A lot of things happened in the world of digital marketing last year. Interest in social media rose across all industries, enterprise level companies are seriously taking a look at their SEO strategy, and “Inbound Marketing” is beginning to move from buzzword to campaign strategy.
Here is a review of some developments from 2011 which will continue to have impact in 2012.
- Google and Bing admitted that clicks/visits influence rankings within the search engines. This has been a point of contention in the past, but now the cats out the bag. If 1,000 people find a link click-worthy, it gets a ranking boost.
- The rise of mobile didn’t precipitate a complete reimagining of the digital landscape, things are just more local now. Mobile users still rely on search engines, social media, and the same avenues as on laptops to find what they are looking for, and are typically more ready to convert.
- Google+ came out swinging, and it ain’t over yet. Aside from pouring tons of money into branded TV advertisements encouraging consumers to do <everything> together, Google is also incentivizing companies via search engine result page real estate. You can now have your Google+ image, comments, and author links visible from Google if someone searches for you or your company.
- Goodbye “traditional”, hello “inbound”. This year saw a dramatic rise in the amount of interest (as measured by corporate budgets) given to social media, SEO, content marketing, blogging, and anything which pulls the user in with something valuable versus the old methods of forking over tons of cash to get your brand message repeated ad infinitum (Yes, I get it that I can group video chat, and still don’t care).
To read a few more interesting analyses about the way the digital world developed in 2011, check out Rand Fishkin’s post on SEOmoz. For more information about how these changes can impact your enterprise, please contact Verndale’s digital marketing experts.