The SEO industry is a very fast moving industry and those who truly stay on top of trends and topics while keeping their creative dome pieces on nice and tight will be the ones that flourish. Things like link building will change and shift due to the cess pool of junk content getting larger and larger in search results.There are some areas that I think will flourish even more than they are now.
Real Time Anything
Just about anything real time will become even more important as time goes on. Real time news, data, video anything that can make it to the mass market before it really even has a chance will be a link building force that could and will bring mighty power to a website. Reporting anything that is juicy that you know your industry will tear apart will create some really nice links for you. I think we are just getting started with real time information.
Industry Data
As they say, the proof is in the pudding. People love statistics and raw data they can sink their teeth into. Often times a nice piece of data will be dissected by hundreds of bloggers creating their own points of view on what the data might mean to the industry at hand. If done right and you create the first piece of data dissecting an aspect of your industry that data might be linked back to you from hundreds of other sources, some even very credible.
Brand Building Not Link Building
A forced link is still a link but the ones that happen naturally are given the most weight. It sounds easier said than done but if you want the natural links to occur you have to position yourself as a brand online. Take for example your top industry blog. Do you think they are going to want to link to a website that has zero branding and is clearly there just to take up search space? Most likely not. If you are an older website that has simply never gone through a rebrand than you might just get grandfathered into the linking plan for that blog jut because of seniority rules but if you are a relatively new website and you don’t have many friends in the industry branding is going to play a enormous role in the future of website marketing.
Personally I can’t wait to see what the future of search marketing has in store for us all. If you are a web marketer that takes a strong branding and business building approach to your online marketing I think you will flourish even more so. If you sit around brainstorming how to manipulate the search results I don’t think you will be around for very long because the industry on to you and most people understand that things take time.
