It’s that time of the year again where we can final­ly take a back seat and reflect on an excit­ing and event­ful year with­in search. It’s fair to say that 2012 has taught us to relearn what we thought we already knew. Google once again kept us on our toes with its var­i­ous search algo­rithm updates in the form of black & white ani­mals as well as var­i­ous SERPs updates – and ‘oh boy’ it’s been a year! The beau­ty of our indus­try is that it’s con­stant­ly chang­ing – chal­leng­ing the sta­tus-quo. What has clear­ly become evi­dent is that the indus­try as a whole is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing dras­tic changes demand­ing the holis­tic inte­gra­tion of search, social, PR & con­tent.

I have been busy get­ting in touch with some of our Linkdex friends to find out what their pre­dic­tions for 2013 are – one thing is guar­an­teed: 2013 promis­es to be yet anoth­er busy year for all of us! I hope this post helps to shed some light on what to expect in the new year.

Greg Jarboe

Greg Jar­boe is the pres­i­dent and co-founder of SEO-PR com­bin­ing SEO and PR to opti­mize and pro­mote web­sites. His inno­v­a­tive approach enables clients and agen­cies to write effec­tive press releas­es, white papers and ezine-newslet­ter con­tent that gen­er­ate leads and pub­lic­i­ty. Fur­ther­more Greg is the author of “YouTube And Video Mar­ket­ing: An Hour A Day“ and he also con­tributes to Search Engine Watch and ReelSEO.

Greg pre­dicts the fol­low­ing three key trends:

Mar­ket­ing teams will rein­vent them­selves to sup­port con­tent mar­ket­ing efforts

“In 2013, more mar­ket­ing lead­ers will look at their con­tent mar­ket­ing resources and ask if they are being deployed in the most effec­tive way. I believe we’ll see more com­pa­nies adding titles like Chief Con­tent Offi­cer (CCO), Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor, and Con­tent Strate­gists to their orga­ni­za­tion­al charts.”

Video and visu­als will play a more impor­tant role

“2013 will be the year in which con­tent mar­keters tru­ly embrace visu­al con­tent. From YouTube  and Pin­ter­est to Insta­gram and SlideShare, visu­al appeal will rule con­tent cre­ation and cura­tion. In an era of con­tent over­load, users will be look­ing for a fresh face and inno­v­a­tive pre­sen­ta­tion.”

Mar­keters need to re-think “web-only” to adapt to con­sumers who want infor­ma­tion

“In 2013, we’re going to move away from think­ing about web­sites and start think­ing about con­tent cor­ner­stones — col­lec­tions of con­tent cre­at­ed and curat­ed to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on a top­ic. And this con­tent needs to be struc­tured in chunks that can appear on smart­phones, tablets, and lap­tops.”

Dixon Jones 

Dixon Jones is one of the most respect­ed inter­net mar­ket­ing vet­er­ans with­in the indus­try as well as being the mar­ket­ing direc­tor of Majes­tic SEO – the world’s largest link intel­li­gence data­base. Apart from that Dixon fur­ther keeps him­self busy as direc­tor of Recep­tion­al, an inde­pen­dent mar­ket­ing con­sul­tan­cy spe­cial­iz­ing in SEO, PPC, link build­ing, social media, design and CMS as well as blog­ging.

“I believe that Google are find­ing the auto­mat­ed scrap­ing of the SERPs incred­i­bly expen­sive and will take dras­tic steps in 2013 to address the bal­ance. As many SEOs know, but choose to ignore, using auto­mat­ed means to crawl Google’s search engine results pages which actu­al­ly vio­lates Google’s terms of ser­vice. The irony that Google had to scrape the whole web to get the con­tent in the first place is not lost on me, but I think that makes lit­tle odds to Google. Here is what I pre­dict: When “Key­word not sup­port­ed” gets to around 80% of “real” users (in Google’s view) then they will have crossed a Rubi­con.

This will mean most peo­ple are already logged in to Google, YouTube or one of many oth­er Google prop­er­ties or soft­ware sys­tems (or oper­at­ing sys­tems. Google will then – prob­a­bly in Europe first – flick a switch so that search­ing with­out being logged in gives near mean­ing­less or ran­domised results. Google will choose Europe first under the guise of con­form­ing to EU pri­va­cy and Cook­ie laws – putting them over as the good guys once again. In truth, of course, this means that the EU’s cook­ie leg­is­la­tion has exact­ly the OPPOSITE effect to the one intend­ed – as it gives Google more of a monop­oly, not less. With this strat­e­gy in play, rank check­er will be mean­ing­less and Google will be able to track pret­ty much every action of every user.”

Jo Turnbull 

Jo Tur­bull is a free­lance SEO con­sul­tant and founder of SEO Jo Blogs a con­sul­tan­cy offer­ing SEO, paid search and social media ser­vices to its clients. If she is not busy help­ing brands with their online mar­ket­ing efforts she’s prob­a­bly busy trav­el­ling the world inter­view­ing search pro­fes­sion­als or busy organ­is­ing the next Search Lon­don meet-up – that offers great net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for search pro­fes­sion­als in Lon­don. Jo is also part of the State of Search blog­ging team.

“At the end of Novem­ber I held a Search Lon­don event about “SEO in 2013”.  We all agreed that 2012 has been a busy year with the Pen­guin update in April and the sub­se­quent updates, which result­ed in many sites los­ing rank­ings. The last few months, these sites have had to con­tact indi­vid­ual site own­ers to try and remove these links so they could see their rank­ings (and traf­fic) return back to lev­els seen before the Pen­guin hit.

So what does 2013 install for SEO?  Con­tent is going to be even more impor­tant. The phrase “con­tent is king” is not dead and will be used con­stant­ly. Instead of focus­ing on link build­ing, each com­pa­ny will have their own con­tent strat­e­gy. By focus­ing on great con­tent, users will tell oth­ers about that site and traf­fic and links will fol­low. This is not just my view, but many oth­ers in the search indus­try. To be hon­est, when I first start­ed in SEO, I ques­tioned some of the link build­ing tech­niques such as the arti­cle syn­di­ca­tion and the direc­to­ry syn­di­ca­tion as to whether they would real­ly have a pos­i­tive effect on a client’s rank­ings. Now we have seen that those who did not nat­u­ral­ly build links have been penalised. Google have updat­ed their algo­rithm and are reward­ing those with great con­tent who are not nec­es­sar­i­ly writ­ing them for the pur­pose of links. SEO in 2013 will also see Google Author­ship become even more sig­nif­i­cant and the per­son who has writ­ten the con­tent will have more weight­ing than what site the link is com­ing from.”

Kelvin Newman

Kelvin New­man is SiteVisibility’s cre­ative direc­tor spe­cial­iz­ing in SEO research & devel­op­ment, inno­va­tion and explor­ing new new busi­ness mod­els for search agen­cies. He’s a well respect­ed indus­try thought leader who reg­u­lar­ly pro­duces search and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing whitepa­pers for the recruit­ment, e‑commerce and pub­lish­ing sec­tors. Kelvin also dili­gent­ly con­tributes to State of Search and eCon­sul­tan­cy. On top of that he’s also respon­si­ble for Brighton­SEO (which attract­ed 2000 search pro­fes­sion­als with­in the UK ear­li­er this year) and the recent Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Show.

“Shift­ing line in ‘accept­able links’: Google isn’t the ene­my – they’re the ref­er­ee. And to stretch that metaphor to break­ing point this year we’ve seen them crack­ing down on div­ing but I don’t think it’ll be long before we get video ref­er­ees and goal line tech­nol­o­gy? Too far? Prob­a­bly…. But I think the changes we’ve seen are only the begin­ning.

Google has right­ly been crack­ing down on what it decid­ed to be manip­u­la­tive link-build­ing prac­tices. As these para­me­ters change what in the past may have been accept­able may no longer be valu­able, and I think they’re only going to get clever-er. You need to ful­ly under­stand where your exist­ing links are com­ing from and have a sen­si­ble risk assess­ment for the future.

This isn’t just a change in tac­tics though, it’s a change in mind­set, it’s less about what can I do today that will get me a link tomor­row, but what can we do today that means we’ll accrue links for years to come. Some with­in the SEO com­mu­ni­ty aren’t in a place to offer advice that will help solve this prob­lem, oth­ers are head­ing in that direc­tion and broad­en­ing our skill-sets.”

Julie Joyce

Julie Joyce is a very well-known SEO spe­cial­ist and project man­ag­er for Str0ud LLC and Link Fish Media. She has been work­ing in the indus­try for 12 years offer­ing her clients an exten­sive range of skills and expert knowl­edge on issues such as pro­gram­ming, tech­ni­cal writ­ing, qual­i­ty assur­ance test­ing, SEM, SEO, PPC, SEO project man­age­ment and link build­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, she is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor of Search Engine Land and a found­ing mem­ber of the SEO Chicks blog.
“As much as the link build­ing indus­try has been shak­en up over the past year, I think we’ll see it get much, much hard­er to com­pete for the links that mat­ter. I think that since gen­uine user engage­ment is dif­fi­cult to fake, we’ll see that become more of a fac­tor in how well some­one does online. I doubt we’ll be try­ing to build links on sites that have very few pos­i­tive social sig­nals, and if we do, I doubt those links will be near­ly as impor­tant as links on the sites that are doing an amaz­ing job social­ly. I think paid links will still work, and will still work well…but I think we’ll have to get bet­ter at choos­ing what we buy. I don’t see any­thing hap­pen­ing that would hon­est­ly pre­vent web­mas­ters from accept­ing some form of pay­ment for a link, and I don’t see ultra-com­pet­i­tive indus­tries aban­don­ing link buy­ing in order to cre­ate amaz­ing con­tent. I think the need for link builders who can suc­cess­ful­ly buy links that fly total­ly under the radar will be huge. Some indus­tries will always be will­ing to risk it.

Guest posts wor­ry me a bit as I love them and think they’re fan­tas­tic for expo­sure, but they are becom­ing one of the most recent meth­ods to get spammed up. With author­ship becom­ing more impor­tant, I think it will become more dif­fi­cult to do well with guest posts, and I think/hope that the tru­ly good con­tent cre­ators will eas­i­ly stand out.

What do I not expect to see still work­ing in a few years? Ignor­ing the nec­es­sary con­nec­tion between on and off page. Link builders have tra­di­tion­al­ly been viewed as off page types who can just do what they need to do with­out giv­ing any input on things like site struc­ture and con­tent, but I don’t see this con­tin­u­ing. Just a few years ago we could rank any site with links and links only. That isn’t the case now for the most part but it can still be done. In a few years, I doubt that will be pos­si­ble.”

Kevin Gibbons  

Kevin Gib­bons entered the inter­net mar­ket­ing world in 2003 and by 2006 he found­ed SEOp­ti­mise, a search agency with offices in both Oxford and Lon­don. His lat­est ven­ture was Quaturo an agency spe­cial­iz­ing in con­tent mar­ket­ing. In Novem­ber 2012 Quaturo was acquired by Blue­Glass – a lead­ing dig­i­tal agency – to rep­re­sent Blue­Glass UK. Kevin is con­stant­ly on the move shar­ing his exper­tise as a speak­er at the industry’s lead­ing con­fer­ences. Apart from that he reg­u­lar­ly con­tibutes to eCon­sul­tan­cy,Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land.

“My pre­dic­tion for 2013 is that mar­ket­ing in gen­er­al will have to become much more inte­grat­ed and agile.

The prob­lem we’ve had with search in the past is that there was a huge gap between what Google said the algo­rithm did and what it actu­al­ly did. Every­one knew all along we should be cre­at­ing great con­tent and build­ing online brands, this isn’t new – but in 2012, we’ve seen that gap close to the point that the only way to achieve sus­tain­able results is to final­ly do what Google has been telling us all along!

The con­ver­sa­tion is now chang­ing more strate­gi­cal­ly, as opposed to tac­ti­cal­ly – and the lines are merg­ing close­ly between, not just search and social, but more impor­tant­ly PR and brand­ing. This means you can’t oper­ate in silos any­more – brands need their whole team to be look­ing at an over­all mar­ket­ing plan from all angles, oth­er­wise they risk miss­ing the big­ger pic­ture.

In order to max­i­mize the impact your efforts have, you need to ensure you’re aware of where search is head­ing. The clear shift in 2012 – which in my opin­ion has only just start­ed to have an impact – is Google Author­ship. If you look into the patents on Agent Rank, the pre­dic­tions I would have for 2013 would be:

• Who links to you is going to be more impor­tant than where it’s from.
• Author top­i­cal rel­e­van­cy is to become a much more trust­ed sig­nal.
• Brand sig­nals will become more impor­tant – espe­cial­ly brand query pop­u­lar­i­ty and co-cita­tion links.”

Andrew Girdwood

Andrew Gird­wood is LBi’s media inno­va­tions direc­tor – and a self con­fessed dig­i­tal and search mar­ket­ing geek. He has great inter­est in the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments to ampli­fy his dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts. He is often referred to as Mis­ter Search UK. He has a great appetite for new tech­nolo­gies and behav­iour trends – a true indus­try thought leader.

“I think 2013 is going to be an inter­est­ing year for dig­i­tal. A lot could hap­pen and much of it depends on the rate of adop­tion with excit­ing tech­nolo­gies like Con­nect­ed TV. Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing may come to the TV direct­ly but 2013 looks like­ly to be a year in which inter­me­di­ary devices like gam­ing con­soles and tablets will be impor­tant.

We’ll see a renewed focus on build­ing rela­tion­ships. We will see this from brands to their cus­tomers in the form of social CRM and increased efforts in Loy­al­ty mar­ket­ing. We will also see this in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing as the grow­ing affil­i­ate sec­tor steps up to unlock even more val­ue from the long tail of niche pub­lish­ers, from SEO and social.

Local will be pop­u­lar in 2013 as big names like Google, Face­book, Yelp and Foursquare all up their game. We will see how well com­pa­nies like Groupon do and whether play­ers like Ama­zon can suc­cess­ful­ly move into the local dai­ly deal space. Local blog­gers and pub­lish­ers will like­ly find them­selves in the sweet spot of atten­tion.

Last­ly, pro­gram­mat­ic buy­ing, real-time bid­ding and the debate around met­rics and attri­bu­tion will go from being hot to vol­canic.”

Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld is the own­er of State of Search the award win­ning blog on all things dig­i­tal, search and social. State of Search has recent­ly been vot­ed “Best Search Blog” by the Euro­pean Search Awards 2012! Bas is a web/search strate­gist, train­er and speak­er always in the know of the industry’s lat­est hap­pen­ings. He has a gen­uine pas­sion for dig­i­tal includ­ing inter­net mar­ket­ing, social, and search mar­ket­ing. Besides that he’s a well regard­ed speak­er at lead­ing search con­fer­ences such as SES, SMX and the A4U expos.

“First off all let me state that ‘pre­dict­ing’ some­thing is dan­ger­ous and you shouldn’t believe all pre­dic­tions you hear. After all, pre­dic­tions are what they are: guess­es, based on past behav­iour, in our case most­ly based on past behav­iour from Google.

The essence of look­ing at the future for me, as an his­to­ri­an, is indeed look­ing at the past, but more impor­tant­ly: look­ing at humans. What are they like, how do they inter­act, what are they sen­si­tive for. And if you look at how humans are you can pre­dict what humans want. In my opin­ion that is just what Google is doing as well: they are look­ing at the needs of peo­ple and are mak­ing changes based on that.

Think­ing about that way of work­ing it becomes ‘eas­i­er’ to pre­dict where things are going because you have to take the same posi­tion as Google does: look at what the user wants. I think the user will want more and more com­fort, which means that search results for exam­ple won’t ‘just’ be results any­more, they will be much more craft­ed towards what the user’s needs are. This is the per­son­al­i­sa­tion trend we are already see­ing: you and your sur­round­ings have been ‘mapped’ by Google, mak­ing it eas­i­er to pre­dict what you real­ly want. Which means that irrel­e­vant results will dis­ap­pear more and more. You will see results you ‘trust’, whether it’s because it is a top­ic you are indeed read­ing more on or maybe it is rec­om­mend­ed by some­one you know or writ­ten by some­one you con­sid­er an author­i­ty (author rank!).

Even though updates like Pen­guin and Pan­da seem to be about ‘just’ clean­ing up the mess which some search results had become – I think it is more than that. It is part of mak­ing the ‘rel­e­vant’ results more vis­i­ble. And that is a process which I believe will be con­tin­ued in the next year. It will be less about rank­ings and more about rel­e­vant answers.

This means that the atti­tude of some needs to change. Yes, tech­ni­cal SEO is still impor­tant, very impor­tant even, but more impor­tant­ly: stop fuss­ing about ‘has there been an update yes or no’ and stop lay­ing too much empha­sis on the impor­tance of rank­ings. Start to get to know your (tar­get) audi­ence bet­ter and with that make more rel­e­vant results, for your audi­ence. I “pre­dict” that that is where the future lies. Oh and yes, Google will keep on mess­ing with the algo­rithm and stuff, just to keep us busy ;).”

Sam Hailstone

Sam Hail­stone is a senior SEO engi­neer at Razor­fish, one of the world’s largest, most inno­v­a­tive and most influ­en­tial dig­i­tal agen­cies. His clients include brands such as Audi, Pfiz­er, Ralph Lau­ren, Kurt Geiger and Asda. His respon­si­bil­i­ties include strate­gic sup­port for exist­ing clients, gen­er­at­ing new busi­ness and man­ag­ing the agency’s team of SEO ana­lysts. With­in his first year at Razor­fish he was imme­di­ate­ly pro­mot­ed from SEO engi­neer to senior SEO engi­neer.

“The biggest change in SEO that we will see in 2013 will be the down-weight­ing of anchor text-based rank­ing sig­nals and up-weight­ing of more reli­able sig­nals which are less easy to manip­u­late. We have already seen the start of the move towards Google+ and rel=author which allow search engines to aggre­gate con­tent val­ue at an indi­vid­ual author lev­el to cre­ate a new sig­nal – let’s call it Author­Rank. It will be very inter­est­ing to see how peo­ple will try to manip­u­late this. We may also see Google reduce the impor­tance of non‑G+ social sig­nals.

2012 was the year that SEO stopped being just SEO and became some­thing big­ger and this will con­tin­ue into 2013. It is no longer enough to just opti­mise a web­site and build some links. Prospec­tive clients expect to see all encom­pass­ing dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gies and this is demon­strat­ed in the RFPs we have been see­ing recent­ly.

2013 will also bring fur­ther improve­ments in the fight against web­spam. Pan­da and Pen­guin updates of recent times have been the most sig­nif­i­cant efforts by Google to com­bat spam and it’s hard to think that they will stop there, espe­cial­ly when so many spam­my tech­niques can still be effec­tive.

If I had more time I’d dis­cuss the evo­lu­tion of mobile, local and rich snip­pets – suf­fice to say 2013 will be an excit­ing year!”