Mediaboss Marketing

What SEO trends are important to watch in 2012 for enterprise-level SEO? Many colleagues, clients, and prospects are keenly interested in the answer to this question.

Here are what I think will be four enterprise SEO trends to watch in 2012.

1. Further Corporatization of SEO in the Enterprise

The trend over the last several years has increasingly shown SEO teams "go within" at large companies.

For enterprise companies to realize exceptional results in SEO, they almost always require a dedicated internal SEO team. That's the case today primarily because incremental gains are harder to achieve, as SEO is becoming more complex, harder (through obfuscation of data, such as Google's "not defined" segment), and more competitive. Organic results, too, are shrinking and Google's SERP and paid listings are continually evolving to blend in more tightly with the organic results.

Where does this lead us in 2012? Well, what we continue to see is strong demand for enterprise companies to lean on agencies for SEO work.

As SEO gets investment and resource demands within corporations continually rise, the need for outside support also rises. We see this most strikingly in the need for companies to secure content and off-page support.

Link development, social media, and content strategies will continue to be the primary need of the enterprise in 2012. With this trend comes the solidification of enterprise-level SEO analytics tools for in-house teams (and agencies for that matter). SearchLight, Brightedge, SEO Clarity, Matrix, Searchmetrics, and other toolsets are becoming essential complements to analytics, log files, crawling tools, and Google's and Bing's own excellent webmaster consoles.

Every SEO team needs a precision competitive analysis tool.

2. Rich Snippets Proliferate (and So Does Spam)

With one small recent change, Google has made it very easy to get your author photo in search results. 2012 will be the year this absolutely takes off. In fact, it will become a competitive disadvantage to publish without author information accompanying the Google result.

And it's not going to be confined to authors, either. Rel author is certainly the most interesting recent microformat that Google has introduced, but there are many others. We've seen the way rich snippets increase clicks in search results by providing more information and better "pop" on the SERP.

Google's RV Guha, a rich snippets engineer speaking at SMX East recently, was quoted as saying that "...it seemed that giving the user a better idea of what to expect on the page increases the click-through rate on the search results. So if the webmasters do this, it's really good for them. They get more traffic. It's good for users because they have a better idea of what to expect on the page. And, overall, it's good for the web."

In our testing, rich snippets can contribute to a staggering 52 percent lift in clicks, with spillover effects in increased impressions. And we've seen it even higher, although nowhere near the increases reported elsewhere, (which I have no reason not to believe).

Rich snippets positively influence CTR in organic results.

With great power comes great responsibility. Spammers are already jumping all over this one, so I imagine there will be tighter controls coming out soon.

3. It's All About Social

No discussion of social in 2012 will be complete without Google+. You need a strategy there. Google is forcing that need upon you! And while it appears the Google+ dial has been turned down slightly in SERPs over the last few weeks, there's no reason to think it's going away.

There's a troubling subcurrent to this whole polemic. When Google announced that search queries for logged-in users would not be passed to analytics (but would be passed to AdWords advertisers), it assured the web community that only a small percentage of queries would be affected. However, as Google+ adoption increases, and more users with accounts perform searches while logged in, that number will continue to rise. Could there be a time when 50 percent or more of search queries are "not provided"? Absolutely.

While changes like this absolutely make SEO more difficult, they also push the door ever slightly wider to new competitors. Look for Bing to continue to creep upwards in market share, although it won't be through the partnership with Yahoo. If anything, all that partnership has done is marginalize Yahoo search. Bing will have to grab market share on the merits of its search experience, and even more importantly, through marketing.

Since you can't fight the importance of Google+ to SEO, you might as well embrace it. The good news is there are already cool things you can do to integrate Google+ with your search campaigns, such as implementing "social extensions" to connect your AdWords accounts with a Google+ brand page.

SEOs without a Google+ strategy will be left behind. Get after it.

4. Domain Authority: Still the Trump Card

As much as social media is changing the SEO game (remember when Duane Forrester of Bing told us social signals matter more than links?), good old classic domain authority is still the heavyweight in the room. And it will be for some time, at least with Google.

Guess which one ranks higher?

Remember: Google won't blend Twitter or Facebook data into its search results. Not until it gets significant access to the data, on terms that "won't change," according to Amit Singhal. This means it's all about Google+, at least for now. Even if users don't necessarily want it (they've crested 90 million users, but penetration among the masses is nowhere near where the two other social sites are), Google's going to push its social network. And it's got a long way to go.

I'm sure Google is already amassing valuable data through Google+, but it's for a very small sample of users (relative to the web). Therefore, it's unlikely that signals from the social network will have a meaningful impact on the organic results. While it's likely Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social signals are being incorporated somehow (as long as they're available through the crawl), without direct access to that data, and without knowing its intricate relationships, Google only has part of the picture.

The link graph is still the most reliable set of ranking signals Google has. And so far, it's still what's making the difference in competitive SERPs. Classic links still rule, and sites with domain authority (notably brands) remain at a distinct advantage in SEO.

This story originally appeared on ClickZ.

Save up to $400! Register now for SES New York 2012, the leading search & social marketing event, taking place March 19-23. Google's Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik will keynote. Early bird rate expires March 2.

Originally posted here:
Enterprise SEO: 4 Trends to Watch in 2012

Published : Monday, February 20, 2012 00:00 Article Views : 78 Written by : KRISTA ANGELA M. MONTEALEGRE

Property developer Ortigas & Co., the owner and operator of the Greenhills Shopping Center, expects to double sales from its real estate division.

Joey Santos, Ortigas & Co. real estate division general manager, told reporters in a recent interview that the company expects sales to hit P4 billion this year from P2 billion in 2010.

Real estate division accounts for half of the revenues of the Ortigas group while the retail side contributes the remaining 50 percent.

Ortigas & Co. is in the process of completing residential towers Majorca and Ibiza within the 12-hectare Circulo Verde located in Quezon City. Launched in early 2009, the two buildings are set for turnover by the end of the year.

By next month, the company will also launch the P2-billion Royalton, a 65-story residential tower that will be the first of the five premier towers set to rise in the 25-hectare Capitol Commons in Pasig City. It will put up a sales center by June at the former site of the provincial capitol of Antipolo that will also feature small retail outlets.

The 19-hectare Tiendesitas in Pasig City will undergo major redevelopment this year that will double its gross leasable area to 20,000 square meters and turning into an upscale shopping destination. The property developer will also beef up its office portfolio within the commercial complex with the construction of two office buildings on top of the existing two.

The 80-year-old developer is engaged in property development and shopping center management. It is the company behind the Greenhills Shopping Center as well as vertical developments like Greenhills Subdivisions, Greenmeadows and Valle Verde.

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Ortigas sees doubling of sales from real estate

18-02-2012 17:53 http://www.hypersonicmarketing.net Hypersonic Marketing is a marketing service firm based out side of Philadelphia Pa. Our video describes local internet marketing tips to help your small business succeed in the coming years.http

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Philadelphia, Pa. Social Media Consultants-HyperSonicMarketing-Dominate Local Online Competition - - Video

Since it's so hard to keep up with everything that's shared on social media, here's a weekly guide to things that may have passed you by.

OK, here's the dirty little secret of social media. Almost everyone will miss almost everything you share.

Those who disparage Twitter, Facebook, and so on, point to that as a reason for us to ignore social media altogether.

But though it's true most folks will miss the majority of your posts, that's no excuse for you not to participate. After all, you can say that about any medium--TV, magazines, newspapers, even blockbuster films--the majority of people will never see what goes on there.

So, in an attempt to get more stuff seen, I'm starting a Social Media Week In Review. Each weekend, I'll post items you may have missed. You can help by posting links in the comments section or e-mailing me at sreetips@sree.net.

First stop: Mashable's 37 digital-media resources you may have missed, by @MattPetronzio. A great way to catch up with all the best posts within Mashable, a leading social-media site. On Mondays, @Charlie_White offers a Weekend Recap of Mashable posts--also worth checking out.

Social Media Week: Hundreds of social-media events were held in dozens of cities last week as part of Social Media Week. That means you--and I--missed almost everything that went on. Dozens of the panels were simulcast, and you can catch up via the SMW Livestream page. I was involved in two panels, and I thought I'd share them here.

One was about the future of education (video here). It featured several terrific speakers, but the star of the show was Melissa Seideman (@MSeideman), 8th grade history teacher from a school north of NYC. She showed me several new tools that I'll use with my students, including Socrative, an audience/class instant polling service that could make those complicated clicker-based systems obsolete.

The other panel was one I moderated at the instigation of Eric Carvin (@EricCarvin), the new social-media editor at the Associated Press. (Video below.) It was about challenging the conventional wisdom in social media, with seven top social-media editors. Strange to think that such a new medium already has conventional wisdom, but it's true, and we covered many topics I hope to touch on in future posts.

#anthonyshadid: Thursday night we learned that Anthony Shadid, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times (and ex-Washington Post, ex-AP) had died while covering the crisis in Syria. A man who had survived the Iraq war and countless other hostilities, including being kidnapped in Libya, appeared to have died because of an asthma attack. In a testament to how popular he was, Facebook and Twitter lit up with posts, tributes, and comments about his work. This NYT compilation of tweets shows the extent of Shadid's reach; my favorite was by his former colleague Don Van Natta, Jr. (@DVNjr):

"By Anthony Shadid" was a beacon of humanity and truth.
February 17, 2012

Liz Heron (@LHeron), NYT social-media editor, speaking at a tribute to Shadid at Columbia Journalism School, pointed out social media's unusual role in the hours after his death. She said the paper and his family would have had no idea how globally loved Shadid had been if it weren't for the outpouring of affection via social media.

Shadid himself was on Twitter (@AnthonyShadid), and what struck me the most about how he used it was in his very simple Twitter bio. He just said, "Journalist and author," rather than mention his prizes and his Times connection. How many of us are as humble as he was?

Shadid's widow, Nada Bakri (@NadaBakri), a former student at Columbia, tweeted this on Saturday:

#anthonyshadid i love and appreciate all your notes. they bring so much solace. he had so much more to give ... if only he had the time.
February 18, 2012

Funniest post I saw this week: Changing gears, the most amusing item I saw was posted on my Facebook wall by Jonathan Boorstein (@solodiner). It was a graphic from StuffJournalistsLike.com's Facebook account, which looked at what journalists think they do and what they actually do. I guess others liked it, too. The graphic got more than 14,500 likes and almost a thousand comments.

What did I miss? Tell me in the comments or via @sree or #sreetips on Twitter.

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Social Media Week in Review: What you may have missed

SAN FRANCISCO — Living in the world of social networking and mobile smartphones means trading away some of your personal information.

But assessing the price of admission to join the super-networked, digital class is not so simple; even experts on the issue admit that they don't have a full picture of the way personal information is collected and used on the Internet. But here are some basic guidelines to keep in mind.

Q. What information do you have to give up to participate in social media?

A. Social networks such as Facebook and Google+ require at a minimum that you provide them with your name, gender and date of birth. Many people provide additional profile information, and the act of using the services - writing comments or uploading photos or "friending" people - creates additional information about you. Most of that information can be kept hidden from the public if you choose, though the companies themselves have access to it.

If you use your Facebook credentials to log-on to other Web sites, or if you use Facebook apps, you might be granting access to parts of your profile that would otherwise be hidden. Quora, for example, a popular online Q&A site, requires that Facebook users provide it access to their photos, their "Likes" and information that their friends share with them. TripAdvisor, by contrast, requires only access to "basic information" including gender and lists of friends.

Social media apps on smartphones, which have access to personal phone call information and physical location, put even more information at play.

On Apple Inc's iPhone, apps must get user permission to access GPS location coordinates, a procedure that will now be applied to address book access as well after companies including Twitter were found to be downloading iPhone address book information. Beyond those two types of data, Apple locks away personal data stored in other applications, such as notepad and calendar apps, according to Michael Sutton, the vice president of security research at email security service ZScaler.

Google Inc's Android smartphone operating system allows third-party apps to tap into a bonanza of personal data, though only if they get permission. In order to download an app from the Android Market, users must click 'OK' on a pop-up list that catalogues the specific types of information that each particular app has access to.

Related: Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears

With both mobile and Facebook apps, often the choice is to provide access to a personal information or not use the app at all.

Q. Should I worry about how my information is being used? A. Personal information is the basic currency of an Internet economy built around marketing and advertising. Hundreds of companies collect personal information about Web users, slice it up, combine it with other information, and then resell it.

Facebook doesn't provide personal information to outside marketers, but other websites, including sites that access Facebook profile data, may have different policies. Last year, a study by Stanford University graduate student found that profile information on an online dating site, including ethnicity, income and drug use frequency, was somehow being tramsitted to a third-party data firm.

The data that third-parties collect is used mainly by advertisers, but there are concerns that these profiles could be used by insurance companies or banks to help them make decisions about who to do business with. Q. Are there any restrictions on what information companies can collect from Internet users or what they can do with it?

A. In the United States, the federal law requires websites that know they are being visited by children under 13 to post a privacy policy, get parental approval before collecting personal information on children, and allow parents to bar the spread of that information or demand its deletion. The site operators are not allowed to require more information from the children than is "reasonably necessary" for participating in its activities.

Related: 7 signs we're living in the post-privacy era

For those who are 13 or older, the United States has no overarching restrictions. Websites are free to collect personal information including real names and addresses, credit card numbers, Internet addresses, the type of software installed, and even what other websites people have visited. Sites can keep the information indefinitely and share most of what they get with just about anyone.

Websites are not required to have privacy policies. Companies have most often been tripped up by saying things in their privacy policies - such as promising that data is kept secure - and then not living up to them. That can get them in trouble under the federal laws against unfair and deceptive practices.

Sites that accept payment card information have to follow industry standards for encrypting and protecting that data. Medical records and some financial information, such as that compiled by rating agencies, are subject to stricter rules.

European privacy laws are more stringent and the European Union is moving to establish a universal right to have personal data removed from a company's database-informally known as the "right to be forgotten." That approach is fervently opposed by companies dependent on Internet advertising.

Related: Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears

Q. Is there likely to be new privacy legislation in the United States?

A. The year 2011 saw a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill as U.S. lawmakers introduced a handful of do-not-track bills with even the Obama White House calling for a "privacy bill of rights."

Leading the charge on do-not-track legislation are the unlikely pair of Reps. Edward J. Markey, a Massachussetts Democrat, and Joseph Barton, a Republican from Texas, who have jointly led a "Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus."

Still, with half a dozen privacy laws meandering through Congress, most observers expect it could take a long time before any are passed-and not before they are significantly watered down in the legislative process.

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Why social media, mobile phones want your info