What is Going to Happen to Search Engine Marketing in 2010?

I'm going to leave my series of posts on 'How to convince Google to list your site' for today to comment on the issue of how SEO and SEM is going to change in 2010. There is a lot of talk about it now on the web and it has been mentioned to me quite a few times by associates as well.

Time to put my views on the matter down for all to see.

First, let us define what we are talking about.

All the chat seems to be concentrating on Search Engine Optimisation (words on the page & links) and not about Search Engine Marketing. This in turn means that people don't think that things are going to change in the area of Pay Per Click, which is a huge weapon in the arsenal of any Internet Marketing company.

Why do I mention this, because PPC also needs the words on the pages to be carefully considered, that is if you want to get the highest quality score (and thus pay less per click). This means that whatever happens to SEO, site owners will still have to build their pages with SEO in mind, if they are using PPC.

Getting back to the point, the issue is 'will the words on the pages and the links to these pages need to be optimised in the future' and secondly why is the question being raised at all?

Let's deal with the second point first. As you guessed Google is at the bottom of this, as it is said that they soon won't bother to look at the words on a site, instead they will see what people are talking about on the Social Networks and then 'decide' what site best fits a search term from that information alone, this no doubt based on the words used in the Tweets etc and the association with a site, or the mentioning of a site/domain name.

There is even talk of Google 'knowing where you are' when searching on a mobile phone, and then using this info to provide what 'they think' is the best site in their search results. This is not that new really it just being an extension of the way that Google uses a searcher's IP address to locate where they are, then skewing the results to fit with that location to some degree, but to me it is all I must admit getting a bit scary.

Leaving the 'big brother' aspect aside (the worrying bit about Google 'deciding' what you want to see) let us look at the mechanics of this potential search algorithm.

What is being proposed is that the Engines will ignore the words on the page and instead use the Social Networks to deicide what is best. I think this is rubbish, sure Google can decide whether Coke or Pepsi are most popular and that Niki must be at the top of every search for 'trainers' because they are mentioned all the time, but what for the normal small business that is using Google to obtain traffic?

It will be along time before most of these get enough traffic on the Social Networks to 'count' and that means that Google will have to fall back upon something else to decide what to list when searching for something like 'boat trailers' and that something is BOUND to include the words on the page and the number and type of links to a site from others.

So, my view is that SEO and SEM are far from dead, BUT that anyone who wants to get (or to keep) a top ranking on Google will have to include the use of the Social Networks in their marketing plan, as these WILL be used to one degree or another when Google decides what sites to list.

Any comments gratefully received