With a brand new year offers a new beginning for SEO. 2012 was an incredibly tough year for all involved in the industry, with Google churning out numerous algorithm updates in an attempt to clean up the web. The question is, Will 2013 prove to be as unlucky as its name suggests and as 2012 was, or will it prove to be a fantastic year for all involved?
In order to stay ahead of the game and to make sure that 2013 a success, here are just a few things to expect this year:
Author Rank: In 2013, bloggers will be assigned an Author rank based on factors such as domain expertise and knowledge of the industry. This will mean that content written by a highly ranked author is more likely to place in the top rankings. In addition, bloggers will be encouraged to link their content to their Google+ profile to further raise calculations for a sites ranking.
Social Media Presence: This year, social media presence will have a huge affect on how Google consider a sites quality. It will be imperative for sites that they are linked to a number of social platforms such as Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc, and that they are actively using them. One reason for Google doing this is because they are looking to give Google+ a boost, and so by forcing companies to use it to improve their rank, it will inevitably improve the usership of Google+
Equivalency Score Algorithm: 2013 is likely to bring a change to the equivalency score algorithm (ESA), in other words, it works in the same way as Google Adword’s Quality Score wherein each keyword is given a score based on different factors. It is expected that this will eventually reduce the issue of how certain websites “own” the top ranking spots and it should create a more level playing field for businesses.
Link Disavow Tool: It can be expected that 2013 will be a big year for the Disavow Tool, which was created to collect the data on the back link structure of websites. It is believed that Google are likely to make an algorithm change based on the links that have been submitted to them. It is expected that as a result of this, blog posts and forum posts will no longer have much clout when it comes to back links.
Here’s to hoping that 2013 proves to be a successful year for everyone involved in the SEO industry!
