SEO Best Practices 2012

What are the likely changes in the SEO practices in 2012?

There are some best practices that will not change at all. Especially, I do not see the SEO basics changing at all.

What will really change and is changing in a big way is the SEO mix. The composition is changing and gravitating more and more towards Social networking.

Meaning: when chalking out SEO work for your website make sure Social networking makes for a huge chunk of the pie. Networking sites enjoy a lot of traffic. If you have a circle of friends that you are connected to, the best means gaining visibility for your website is by making it part of your profile. Sharing updates etc. The best part is the viral nature of this channel. Through your circle of friends, you will get more friends and so on. Imagine the potential!

For instance on Facebook, you can “write a note” and publish it for your friends to read and share. It is a great way of sharing information. If you have a blog, you should make sure your blog updates show up on the Facebook notes, you can easily do so by importing your blog feeds. If you do not have a page for your business on Facebook, it may be worthwhile to create a page and send requests to your friends.SEO optimize the page just like any other page and watch the traffic grow.

More and more people are using the networking sites and it is therefore a good idea to have them as part of your SEO plan. People are looking beyond search engines for answers, what can be better than gaining visibility while catching up with your friends.

This year I see more and more people using social networking sites to connect, to share, and to promote. Although this means a shift in the SEO strategy for more businesses, it does not however minimize the importance of SEO. Optimization thy name is SEO.

Optimizing content for SEO across all channels should be the plan, it could be on Facebook or PR sites or blogs or anything. Anything that can be searched can be optimized.

The SEO mantra for 2012 is to be visible across all the channels and especially channels that are being frequented by your target audience. Go with the flow and ensure that your presence is felt!

Let us go SEOnetworking this 2012.