So here I share some of their Internet marketing predictions for 2012, along with my thoughts of what they mean to you, the small business owner (because after all, that’s really what you should care about.)

Google+ will continue to grow but…

Still haven’t tried Google+? You’re not alone. Many experts, like Susan Payton in a post on Small Business Trends  say it’s picking up momentum but is not even close to matching Facebook in terms of users.

What this means to you: Now that brands can have their own account, it’s really not something you can afford to ignore just yet. If you already have your bases covered on Facebook and Twitter and have built up followings, devote  time to Google+. (See its connection to SEO trends below.) But if you are new to social media, you are probably better off sticking with Facebook or Twitter for now (unless you know for sure your target audience is a Google+ audience – then focus your time there.)

Google appeared to make a much more public push for Google+ then it ever seemed to do for Google Buzz or Google Wave  (which while not exactly like Google+ were aimed at sharing content.) Both Google Buzz and Google Wave will be no more in 2012. So even Google can get it very very wrong. That is why you should be cautious before jumping wholesale onto the bandwagon.

However, Google is the reigning king of search engines and it is expected that Google+ will have impact on search rankings. So if you do nothing else with Google+, do add the Google+ button to your sites and blog posts. Doing this encourages your visitors to “plus one” something even if you aren’t active on the network.

Understanding “social search” and seeking to connect with influencers will gain in importance

Accoriding to Sam Fiorella in his post “Trend Currents: Social Media in 2012“, Social Search will make “Influencer Outreach” the No. 1 activity for brand marketers.

…search engines will push relevant content from our personal engagements, not our Web sites to the top of search results. ….the impact of Social Search will dramatically change the focus of marketing. It’s no longer about relevant content but identifying and influencing people that can help you to “ENGAGE” your target customers in social engagements.

While consistent sharing of content will get you more followers (see research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot), Sam’s point dovetails with the idea that not all followers are equal. Some are more equal than others and you should find those that share, those that share a lot. Google and Bing are paying attention to the “sharegraph”, if you will, of content. So focus on sharing yes, but also focus on finding influencers to notice you.

Buzzword of 2012:  SoLoMo for “Social, Local, Mobile”

According to an article by Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone, “The year 2011 saw a 400 percent increase in the number of mobile searches, with 74 percent of people using their mobile phones to search while running errands.”

What this means to you: All the experts say mobile is hot, this is the year of mobile, etc.. Okay, I think we’ve heard this one before, but this year, if you’re a business that depends on local customers, it’s time to take the prediction seriously. This can mean making sure you have a mobile app (especially if you are restaurant, nightclub or other entertainment venue), making sure you enable the mobile listing in your Bing Local account, and use check-in deals to encourage people to share where they are with their social networks.

And while you are getting your mobile on, you should be making sure your local listings are in order. Here at Juicy, we’ve seen clients make great strides in their business, simply by paying attention to their visibility on local listings. Ranking for local searches is only going to get more difficult, so jump on this now. It’s the easiest of all tactics to get started with in Internet Marketing.

So where does the social come in? The listings are one thing, but getting people to talk about you is something else. Reviews are one of the single biggest factors people use when making a buying decision. (Barone cites a Nielsen study that shows “that 63% of social media users list ‘consumer ratings’ as their preferred source for getting information about a business, product or service.”) Reviews are also a ranking factor for Google Places. Get customers to give you reviews.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) predictions

We all have our gurus and mine for SEO is Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz. I share with you 3 of his 8 Predictions for SEO in 2012:

Prediction 1:  SEO without social media will become a relic of the past

Prediction 2: Google will make it very hard to do great SEO without using Google+

SEO will rely even more heavily on social media signals. The integration of Facebook results in BING and (at one time Twitter in Google) was only the beginning. Google, with it’s 80% plus share of search traffic in the US, has made it clear that it will not only show you your own social network results in the total list of organic results, but will use the social cache of an item in its ranking algorithm. Many in the biz think this is Google’s way of pushing Google+.

What this means to you: If you are depending on search to deliver the goods in your internet marketing plan, you need to ramp up the social and get started with Google+, especially if you are in a market that is already highly active in social media – think restaurants, specialty/boutique stores, salons, gyms, etc. But as we mentioned above, don’t do this at the expense of Facebook and Twitter.

Prediction 3: Google Will Finally Take Stronger Action Against Manipulative Link Spam

Over 2011, a lot of sites lost rankings in Google because of what is known as “Panda updates” which are in simple terms changes to Google’s algorithms. The main target of these updates: sites that engage in link spam or low quality, junk links.

What this means to you: If someone comes a knockin’ saying they can get you to rank #1 for a highly competitive keyword in a few months, run. If someone says they can guarantee you 100 links to your site in a few days, run. Link building the right way, that is getting quality, relevant links is hard work. Relevant links from quality sites to your site is what you need, not links from pornography sites or “blogs” that are nothing more than spun articles in bad English. This has always been true. Now it’s just more true.

Okay here’s a few of my own (and even if they don’t come true, they are still good advice.)

Prediction #1: Small businesses and start-ups that talk to customers like they are people and not just the means to a “bottom line end,” will win customers over those businesses that stick to the old-school corporate-speak way of communication. If you are using words like “leverage,” “value proposition,” “world-class,” or “exceed expectations”—stop. If you have mission statements and a list of corporate values on your website, delete those pages. Seriously. With our new social media-ized culture, people feel a little more personal with the business they choose to work with. Be that personal business.

Prediction #2: Small businesses will get more used to using social media as a way to enhance, not replace regular networking. How many people do you network with on a regular basis that you are not LinkedIn to or following on Twitter? Small businesses need each other for referrals. That’s why you network. Why not extend that networking online? Why not form a small group of online network buddies where you are particularly attuned to sharing each others’ content? See where I’m going with this? (You can read more on this subject in Supercharge Your Business Development.)

Okay, now go out there and make 2012 a great year for your business!

Content syndication on the web is defined as the mass publication of a single article, podcast or video (content assets) across many outlets. In a nutshell: Write once, spread everywhere.

Syndicating your content has obvious benefits—expose more people to your message—but it also plays a vital part in search engine optimization. As the search engines see more of your message online, pointing back to your website, they give more weight to your site. This is one of the most natural and powerful ways to build links to your website. But, the real bonus is that these articles, videos and podcasts are being found in places with far more traffic than your website, such as YouTube, iTunes and Squidoo, and some of those people are clicking through to your site.

Content syndication is a key element to traffic building, and it helps with both article marketing and search engine optimization. I’m always a fan of leveraging a little bit of work into a whole lot of results, and that’s what good content asset and some content syndication can do for you!

Icons used in the info graphic courtesy of Icon Drawer.

On May 6th, 2010, twelve days ago, I posted a short blog post titled “What is a content asset?” Admittedly, not an extremely competitive key phrase, but a term with moderate competition (26 million results in Google), that is used regularly in internet marketing.

I created and optimized this phrase for the term that I titled the post, “what is a content asset,” and built just a few links to the page (about five).

Less than two weeks later, I noticed the term in our top ten search engine keywords in our traffic sources. So, I started to review the rankings and this is what I found.

Google
#3 for “What is a content asset”
#4 for What is a content asset (no quotes)
#12 for content asset

Yahoo
#1 for “What is a content asset”
#1 for what is a content asset
#6 for content asset

Bing
#1 and #2 (via Linked In) for “What is a content asset”
Not in the first four pages for content asset.

And, I expect these rankings to improve as we build more links to the article.

To recap, here is the process I used for posting this article:

• Create a WordPress blog post, using an SEO plugin to set the page title and keywords.
• Matched the page title, URL file name and H1 tag exactly to our keyword target: what is a content asset?
• Linked to the post with two Twitter accounts, one Linked In account, one Facebook link and one Digg link.

I did this all in about an hour. Then, I moved onto other business unrelated to this post—only to be brought back to analyze this post because it came up so high in our traffic sources so quickly. I’d like to point out that we write articles like this all the time, some of which rise to the top while others do not. But, it’s this collective and fragmented keyword strategy that brings us our complete traffic. Frankly, we are unsure which will be the home runs, so we make lots of concerted efforts to increase our likelihood of winning.

This is a concrete example of the work we do for our clients, and a big part of our own internet marketing.

Success came from identifying related keywords to our market, generating an optimized article and building quality links to that page. Assuming that we have the right call to actions that will lead interested lurkers into buyers or subscribers, we’ll be earning a respectable return on our investment on this content asset soon.

Links to your web pages hold an obvious value: they bring new people to your website. That reason alone makes a case for building as many links to your web pages from relevant and high trafficked websites as possible. More links mean more people can find your site.

Less obvious, is that search engines, especially powerhouse Google, use the quantity and quality of links to your website as a strong factor in determining how you appear in search engine results.

Consider links from a website a vote of confidence. When a reputable third-party website links to you in a way that suggests you have content related to “sports psychology” the search engines place stock in that link. That’s the quality part. Additionally, the search engines consider numerous factors when determining quality, including the age of the domain, number of links to that referring site and even the extension of the domain (.gov and .edu domains cannot be purchased commercially, therefore they are harder to exploit).

It’s important to point out that the search engines only hint at how they determine search rankings—there is no black and white formula available, and these algorithms are being tweaked constantly. However, link building is one of the universally accepted efforts in search engine optimization.

It’s also important to build a high volume of links to your site, even if some of those are not considered high quality. Back to the original benefit of links: they bring in direct traffic as surfers stumble upon your site. Additionally, if the search engines see a consistent history of numerous links being generated pointing to your site each and every month, you’re sure to move up the rankings.

Lastly, today’s new site can become tomorrow’s high quality link. Get in on the ground floor, when the cost is the lowest.

In summary, link building is a fundamental exercise in traffic building, both directly and indirectly. If you’ve ever wondered why search engine optimization is an ongoing process that takes time and persistent effort, you should now understand that link building is a crucial ingredient, that should be done persistently over time.

A content asset is really just some piece of content that you can use as a business tool, either by monetizing it directly (purchasable book) or using it to attract new customers (free article). Often, this content asset is repackaged and distributed in numerous formats and mediums. Think about how a movie is first released on the big screen, broken down into small parts for trailers and web previews, then taken to DVD, then presented on TV. Each time the asset is used, it’s just a variation of the original working in some other way.

On the web, content assets are typically articles, e-books, podcasts or videos. These anchor content assets can be broken up into smaller chunks and used as blog posts, tweets, You Tube shorts, email blasts and even search engine ads. The point is, you develop it once, and if it’s a valuable tool to generate new business, you’re going to want to break it up and use it across as many mediums and channels as you think you can without diminishing its value.

The above examples show how large content assets can be divided and distributed. Additionally, content assets can be aggregated and then distributed. There have been numerous books published recently that are simply large collections of blog posts edited and assembled in a thematic or chronological way.

if you’re involved in search engine optimization, what you’re optimizing are your content assets. If you’re involved in social media marketing, you’re likely using bite size ideas that come from a larger article or white paper, which are also content assets. And, if you’re creating a podcast or You Tube videos, those too can be used in an array of ways on the web to generate more business.

Inventory your site or file server and see what kind content assets you have in your inventory that can be taken advantage of to generate new business. Think: create once, reuse many times.

I often compare it to professional networking or losing weight, as it isn’t rocket science, but it does require a sustained effort of many different types of activities. And, when you don’t see results immediately, it can be difficult to maintain your effort level.

The web is saturated with articles suggesting SEO tactics, but there is little information about how the search engines define their rankings. This is due to the ever-changing nature of these formulas.

While the full details of search engine results is above the scope of any single article, SEO Moz does a bang-up job of summarizing the high impact items used to influence the results. The most current Search Engine Ranking Factors article is online here, and sums up the top factors clearly and visually.

It seems that while there are many new tactics and tools always becoming available, but nothing has unseated good ol’ fashioned quality link building and content publishing.

If you don’t know where to start, and you want to invest time in your search engine rankings, start writing relevant and attractive content. If you’re writing what your customers want to know about, there’s a good chance they will link to it. Over time, with a little bit of sustained effort, you’ll be sure to increase your traffic and search engine rankings.

Write for your customers and promote the content (using Digg, Twitter, etc). It’s a fundamental strategy for SEO.