Exciting New Trends in SEO

Search engine optimization is always a changing field. Competition drives evolution, and with the way online marketing has surged ahead in the many pressing concerns of businesses and companies, Search Engine Optimization will only see more growth as the years go by. Saying “the best is yet to come” may be an understatement, but here goes anyway: the best is yet to come!

For a sneak peak of the best and brightest SEO has to offer, here are some exciting new trends (and some already obvious trends starting) you should watch out for in the world of SEO.

The Future of SEO is Social Media

It’s no accident that this year’s Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is Mark Zuckerberg. And no, The Social Network had absolutely nothing to do with Time picking him to be 2010’s Person of the Year. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are the face of the new generation of consumers. The battle for sales leads and conversions will be fought here (and in some other places listed below). Positioning your business to have a strong presence in popular social media sites can only be good in the long run.

Mobile Search

In 2009, mobile users reached 4.6 billion. This year, it easily broke the 5 billion mark and still shows no signs of stopping. The growth of cell phone users worldwide is easily the biggest phenomenon in telecommunication – and marketing. With such a huge market, mobile search is just too big to ignore. Planting your feet (and your firms’ roots) firmly in this fertile ground should be one of your company’s goals – yesterday. If you haven’t done it already, then for the love of all that’s good and profitable, please do optimize your site for mobile devices! Have mercy on those poor mobile users who are missing out on your fantastic website because they couldn’t browse it on their phones. Please.

Going Viral

What do Justin Bieber and SEO have in common? Well, aside from millions of hits, both SEO and Justin Bieber now share the spotlight in YouTube and other popular video sharing sites. Yes! If you haven’t noticed it yet, YouTube just overtook Yahoo! to become the 2^nd largest search engine in the U.S. behind Google. If that isn’t an indication yet of how important it is to have a video of your company uploaded tagged with your target keywords, then we don’t know what is.

Personalized and Local Search

This is just a double whammy of exciting SEO trends currently developing. On the one hand, personalized search favors established websites and makes it harder for new players to break in. On the other hand, local search do help smaller market players beat out bigger competition which may not necessarily have a strong presence in your area. By having a lower number of competitors, you stand a better chance of coming out on top with an aggressive push to be more visible locally. Just make sure your website is hosted in the same country your business is located in to capitalize on the benefits of local search.

Best Practices and Innovation

Meeting the challenges of the years ahead and successfully overcoming them is a combination of continuing the best SEO practices and improving on some of the old. As always, building your brand and managing your reputation continues to be an integral part of SEO. So is maintaining on and off-page optimization. SEO has always been an art between technical finesse and public relations management. Achieving a balance between the two is key in any business’ online success now and in the future.