In a recent article, SEO guru Rand Fishkin takes a look back at how his 2010 SEO predictions fared and prepared a new list for 2011 as well. Find the original article here: http://www.seowebhosting.net/seo-hosting-blog/7-predictions-for-seo-in-2011/
Overall, Rand’s past year predictions have been relatively accurate. With a couple of exceptions, he hit the nail on the head in saying that Google’s going to further hone it’s treatment of Tweets and predicting that Google’s dominance would continue to grow closer to 80% of market share through the year. He was less accurate in predicting that SEO spending would continue to rise dramatically and that Conversion Rate Optimization would soon be thrust to the forefront of the SEO industry.
Offering 7 new SEO predictions for 2011, Rand assumes that some trends in the industry will continue. His predictions are:
1. Someone will finally prove that clicks and number of visitors to a site improve the site’s organic rankings. Through search testing or even the engines themselves, we’ll all have confirmation that types of clicks and visitors affect the algorithmic method which will in turn affect the SEO hosting industry.
2. Google Maps will (finally!) incorporate some type of filtering and sorting system for data queries. In an attempt to keep up with Yelp’s superior review functions, Google’s going to have to add additional filters for features like price, proximity, etc.
3. “Social Search” will become an even more important player in SEO. This will come in the form of increased search results created by social networks and will almost certainly involve the big players like Twitter and Facebook.
4. Referral Strings will be used by Google to signal ranking strength to marketers. Google may even go so far as to start offering Google Analytics data to track these strings, but only if they make them more standardized than they are now.
5. Search will not be heavily impacted by Mobile Search and neither will SEO. Mobile will still be important but it won’t be a game changer. Instead, searching will continue to merge platforms and it’s all going to continue to fall under the SEO umbrella.
6. SEO software is about to take off. Once tools deemed “dreams” by SEO marketers, the functionality of products from companies like RavenTools and Search Metrics will start to be seen as a necessity. Search Marketers will have more software at their disposal than ever before as well as more options for SEO hosting products.
7. Someone will come up with a better, more general way to describe “SEO.” Rand himself says it best,
“…with the search engines expanding so far afield in the signals they consider and the verticals/media types they include, I have to face facts – SEO today calls for much more of a talented generalist than a pointed specialist. We need to be savvy about and good at so many facets of organic web marketing that to call us “SEOs” is less empowering and more limiting than in the past.”
These seven predictions make up Rand Fishkin’s guesses for where SEO is headed in 2011. He promises to check back in early 2012 to grade himself on how his predictions fared.
