Our 2012 Predictions: SEO

PPC advertising will become more prominent. In the coming year we expect to see Google displaying more paid advertising which will feature seller reviews, star ratings, photos and featured brands in its search results. Therefore, we’d suggest that those of you not currently running a PPC campaign may wish to consider one for 2012.

SEO without social media will become archaic. SEO will no longer exist as a separate, standalone marketing strategy without a fully integrated social media campaign. Social is becoming the primary method of sharing and discovery on the web and sends a clear inclination to Google about what is new, interesting, relevant and of high quality. We’ve already seen the impact that social media has had on SEO in 2011 as Google attaches more and more importance to social signals. Google’s new personalised results are a clear indication of how the trend is set to continue in to 2012 and beyond.

Google + set to force marketer’s hands. Google recently began implementing Google + brand pages into primary search results as well as displaying Google + circles and +1 in the search engines results pages. This clearly represents a great opportunity for those who can successfully integrate and manage their SEO and social media campaigns. On the plus side you can expect to see the effects of manipulation such as exact match domains and link spam reduced however, this will give the already incredibly powerful Google more data about all of our online behaviour and may make it harder for SEO without Google + to be a success.