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A Year of Progression for Web Optimisation

Having lived through the much-anticipated Mayan apocalypse, many of us are faced with the continuing struggle of marketing our websites in 2013. But often when looking forward it’s a good idea to first look back. So what have been the rising trends in SEO and online marketing in 2012?

Growth of mobile SEO

2012 might be seen as the year that smart phone commerce came of age. In May, a survey by Google’s ‘Our Mobile Planet’ found that 60% of smart phone owners searched for products online, while 42% said that they used it to make purchases on a monthly basis. This and other intelligence has driven home the importance to businesses of all sizes of optimising for mobile devices.

Quality, Quality, Quality

In April, Google’s Penguin took the reins from the earlier Panda search update to shake up the search engine’s results and SEO in general. Again. Penguin continued to crack down on poor quality web content, specifically targeting three major areas – keyword stuffing, spun content and irrelevant link strategies. This effectively ruled out the creation of content that only served SEO purposes, whilst rewarding those sites that spend time creating high quality, purposeful content.

Rise of responsive web design

Responsive design is another trend that’s started to come into its own in 2012. If you’ve not heard the term, it refers to a type of web design that adjusts itself to suit the specific screen and platform of the user. Long tipped as the next big thing, this year has seen big name news websites such as BBC News and Channel 4 News adopt responsive design.

Google SERPs get tougher at the top

Getting into the top ten results on Google has long been a major goal for webmasters. But in 2012, it became more important to get into the top seven. Research from SEOmoz in August suggested that 20% of SERPs had as few as seven results per page – with those vital extra few being crowded out by ads, image results and ‘at-a-glance’ info from Google’s ‘knowledge graph’.

The way forward for 2013

Taking these lessons from the past year on board, it’s easy to extrapolate where you should focus your efforts in 2013. That is, you should aim to provide quality content that’s optimised for multiple platforms, and you should aim right for the top of the search rankings.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jon Celeste .