SEO And Online Presence In 2011

It is that time of the year again when each one of us ponders over the decisions and follies made in the past year and plan and make resolutions for the coming year. This is applicable to our personal as well as professional lives. I have given some thought to the online scenario with a focus on SEO for 2011 which I would like to share. Firstly, at the very outset I would like to dispel any doubts and fears if any SEOs have regarding the demand for SEO services in the coming year. According to me the  SEO Services will be   the most sought after services and the demand curve for the same will surely show and increasing trend. Though SEO is going to have a much wider connotation in the coming year and the SEO services deliverables will include much more than just on-page tweaking of titles and meta tags. What is going to be of importance is the off-page optimization.  Off-page optimization will  also be much more than just trying to get links from here and there randomly. The off-page efforts shall have to be more organized and the whole process shall have to be focused on creating a brand and goodwill online. Just having a site linking to you may not pass on the much needed link juice for pushing the SERPs. With search engines confirming the use of the social media signals for rankings the social link graph and the social media parameters are fast becoming  the basis of off-page optimization passing on the necessary nectar or the link juice for boosting or maintaining the SERPs. Currently the Facebook and Twitter social link graph and data are of utmost important. Social media sites is a conversational type of medium which involve a dialogue, sharing of links  and  now is also truly social in nature and is making the birds of a feather flock  together  and like minded people are seen sharing news , ideas and views. Though at present there may be a lot of noise on the social media but soon it will evolve into a platform where discussions and opinions  and links shared by the authority accounts related to the concerned industry will gain a lot of weight. Hence how your social media interaction is managed will be the key to the success or failure of the online campaign. Apart from the social media - the blog posts, the presence on the community forums, the links in the email signatures, guest blogging, User generated content on your blogs and any other external  link from the WWW which adds value to your website is going to establish your identity, brand, goodwill, reputation thereby increasing visibility and also will add the necessary life needed to push the SERPs. Hence you can say an overall online presence on the WWW which gives you a chance to rank on all the search options will be the key to have a successful SEO campaign. The local markets have a lot to offer and ignoring the local scene and aiming for the global scene will surely be a very big folly for any business especially for the SMEs. Think global and act local will be the needed approach that any business would be expected to have. Tuning your website and yourself for the mobile web is one more thing that needs to be focused on . With the kind of the increasing trend shown in the sale of the smart phones especially in the last quarter of the year says that the web is going mobile. In short, we can summarize as follows:

• Have great content on your site
• Have a social media presence
• Engage and interact on social media establishing an individual and business persona
• Have a blog  with a focus on your main line of business which you keep on updating regularly
• Participate in conversations of your topical communities
• Take guest blogging seriously
•  Do not ignore the Local Search
• Go mobile

The overall aura generated from all these efforts put together will create your online brand and identity which in turn will reflect on your current and potential  online business. The search engine bots will measure all these signals according to the algorithms which the programmers have worked on, the online visitors will make judgments on the basis of what they read on the various platforms about your business and your ROI  and social media mentions and comments will give you the answer to where you are heading to on the web world . All put together SEO is going to emerge as Web Presence Optimzation rather than Search Engine Optimization maybe we need to have a new term for SEO  as in order to reach the search  engines and SERPs,  first you need to have an over all presence on the web. Hope all of you have a great time analyzing the past year and get great innovative  ideas for the future.   December 15, 2010