Spread EffectSpread Effect’s Fearless Predictions for 2013
Before we get into our online marketing predictions for 2013, let’s hope you’ve first read our look of the biggest online marketing changes in 2012.
Now, without further adieu, let’s just leap into the list of predictions.
The Continued Decline of Anchor Text
Co-occurrence may be the buzzword of the moment, but it’s going to continue to evolve in 2013. Anchored links are – by their very nature – spammy. If we can achieve the same result without having to ugly up the internet with anchored links like “plumbing service northern Ohio” everyone in the industry could breathe a selective sigh of relief knowing that we could instead just focus on producing great content and taking a more PR-driven approach to SEO.
Inbound Marketing Gains Mass Acceptance
In our previous post, we reported that your standard business spends a staggering 84-percent of their marketing budget on offline marketing such as TV spots, newspaper/magazine ads, radio ads, and billboards. 2013 should be the year where that number gets much closer to 50/50 between offline and online advertising and marketing. Inbound marketing efforts such as SEO, social media and content marketing should gain a ton of traction in the coming year and let’s hope it’s finally enough to take a significant dent out of the marketing budget and push those offline funds where they’re most useful – online.
The Rise of the Super Bloggers
Google is making significant changes to their algorithm as it pertains to the author tag, and its use to rank sites based on author authority. Your big-name authors, like Michael Arrington, Adam Pash and the like are going to bring SEO benefits to sites they write for. Google is in a pro-content phase that’s attempting to weed out the spammers and it seems that the more competent and authoritative the author, the more likely the site is to be authoritative on the subject in which they are writing. This is still evolving (as is everything online) but expect to see significant changes to the way sites are ranked based on the quality of their authors in 2013.
Twitter Figures Out Online Advertising – Facebook Continues To Perfect It
Twitter has been mentioned in IPO rumors for 2013 so you’d have to assume that there is at least a blueprint for their Twitter ads platform to be built on. As the second largest social network in the world, at some point they have to show they can generate revenue if they are thinking IPO. They’ve experimented with ads previously, but expect a full roll-out in 2013.
Facebook ads inevitably revoke either “love” or “hate” reactions when it comes to the pay-per-click crowd. They’ve announced some exciting tracking ability in recent weeks that’s set to role out to BETA testers in the coming months. Expect widespread adoption by the end of 2013 as well as some other significant improvements – preferably in their targeting capabilities.
Social Begins to Shape Search
Personal search is happening and it’s happening now. Although we’re in its infancy, we’re not far away from the day where no two internet users get the same Google results for the same query. This is already beginning to take shape. Ask your friend on the other side of the country do search for the same term as you and note the different results you’ll both see on the front page.
We’ve heard previously that +1′s – Google’s version of the Facebook “Like” – are going to begin being used as a search metric. 2013 should bring us one step closer to personalized search by one of the three major search engines beginning to factor in “Like’s” as well as “+1′s” and “ReTweets.” Google has played around with indexing Twitter before, but we’re getting to the point where Twitter can really shape the face of search in coming years.
Local + Mobile = Big Money
We’ve touched on it before so I won’t re-hash, but the key takeaway from mobile search is that nearly half of searches performed from a mobile devices are searches pertaining to a local business. The smartphone market is expected to double by 2015 and for those of you that are leaving mobile websites, apps and local search out of your marketing plan – it was nice knowing you.
Honey Boo Boo Takes Over The World
Just wanted to see if you were still reading!
Happy holidays to you and yours from all of us at Spread Effect.
Enjoy your 2013 and be sure to let us know what trends you think are going to shape the face of marketing in 2013.
