How SEO will Change in 2011
SEO is always changing, constantly moving with the flow and ebb of the millions of anonymous users online, whose numbers grow every day. This means that as SEO it is no longer, and has not been for quite some time, enough to just keep up – we also have to be able to take some chances and try to look ahead at what is likely to come. This is my end of the year so called report where I also will outline my predictions for 2011.
SEO in 2010
For me SEO in 2010 was a lot about changes, since 2007 SEO slowly started moving and becoming more complex, true enough that Link Building still was the name of the game and that the impact of them still outranked most tricks you could perform Onpage – even the Black Hat techniques (then referred to as ground breaking tricks). 2010 started very slowly but I did manage to note early on that fresh and unique content managed to appear in Google instantly, even on extremely fresh websites, so I conducted an experiment setting up three blogs where I posted unique content every day for 10 weeks and I managed to find out that 475 words or more in an article made the bots come around a lot faster than 474 words did. This remained true for the entire 10 weeks I ran this experiment, but I was unable to replicate it when attempting to redo the experiment, still it has led me to believe that the volume of content also matters.
The dreaded May Day update impacted people in very different ways, for me personally I saw a drop on about half of my websites, but at the same time an equal increase on the rest of the websites, so my overall traffic volume was the same, but my websites traffic levels shifted individually.
I also detected several features and abilities that made SEO work a lot more simple and saved me tons of time. Syndication of RSS feeds can now go further than just the normal reach that most SEO use them for. I have managed to gather quite the arsenal of potent SEO software, services and websites over the years I have been doing SEO. I really don’t know why but it was first in this year that I came up with the idea of using ALL of these software’s combined – even if they did perform exactly the same thing. The end result sprang my websites from a normal overall visit of 40 000 per month to 95 000 visits per month. The bounce rate increased by 10% and the time on my websites dropped by 20 seconds (24%).
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly in 2010
I was hired, enlisted, demanded, recruited and even head-hunted to provide SEO Strategy and Services for several companies in and around London. Here is a recap of my SEO experiences during 2010.
The Bad.
I managed to get around quite a lot in London during 2010, I was a part of saving a company that had accidentally made changes to their website structure, resulting in them losing over 33% of their daily visits – to my dismay however I did not manage to make their management realise that their strategy was about to get them blacklisted by Akismet in time, I did my best but the management was unable to understand the impact this would have as they said at the time “they were happy with the current level of traffic”.
I was hired by a company that was not entirely honest about their motives when they requested an “experienced multi-lingual SEO person”, my initial instinct when trying to locate this company’s website was spot on as they was not really keen on being found more than they already were and merely needed the multi-lingual skills I possessed. I did not object until I got the confirmation directly from the company’s founder himself, a man who had been avoiding my SEO questions from day one. The entire experience resulted in them having a completely useless blog system far outranking their money making website.
I also saved another company in complete disarray after having been dumped by two senior SEO staff in a very short time. When I came on board I manage to calm the clients down and reassure them that SEO really works and that they would be in safe hands (once the company had managed to allocate resources for more SEO staff – but that was something I was prohibited from explaining to the clients as I was under strict orders to make the company appears to have more staff than it really did, something I was fine with as I was promised that more staff would join shortly). The clients was satisfied, but the large portfolio made quality SEO deliverables an extreme challenge and I found myself working 12 – 16 hours per day, even during the weekends just to try and deliver as good as possible results to these clients. When the owner of that company requested that I should put more hours in I told him politely that I could not do so and that I regrettably had to resign him as a client, we shook hands and I handed back the equipment. However after handing over my final invoice this company owner decided to act out and started sending threatening emails, phone calls and refusing to pay the money he owed me. It also came to my attention that he may have continued using my name and kept my email account with his company active to communicate with the clients, forcing me to publicly renounce any participation with that company – In hindsight I know clearly why the two previous SEO staff abandoned their posts.
The Ugly.
Overall my year 2010 in London seems to have attracted a lot of the bad, the incompetent and the malicious, coming from my background we do not engage as much in these “backstabbing businesses” to try and give a brief description to these events – Where I come from we mean what we say and we do what we say we will do, personal politics and rumor spreading and spite is what cowards engage in, I am not interested in your job title, your job position or stepping over someone in the ranks to get ahead – I am here to do a job, learn what I can and with that deliver the best possible, highest quality result I can to the clients.
The Good.
All was not bad during the 2010, I managed to get pleasantly surprised by a complete fresh starter in SEO, prior to meeting me he had only known about SEO for 2 months, that was in May 2010 and he is now heading up as a SEO Team Leader for a company that has websites that get as many as 150 000 daily visits during off seasons and as many as 900 000 daily visits when it is peaking.
We quickly realised that we both had some serious skills in SEO so a competition had to be held. To make a very long story short; We both set out with exactly the same foundation for a website, the same look, the same feel, the same on page enhancements and also some common grounds for regular SEO and after that it all came down to who could do the best to their website in terms of driving traffic and increasing value of the website. During the first few months I was getting my behind kicked at every turn, my strategy got forced to be more reactive than anything else as he constantly came up with ideas, content and tricks that kept driving traffic to his website. The only real thing I had going for my website was my long term goal, which was to prove that Domain Age Does NOT matter any longer. I managed to prove that by the middle of September and not until just some weeks ago did this become public knowledge through Google and Matt Cutts.
In the end I managed to win the competition, my website reached more than 145 000 monthly visits and based on data gathered it would have peaked over 900 000 monthly visits (with about 85% of them unique and 90% organic traffic) if I would have been able to find affordable hosting here in United Kingdom – Regrettably something that does not seem to exist here. I am still looking for dependable hosting, that can take these amounts of traffic without costing me an arm, two legs and three mortgages.
The Future of SEO
Maybe a bit dramatic for a sub head liner in an article, but here goes my predictions for what will happen with SEO in 2011. Just to put a little disclaimer here first – I am not to be held responsible should any of these predictions come true, nor if they never come to pass at all. These are only my predictions that are based on my experience and what I have been able to “determine by tea leaf reading and listening to the wind”.
So without anything else distracting us, here are my predictions for SEO (Online Marketing) in 2011;
1) SEO will move Offline! SEO will become even more of an umbrella for anything related to marketing, it will even branch out more in to the world that is called “Offline SEO”, which includes newspaper and print, TV and Radio. While some may refer to it as “educating the user” it is already set in motion and with the incredible increase of SEO jobs appearing everywhere we will see more and more companies using SEO in the “offline world”.
2) Social Media will dominate 2011! Social Media will be renewed in the sense that companies and search engines catch on to that this is where people “hang out online” and that search engines also “monitor what users click on” is going to increase the importance of what Social Media platforms are doing. This will mean that search engines will put a lot more importance on where users go, rather than where they are being led. SEO will still be able to impact this area, but not as effectively as before (without tapping heavily in to Social Media)
3) Microcosms of Social Communities. While this is already a truth it will be more important for SEO Strategists and Social Media to have a presence within these smaller communities. It has always been important for companies to move their social sphere to where their clients are, rather than trying to convince one client at a time to come to them, but with the development of these social communities companies will now run the risk of being excluded from these places. Much like the “No thank you to commercial post”-signs that people have on their front door to avoid spam. Which leads to.
4) Specific Targeting! Adverts will become even more effective through better understanding of consumers. Google is likely to file a couple of hundred thousand pages of patents all leading up to better targeting of their ads. Other companies will follow suite once this happens and we will soon see a race for who can “promise” the highest amount of CTR.
5) Link Building will work again! While Link Building suffered in 2010 since the May Day update, it will come back in importance again in 2011, but not at the previous levels we have seen before. We will see an even more demanding Google that will put a lot of efforts in determining uniqueness of links, rather than multitude. Page Rank will still carry some effect, but a completely fresh and voluntarily added link to your website will become more potent. It is a bit countering what I mean with Link Building will work again, but it will work as long as you are not the one placing the link (or can find a way of placing links without placing the links).
My plans for 2011.
I have several ideas for world domination during 2011 and the biggest and probably most time consuming will be to build an entire Social Media Empire – Not just something automated (although many aspects of it will be), but rather something real, that will provide users with quality and provide usefulness. Although I am not entirely on the clear about how to achieve the last bit I will find out along the way. You will find out what happened in 12 months, so stay tuned!
My second goal for 2011 is to bring up the amount of traffic relating to SEO for SEO Shepherd, at the moment it is extremely low and I have found that the quality traffic tend to end up here rather from some complicated search than a specific keyword. As such I will devise a better keyword list and focus heavily on driving SEO searching traffic to my website. All of this is going to be organic traffic and I will depending on how much time my major project is taking up be reporting on the progress as much as I can. All I can say for now is that I hope to be able to do a monthly report.
My administrative goal for 2011 is going to be to bring all my projects in under one umbrella, which will be SEO Shepherd, from where I can run and administrate most projects, this will likely include some kind of redesign of my website again, so that I can have room for all the features. Talking of which, any clients of SEO Shepherd will be receiving unique SEO Services and functionalities during 2011, work is still in progress, but once it is complete SEO Shepherd will be offering SEO Services that no other SEO company on the planet is offering. Very exciting times ahead.
But most of these things are not going to happen until the next year has arrived. Until then, Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to everyone – Thank you for a fun 2010!
SEO Shepherd is an experienced SEO Freelancer in London, with experience of SEO since 2003 he provides his clients with valuable insight and he takes great care in ensuring that the clients understand and can see the result of great SEO through clear and easy to understand methods. If you require assistance with online marketing SEO Shepherd can help you with google SEO and much more.
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