6 Marketing Predictions for 2015

These Are Safe Predictions Because They Really Are Obvious

 

2015 is going to be an interesting year for marketers. Based on what I’ve seen over the years and my decade-long+ experience with online marketing, I think there are going to be a lot of changes – which means opportunities!

 

When you are thinking about planning your online marketing for 2015 give some thought to these 6 online marketing predictions that are sure to be more significant factors in 2015 and beyond.

Penguin 3.0 – The Link Profile Analysis Algorithm

Link-Building Is Still a Major Search Positioning Factor but this Update is Minor

Google released Penguin 3.0 in mid-October and the impact was felt negatively by some and positively by others. This is typical of updates from Google.

What is Penguin anyway!?

Internet Search Marketing – Backlinks

You may have heard the term and have an idea that they are important for gaining search position. However, what is a backlink and why are they important?

Let me start by explaining exactly what I mean by backlinks as many people confuse the term or don’t fully understand it.

Links form the relationships between pages on the Internet. They allow people to navigate from a given point on the Internet to other points on the Internet. Many people understand the value of links from this perspective. The problem is not making a distinction between a link and a backlink. If you want to enhance the marketing of your online content then you need to understand backlinks and their immense value.

Building a Powerful Link Profile

Link Building Advice

Back linking has become more difficult since Matt Cutts’s famous blog post on the use of guest posting to produce backlinks. He states in no uncertain terms that this is no longer acceptable. Therefore, this way of gaining backlinks is no longer effective.

Of course, this is due to the amount of abuse that guest blogging attracted. Many SEO experts were touting this way to generate links into your site. The resultant link profile did not look natural. It was not hard to figure out when most of the links came from blogs and even more obvious when they came from the comment section of blogs.

Here is some link building advice . . .

Online Marketing – There Is a High Cost to Blending In

Do Things Differently (and better)

When it comes to marketing I see that many companies copy one another. Rather than trying to stand out they try to fit in. It is almost as if they are trying to blend in.

To be successful you need to understand your audience and then stand out from the crowd. There is a high cost to blending in.

Link Building

The Rich Get Richer

Real life is not fair, unfortunately. This seems to be even more true when it comes to matters of wealth and success. Critically, this is true also in the world of Internet marketing when it comes to acquiring links – sometimes it’s just not fair.

A Signal That Shouts Out About the Quality of Your Content

Let the Search Engines Know How Important Your Content Is

You may have an amazing and delightful website however not many people will see it if other sites aren’t linking to it. To have in-coming links sends an important signal to the major search engines and creates traffic in and of themselves.

Content Marketing

Your Visual Assets – Boost Your Business Online

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I often make a point about creating meaningful and interesting content (even entertaining content) to help in your content marketing efforts. I want to emphasize the importance of taking stock of your visual inventory capabilities when it comes to creating delightful content.

Many of the items listed in this article can be created with very little effort. But I will also point out that developing skill in certain visual areas or having access to a visual content creator will be a big help in boosting your ability to create content that will help boost your business online.

Why is visual content so important to online marketing?

A good visual piece can:

• Make things more interesting.
• Give people a break from reading text.
• Help people to understand.
• Provide more incentive to for people to provide links back to your content piece. This last point is a valuable factor in gaining position in search.

Here are some visual assets that we all can consider.

Video SEO

If you create a video then you also need to think about how to maximize its effectiveness in the search results and search results can (and should) include YouTube.

You have three main options and each option provides content marketing benefits to the marketer. Each option should be considered and using multiple approaches may be the most beneficial.

1. Host the video on your own website

2. Host the video on YouTube

3. Host the video on YouTube and embed it on your website

Remember that the search landscape is very diverse. For Google to do a good job it has to have different search algorithms. In the case of video there is the basic Google Universal Search, Google Video Search and the search engine built within YouTube. Each offers searchers different ways of searching and will produce different results.

This makes the job of a search engine marketer more challenging.

Here is some advice for optimizing video content for Google and for search in general.

Google Hummingbird was launched in early September 2013. It is a new algorithm being used by Google specifically geared to deal with handling more complex search queries.