Comments on: Keep Your Eyes Open! 5 SEO Trends for 2011

By: Ralpheal Jackson

Ralpheal Jackson — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:15:48 +0000

I’m really digging the idea of Mobile and the direction that things are going in as far as the search engines (Google in the main) and local Mobile.

I think that this could be a huge opportunity for marketers to get a head start on going after some of the tuffer keywords as the Mobile search results are a bit diffrent than actually search results on a computer.

Anyhow nice perdictions I really enjoyed this post.

Thanks,

Ralpheal J

By: Gary Magnone

Gary Magnone — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:29:57 +0000

@Zunaira, I agree postcard verification is a pain. But when you think about it, all signs point to Google going all-in on Places, and they will do whatever they have to to increase business adoption. If I was having trouble getting a Place page verified, I’d try getting ahold of someone on the Google Tags/Boost sales team. Nothing will get that page verified quicker than a potential for a sale.

Thanks for commenting!

By: Zunaira Karim

Zunaira Karim — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 04:17:25 +0000

Great synopsis Gary! I’d like to add a bit to your point on Local Search, but I personally would like to see how Google handles the ‘new verification’ process. As recently noticed by Local SEO experts and personally with a few of my accounts, it’s become a tad bit difficult to verify your listings via phone, especially if you’re a new listing. So what we’ve been seeing recently is that most listings, especially new ones are being verified via postcard. Now for smaller businesses, I see that not being so much of a challenge, however, for businesses such as hotels and mall stores? Might be a bit of a challenge trying to find a postcard in your mail.

By: Gary Magnone

Gary Magnone — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:37:04 +0000

Thanks for your input, Tim! Using sentiment analysis to differentiate positive/negative reviews is definitely a tricky thing. Where do the “neutral” reviews fall? Not sure if this piece is fully implemented in the local algorithm yet, but they are definitely working around that area. Reviewer trust or Reviewer ranking (similar to Yelp’s filter, but probably not as strict) is definitely in the works though, and should have a big impact on Google whole review space.

As far as PageRank goes, not really sure where that is going. I could see them updating it around Jan 1, just to appease PR addicts, but does it mean much? Probably not. I could also see them doing away with PageRank altogether and just providing some type of link authority score within Webmaster Tools, cause really the only people that fully rely on toolbar PageRank are ones that are buying/selling sites & links.

Personally for me, I only use toolbar PR as a quick indicator of the strength of a site or particular SERP, but really thats out of convenience/laziness. There are much better metrics available with the extra click of a toolbar button.

By: Village Ads

Village Ads — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 08:09:03 +0000

For a few years getting reviews (good or bad) has helped Google Places rankings, now we’re starting to see businesses’ rankings decline with more negative reviews which I think is a great thing. Lets hope they can really get a good algo to sort that all out. Code, test, implement, tweak, repeat.

One thing I’m waiting for is to see if Google updates their PageRanks or if PR is going the way of the dodo. Any bets on what will replace it if the decide to kill it?

By: Max Thomas

Max Thomas — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:40:43 +0000

Wow! Great predictions! Regarding sentiment and link building, this is the first time I’ve seen the connection between a site/blog’s sentiment (not just relevancy) and Google’s assessment of the quality of a link from that site/blog. Very nice predictions for 2011. Thanks for posting!