Website Traffic Predictions
Ready for the 2012 website traffic predictions…here’s an undercover report.
Location: Latitude – 36.08, Longitude – 115.17
Date: Wed, January 4th, 2012
Time: 8:55pm
Nicky Parsons Dossier 41B
****************
I’d been sitting at the bar in “DT’s”, as it’s known by the locals, for over 35 minute waiting for Nicky Parsons to arrive. She said she had hot documents outlining the future of the Internet and wanted to share them with me.
Needless to say, I was intrigued.
“Johnny Walker Blue, neat,” she said tersely to the bartender, sliding up behind me from virtually out of nowhere.
“Whoa, Nicky, you surprised me. Happy New Year,” I said.
“Yeah, whatever,” she replied. “What are you drinking?”
“Club soda.”
“You’re such a dork.”
I shrugged.
The bartender slid her drink across the bar, and in return she handed him a small, mysterious gold coin. He nodded and went back to his other customers while Nicky reached into her bag and brought out what looked to be classified documents.
“One of our agents, A-Mar, bought these off someone inside The Big G after their most recent world-domination meeting,”
Nicky explained. “So here are the Big G’s plans for taking total control of the Internet..if you’re interested?”
“Yeah, let me see those,” I replied.
She threw them on the bar and I looked at what seemed to be the meeting minutes from an insider’s meeting at The Big G.
Here’s what it said…
SB – “In 2011 we saw a lot of rapid changes. Our Panda updates forced people to make much higher quality content that helps users stick on those websites.
“Additionally we (The Big G) finally admitted that social signals are playing in the rankings. With the addition of our +1 we’re throwing our hat in the ring to get a piece of the social networking action. Kudos to you Larry.”
LP – “Thanks Sergey!”
“Now…eventually we will probably favor +1 in search, just like we favor Youtube in rankings…after all, we own it.”
**Insert evil laugh**
Correction: **Insert evil ‘don’t-be-evil’ laugh**
“So it will be mandatory for website owners to have the +1 social signal on their websites. MANDATORY.
“Our recent changes also mean that some websites that used to convert well will no longer convert at all.
“As the Internet continues to grow people have become more savvy on using our search engine and finding free info which is changing the face of information marketing“.
“Expect to see a lot of people switching over to selling on the Kindle marketplace.
“But that’s okay because we know how to control the searches using our ‘Instant’ and ‘Suggest’ tools. This will make it harder for website owners to dominate a search term and take all the traffic in our regular ranking system.”
LP – “How’s that work, Sergey?”
“With our ‘Suggest’ tool, people start typing a keyword in their search and are automatically given many options before they have even finished typing, which gives someone a more precise search and better user experience.”
LP – “That’s brilliant Sergey!”
“Thanks Larry, then again, I am a genius. Here’s what this means in the business world…
“Traditional keyword research is possibly going out the window. Our search engine will suggest keywords and business owners better have great content based on our suggestions.
Basically, we’re telling people what they should search for, rather than letting the user decide themselves.”
LP – “We’re showing them who’s the boss, right Sergey?”
“You got it Larry, and it sure ain’t Tony Danza.
“Smart business owners should be studying our search engine to see what shows up when they start typing in their desired keyword. For example, some keyword search results might be dominated by Youtube videos, and therefore a smart business owner will start creating their own keyword-rich videos.
“So again, it’s really important for business owners to look at the layout of our search results for their keywords to make sure they are ranking with the right types of media.”
LP – “Brilliant again, Sergey!”
“Thanks Larry. So in 2012 you’ll see the smart website business owner will be diversifying into many forms of media to make sure they cover all the ways of getting found for a keyword search.
“This includes having a keyword-rich Facebook page, blog post, press release, Youtube video, and Kindle product if possible.”
“The best strategy for search traffic in 2012 will be to diversify your efforts with many media types. Of course, the smart business owners will simply create a youtube video on a keyword, have it transcribed into a blog post, then post that info on a keyword-title Facebook page with a great free offer, and turn all that info into a cheap Kindle product.”
LP – “Brilliant again Sergey!”
“Thank YOU, Larry”
LP – “No, thank YOU. You’re the best.”
“No, YOU’RE the best”
*****This continued on for several minutes…End of anything
noteworthy.*****
Me again, CB here to sum it up.
Search engine marketing is changing, but those guys outline a pretty straight-forward and simple strategy for you to stay on top of it all.
Creating Kindle products is probably going to be the biggest trend of the year…and I’ll be back to report on that soon, with a little help from Nicky.
Tomorrow she’ll show us how to beat your biggest search engine rival – Wikipedia.
Craig Ballantyne
PS – The above email was a fictional story written to turn a complex topic into an entertaining and educational email. Any resemblance to real people is like, totally, coincidental.
To LP and SB, do not sue me. But the ‘predictions’ were real.
That’s the best way to get free traffic in 2012.