The lead up to 2012 has no doubt showed Google’s endeavours in ensuring organic search results are providing content exhibiting high relevancy to a search query. This push for good quality will not halt meaning Google search results will turn out to be more challenging to obtain. Of course that implies algorithm A/B testing (primarily research & development) is a must for any organic SEO specialists to ensure any customer project is certainly benefiting from the marketing budget.
The delivery of higher-end online marketing services are now turning out to be more of an arena for the few that are ensuring continual research and development procedures are completed. The motives for updates are to enable those in any niche industry to truly benefit for remaining within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, which are now (more than ever) targeted on engagement with the market place more so than rivals and by having an organic search strategy that is holistic in approach.
Some of the most recent and critical updates to be conscious of for 2012 SEO are:
Google +: In the push to make sure website entrepreneurs engaging with their market most often are acknowledged, Google has developed a social engagement service that allows organisations (as well as individuals) to engage through video media, picture media, company product and/or service updates, links to related/engaging articles and anything different you would like to share. Shifting into 2012, Google are cleaning their natural ranking algorithm by bringing in fresh and very important social media monitoring that is assessed regularly enabling the most busy client engaged website marketer in any industry to be noticeable.
Google Panda: We have previously seen 7 Panda updates in 2011, which have affected previously highly visited online businesses that were observed to have weak or “thin” content on primary product pages and this has cleaned up the search results for those marketers that were less targeted on good quality on-page SEO. As we all know, Google’s ranking algorithm for organic (not-paid for) results has traditionally been largely based on the quantity of optimised links & those mainly with a higher PageRank. This practice has permitted for search result manipulation and has been very difficult to police. In Google’s on-going push for high quality, we’re now seeing available month-to-month algo-updates from Google’s Engineering Director, which should hopefully permit any online marketing agency to review and recognize why, when, how and what updates are imminent that ought to allow for planning in advance.
Rich Snippets: As we all know, a visual message does normally stand out in search results much more obviously than a 150 character text-only description. Google has recently launched “Rich Snippets”, which will enable your website to display mixed-media content (picture or video media based) directly in your organic search result. Whether you’re a company promoting software or a company promoting online recipes, the picture or video based addition to your Meta description result will surely enhance your message.
Authorship Recognition (Google+): Joining your published articles with your business is an absolute must. Any publisher can now arrange authorship just by utilising their email address, which allows for the display of their full name and profile picture directly in the search results. Anyone publishing unique, well written articles online comprehend how painful it can be to see their hard work plagiarized, but can currently put their authorship signature alongside the article.
Freshness Update: For a long time Google has been concentrating on the freshness of certain search queries, which was labeled previously as Query Deserves Freshness or QDF. In actuality there are certain search queries such as an forthcoming occasion like a music live performance or a movie show. However, info today moves incredibly rapidly so this 2011 update ought to have an interesting impact in 2012. We will be observing around 35% of search results being affected by the Freshness Update and any experienced online marketing agency will be working hard to retain up-to-date and fresh updates in their clients/own content.
Organic SEO service providers clearly need to be aware of any and all algorithm updates that will affect their campaign service delivery and this means that research is absolutely needed to continue providing results to clients. The steps one must take to ensure up-to-date technical knowledge can be vast and include Research & Development, split testing, engaging with the SEO community, researching the Google and other trusted SEO blogs.