Small business owners can gain a real advantage when they take the time to explore the potential changes and opportunities available within Internet marketing. We’ve gathered some of the top trends noted by some of today’s great minds in Internet Marketing to help readers stay on top of the coming changes and direction for marketing online through social media, SEO tools, and Google AdWords.

 

 

Hot Trends that Bring Opportunities and Challenges

 

Recently, National Positions, a SEO company and Internet Marketer, released its list of Internet Marketing Trends. Here is a summary of their list:

• Value-based marketing focuses on performance and metrics rather than just rankings and traffic numbers.
• Rich snippets are where Google will provide a summary of your website so people do not have to click on the website to find out. That could be good but it could hurt you as well, depending on how convincing the snippet is, and it could potentially reduce page views.
• Vanishing data includes a strategy where Google will not make as much available in terms of your website in Google Analytics so it will take longer to find the key performance indicators you need to determine if your tactics are working.

• Maturing mobile marketing, including ongoing growth, is important, especially in the mobile search area, which will require mobile optimized website strategies.
• Local search marketing will increase exponentially, including local search and Google Local, in which companies will have to rethink how they position their online marketing for local searches.
• Social media will meet search marketing at the intersection of Google+ in which strategies will need to be able to integrate across all platforms.
• Video content will grow in importance, especially in the area of mobile and greater interactive video content to gain brand engagement with users.
• Online reputation must be maintained so it is important to pay attention to any reviews and comments posted by unsatisfied customers. Consumers look to these reviews as one of the main influences on their decision-making before pursuing any product or service.
• New leads will need to be cared for in a way that shows their value, which means greater and faster response times to the leads that come your way.

• Link diversity will become more important than simply having a basic linking strategy when it comes to search engine presence. This means varied anchor text links and reciprocal linking that meet search engine crawlers’ exacting specifications.

Other Noteworthy Internet Marketing Trends for 2012

 

Another article also offered some noteworthy trends:

 

• Online reviews are also excellent sources for understanding customers. Reading the types of reviews left on your site as well as on those of the competition or even on independent forums and social media sites provides a way to get into your customers’ heads and understand what makes them tick and what it is that they do and do not like in products and services. This is research material that is free for the taking rather than having to conduct expensive and time-consuming surveys. Make the most of it!
• Cloud computing is growing in importance and going mainstream. The benefits of moving to the cloud income low costs, more accessibility, scalability and some improvements in security.
• And, speaking of security, site security is very critical, especially with so many hackers on the loose. It is of the utmost priority to protect your data and intellectual property from customers as well as what you have developed.
• Lastly, apps are all the rage so it is becoming a revenue tool to help many small businesses gain attention for their products and services not to mention make money from developing the app.

 

What Trends Do You See?

 

Tell us what trends are impacting you and how you are approaching them. At Flyline Search Marketing, we keep our eyes open and ear to the ground so that we can help our clients adapt and be ready to take advantage of these trends.