For 2013 The Industry Wishes… (part 2)
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For 2013 The Industry Wishes… (part 2)

4th January 2013

Last week we let the industry and the blogging team tell us what their best moments of 2012 were, this week we are looking forward to 2013. And what people wish for. Earlier this week you could be reading what the bloggers were wishing for in 2013, today we are looking at the industry experts. In this first post Joost de Valk, Dixon Jones, Jane Copland, Andrew Girdwood, Kevin Gibbons, Fili Wiese, Matt Roberts, Avinash Kaushik, Kristjan Hauksson, Mel Carson, Richard Gregory, Nicky Wake, Dom Hodgson, Aaron Wall and Judith Lewis

Joost de Valk, CEO at Yoast.com

“We’ve got several new products lined up for 2013, moving Yoast into a product company more and more. I can only hope for that to prosper. For the wider web, I’m hoping that Google will refine its updates more, as I think it is, in general, improving the quality of search results, even though there are many specific cases where it’s really, really ugly.”

Dixon Jones, Marketing Director at MajesticSEO

“My wish for 2013? That the cost of flying Business would come down to a level that I can justify every trip! More seriously – I wish that in 2013 more of us would get up from our desks and meet each other face-to-face. I think that there are so many talented individuals out there that never get the recognition they deserve because nobody meets them… so nobody follows them… so nobody hears their cry. Shouting in Cyberspace is not like shouting in real space… unless there is nobody around to hear you except bots. My wish – that EVERYONE in Internet Marketing goes to a monthly local get2gether of some sort.”

Jane Copland, SEO Consultant at Ayima

“As for what I wish would happen in 2013, I hope we get a clearer idea of where Google is going with data reduction. I want to know where the bottom of their barrel is. I don’t think I’ll see my wish come true, but I’m also keen to see how everyone adapts and innovates in response to a market where it is becoming more and more difficult to access data we used to accept as standard. I know a lot of people have already begun. Despite not thinking this will happen, I’d like to reach a point where we can be fairly sure data reduction (or coercion to eliminate data!) has reached its low point or is tapering off.”

Andrew Girdwood, Media Innovations Director, LBi

“I wish that the SEO industry rescues its reputation in 2013. I wish that we can cast off cowboy bad practise that risks the livelihoods of SMEs. I wish the definition wars would fade and people accept that modern SEO, content marketing, branded content, inbound marketing, content activation and others pretty much all describe the practise of connecting engaging content or opportunities with an audience that matters to achieve the business change necessary. This means wishing that the perception SEO was about doorway pages, keyword stuffing and cloaking would fade.”

Kevin Gibbons, Managing Director UK at BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.

“My prediction for 2013 is that brands will have to become more integrated and agile with their marketing strategies. At BlueGlass we have ditched the silos, rather than looking at social, search, content, PR etc individually, it makes far more sense to look at the bigger picture as one. And likewise, everything in this industry changes way too much to stand still. Especially with content becoming such a key focus this year, so in order to compete the market leaders will have to become more agile and adaptable to constantly learn and improve. So my wish for 2013, is that those slow-moving brands will start to realise this – and hopefully the agencies won’t ;-)”

Fili Wiese, Head of SEO and Development at Netlead

“Looking forward towards 2013 it is my sincere hope that we will see more tools and automation to help our making our lives a lot easier and better. I know that we at Netlead will be focusing on making our SEM Suite available to everyone to help automate and improve current workflows. And on a personal note, I also trust the year 2013 to bring even more change again. So stay tuned … 🙂 Until then, I wish everyone a festive holiday season and hope to see you in the New Year!”

Matt Roberts, VP Product / Marketing at Linkdex

“2013 promises to be a huge year for me personally and Linkdex. I hate travel. Especially air travel. Yet strangely I can’t wait to get back on the road with our UK and US team to meet our customers.”

Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google

“I hope to see two things happen (why not be greedy when we are just wishing!).

There is an incredible opportunity at the intersection of Search and Social. A simple example is me seeing “458,345 have +1’ed Booking.com” in the AdWords ads – what an amazing brand endorsement to have and what a great way to stand out in the sea of AdWords ads. Another example is how social drives telling of stories about companies and brands – what a great way to get worthy clicks and earn some SEO along the way. I hope more people will start to live at the intersection of Search and Social.

My other hope is for Social to be truly about being social. Most brands just shout at people on their Facebook page, their Twitter feed, their Google+ page. LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT MY BOX SHOT!! TAKE A LOOK AT MY LATEST SALE!!! It gets tiring very quickly. Would you want any of your friends to talk to you like that? I hope Social will be about conversations. Companies will figure out how to participate in conversations and initiate conversations. I’m confident this will increase world peace. :)”

Kristjan Hauksson, Director of Internet Marketing at Nordic eMarketing

“I wish for 2013 that legislators hold back in regards of law making and actually spend some time understanding what this industry is all about. Given the incentive I believe that we can self-regulate and maintain ethics in our work.”

Mel Carson, Founder at Delightful Communications LLC

“As for 2013, I’d like it to be a little less eventful and more of a smoother ride…….but with the search and social media industry, I know that’s not going to happen. So I hope I give my clients the best advice, that many end up feeling better educated about how search and social should be integrated into their marketing, PR and personal brands, and that we all grow as an industry that is really making a difference in how people discover, engage with, and share quality information and content.”

Richard Gregory, Managing Director at Latitude Digital Marketing

“My biggest hope is that Google stops relying on the intuitive nature of its product design and actually starts consumer advertising about how to better use it’s services. As we know they roll out 500 changes a year (some obviously insignificant to the end user) with little explanation to those outside our industry. Does the end user really understand how easily abused “seller ratings”, do they know why they should hit the +1 button next to an ad? Come on Google…it’s just not intuitive.”

Nicky Wake, MD, Don’t Panic Event Management

“Our wish for 2013 is that the European Search Awards continues to grow in its second year when we hold the event in Barcelona and that our plans for a similar awards in another territory can be announced in the new year…”

Dom Hodgson, CEO at EmberAds Ltd

“2013 is going to be the year where everyone is cleaner than clean, all you need to rank is a good ‘content marketing strategy’  and a few twitter followers and HAPPYS DAYS #1 ranki…. yeah well that’s obviously bollocks, SEO is going to be much the same in 2013 as it was in 2012, if people are buying links, they will keep buying them (although they will probably be buying better ones), Guest Post’s will still be in fashion as the new way to get hot links until Google updates the webmaster guidelines to say that they only count guest posts from people your connected to on Google+.

Personally 2013 is going to be a big year for us, Think Visibility is going to grow and to be honest, I’ve no idea if that’s going to work or not but my nanna always said ‘you don’t get if you don’t try’* .. *she never actually said that, she used to work for nestle so mostly said DOMINIC STOP EATING THE TOFFEE CRISPS but I like my version better”

Aaron Wall, SEOBook

“The biggest wish I would have for 2013 would be that the relevancy guidelines were more uniform in terms of enforcement.
– Smaller sites now have to police 3rd party websites & the link graph, where larger sites can have millions of spam pages on their own sites & it is just fine.
– Google mentioned creating a ranking signal based on copyright complaints. YouTube gets a free pass & some big media are already using fake DMCAs for competitive reasons. If you can get penalized for DMCA requests then a person/company/entity that is knowingly sending bogus ones (or too lazy to even research if what they are sending is legitimate) should get penalized hard for sending fake ones. Though we won’t see that, as Google has to partner with big media to drive Google Play. “

Judith Lewis,Founder

“As Google moves more deeply into Knowledge Graph territory in 2013, I believe that SEOs will embrace more and more their ‘online marketing’ roots and look at the diversity of places consumers and businesses do their research on and use those channels to create visibility not only directly for their brand in search engines but beyond direct brand exposure in the SERPs to increase that exposure on secondary and tertiary sites where their customers may be visiting. Email marketing remains the king of DM, but I believe that SEOs will increasingly turn to helping bloggers and review sites to rank well for their brand, even helping to build links for them. I believe that through understanding their target audience in a traditional marketing sense, SEOs will begin to move beyond their snake oil salesman image and into a more effective and, dare I say it, socially acceptable role. Most of all though, I fervently hope the UK industry moves towards creating a minimum, basic set of standards that all who call themselves SEOs in the UK must adhere to. It won’t stop fraudsters but it will help the industry in the UK as a whole with its image and give us all something to rally around and evolve.”.

Be sure to look at the moments of the bloggers of 2012, part 1part 2their wishes and part one of the wishes this morning.

Find the moments of 2012 for the industry experts here:

Joost de Valk, Mel Carson, Jonathan Allen and Barry Schwartz
Becky Naylor, Marcus Tandler, Dennis Goedegebuure, Alex Moss and Julie Joyce
Dixon Jones, Kevin Gibbons, Fili Wiese and Richard Gregory
Will Critchlow, Roy Huiskes, Andy Betts, Jane Copland and Matt Roberts
Andrew Girdwood, Murray Newlands, Judith Lewis, Greg Jarboe and Nicky Wake

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Bas van den Beld is an award winning Digital Marketing consultant, trainer and speaker. He is the founder of State of Digital and helps companies develop solid marketing strategies.
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