2010 looks like it will be a big year for SEO (search engine optimization) with a lot of the web trends of 2009 such as Twitter making its way into SEO. 2009 seemed to be a dismal year for most every industry including SEO. With the US economy picking up and the ever increasing awareness of technology, we are looking forward to leaving 2009 behind us.
Let’s get right to the good stuff.
- Increased Budgets for SEO – Companies will focus more of their marketing budget on SEO. According to Forrester in their report on interactive marketing tactics, the top three areas where marketers feel there is the most potential over the next three years is social media, online video, and SEO. The bottom three is radio, newspaper, and yellow page ads. 2010 may prove the best year yet to be in the SEO business.
- Binary Search Engine World – Google continues to grow its market share and Bing and Yahoo slip in the latest studies. With Bing to provide organic search results for Yahoo in the near future and the “all but” merger of the two, expect the Yahoo search engine to be marginalized. This is going to leave us with about an 80/20 split between Google and Bing with Google in the lead. This could be a good thing for SEO experts. Looking at and comparing search results from Google and Bing, Bing may be producing more relevant search results. If Bing can continue to produce high quality results 2011 may be their year. In the end search users just want to find what they are looking for in the fastest way possible.
- Google Gonna Keep its Traffic – Traditionally Google wanted to send traffic to the most relevant web pages based on search terms. These days and the trend will continue to grow, Google is keeping more of it traffic. If you were to search “weather 37412”, Google will give you the current conditions and a 4 day forecast without ever leaving the search engine. You can get the latest baseball scores, track your shipments, and even sample music from your favorite artists. Expect more of this type of information to be available. Bing is also trending this way in much the same information.
- Yahoo Site Explorer to Disappear – One of the best SEO tools available for free, Yahoo Site Explorer, will vacate the cloud and leave all the SEO experts who relied on it in the dust. I believe this will be a product the Binghoo phenomena. Surely other tools will emerge to take the place of good ole Site Explorer.
- Real Time Search will Burst the Bubble – All the rage for the last few weeks is that Google is integrating real time search from Twitter. My opinion is that this is truly diabolical in the sense that these “real time results” at the top of the search results pollute the organic results on the first page. It’s akin to digging out bones from a plate of fish. If Google really wants to include these results, they are going to have to find a better way. This whole Twittergate debacle reminds me of the early days of SEO when you could be at the top of Infoseek just by submitting the freshest page. I understand that Google is testing, and I hope they see the light. I’m hoping that the introduction of Caffeine will solve this problem…
Honorable mention: Google Caffeine – It’s a little too early to see how Caffeine will affect SEO, so I have left it out of the top 5. Early results are that search engine ranking position (SERP) will not be affected by Google’s new technology in a tangible way. This technology is expected to increase Google speed in both finding content and displaying pages. Time will tell how it really affects SEO, but let’s hope that it sorts out those absurd Twitter tweets.
There are plenty other things happening in the world of SEO that will affect how web pages get ranked and how we use SEO in general, but these are a fair representation of the 5 trends that will be most apparent. If there is one thing that you can count on in SEO, it’s that nothing ever stays the same.
Excellent article. What about Dmoz?
@chris: I’m pretty sure DMOZ is done with. I havent gotten a site accepted in years.
I agree that Google will add more of those “stay in the search results” results. They’re petty nifty though, and I welcome them.
I’m not sure about Google Caffeine though.
Thats right. 2010 is a year where more and more people are becoming aware of the meaning of SEO. They are starting to learn SEO and use it for the better ranks of their sites.
thx for your new SEO tips
When is the Yahoo Site Explorer supposed to die out? Sometime this year?
Great tips – thanks a lot. I think one thing that your pointed out very well is that most companies simply dont give SEO the budget it needs and deserves…its still not seen as a powerful way to massively increase business…
Looking forward to the increased spending on SEO! A have noticed that a lot of businesses are starting to realise that being in the Yellow Pages doesn’t cut it for ‘marketing’ anymore.
Great Seo tips – No BS and honest stuff. Cheers
The point which really stands out for me is “Google are going to keep its traffic”. Every day google grow more and more powerful and this is somewhat of a worry but we need to understand how to best work with them to get the results we want.
Where can I find more info on the ‘Real-Time Search’ / Twitter changes? I didn’t think that Twitter was really widely enough used (or representative of the average searcher) enough to trump the organic site search results!
Thankfully, Google scaled this back and you can usually on see it with trending search events.
The increase of people using the web as to get information or even products that they need also increase business minded people to create websites that can supply the needs of these people. There was a research that shows the growth of people who rely on the web, and this makes SEO indemand in the current year of 2010.
2010 is definitely an interesting year for internet marketers. Doesn’t look like caffeine affected much, but the Mayday update did. I think if people just stick to the fundamentals of SEO, they’ll always be favoured by the search engines. Lot of potential going forward!
2010 is proving to be a promising year. The web is becoming a fundamental part in more and more people’s lives. It’s the way to go and more and more businesses are realizing this and getting on board.