There are lots of speculations right now as to how SEO will look like in 2013. Surely worth debating as there are lots of exciting changes coming up. I rather cut off from the most extreme opinions that ‘SEO is dead’ – these claims are annoying me. SEO will be an industry to be in as long as people keep searching for information on Google.
Ok, so let us go through what might change and what is likely to stay same next year.
Content Marketing
Yes, this is not anything new. Content marketing existed for a long time and most (good) SEO guys will be using it in their campaigns. Effectively it all starts with high quality content, doesn’t it? My main point is that in 2013 it will become even more important to focus on good reputable content in first place. Google is currently fighting very aggressively cheap and low quality content and links (7 Panda and 4 Penguins we faced in 2012 – am I counting all of them?). Well ok, name it spam fighting but how many interesting blogs and websites were left behind? The gap between good and average bloggers is becoming higher than ever. Either you follow up this trend and learn how to create quality content or you stay behind the competition.
Multi channel approach
First of all and probably the most important one is that SEO will be more and more challenging and will require utilisation of multiple channels to achieve online success. Social media, content strategies and PR will all have to go together to develop cutting edge and effective SEO strategies.
Social Media and AuthorRank
If I was to name the most important change in SEO in 2012 it was mostly about adjusting to ‘Search Plus Your World’ algorithm update. It required a completely different model of thinking, rankings stopped being as permanent and tangible as they used before. Now you could expect completely personalised search results for each logged on Google user and this exposes us to brand new challenges. One of the most natural follow up was an increased industries interest in Google+. This seemed to be encouraged by Google with authorship implementation and author image being displayed next to snippet. It was all preparation for what will play a more and more significant role as a damping PageRank factor: AuthorRank becomes a way for Google to link content with its original author. The more reputable authors are more likely to create quality and valuable content.
The topic of PageRank dumping factors is not new and there were some interesting research publications in this area (PageRank for ranking authors in co-citation networks).
Microformats
We have already seen how important it began to be able to present your content with microdata markups. Rich snippets show clearly that Google wants and will encourage developers to put them in place. And yet it is well worth it: Rich snippets do present themselves better and get much higher click through rates. Why is Google doing that? With microformats it is much easier to group data together and understand relationships between various objects in the internet.
Link Building in 2013
As long as the general direction for Google is a growing focus on social media I believe 2013 for most SEOs will be still built on activities around link building. Citation rule will remain in place, but more and more attention will be required on obtaining authority links. The understanding of authority links will undergo a shift as well – authority links will be now no longer based on pure old-school SEO parameters like domain or page authority. Social signals will start playing a crucial role on how valuable a link is. Back links from pages with many social shares or many clicks through will have more impact than others.
Co-Citation rule and significantly reduced impact of anchor text
Up to now all link building activities were focused on building diversified portfolio of back links and especially after Penguin update ensuring broad coverage of partial match variations of main phrases. Next year might bring yet another challenge with Google pushing strongly co-citation. There are predictions co-citation will eventually replace anchor texts completely.
From other important changes there will be an increasing focus on local search and brands.
What do you think will change in SEO next year? Do you agree or disagree with the points above? Please share your view in comments.
