SEO Review for 2012

Such changes influenced rankings even for 'good' websites by having a ripple effect across the whole web.

Google 'not provided'

In late 2011, Google announced that users searching from the https version of Google (or when they are logged in) the information about the individual searches would not be passed to the website due to encryption. This means that Google Analytics will track that the visit came from Google, but it will not track the actual keyword the user came from. Throughout 2012, this traffic was shown as 'not provided' in Google Analytics search engine traffic and the percentage of 'not provided' traffic is increasing over time. This withheld information is an issue for optimisation since now marketers cannot make the most out of tracking traffic and improving on keyword opportunities.

Google Penguin and Panda Updates

Launched in April of this year, the Google Penguin Update caused a lot of discussion with the entire SEO community where this particular update fought aggressive web spam techniques. It changed the way links are built, thereby making SEO more difficult. It was nicknamed as the 'over-optimisation' penalty as too much SEO could harm your website rankings. Websites that were hit by the Penguin Update got their search engine traffic vanished overnight.

This year Google also tuned and rolled out updates for their Panda Update that was initially launched in February 2011. This update affects the whole website rather than specific pages, which are determined as being of low quality. Having content which is not original on your website can be detrimental to your rankings. Rephrasing content may also have a negative effect.

Quality not Quantity

Nowadays quantity is no longer seen as a factor that will help you on search engines. Having lots of pages does not necessarily mean that the quality of the website is high. Having thousands of links from low quality websites will not result in a cumulative effort to increase the quality of links. A good link could help your website better than a thousand of low quality links. Meanwhile, with Penguin these low quality links could drag your website rankings down. The important factor to remember then is that 'Quality Not Quantity' is the forward trend. Fresh content on the website will also help in keeping search engine interested in your website but also create a medium to attract links and participate on social media.

Optimisation of the webpage

While optimisation of the webpage is still a factor in improving rankings, doing too much SEO or over-optimisation may harm your rankings. A common mistake is to insert many keywords in the keyword tag and page title. It is better to do without the keyword tag than insert lots of keywords. Similarly, this applies to the page title where one must not insert too many keywords.

New Tools

It is worth mentioning that new tools and upgrades to Google Webmaster Tools were launched. Especially the Google Disavow tool that gives the possibility to instruct Google to ignore some links to your website. However, this is not easy at it sounds. If a website has too many low quality links the webmaster must first do all that is possible to remove as many links as possible.

The influence of Social Media

Social Media will continue to grow and play a significant role in SEO. This means that URLs that obtain shares and tweets may have a positive correlation on rakings. In the online world, getting shares on social network may also result in getting links backs from other blog posts, such as when a blog post mentions your website. This means that social media not only provides links through social networks but provides visibility to attract other links.

What this means

We have seen throughout 2012 a trend towards quality. This ongoing trend will continue to grow throughout 2013. Next year will be the year of content marketing, typified especially by blog posts, articles and research material, which will surge and increase the level of content on the web.

Conrad Bugeja is a Search Engine Optimisation Consultant and Pay-Per-Click Consultant at Alert eBusiness Internet Marketing Division - www.alertemarketing.com