For now, it is safe to say that Flash is slowly but surely dying. Gone are the days when most websites used to have an ‘introduction’ page that featured incredibly flashy Flash presentations.

Gone too are the days when Flash was used to add various tweaks and special effects to the website itself.

Nowadays, pretty much all websites that strive for a Web 2.0 look focus on a ‘clean’ designs with matching color patterns throughout their graphics and text. In general, the idea is to have websites load faster and more efficiently.

But that doesn’t mean that new features aren’t going to crop up within Web 2.0 designs over the next year.

Increased JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5 Functionality

As time has gone by while Flash has declined JavaScript has enjoyed a surge in popularity. With developments made over the last few years, web developers have found that they replace a lot of resource-hogging flash features with JavaScript – and so have slowly but surely migrated to it.

Also, the fact that JavaScript is far less prone to bugs, and much more stable has undoubtedly influenced this decision.

This trend is expected to continue, but with CSS3 and HTML5 also widely gaining popularity it is safe to say that 2011 will probably feature designs that use elements of all 3.

With these new array of options, it will certainly be interesting to see what web developers come up with over the next year – and some are even of the opinion that entirely new types of designs (apart from the standard column or magazine styles) may surface.

Wide Array of Design Possibilities

Speaking of designs, 2011 is probably going to be a year that really and truly showcases the wide array of design possibilities that are present within the Web 2.0 style.

Towards the latter part of 2010 it was becoming evident that the standard ‘notebook’ type designs of traditional blogs were no longer as popular as they used to be. In fact, most popular blogs begun migrating to ‘magazine’ styles instead.

Several big corporations have begun shifting to microsite designs for different areas of their services. With each site essentially acting as a ‘portfolio’ for that service which answers all the questions interested parties might have.

Whether or not this particular trend catches on remains to be seen.

Over the years this has become such a culture with SEO enthusiasts that very often they fail to realize that there are other factors at stake too. These factors can not only affect how likely your website is to rank for that keyword – but they can also in some cases actually affect the amount of traffic you gain.

In short, even if you get in the top 10 of an immensely popular keyword you could find that you’re only getting a handful of actual visits from it.

One very new factor that you need to think about in that regard is: How crowded the search results page is.

Additional Listings Crowd Results

Once upon a time, search engine results were simply listed with about 20 on each page meaning that 10 were ‘above the fold’ and visible the minute the results loaded without needing to scroll down.

As time has passed however, search engines have added new listings to their search engine results and these new components have pushed the actual organic results lower and lower down the page.

For example: Google now displays results that include sponsored links (i.e. paid results), local results, image results, video results, real-time results (from Twitter), and news results for certain searches. Although the order of those results differs – that still amounts to a large number of extra listings.

Can you imagine just how far down the page that could potentially push your listing, even if you are in the top 10?

In some cases, it means that even if you’re in the top 5 your result ends up being shown ‘below the fold’. Naturally, that will represent a huge loss of traffic, especially if you’ve been counting on that particular keyword to supply the bulk of your regular visitors.

All said and done – you need to take ‘crowding’ into account.

Gauging Page Crowding on Search Results

The good news is that it is easy enough to see for yourself how crowded a search results page is – just go to Google and type in the keyword. Be sure that any personalized settings that you may have are off however, so that the results you see will be the same as what others do.

As you’ll find, it is mostly those extremely popular, one-word keywords that end up attracting numerous sponsored results, real time listings, local listings, and so on. Most of the long tail keywords rarely have crowded results pages.

Check the keywords you intend to target for yourself. Also, you should be aware that the addition of these ‘new’ listings might provide an opportunity for you to get your website listed there as opposed to the regular organic search results.

So as much as this might be a little bit of extra hassle – it could also be something you can turn to your advantage.

Who knows, you might even be able to pull in more traffic in the long run!

No one charged for links, no one demanded them, and no one certainly went out and tried to build as many as links as possible.

Then Google came along and everything changed.

Once Google realized that links were a really great way of evaluating exactly how good a website was, backlinks stopped being so innocent. Instead, they turned into something that every webmaster ‘needed’.

From there on out it was only a matter of time until things evolved to exactly what they are now – where link building isn’t natural, and doesn’t happen ‘innocently’, but rather is a convoluted maze of barter trades and high value demands.

Buying, Selling and Trading Links

Let’s face it – links are now a commodity, and everyone knows it. As much as Google and other search engines issue guidelines against buying, selling or trading links, the fact that links are in such high demand makes it inevitable that some will try to do so.

Most SEO services engage in these sort of practices. After all, what choice do they have? If they aren’t buying links, others are going to do so and surpass them, which will cause them to lose clients. Some of the more respectable services inform their clients about their practices, but others do not.

Even if SEO services and webmasters don’t actually ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ links, they very often end up trading them. At times this may be via reciprocal linking, but at other times it may take the form of a link for an exchange of some other service.

Yes it sounds very shady, but is there really an alternative? Can links actually be built naturally in an environment where everyone who knows anything about SEO is aware of exactly how valuable they are?

Search Engines Shifting Away From Backlinks

It would seem as though Google has decided the answer is ‘no’. Recent developments seem to suggest that Google has started diversifying the factors that influence rankings on their results – by adding social factors into the mix.

For now, this to be relatively less prone to abuse – but if it does catch on you can bet that it is only a matter of time before people attempt to game that system too.

In order to reassure webmasters, Google’s often quoted line is to focus on building quality websites – and not regard their ranking as the final goal. As you can imagine, this isn’t very reassuring for webmasters who require traffic in order to turn a profit!

For now it would seem that the best way to go about link building without getting on the bad side of search engines would be to do so at a measured pace. Content that is worthy of being link-bait doesn’t hurt either – and if properly promoted this could probably generate a fair amount of natural links.

It really is impossible to tell how search engine algorithms will evolve over the next few years – but as of right now ‘link building’, especially for SEO services, is bound to not be entirely natural in nature.

In many ways, the writing is on the wall already. Recent market analysis has revealed that more people are spending time on social networks compared to any other type of websites. Needless to say, major search engines cannot afford to ignore this trend.

And this may surprise you but: They have already started going social in some areas!

Google and Bing Confirm the “Social” Aspect of Algorithms

Lately, both Google and Bing have confirmed that there is a social aspect in their search engine algorithms.

In fact as you may have noticed, Bing is displaying Facebook’s ‘Like’ data on their search results.

Google has followed suit and has begun to show Tweets, Flickr photos, and shares within their results as well.

Make no mistake though – right now there is no hard evidence that social networks provide more SEO value and relevance than backlinks, content, and other traditional SEO methods. In fact, some skeptics insist that this is just Bing’s way of trying to one-up Google, and Google retaliating in kind.

While this may certainly be true of Google and Bing’s recent additions – will it remain true forever?

Making the Case for Social SEO in Searches

If social SEO becomes a reality, it will be mostly because search engines are looking to provide more relevant results. Currently, the backlink driven voting system is fairly open to abuse, with irrelevant content occasionally still managing to weed its way into the top search results.

All the major search engines (especially Google) know that the cornerstone of their success is their ability to provide relevant results – and socially based algorithms would appear to be that much more difficult to manipulate.

After all, getting thousands of people to ‘Like’ your post on Facebook is a lot harder than sourcing backlinks.

Some tests carried out early this year have already shown that websites with social links, ‘Likes’, and Twitter posts connected to them consistently rank higher on Google than those without. While these tests are far from conclusive, they certainly indicate a growing trend that you should probably be prepared for.

Readying for the Shift

Even though social SEO is not fully implemented (and may never be), considering how likely it is that it will play a major role in search engine rankings in the future – why not be prepared?

Just start off by promoting your websites via Twitter and Facebook, and encouraging ‘Likes’, re-tweets, and comments.

As much as Google and other search engines are interested in the power of social networks, you should be too. It could make all the difference if and when search engines start relying on social algorithms more heavily.

And even if social SEO never becomes a reality, tapping into social networks and media is bound to help your traffic anyway.

For now, the entire SEO community is still waiting to see exactly what direction the social component of search engine optimization takes. But with so much framework already in place, it seems as though it is just a matter of time before search engines take the next big step forward.

In order to combat ‘spam’ and boost the relevance of its search engine results, Google has now cracked down on websites that have low amounts of original content and high amounts of content taken form other sources.

Who is Affected?

Generally speaking, anyone and everyone who relies on duplicate content to populate their site is going to find that it is much harder to rank on search engine results now.

Obviously some extreme cases such as content farms are bound to find this extremely painful – but they aren’t the only ones. ‘Automated blogs’ that scrape content off RSS feeds, and websites that use high levels of ‘re-spun’ content also appear to have been affected.

The bottom line is: If your website does not have original content (or has very little of it) it is now likely to be affected.

What Can Be Done?

Make no mistake, this change to Google’s search engine algorithm is not about making life more difficult for marketers and SEO experts.

Instead – Google’s focus is the same as it always has been: It wants the results it provides to its users to be as relevant, accurate, and helpful as possible.

So the solution is simple: Give Google what it wants.

Assuming you’re running a few websites or blogs and you count on search engines to provide the bulk of your traffic, you cannot rely on scraped content any longer. Sure, you can still use that content and it will undoubtedly provide some SEO value – but in between the scraped posts you need to ensure that there is a smattering of real content too.

If you still want to ‘automate’ this content to a degree, you could hire writers to blog on your behalf.

Granted, this change is going to mean that your expenses will increase – but the alternative is to either find some other way to generate traffic to those websites that use scraped content, or opt to abandon them instead.

Be Prepared for Future Changes

Although many SEO experts have been taken by surprise over the recent changes, many more really saw the writing on the wall a long time ago. Over the years Google has constantly attempted to make its search results more relevant, and has weeded out a lot of ‘undesirable’ websites in the process.

For anyone who wishes to count on search engine traffic, the message is clear: Be prepared to offer relevant content of a high quality.

While the short term gains of attempting to ‘game’ Google’s algorithm might be deemed worthwhile in some cases, in the long run changes like this could very well put you back to square one if you do so.

At the end of the day the choice is yours – and you need to start thinking about how you want to structure your websites in light of these developments.

But wait – are you looking for apples that you can eat, or are you looking for Apple computers and gadgets? If you were looking for the fruit then you’re probably out of luck because all the results on the first page of Google’s search will be about Apple devices.

Some searches even produce blended results, as the phrase ‘great apple’ which will give you a mix of results that range from Chinese takeaways to Apple devices.

Now as a user, you and the millions of users performing searches across the world at any given moment all know what you’re looking for. Unfortunately search results have no way of reading your mind – and so results based on a keyword phrase that has multiple meanings might not match the intent that was on your mind when you searched for it.

This is something you need to take into account when it comes to targeting keywords.

And although you be thinking that it isn’t that big a problem – think again!

Keyword Targeted Content that Sacrifices Intent

The main problem faced by many people who try their hand at SEO is that they end up designing content solely based on keywords while not even thinking about the intent behind those keywords.

All too often you come across pieces of content that deviate from the topic just for the sake of introducing a higher density of keywords. For example, there are cases where content supposedly designed for ‘video camera reviews’ actually talks about how to write video camera reviews.

Needless to say, most people searching for ‘video camera reviews’ are actually going to be searching for reviews of video cameras!

Another example would be ‘free
‘, where the person is obviously looking for something free and yet ends up with content that is geared towards selling them a product. For this particular type of keyword, it might be possible to give them something free and then upsell a product within it – but your chances of making a sale outright are slim to none.

See how focusing on keywords too much can cause your content to become irrelevant within search engine results? The minute your content is irrelevant, it isn’t going to get clicks – and thus won’t perform the way you desire.

“What Would You Look for With Those Keywords?”

This is the question that you should ask yourself each and every time you try to target a keyword.

By figuring out what the intent is behind the keyword, you can avoid a lot of the common mistakes made keyword driven content – and in return gain more clickthroughs by providing more relevant results for that keyword.

In short, it will make ranking on those keywords actually worth your while.

Bear in mind that even on highly competitive keywords, providing more relevant results than your competition can help not only boost you into the top search engine rankings, but also enable you to gain the bulk of the traffic coming from that keyword.

And that is certainly worth its weight in gold.

One of the easiest ways to understand the role backlinks play in SEO is that each backlink counts as a vote. In other words, it is a testament that someone out there felt your website was worth linking to – for whatever reason.

Search engines nowadays place a lot of importance on these votes to tell them which websites are ‘better’ than others in terms of the content that they offer. Chances are, you can see how this applies since you would probably link to websites that you feel are relevant and helpful too.

Needless to say, this is why people talk about backlinks so much. In a nutshell: More backlinks, more SEO joy.

But before you decide to start building up as many backlinks as possible – you should be aware that not all backlinks are created equally. In fact, most search engines use a ‘ranking’ or ‘valuation’ system of some sort that makes some backlinks a lot better than others!

After all, let’s face it, if you really wanted to you could create a couple of websites right at this very moment and have them link to yours – thereby gaining backlinks. And if you really wanted to, you could spend a couple of hours and create hundreds of websites to gain hundreds of backlinks.

So in order to improve the ‘voting’ system, search engines pay more attention to backlinks from better sources. Some backlinks, particular those from government or educational institutes, carry a lot more weight than others!

A good example of the ‘ranking’ system that search engines use would be the Page Rank system that Google operates. In a nutshell, Google ranks all websites with a number from 0 to 10, and the higher the Page Rank of the website – the more value a backlink from it would be.

To sum it all up – both quantity and quality matter when it comes to backlinks. It is really rather easy to collect large amounts of low quality backlinks from a variety of sources, but in order to really rank well you should aim for at least a couple of backlinks from high quality sources!

Now that you know what all the fuss is about backlinks, you should be able to quite easily start improving your SEO!

At the end of the day, the most obvious advantage to using long tail keywords is simply a case of competition. In most niches (especially the popular ones) you’ll find that short keyword phrases tend to have truckloads of competition simply because every Tom, Dick and Harry ends up attempting to target them.

Needless to say, trying to break into the top 10 search engine results for a phrase that has millions of competing websites is not easy.

On the other hand, when it comes to long tail keywords there are so many different combinations out there that you’ll find the competition noticeably less intense for most of them. Granted, such keywords also tend to be slightly less popular – but when you weigh the popularity vs. the competition, long tail keywords are definitely worth investing time in.

Think about it this way: For the same amount of work that it would take you to get into the top 10 of a highly popular and immensely competitive keyword phrase, you could probably rank in the top 3 for numerous long tail keywords.

So despite being less popular, you’d still undoubtedly end up with much more overall traffic for a similar amount of work.

When you do start to carry out keyword research, you may also notice one other thing in particular: Long tail keywords are extremely targeted.

Generally speaking, due to their length most of these keywords deal with specific areas of the niche you’re looking at. As a result you can use that fact to engineer content around them that is relevant to the keyword phrase, and attracts the attention of the people who search for that particular phrase.

So in short, long tail keywords can enable you to not only to rank high on search engines due to the lesser competition, but they can also ensure that you actually get a better response (and more traffic) from your high ranking!

Traditionally, search engine optimization has been the number one method of generating traffic. With search engines commanding such a heavy share of the net’s traffic, most everyone practically salivated at the chance of getting a slice of the pie!

However, PPC advertising has gained ground over the years. Not only do some PPC networks operate in tandem with search engine results (i.e. Google Adwords), but they’ve been proven capable of generating truly remarkable traffic figures themselves.

So, all things said and done – does anything really separate the two?

To be honest, the biggest difference between search engine optimization and PPC advertising is the fact that the former is free while the latter is not. While it is true that some people pay for search engine optimization – the fact of the matter remains that it is a one-time payment. On the other hand, with PPC advertising you’re going to be paying for each and every click!

Although the cost per click is generally small – it does add up in the long run!

On top of that, you should bear in mind that PPC advertising can be a bit tough for beginners to master, and involves a steep learning curve. Jumping into it without actually learning how to properly gain the best results from advertisements is probably a bad idea!

The main reason why some people prefer PPC advertising is the fact that the results are immediate. With SEO efforts, it takes time before search engines acknowledge the changes and rank your website accordingly. Until that happens, you’ll find that you’re not going to reap the rewards of your hard work!

For quick results, search engine optimization really doesn’t even come close to PPC advertising.

All said and done, both of these methods are fully capable of generating the traffic that you desire. It is really a matter of preference whether you’d like to opt for a free but gradual build up of traffic, or immediate results that you have to pay for.

Bear in mind – there’s no reason that you can’t put both to use, opting to get an immediate influx of traffic from PPC advertising, while waiting for your SEO efforts to bear fruit!

Most people regard website development and SEO to be two independent jobs. Intuitively, web development seems to be a ‘production’ type job, whereas SEO is more of a ‘marketing’ type job. As such, it sometimes feels to make more sense if you get a website up and running, and then go out and hire an SEO expert as and when you need.

Unfortunately, that is far from the case.

Despite how independent you might feel web development is from SEO, the truth is that the two are so intertwined and interconnected that they’re really inseparable.

For one thing, SEO begins with the code that your website consists of – which is something that definitely has to be handled during the development stage. If you want an SEO-friendly website, you need to ensure that the code is as clean as possible, and you also need to deal with any issues that might crop up if you’re running a database-driven website.

In addition to that however, the biggest area that you need to pay attention to for SEO purposes is definitely content – and this is where a little bit of planning could go a really long way.

Take a look at these two scenarios:

In Scenario A, you’ve already developed your website and it has been up and running for a good month before you decide to hire an SEO expert to help boost your rankings with search engines. The SEO expert goes over the site and the niche its in, figures out some keywords to target, and tries to insert them wherever possible into the body of the site.

Unfortunately, since most of the content is already on the website, the SEO expert is going to have to simply attempt to fit in whatever keywords possible without ruining the flow of words on the website.

In Scenario B however, let’s just say you’ve decided to take into account your SEO efforts before developing your website. So you hire an SEO expert right from the get go, figure out what keywords to target and then plan your content based on those keywords.

As you would expect – the end result would be a website that has content specifically engineered for itself, and yet also contains the right keywords to pull in exactly the type of targeted traffic that you need for each page on your website.

See why it is so important to make SEO part and parcel of your website development? If you put it off to a later date, you’ll find that its that much harder to perform, and will take more time, cost more money, and still never be as effective as if you’d just taken the time to plan it all out from the start!