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Kim Krause Berg Predicts 2014 The Year of Buzz (Lightyear)

Posted: 17 Dec 2013 08:50 AM PST

It seems like yesterday when my idea of fun was making client websites move up and down Alta Vista search results after a code change and page refresh.

December is known for many things, like holidays, days off, fourth quarter taxes and snow. For we web folks, it's also a time to analyze and review the consistent and twisted Google roller coaster algorithms and every word Matt Cutts delivered to his search engine marketing flock. This is the time where we review the past and ponder the future, make predictions and check those from last year to see who won or lost.

This year I decided to make some predictions of my own. Since nobody predicted Jill Whalen would ever retire from her search engine optimization career, I feel safe in jumping in with mine just to see if my Zen Mom visionary skills are razor sharp.

The Year of Buzz or Mrs. Nesbitt? Which hat are you?

1. I predict that PubCon will FINALLY have a regional seminar in Philadelphia or a surrounding suburb so I can drive there and save money on flights.

2. The backlash against Google will continue to develop into an underground movement of defectors. I don't believe these fed-up folks will run to Bing or Yahoo!. Rather, they will rally around a new search engine being built in the underground caverns of Mt. Shasta with the help of alien technology donated by Star People who have been watching this whole thing and laughing at us.

3. WordPress has had its heyday. New blogging platforms that are easier to use are already here. Why? We got greedy, okay? WordPress was for bloggers, not enterprise content management systems with bells and whistles and widgets for layouts. So yeah. Bloggers are back! Remember them? The story-tellers from 14 years ago are going to make a huge comeback. Which reminds me of the time years ago when I found the blog of some New York gigolo who had trouble with his girlfriend, who apparently screamed louder than any of his clients. I love stories like that!

4. You know I’m going to say it so I’ll just get it done and out of the way so we can move on. Usability will be even more important that ever! Why? Because “users” who use websites are people. People have brains with neurons and need information. People have credit cards and PayPal and need to buy stuff. Search engine bots have neither.

5. “She’s breaking up, Captain” My sense is that we’re sick and tired of feeling sick and tired of the constant onslaught of privacy invasion, hacking, spam and all the uglies that turned website ownership and sharing our lives on Facebook a real kick in the pants. I predict we are going to hide. This is a true disaster.

6. You laugh. But think about it. We who own, use, build or market websites are like the toys in Toy Story who just want to be loved. Our intentions are to please our customers, readers, clients and friends with our day to day humanbeingness. We never asked for our information to be stolen or sold. We certainly never gave permission to be tracked, traced, spied on and stalked by every engine, cookie, bot and remote viewer out there. I predict we will “play dead” until we feel safe and we won’t feel that way until things change with the Internet. We will pick and choose who we play with, however.

7. “To infinity and beyond.” I foresee 2014 as The Year of Buzz and The Year of Mrs. Nesbitt. When we develop new spaces where we feel safe or fortify existing ones, we will fly. Online communities are making a tremendous return for the simple reason that people are tribal in nature. SEOChat, Cre8asiteforums and Webmasterworld are thriving because there are no ads plastered everywhere and distractions out the gazoo. Blogs that are simple are returning to an audience that just wants to read. I predict new vertical communities and websites with less noise, more substance, and a keen and swift army of folks protecting the property from invasive online marketing tactics, hackers, etc. Meanwhile, the drunken Buzz Lightyear’s among you all will wear your pretty aprons, call yourselves Mrs. Nesbitt and serve up the same old website crap. Snap out of it!

8. Who will retire next? I have a gut feeling about a famous Boykin dude who, after building the largest Internet Marketing company on the planet, with the added sense to include usability and conversions design and testing to the mountain of services, announces he is dead, records messages in music videos backwards, moves to a private island he loving names “Apple” and re-writes the lyrics to “Let it Be” while watching the waves on the beach with his new Google Glasses. Wait. I have him confused with Paul, or John. Silly me.

The post Kim Krause Berg Predicts 2014 The Year of Buzz (Lightyear) appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

SEO Skills For Success In 2014 And Beyond

Posted: 17 Dec 2013 06:45 AM PST

By: Ian Wilson

SEO basics and fundamentals are now more important than ever. However, the always changing landscape of SEO forces most of us to learn new things every year and adapt. A year ago if you asked me what skills SEOs need to learn for the future, I might have said something completely different, but for 2014 I am willing to bet the following will be crucial.

Taxonomy Design

Taxonomy is simply the practice of classifying things at the concept level. It seems like a very common sense practice, but when you actually start doing it, you will realize that it can be very complex. For example, lets pretend that you sell paper products online. You might start organizing your inventory around product types, but then realize that your target demographic searches for paper products by type of use. Or you might decide that you want to sell paper based on manufacture, or milling process. There are literally millions of ways that you can classify information, and having a clear articulated process will help in many ways.

Why is taxonomy design so important for SEO? With Hummingbird, mobile search, and other future search trends, defining concepts is more important than ever. A strong taxonomy design can be the foundation for other important elements such as content development, information architecture, and keyword research.

Community Management

Online community management has become an important task with brand building and social media management. Having a robust community means more exposure for your brand, and a closer connection to potential consumers.

With Google's ever increasing dependence on Google+ as a platform, community management is becoming an important part of SEO. Sites with strong Google+ profiles will get more exposure and tend to rank higher.

Public Relations

Public relations has always been an intricate part of any successful marketing campaign. Engaging with media outlets can help with brand building a campaign promotion.

Public relations can also be used to build strong powerful links. The types of links that don't trigger Penguin. Understanding how to pitch a story to news outlets, get them to run the story, and then link back to your site, will be one of the most powerful link building tactics now and in the future.

Research

Whether it's content development, keyword research, or taxonomy design; research is becoming an increasingly important step with SEO. Hummingbird is forcing SEOs to have a very developed understanding of user intent. This goes a lot deeper than regular keyword research. SEOs need to now understand what types of questions users are asking, not just what words are relevant to the page.

Basic Understanding of HTML

A basic understanding of HTML has always been a valuable asset to SEO. Meta, title, and anchor tags are the traditional on page SEO HTML elements. However, now Google is putting more emphasis on structured data and authorship. Both of which requires unique HTML tags to implement.

The post SEO Skills For Success In 2014 And Beyond appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.