Factors To Pay Attention To In 2011

The way that search engines view websites and define their search relevance by ranking is continuously evolving and developing as search engine companies try to find more suitable, efficient and appropriate ways of organizing their data. These changes happen extremely frequently and over the last few years there have been a number of big changes that have affected the way web designers and SEO companies optimize websites for better search engine results.

During 2011 we are going to see some more developments in the world of SEO and it is important for web designers to recognize these developments and adapt their efforts to suit them and avoid losing previous accomplishments. Below is a detailed list of a few of the predicted major evolutions in SEO.

Social Network Marketing And Social Media Optimization - If you have been living in a hole throughout the last five years, only then will you be forgiven for not seizing the marketing and SEO opportunities offered by social networking sites. If you have a product or service and it is not being advertised in some way, shape or form on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, Twitter or MSN, then you are missing out on free mass marketing. During 2011 this trend only seems to be increasing in popularity as search engines are beginning to incorporate personalized searches which are based on (amongst other things) social network recommendations.

Website Optimization - In recent years SEO has been taking the easy option of off-site internet exposure (backlinks) through blog posts and articles whilst not ignoring but certainly not concentrating on the more difficult process of on-site optimization; this is going to change. On the face of it, on-site optimization is not particularly difficult to do, but it is difficult to perfect. It requires making sure that webpage load times are not overly high and the meta-tags used are appropriate for the content. Why will this change? Because Google wants it to, that's the simple answer.

Twitter - The reason Twitter has been increasing in popularity alongside the social networking giant that is Facebook is that it incorporates a different method of social communication and is actually based on the idea that people like to know what their friends, family, acquaintances and favorite celebrities are doing at any given moment during the day. The real-time update nature of Twitter lends itself well to social media marketing as once a brand image is created and a good relationship has been built up with online contacts, products can be advertised (or suggested) directly to their idyllic customers, who can then, in turn, re-tweet the product to their selected contacts within minutes. The speed of this exposure is what makes Twitter potentially such a great marketing tool.

By Mark Thomas Walters