Trends in Search marketing in 2006
Looking back at last years search engine marketing activity I have listed a number of trends to summarise how things are looking to head in the coming year, of 2007.
1. Usability and will become increasingly important for natural search .
A major part of the process of SEO focus will shift towards website functionality and usability for two reasons for 2 reasons;
First, search engine algorithms are increasingly taking user-experience into consideration when calculating ranking.
Secondly, mainstream advertisers are moving back towards SEO but those advertisers will require something stronger than Top10 placements to justify spending money on the mysterious marketing miracle SEO represents. When an SEO can tell his or her clients they will not only get strong placements but will also get a website redeveloped specifically to increase conversions, that SEO will make more sales.
2. Increasing Trend towards Local search services
Local search grew by 13% year-on-year (Source Hitwise; November 2005). Yell.com remained the most popular vertical search site, a position that it has held for the past 15 months, attracting 64% of the market share of local search visits although its share is declining with Local.co.uk and ThomsonLocal.com taking over 5% share each. All the major UK search engines are aggressively pushing local search functions. We are also seeing a corresponding trend towards more targeted localized searching by consumers.
3. SEO/SEM Community expands services to include specialties and features such as Google Base, MSN Fremont and Yahoo Shopping.
Google and all the other major search entities is likely to be heavily influenced by the appearance and placement of online businesses in other, less known search-venues. This will move SEOs to offer services supporting Google Base, MSN Fremont and Yahoo Shopping, along with the slew of other “alternative” search arenas.
4. Google’s will continue to dominate UK search.
Google will continue to be the most popular search entity in the UK. It dominates the organic search market and has nearly absolute power in the paid-advertising arena. Having beat Microsoft to the deal with AOL, Google enters 2006 even more powerful than it entered 2005. These products will increasingly form part of general SEO strategies.
5. Link building will become more complex and more strategic
We are already seeing major changes in the implementation of link building strategies for clients. In the future the trend will be towards maximizing internal relationship for clients such as affiliate networks, blogs and incorporating PR services into strategic content deliver.
6. More high profile brands banned
Search Engine will become increasingly stricter with spammers, Google has already demonstrated how it is becoming stricter in monitoring spamming techniques and banning high profile brands E.g. banning BMW.de in Feb 2006.
7. Trend towards natural SEO as opposed to paid Search due to;
- Keyword inflation- clients faced with the prospect of spending increasing amounts to maintain their positions on Adword and Overture; ROI is expected to decline Costs are rising exponentially for competitive terms.
- Growing understanding from Marketing directors on the importance of building search into a wider online and overall marketing strategies.
- Longer-term advantage of organic SEO vs paid listings
- Some sectors or PPC cannot advertise e.g Google Adwords
- Increasing client concern about PPC click fraud despite agency assurances.