Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the New Year 2013

by Prejushya Kalicharan - 11/21/2012 28478 Views

How to Take Of Your SEO from the Current Level to the Next

2013_SEO

Webmasters and SEO’s are very eager to know what holds in future for internet search, five years from now. The two consecutive years 2011 and 2012 played a great part in changing the face of SEO and search via Google. Businesses started showing disinterest in making their websites SEO friendly after these catastrophic algorithm updates (possibly 500 per year) got dumped upon low quality sites. Now, why should you avoid SEO? Do you fear that Google penalizes sites that do SEO? If so that's your ignorance. SEO is trick only for those practitioners who do black hat techniques. Despite any algorithm updates, it’s really important for you to know that your site is optimized for search engines bots to recognize, plays base to your existence over the web.

Can anyone assure that Google displays 100% perfect results? NO. Most times, good websites appear only after the second page. Google tries to eliminate these flaws from their algorithm and that is the reason they update them once in a while. The reason they scare you is one among their strategies to exist and stay safe in the search industry. It’s obvious that everyone polishes their business. As simple as that.

On-page refresh

Follow all old on-page optimization procedures as before, except for a few tweaks. Have a responsive website design across mobile platforms as well as smartphones. You will be aware of the 7 results per page for Google search. This in turn means that competition has become fierce. You are left in a situation to write more compelling content for your website. Use the Rel Author tag to make your results look more significant among others. Enhance Shema.org microdata to your website to enrich your search results with data rich snippets displayed. Have a look at the updated Google Webmaster Guidelines as well as the newly released Bing Webmaster Guidelines.

Importance of Google+ Authorship in SEO Ranking

Google+ engagement is the key to this factor. Author of a website having a Google+ account is really important for you to rank better. See to a discussion between Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts,

“Danny: This is Google saying it’s an author-specific thing you can do. It’s your attribute.

Matt: Rel=author has been around for years…

Danny: Okay, say I do that. I link my byline to my profile and now you understand that this is written by me, Danny. [Matt nods]. In the future, I can write on my personal blog and get credit for it. It sounds like you’re establishing personal page Rank.

Matt: That’s the hope – AuthorRank. We’ll see what the traction is and then over time we’ll try to annotate it in the search results with a picture of Danny. Or maybe a panda…”

Now what are the factors that influence author rank?

+1 shares of your Google plus posts
Your connection level in Google+
Frequency you post into Google+
User or member engagement for your posts

It’s obvious that Google has openly declared Author rank as a ranking factor, as part of its social network promotion. Despite, we have to engulf whatever Google vomits.

Content plays a huge role now

When we consider the ‘Time-stayed’ by a person in your website that might also become a strong SEO factor of tomorrow. Now what makes a person to stay engaged with your web pages? Yes, it’s the content you display. Unique content engages reader to read the entire page where they land at and also urges them to read yet another page of yours. This in turn boosts the ‘time of stay’ factor, in turn improving your search rankings and traffic. You also have an equal benefit of good quality websites linked their website with that of yours. Have the best Meta data for each of your web pages. It’s again content, though it falls under the on-page category.

Earlier, Matt Cutts had been very generous to say “Create good content and it’s okay you need no SEO done to your site”. Obviously it was one among his absurd statements and he created mayhem with such a revelation. All he targeted was people who involved in copy paste jobs and thin contents posted to their sites. Though, content plays a major role in enhancing the freshness to your site which automatically reflects in rankings. So, create creative content for your business, explaining how you differ from your competitors and how you operate. That would be more than enough.

Directory Submissions

SEO-2013

All your efforts done to improve your business online will reach its eternity, by means of directory submissions. Submitting links of your site to quality and selected web directories allows your site more approachable to the internet. This is again a natural means to gain links. It helps search engine bots to crawl through keywords and identify the links falling under them. Again this approach should be a noble one. Submission of your website into bad web directories will end up as a headache to you. Identify the popular and ethical web directories and submit your website to that handful of them, rather announcing a 10,000 or 20,000 count to your clients. Google’s ex-employer, Andre Weyher who worked with the Quality team also revealed on the importance of Directory submission which became huge news in the SEO community.

Social media’s Influence

Social media sites got a major level of polish done in 2012. This includes Timeline for Facebook, Pinterest flourished, revamped LinkedIn Company Pages, improved Twitter profile pages, Google+ share tracking and most important is the removal of fake followers from Twitter and Facebook. Social media handling has direct and indirect impact on your business. Business people get instant reviews for their products via Facebook and Twitter. Moreover it’s all public. A companies’ credibility and ranking is fixed on the way they optimize their social media sites as wells as how well they stay active and respond to their clients. SMO helps you generate leads and improves business. Your brand gets recognized among the other thousands in the industry.

Branding

Branding plays backbone to your business’s success. Your site remains untouched by any of the algorithm updates once you gain the big brand status. All you have to do is gaining the trust of your customers via social media and other advertising means. It may involve more of digital marketing (cheap and more beneficial) as well as traditional marketing methods. Participate in all major industry related events and conferences and possibly exhibiting stores and offering giveaways, helps to expose your brand more. Collect feedback from them, rectify their concerns, boost business through them and build your brand.

Video Optimization

Here is a video by Danny Sullivan, Editor at Search Engine Land – giving tips to boost video search rankings.

Closure

Another threatening factor is that, websites who have received manual penalties, those links which were submitted in their disavow tool, those send along with reconsideration requests all will be tracked. They might be maintaining exclusive software for those, paying manual attention to all activities going on with these sites and treat them as second class. This will be a discussion of debate if proven by any means. However the future holds the answer to this prediction.

Since no one can say for sure what SEO will be like tomorrow, it’s really important to remain updated and connected of any new trends emerging in the world of web development and search engine optimization. That would be the best thing to do as of now. Forecasting the future becomes an inevitable factor then. Catching the clue bait that Google throws now and then helps us remain focused and prevent being lost from the SEO community. Read articles that alert you on what’s happening in the field of internet and search which in turn works wonders for your company.

Please share your thoughts and ideas.

Category :

SEO News

Tags :

Search Engine Optimization, SEO 2013, SEO, on-page optimization procedures, Authorship, Content seo,

About Prejushya Kalicharan

SEO is a challenging field and I try my best to surpass this challenging environment which is unconditionally filled with opportunities, knowledge building and problem solving. I pursue what I .... more info about the author