Trends Impacting SEO

“Top Shelf SEO: Hot Topics and Trends”, Stephan Spencer, Greg Boser, and Mike Grehan discuss trends continuing to impact search results.  Below is a quick list:

1. UGC – User Generated Content has huge impacts on your rankings. Google place / local listing is impacted by UGC.
2. Text on an HTML page is still very important.
3. Linkage data and link anchor text is crucial.
4. Social Media, Tagging, bookmarking, rating, etc is more important than ever.
5. SEO should drive your Social Media Strategies. It’s not a social media strategy if it isn’t driven by SEO needs. This is the backbone of all strategies.
6. Watch out for duplicate content. It can impact ranking negatively.
7. According to Marketing Sherpa study, short URLs get clicked on twice as often as long URL’s.
8. Link in the body has more value because it is surrounded by text.
9. Identify your non-performing pages, and make them work for you or get rid of them.
10. Connected Marketing: People are using several tools to search. It is about change in Consumer Behavior. Remember all the tools while marketing i.e. iPad, GPS, PC, TV, Mobile Phone, iPhone.
11. Page Rank has no real value. Use it to gauge importance of various pages. Interior pages should not have a blank value.

It’s important to know what are the crucial factors impacting search and be able to tailor strategies around these guidelines.  Stay ahead of the game!

Speakers:
Stephan Spencer, Vice President, SEO Strategies, Covario
Greg Boser, President, 3 Dog Media
Mike Grehan, VP, Global Content Director, Incisive Media

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Contributed by: Benu Aggarwal and Zulema Romero, Milestone Internet Marketing