SEO Eagles Blog

According to Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory, life is all about the survival of the fittest. Evolution of new species and it replacing the old is the law of life and one of the key elements for survival. This concept of life is well applicable to SEO or Search Engine Optimization. There might not be any association between the two but what we are trying to point out here is that trends do need to change with time and that is very true for anything related to the world of web. This is true for SEO especially where the ranking of the websites depends upon the recent trends in SEO that you follow.  Stick to the obsolete ones and you will no longer be seen. That will be equivalent to death for your business. Hence, it is wise to follow the SEO trends in 2012, some of which is highlighted here.

Panda Update – We will be beginning with Panda and the quality concepts that are behind it. Panda continues to enjoy the importance for helping websites rank in Google. While content has always been counted as an important factor it is hard to say whether it would enjoy the same favoritism among readers for the years to come.

Even if content continues to have the same importance, it has to be different and fresh apart from being of high quality. The utility factor is also crucial apart from being shareable with users and utilized well in social media sites.

Inclusion of social snippets – Google’s core page layout is the next concern in line since it has undergone change in the last 10 years or so. As far as the “10 Blue Links” are concerned, they remain but they have ceased to be taken as feature as other content modules make way to the page. Things have changed as now for some searches in the US, it is not very uncommon not to see first of the 10 blue links visible above the fold. The trend is likely to continue with the inclusion of social snippets. The result will be less number of websites being visible above the fold.

Social Media Signals - Shift the picture to social media sites like Facebook which continues to be in the limelight but with a strong competitor in the scene, Google+. It is expected that there would be tough tiff to gain a bigger share of the end user’s “eyeball time”. This is expected due to the introduction of new ways and new features. Social Media has emerged big and is going to have a positive effect on search results thus triggering a battle between competing websites.

Google gets social - There have been some fake signals though but Google has finally proved its worth with the introduction of Google+ and their Business Pages. The tie up is a good combination from the viewpoint of a SEO campaign as this might lead to affecting the personalized results in the very near future. If we trace what Google has launched within a very short span of time, we can count Search, Plus Your World and also integrate results from traditional search results and social circles alike.

Adoption of HTML5 – Technology has also made its contribution by integrating HTML5 in certain aspects of the Google’s content. This will be making way for more interactive sites to be easily navigable through mobile devices. The mobility factor has also put Google Places on a pedestal increasing its chances of fast development if however it chooses to tie with personalization and social graph. There is a clause however. Citations which once was important in Places results have disappeared now but however is counted to still remain as signals of relevance for local search.

Mobile marching right into the local search – iPhones led  to a revolution in the way mobile phone was used. Siri changed the picture. Voice search is projected to be in news in the year 2012. Present but not in use, this is thought to take off real big this year especially in Local Search. 2012 can also be count to bring in more surprises with QR codes and mobile barcodes gaining sudden exposure.

Things look bright with 4G mobile phone network which has gifted faster data speeds and mobile devices with video cameras. The result is a subsequent rise in the ‘logging’ numbers.

Google’s crawling technology – There was a word of concern however with Matt Cutts talking a lot about Google opting to view only what can be seen “Above the Fold”. This was hushed by the release of the update midway in January 2012. This area is going to be the focus area for years to come as it carries the indication of the development that is going to take place in Google’s crawling technology. It is a must to make the content load faster and keep all the information above the fold.

W3C’s microdata format – The release of schema.org is another topic of discussion as with the release of this the importance of snippets is finally highlighted. These technical elements required a boost up and it is gauged that the various rel=” tags will continue to be important with their usage becoming widespread. With the addition of code bloat, the server speed and hosting infrastructure will be counted as crucial for the successful implementation of the tags.

Deduplication over web – The use and implementation of link rel and href.lang attribute will be the path to multi-national websites. The implementation of these will guarantee security against content duplication for the site owner at the same time enabling a more precise website targeting to end users who shares a common language. It is however mandatory to get the structure of the website and the code to make the best of the eventualities.

Impact & of Importance CRO on SEO – Next, the on-page factors are forecasted to grow in prominence. CRO, user engagement, bounce rates are all going to be counted as crucial metrics while considering the ranking algorithm.

Recent SEO trends in 2012 also shows that it might become difficult to analyze the traffic due to the “Not Provided” search query used by Google users who use a secured log in. It is estimated that this might affect nearly 20% of the queries.

‘Likes’ are however counted to become stronger than links in terms of strengthening relevance signals to search engines. With the signals becoming stronger, likes spam schemes are likely to become common before they are defeated algorithmically by Google’s spam combat specialist.

In the social media scenario again, +1 will be equaled to bookmarking a page.  Change is on the cards with Google deciding to bring together Reader into G+. This will enable the user to create a news feed which not only can be shared but is also personalized in nature.

Facebook too has introduced something new to put up competition. With Facebook extending the Open Graph in January this year, it has enabled the inclusion of increased number of business signals to be included on the Timeline pages of profile owners.

Summing up, 2011 was the year of the content giving way to social search as the means of success in search engine results. The rate of success in achieving good search engine rankings has become complex over the years with the successive increase in the number of variables in the algorithm thus affecting the ranking scores. Changes might have occurred but the strategy continues to be the same while bringing in search engine traffic. A balanced combination does the trick. This is done by using good and original content and generating relevant signals to search engines by weaving the thread around the main topic of the content. Organic search traffic is still counted to bring the highest ROI when it comes to calculating the cost of converted traffic. Search engine optimization is thus an integral part of internet marketing with customers and low cost traffic continuing to be crucial for any business.