If your business doesn’t stay current with search engine optimization trends, you may quickly find your page rank slipping. In the same way that surgeons must continually educate themselves on new technologies and procedures, businesses must continually monitor and adapt to the evolution of SEO. For businesses that are setting goals for 2011, now is the perfect time to consider recent SEO and SEM trends that are ripe for capitalization in the coming year.
Video Search Marketing, or VSM, is a term that you can expect to become as common as SEO. In 2010 there was a substantial increase in the use of this marketing strategy- also referred to as Video SEO. In 2008, video powerhouse YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the second largest search engine in the world. This success is of extreme importance to web-based businesses, because it means that consumers prefer a highly graphic and interactive method of finding what they want on the web.
Businesses that capitalized on this trend in 2010 often achieved great success in driving traffic to their websites using video search marketing. This is because videos that are created and published using keywords, key-phrases, transcription SEO, and strong back-linking are found to boost credibility to the parent website. This is a relatively new addition to the search engine’s algorithms, but it is one that has evolved as a direct response to the way people use the internet.
Local Search expanded significantly in 2010 and will continue to do so throughout 2011 and beyond. Local search listings are extremely beneficial for search engine optimization- even if the majority of your business is conducted at a national or international level. Because there is significantly less competition for keywords and terms at the local level, it is much easier to capture top positions in local search listing results. Once your business is ranking well in local search, major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN will find your site to be more credible and will likely improve your overall search ranking.
Social Media Optimization, also referred to as SMM or Social Media Marketing, is one of the fastest growing areas of internet marketing. Businesses that maintain relationships with their consumers via social media have enjoyed a surge in popular interest, as well as a surge in search results. This is because SMO provides an excellent opportunity for back-linking and referral traffic- critical components to any SEO campaign.
Mobile Web Optimization can be a complex process, but it can also prove exceptionally rewarding. As more and more consumers use their mobile devices to surf the web, mobile search results will become an increasingly more important part of effective search engine optimization. The major search engines already use data from mobile search results to assess and rank your website; so if you’re not mobile web optimized now, this should be a primary focus for 2011.
Smart businesses know that SEO is a forever process- meaning if your business is still alive and viable, then its SEO strategies are not complete.
