As sure as tax season, there will be SEO predictions at the beginning of each new year. Predictions are made every year in all facets of business and life, and SEO is no exception. While many SEO predictions are theoretically based, many more are somewhat wild guesses that are at best irrelevant, and at worst a liability. Understanding how and why you need to pay attention to predictions is part of maintaining a competitive advantage in SEO.
Search engines have a very clear mandate to provide the best search results for their customers -- this is what keeps search engines in business. The most successful SEOs (in the long-run) have been able to think like a Google engineer and anticipate the direction search is headed. The cutting-edge organizations position their sites to stay ahead of the algorithm, rather than chasing the algorithm, by recognizing which predictions to plan for, and which to ignore.
While predictions may not always be right, they do offer insight and ideas for where search may be headed (something you need to be predicting yourself, so that you can stay ahead). And yes, I make SEO predictions all the time, but normally do so privately (until now).
How bad SEO predictions happen
Hype used for online attention. Predictions happen both privately and publicly. Many predictions are made editorially by predictors with a goal of getting links and traffic to their own site. Some writers want to create controversy to help gain traction so they make predictions that are designed to drive the SEO community crazy with controversy. Even some predictions that may be well founded are exaggerated to make a stronger point.
Poor methodology. Some predictions may be bad simply because of the methodology used to infer a trend. For example, anytime data is referenced in a prediction to show a correlation that helps predict changes in the algorithm, there is an inherent risk that a person will mistake correlation for causation.
Predictions for a specific industry. Recognize that a given prediction may only apply to certain industries. Search engines treat different verticals differently, and strategies that are relevant in one industry may not be as important in another. Predictions can often be written with one industry in mind, and when taken out of context, become a pretty bad prediction.
Off-the-wall predictions. And then there are the die-hard SEO predictions like "SEO is dead." Of course, there have been enough articles on the nonsense of "SEO is dead" that we don't need to reiterate it here. But these shock tactics are frustrating because they can persuade people to dismiss SEO predictions altogether. The reality is that SEO is not dead. Some SEO tactics and strategies from the past are dead because the search engines' algorithms are newer and more robust, but that doesn't spell an end to SEO. Google claims to evaluate more than 200 elements in its ranking formula, and Bing claims it considers more than 1,000 elements in determining who will rank at the top. SEO is a different game with far more factors to consider. SEO is dead only in the sense that many of the old tactics that no longer worked do, and have given way to new approaches that span across even more disciplines than before -- for example, social media and website usability. Unfortunately, these new developments are not as sexy of a headline as claiming "SEO is dead."
Parsing the good, the bad, and the ugly
Don't get caught up in the hullabaloo. Predictions made by bloggers, writers, or other people in the public spotlight should be taken with a grain of salt. Editorial predictions may be made with the intent of stirring up controversy, chatter, and links.
The problem with many SEO predictions is the scale of the message. Some predictions lose sight of the scale of the impact a trend will have. For example, many predicted that Google Instant would kill the long-tail of search, but reality shows that Google Instant has impacted the long-tail of search on a much smaller scale than some were suggesting.
The best predictions tend to address the search engines' primary goal. That goal is to create the best user experience. The best predictions are also grounded in fact. In December 2009, Twitter started showing up in Google's search results (real-time search). In order to display only quality Twitter content, Google had to use specific metrics such as the number and authority of followers to determine the authority of a tweet. Google was clear about that being included in the "real-time algorithm." So in light of this, one of Rand Fishkin's SEO predictions for 2010 was based on fact and carries much more weight:
"Google's not going to just take raw number of tweets or re-tweets. I think we're already seeing the relevance and reputation calculations in their decisions of which tweets and sources to show in the real-time results, and I expect that algorithms/metrics like PageRank, TrustRank, etc. will find their way into how Google uses the real-time data. Today, SEOs want to turn tweets into links so they can get SEO benefit. My feeling is that tweets are going to carry their own weight in helping pages rank in the not-too-distant future."
And sure enough, almost a year later to the day, Matt Cutts confirmed that social signals including Twitter were influencing not only real-time search, but other rankings as well.
