SEO predictions for 2009

[asha]

Its quite interesting... the by experts in SEO industry. Flash designs will get a better new platforms from Google and Yahoo.

Asha

[DJ]

This post was ok... but really only shortly summarized what we can forecast for 2009. I agree that video will become even more important and that social search is right in front of us.

[oneelephantpickle]

So far what industry had heard Matt cutts talk about has come true, the first was personalized search and the rest of the changes to follow can be summed up broadly as 'user experience', this is what he says in a webcast in late 2008 "central focus for SEO’s should be traffic and conversions". Enhancing the user experience adds value and improves the image of SEO industry which was becoming more like snake oil peddlers known more for empty rankings which added nothing significant to the world knowledge. We have to accept it in 2009 that internet is no longer a sub-culture its mainstream. People are using it to make life and world changing decisions based on the information available on the net. In short its global community.
Google is aware of the responsibility that comes with being the top dog. " Along with great power comes great responsibility this is my blessing and this is my curse" -spiderman.

Google is doing all it can to diversify the results and that what is expected from the website in words of matt cutts again " With all these innovations, the game is changing for SEO’s. Matt says they are now marketers and need to embrace universal search by integrating video, images, books, etc. Matt reports how black hat SEO is “getting more malicious” and shamelessly illegal ".
Why diversify and repack the information in your websites in different forms. Melissa mayers ( vice president of user experience at Google) answered the question yesterday?

Google will be focusing less on 'keywords' and more on questions. Querying information using keywords is something learned by our generation and internet savy people. As more & more age segments get online and internet penetrates wider and deeper the so called 'keywords' will get longer and longer and begin looking more like questions. So its no longer keywords but ideas or theme and coverage of a topic.

Paraphrasing her words... search engine sees questions as an important development when it comes to finding information on the web.
She also indicated that Google is looking to integrate information from videos, books and online news into search, as well as harness the power of users' relationships with others "to understand which news to direct them to [and] which local events to direct them to"

How does Google intend to harness the power of connectivity? through Social networking and semantics net.

Its interesting just as harnessing and making the web more usable using semantics is gaining momentum there is gaining interest in HTML 4 elements

Such as

* <ol> - ordered list
* <ul> - unordered list
* <li> - list item

* <dl> - definition list (also can be used for dialogs)
* <dt> - definition term (also can be used for speaker in dialogs)
* <dd> - definition description (also can be used for speaker's words in dialogs)

tags for adding structure to phrases:

* <em> - emphasis
* <strong> - stronger emphasis
* <dfn> - the defining instance of the enclosed term (as mentioned above)
* <code> - fragment of computer code
* <samp> - sample output from programs, scripts, etc.
* <kbd> - text to be entered by the user
* <var> - an instance of a variable or program argument
* <cite> - citation or reference to other sources
* <abbr> - abbreviated form (e.g., WWW, HTTP, URI, Mass., etc.)
* <acronym> - acronym (e.g., WAC, radar, etc.)
* <address> - as mentioned here

these and more HTML tags can be used more extensively by the semantic aggregators and also make ur website content more structured & visible even without the ranking, thanks to coming power of semantic technology. To be persuaded that we need to implement this for our on page process follow the discussion here with examples.



shall we call this coincidence or timing. We also have new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in Dec, 2008.

Follow the discussion here

[DJ]

Holy Crap Nitin - talk about the founddations of a great blog! Very interesting post my friend.

[Robert]

<IMO>
Nitin, a very nice gathering of information. I completely agree and have read many of the source articles you reference.

Bottom line OLD school SEOers are dead in the water. They must now face conversion, marketing, engagement, bounce rate reduction, etc. Keywords are not to be focused on...ideas, themes and questions are!

</IMO>

A great post Nitin,

Rob

[Thomas]

Great post Nitin. Anything with a Spiderman quote is bound to be epic!

[DJ]

hahahaha... nice one. SEO will certainly be making an even bigger mark this year!

[cyriac]

Oh- what an informative article Nitin- We are seeing the changing face of Google's search methods that lays more emphasis on questions and answers in preference to mere key words. Hoping for more such elaborate and informative articles from you wise guy.

[oneelephantpickle]

Ha ha Thomas i understand i quoted Spiderman like once people quoted great public figures.

But thats the nature of reality in the present world- we have physical, metaphysical and virtual reality. Its authoritative like the former two were.

cartoons & animation are powerful communication tools that unlock creativity, simplify complex ideas and make us see ideas in imaginary pictures.