At the end of each year, we have many year in review stories and predictions for the next year. Now, that we’re into the New Year of 2011, the stories and blog posts continue littered with predictions about everything from the economy to the end of the world on December 31, 2011. Regardless, if the world will end, the show must go on. And for me, of course, the show happens to be in the SEO world. I’m curious what may be on the plate for me throughout the year.

While I have my opinions about what I believe will happen beyond all our clients being incredibly happy and satisfied with the work we do for them, but I’ll save that for them so they can benefit. However, I’ll summarize what many others have already went ahead and blogged on their various CMS’s and websites to bring them more traffic. Regardless, it’s good to gauge the consensus by gathering multiple sources. So, here I am to summarize what I’ve read and seen.

Predictions for 2011 in the SEO World (with the supporters in the parentheses that follow each prediction; key below):

SEO/Google/Analytics/Tracking/CMS Predictions:

• Demand for SEO Continues to grow with even a post about SEO being the #1 priority in a poll of 200 Marketing Decision Makers and a great post by Jeffrey Chew showing how SEO still dominates in terms of peoples’ interest in finding out more about it (1, 5); of course most people in the industry will be making sure this is very clear!  However, my gut feel with all the activity around it shows it’s still alive and kicking!
• Similarly, SEO won’t die (4)
• However, SEO is still considered Black Magic (4)
• SEO reputation problem still plagues industry (4)
• Google is still the main search engine for us to focus our SEO efforts on; Yahoo, Bing and the rest still trail (1)
• And Matt Cutts will still keep his job (4)
• No more link exchanges (1)
• SEO methods must be diversified (1)
• Page Rank (PR) loses value in the SEO industry
• WordPress will dominate the CMS tools front in terms of SEO (1)
• Clicks/Visits will influence rankings (3)
• Google places/local/maps adds filters and sorting (3)
• Rank tracking will be possible through google’s referral string (3)
• Mobile will not be as big as some predict in terms of SEO (3, 4)
• But Mobile Marketing is going to take off? (5)
• Software will be the standard (3; are we biased Rand? ;))
• SEO will become a subdivision of a greater online marketing industry name (3)
• Personalized Search becomes more important (5, 10)
• SEO becomes more complicated (5);  as if it isn’t already?
• Online privacy issues still reign (5);  don’t think this will ever go away
• Trust will be bigger than content (6)
• Marketing Analytics become more complex (5);  I wish it was the other way around!
• Local Demographics dominate (10)
• Speed issues (i.e., loading webpages) become more important for websites and their rankings (10)

Social Media/Facebook SEO Predictions:

• Social Marketing will be HUGE (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10)
• But there won’t be a large or HUGE social property popping out like Facebook or Twitter (4)
• Twitter or Die (6)
• Social will become more social and social will become more searchable (4) – I certainly hope so because Facebook’s search function is horrible right now 😉
• FBML (Facebook Markup Language) becomes big (6)

Video SEO Predictions:

• Video apps will save internet television (7)
• Big for lean back? Wth? (7)
• Playlists & Watch Later will be big in 2011 (7)
• TV, Mobile and Computers having integrated (7)
• Video SEO will be basically the same (7)

Sources (basically summarized from all the different predictions for your benefit so you didn’t have to go to literally 11+ resources.  The “+ could of been the numerous PR releases by #2 here.  Unfortunately, these duplicates flood the index for a while):

1. freetrafficsystem
2. Ajax Union PR Statement
3. Rand Fishkin
4. SEOptimise
5. ineedhits blog
6. helpmyseo
7. vidiseo
8. reviewon
9. hitsearch
10. reviewon
11. Performics