Kevin Pike – Kansas City SEO BlogSearch Engine Optimization News, Tips & Fun Stuff

Confirmed by Google’s own Matt Cutts, http://twitter.com/google is the official twitter home for Google.

The first post was about 22 hrs ago and they already have over 20K followers!!

Personal Search & Mobile Results

Logged in or not, Google and other search engines are starting to consider your search history, location and even your mobile GPS location to deliver search results based on where you are. Just as recent as last week Danny Sullivan wrote an article about how Google is ramping up personalized search.

Here is a good example: If someone like me (sitting in Kansas City) Google’s “Pizza”, I get results of area pizza shops in KC. You will notice in the screen shot below I was not logged in to my account but still got the local Kansas City results.

Look for personal search results to grow in 2009.

Consumers of SEO are starting to figure out we were heading into a search environment where keyword rankings are not consitant and don’t mean what they used to. I will be interested to see how those SEO firms that sell their service with guarantees like “we will rank you #1 in Google” will change up their game.

Smaller to Mid-Size Companies Entering The Online Ad Arena.

This is one prediction for 2009 I hope comes true because small & mid size businesses are what my agency primarily focuses on.

A large number of small to medium size companies are still stuck in traditional marketing ruts because they don’t understand online marketing. As these companies are starting to figure our their customers are online, they find out how inexpensive and how measurable online marketing can be. Compared to TV, print, or radio, online marketing gives you much more data to use to optimize your campaign.

Where does the time go? I am already tardy with any 2009 predictions so I’m going to skip that and give you something more valuable – the top 3 SEM predictions scrubbed out from all the articles, podcasts, and general hype you got in January.

I have done my due diligence to find out what other top industry professionals are predicting for 2009 and this 3 part series will give you what you need to know.

Engaging is to Media as Relevancy is to Content

One of the best 2009 predictions came from SEM Synergy with Bruce Clay. I would recommend checking out this episode on webmaster radio if you didn’t catch it. In this episode Bruce talks about the future of universal search.

Universal Search promised to dramatically change the search engine landscape in 2008 but did not make as big of a splash as some might have thought. I think Google was smart to roll this out slowly, but look for them to make further strides in ’09 while webmasters scramble to incorporate more site media to rank in a web 2.0 world.

As the hustle and bustle continues to incorporate video, podcasts, etc for universal search a great way to optimize these elements is to measure its ability to engage your audience.

Relevancy is generally the search engine optimization measurement with consideration to how good your site content is. Engagement is quickly becoming the SEO measurement for audio or visual media files. Users and search engines will gravitate towards media that is engaging – make sure your development and optimization is geared for the future.