It's 2012, and that means we get to revisit our expectations for 2011 and prognosticate for the year ahead. In keeping with tradition, I'm first going to evaluate my predictions from last December before determining if I've got the cred to make some for 2012. Here's the rules:
For each prediction, we'll grade using the following points system:
- Spot On (+2) - when a prediction hits the nail on the head and the primary criteria are fulfilled
- Partially Accurate (+1) - predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality
- Not Completely Wrong (-1) - those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense
- Off the Mark (-2) - guesses which didn't come close
The rule is - if the score is lower than +1, I'm not allowed to make predictions for the coming year. Cross your fingers for me!
Last year, I made 7 predictions:
-
Someone proves (or a search engine confirms) that clicks/visits influence rankings +2
Both Google and Bing confirmed in 2011 that they use searcher behavior, including clicks, as ranking signals. This prediction was spot on (though, to be fair, some felt that prior statements had already insinuated this was the case). -
Google local/maps adds filtering/sorting -1
This one was almost completely wrong. I expected something more like what Yelp offers (and I thought Google's move to do this in recipe search was the beginning of something broader). Google has added more suggested searches as seen below, which is the only reason I'm giving myself a "not completely wrong."
_ -
Social search will rise -1
This guess was also quite nearly off the mark, but Google's move into social saved it, at least partially. Google+ has added a lot more depth of social elements and signals for the engine, and for anyone logged into their Google/Gmail/Google+ account, the prevalence of social results is quite remarkable. -
Rank tracking will be possible through the query string -2
Sadly, this one was dead wrong. We saw rank tracking in the query string first emerge in 2009 and I was sure that Google would roll this out more broadly, but instead we're still getting only 10-20% of search referral strings with rank data included, and the new (not provided) issue has made manual or machine-based rank tracking even more essential. Sad, because I think this was a big opportunity for Google to be more open. -
Mobile will have a negligible effect on search/SEO +1
While many pundits will surely claim that 2012 will (finally) be the year of mobile, I'd say 2011 has helped prove that the search world is pretty device agnostic. Rather than changing SEO, mobile and tablet adoption has merely meant that there's more searches around local and location and that the web as a whole is a bigger part of people's lives than ever before. -
Software will become an SEO standard +1
This one's hard to quantify, but I think it's directionally accurate. Here's the Forrester Interactive Marketing report, which notes a large adoption of SEO software at the enterprise level, and with the death of Yahoo! Site Explorer, software and tools from third parties is more essential than ever. I'm not going to give a +2 as I'd say we're still missing conclusive proof that software is "standard," though our upcoming industry survey may help shed light on that. -
We'll start to move away from the title "SEO" to something more all-inclusive +1
It didn't happen in a big way, but the phrase "inbound marketing" and "inbound marketer" appears to be gaining traction. I like the wording, which suggests earning people's trust and interest rather than buying it and includes SEO, social media, content marketing, blogging and web analytics. In our recent survey of agencies, "inbound/organic" agency was how the largest group of respondents described their firms:
We'll be releasing the full data tomorrow night on the blog - stay tuned!
When we tally up the numbers, it's +5 and -4, leaving me with +1, just barely enough credibility to make predictions for another year :-)
This year, I'm making 8 predictions (rather than 7). The goal with each is not just to share an opinion, but hopefully to provide some action (implied or explicit) for marketers on at least a few. I'm also aiming to have each prediction be verifiable at year's end, so that I can, once again, check my work.
Prediction #1: Bing Will Have a Slight Increase in US Marketshare, but remain <20% to Google's 80%+
According to Comscore, Bing + Yahoo! have ~30% market share in the US to Google's ~65%. I personally think these numbers are relatively bogus and put much more faith in those generated by sources like Statcounter (which look at traffic sites receive rather than queries performed by a sample audience). Statcounter shows Google at ~82% and Bing+Yahoo! totally to ~16%. I'm guessing those numbers will be pretty similar come January 2013.
The biggest reason, IMO, isn't necessarily just brand loyalty and inertia for Google, but their continued superior performance on long tail queries (note: plenty of the comments in the linked-to Reddit thread are worth a read to get a sense of how "early majority" searchers feel).
Prediction #2: SEO Without Social Media Will Become a Relic of the Past
Already, we're seeing SEO and social media marketing become intrinsically intertwined, but in 2012, I believe we'll see SEO without social fade, just as SEO without link building did from 1999-2000. It's not just that social signals are making their way into the ranking algorithms (in both direct and indirect ways), but also that social is becoming the dominant method of both sharing and discovery for web users. The link graph will remain useful for years to come, but the social "sharegraph" is chipping away at its ability to illustrate what's new, interesting, useful, relevant and high quality.
This trend could well be part of what finally weakens the title of SEO (though I think the practice/tactic will remain strong) and forces those of us who've used that name to describe our profession for over a decade to migrate to something broader.
Prediction #3: Google Will Finally Take Stronger, Panda-Style Action Against Manipulative Link Spam
One of the major weaknesses of Google (and Bing, to be fair) is their continued over-reliance on links as an overwhelming ranking signal. Just recently, I took up a friend's offer to point some obviously shady links from sites Google should clearly be discounting at several webpages. We saw dramatic results within 24 hours - #1-5 rankings that have sustained for several weeks (more news on this experiment to come). This shouldn't be the case and Google's webspam and search quality teams know it.
In 2012, I believe Google's search quality folks will roll out algorithmic changes in how they value low quality links that help them regain pride in their work. The embarrassment and quality gap caused by linkspam is egregious and, if left to stand, gives competitors an opening while simultaneously weakening searchers' trust in Google's results. Just as "content farms" took their hits in 2011, I think link spam's up for some blows in 2012.
Prediction #4: Pinterest Will Break into the Mainstream
The last 4 years have seen Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare and Tumblr all break the 10+ million users mark. In 2012, I give Pinterest good odds for doing the same. Pinterest is also the first major social network where the gender balance heavily favors women (which is, IMO, a great thing).
(above, my sad attempt at a Pinterest board)
Because of this breakout, don't be surprised to see lots more posts like these showing marketers how to leverage Pinterest to help share their content and find potential customers.
Prediction #5: Overly Aggressive Search Ads Will Result in Mainstream Backlash Against Google
There are some pretty crazy things going on in the search advertising world right now. To wit:
On my laptop (which has fairly impressive resolution), I can only see a single organic result, and the paid search markup is incredible. Star ratings, seller reviews, prices and individual items, photos and featured brands are all dominating the page.
Google's own "comparison ads" in the credit/finance world push organic results down even further, as the Google product still allows for three additional full size ad slots above the organic listings.
Perhaps the most aggressive of all is Google's new ability to insert a logged-in users email address automatically into PPC ads, as pictured above. These are still rare, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them roll out in greater force.
My prediction is that in 2012, we'll see the start of "paid search blindness" being studied, reported and impacting the engines' bottom lines. Organic results still garner 80%+ of all clicks, but that percent has been dropping as Google gets more aggressive with paid search to continually meet earnings expectations.
Prediction #6: Keyword (Not Provided) Will Rise to 25%+ of Web Searchers
Despite Google's statements that missing keyword data will stay below double digits, I'm predicting that by December of 2012, we'll be looking at a quarter of all searches coming from logged-in (and thus, keyword-anonymous) searchers. Google's working hard to get adoption of Android, Google+, Google Apps and Gmail, all of which will increase the percent of not provided searchers.
While I wish this program would roll back (as there's clearly no real privacy risk or they wouldn't provide the data to paid advertisers), Google's the 800-pound gorilla and the marketing field's counterpoints, while far more valid, likely won't play as well in the media. Google's got the politics sewn up on this one, so our only hope is that they decide to do less evil. Unfortunately, that's not the way they've been trending of late.
Prediction #7: We'll See the Rise of a Serious Certification Program
The search/inbound marketing industry is in sore need of a program that helps early talent in the field become mature professionals. Today, SEMPO, Market Motive, Inbound Marketing University (from Hubspot), Search Engine College and a variety of others provide this service, but none of them are yet at scale or universally respected by hiring managers and companies in the field.
It's hard to quantify what "the rise of..." means. Thus, I'll predict that by year's end, at least one industry certification has 5,000+ users on LinkedIn (currently, Market Motive leads the pack with ~1,700)
Prediction #8: Google Will Make it Very Hard to Do Great SEO Without Using Google+
Google's just started to add Google+ brand pages in search results, They're leveraging Google profiles for rel=author tags. They've made Google+ circles and +1s visible in SERPs. In 2012, I think this pattern becomes a concerted effort by Google to tie promotional efforts in organic results to the Google+ login/verification system. This will not only encourage/force usage of their social network, but give them a much greater ability to tie social, ranking and visibility signals together (and probably fight spam + manipulation, too).
The positive for marketers is that closer integration with the social platform will reward those who can successfully manage both SEO and social media marketing. It's also (hopefully) going to be a boon for white hat tactics that help build brand signals while reducing the effectiveness of exploits that manipulate (like exact match domains or anchor text link spam). The negative is that Google's probably going to get even more data about ALL of our online behaviors, making themselves an even more overreaching and powerful force on the web than they are today. We just have to hope they'll also become more benign, though more power rarely leads to less corruption.
I'm looking forward to hearing your predictions (and opinions on the above) in the comments. I think we've got an exciting year ahead.
Oh how I despise (not provided)...
I agree Noel. Here's the share of (not provided) for my blog since October:
October - 1.85%
November - 26.43%
December - 30.29%
It's brutal, but can't you assume the (not provided) equals the same pie chart of your overall keyword distribution?
Tell me about it, I didn't see that coming and I can only hope there is an analytics provider that can show that info, but since the data is coming from Google in the first place it may be impossible?
Hi Rand and happy 2012 to you and all the Mozzers.
I've cleaned my crystal ball and here some of my predictions:
GOOGLE+
SOCIAL
Just one preview and it is about Facebook.
SEARCH (AND SPAM)
SEO & ONLINE MARKETING INDUSTRY
"We already have signals that yourger generation: 1) don't use Facebook as we did at their same age and 2) are going out of Facebook."
What signals are those?
Mainly Marketing studies. And the natural growing up of the first and second generations of Facebookers.
An interesting read was this article on Forbes.
With regards to your comment about Facebook - I wonder what marketing studies will show when Facebook rolls out the new timeline feature. The usual moaning aside, it's already radically changed the way I use Facebook myself, and I think it will appeal to younger users - especially since user pages now have the chance to look a lot more distinct.
It'll be interesting to see how businesses take to it once the inevitable changeover happens on the Pages side of things.
One thing I'm sure of is that those youngsters leaving Facebook won't be moving to Google+ (gut feel, no marketing surveys :P). I don't think Google+ has what it needs to go mainstream just yet,
In fact I was not saying they were going to Google+, maybe they are going to other not yet visible in radar social network, or maybe will start adopting site that still don't exist.
Or maybe they will start using site like Tuenti, which is the Social Network used by teens in Spain and which remind a lot the original FB (beware, Tuenti was created not so later than FB) and which has an internationalization growing plan.
About Facebook and teens... and users in general: the more easier it will be to use it on mobile, the more successful it will be. If not, it will start loosing appeal, especially amongst teens, which are the heaviest internet mobile users.
unfortunately I have to agree... sometimes it's not about quality but more timing and how crowded the market is.
Great comment Gianluca. You wrote a blog post on a comment pannel.
Thanks... even though I exaggerated a little in the lenght (in Rome there's a quite colourful phrase for this: I shat out of the jar).
Agreed - On the Facebook front, with the demographics getting older due to less young sign ups I think it makes a lot of sense - I mean what teenager or twenty something really wants to be on something that allows their parents to spy on them - this is something that Facebook need to have a serious think - come up with some kind of Facebook junior, Facebook Timeline is great at getting people to stay onboard (reinforcing the idea that you've already spent a lot of your life on Facebook) but for those without any Facebook history where's the incentive, if I was still a teenager I think Facebook would be a bit too mainstream for my liking.
I hate the rep that SEO has, but I don't see that going away as there are always scammy people out there trying to make a buck who understand just a little bit more than the average person -- ie. enough to sell someone "submitting your site the search engines" and making us all look bad
Excellent predictions Gianluca. I might disagree a bit with the gamification (too hard to pull off successfully for many, though more will continue to try) and local search revolution (they've had tons of time there, but just haven't been able to match up to Yelp). I'm also skeptical about young folks leaving Facebook - I think that's more the media looking for stories about it than a true trend, but I'll cross my fingers I'm wrong. I'd love to see more, diverse social networks prosper.
Great list, thanks Rand. Food for thought at the start of the new year.
With regard to your prediction #5: "Overly aggressive search ads will result in mainstream backlash against Google", all I can say is: Let's hope so! And let's hope Google will listen and scale things back to show more organic results again.
The overwhelming number of ads in the search results is really getting ridiculous but to be honest, I'm not convinced Google really cares what we think as long as we continue to use Google. Which we do. Even more so here in Australia where Google still owns over 90% of the search market.
I was just about to comment the same sentiment. #5 is high on my wish list...those screenshots above got my blood boiling.
Not only the overall amount of ads, but the color background on the ads is so similar to white it's rediculous. Yes it differs depending on the contrast of the screen, but I just got a brand new laptop and on that screen I can only tell apart the ads from the organic listings when I look really hard. I look at the SERPs everyday as much as you guys, which is way more than most users in the world, and I still take a double take every time to determine what is an ad and what's not.
I have perfect vision so it must be even harder for those who might be color blind or have less than great vision. Overall I would say it is definitely deceitful for the majority of users and Google owes it to the public to clearly denote the top 3 paid ads from the organic SERPs. That is all.
Nope, they don't care at all. They are now about the 'bottom line' and that is revenue. It's been growing at rediculous rates over the last few years, and it isn't stopping. They are going to manipulate the search results for product related search and this will have a huge impact on available and natural spots for ranking naturally.
I'm not a fan of Google in this regard at all. It's a shame really.
Exactly, what is the point in being on first page in Google if all you can see is" Star ratings, seller reviews, prices and individual items, photos and featured brands"?!
I love your yearly prediction posts Rand. Always fun to look back at your past predictions to see how you did, and to hear your thoughts about what's next.
Here are my predictions about your predictions:
#1: Spot on.
#2: No way. Think about the local space. There are still plenty of companies ranking well in local results that don't even have websites let alone a twitter or facebook account. In competitive spaces, sure, I agree that social will become more and more important, but SEO without social won't become a relic of the past in 2012.
#3: Oh, you're just so optimistic. :) I'd love for this to be a +2, but I'm predicting a -1 on this one. I think they might make algorithmic improvements to discount some of the link spam, but sadly, I bet we'll still be looking at link profiles in 2013 and shaking our heads in disbelief.
#4: Spot on.
#5: Spot on. We're already seeing a growing interest from the mainstream media in calling Google out. Posts from the New York Times, SEObook, and even SearchEngineLand are leading the way to more mainstream criticism of Google's increasingly aggressive tactics.
#6: Spot on. Sadly.
#7: Yes, hard to quantify. For sure we'll see a rise.
#8: Nah. I don't think Google+ is going to go mainstream. All the people I know that aren't SEOs are all happy on Facebook with no intention of jumping ship. You can currently do great SEO without Facebook, talking purely about the things you need to do to get top rankings and traffic, and I certainly don't think think Google+ will become more important than Facebook for SEO. Maybe the term "SEO" is getting in the way of this prediction.
As you mentioned in your 2010 predictions, SEO is evolving and growing into something much bigger than just SEO. 2012 is going to be a great year for this industry. Looking forward to it.
Great points Darren! I think social won't just become critical because the engines mandate it (or the algorithms use it more strongly), but because it's so essential to how content and ideas are shared. There may be small, local businesses that can survive without, but virtually every tiny, local business I walk into has a Twitter and Facebook sign (most have a FourSquare and a QR code, too). In terms of the adoption process, I'd say we're over the hump w/ social already - https://www.spikelab.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Technology-Adoption-Lifecycle.png - it just hasn't become wholly widespread in the SEO field (but I think 2012 is the year).
I think the algorithms won't necessarily emphasize google+ more (although that wouldn't surprise me), but social as a whole will become even more important as an indirect signal of quality/popularity. Even if Google doesn't key off of social shares/views/likes/etc., all those social actions definitely drive a decent number of "normal" links and other traditional indicators.
I agree with almost everything you predict especially when it comes to Google+ becoming more of a ranking boost factor.
I agree with you too Vinny. I'm working on building this into my SEO team's work/strategy because you don't want to miss the Google gorilla out of the gates. Early adopters of thier technology have shown greater increases and success in the past with this type of early adoption.
Interesting read. My predictions:
1. Google will finally take strong action against scraper sites and SOPA will push it to its very limit.
2. There will be more rules and regulations on Google by Govt. of the countries where it operates.
3. The cost of doing SEO effectively esp. in highly competitive markets will rise dramatically (thanks to paid and vertical search results and dominant brands) and in some cases to the point that PPC/social media may seem a more viable channel for advertisement.
4. Content will play a second fiddle to Social media presence. I see lot of mediocre contents doing very well because of the large social media presence of the website on which it is hosted. This just reinforce the theory that user is the king.
On #3, I sort-of agree, but I think creativity in the organic/inbound world will always trump dollars. That's why I love this field so much.
Regarding your last years predictions ( 2011 ):
"Mobile will have a negligible effect on search/SEO +1" IMHO, should earn score -1 cuz, if you see GA data for set of SMB service provider sites ( eg: dentists, florists, lawyers, fitness trainers, etc ), you'll find mobile search is trending north consistently for most sites
We'll start to move away from the title "SEO" to something more all-inclusive +1
Yes, but it's certainly isn't inbound marketing. If you check Google trends for : Inbound Marketing Vs Digital Marketing Vs Online Marketing Vs Internet Marketing, you can see the trend yourself. I have seen the term Inbound Marketing pushed only on Seomoz & Hubspot!
Your data table is skewed towards "inbound marketing" term only because you didn't give the participants existing options such as Digital Marketing Agency, Internet Marketing Agency, Online Marketing Agency, etc
So your tally is more realistically 0 and not +1; but still you DESERVE the right to make predictions cuz' there's no denying the fact that you have conntributed towards the industry tremendously over the years.
Coming to 2012:
"Prediction #2: SEO Without Social Media Will Become a Relic of the Past"
Not quite true for local SEO for service provider websites. For example: A plumber, a dentist, a yoga teacher, a lawyer, etc can still survive / thrive purely on strength of local SEO / PPC without needing fan pages / tweeting, etc
Prediction #3: Google Will Finally Take Stronger, Panda-Style Action Against Manipulative Link Spam
If they could, they would have already! They have already been doing their best possible but unless Google owns a large chunk of social web, they will have to reply on links as basic connectors of the web. So small incremental anti-spam iterations, yes. Not so sure about Panda style link related shakeup.
Prediction #8: Google Will Make it Very Hard to Do Great SEO Without Using Google+
Of course, it'll try, but do you think it's going to succceed? What does Google trend for Google + tell? Do you know average moms, teens, youth, using it or is it just marketeers & brands? We all know the answer, One can't force a website to become part of people's daily lives even if they are "the Google"
Cool @ rest of predictions & hope it's okay to air divergent viewpoint in the community.
A couple of thoughts.
#2 SEO Without Social Media Will Become a Relic of the Past: I am still very hesitant on this issue. I think it is unlikely for Google to base a meaningful percentage of its general search algorithm on 3rd party data (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). I believe that Social Media will continue to matter, but it will still primarily be used by Google to influence personalization of logged in users. This is not to say that Social Media is without benefit, rather that those general algorithm benefits come from indirect effects of Social Media (like the creation of links due to an item being shared, not the share tally itself).
#3 Google Will Finally Take Stronger, Panda-Style Action Against Manipulative Link Spam. This one is really hard for Google to do given that they still struggle with proving who is responsible for creating the links. Every time Google dials up link penalties, they increase the likelihood that negative SEO will be used.
#7 We'll See the Rise of a Serious Certification Program. Does serious mean "respected" or "popular"? Certification programs attempt to turn SEO into basic vocational training without addressing the huge research component. I have trouble respecting any SEO who doesn't contribute to the base of industry knowledge, and I certainly won't respect an academic program that doesn't expect the same out of its students.
Hey Russ - as I noted in the post and some of my replies above, I did not mean to suggest that social would become critical to SEO purely b/c of direct algorithmic influence. I'm more suggesting that because social influences so much of the other signals - links, content, user/usage data, branding, etc, it will be very hard to do great SEO without it.
On the certification - I don't whether a cert program should necessarily require students to contribute publicly; that doesn't quite match with how any other program works (other than doctoral dissertations or master's theses in University and that seems like a very high barrier to me). I'd just love to see Market Motive or Search Engine College's programs grow - those are, IMO, pretty solid training systems already, just not at scale.
Just wanted to note that I've heard about some examples of burning sites pretty easily with anchor text optimized link spam recently. To the point of knowing exactly how I could take out a competitor if I wanted to. Wouldn't work to take down big brands of course, but anyone sub-PR7 would be fair game. Don't need much of a budget to do it either. Scary stuff.
"Prediction #4: Pinterest Will Break into the Mainstream - The last 4 years have seen Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare and Tumblr all break the 10+ million users mark."
Sorry, but 10 million doesn't mean mainstream. 10 million means less than 0.5% of the global web population. Facebook is mainstream. Twitter is mainstream in terms of recognition, but arguably not in usage (I'd say it's so close as to not matter). LinkedIn is for businesses, foursquare and Tumblr aren't.
Your problem Rand, is that you can't do the mum/mom test!
I guess I'm just using a different definition of "mainstream." To me, 10mm users suggests something fairly remarkable on the web.
It's a large audience, but it's not mainstream. It would be just over 4% of the US web population.
There's a real danger that we, as digital marketers, assume that because we are doing something, then everyone else is too. A number likes ten million looks big, but that's how many viewers mainstream TV shows get in the UK on a fairly regular basis - 'only' being able to get that audince worldwide doesn't really compare.
What kinds of developments do you think we'll see in terms of local search/local SEO? I think there's potential for some interesting stuff there, as more people start to pay more and more attention to it and spend more time and money optimizing for local searches.
If I had to guess, I'd say that Google+ is, again, going to become part of Google's local business registration/claiming/verification process, and we'll see more of that SoLoMo integration. That said, I was wrong abuot local search last year (on the filters issue), so I'm hesistant to make an official prediction.
Thanks for the reply!
The big thing I see is that we (desparately) need to get into Social Media.
Dang. I hate FaceBook
Hey! Welcome 2012 - I love these posts and tend to refer back to them throughout the year so thanks Rand. I was really hoping your "We'll start to move away from the title "SEO to something more all-inclusive" would have had a bigger impact to all but that may be more this year so maybe you're too ahead of your time :)
#4 Pinterest is totally going to break into the mainstream! But will it be used for SEO purposes? I could really only see happening if their user base evolves. Right now all the TOP and POPULAR stuff I see isn't really anything outside folks could get traction on and they frown a lot advertising. Their network is weighted heavily on women as they're all pinning their dream weddings and pictures of cute dogs/movie stars (ok I have some cute dogs and movie stars too). Maybe if your company is selling wedding based items it'd be an awesome market to tap... ha. wait that's the one that needs to use it right now! :)...Well there ya go haha.
I completely agree about Pinterest! My wife is on there daily. No joke..
Why is Pinterest so popular with women?
There's a lot of cooking/wedding/pretty dresses on there that's spawned through the system hourly and all the women have invited all their women friends to join. My friend who's into all that stuff originally invited me and I think their site's still in invite so those are the folks that seem to end up on it. Once the flood gates of everyone can join that may change the demographics involved.
I am on Pinterest too, from time to time. But its hard to find much 'guy related' stuff worth adding to my board. Could be another reason its predominately women....for now.
So this Pinterest is actually a BIG Deal??
Like Rand I'm predicting Pinterest will become a massive deal over the next 12 months if not only for the fact it is the first key social network where the gender balance heavily leans towards women. It's the perfect platform to perform outreach to a wide range of female focussed sectors which personally we've struggled to connect with on a number of occasions through the other major social networks.
Nice to see Pinterest on your list. I just posted the same on Facebook as I am preparing to teach a "Social Media Planning for 2012" class. I knew I could not leave it out given it's growth. It's also the first time my wife has beat me to something in the social media realm :-) (I had to ask her for an invite which she really got a kick out of.)
Google+, well that's a given since it's the Big G. I have to say, I am least excited about this one. I found one of the positives was being able to connect to folks, but I did not like the fact that I felt I was (once again) giving Google more access to my life. Such is life in a Google world.
Prediction #3: Google Will Finally Take Stronger, Panda-Style Action Against Manipulative Link Spam
Content farms took a hammering last year now it’s time to focus attention on who is dishing out link love. This has to be Google’s next course of action. Google spent the whole of last year tidying up on page SEO and content issues and now it’s time to focus on off page SEO, and it’s about time too.
Off page SEO in its cleanest form is inbound marketing. Off page SEO to most SEOs is aggressive low quality link building. I’ve seen many sites rank highly for purely anchor text in hundreds of links, even though the destination page has nothing to do with the link or anchor text, a major floor in the system!
This year I can see Google starting to discredit these links if they are not coming from the right neighbourhood or a related source. I don’t think you’ll get any kind of formal penalty just a lost in rankings as links to your site become no longer relevant.
The solution is simple. Google will possibly bring out their next major algorithm update in April. Now’s the time to serious adjust your link building strategy. Do away with 5 PR blog comments for £xx and do something that will benefit your visitors and bring them to the site!
Quality link building not only makes your site more credible but producing things like link bait, will make people start linking to you! Also answer questions on Q&A sites and link to your site if it holds the solution to the person’s question or just leave links in relevant placers those potential customers will want to click on.
Going forward, rel=”nofollow” links may start to hold more weight as these kind of links currently don’t hold much value in the terms of passing link juice to pages and building link profiles, but, these types of links are generally less scammy than all the DO follow links that SEO link builders pine after.
Google’s magic keyword is QUALITY. How much quality do you have in your inbound links? Do you have a least one in the hundreds that are coming to your site? If not. Now might be the right time to get some quality ones to maintain your SERPs!
Ray Krzeminski (SEO Juice - https://www.seo-juice.co.uk)
Rand,
your predictions aren't too far off the mark. You're definitely entitled to predict every year because your advice is often pretty solid (rather conservative for me, but I realize it has to be that way).
You are so "bullish" on Google+ and I just can't see how Google can take itself seriously at this point. I ran across this a few months ago and he has a great point -
https://www.sirslappy.com/2011/09/why-google-1-is-irrelevant/
Google is a tool. It always has been a tool and it always will be a tool. If they try to break into the social arena they will lose. Their attempts are relatively pathetic. Facebook is, in many people's eyes, about as good as it gets for social and most people won't flip for Google+. Google would be better off simply working WITH twitter and FB instead of trying to compete.
I'm always impressed by Rand and the rest of the MOZ team's willingness to hold themselves accountable and to be crystal clear in their methodologies. Beginning a new predicition with a run down of hit's and misses of the past is so rare and refreshing. Any opinion provider should be willing to be this accountable.
ok, I won't overdwell to the chagrin of others, but i'll comment on:
Prediction #5: Overly Aggressive Search Ads Will Result in Mainstream Backlash Against Google
Yes, and by association that will worsen the perception of SEO practitioners unfortunately. Search trust is at the core of the whole industry. I contend that this backlash will be further exacerbated by site owner abusers of the snippet spam issue that the face-snapping Gianluca highlights here and which I postulated about elsewhere. Simply go and Google Dr Seuss SEO Star Wars
Fingers crossed Google will combat this rapidly in 2012 or I'll predict a riot.
Do you think the backlash against Google and their ads will result in another company being born or other gaining more market share?
I predict we're going to see even more evidence that Google understands javascript when it comes to content and links, and we're going to begin to see some evidence that Bing is trying to understand it as well.
I predict that the next social network to generate buzz will be something that we haven't heard of yet, and maybe doesn't even exist yet.
I'm also hoping SOPA and/or PIPA doesn't pass and lead to even a fraction of the collateral damage that most tech leaders are afraid it will enable.
I'd be surprised if we can see organic results above the fold at all if Google's increase in aggressive ad placement continues!
Prediction #6: Keyword (Not Provided) Will Rise to 25%+ of Web Searchers
Possibly optimistic - mine's been showing steady growth since November (17%) to Dec (21%) - I'm expecting it to increase more as I push to increase exposure.
But you know what really hurts? The traffic there in my (not provided) slot {which is the highest contributing "keyword" for me at the moment} is some of my most valuable traffic. My avg time on site for organic traffic is 1:31 - time on site for (not provided) is 4:00. It would be awesome - y'know, if I could figure out where the value was so I could capitalise on it.
This is true for us as well, since logged-in Google searchers are often mroe advanced, sophisticated folks who are likely customers of Moz Pro. Perhaps through some sort of pattern matching system, clever software could help guess at the keywords used (though it won't be Google Analytics, obviously).
OMG, there are almost too many comments here. This was a great post.
Prediction #5: Overly Aggressive Search Ads Will Result in Mainstream Backlash Against Google I don't necessarily agree here. Maybe the backlash from SEOs, but not from me. I don't give a damn what platform (PPC, Organic, Google Base, Places) I use. The "REAL" business marketers will not risk their all their eggs in one basket.
Prediction #7: We'll See the Rise of a Serious Certification Program. I HIGHHHHHLLLLYYYY recommend Avinash's Web Analytics at Market Motive. I took Avisnash's Nija Certification.
It is incredible isn't it!! Quite difficult in parts though as it's not easy to find practical, real world situations to apply it and practice... then you end up forgetting some of it through lack of use, or at least I have, and when you know it would be so useful in other situations that's frustrating.
Google have really steped up the game at the end of 2011!
What does the big G have up their sleeve for 2012 everyone asks?
I believe the rollout of Panda was a great thing for Google and so was Google +
We got hit hard with our search positions within the local maps searches which we used to be no.1 for under 5 different keyword search terms. This hit our business harder than we though.
But instead of moaning like a lot of companies did to Google we searched up on how to improve this and it was all about citatations and links ( ther's a surprise huh).
Now I don't know how true the citatation thing is because we have probably the most reviews and citations on our site over our competitors but they are above us?????
Google roll out all these things and i'm sure that even they don't fully understand how it really works.
I do feel that Google + is going to steal the show this year, I also predict that Google will soon have another algorythm come out later in the year to favour Google + account holders, and how many links followers etc are in your circles, but i could be wrong.
So the bottom line to be on the safe side is get lots of people in your circles, get interacting and get blogging because prevention is better than cure right?
Hey Rand,
I've talking about #2 for about 2 years now. I've attempted to start a movement away from SEO to SO (search optimization). The "engine" part is obsolete with the rise of social ranking signals. Maybe 2012 is the year as you suggest.
I think prediction #8 has potential anti-trust implications. I don't doubt Google will move in this direction. But, as you mention, the potential for corruption is high and I wouldn't be surprised to see a lawsuit against Google if a large brand believes they've lost business because they're not active on Google+.
Time will tell. About 359 days to be exact. ;)
Cheers,
Bernie Borges
Do you think SO will be the new phrase of 2012?
Oh I rember the days, when it was fine to bag the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft for their over use of paid ads in search results, and Google just wouldn't dare be evil. Now they have choosen the wrong path and prediction #5 is already true for me personally. I'd also like to make a prediction #9 that Google will continue to turn a blind eye to the numerous websites abusing the 3 Ad cells per page limit. That too I hate, but they won't bite the had that feeds them.
Sweet. 2012 is looking even more complicated.
This post should be appropriately renamed to "How to please Google and the businesses who care about their online presence".
Great insight though. So if I'm tasked with SEO for my company, it'd make sense for me to be attending search marketing and social media conventions? But I'm not, so I rely on reading your articles.
Thanks for sharing.
Isn't this a self fulfilling, self fulfilling, prophecy:
Prediction #8: Google Will Make it Very Hard to Do Great SEO Without Using Google+
In regard to #7 from 2011:
We'll start to move away from the title "SEO" to something more all-inclusive +1
It didn't happen in a big way, but the phrase "inbound marketing" and "inbound marketer" appears to be gaining traction. I like the wording, which suggests earning people's trust and interest rather than buying it and includes SEO, social media, content marketing, blogging and web analytics. In our recent survey of agencies, "inbound/organic" agency was how the largest group of respondents described their firms:
Title changes haven't firmed up, but the nature of the work has. Web analytics, content/blogging, and strategic social media is now core to getting results with SEO, and part of my baseline process going forward.
Superb post randfish i am waiting for this pridiction and i totally agree with you. The thing i hope and predict in 2012 which effect seo or ranking on search resuilts and for which algorithm will base.
social popularity points +2
link spamming - do follow aut0 approve -5 ( i think webmaster team working to fight link spamming)
google + popularity and its impact on seacrh results.
local map submission with full business address.
auto title and keyword changes which relevant to your site and fit to user search results.
and more.....
Hi Rand, great post. Your predictions for 2011 where not far of the mark. I think everyones biggest worry is prediction 5 (i know its ming). Overly Aggressive Search Ads Will Result in Mainstream Backlash Against Google.
I do hope google get taken back to court and lose there battle to display there prefered links (ads or own service links) where and wherever they want.
We understand Googles need to make money however, its not much of an organic search engine when searchers cant see organic rankings.
"We just have to hope they (Google)'ll also become more benign, though more power rarely leads to less corruption."
Rand, I doubt this is going to happen. I think it'd be irrational for le Goog to become more benign. They need to fight FB with everything they have and keep them from becoming The Internet. So they will just go ahead and keep on collecting every single bit of information they can get their fangs on.
Nothing on Facebook?
I think google plans will be cut short by fb. There are two options. Google circles will pick up and we see focus shifting from fanpages to +pages. (as Rand mentioned, it will be hard do SEO without +pages in the future)but i doubt it.
Other thing I find very possible is that facebook will buy, overtake or JV a searchengine for knowhow. We will see a igoogle, or firefox/google style startingpage for facebook with integrated search. It would be 2 points scored for facebook. 1. more ad space 2. less adspace for google ant thus even worse UX for google users.
We know facebook is most popular ad network, and we know that facebook started to gather more money for something big this year.
Anyhow let see....
I look forward to seeing your accuracy at the beginning of 2013...I do hope you are wrong in many areas (wishful thinking...I know)...I'm really bothered by the forced adoption of Google+ :(
Loving the predictions... especially Pinterest. Great site, even if I'm not a girl!
Insight from this post, provides a vital guideposts on Predictions of SEO. Your analysis of this all predictions is amazing. I think in highly competitive markets will rise dramatically and in some cases to the point that PPC or social media may seem a further viable guide for advertisement.Thanks.
Hi Rand! Nursing was my degree in college. I decided to go into real estate and until recent years, it was a fairly easy transition. WHO knew that we'd be discussing SEO, Panda and building our own WordPress sites?! All of the aspects of real estate are so 'simple' but, the additional knowledge necessary and work time involved to compete in our business has really become an enormous part of my day! I love it and wish that I had more time to delve into some of the topics that you're discussing--but, I'll do the best that I can to keep the pace and learn from people like you who are 'in-the-know!'
I'm anxious to see what 2012 brings with regards to SEO and G+. I do see that more and more of my boost is coming from Google applications, including G+ and feel like you're probably on target with that one. I'm not seeing many of my consumers there but, do see other small business owners in the area working it just as i am.
Here's to a stellar 2012. Thanks for the post, Rand!
Hard to see how one would argue with #3 - Google's taken action against content farming, it's about time it got sophisticated enough to do the same with linking.
Prediction #3.>>One of the major weaknesses of Google (and Bing, to be fair) is their continued over-reliance on links as an overwhelming ranking signal.
Google has gone out of it's way to tell us that links no longer count for SERPs. PageRank is divorced from SERPs.
I have done some testing to that effect and about 100 links to an internal page showed that the page's SERP did not move. Links were a mix of anchor text and dynamic strings.
What did affect the SERP was re-tweets - FB likes, and G+1 votes.
Reg
Prediction #8 :: it will be more difficult to provide top tier SEO services wwithout using G+ :: for the most part, I would agree (however) notice the # of +1 clicks vs. Tweets and FB Likes on this article? The +1 Button is low man on the totem pole :: why is that?
I'm keeping a close eye on how Social is becoming the New SEO and if the new social share WordPress plugin I just installed on my Local SEO Blog will influence a spike in the # of social shares on my varous sites?
This is a fun post and great information. I'd like to see two really good and widely accepted SEO certifications available by the end of the year. I am looking forward to the follow-up in 2013. :-)
The ads do look annoying but the examples you have used are for highly competitive keywords. I guess for a regular search you wont get this number of annoying ads..
Hi Rand,
Google Will Finally Take Stronger, Panda-Style Action Against Manipulative Link Spam this best thing for link-spammers and I think you should more focus on them so this helps lots to others who do organic .
Thanks for your thoughtful set of predictions. I share you concern about #8
"The negative is that Google's probably going to get even more data about ALL of our online behaviors, making themselves an even more overreaching and powerful force on the web than they are today. "
Google will end up with a "Entity" for each individual, where all online information is collated: our likes, dislikes, relationships, opinions, everything we have exposed about ourselves or people we have talked about online.
It knells the death of personal privacy.
We are left with this dilemma: whether to submit oneself to public scrutiny online or to hide or online presenc behind one or more virtual personas? What course of action will you take as Google builds its randfish entity?
Hope you wrong about or Google will back off with Google+ I hate this network and the only reason I opened account is to get +1 to my web page, which by all say it increase SERP.
Guess we have to go with flow but I hope they will fall down!
I don’t like the way they use their power to push + so hard it almost painful.
I think Google are already trying to assess link quality, but are not having a great deal of luck with it. The problem is that with every single link type, there are some legitimate uses and examples so it's hard for them to simply discount whole swathes of links
Everybody talks about quality being used as a primary judgement when it is not possible. What is quality to me looking to increase my 15 years of experience in search would not be quality for someone looking for the basics, or vice versa. Quality is subjective.
Quality CAN be judged but only by watching users' actions on the page. Length of time on page, bounce rate, exit rates are quality judgements.
Definitely aggree with 2,3,4 +8. Pinterest is definitely going to go mainstream, it's just up to businesses and whether they become creative enough to use the new platform. Almost all industries can find some benefit of the site. SEO without Social Media, it's just no longer an option. Some industries might not be glamourous enough to gain 10,000 follows but I don't think that really matters, it's just having a presnece that matters. And Google+ bias is just a given.
Hello Rand,
Just like your earlier predictions, I wish the score for this year predictions would be better so that we would get a chance to get your predictions in coming years too.
1- Google will take action against link spams, I think it's already adopted by google in last month. So congrats for this nice prediction. I feel Google will still chnage its algorithm to find spammed links.
2- Socila media will definitely be crucial this year but I'm sure that they'll make their algorithm so strong that it would be difficult for spammers to get the benefit of it.
3- Pinterest grown very quickly still I found another site https://whosin.com/ which will soon get into the elite list.
4- Improtance of Google Plus will surely grow as Google will definitely take the data from it & will use for its SERP.
5- Google will take additional step to penalize for content spamming.
I agree with everything exceptt your last point. Google+ is going to be important for seo of course, but it's also going to help Google chart how the big social networks interface, for a lot of companies it would also be very hard to do any real seo without for example Facebook
These are very effective predictions for Search Engine Optimization which I was looking for.
Rand, seems like your Prediction #2 is coming true with "Search Plus your World"!
I'm a bit worried... what does this mean for the future of SEO ?
Not only is social media becoming an important part of SEO with this new feature, but it's actually making search all about Social media...
How can we - SEOs - cope with that ? I guess what you said last year is also true : we should now use the term Search Engine Strategists rather than SEOs.
Looking forward to reading your post on Search Plus.
Cheers,
Z
Hi Rand,
Completely agree with your predictions #6 and #8. Yes i feel that google is possibly feeling the heat over the giant social media space has been occupied by facebook and twitter in last year. Google previous attempts with Google Wave went into the vain and now they will do anything for being at top in Social Media space. Google+ will be their weapon for the same... and they might go up to any level to doing so and in order to doing so they may influence the organic SEO and make it hard without Google+.
Thanks for the predictions! They make sense to me and I will be interested to see what happens this year. I have great hopes for number 3. Keeping my fingers crossed (although that might make it hard to type and therefore work) :)
My thinking on this is. Writing quality was always big with Google and now its even more important. Now people are saying SEO is "Dead" or "Morphed" this has been said how many times. I think it is just evolving with the times that is all. If you have quality content, quality backlinks, quality social media marketing, you should then be getting some rankings. There is still some sort of algorithm that the engines have that they use to rank sites and now social media and content is part of it.
This term content marketing can be confusing to people cause in actuality isn’t it just SEO, writing quality content, getting it out on the web (via links and social media) hence the rankings then come which in turn drives traffic.
SEO its self is still there its just has some added components now. Getting a FB like and a Retweet and a +1 is the NEW link building that is all.
Think about the more quality content you have the more traffic you get just makes sense. More pages...more ways for people to find you.
I don't think SEO is dead by any means but ever evolving. SEM is becoming more and more important and Social indicators are affecting everything. Do you think Facebook likes will become the new +1?
Rand the Man,
Great post my friend. I predict that flash websites will start to be transferrred to html5. Yatzie, need spell checker..
Hey Rand, I really appreciate your predictions for 2012 but do you really think Rand that Google+ will play a vital role for having ranking I mean to get traffic on our site?? We are already using facebook, twitter, linkedin and networking site to get traffic and in fact sites are performing well.. So, suddenly Google+ will create an impact on all these things???
While since everyone else is doing these predictions I decided I had to make my own. I included 5 non-obvious ones and 5 obvious ones...here they are: https://seopeng.com/2012-seo-predictions-obvious-non-obvious/
Dear Sir,
The Predictions are very Nice some of them are very use full Specially Prediction #8 & 6. Thanks Looking forward to hear some more if there is any.
Regards,
Ahmed Adnan
Facebook search engine anyone?
The "keyword not provided" is already accounting for a large portion of the searches on our properties now. It started out just being in the mix of the top keywords but now it's usually anywhere from first to third on any given day. I'm not sure what the solution is going to be but the testing of conversions based on inbound keywords is getting tougher.
Some of these feel like they are too easy...lol like you want to make sure you can make predictions for next year because I think Pinterest and the Not Provided is a given for sure also with all the marketers starting to talk about SMO (Social Media Optimization <-Yay someone named it) then the use of social and seo on a grander scale is also inevitable. However I do look forward to seeing how your other predictions play out especially the one involving link spam and paid advertisments. Overall it should be an interesting year.
Rand -
Great post to read on the first day back to work.
I can live with everything you predicted, except (not provided)...
Firstly i appreciate you on this such a valuable and knowledgable facts sharing here . I m totally agree with your #2. As we know social media is playing a very important role in our daily life now a dayz. Its very true that social media is becoming the dominant method of both sharing and discovery for web users. I dnt say that SEO will not work due to social media but it will play a vital role in search engine optimization in 2012.
"Yes" to all predictions, but I dont believe the "social will beat links" hype.
I'm not suggesting that, I'm more saying that because social is such a driver of links, it will become an essential SEO practice that very few will do without.
Hi Rand, I think you've got points 2 ,3, 6 and 8 spot on!! Lets see if you're right, bring on 2012 :)
congrats on the passing grade, Rand - and a good list of predictions for 2012.
Now...with regard to this statement from prediction#3
"We saw dramatic results within 24 hours - #1-5 rankings that have sustained for several weeks (more news on this experiment to come)."
Does this mean that you are going to out your own spammy link practices? :)
Since I used a friend's services to do this (and don't know everything about they operate), I'm hesistant to show off their network without permission. However, I do plan to write in as much detail as possible about it while staying TAGFEE. It will probably be a few months away, though. We're hoping to actually penalize the site, and have heard/seen that this can take months to do.
Nice article to get us thinking about what to expect in the year ahead.
With regard to linkspam - google needs to do something are more legitimate sites are displaced by low quality sites with spammy link profiles.
It does make me wonder though - as googles algorithm improves, we're moving more and more to telling people that they will be ranking "on merit" and that they need to produce good quality content. Not everyone wants to do this - seeking SEOs out for shortcuts etc. If good content is where it's at - would SEO budgets be better spent on content creation?
What other ways can Google use to measure the quality of links? Do they have the information to look at how much traffic each link actually passes? Surely a link that people are following to get to a site is more valuable than a link that's sitting there unused?
Rand, Some GREAT predictions for 2012! I agree with nearly all of them, especially Bing Increasing in the marketshare and that Keyword (Not Provided) will rise as more and more are utilizing Google Accounts.
Really, the only prediction I disagree with was #4, Pinterest breaking into the Mainstream. I personally never heard of it before this article and see it's not like Google + nor FB which is pretty much the standard now for a social network.
Great post, lets see how the score adds up for next January!
Pinterest is still in its "early adopters" phase, but it is surely going to have a mainstream success, not replicating the interest desinflation Quora had.
Yes, it doesn't have nothing in common with G+, FB and Twitter... and that is its win win characteristic.
Prehaps having a different kind of social network will be a nice change of pace for everyone. G+ made a mistake by not having a FB integration to "invite" friends. People want to be connected but don't want to have to check several different networks to keep in contact. I guess that because Pinterest is not like G+ or FB, I don't see the need.
Maybe I'm speak too soon as I haven't used their system yet.
Google+ inviting Facebook friends... I suppose it was not possible as Facebook close this opportunity from Gmail...
About Pinterest, better you try it before saying it is not worth. Pinterest is all about curation and images/photos, which can be a killer content opportunity for SEO and marketers.
it kinda looks like another social bookmark site.
Do you personally use it and find it useful? I don't mind investing my time into another media source, but we want to make sure it not time wasted.
3.2mm users is nothing to shake a stick at (particularly when they started the year with only 40k): https://www.arikhanson.com/2011/12/13/whats-behind-the-pinterest-craze-15-super-users-share-their-thoughts/
40K to 3.2M = MEGA Growth!! Why hasn't it made headlines yet?
This proves that there are 3.16M SEOs in the world. ;)
Good read, Rand. I've thought of the point you make in #2 for some time now. Those offering a range of online marketing services may be limiting exposure and consumer understanding, being labeled as "SEO" services.
The proliferation of ads (#5) is disappointing and aesthetically displeasing. I think there will be a backlash too. Though I do hope the obvious "junk" opens the eyes of industry novices, making them better respect organic initiatives.
I think we'll see more businesses engage in all types of "online marketing" initiatives in 2012. I also see our industry leaders stepping up and getting more credit as catchall, "online business consultants." I think our industry is going to get a lot more attention in 2012. Good news for us. Happy New Year!
Awesome read thanks Rand, interesting thoughts / predictions do digest as 2012 gets underway :)
Interesting times ahead that is for sure, I agree 100% that social will even become a larger driving force with SEO if you are not joining forces with social media teams to align your SEO strategy then you are missing out. IVe been pushing the social media teams for the last 3 years to get more SEO involvement only recently have we been seeing some traction.
But overall great post rand.
Great Post as always !
Don't you think Page Speed is becoming more and more important ? It take long time before marketers see that opportunity and start making site who are actually really fast.
For Google+, I hope you're wrong because if Google+ is mandatory, that means everyone will be connect and it will be more not provided on my stats...
When Google introduced page speed, they said it would be a very minor factor, and my sense is that it has remained that way. I've not seen compelling evidence to suggest otherwise, though from a second-order effect perspective, speed certainly improves user/usage data, UX, sharing, linking, social, etc. so it's definitely more important to a website's overall success (as consumers of the web become more demanding about speed).
Rand,
I think it makes the most sense to associate page speed and rankings with user/usage and sharing. The overall experience of a user is a factor Google takes seriously. So, for Google to say speed alone is a minor factor might be accurate. However, overall it could be a major factor if the users aren't happy because the page loads are annoyingly slow. I haven't seen any evidence that reasonable to excellent page load speeds effect rankings, but I have seen excessive page load speeds hurt rankings. Just my 2 cents.
I'd have to agree. When I went to Pubcon South last year, Aaron Shear made a huge deal about page speed and how his use of CSS Sprites and other technology had boosted his rankings significantly (with Zappos, I believe). I went home and worked my ass off optimizing page speed for a few clients and saw little to no lift in their rankings.
Bing has indeed improved in the last quarter 2011, but it wont beat Google markershare anytime soon. Thanks for the update @rand, will consider your predictions in our 2012 plans.
Hi Rand,
This is farhan jaffry, i hope you remember me. Just a thought regarding your prediction number 8, if google will give more importance to google+ then does it mean that twitter, facebook pages will be less regarded? because now if you see facebook and twitter are the most used social media these days.
I agree with your prediction number 7 that there should be some certifications avaiable for SEO which really gives a sense to companies who think that SEO's is just a scam, but this thought is getting changed really fast.
I will relate your pridiction number 1 with number 5, beacause of the aggressive paid ads strategy followed by google will surely hit Google back and the searchers all over the world would turn towrds bing which has a low ratio of paid ads and their search result pages shows more visible organic ranks compared to google, but it does not mean that Google will loose its 80% market shre, but in coming 4 to 5 years google will loose its large chunk of traffic to Bing.
Now, how to cope with all the dangers related to google panda depends upon us (SEOs), we need to start preparing ourselves from the very begginning of the new year, we need to have unique content up on our websites/clients websites, we need to regularly update our meta tags and most importantly we should start working more hard on creating google+ profiles and use them as our SEO tool from now on.
I enjoyed reading your blog, the above comment is just my thought, I will be more then happy to read Rand and other contibutors replys.
Thanks,
Jaffry
I'd say Facebook and Twitter are independently important for reaching huge audiences (170+ mm on Twitter, 800+ mm on Facebook), and the sharing signals there are something Google wants access to and wants to replicate.
Hi Rand,
Really interesting post as usual, thanks for your insight into what may be happening in 2012! Just one query could you give me a link to the official confirmaitons by Google and Bing that they are using click data for rankings? Im having trouble finding this for a footnote!
Thanks
Danielle
Rand, it’s always interesting to see your predictions for the next year and honestly this actually helps me understand Google and search world from a different perspective.
I do agree with Gianluca Fiorelli on this one, Google + will probably going to integrate Google ads in it most probably to start the social Ad war with facebook.
As far as your point on Google’s Panda style action on Link spammers, I wish, but honestly by looking at the link report for some of the competitors (especially in my niche) I see that Google is still giving credit for some low quality blog commenting and forum links... so i can hope this to be change in 2012 but ground realities didn’t allow me to say Yes on this one!
25% on (not provided data) was a very safe number IMHO... the number will increase way more than 25%.
Google will make it hard to do great SEO without Google+, can’t agree more..!!
Let us all hope for the best for 2012! :)
Rand, I hope you're wrong that (not provided) will rise to 25%, althought I'm already seeing very close numbers - We've compared 130 sites from different niches, with different amount of traffic and the overall (not provided) percent was 18.87%.
Rand good job on 2011 and I am total with #8.
All the signs lead to Google + playing a major factor in SERPs. Here they are giving us, the people the tools to tell them what is relevant to us at any given time. Knowing what is hot and trending through their empire of tools that collect the data and spitting it out in a nano second. I have a client that is a major producer of content in the financial industry and was hit bad when Panda launched. But by implementing these tools they have started gaining much of the Google Traffic they lost just by "manage both SEO and social media marketing together."
Out of the certification courses / sites you mentioned, do you recommend any of them over the others? Are they worthwhile in your (or anyone's) opinion?
Great post and predictions. I'm still not seeing a huge effect from (not provided) and hopefully it stays that way.
Happy New Year!
I like Market Motive a lot, but I've also heard great things about Search Engine College by Kalena Jordan (whom I consider a friend and very high quality SEO). SEMPO is the only one I'm skeptical about - haven't generally been impressed by what I've seen there.
thanks for the response, I also agree with your statement that we are in "need of a program that helps early talent in the field become mature professionals" ... not only that, I feel like some sort of "seal of approval" (in addition to your standard partnerships) will go a long way when it comes time for business owners to choose a digital marketing company.
Raaand, seeing as there's so much discussion around the certification... you know where I'm going with this haha.
I'll just drop this little linky here, and will of course remove if you say it's not okay to do so :D
https://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/seo-training-courses-for-seo-certifications
Steve, that's actually a solid write up, thanks for sharing. Do you agree with Rand that Market Motive is towards the top of the list? Appreciate any feedback. I am somewhat skeptical of an "SEO course" but wouldn't be opposed to trying one out if it gets a lot of positive feedback ... thanks again
I totally agree with what Rand said... MM contains the most practical material, and covers more advanced stuff... and SEC (which Kalena is currently adding more advanced stuff too right now) is really thorough and in-depth. Doing both would be worth it even if you're going over some stuff you already know... and yeah it's worth being skeptical, most of the ones I found out there were worthless.
it's at least worth checking out and seeing where it goes ... appreciate your input / feedback! thanks again
Thanks so much for the support Rand. I agree with you that scale is always an issue, but as Steve says above, we are in the process of rolling out more advanced modules, video tutorials and interactive learning tools that should see Search Engine College gain an even better reputation in the industry than it has now. Despite what some people think, we do get approached by HR and Marketing Directors of companies of all sizes seeking graduates, so I feel certification is becoming increasingly more important. Happy New Year to yourself and Geraldine.
Hehe I've sent a few recruitment agencies your way actually, and to the resume boards on here... they get hold of me through Linkedin, etc... and I always explain to them to be careful who they get and from where, and to try to recruit from a community to get better quality... then I drop em some links to jobs areas of SEC, MM and here. Which is a point actually, Rand... Your resume section has got pretty spammed, I reported it before but don't know if it's been fixed. There were tonnes of people just trying to flog services with cheesey lines instead of real resumes in there... just thought I'd better let you know before I forget again ;)
I don't know, Rand, I think you're being too hard on yourself again, and I don't think anyone feels like your authority is in question :)
Take #2 for example. I use filtering by price on my Android phone all the time. Why Google maps still lacks the feature is beyond me, but it seems like a no-brainer future implementation. I give that a +1. I'd also give #5 a solid +2.
I appreciate that you have the guts to put some predictions out there. Seeing how I hate/avoid social media, I keep telling myself that I won't have to get involved, but we'll see whether this is finally the year that I have no choice.
I would certainly go along with prediction #3 of Google heavily penalising link-building spammers. This has been long time coming. Links spammers seems to be all over the internet and growing in numbers by the day. In fact, it's become a seriously annoying trend we can really do without. Let's see this prediction come true for sure!
Link spammers can not be penalised. If google starts to hit spammers, some of us will start spamming competitors. If today we ( im former BH. Way, way back) spam blogs and forums to be ahead of other spamers. Then as soon as we see google hit spammers we will remove competition by spammming on their behalf. so really google has nothing else to do than just ignore spam. But the quantity of spam is so big that even if 10% gets under the google radar, the serps are still dominated by spammers
I wonder if there will be a certification site to claim content. I can put my author tag on my content... but someone else can put their tag on it too. I think google will have some sort of content submission service where they can determine the source of unique content.
very very nice blog. very much impressed with the information provided. a good start for SEO guys in the new year.
Ahhh,,,Again and always a Good Post...!!
Mostly I belive that All Prediction will have Spot On..though I will keep my eye on Prediction 4 and 6..
Overall,
Prediction 1 = Spot On (+2)
Prediction 2 = Spot On (+2)
Prediction 3 = Spot On (+2)
Prediction 4 = Partially Accurate (+1) (This prediction would be interesting if its goes well)
Prediction 5 = Spot On (+2) (It should be like a WAR between PAID vs. Organic Results)
Prediction 6 = Partially Accurate (+1)
Prediction 7 = Spot On (+2)
Prediction 8 = Spot On (+2)
I like Google Panda Style because there will be diffrences between sites with lots of backlins and sites wiht great Content and also backlinks.
Unfortunatly google was forcing every one to buy or get backlink anyway.
But now they are forcing everyone to be a great writer rather than a great buyer.
Translated to persian and published to our site.
TNX RAND
Hey Rand, I really appreciate your predictions for 2012 but do you really think Rand that Google+ will play a vital role for having ranking I mean to get traffic on our site??
We are already using facebook, twitter, linkedin and networking site to get traffic and in fact sites are performing well.. So, suddenly Google+ will create an impact on all these things???
It makes sense that Google would use Google+ as a ranking signal, but if they make it hard to do SEO without Google+, don't they risk facebook bringing an antitrust suit?
When you look at #5 "Overly aggressive search ads ... result in mainstream backlash" and number eight, "The negative is that Google's probably going to get even more data about ALL of our onluine behaviors,..... We just have to hope they'll become more benign, though more power rarely leads to less corruption." You have to wonder what way the scales will tip. For most people, I think there will come a moment and possibly an event that makes them say, "Wait a minute. That is too much." The question is when will it be and what will be the tipping point?
Even a powerful company, when faced with a massive exodus will change behaviors. Look at GoDaddy and SOPA. It won't be SEO's that cause it to happen though, it will be the public if it is to happen at all.
a great post Rand - I have sent it to all my co-workers who are interested in SEO
shared.
I wonder if Google will allow users who are signed in, to control the # of AD's (if any) in their personalized search results? I honestly think they should with all the customization going on by them. Then again, it would affect thier bottom line, and result in lost $$, and hummmm..
Google wouldn't like that, so it won't happen! That bothers me...
How can they effectively discount +1 manipulation? It seems like a company could have hoards of users +1 their content from multiple sources and IP's to boost their rankings. I know the web spam team is good, but this could be tough. I can already hear the marketing pitch from a well organized black hat agency. Grr..
I think the goal is to tie +1 activity back to user accounts that can be verified. Those that are manipulative won't get real email, won't have real things on their calendars, won't use Google docs naturally, won't share/browse/use Google+ normally. As Googlers and Bing folks have mentioned, social spam is so much easier to find and discount b/c "abnormal" usage patterns are easy to spot, and discounting the influence of those accounts is simple, too.
Doesn't the local listings show rankings in the url at least? Just took a look and found these:
&resnum=1
&resnum=2
Here's one I am interested in, and I think it will be dictated both by Google and companies adapting, but how much do people expect local searches to increase?
At what point does, say, 75 percent of search queries deliver localized results. I think now we're around 20, but over time we are going to see more and more of our targeted keyword phrases delivering local results first.
Thoughts?
I'm a little surprised you didn't think their would be a paid version of Google Analytics that would give us those (not provided) keywords again.
Haha, don't be so hard on yourself re the score, Google did some pretty surprising and unpredictable stuff, your predictions made good sense for what "should" have happened, still do!
I would love to see universally accepted accreditation come into being, it needs to be relatively low cost or free so we can make it as inclusive as possible, whilst being a bit more substantial than inbound marketing university (which took me about 15 minutes to complete) - it should also be regularly updated and limited for how long the certification lasts.
I definitely think this year will see the end of seo without social media and more than that without Google+
I have thought for a while that there could be a backlash against Google for the amount of advertising it's putting into the SERPs however who would complain? where would they complain? If it's just the search marketing community then Google would fall back on its us against them position and dig in. It would have to be something pretty big and be lead by the average user - I could see it happening with users of Google+ but there'd have to be a lot more users before it would count for much.
As far as backlash against Google for more "paid ad" content, the complaints wouldn't be in the form of verbal dissatisfaction, but rather people simple ignoring the ads more due to their heightened awareness of their existence. Humans (well, at least Americans and Western Europeans from my knowledge) are growing to distrust endorsements and ads that are obviously paid for more and more.
Amusingly this might have an unsusual counter effect... If less people are clicking on the ads, that means a greater number of advertisers are going to stay active in the bidding process over time, because it takes longer for their maximum spend allotment for the day/week/month to be consumed. With more and more advertisers staying in the bidding, because their isn't enough click traffic for them to spend their budgets, bid rates will probably increase overall. If bid rates increase, a large number of advertisers (small businesses) would be forced to drop out of the PPC game, because their costs per acquisition would rise too high.
2012 could definitely be the year we see a ceiling on how far traditional PPC advertising can grow. Not promising anything, though... and "ReMarketing" and social (Facebook) advertising are entirely different worlds.
It's all food for thought, and I'm of course not the "all knowing expert" on this subject!
Interesting what you said about advertising seeing as though the facebook advertising model is based on recommendations from friends (or is going more in that direction) especially considering Google has included +1 on AdWords ads - the general feeling about this is that when humans interact they naturally recommend products and services to each other.
I guess only time will tell if this form of personalised / group orientated / social advertising will in fact prove to be the new advertising model.
but rather people simple ignoring the ads more due to their heightened awareness of their existence
That will not likely happen. If you ask everyday folks, they have no idea which are paid ads these days. Google pulled a major bait and switch. They got people to trust them and then they placed almost invisible ads in the premium spots so people would click on them without even knowing they are paid.
Unfortuanately the only hope to change this will be government intervention (or the threat of).
I don't think there's anything wrong with the way Google and Facebook et al place advertising, Google may be going a bit too far in how they are positioned however usage will determine what they can get away with, I do think that there needs to be a campaign to wake people up to how their data and behavioural data is being used to manipulate what they are viewing - in the same way that we all know that certain newspapers have a bias and the demographics of the newspaper readership then determines which businesses decide to advertise in each magazine.
It's the search / inbound marketing community that needs to be championing this message - I think it's more about mass education rather than regulation.
As far as the accreditation program, do you think the majority of SEO best practices are universally agreed on enough by the industry leaders to be taught as absolute truth? How would the program handle thornier issues like exact match domains, nofollow sculpting, etc that can be in the gray zone? And do you think they should teach/test on black hat tactics so that the tester is aware of these spammier tactics?
My general feeling is that knowledge about these issues is important more so than teaching one specific way to use/not use them. Similar to the field of legal advice or accounting - there's knowledge of tactics/practices/principles and there's what you actually use vs. what other firms do.
Prediction #6: Keyword (Not Provided) Will Rise to 25%+ of Web Searchers
I think it will go well beyond 25% and nearer to 35%. I do however think the industry will find a way around it, maybe even one of the geniuses here at Moz. (no pressure).
All the predictions for this year are spot on. I agree to all the points predicted.
Regarding #3 I think Google might just give us a surprise this year by giving less importance to inbound links . Only the links which will come from trusted and high authority sites and editorial links will matter and will be taken into account. The major focus will be on the social media signals which will reflect the trust and the authority factor. Hence, in what context the links are being shared on social media and the discussions and reactions surrounding it will make a big impact.
Hence, stop the link building nuisance and focus on building quality content (in all forms, images, text, video, audio, etc. and share it on social media) and let the natural links get built.
#6 and #8 are correlated according to me.
As the no. of Google+ users increase there will be more and more people logged in to their Google account hence more ‘not provided’ keyword data. Though this ‘not provided ‘ aspect is creating a lot of dissatisfaction among the SEOs today. I think this lack of data in fact will carve the right niche for the true meaning of SEO in future. This will make the SEOs explain to the clients that they should think beyond the keyword research and the rankings aspect of SEO. The shift will be on other quality metrics .
This will draw the line of distinction between a PPC campaign and a SEO campaign. The quality metrics will be CR and the CTR which again will make the client focus on content and the landing page design which will again be a quality step towards a better web world rather that discussing about keywords the client will be open to discuss about content and design. As the people become more net savvy and use mobiles for search ascertaining keywords will become more and more meaningless and redundant as the search query will become more and more long tail and will vary from country to country depending upon the jargon and lingo used in that place.
The search results will be more on the basis of correlation of the quality content on the web rather than the exact match of the keyword or the search query. This will take some time but I think that that this is the direction where search is heading to.
Well this is what I perceive when I listen to Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts say that their focus is on quality search results.
Well, this is my opinion and I think I am the only one speaking in favor of the ‘not provided’ data currently and am prepared for all the thumbs down.
I have written more in detail about ‘not provided’ data on :
Search Queries , Google's Encrypted (Not Provided) Keyword Data And SEO
Totally agree with you in the correlation with point #6 and #8. I hope Google will make a Google+ Insights or Analytics integration for brand pages to track user behaviour, kw, and so on..