Future Searches

A Round up of On-page SEO Factors in 2012

2011 has been an eventful year for all online marketers. We have the Panda, freshness update and some fleeting reference of the Vincent update. And if this is not enough and if I am not wholly wrong, we have some strong signals that 2012 will see the death of links as a signal of rankings. However, the changes are not all about off page optimization. There has been a massive change lurking large over on page optimization process as well. On page optimization is no longer confined to keywords stuffing and all that. What is even more interesting is that Google is now scrapping Meta description as well. But onpage optimization is more than keyword research and meta data writing. Here in this article, we will try to explore some other vital aspects of on page SEO that may have direct impact on ranking in the year to come:

Duplicate Content

Sites with faceted navigations often find that a product page can be accessed via almost infinite number of ways. Since these pages are all basically the alternative versions same page, they will lead to the issue of internal duplicate content. To solve this issue, you need to use rel=“canonical” tag. Set a page as a canonical tag and use this code – <a href=http://www.example.com/rel-canonical.html rel=“canonical”> in the header section of all the other pages. It will solve the issue of internal duplicate content.

Optimizing For Trending Topics

What are Trending Topics?

 A key aspect of marketing is taking ‘the next big thing’ and harnessing its appeal. Trending Topics are the popular subjects, recent news stories and current events that everybody is talking and writing about. Finding and harnessing these topics is an excellent search engine optimization tactic. Trending Topics are a fantastic way to optimize website traffic towards those who are searching for those current topics.

There are typically two different categories of Trending Topics: Short-term and long-term. Short-term trending topics are news stories that will not remain popular for a long amount of time. A prime example of a short-term trending topic would be celebrity news and gossip. A subject such as a celebrity marriage may be a Trending Topic one week but irrelevant and forgotten the next. Long-term trending topics are sustainable issues that have both staying power and growing potential. An example of a long-term Trending Topic is the current ‘green’ trend. A few years ago it was a specialist subject of minimal popularity now it is a huge trend that will continue to grow.

How to find Trending Topics

The Future of Search – SEO or Social?

The web is currently alive with talk of the evolution of social marketing. With new social plugins expected in the form of the “Send” button from Facebook and the “+1” button from Google, it feels like there is a change in the air regarding the way that people find the websites and information they are looking for online.

With social seemingly gaining momentum and arguments over whether you need to hire social media experts circling the web (for http://www.seomoz.org/blog/everyone-should-hire-social-media-experts and against http://shankman.com/i-will-never-hire-a-social-media-expert-and-neither-should-you/), is the future going to see a move away from more traditional forms of SEO in favour of a more socially driven internet experience? If your career is based in SEO, do you need to get more social to survive? Let’s take a look at the state of the industry and see where the future of web marketing lies.

Social

Social networks are enjoying the very peak of success at the moment, with Facebook users increasing all of the time and Twitter gaining more followers as it becomes the ultimate resource for keeping up to date with the latest news stories.

Use Social Media to appear in Real-Time Search

Google and Bing revealed their integration to real-time search and social media by announcing their agreements with Twitter during the Web 2.0 Summit on October 21. Google is aiming to give a better real-time search experience by including real-time Twitter updates in their search results hence users will be able to learn what others are saying about what they’ve been searching for under the same roof. Consider you perform a search about “x brand of freezer”. You will not only see relevant search results but also public opinion about your topic that will give you quick and better understanding about your query.

On the other side, Bing didn’t go far beyond than developing a Bing Twitter search facility similar to the other Twitter search engines in the market. Bing’s new Twitter search feature is currently available in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Arabia, South Africa, and the United States. Those guys are aware of the power of real-time web and took their step in to the social media not later that Google.

What Would You Ask to Google CEO Eric Schmidt?

Last week, I read Michael Arrington’s interesting interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt on TechCrunch regarding the future of search. The questions were simple and cool. The answers were inspiring. I just can’t wait to read the rest of the interview.

So, what people on internet business would ask or tell to Eric Schmidt regarding Google and internet if they are given a chance to do so. If you have questions or anything to say, write them down here now.  I will bring all comments together and maybe we might get the answers of our common interview later.

First question is coming from me: What do you think about the future of SEO?

Come on, say your word.

Global Search Market is Growing

According to comScore, 113 billion searches were conducted in July 2009 globally.

Google sites had 58 percent increase compared to last year and ranked as the leaders within search engines in global search market with 76.7 billion searches conducted and 67.5 percent market share. Google sites are followed by Yahoo sites with 8.9 billion searches and 7.8 percent market share. Yahoo had just 2 percent increase compared to last year and closely followed by Chinese search engine Baidu sites with 8 billion searches 7.0 percent share. Microsoft sites ranked forth worldwide with a 41 percent increase compared to last years data which seems promising for next year.

The overall July 2009 data represents a 41-percent increase versus July 2008 in global search market that is a positive indicator for future search marketing opportunities and e-business.

Rank # 1 for Rising Search Terms

Last week, on 25th of June I went to Facebook and saw one of my friends flash post about Michael Jackson’s cardiac arrest. What a shock! As a fan of M.J. since I was a teenager, I felt so sad and hoped he was happy in his last minutes.

Anyway, I made a search and found out there were not many posts yet on the internet, especially in Google.com.tr news page. There was only one news about Michael Jackson’s death so I thought it is a good time to implement some tests on line.

I create a post on my Turkish bookmarking site Linkopedi and avoid using the main keyword for M.J. death “Michael Jackson öldü” and used synonyms instead. Next day, my post ranked #1 for “Michael Jackson vefat etti” term in Google.com.tr, which is another synonym of “Michael Jackson öldü”, although I never used that “exact match” in my post but used other synonyms instead. I guess if I have used both terms in my post and used the most common terms “Michael Jackson öldü” in my title, I would have traffic coming from the main keyword and synonyms.

What Twitter Trends Are All About

If you use Twitter as a tool in catching up with what’s going on in the world, probably you all experienced “have no clue” moments and it becomes a pain if you are planning to create content related with trending topics to drive high traffic to your website, you need to spend some time on finding out what they are all about.

I came accross to a website today which I found so useful for understanding why trend topics in Twitter are trendy. What the trend is giving user edited short blurbs of each trend topic in top 10 explaining why they are popular. It gives you a list of latest tweets about each popular topic plus related Google news and Flickr photos as well. Check it out and let me know what you you think.

Twitter Search and Trending Topics

I love Twitter and tweeting in Twitter. Some good things about Twitter are: you don’t need to be a celebrity or anything special to contact with people that you always wanted to, you just say your words to everyone all over the world and people pick you up if they think that you are like-minded or they have an interest in your topics, products etc. It keeps you up-to-date with any topic you choose, helps you extending your network .

Twitter recently added 2 new features to it’s structure. Twitter search and trending topics. Both are in my opinion a must-to-have and will keep more users online.

Twitter search is enabling users to search across global tweets from all around the world, build a fresh timeline of updates based on a keyword or phrase.

Users have the functionality to save their favourite search terms by pressing “save this search” button. Those search terms will be displayed as a link under their search box so they only need to click on the link to execute results.

Drive Traffic to Websites by Current Search Trends

If you have a website or blog, I know that you want to drive big traffic and bring leads, generate some ad revenue or just increase your Page Rank and websites’ value.

One way to drive traffic to your website is following trends and generating posts related with search phrases. There are several ways you can monitor real-time (delays are always possible) search trends such as Google Trends, Twitter and Yahoo Buzz.

Google Trends

Google trends give you approximate popular search patterns. You can see a list of most searched 100 queries. It gives search volume index for each pattern, news articles, blog posts, related searches, peak times and locations. I believe it gives great insight for popular search trends as majority of people use Google for search.

Trend topics by Twitter

Twitter is a “a real-time short messaging service” and has recently added search and trend topics features to users homepages. It gives top-ten popular tweet topics and a great global insight as they say:

“As public tweets fly in from around the globe, we analyze them to detect when certain words or phrases occur with higher frequency. These trending phrases are surfaced in the Twitter home page just under the new search box and they’re updated throughout the day.”