Search Engine Marketing is something essential for every business and it is becoming more and more important nowadays. This year, some things will change and some will probably remain the same. We can’t know for sure but we can at least guess.

So what happened in 2010?

2010 was a crazy year for Search Engine Marketing and one of the most memorable things that happened was the launch of “Instant Preview” by Google. This seemed like a cool feature in the beginning but it is not really very useful. What it allows people to do is check out how a website looks without actually visiting it. Also Google launched something else – Google Instant. That allows people to view the results of their searches as they are typing. This can be pretty useful although some people find it annoying.

What the search engines have in store for us in 2011?

The search engines are constantly making updates of their algorithms and adding new features. That can be really helpful sometimes but most of the times it is hard for people to keep up with all the new updates. In my opinion 2011 will be an interesting year for SEO. Here are some of the things I think will happen this year:

• Social medias such as Facebook and Twitter will be a huge part of Search Engine Marketing. Google is already crawling through Twitter and the Facebook “likes” get noticed by Bing so I think we should focus even more on social medias and use them to our advantage.
• Competition will be the keyword in 2011. The competition between Bing and Google will grow bigger and that will only lead to some great new features for both the search engines. Bing would like to get some of the Google’s searches and will try to invent something new and helpful. Google on the other hand will try to prevent that and will think of another great feature.
• Also I expect to see some changes of Google’s algorithm. We should all be looking out for that.

As I said, social medias will be a huge part of the organic search engine marketing (interesting to know is that the Danish term is organisk search marketing) so from now you should be extremely careful about what you write on Facebook and Twitter. That will have a certain impact on your rankings.

Also try to produce 100% unique content and pay more attention to the readers. Try to write for the reader and not for the search engines. You should also pay a lot of attention to the content you write if you have a blog. Try to start a conversation with the readers. Try to involve them in what you are writing about and make it even more interesting. Try to reply to every comment you receive since that makes a great impression on visitors and there will be more interaction between you and them.

We can only wait to see what the world of Search Engine Marketing has in store for us in 2011 but I am sure it will be a great year.

Lyuben Georgiev