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Forget SEO trends, how do you stay ahead of the curve?
Naturally, a strong marketing strategy is a proactive strategy. Everyone is talking about tracking SEO trends, but how do you make sure you're ahead of the crowd and on top of the search marketing game?
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8 Answers
Read, read, read. There are sites out there that are constantly pushing new theories for what is relevant to SEO, as well as trends happening, some of these sites are even direct from the search engines themselves (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/), to some leading voices in the industry (http://seomoz.orghttp://searchenginewatch.com/ and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ are a couple good starts).
You will start to see some topics trend up or down and can be hot or controversial such as LSI or LDA algorithms, or you will see interviews that confirm that social media trends are used and influence the search rankings (such as both Google and Bing confirming the use of Twitter in search results). As well as testing of these announcements to understand how much of an impact each of these have on your rankings.
You may also see topics on mobile search currently being hot as well. I am surprised to see very little discussions on site search as of yet. Most sites I know of where site search is deployed it is a heavily used tool, yet there is very little discussion.
CRO conversion rate optimization is another trending topic today, where it's not just enough to get the clicks but what are you doing to keep those clicks? minimizing bounce rate, and the impact it has on relevancy is something else I think will continue to trend more as a relevant site should either satisfy a search term, or limit bounce rates, and I think the engines will be looking at this as a relevancy factor even more so.
Then you have your big changes, that you can see right away. When Google introduced instant search, and previews, it trended hot right away. How does the results leading you through your search showing several results as you type impact your site visibility? How does a poorly designed site impact clicks from the preview rendered?
At the risk of rocking the boat, I want to suggest that we need to look at the far more essential question of what is our next strategy after SEO. Increasingly traditional SEO strategies are being used by everybody (including scammer, spammers, etc.) and while certainly important to insure appropriate ranking, I don't think they will play a dominant role in the future.
If I were to rub the little crystal ball, I would theorize that search engine operators will soon begin applying algorithms that measure far beyond traditional SEO factors. We are already seeing signs of utilizing factors such as reputation of the site, organization, page by sources that you have no control over from blogs to facebook. I suspect that in order to counteract spammers and scammers effectively operators will begin leveraging fairly advanced artificial intelligence and algorithmic approaches. I think the key trend will be that others will begin to influence your SEO more than anything you do and to that end a key strategy going forward is to insure that your house is in order. Complaints, negative feedback on trusted sites, poor rankings in industry comparisons, twitter or other social media feedback could all begin having a heavier impact on your SEO than anything you do. I want to add that I think this is only the beginning. Given the volume of data that is available for analysis and the increasing triviality of computing power, some of the top mathematicians and computer scientists working for Google, Microsoft, and others are hard at work inventing and proving next generation strategies.
To truly stay ahead of the crowd, avoid the entire SEO Blog Echo Chamber and go build a ton of sites and collect data. You should only do this if you already have a strong base of SEO and online marketing fundamentals. If you don't have those, don't even try to "jump ahead of the curve". It's tough enough assimilating what's already happened.
There is growing difficulty in optimizing a site that doesn't exhibit the strongest inherent value to the searcher. The most valuable strategy will continue to be creating valuable and well organized content relevant to the search terms. That means being the best you can be, not to be confused with having the best keywords or headlines or most current tricks.
Unfortunately, that strategy doesn't help a site that is not willing to be the best, but simply wants an SEO firm to "get me to the top" without substantive changes to content.
I agree with the above posters in that keeping up with the curve involves getting your daily / weekly digest of news. You don't need to confine yourself to SEO specific sites like SEO MOZ (which can be a bit boring) - also check out general tech trends sites like Mashable.com or TechCrunch.com which tend to cover a wide swath of 'Web 2.0' news.
You can also check out the blogs of local SEO companies - who for their own site optimization are obligated to cover the latest trending topics in the industry.
Reading SEO expert blogs (http://webbiquity.com/search-engine-optimization-seo/40-of-the-top-seo-guides...) and conducting your own experimentation are both essential activities, but the most important tactic is to think like a search engine engineer, and then build your site and content accordingly.
The goal of search engineers is to return the most valuable, relevant content for each query. So, once you've done your keyword research, for each critical phrase or set of terms, ask yourself: what is the searcher really looking for here? Explanatory information? Comparisons? Are they likely ready to take some sort of action at this point?
Then focus on providing that. Of course, SEO basics like a well-crafted title tag, proper use of headings, external and internal links and the like are all important, but the most crucial consideration is meeting the searcher's need as ideally as possible.
And the best aspect of this approach is that it will never become obsolete; while specific tactics may change (e.g., stuffing the meta keywords tag full of repetitive terms worked for a while, in the distant past), addressing the searcher's needs with quality content will always be an effective approach to SEO.
To speak to Simon's post, first, let's clarify that SEO is no longer about keyword optimization, and hasn't been for some time. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization", therefore any strategy that helps your website be returned in organic, non-paid search results is SEO.
To answer the question, staying ahead of the curve will take daily research, experimenting, and creativity. There's no one right way to do this - online marketing is a competitive space with a brain crushing array of options, some of which where predicting outcome/ROI can be tricky.
At Anvil & Formic Media, we stay ahead of the curve by hosting a weekly "Big Picture" strategy meeting, where we discuss the latest search engine and social media marketing news, trends, tactics and technology. We recap the highlights on our blog and other industry websites (sample links below). Secondarily, we read blogs, articles, books and attend industry webinars, events and conferences.
Related Links:
http://www.socialsearchmarketer.com/2571/anvil-2011-sem-predictions/
http://www.anvilmediainc.com/search-engine-marketing-articles.html
http://www.anvilmediainc.com/events.html
I hope this helps.
KjL
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