By Chris Lee

Search engine optimisation (SEO) – the practice of creating more visibility on search engines for organisations’ domains – is front of mind for marketers in 2012. 2011 saw some interesting developments in search marketing, including the arrival of Google’s Panda update – which put the emphasis on quality content. Debate in 2011 also concerned the future of search agencies as PR consultancies begin to earmark SEO services as an offering.

Justifying worth

For John Cheney, CEO of business applications firm Workbooks, 2012 could be a pivotal year for digital and SEO agencies as they will really need to justify their fee against tangible business results.

“The introduction of Google’s new search algorithm ‘Panda’ this year means that 2012 will be even more challenging for SEO agencies,” he told NMK. “Panda is designed to improve the quality of content delivered to users and to mitigate the impact of low quality content, websites and links on Google search results. Displaying relevant, engaging content is no doubt the future of the digital world. But Google Panda punishes those who try to deceive Google Search, by manipulating links and content. Those that do face the risk of falling behind competitors in Google search rankings.”

Cheney said that as a consequence, 2012 will be a big year for digital and SEO agencies, as they will need to justify their worth by using more sophisticated analytics to measure and prove results.

“No longer will companies be able to measure the effectiveness of their SEO campaigns by using search rankings alone,” Cheney continued. “With customers looking to do more with less, SEO agencies need to be smarter and demonstrate the real return on investment from their SEO efforts. And the only way of doing so is by tracking and intelligently analysing campaign outcomes from launch right through to offline sales and all the way to the bank.”

Getting personal

For Dr Horst Joepen, CEO of search analytics software company, Searchmetrics, search marketing in 2012 will become increasingly personal.

“Google already collects data about people's online habits from their Gmail accounts, their Chrome browsers and their Google+ accounts. In 2012 we’re likely to see it using more of this to help personalise search results and make them more relevant to individual users,” Joepen told NMK. “For example, the Chrome Brower already allows users to block certain results being displayed in their searches. Although our data shows that Google+ activity is currently quite low, it's likely to play an increasingly greater role in this area."

Joepen also argued that search engines can access geolocation information from searchers' mobiles and smartphones and they're going to use more of this to tailor organic search results and PPC ads to the searchers' specific locations.

Social media will also become more significant in 2012 as search engines such as Google and Bing are starting to assess the quality of web pages and how highly they should rank in searches by analysing how often and by whom they are shared on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Joepen advised.

But Panda will continue to bite, Joepen concluded.

"Google will continue sharpen its Panda technology which is aimed at driving out poor quality, mass produced content from its search results,” he said. “You'll need to pay close attention to how Panda evolves if you want your sites to maintain high search rankings.”