SMX Advanced 2013 Recap: 32 Takeaways was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

After a successful three-day run, SMX Advanced 2013 has come to an end and, after saying goodbye to the Bell Harbor International Conference Center and spending the night in Sea–Tac Airport, our Bruce Clay live-bloggers have safely returned home.

In case you missed it, today’s post offers a quick-read recap of nine SMX Advanced live-blogging sessions that cover topics from PPC best practices and link acquisition, to content curation, authorship, and Schema.

 

32 Takeaways from 9 SMX Advanced 2013 Sessions

 

The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors: 2013 Edition

• Technical SEO is still relevant. When optimizing, remember that user intent comes first, and site speed matters.

• Anchor text has gone down in value since last year.

• The presence of Google+ 1 JavaScript code can cause a page to get indexed, and Google+ social sharing can make an impact on Google indexing and ranking within 4 or 5 days.

• Social shares on Facebook also impact Google indexing and ranking, but it can take 7 to 8 days.

PPC Best Practices in an Enhanced-Campaign World

• Mobile modifiers, location and time of day are available at the campaign- and ad group-level, but not the keyword level.

• Campaigns with low desktop/tablet bids and aggressive mobile modifiers are preferable to campaigns running only mobile-preferred ads.

• Improve your Quality Score by using mobile landing pages for mobile-referred ads, or {imobile} and {ifnotmobile} parameters within PPC URLs.

Authorship: The Deep Dive

• 

  Authorship versus AuthorRank — what’s the difference?

  Google Authorship versus AuthorRank: Google Authorship refers to the system whereby authors can connect themselves to pieces of content by linking content back to their Google+ profiles. AuthorRank, on the other hand, is a more nebulous concept that supposedly uses information gathered through the Authorship program and other signals to attribute a level of authority to a writer’s body of work, which is then used as a ranking factor in the SERPs.

• 13 percent of SERP top pages have Google Authorship markup but, overall, there has been low adoption of Authorship. Authorship is still in its infancy and understanding of how Authorship signals effect SERP position is something that is still being researched and worked on.
• Google+ profiles, pages and communities have PageRank, and their PageRank corresponds not only to the level of Google+ engagement they receive, but also to their backlink profile from sites external to Google+. Using Authorship on authoritative sites builds the search rank power of your profile.

• Videos, PDFs, Word documents and online PowerPoint presentations can all transfer Authorship but Google Books cannot.

Microdata, Schema, Rich Snippets

• 

  Click-throughs and on-site activity are more important than ever. If a user clicks through to your site and spends 2.5 minutes looking at your article and then clicks the back button, Google will take into consideration their time on site and deliver the searcher more articles from you in future search results.

• There are hundreds of Schema objects that can be assigned including  reviews, ratings, recipes, and person. Note: Authorship and “person” are not the same. Person is for show hosts and assigns information about the person; Google Authorship uses a rel=author tag and links to the author’s G+ profile.
  

• Only .27 percent of domains are using Schema, but those sites that do use Schema markup have seen 47 percent higher rankings on average.

Getting Curation Right

• 

  Content curation panel at SMX Advanced 2013

  When it comes to content curation, the wrong questions to ask are: What’s the bare minimum? How many words do I need to get by? How many keywords do I need to put in the copy?

• Use quality images, which you can find through Flickr’s Creative Commons, Shuttershock or via your own lens. Remember, content with images is more likely to be shared on social media.

• Types of curated content that tend to get traction: Improved versions of original posts, argumentative or controversial articles, lists, how-to articles and guides, images/memes, timelines, comparisons, offbeat or extreme posts, and videos.

• Curating content can save time. An original blog post may take upwards of four hours, while a curated post can be compiled in two hours or less.

SMX Keynote: Gurdeep Singh Pall, Bing Corporate VP

• 

  The idea of typing keywords into a search box is soon going to be outdated. Natural interaction with devices is going to be the new model and technology is catching up.

• The keyboard and mouse are on their way out, to be replaced with conversational interfaces for apps and devices. Proactive applications that can infer what you want or are planning to do based on your interactions with technology and search engines are coming.

• Younger people are drawn to the accessible spoken-word functionality of Bing. Research is being done to figure out if users want Bing to be like a friend, a butler, or a snarky concierge.

• With comScore figures placing Bing at 17+ percent market share, June 2013 has been Bing’s best month ever.

Think You Know Good Content? Fuggedaboutit. Here’s What Really Counts

• 

  Vanessa Fox and Vanessa Casavant answering questions after the session

  When it comes to content, the best long-term strategy is to figure out who your audience is, what they want and how you can help solve their problem.

• Content strategy is people strategy. Don’t think of it as a system.

• Creating a consistent voice in different communication channels strengthens the brand online and offline.

• Content can be political because there’s an overlap of requirements: technical, editorial and web strategy/planning.

Legit Link Acquisition

• 

  Further optimization helps build links and shares

  Create good high-quality content and make the content available for others to embed in-full on their websites. For example, people like infographics they can feature on their sites.

• Don’t stress about whether or not SEO is becoming inbound marketing. Do your basic SEO.

• Make sure to keep your internal link structure updated. Internal link building still works well, and manual link outreach still drives revenue.

• In light of Penguin, monitor your inbound anchor-text. Understand how link spam analysis works and make sure anchor text stays brand-focused (as opposed to keyword phrase focused) 50 percent of the time or more.

SMX Advanced 2013: Ask the SEOs

• In this session SEO veterans Bruce Clay, Rae Hoffman, Greg Boser and Alex Bennert answer questions including: How do you deal with syndicated content? If your audience isn’t on Google+, should you spend time on it? When do you know when your job as an SEO is done? What’s the biggest mistake marketers are making? And our personal favorite, if you could make Matt Cutts do anything, what would it be?

• Matt Cutts ascends the stage to drop some knowledge. Referring to the paid side of search and keyword data, Matt says that he’s only one guy and can’t push the whole organization. He mentions that he’s really pushing for security and recommends the book Little Brother and says it will inform your thinking on the topic.

• The SEOs, Matt Cutts, and Duane Forrester, each share one item they would consider a major conference takeaway. Bruce: fix weak links. Alex: make use of data in Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. Greg: concentrate on mobile and consider responsive design that supports native apps. Rae: Avoid being generic at all costs. Matt: make something compelling and optimize the user experience. Duane: think social.

Bruce Clay Blog

Posted by bradfriedman

It has been an amazing month at Moz, and for the first time, we have served up three indexes in one month – holy fresh data, Batman! This index is also our second index release from our Virginia data center.

As we’ve become so regular with our index releases, it seems that a blog post announcing each release may not be the best way to inform our customers on releases as they happen. This will be the last index update announced on the blog, but index release readers, have no fear! There’s a new, more digestible way to get all of the information about the index updates you know and love.

Going forward, we invite you subscribe to the Mozscape RSS feed found on the lower right-hand corner of the http://moz.com/products/api/updates page so that you will know when we have released a new index. Simply click on the RSS feed icon… 

…and you’ll be directed to our Feedburner Mozscape updates page. This page makes it easy to enter your information to subscribe to our index updates: 

Just enter your email address, choose your reader, and let the Mozscape index data flow in! 

As our index releases continue to become more frequent, you can expect the number of updates received through the RSS to mount. We hope you enjoy this new way to consume fresh update info as much as we do.

---

Here are the metrics for this index:

• 85,870,573,626 (86 billion) URLs
•   5,524,096,501 (5.5 billion) Subdomains
• 155,443,706 (155 million) Root Domains
• 902,845,046,889  (903 billion) Links
• Followed vs. Nofollowed
•   2.17 % of all links found were nofollowed
• 57.32 % of nofollowed links are internal
• 42.68 % are external
• Rel Canonical –  14.44 % of all pages now employ a rel=canonical tag
• The average page has 79 links on it
•  67.836 internal links on average
•  11.13 external links on average

And the correlations with Google’s US search results:

• Page Authority – 0.36
• Domain Authority – 0.19
• MozRank – 0.24
• Linking Root Domains – 0.30
• Total Links – 0.25
• External Links – 0.29

This histogram shows the crawl date and freshness of results in this index:

This index spans 38 days with crawl starting April 1st and finishing on May 8th.  

We always love to hear your thoughts! And remember, if you’re ever curious about when Mozscape next index release is planned, check out http://moz.com/products/api/updates.

Thanks for reading, and have a Mozzy weekend!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Moz Blog

SMX West 2013 Liveblog Schedule & Where We’ll Be was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Holy heatmap have you seen the SMX West agenda? This is some next level content. Getting to attend an educational series like the one going down next week in San Jose is truly one of the perks of the job. Of course it’s not all fun times and smart insights while at SMX; I earn my keep by liveblogging. And with an agenda like this, picking the sessions to attend has been the hardest part! But I did it, and after the fold down you’ll see the SMX West sessions you’ll find on the blog next week. Ad retargeting, YouTube PPC, Google Knowledge Graph, Facebook Graph Search, authorship and online identity — it’s all here! Before that, some details you should know if you’re lucky like me and will be at the conference!

How to Meet with Bruce Clay, Inc. at SMX West 2013

If you’re attending the conference, let’s connect. Here’s where we’ll be next week.

• If you’re getting into town Sunday, have a drink on us! BCI co-sponsors the Meet & Greet this Sunday from 6-7:30 and we’d love to see you there, get pumped for the conference and nerd out marketing style.
• The team will be stationed at booth #406 in the expo hall. Visit us to enter to win a free seat in our 3-day SEO training course in Simi Valley, CA. We’ll also be giving away $ 400 off the cost of our 3-day SEO training in 2013 for you and 6 friends, so stop by!
• Bruce will be in Theater A explaining Google ranking penalties and how businesses can get back in Google’s good graces on Monday at 12:00.
• Register for the SEO Workshop on Thursday, March 14 for a search optimization intensive you can use to take your business’s optimization efforts from 0 to 100. The last two SEO Workshops Bruce presented at SMX conferences last year sold out. If you have any questions about SEO, Bruce answers any questions in face-to-face workshop and equips you with a comprehensive and fundamental understanding of SEO. (P.S. You can deduct the cost of the workshop from our full SEO training course in Southern California if one day isn’t enough!)
• If you decide to go to SMX, save yourself 10% with code SMXW13bruceclay.

Liveblogging SMX West

Day 1: Monday, March 11

Time	BCI Liveblog Coverage
9:00 a.m.	Essential SEO Analytics: The Performance Metrics That Truly Count
10:45 a.m.	Ready, Aim, Fire… Then Retarget!
3:30 p.m.	The Search Police: Matt & Duane’s Excellent Search Engine Adventure
5:00 p.m.	Enhancing AdWords For A Constantly Connected World

 

Day 2: Tuesday, March 12

Time	BCI Liveblog Coverage
9:00 a.m.	Keynote Conversation: Grady Burnett, Facebook
10:45 a.m.	Meet Facebook Graph Search
3:30 p.m.	From Authorship To Authority: Why Claiming Your Identity Matters
5:00 p.m.	Inside Google’s Game-Changing Knowledge Graph

 

Day 3: Wednesday, March 13

Time	BCI Liveblog Coverage
10:45 a.m.	YouTube Words: Tying Your PPC Campaigns To YouTube
1:00 p.m.	Social Media Ads
2:30 p.m.	Google Enhanced Campaigns: What You Really Need To Know

 

Bruce Clay Blog

SEO Predictions 2013: New Tools, Social Spam Witch Hunt and the Knowledge Graph was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

‘Tis the season of reflections and SEO predictions, and yes, here’s another for 2013: SEO and search marketing in the coming year is going to see trends in the way of SEO ranking data and tools that work in compliance with Google’s terms of service, more interest in Google’s Knowledge Graph and putting the kibosh on social media spam, according to Bruce Clay in his 2013 predictions.

Interested in hearing more about these SEO predictions for 2013? Check out this month’s SEO Newsletter feature story: “2013 Internet Marketing Forecast by Bruce Clay.”

And while we’re on the topic of predictions, nothing helps you ponder the future better than analyzing the trends of the year previous. And we’ve got some gems for you there, too. First, what happened globally in search marketing, and then how’d Bruce do on his 2012 predictions?

We rounded up Bruce Clay Australasia, Bruce Clay Japan and Bruce Clay Europe to talk about the trends of the year in their neck of the woods. I think you’ll find it interesting to see the adoption rate of certain methodologies across the globe, and what’s important to different business communities.

In the article, “What Internet Marketing Tactics Were in Demand around the World in 2012?“, we asked six questions of our offices in three very different locations across the globe:

1.  What were the buzz words of Internet marketing in 2012?
2. In what concrete ways did SEO change in 2012?
3. What proved to be the most effective SEO tactics of 2012, the most popular or the most requested?
4. What was the demand for content and content marketing in 2012 compared to 2011?
5. How did budgets for Internet marketing shift in 2012?
6. What was the demand for link building in 2012 compared to 2011?

And the big question is: How did Bruce do on his predictions for the state of search marketing in 2012? Virginia Nussey put together this month’s Back to Basics article, “Bruce’s 2012 Predictions Scored: How Accurate Was He?” and says:

“It’s one thing to make a prediction. It’s another thing to be held accountable for your claim. There might be far fewer fortune tellers in the world if they were confronted by the accuracy of their soothsaying later down the line.

Bruce is a veteran SEO who has witnessed the rise of Google, seen the value of search algorithm ranking factors ebb and flow, watched the results page morph and grow, observed the many faces of spam, and assisted countless companies to develop websites that attract visitors and establish loyal communities.

Bruce has been at the forefront of the online marketing industry since 1996; it’s hard to be involved with something for that long and not see patterns.”

The article analyzes his forecast for 2012 using survey data from readers just like you who cast their vote to score how his predictions panned out in conjunction with feedback from thought leaders in our industry, including:

• Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners and chair of Conversion Conference
• Motoko Hunt, president and search marketing strategist at AJPR
• Kendra Jaros, VP of marketing at Third Door Media
• Joe Kerschbaum, VP at Clix Marketing and author of Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Mike Ramsey, owner of Nifty Marketing and The Voice

The results? You’ll have to check out the article to find out!

So what are your 2013 SEO predictions? Have you got any feedback on Bruce’s for 2013? Don’t be shy — tell us about it right here in the comments section below!

Bruce Clay Blog

Marketing Resolutions for 2013 – Hold Us Accountable (and Help Us Out!) was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Happy New Year! I’ve been told one way to hold yourself accountable to your goals is to post them publicly – but what’s even better is when you have a support system to help you get there. So Virginia and I were chatting this morning and we’re ready to share with you some professional marketing resolutions and goals for 2013 — and maybe you can help us out.

Aside from doing more traveling together to our favorite conferences (see left), we both have hopes of growing our skill sets, refining processes and continuing to develop professionally.

We hope you’ll weigh in with your goals, too, and then let’s do our best to collaborate! Who knows, maybe we can help one another accomplish our professional resolutions for 2013. What do you say?

Virginia’s Resolutions for 2013

I tend to shy away from resolutions because the new year seems like an arbitrary time to start doing something you obviously feel you should be doing anyway.

Yet at the same time, a new year resolution has something going for it: a built in metric for measuring success. And as we know, what gets measured gets done.

When you make a resolution for the new year, you have an easy date marker to check on concrete progress made at intervals throughout the year and get a sense of overall effectiveness one year out.

In addition to the time restraint, all goals are more likely to be achieved when they are measurable and concrete. These were chief qualifications as I set my professional resolutions for 2013. Have you found success with new year resolutions in the past? What characteristics do you feel a resolution must have in order to be achievable and not just a passing wish?

These are my professional resolutions. I’d love to hear yours along with your plans for how to make sure they get done.

1. Establish 3 ongoing guest blogging or cross-blogging partnerships.

We ramped up guest blogging on the BCI blog in December, and through the course of arranging posts from guest authors and trading posts from others, I was reminded of how important guest spots are for every blog’s promotion and audience reach.

And so I’m setting a concrete goal for guest blogging in 2013. I want at least 3 blog partners to trade guest posts with every month. I’ve already got some guest partnerships brewing, but if you want in on the guest blog action at the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog, let me know.

It goes without saying that guests to the BCI blog must be experienced, expert-level, highly reputable Internet marketing practitioners.

2. Write down processes and become more efficient with client work flow.

Jess and I wear many hats in our dear content and marketing department. With all the sombrero swapping we do, defined processes are a helpful thing to have on hand during transitions between projects and handing off to other BCI team members. Written processes are also a critical educational component, internally and with clients.

So over the year ahead I want to polish processes for:

• Keyword research in the SEO content marketing vein.
• Content writing, including the subject research and discovery process and on-page keyword optimization.
• Performance measurement of content starting from baseline SEOToolSet ranking reports and on to Google Analytics conversion path analysis.

With those processes in place, Jess and I will be in a happy place for efficiency and expansion opportunities.

3. Invest in a personal pet project where I can apply my professional skill set.

There’s a special kind of fulfillment that can be attained when your professional and personal interests collide. Coming up with the right idea to pursue is going to require some thought, but I know it’ll be worth it.

Understanding Internet marketing is a special skill in the world we live in today; not using it to further our personal projects and goals is doing ourselves a disservice.

Happiness in life comes from striking a balance in the various areas of our life. Hard working professionals are in danger of overlooking personal passions. I want to be sure to carve out more time every week for the activities and issues that interest me beyond Internet marketing. I want to dedicate my professional skills of promotion on the Internet to the things I care about.

Stay tuned for more details on this front.

Jessica’s Resolutions for 2013

I’m a huge fan of professional development and growth. I’m always trying to better my skill set, hurdle over personal barriers and think of new ways to look at how my discipline is growing and changing. So this year is going to be all about challenging myself to experiment with new things, testing new ideas and learning as much as I can.

1. Get better at analytics.

This has been on my list for way longer then I’d like to admit. I can find my way around Google Analytics OK, but it’s extremely important to what I do every day that I am able to quickly access the data and set up what I need in analytics to make more informed decisions about strategy. It’s especially interesting to me to be able to tie content to revenue.

I’ve been told that the Google Analytics certification is a great way to sit through the learning necessary to customize and get the most out of their analytics. So my first step is to get through the basic GA certification, start using it like a power player, and then explore more advanced learning in the area of analytics.

There’s so much to be learned, and I truly believe that we cannot get the most out of our efforts until we learn how to best use the data that’s available to us. I plan to explore mining data on just about everything I do, so that means lots of learning and doing with the right reporting.

2. Be more efficient.

Every month that passes here at BCI is only getting busier and busier. With competing deadlines, projects and clients, and everyone working their heiny off, my goal is to find ways for us to work smarter.

Our content department is an interesting beast. We’re not *just* in the business of writing. We deal a lot with many other facets of digital marketing because they all interconnect. But on top of all this, we do have to write. So not only are we dealing with the more strategic side of content, but we toggle back to creating content as well.

I need more advanced tools and processes this year to make sure the content team has continued success, including exploring new tactics and making sure none of us burn out. So efficiency is the name of the game here.

I’m especially interested in exploring different ways of project management to make things “easier.” That includes tools for large-scale project management like scheduling people and editorial calendars. I also want to further explore lean and agile approaches to tackling projects, like sprints.

3. Start being more active in the community.

I love the fact that that we have a platform at BCI to share ideas and concepts – namely the BCI blog and search marketing conferences. That said, every year I vow to do more outreach and collaborate more, but it rarely happens at the rate I’d like it to. And it’s so frustrating!

Know how many group conversations on LinkedIn I see every day that I could contribute to but never do? Know how many queries I get from HARO but never answer? Know how many opportunities there are for me to collaborate with all the creative and talented people in the industry and I just don’t reach out on a regular basis?

So this is my goal: Start sharing more knowledge where I can; start being a part of the conversation more; start collaborating more; start listening more. It all sparks a creative cycle. Every time I spend a bit of my day being a part of the community, I get inspired.

I’m excited to be joining Search Engine Watch this year as a contributing guest author, and I hope to contribute more to the Content Marketing Institute in 2013, too. Looking for other opps, too — so please reach out if you have them!

Virginia is also doing more educational outreach, starting with guest authorship at the Online Marketing Institute. And we hope to forge many more relationships where we can be a more active part of the community we love. I hope to see more webinars, guest posting, speaking and/or teaching and other forms of educational content in our future.

4. Explore the relationship between content and user experience.

I think content as it relates to user experience is going to be very important in the future. So I’m interested in researching how user experience and content work together. I want to get to the bottom of how people like to consume content and why.

Some of the questions I need to explore are:

• What makes a better learning experience for people and why?
• What gets people excited about content and not overwhelmed by it?
• What makes people react to one type of content over another?

I’ve been fascinated by user experience for some time. Google is highly focused on the user experience, and I think it’s only a matter of time before we’ll stop the more granular SEO tactics and focus more time on the user experience.
I’m really intrigued at how content becomes a part of this. And I want to start experimenting with how far I can push the limits of what I know is good for SEO in favor of user experience to see how content fares in those environments.

5. More experimenting and testing.

This year, I want to take more risks with the content I produce. That means exploring new ways of writing (starting with a creative writing course I’ll be taking this month) and new ways of creating and distributing information.

I consider myself a pretty diverse writer, but I tend to fall back on a lot of “how to” in my blog pieces. To be honest, I’ve been somewhat hesitant to break away from that mold because people do seem to find that content very useful. But I want to start exploring other ways of writing that’s still useful, relevant and resonates with readers.

So that’s where I’ll need you, our reader, to weigh in on what types of content you like and want to see more of.

In 2013, I’m looking to find answers to:

• What works better: shorter or longer posts? Do people really have the time or attention span to read lengthy pieces anymore?
• Is curated content a good solution for us for certain content objectives?
• Should we have more guest authors and user generated content? What’s the best way to approach this?
• Do people like shorter posts? More in-depth posts?
• Do readers react stronger to posts driven by:

1. Storylines and experiences?
2. How-to strategy and tactics?
3. Posts or posts that touch on forward-thinking ideas and concepts?
4. Fun, silly posts?
5. Posts that don’t require a lot of time or thinking?
6. Posts that have more video or imagery in place of text?

Another thing I’ve been meaning to do for a long time now is start my personal blog. I have soooo many ideas swirling around in my head that need to be unleashed in my own platform so I can have another testing ground.

And speaking of testing, I want to test more. That means getting savvier with the many tools and data that’s available so I can A/B and multivariate test.

Well there you have it. Now I suppose we’re stuck on making these things happen – eh, Virginia? If you’re reading this and you have important professional goals for 2013, vow to commit to them right now by saying them out loud! We’d love to be supportive in any way we can.

Bruce Clay Blog

Posted by randfish

As is tradition here at Moz, I'm conducting my annual analysis of my predictions from 2012, and if I score high enough, predicting what will happen in 2013. I like to use this process because it keeps me honest – if I suck at predicting what will happen in a 12-month span, should you really listen to me for the next 12 months?

This year, I'm also broadening my focus beyond just SEO to all of inbound marketing – search, social, content, PR, CRO, and email. Hence, if my predictions from last year do well, I'll be making a few more guesses about the year to come than usual.

Here's how scoring works:

• Spot On (+2) – when a prediction hits the nail on the head and the primary criteria are fulfilled
• Partially Accurate (+1) – predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality
• Not Completely Wrong (-1) – those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense
• Off the Mark (-2) – guesses which didn't come close

The rules state that if the score is lower than +1, I'm not allowed to make predictions for the coming year. Here's to hoping!

In 2012, I made 8 predictions:

1. Bing will have a slight increase in US marketshare, but remain <20% to Google's 80%+: This one is spot on if you use real numbers like those from Statcounter (which makes way more sense than using Comscore). Here's the graph for 2012:
   _
   
   _
   It's showing almost exactly what I predicted. Bing has gained very slightly in the US (while Yahoo! shrunk a tiny bit), but the two combined remains at 18.2% while Google hovers at 80.68% (GG+AOL). That's worthy of +2 points.
2. SEO without social media will become a relic of the past: I'm struggling with exactly how to rate this one. One the one hand, there are certainly forms of SEO that can exist independent of social media, and some practitioners still don't combine the two. On the other hand, that number has drifted to a very small percent of the SEO world, and the use of social, especially in link building, outreach, PR, research, and networking is nearly universal. This one comes down to opinion, but I think few would say it's off the mark, so I'll give a +1.
3. Google will finally take stronger, Panda-style action against manipulative link spam: This one was a slam dunk. The "Penguin Update" is not only focused specifically on link spam, but it's also similar to Panda's style of updating and, many suspect, uses much of the frameworks that Google's Search Quality team built with Panda. +2 points on this prediction.
4. Pinterest will break into the mainstream: To be fair, this was one of the easiest predictions to make for 2012, given how Pinterest was exploding at the end of 2011. And while growth the first half of the year was exceptional, it slowed in the 2nd half (as seen below in this chart from Nielsen's excellent Social Media Report 2012):
   _
   
   _
   I'll only give myself a +1 despite the fact that Pinterest was the web's fastest growing social network in 2012, due to that slowing second-half growth, and the fact that from a media, investor, and market standpoint, Pinterest still isn't mentioned alongside Twitter & Facebook.
5. Overly aggressive search ads will result in mainstream backlash against Google: Given how Google ads and Google properties are appearing in verticals like travel, autos, mortgages, and credit cards, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of a backlash.
   _
   
   _
   Certainly, we've seen some activity like EU regulators cracking down on some potentially monopolistic practices, but the outrage for Google's ad practices are miniscule compared to, say, the TOS changes by Instagram. I suspect the search giant is still benefiting from the positive reputation it's built over the past decade. We'll see if they can maintain that long term. All in all, I'm giving myself a -1 on this prediction. There's been some backlash and we may see some legal consequences, but they're pretty small.
6. Keyword (not provided) will rise to 25%+ of web searches: I'm sad to be right on this one. I believe Google is destroying value on the web and hurting the ability of site owners and content creators to better serve searchers, and doing so only in the interests of protecting their own revenue opportunities (since keyword data is still provided to any paying AdWords customers).
   _
   
   _
   The above chart comes from the excellent (Not Provided) Count project which tracks referral data across a large number of sites in a variety of verticals to show the average impact. Given that this number hit just over 25% at the end of the year, I'm giving myself a +2. Predictions that accurate don't come along often – I only wish it was a less negative one. 
7. We'll see the rise of a serious certification program: Tragically, this still hasn't happened. Distilled U is certainly a great resource, and Market Motive, Search Engine College and free programs like Hubspot's Inbound University continue to do well, but there's no true standard (or even a combination of standards). I'm giving this one a -2 as the trend just hasn't materialized in a mainstream enough way to deserve more.
8. Google will make it very hard to do great SEO without using Google+: this one's tough. It's mostly true for local business SEO, where Google Local Pages now require a Google+ account. And certainly Google's authorship program, which leverages Plus, is a powerful tool for content publishers (and has some hidden benefits, too). However, Google+ signals like shares and +1s don't appear to be a big part of the ranking algorithm. Thus, I'm giving myself a -1.

Taken together, the total score is a surprisingly good +4. That means it's time for another set of annual predictions!

#1: None of the potential threats to Google's domination of search will make even a tiny dent

I've heard all the theories – Apple is getting into search, Facebook is getting into search, DuckDuckGo will take market share, Amazon will restart their old A9 project and take share, Bing will take share as Google loses consumer trust, Yandex & Baidu will expand to other markets and slowly peel away users, and all the rest. I don't buy any of them. Google is a "default behavior" for the world's Internet users, and it's going to take massive, repeated failures on their part or a complete shift in the way the web is used before Google will feel even a sliver of pain.

My prediction is that Google's market share at the end of 2013 will remain at least steady, and possibly gain in the US, and its global domination will continue unabated.

BTW – If I had to place a bet on which of these would have the best chance, it would probably be Amazon (mostly because search is a behavior we're used to on Amazon and their brand already serves as a destination in lots of commerce-focused verticals). But, I still think it wouldn't work.

#2: "Inbound marketing" will be in more titles & job profiles as "SEO" becomes too limiting for many professionals

Searching LinkedIn today, I can see that "SEO" far, far outnumbers "inbound marketing" on job profiles.

The same holds true for job postings on aggregator sites like SimplyHired:

But, I think there's already a trend among early adopters to expand their job descriptions and earn more responsibility and influence in areas that have a significant impact on SEO – social media, PR, content, etc.

The only term I've seen that potentially rivals "inbound marketing" is "growth hacker," but that's confined to only the most hardcore Silicon Valley cultures and companies, and the definition seems far less clear. Still, it''s my guess that either or both of these terms will make a more serious showing in job profiles and listings in 2013.

#3: More websites will move away from Google Analytics as the only provider of web visitor tracking

I read Russ Jones' post on Dropping Google Analytics for Piwik and it struck a chord. I think we're going to see more of this as marketers grow more suspicious of Google and less happy with relying on what the search giant does or doesn't grant. I do expect this trend to be small, but measurable, in 2013.

Benefcators will include folks like Piwik, but also potentially Omniture and Webtrends on the enterprise side (though both have UX and usability work to do to catch u with GA), and Clicky, Statcounter, Mint, Mixpanel, KISSMetrics, Hubspot, and others on the SMB end.

#4: Google+ will continue to grow in 2013, but much more slowly than in 2012

At last report (Dec. 6th via TNW), Google+ had 135mm active users viewing their streams on the service in a 30-day period, and 500mm total users. The total users number was only 90mm according to Google in January of 2012, meaning the service grew nearly 5X (unfortunately, we don't have earlier numbers on monthly actives).

In 2013, I'm predicting both numbers to grow 1.5-2X at maximum, and I'll be shocked if Google can reach more than 300mm active monthly users.

#5: App store search will remain largely ignored by marketers (for lots of defensible reasons)

Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store attracted a lot of attention over the last 2 years, but not much serious effort from marketers (with some notable exceptions), particularly on the SEO side. The reason's fairly clear – search on the app store isn't anything like web search. Brand searches are probably 80%+ of that market (I'd actually guess they're well over 90%), and the algorithm used to rank apps is based on basic keyword use and metrics like downloads and ratings, hence the rich get richer.

I thought Vibhu Norby's post Why We're Pivoting from Mobile-First to Web-First made a tremendous amount of sense, and while I respect and admire those who disagree (like USV's Fred Wilson), I think marketers as a whole and certainly a lot of startups, too, are going to come back to the web as the way to build a brand and mobile as a way to extend it when and where a device-specific format makes sense.

#6: Facebook (and maybe Twitter, too) will make substantive efforts to expose new, meaningful data to brands that let them better track the ROI of both advertising and organic participation

Both social media services are woefully underserving their advertisers and marketers today, and I predict that for paying customers as well as account administrators, more substantial and robust options will be available on the data side. A great match for marketers would be tracking via the Facebook share / Twitter tweet buttons that maps to account info in the platform's dashboard, e.g. 7,514 logged-in Twitter users visited this blog post of which 72 tweeted it. More data like sources of shares and click-tracking could add even more utility.

A good example might be what FourSquare's doing with their dashboards for businesses (though I think both need to go further on the data they provide):

Twitter in particular could benefit hugely from this, while Facebook is already close(ish) with their admin portal. That said, I think it's unlikely we'll see Facebook fo as FourSquare has and share full names of users who visit.

#7: Google will introduce more protocols like the meta keywords for Google News, rel author for publishers, etc.

Google continues to keep SEO for their engine a complex, nuanced, and fast-changing practice through the launch of dramatic numbers of updates and introduction of new optimization protocols and opportunities. I don't see this slowing down anytime soon. 2012 saw the launch of the Google News Meta Keywords tag, the expansion of the Rel=Author/AuthorRank program, and the new Google+ for Local Business pages, among others.

In 2013, expect a few more of these to keep SEOs, publishers, and web businesses of all kinds on their toes. There's no rest for the optimization weary.

#8: The social media tool market will continue a trend of consolidation and shrinkage

I haven't seen this trend widely reported, but as we studied the social media tools market in 2011 and 2012 from a potential acquisitions perspective, we observed a surprising amount of tools and services shuttering (many of which, to be fair, were "features" not fully-baked products that could support and justify companies). We also noticed that 2012 in particular had far fewer wholly new social media monitoring/management/reporting/scheduling/analytics tools that the three prior years.

I'm guessing that 2013 will be the year this comes to a head, and the few dozen social tool companies who have substantive, loyal users will gobble up or copy the key features of their smaller, less-well-suited-for-long-term-survival competitors. 

#9: Co-occurrence of brands/websites and keyword terms/phrases will be proven to have an impact on search engine rankings through correlation data, specific experiments, and/or both

The idea of co-occurrence as a ranking factor is by no means new, but it got a lot more attention in 2012 thanks to a number of SEO industry folks discussing it on blogs, forums, and at conferences. One of Moz's most popular WB Fridays this year was on the subject: Anchor Text is Weakening… And May Be Replaced by Co-Occurrence. Bill Slawski wrote an excellent follow-on: Not All Anchor Text is Equal And Other Co-Citation Observations, and Joshua Giardino followed him with another good piece: It's Not Co-Citation, But It's Still Awesome.

#10: We'll witness a major transaction (or two) in the inbound marketing field, potentially rivaling the iCrossing acquisition in size and scope

Acquisitions and IPOs make headlines and they make the market's movers & shakers (and investors) stand up and take note. In 2010, iCrossing's $ 325mm acquisition by Hearst Media dominated headlines and got a lot of organic search-focused agencies (and big advertising/publishing brands) taking note. That acquisition marked one of the few massive exits in the SEO/inbound space and remains the largest transaction I'm aware of outside the email world (e.g. ConstantContact, iContact, etc). Eloqua's public offering in 2012 was a bright spot, too, and I think we're in for one or two more of those in 2013.

My money would be on the tools/software market (companies like Marketo, Hubspot, SearchMetrics, Conductor, Brightedge, Covario, Raven, Act-On, SproutSocial, Hootsuite, Ginza Metrics, etc) but I'm not confident enough to limit my prediction to the software space exclusively. Agencies may still be in the picture, and the big four advertising firms still have opportunity in the inbound realm, IMO.

---

2013 is going to move fast in our space. The relentless pace of innovation, change, and opportunity have little chance of slowing down, and that's a wonderful thing for all us in the marketing world. Hopefully, these predictions will provide some value to you – whether they do or not, I'd love to hear some of the expectations you have for what the world has in store for us in 2013.

Happy New Year and best wishes for a fantastic 2013!

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Posted by gfiorelli1

Apollo fell in love with a priestess, and offered her the terrible gift of prophecy. She agreed to the gift, but when Apollo asked her to lie with him, the daughter of Priam refused. The God, angry, cursed her: the young priestess would have been a prophetess, but no one would believe her.

Her name was Cassandra.

Every day this month, I've seen Twitter posts with every kind of predictions about how web marketing disciplines will look in 2013.

I am not exempt from the desire to predict the future. The urge is something deeply human and, in an industry as uncertain as ours, sometimes it is a psychological necessity. However, some of those predictions are so improbable that this obscure prediction (written to be blatantly false by one of my Spanish friends) seems more plausible:

"Google launches Google Balrog. The name of this new Google algorithm is inspired by the name of the mythical creature imagined by Tolkien, because it will operate the same way.

It will be an algorithm that, wrapped in fire, will crawl the Web, penalizing and incinerating sites which do not include the anchor text "click here" at least seven times and not include a picture of a kitten asleep in a basket.

If your site will not meet these minimums, the Balrog will go after you." (The translation is mine from Ricardo`s original post in Spanish.)

Every speculation about how something may evolve in the future should be based on the knowledge of the past, and, in the case of Google, we should not make the mistake of excluding elements like its acquisitions and technological evolution when predicting its future.

For example, Panda should be seen as a needed action that Google took in order to solve a problem caused by the technological advancement of Caffeine. In fact, with Caffeine (June 2010), Google was able to find new pages (or new information about existing pages) and could add them straight to the index.

As a negative side effect, gazillions of poor-quality pages flooded the SERPs, objectively deteriorating them. I'm sure the Search Quality team was already working on finding a solution to the poor results in the SERPs, but this particular Caffeine side effect accelerated the creation of the Panda algorithm.

Opening the prophecies book of Cassandra

If you visit the About Us page of Google, you will read this: Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

That is the why of Google, and three words matter the most:

1. Organize
2. Accessible
3. Useful

The how is represented by its algorithms; the what is composed by all the products Google has developed along the years (Search, Local, Mobile, Video, Voice, etc.).

 

Organized

For many years, I've considered Google as a cataloguer of objects, which offers information on a variety of topics:

• Written content
  • "Generic" content
  • Blog posts
  • News
  • Questions/Answers
  • Books
  • Patents
  • Academic articles
• Photos and images
• Videos
• Apps

You've probably noticed that these are the vertical searches Google offers and that compose the Universal Search right now (I excluded Products because they are a paid option, and I consider Google+ status as “posts”).

Almost all these “objects” have their own algorithms which are frequently updated, similar to the YouTube, Google News, and Google Images algorithm updates. And all them have their flaws (for instance, the real value to be assigned to a link).

Until recent years, Universal Search seemed to be similar to a building constructed with Legos, but there were three important changes in 2011 that changed the landscape. These changed began developing in 2012 and – possibly – will be consolidated in 2013, which could really unify all the vertical searches. These three changes are:

1. Schema.org
2. Authorship
3. Google+

Schema.org

We know that Google is using semantic closeness in its categorization of crawled information, as we know how the concept of Entity is strongly related to semantic.

However, this aspect of the crawling function has assumed a larger relevance after the implementation of Schema.org. The general acceptance of HTML5 as the new standard (pushed by Google since its beginning) and tools like Open Graph has helped boost relevance, as well.

The fact that Google offers the opportunity to verify accuracy of rich snippets implementation (and is continuously updating the tool), changed its name to  the Structured Data testing tool, and recently offered the opportunity to highlight events structured data directly from Webmaster Tools makes me suspect that semantic is going to have even greater weight in how Google will organize the information it crawls.

The Knowledge Graph (and open data such as Freebase since Google's acquisition of Metaweb in 2010), which recently rolled out in many regional Googles, is based on the semantic web and is improving very quickly. My advice is to start thinking seriously about semantic as a channel for possible web marketing and SEO actions. 

Authorship

AuthorRank has been one of the hot topics of 2012. People smarter than me wrote about it, and even created a tool around it.

In my 2011 “Wake up SEOs, the New Google is here” post, I presented my hypothesis that AuthorRank would have become a part of a more complex set of graphs, whose purpose was to organize and present for real the best content in the SERPs. We have not yet seen that “prophecy” become fact, but I am stubbornly convinced that this is the direction Google has taken. If not, why can we already use the relation ”author”/Google profile in posts, articles, videos, and books? In the future, I see AuthorRank becoming useful in other objects as well, such as photos, images, and audio.

Today, I want to focus on an aspect of AuthorRank which (incomprehensibly) does not receive much attention: the rel=”publisher” mark up. It is rel=”publisher” that connects a site (the publisher) with the authors. Even when those same authors abandon the publisher to start working with another site, their AuthorRank will continue to influence the “PublisherRank,” which makes it even stronger.

Google+

During the last SMX Social Media Marketing Expo, Vic Gundotra told Danny Sullivan:

"I think people are just now starting to understand that Google+ is Google. At some point, we’re gonna have a billion users. And eventually, you’ll just say: 'Google has a billion users.'”

I am not going to discuss the value of Google+ as a social media channel, but we must admit that it is the irresistible evolution of Google for a number of reasons:

• Social is the nature of a profiler tool.
• The fact that rel=”author” and rel=”publisher” are strictly related to Google profiles makes them part of the future of Google Search (and also Paid Search).
• It is the easiest way for Google to obtain real social signals, not just through how users act on Google+, but also through users connecting many other social accounts to the their G+ profile.

Accessible

"You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer."

You can find that phrase in the Ten Things We Know to Be True page of Google.com.

Google bought Android Inc. in 2005 and entered in the mobile phone industry in 2008. Why the sudden surge into mobile? Aside from Android being a gold mine, Google's goal is making information universally accessible. Because more and more people are using mobile for search (especially for local), it was imperative for Google to be a player in the space:

Search on mobile is almost synonymous with Local Search, which can also (partly) explain why Google Now has been developed, along with the peculiar design of the mobile version of Google Search.

Therefore, it's time to stop thinking of mobile as an option and realize it's a priority.

For that same reason (strongly connected to the concept of accessibility), Google started giving instructions and suggestions about how to build mobile-optimized sites, with special predilection for the responsive design technology.

Mobile accessibility means also Google Voice Search, and <irony> what a surprise </irony>, from Knowledge Graph, Schema, and Local Search.

In addition, we can't forget Project Glass. It is still a Google X project, but has been given to developers to start designing software/apps in preparation for its commercial release predicted for 2014.

Accessibility gives information to users quickly, which explains why site speed is so important to Google – so much that it released mod page speed this last October and updated it just few days ago.

Lastly, WPO (Web Performance Optimization) is not exactly an SEO activity, but it affects SEOs, so it must be considered one of the priority for 2013. The frequently troubled relation between SEOs and developers/web designers will forcedly find a solution in 2013. We will need to start being better communicators and reach them where they are.

Useful

At the end of November, Matt Cutts gave a definition of SEO as Search Experience Optimization in his Google Webmaster Help video series:

Nothing really new, but yet another confirmation that SEO should focus on providing users with useful information.

Panda, Penguin, EMD, Layout Update… all of these updates were aimed at prioritizing the most useful sites available, and punishing those that Google considered useless.

Content marketing (the discipline that helps create useful information) has become a big priority for SEOs. However, there are still so many in our industry who don't really understand what content marketing really means and how SEO can be implemented into a content strategy. This is not the best place to discuss this topic, but check out the deck below for further explanation.

How to Build SEO into Content Strategy by Jonathon Colman

2013 will see definitive adoption of content marketing into SEO, and those sites that do not integrage marketable content into their strategies will see themselves overtaken in the SERPs.

At the same time, we will also see an increase of content marketing spamming: guest posts as article marketing, infograph-spam, or simply not consistent content actions. Sadly, SEOs tend to screw up a lot of at-first-good-tactics just because of a short-sighted tactical vision we may have. It's possible that some of the Search Quality Team actions will be focused on those facets of spam, because they already have the tools for doing it.

Usefulness to Google does not just mean "content," hence filling every kind of site with zombie infographics just because "they are cool" is not the way to go. Usefulness is paired with personalization, as if Google was saying, "We will offer you the opportunity to find the information that is interesting to you based on your previous searches, your interests, the authority of the sources, and where you are."

For that reason, I consider the Venice update the most underestimated update of 2012. It completely changed the SERPs for almost every kind of query.

Moving forward, I recommend paying close attention to the Gmail Search Field experiment, or why Google is putting effort towards making International and Multilingual SEO easier. 

Cassandra's appendices: what updates might we see in 2013?

Between 2011 and 2012, we experienced three major updates: Panda, Penguin, and EMD.

The first update's goal was to clean the SERPs of useless content, defined as content that doesn't provide any real value to the users. The second aimed to clean the SERPs of content that ranked thanks to a "false popularity" obtained through low-quality link building actions, rather than ranking by value according to users. The third update's goal was to clean the SERPs of content that ranked solely because of an exaggerated boost obtained from its exact match domain. 

The Penguin and EMD updates were even more necessary after Panda as a logical consequence, if you really think about it. Panda resulted in a large amount of sites disappearing from the SERPs. Other sidtes that survived Panda's ranking factors still won in the SERPs, mostly due to an over-SEO'd link building strategy. After Penguin, we saw those sites replaced by the sites relying only on the strength of their domain names, leading to the EMD update roll out.

Are the SERPs perfect now? Not quite. Domain crowding (and its counter part, domain shrinking), which was minor issue since 2007 was somehow justified by the Brand Update, is becoming a problem, especially in countries where the EMD update is not yet rolled out. 

Conclusion 

We know how much can still be done through Rich Snippets spam, the gaming of Local Search, and guest posting and infographic directories spam. In 2013, we may see the effects of a massive collection of spam sites (although Google is working on it, thanks to the disavow tool); could this be the "linkapocalypse," or maybe even the real "Balrog" update? These are simply my assumptions, as every year when it comes to possible updates. What is sure is that we will see new releases of Panda and Penguin, and the extension of the EMD update in all regional Googles.

This is Google in 2013 for me and I am not a prophet, just someone who likes to look at the past while trying to interpret the future. I am right? Probably not.

But, just maybe, I am Cassandra.

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SEO Book.com

Posted by Dr. Pete

If we’ve learned anything in 2012, it’s that Google isn’t letting up on low-value tactics. We’ve had the Penguin update, 13 Panda updates (so many that we needed a new naming scheme), and a crackdown on low-quality Exact Match Domains (EMDs), to name just a few. While I can’t tell you Google’s next move, I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty – there’s more to come. So, how can you protect what you’ve built in 2013?

I was going to write a long list of suggestions, but I realized that they almost all boiled down to just one idea. I’m not going to toy with you – my top tip for 2013 SEO is this:

If at any point in 2012 you asked “What’s the best [X] for SEO?” (link-building tactic, tag, directory, etc.), you’re already in trouble. Any single-tactic approach is short-term at best. Real companies, real link profiles, and real marketing are rich with variety.

So, what does that mean, practically? I’m going to cheat a bit and split my one tip into five kinds of diversity that I think are critical to your SEO success in the coming years.

1A. Diversify Anchor Text

Let’s start with an easy one. We’ve all known for a while that overly aggressive inbound link anchor text was pushing the envelope, and the Penguin Update definitely reinforced that message. If every link to your site reads “buy best Viagra cheap Viagra today!”, it might as well read “spam spam spammity spam,” especially if it’s in a sentence like:

If you’re looking for the best price on the new iPad and iPad cases, then buy best Viagra cheap Viagra today! and get a free bag of Acai berries.

It’s not natural, and you know it. What’s the best way to make your anchor text seem “natural?” Stop obsessing over it. Yes, anchor text is a signal, but any solid link profile is going to naturally use relevant text and appear in the context of relevant text. If you want to tweak the text on some of your high-authority links, go for it, but I wouldn’t break out the spreadsheets in 2013.

1B. Diversify Your Links

Are guest posts the one true answer to all of life’s questions or are they a scourge on our fragile earth? To read the SEO blogosphere in 2012, it’s hard to tell. Any link-building tactic can be low quality, if you abuse it. The problem is that someone reads a tip about how guest posts make good links and then they run off and publish the same slapped-together junk on 15,000 sites. Then they wonder why their rankings dropped.

Nothing screams manual link-building like a profile that’s built with only one tactic, especially if that tactic is too easy. At best, you’re eventually going to be doomed to diminishing returns. So, take a hard look at where your links came from in 2012 and consider trying something new next year. Diversify your profile, and you’ll diversify your risk.

1C. Diversify Traffic Sources

There’s an 800-lb. Gorilla in the room, and we’re all writing more SEO blog posts to avoid talking about it. Most of us are far too dependent on Google for traffic. What would you do if something changed overnight? I know some of you will object  – “But ALL my tactics are white-hat and I follow the rules!” Assuming that you understood the rules 100% accurately and really followed them to the letter, what if they changed?

The more I follow the Algorithm, the more I realize that the changing search UI and feature landscape may be even more important than the core algorithm itself. What happens if your competitor suddenly gets site-links, or you’re #8 on a SERP that drops to only 7 results, or everyone gets video snippets and you have no videos, or your niche shifts to paid inclusion and you can’t afford to pay? Even if you’ve followed the rules, your traffic could drop on a moment’s notice.

You need to think beyond Google. I know it’s tough, and it’s going to take time and money, but if you’re dependent on Google for your livelihood, then your livelihood is at serious risk.

1D. Diversify Your Marketing

There’s been a very positive trend this year toward thinking about marketing much more broadly – not as a tactic to trick people into liking you, but as the natural extension of building a better mousetrap. I think this is at the heart of RCS (not to put words in Wil’s mouth) – if you do something amazing and you believe in it, everything you do is marketing. If you build crap and you know it’s crap, then marketing is sleight of hand that you hope to pull on the unsuspecting. You might score twenty bucks by stealing my wallet, but you’re not going to gain a customer for life.

Stop taking shortcuts and make a real resolution in 2013 to think hard about what you do and why it has value. If you understand your value proposition, content and marketing naturally flow out of that. Talk to people outside of the SEO and marketing teams. Find out what your company does that’s unique, exciting, and resonates with customers.

1E. Diversify Your Point Of View

I recently had the pleasure to finally see Michael Dorausch (a chiropractor and well-known figure in the local SEO community) speak. Dr. Mike arrived in Tampa for BlueGlassX and built his presentation from the ground up, using photography to tell stories about the neighborhood and local history. It's hard to explain in a few sentences, but what amazed me was just how many ideas for unique and original content he was able to find in less than 48 hours, just by having a fresh perspective and passion for the subject. I'd like to say I was inspired by the presentation, but to be totally honest, I think the emotion was embarrassment. I was embarrassed that he was able to generate so many ideas so quickly, just by coming at the problem with the right attitude.

In 2013, if you tell me your industry is "boring," be warned – I'm going to smack you. If you're bored by what you do, how do you think your prospects and customers will feel? Step out – have someone give you a tour of your office like you've never been there. Visit your home city like you're a tourist coming there for the first time. Get five regular people to walk through your website and try to buy something (if you don't have five normal friends, use a service like UserTesting.com). The New Year is the perfect time for a fresh perspective.

1F. Happy Birthday, Erica!

Ok, this has nothing to do with the post, but today is Erica McGillivray's birthday. If you don't know Erica, she's our Community Attaché here at SEOmoz. So, diversify your communications today and wish her a happy birthday.

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What’s In Store for Content Marketing in 2013? was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

The Content Marketing Institute last week released 2013 predictions, where more than 80 marketers (including yours truly) weighed in on where the discipline was going in 2013.

Some predictions we heard over and over again:

• Journalists will have a new home in the corporate or agency environment.
• Visual content ramps up in the form of video and graphics.
• Creating content for mobile is key, along with other multiscreen options.

My take on the emerging themes from the survey:

• Great business content that’s on par with big publishers will be key.
• The way we want to receive information is changing from the device (mobile) to the medium (visual) to the delivery (concise).

Here’s the report on SlideShare. Scroll down for hand-picked predictions plus my take on them.

Journalists Predicted to Be Big Players in Content Marketing

We heard a lot of predictions in the CMI report about the demand for journalists, and how they will now have a home in the corporate or agency environment due to the brand publishing explosion.

If the predictions are true, businesses will be putting a high value on writers – trained writers – and especially those that can use objective writing as in journalism, as well as investigate the company to find the stories and then go tell them.

I loved Paul Conley’s take on the future of brand journalism, and I think it’s a highly likely scenario:

And while the journalist skill set in a company’s marketing and publishing department is a fantastic addition, it doesn’t necessarily mean a successful content marketing department.

Businesses should turn to journalist skill sets as a viable options for well-written content and storytelling, but those journalists may not have the digital marketing strategy to execute content marketing on a full scale.

Which is why I see it a little differently than Jason’s comment below:

 

My prediction is that businesses will need a healthy mix of skills sets on the content marketing team – publishing, journalism, editing, analytics, SEO, social media, writing, user experience, design and videography, and other Web marketing disciplines.

In fact, here’s my prediction from the CMI report:

At the helm of all those skill sets I mentioned previously should be someone who understands how all the moving parts fit together within a healthy digital marketing campaign; someone who can speak to the strategy and make sense of all the data to balance the content production with the business goals and audience.

This is similar to what Nicholas Kinports is saying:

I particularly loved the following prediction because in order to be successful, businesses need to define what content marketing means before they go after it:

How We Create Content Is Predicted to Change

Several marketers predicted the way people wish to receive and produce content is changing and will continue to do so. Many statements had to do with the rise of video production and visuals, as well as more sophisticated execution of those types of content.

So just as journalists will be in demand, I say graphic designers and videographers will continue to have a home as the need for visual storytelling becomes more and more important.

Then there’s the rise of mobile consumption of content. Many predictions talked about the devices people will use to consume content, which means content needs to be responsive for multiscreen use.

And on top of it all, you have waning attention spans. One of my favorite predictions by Roger Parker was on simplifying the message:

I also agreed with the predictions on Slideshare being a driver of content consumption. Think about it: Why wait until you have a presentation that you’ve unveiled to an audience? Any topic you have in your head can fleshed out in a PowerPoint, and the succinct nature caters to thin attention spans. Could slide decks be the new blog post?

In a prediction by David Dunworth, he talks about visuals trumping the written word as a form of learning. I would add to that comment by saying that I believe we are going to have to take into account various personas and learning styles to cater the content deliverable (words, visuals, video) we present on the same topic.

All of this is to say that the way we think about creating our content will need to change, from the way our text is laid out, to the type of content we create and the way content is written and delivered, where simplicity, entertainment, ease of use and engagement could trump in-depth, how-to content for the purposes of authoritative content.

Does this mean that the entertainment factor will trump thought leadership in our content production? I guess we’ll find out …

What’s your prediction for content in 2013? Weigh in in the comments below!

Bruce Clay Blog