Search and SEO

Location based mobile search on smart phones like i-Phone, BlackBerry Storm, Sony XPERIA, HTC HD but also more Google phones to come will change business. The proliferation of those mobiles will result in a critical mass. More people will search for the next bank or ATM, Chinese Restaurant or store selling a particular brand nearby.

Semantic SEO

While semantic search is slow to catch on and the attempts to implement have been far from perfect I’ve seen apps and methods often with SEO in mind using semantic technology. That is technology understanding the meaning instead of just counting words or links like Google, technology to bring about a significantly better user experience. It might be a search engine that soon everybody will add to hers or his site or another kind of adds on. In 2009 this overdue development will finally get traction.

Rankings and Page Rank

Rankings and Page Rank will finally go the way of hits. Serious webmasters will care less and less for them and focus on real website success metrics.

Google monopoly

The Google search monopoly will become even more apparent in more and more countries. Facing it the people will increasingly seek alternatives and as other search engines aren’t better turn to other ways of finding what they look for on the Web, mostly in social contexts like blogs, communities, social bookmarking and browsing services.

Shift from traditional advertising to search marketing

As TV and print advertising budgets will melt search marketing budgets will be stepped up to get measurable results and a clearly defined ROI beyond simple brand recognition.

Shift from PPC to organic SEO

People spending massive amounts for a while on PPC ads like Google Ad words will more often consider investing in long term organic SEO.

Google employees switching sides

The 10k “Permanent temps” who have been “downsized” at Google will switch sides and work both for SEO companies, Google competitors and come up with their own business ideas.

Value SEO vs SEO tricks

The value in SEO will outdo old school SEO tricks. Content creation, social networking and reputation building will be key more than ever. The tasks of SEO will shift from programming, website tweaking.

SEO criminal’s vs professionals

With the emergence of hacking blogs and websites “for SEO reasons” the black hats have crossed the line between cheating search engines and downright criminal’s behavior. Whoever will want to be taken seriously as a SEO professional will have to deal with ethics?

Link popularity vs real popularity

Links will become less important for search engine algorithms. With more and more data coming in from personalization, Search Wiki, Google Chrome and Google Analytics etc., Google will lower the value of links to rank websites and based on real popularity with users instead.