Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? It seems that Google has certainly been working on theirs. With all the algorithmic changes that have been occurring lately, the world of search engine optimisation looks set to change as we embark on 2010. So what New Year’s resolutions have we as an SEO marketing agency, made to ensure that we’re ready for all that the search engines can throw at us? We Will Be Ready For Caffeine Google has certainly been busy as 2009 draws to a close, though they assure us that their Caffeine update will not be implemented until after the holiday season. It seems their latest updates are set to change the appearance of search engine results pages quite dramatically. Whilst they will look no different to the untrained eye, behind the scenes Google’s search engine spiders will be focusing on relevance more than ever before. Search in 2010 will still be based around the basic relevance of a site’s content, the links it generates, and its infrastructure. However it appears that Caffeine will concentrate more on indexing the latest content, as quickly as possible. This may mean that the more regularly you update your content, the more Google will index you, and the more they will improve your rankings. But will this be at the cost of relevant search results? On top of this, it seems that as an SEO marketing agency, we will also have to start taking factors such as site speed, site usability and social presence into consideration. With so many unanswered questions about Caffeine, our first New Year’s resolution is to continue researching these algorithm changes, and watch Caffeine very carefully to ensure that we stay ahead of Google’s game. We Will Blog, We Will Post, We Will Tweet The social presence of a site appears to be an increasingly important factor in the SEO strategies we will implement in 2010. People share thoughts and relevant information via social networking sites on a daily basis. Google’s increased indexing and real time updates will mean that these posts from social media sites such as Twitter, hubs and blogs will begin to appear on search engine results pages. Whilst it is as yet unclear as to how this will affect the ranking of websites and pages, it is clear that as an SEO marketing agency we must ensure that our campaigns are optimised for social media as well as search. Our second New Year’s resolution therefore, is to strike a balance between social media and search engine optimisation, by developing our blog programmes even further to cater for real time search and keep us on top of Google’s results pages. We Will Not Underestimate Bing Though it is in its early days as a search engine, given time Bing may well become a legitimate alternative to Google. Though many SEO strategies concentrate solely on Google, experts have commented that it would be wise not to discount Bing entirely. Whilst Google narrows its search to become more relevant and specific, it has been suggested that Bing would do well to go in the opposite direction, appealing to a crowd of searchers who are less keen to have their data collected, or for their searches to include other people’s social media thoughts and updates. If this were to be the case, there would in effect be two markets to optimise for. Our third New Year’s resolution for 2010, is to make sure that we d not become the SEO marketing agency that underestimated Bing, but to keep an eye out for the opportunity for us to capture another market, on top of Google’s. So as 2009 draws to a close, you see before you an SEO marketing agency that is looking forward to the New Year. 2010 looks to be an exciting year for SEO strategies and we are ready and waiting.