2012 SEO Predictions

I believe 2012 will be a very exciting year, especially in the SEO landscape. I think there will be a lot of great things to come for white-hat SEO’s in the world of search. My top 5 predictions in regards to SEO for 2012 are:

1. Google + will play a major role in SEO.

For Marketers this will have an unequivocal effect  for marketers that do SEO and Social Media successfully. Use of Google’s social network will be able to tie rankings factors and social media together like never before, albeit decreasing manipulation and spam.

2. SEO and Social Media will depend upon each other.

Successful SEO campaigns with out social media will become part of the past. Social Media factors are becoming more prevalent in the search engines ranking algorithms but more importantly Social Media is the primary way people are sharing and discovering information.

3. Google will crack down on devious link spam.

I predict Google will roll out a panda-esque attack on link spam in the coming year from their search quality team. We will begin to see Google’s algorithm depreciate the value of less respectable links to give users more quality search results.

4. Pintrest.com will be the next social network to watch for attracting new customers.

I believe this new social network has some great potential for marketers. People use Pintrest to find inspiration for their purchasing decisions. Finding a way to leverage this to share information about your business and attract potential customers will be beneficial to many business, small and large.

5. Search Advertising will become more prevalent.  

We will be seeing more and more emphasis on paid search ads in Google. Which will push organic results further down the page. The most shocking new feature is Google’s capability to pre-populate a logged in users email into a submit form with in a PPC ad. These types of ad’s are seldom but we predict we will be seeing more of them in the coming year.