We are already well on our way into January and need to make sure our SEO and marketing strategies are suitable for the new year. There are already plenty of SEO predictions 2012 being discussed across forums and blogs, and considering the latest updates to the search engines, it is a good idea to keep them in mind when planning and conceptualising campaigns for the upcoming year. We take a look at the top predictions that your SEO agency needs to think about for 2012.

1. Fresh, Relevant and Enticing Content

Regardless of how exhausted the poor Panda may be, Google is almost certainly going to continue its focus on providing good quality and relevant search results by penalising sites with duplicate or low quality content. So the first of the SEO predictions for 2012 is that more emphasis will be placed on new and relevant content.

Now firstly I completely understand that mistakes happen, but there are minor mistakes and there are major mistakes and this one definitely resides in the major category.

A close friend, who I have helped over the years, phoned me on Monday mentioning that they have lost a lot of major rankings and is there any reason for it? They weren’t likely to be hit by any updates and have been ranking awesomely for 5 years so I thought it was probably a problem between the keyboard and the chair.

Version Five of Google Analytics imposes some interesting new changes to a system which many came to enjoy using in order to track their online campaigns. The updated look and feel has also altered the reporting in a few ways, some drastic, and some for the better.

Google is attempting to layer a Chrome-like look onto all of its tools and analytics is their latest product to receive a new coat of paint. Today we look over these changes and see how you can adapt and then easily transition to the new, shinier Google Analytics v5:

The most glaringly obvious change is the new interface which eschews stark white borders and functional text for an pleasing look which takes a few minutes to get used to; but once you are familiar with the new look analytics, the streamlined aesthetic will assist you in more easily monitoring your campaign. When you first logged into the old look analytics, there was a snapshot of your accounts with bounce rate, visits and so on; the new screen allows you to handily jump straight to the most accessed pages – visitors, traffic sources, content and conversions to be more precise.

Moderator:
Andy Atkins Kruger – WebCertain

Speakers:

Eric Papczun – Performics
John Mueller – Google
Richard Falconer – Bigmouthmedia
Preston Carey – Yandex

Some Golden nuggets from Andy

1. Google is dominant BUT there are other engines to watch. Baidu and Yandex stand out, Seznam, Naver, Bing and Ayna are all up and coming.
2. What is Geo-Targeting? Making sure you see Pages from Germany – Pages in German.
3. How does Google filter the web? a) by google domain, b) by language
4. Google.co.uk vs Google.de search for “Lufhansa” shows very different results. ”Billigflug” Austria vs Germany shows different results.
5. Keyword language tag “Casseroles” in English shows a dish, in French shoes a pot. So keywords have a language tag associated.
6. From targeting choose whether you want to target a country or a language first

No matter what updates happen or what engines you work with one thing common to all is the underlying keyword research.

Moderator:
Mikkel deMib Svendsen

Speakers:
Christine Churchill – Key Relevance
Richard Baxter – SEOGadget
Lasse Clarke Slogaard – MediaCom Denmark
Kevn Gibbons – SEOptimse

Richard Baxter – SEOGadget

This presentation is not so much about collecting data, rather on how to group it and make it actionable. By grouping phrases you can spot priorities in search behaviour that allow you to confidently construct site architecture.

Moderator:
Rob Kerry, Ayima

Speakers:
Richard Baxter, SEOgadget
Martin Beijk, Onetomarket
Jonathan Hochman, JE Hochman & Associates
John Mueller, Google

SMX Coverage - Technical SEO

Richard Baxter – SEOgadget

12 popular, interesting & critical issues we have discovered recently.

1. Thin internal pages / no content and boiler plate content. You need unique text on page, persuasive, well written content to inspire visitors.
2. Resolve poor internal link architecture. Google “seogadget link architecture” for guide on how to.
3. Avoid excessive duplication via paginated navigation.
4. Indexed staging server – Clean up a leaky staging server. 301 redirect to production server.
5. Canonicalization and not just the www. Check for trailing slash and other versions of ww or wwww.
6. Soft 404 header or no 404 response. Google “Live http headers” and look for the Mozilla plugin to get a tool to check header codes.

Welcome to my very own guide to becoming an SEO “Expert”. This “guide” is based entirely on my own experience and is to be used or abused as you wish. For the record, I am not an SEO expert just YET, but I now know what it’s going to take to become one, and I thought I should share this with anyone interested in taking on SEO as a career choice.

I’ve been involved in online marketing for about 3 years now, having started out touching on SEO at a price comparison website. After that I moved on to become a project manager at an online marketing company and was bitten by the SEO bug. I moved to MediaVision to leave the complicated world of project management and get started with pure SEO work.

What a great decision! A year on and I have four of my own clients who are flourishing thanks to the knowledge I’ve gained in SEO, conversion analysis and effective copywriting. Here’s how I got to where I am now as an SEO specialist…

Unless your online business is already a household name, we all know that the only way to poach consumers away from your competitors is to ensure that you have a well SEO’d site that ranks well in Google. Simple enough! The big debate however, is whether or hiring an SEO company is worth it or whether you should simply do your own SEO optimization.

This blog post focuses on the top 5 reasons why hiring a professional SEO company is a much better idea than doing your own SEO. Let’s take a look: