Keeping up with all things digital is near impossible – even staying abreast of developments in search alone is tough particularly in a year like 2011. Whilst for some 2011 may have been a year they would prefer to forget from an SEO perspective, it says a lot about where the focus will be for 2012.
A year in review
If you consider the major launches and releases by Google in 2011, you will notice there is a very strong focus on content as well as personalisation. Here are the major releases for 2011;
February – Panda
Just when we were all settling in from our holidays, Google hit us with the Panda update. Aimed to target low quality content sites, the update specifically targeted;
• Poorly written content
• Content copied from other sites
• Content that is not useful
Did it work?
In April, a review of traffic to some of the biggest known offenders of low quality content was conducted and found;
Answerbag’s Google referrals were down 80 percent and eHow, saw its Google search visibility drop 42 percent. Ouch!
March – Blocking
With search becoming more personalised, Google introduced the “block” option which enables consumers to block results from their future search results. This change gives consumers more power over what they see, and penalises sites who deliver an unsatisfactory experience. By September however, it became apparent that this change was not just to aid personalisation. Google had begun using this data in the US as yet another factor to signal low quality sites / content.
June – Authorship
Whilst not as big or widely publicised as Panda, the focus on authors signalled a new “authority” emerging in search. With a clear focus on quality content, Google introduced authorship mark-up as a way of connecting authors with their content on the web. In a blog post about the release, Google signalled the role content authored by great authors will have on ranking in the future, which reinforces their focus on combating low quality content;
We know that great content comes from great authors, and were looking closely at ways this mark up could help us highlight authors and rank search results.
July – Google+ Launch
The arrival of the Google+ launch was met with scepticism by many. Whilst conflicting reports show strong uptake and rapid decline in usage, if it is successful over the longer term – there is no doubt social graph data will be utilised to serve up more personalised results.
October – SSL Search
Google begun encrypting the search query of users signed in to Google.com late in the year to the horror of many SEOs. As a result of the change, analytics users began to see “not provided” search queries within the interface. Whilst Google has stated that this will impact less than 10% of results – it will definitely be felt by all of us whom use this data to make informed decisions about our SEO efforts.
November – Freshness Update
With real time information now more important than ever, Google introduced the freshness update which impacts about 35 per cent of searches. The freshness update aimed to serve up the most recent content for searches.
2012 – Looking Ahead
So what does the year ahead hold for us on the search front?
Content, Content & More Content
Authorship mark-up, panda and the freshness update all point to a strong focus on high quality content and there is no doubt we will see Google continue to focus on this area in 2012. Although I have been saying it for years, 2012 will be the year where SEOs need evolve to be more user oriented and content creation will rate highly on the list of desirable attributes for SEO recruits.
Joined Up Thinking
The intersection between content, social and search functions are more relevant than ever before. In 2012, we will see organisations look to blend roles and strategies to reach objectives across the respective areas. This will however require a fundamental shift in the way SEOs approach what they do – from rankings to engagement.
Mobile
With mobile internet usage growing rapidly, SEOs will turn their focus on mobile. In particular one of the key trends to watch is the impact voice based search will have as voice actions on Android and Siri on the iPhone have provided users a more direct way of getting answers on their mobile devices. In addition as consumers’ ultimate search intentions and actions are different based on the device they are using – this may play an increasing role in rankings mobile results in 2012.
Personalisation
Personalisation will continue to be a focus of Google’s in 2012 and this will be achieved through leveraging behavioural and social data. In fact recent comments by Google prove this to be a key focus moving forward. In a November blog post on the Inside Google Search Blog, Google stated;
We see tremendous potential to make search better by understanding what you care about. It’s clear that personalisation will remain an important trend online that will provide benefits to people around the world, and we think it’s important to be thoughtful about our approach to make sure we get it right.
