SEO Trends in 2012

Andy separated his projections into SEO Trends in 2012 and I am going to add my two cents with regard to general trends. First, he predicts that many of the link-building and baiting sites won't be happy as their place in SEO will diminish.

I tend to agree with this; however, I don't care for using link farms due to the fact I like to generally participate in my social network communities. I am glad to see that Google is moving away from this and will be promoting those of us who utilize more real-time or relevant content driven publications. This is great for bloggers and the like.

He then goes on to talk about Quality over Quantity. Quality has always produced better results, in my opinion, but to have the SEO Trends in 2012 leaning toward Google's promotional efforts is a big help to the true originators of relevant content within the blogging and social network communities.

SEO Trends in 2012 will tend to move toward SMO (Social Media Optimization). This couldn't be a more true statement. Shelly Kramer wrote about the phenomenal growth of social media in a great post with an interesting graphic that I highly recommend you look at as it helps to create a visual map and the SEO Trends in 2012. I've included some of her stats to help put the size of social media into perspective:

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world's 3rd largest, preceded by China and India.


• Need some persuading when it comes to the power of social networking and your job search? Fifty-three percent of employers research potential candidates using social networks. We've said it once, we'll say it again: be careful about what you put on Facebook (and everywhere else!)


• Between 2010 and 2011, Twitter's tweets per day have grown 252 percent - from 27 million per day to 95 million per day.


• If you need help convincing your company or brand to jump on the social networking bandwagon, consider these company usage statistics: 71 percent of companies use Facebook, 59 percent use Twitter and 33 percent use YouTube. Only 6 percent use MySpace.


• The number of companies that have launched corporate blogs has steadily increased from 16 percent in 2007 to 43 percent in 2012.


• Flickr members upload 3,500 images per minute.

The stats above just touch on some of the justifiable reasons to witness the projections Andy wrote about, so I digress... He goes on to talk about CRO's (Conversion Rate Optimization) and how that will be a main factor in SEO Trends in 2012. Conversions are what make the wheels go round. They are how companies earn an income. This is directly related to what we talked about above with regard to submitting 2real-time and relevant information.

With Google+, the criteria is going to change. To what? I don't know; however I agree with Andy once again said that many SEO techniques will need to be tweaked and it will definitely add some confusion among us. If some of the best SEO practitioners are going to be confused, just imagine how us "little guys" are going to feel. This just means we have to step up to make this happen. You know me, as long as you enjoy what you do, you never have to work a day in your life, right?..riiiight. LOL

Some of the things he mentions pertains to Speech Searches and QR Codes and I agree with them, as I use all of that now. Some of this isn't well-known yet, but it sure will be. I understand there has been some challenges regarding the QR codes,

(btw-QR stands for Quick Response and it's a square looking box with a bunch of digital markings, like a barcode, that you can use on your business card or something similar that will contain information to your website, blog or whatever electronic promotional content you want. All someone has to do is take a picture of it with their iPhone or Android phone through a free app like ScanMe and voila... you'll instantly be redirected to whatever information is read by the scan),

but there are changes-a-comin' so be on the look out if you need to take your business to the next "e" level. This nicely segue's into mobile media.

One of the largest SEO Trends in 2012, in my opinion, will be mobile search. Between larger screens on the smart phones and the user-friendly phone applications, along with the expectations that the 400 million plus shipments of smart phones will outpace sales of the computer by the end of 2011, according to quora.com and RBC Capital, a firm focusing on mobile smartphone research.

Bing and Google will utilize their strong positions within the social communities to enhance search ability focusing on strong ties to social networks. Andy points out that many people will have to be even more concerned with regard to their privacy; therefore, more attention will be paid to social media optimization. This roughly means that website owners will begin to fall to the wayside as prominent and continual users of socially integrated platforms, such as blogs and Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, will be dominating the search engines.

If you would like to learn more, Andy goes on to specifically address his predictions with regard to blogs and search analytic's. I wanted to make sure I gave you some good food for thought as we move into this new year. I hope you're able to get a better picture for the SEO Trends in 2012 from my post and thanks for the informative posts of Andy Kinsey and Shelly Kramer as they provided great information to make this post possible.

Have a happy new year and I look forward to a challenging and exciting new year as we all get to see the SEO Trends in 2012 come to fruition.