are fast-paced, Q&A-packed, frequently controversial, always informative…”
Attending this conference allows SEO experts to connect with decision makers from the search engines, and other key industry stakeholders. You’ll be encouraged to participate in conversations orchestrated to debate thorny issues and move the industry forward. Some of the most accomplished and influential search marketers in the world will be revealing cutting edge tips for driving traffic, increasing paid search conversions, SEO, social media marketing and search analytics.
At Silicon Beach Training we understand that getting your delegates involved is a powerful learning technique so this approach should get you absorbing all those wonderful secrets and set you off thinking about search marketing in new and innovative ways.
Well this post is embarrassingly late as Kelvin Newman of Site Visibility offered us his nuggets last July 23rd at Brighton SEO! However as the next one is now being organised what better time to reminisce and dig up his nuggets. Since this we have attended Brighton SEO 2011, click the link to see our first blog post of the morning session and stay tuned for more to come.
What Happens at the Beginning of an SEO Campaign by Zachary Colbert
You will start off by doing some keyword research, these are certain words or phrases that you will want to rank higher in search engines for. Try to find out what keywords you want to target for the business you’re working for, aiming for about two or three keywords per landing page.
Work on the anchor text, this is the text that makes the link to your page, the bit that is underlined that you click on.
You need to make sure that images have alt tags as search engines cannot read them, another good practice is to name the file names with your key words in, in stead of having them saved as ‘IMG_00628′
Urls also need to be well structured e.g. http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/seo/ rather than http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/klerj2rf895e/vdjr67ge/4580gjg/ this can make a big difference to your page rank.
When you have decided on your keywords you are then limiting the amount of terms you can use for anchor text, this should all be based on what you think the user will be searching for.
You may want to use other search engine data keyword research tools, such as:
How to Persuade Managers and Stakeholders to Invest in SEO by Rishi Lakhani
Start off by getting to know the important people above you, there’s a reason why they are above you and you need to learn how to influence them.
Don’t go too overboard with the SEO talk, all the managers, clients and other bosses just want to know the bottom line. They want to know the basics, not the intricate ins and outs of everything.
Don’t make your reports sing and dance in the boardroom; you need to get your point across quickly and simply to these people, as they have a lot of things to go through throughout the day.
Use arguments that sway decisions in the stakeholders mind, not your own. If your boss wants to be top of Google search results then that’s where you want the meeting to sway and how you’ll do it.
