Intro

Initially it was supposed to be just one article about the 2008 SEO trends, but as I kept organizing the ideas and finding new information it turned out to be quite a large entry so I decided to split the article in two parts:

• part (I) – A Bird’s Eye View
• part (II) – Visitors and Search Engines.

In the first part we’ll talk about SEO as part of the bigger picture and in the second one we’ll look at visitors and search engine trends for 2008.

A Bird’s Eye View

The search engine optimization is a paid service offered by SEO professionals and just like any other product or service; it is influenced by the “health” of an economy. With U.S being the largest producer and consumer of online advertising and online transactions, the growth rate of the U.S. economy plays an important role in the overall demand for search engine optimization services.

In January 2008, U.S. unexpectedly lost jobs for the first time in more than four years, raising concerns that the US economy could tip into recession. Higher gasoline prices combined with the slumping housing market increase the odds that the economy will at least slow down. But, if the economy slows down, marketers are going to look even harder for better ROI. And when it’s done right, it’s hard to beat the ROI of SEO.

Also in the news: … e-commerce sales of goods and services will continue to grow, despite forecasted economic slowdowns. In United States for example, the rate of growth is between 15-20% per year which clearly suggest that the market is still far from maturity. Online advertising spending will increase as well. In a recent study, Barry Parr, lead analyst at JupiterResearch, reported that the local sector will experience the biggest growth, slightly outpacing total online ad spending. Local online advertising spending is expected to increase 82 percent in the next five years, Parr reported.

S.E.O. and Traditional Marketing

The goal of your search engine optimization efforts is to get you visibility and quality traffic but the overall objective is to increase sales, and I’m using sales here as a broad term for a product/service sale, a subscription, a quote or whatever your website has to offer. So, you need to convert part of that traffic into sales, and the conversion rates depend mainly on how clear your marketing message is. Of course it’s better to have 1,000 visitors and a 1% conversion rate than 10 visitors and a 20% conversion rate, but, if possible, why not have the 20% conversion rate for those one thousand visitors too?

To improve conversion rates, you will need first to define your market by selecting the proper keywords for searches, to get traffic, to analyze the behavior of your visitors by analyzing the traffic to see what type of visitors came to your website, from where and which pages were the most and the least successful. Based on this information you will know what needs (or needs not) to be changed or tweaked.

Does this sound like traditional marketing? You better believe it! Starting with 2008, SEO agencies will not be just search results promoters, they will have to be marketing experts, public relations experts, image managers, etc. SEO has started to fall in line with traditional marketing and public relations tactics. However, the main function of search engine optimization will remain the same: increase the client’s websites visibility in SERPs. Traditional marketing is changing, and the change will “affect” SEO as well. Organizations are becoming more customer-centric and marketing is no longer seen as the sole responsibility of the marketing department but rather as a way of thinking, as a way of doing business.

The integration of online and traditional marketing seems inevitable so the “bundle” SEO-marketing will be the wining card for 2008. Either the companies will look for SEO-marketing services from the current search engine optimization agencies or they will staff their own full-time SEOs to work with the existing marketing department. We expect the demand for SEO specialists to rise. The need for accurate ROI reports will also drive the need for accurate traffic analysis tools. Things like traffic funneling and visitors’ behavior will become important in the effort of increasing the conversion rates. But, more about visitors and how to increase traffic in the 2008 SEO Trends (II) – Visitors and Search Engines article.