SEO Trends from 2008 & A Look into 2009, by Jill Whalen
Jill Whalen posted an article looking back at some SEO predictions she made for 2008 and takes a look forward into 2009 including:
- SEO Becomes a Priority in Site Redesigns for Larger Companies. Jill predicted that more large organizations would realize the value of SEO for website redesigns. She did see evidence of this in 2008 and she dicusses her prediction for 2009.
We’re predicting this trend to continue largely driven by the fact that in our work with many clients over the last few years it’s painfully clear to us from data generated by our metrics and user testing that many web sites do a terrible job of persuading site visitors to take action, (i.e. the conversion rates are horrbile on many sites, at least for non-brand phrases).
As organizations continue to implement advanced tracking and analytics systems (like Google Analytics and ClickTracks) more of them will realize their conversion rates need to be improved. This often leads to a site redesign.
- Success measures will continue to evolve to focus on the metrics that matter. Jill talks about the need to focus on much more meaningful metrics than rankings and why rankings are becoming less meaningful.
We too have been weaning our clients and ourselves away from Rankings and focusing instead on the much more important metrics of actual traffic to the site, engagement, conversions, and ROI.
(Also see The Future of Google’s Search Personalization: The end of the ranking report.)
- Greater SEO Education Opportunities Will Emerge. Jill outlines the large and small search marketing conferences and seminars that are venues for SEO education as well as the online educational opportunities and predicts trends for 2009.
Read SEO Trends from 2008 & a Look into 2009, by Jill Whalen
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