SEO Trends - What 2011 Holds for Us

With 2010 nearing an end, we are all looking ahead optimistically towards 2011. In the world of web technology, we have not witnessed any major upheaval this year. Being an ardent web surfer and a webmaster it's all but natural for me to become curious about what holds for us in 2011.
The most interesting area to look forward to is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), without which no website under the sun passes the fitness test. The SEO domain has got a tremendous boost owing to the growing popularity of social networking sites and various improvements in search technology. In this article and the following one, I will share with you some of the SEO trends that you can look forward to next year.

Social Media Optimization

Close on the heels of Search Engine Optimization, comes Social Media Optimization, the newest incarnation of SEO. I know that you are not getting surprised any longer by this new term, thanks to the tremendous popularity of social networking sites worldwide. Webmasters should not consider Social Media Optimization as a distraction from their normal SEO efforts; but this new activity should be deployed to boost a site's SEO prospects.

Social Media Optimization activities may include back links from individual social media sites, development of a credible profile on these sites, and targeting towards real time searching. The greater impact you can cast on the social networking sites, the greater your SEO prospects will improve in the coming year.
Website Speed and On-Page SEO Activities

There are some webmasters who rely on off-page optimization rather than on-page optimization. But in 2011, you should give equal, if not more importance to on-page optimization. Most importantly, the site load time is going to be the litmus test.

Google, in its effort to improve websites' performance has decided to penalize those sites that take a longer load time. Simultaneously, improper use of Meta tags in website coding will have a negative effect on major search engines in the coming year.

The Web Is Going Mobile

Smartphones are getting more and more ubiquitous and people have started surfing websites on their mobiles more than ever. This trend is going to increase in 2011. The number of mobile Internet users has touched 90 million already. The need for optimizing your site for mobile users will naturally be more pressing. Your site needs to be optimized for relevant mobile applications, such as Google's Mobile Search Services and mobile keyword tool in AdWords.

Google itself has stated that mobile search results takes precedence over desktop search results when it comes to mobile searching. This underscores the need to invest your time and money towards mobile SEO in the coming year.

Online Videos

Video is the buzzword today. Your site needs to be powered with YouTube video clippings, one of the most popular media on the web today. If you upload a video on YouTube against a particular keyword, your site gets a better chance to be "visible" by leading search engines like Google against that keyword.

One cannot ignore the growing popularity of YouTube. It has outdone Yahoo! To become the second largest search engine in U.S. Therefore, putting up a relevant video on YouTube not only enhances your site's SEO prospects in Google, but boosts up the SEO prospects in YouTube itself.
Personalized Search

One of the important trends in online search features is personalized searching. This trend will get further intensified in 2011. Google, the global leader, has in fact made personalized search the default option. Unless users opt out of this default option, they are likely to experience only personalized search features from Google. Personalized search results are based on the user's web surfing habits.

The probability of your website showing up on the search results is going to be lesser, unless your site is one of the frequently accessed sites by the user. If your site is widely popular and users access it frequently, you are likely to enjoy better search positioning on the days ahead. Else, you need to build up your site's branding (by other means) and entice users to access the site from time to time.

Local Search

Experiments with local search were seen in 2010 and the trend is likely to continue well into the next year. Leading search engines like Google has started depending on local search listings. As a webmaster, you should emphasize more on improving your site's SEO abilities in local search engines. Dominating the local listings is pretty easier as there is lesser number of players. Big search engines will then filter the top results into their search lists and you will get an automatic entry.

The outcome is debatable if you have hosted your site in a different country to grab the advantage of global search. Generically, it is advisable to host your site in the same country where your business operates in order to take the most advantage of local search listings.

So folks, these were some of the SEO trends for the upcoming year. Pay attention to these if you want to retain or improve your site's search-friendliness.

Top 10 Tips for Local Search Engine Optimisation

Punch Above your Weight Online - Localised search results have recently experienced a major overhaul within the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) which has resulted in a fantastic opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses.

Local search results were previously relegated to a small map, which would appear within the first page of results, but now they enjoy first page domination for local search terms.

The benefit of this to small businesses is that they can now appear above their much larger revivals who are relegated to the last few results on page one of Google.

Don't miss out on local search results; they're your next customers. Here's 10 tips to help you capture them:

1. Claim your Google Places listing - it's easy to do and if one doesn't exist for your business then you can quickly and simply create one. What is it? A Google Places listing is effectively a profile attached to Google's local search results. It is important because Google ranks these profiles above all others in their new first page local search results.

7. Get your reviews and testimonials on the web - no doubt you will already have testimonials collected from customers, these need to go online as well as in other marketing materials. Put a process in place of asking satisfied customers to review you online if at all possible. Pen a short email with instructions of where and how you would like the review left and send this to all satisfied customers.

8. Use a local phone number instead of a 0800, 0845 or 0870 - this again refines your location making it easier for search engines to place you within a specific region.

9. Target local keywords - when link building make sure you target some local variations on your keywords in the anchor text of your links.

10. Use your supply network - think about local search as being similar to networking. No doubt you will already have a network of local contacts, associates and suppliers who all allow your business to thrive. Simply transfer this network online by linking to each other.

Local search is set to dominate first page results for all local search terms. Small, local businesses should take advantage of this by implementing some or all of the tips above which will allow them to compete with much larger businesses who have until now monopolised the first page results by investing in aggressive SEO campaigns.

Make Your Web Pages Faster For Your Users and Search Engines

In the world of the modern web it is vital that you keep your web pages fast for your users to see and use, this is also true for search engines as Google is now going to take into consideration load times when indexing websites.

It can be very difficult to make these web pages smaller and faster with clients requiring high quality images/ graphics and dynamic effects such as videos and slideshows. There are however a number of things a web designer can do to make sure that the website is at top speed.

Image compression

It is important to make sure that any images used within the website are at their smallest file size without losing quality. There are many graphics programs out there that can help you to re-size your images so that they are smaller. It is also important to use the correct formats such as GIF and PNG.

The GIF format (Graphics Interchange Format) has been very popular on the web for a number of years due to its ability to create very small file sizes.

You do not really want to be creating large images through this format as you will see a loss in quality but for buttons, small images and backgrounds it is ideal.

The PNG format (Portable Network Graphics) has taken over the GIF in recent years due to its great compressed quality and low file size. PNG is great for logos and other large sized graphics.

External CSS Files

CSS is a very powerful web tool and when used well it makes websites look amazing. It can however slow down the performance of a website if it is used internally (inline) because it gives the browser too much code to read through at once. The best way to use CSS is externally, linking it in to your HTML.

Every great website needs a good style sheet or two but there are many websites relying on 4 or 5 style sheets which slows down performance and the way a search engine crawls the site. Try and keep CSS files down to a minimum and make sure they are external.

External JavaScript

JavaScript works wonders on a website helping it to look and feel more dynamic but just like CSS, if it is used too much internally it can slow down your webpage and give search engines too much code to look through when crawling your site.

Use JavaScript files externally and link them into your HTML for optimum performance.

Unnecessary code

When looking through the code of a website there is very often areas of code that really do not need to be there. This could be due to various developers and designers working on the same project or a website that has had changes over the years.

Unnecessary code like this makes the browser read things that are unimportant or non existent, which will slow the load time of the site. Just take the time to read through the code and strip out any areas that aren't needed.

Server

Good hosting is key to the speed of any website. Make sure that your server is up to date with the latest processors and can handle the traffic your website is getting. If you have a website that attracts thousands of hits then shared hosting will just slow down the website and make it unavailable to others, this is where a dedicated server is needed.

Keeping a check on your hosting can really speed up your website and keep users happy.

Script compression programs

It is a good idea sometimes when running various scripts and style sheets to run them through compression software which will compress JavaScript, CSS and HTML files to ensure that they are as small as possible. This will help to make the webpage fast.

There is one problem when doing this however, if you use a program like Mozilla Firefox's Firebug to inspect your code, it can be hard to find the exact area you need. This is because it tends to bunch things like CSS together as so it can be hard to spot the areas you wan tot change.

How Can Twitter Improve Your SEO

What do you do when you come across a social media site with over 190 million users and 65 million daily posts? Turn it into a website promotion tool, that's what.

Twitter links are nofollow, but that doesn't mean that you can't use the social network for website promotion. On the one hand, many SEO experts say that Twitter isn't a ranking factor. However, Twitter pages directly influence Google's SERPs and thus may be a major force in search engine visibility.

Whether or not Twitter directly affects the SERPs, here are Twitter SEO tactics that are worth checking out.

The Twitter Website Traffic Benefit

After creating new posts on your blog or site, it only makes sense to tweet about it. You'll be surprised to find how many users search Twitter for useful information or tips. Moreover, you can't expect to receive millions of site visitors simply by posting a link to your site. Choose interesting text for better website promotion. A boring title won’t get you anywhere. Something like "10 Tips to Increase Twitter Followers" may generate more clicks.

This doesn't really affect your search engine rankings, but it's an effective Twitter website traffic strategy.

Using Twitter for Link Building

By having a large group of Twitter followers, more will see your new posts and announcements. Here's how to do your Twitter SEO.

First off, for effective website promotion it's imperative that you have a large group of followers. Follow people who share the same interests as you and those within your niche. Some 30% of the users you follow will follow back. Those who are convinced that you should be followed on Twitter are surely interested in your latest updates. Yes, Twitter is really a great PR and website promotion tool.

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