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elcome and thanks for downloading my ebook.

 

You are about to discover the secret predictions of search engine optimization experts for 2006 and beyond!

 

You’re going to want to start making plans NOW to capitalize on this information.

 

Are you making fatal mistakes on your niche websites? Are you afraid of being tossed out of both Google and Yahoo?

 

I want to start off by telling you that I am not an SEO expert. I am just a full time entrepreneur and marketer.

 

I do, however, know that when you are not comfortable about a subject, like I was with search engine optimization, you need to ask experts.

 

• You don’t get on forums and ask other marketers.

 

• You don’t ask the lady who bags your groceries.

 

• You also don’t ask your wife who would rather be shopping (Sorry Anna – you know it’s true)

 

I interviewed people who lived and breathed search engine optimization. And you know what? I also didn’t care what the search engines were doing today.

 

I wanted to hear what they were going to do next month, next year, and even years down the road.

Many marketers would hear that something was working and would jump on the bandwagon. Then they’d find out the hard way that Google and Yahoo were already finding ways to prevent this “new” technique or process and ban it.

Why would you want to spend your valuable time and money doing something such as using generated page software only to find out each of your pages are being targeted by the search engine? And if they’re found, they will be penalized or all out banned!

This is your chance to really find out what will or won’t possibly work in the future. Start making plans now to capitalize on this information.

 

You are about to discover the predictions from the SEO Experts that were brave enough to go out on a limb and answer my tough questions.

In this ebook you will find out the inside scoop when SEO Experts reveal their secret predictions about…

• …the changes Google will make in 2006 that will impact your site and your search engine ranking.
• …what new technology the search engines introduce in the next year that will affect your ranking
• …inside predictions on duplicate content and how Google and Yahoo will handle this problem in the future.

 

• …what you will have to concentrate on to have your websites either stay or become highly ranked in the search engines in the next year.

SEO Expert #1 Dan Thies http://www.seoresearchlabs.com

Dan is a long time veteran of the web marketing wars... author/publisher of SEO Fast Start (www.seoresearchlabs.com/seo-book.php), first published in 2001, the 4th edition is now a free download from his site.

Dan is also the author of the SitePoint Search Engine Marketing Kit (www.seoresearchlabs.com/kit), and a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies (www.searchenginestrategies.com) and other events.

Company name SEO Research Labs

Started in 2001, offering low-cost keyword research reports prepared by our team of expert keyword consultants; expanded in 2004 to offer consulting, training, and private coaching in search engine marketing and other areas of e-business.

1. What changes do you see Google making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

 

Google will do a lot of things that seem random, like opening a video store... none of this has any real impact on those concerned with search engines.

The main changes we can expect from Google are greater refinements in link analysis and spam filtering, as they lead the way among search engines in creating a new map of the web.
I expect Google to launch something comparable to Yahoo stores, get into the auction business, and try more experiments like Google Base. Some of these things will have an impact on search marketing because Google will integrate them into the search tools and portal as they did with Froogle.

2. What changes do you see Yahoo making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

Yahoo will have to switch their pay-per-click bidding system to match what Google has been doing with Adwords. This will make Yahoo's PPC platform more competitive, and drive a great deal more profit into their search engine. This in turn will enable them to promote the value of their search engine.

To become more important in the SEO world, Yahoo must attract more users to their search engine, but even with a large increase in the user base, the search results are still formatted to favor the paid listings.

Yahoo will need to catch up with Google in the area of link analysis, but there's no reason why they can't. At this point, Yahoo's researchers appear to have a fairly naive view of spam, and if this doesn't change, it will remain fairly easy to manipulate Y! search results.

3. What are the changes that the other search engines will be making or must make to compete against Google and Yahoo in the future?

MSN has great technology, but like Yahoo, they're fairly easy to spam. MSN's analysis of web pages may be superior to what Google and Yahoo do, but they have to get better and doing link analysis. Ask.com is so far from competitive right now, it's hardly worth speculating what they might do, since they'll do something between disappearing and getting good at search.

4. What are your predictions on technology that the search engines will introduce in the next year or two and its affect on website owners?

 

We can expect more things like Google Site Maps, and other tools that allow you to give the search engine more information about your web site.

More efforts to index "hidden" content on dynamic sites, and to get to the deeper content (old news articles, etc) and transient content (job listings that may be live for only a day or two).

Everyone keeps saying that the vortals (vertical/niche search engines) are coming, but if vortals happen in a big way, it's more likely to be as an option on the big search engines. You already see Google throwing flight search results up, shopping search, etc. and as search engines get better at understanding the user's intent, they'll get better at delivering search results that really help the user.

5. What do you believe website owners will have to concentrate on to have their websites either stay or become highly ranked in the search engines in the next couple years?

 

On the site, unique content and usability, because "user feedback" captured via toolbars, audience panels, and other methods will start to influence search results.

 

For SEO, more attention to the internal linking and site structure, to draw attention to the most important pages on the site.

 

Better linking strategies, and a lot more natural website promotion to draw links and traffic and boost the brand.

Finally, and maybe most important, working on improving the conversion rate - making the most out of every visitor by bringing them to the right page, delivering the right message, and making the buyer feel safe... those who make more money from the traffic will have more resources to do the other things that make rankings happen.

6. Most people know that the search engines are cleaning up and de-listing a lot of the sites that have been created using bad site generation software. What is the future of sites that have been created using site generation software and what can current generated sites do about it?

Here's a novel idea: instead of trying to siphon off a few nickels with a robo-site, why not actually create a useful resource with unique content? It's not that hard, and you don't have to look over your shoulder all the time.

Those who have been caught and penalized should dump the domain name and consider it the SEO equivalent of Chernobyl; those who haven't been penalized have a choice. The "keyword driftnets" will probably still work (albeit with short lifetimes for any given site) to draw a little traffic, but it's very hard to build a large income that way, and it isn't going to get any easier.

7. What are your predictions on duplicate content and how Google and Yahoo will filter this duplicate content in the future?

All of the search engines will continue to tighten up their filters on duplicate content, which will reduce the SEO impact of some strategies like article distribution and press releases. Fortunately, these things are pretty profitable anyway, so we'll just write more articles, and the web will be richer for all that extra content.

Search engines will approach dupe filtering cautiously, because they don't want to punish the original author and reward people who borrow, steal or plagiarize.

8. There are many current sites selling private label niche articles to its members. What changes would you suggest someone make to private label articles before adding them to their websites to avoid being duplicate content and how would these changes affect search engine rankings?

I would always write a unique introduction, first of all. Changing the author's bio, changing hyperlinks within the article, and the like. It may get to the point where you can't have a duplicate paragraph without further analysis and/or filtering taking place.

I approach article distribution and other content promotions as a three-step process, and distributing the article is only step one - the following steps are where we gain unique content and link placements, and develop partnerships with the people who reach our target audience.

SEO Expert #2 William Leake http://www.apogeesearch.com

William is a Yale University undergrad, top-20 MBA, former Dell Executive, former McKinsey consultant, former exec at multiple VC-backed firms. Currently own the largest pure-play search marketing firm in the Southwest In the mid-1990’s William was part of the executive team at Power Computing, an Apple Macintosh clone-maker that was the first company to sell $1,000,000 of product on the internet.

Company name ApogeeSearch.com

Apogee Search (a division of LCG) is the largest pure-play search marketing firm in the Southwest, with nearly one hundred high-growth clients, comprising both venture capital-backed b2b firms, and high growth b2c ecommerce direct marketers.

1. What changes do you see Google making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

I see Google continuing to hone their algorithms to detect and weed out duplicative content. Also, I see them making some strides in filtering out and penalizing autogenerated blog spam. I also see them pushing the envelope further and further doing “contextual analysis” for relevancy purposes, of the content on BOTH SIDES of a link – thus further reducing the potency of a link buried amongst hundreds of other links. Website owners will need to come up with compelling content that makes it easier to get links.

2. What changes do you see Yahoo making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

They’ll place more emphasis on links and less on content. They’ve been more on-page factor-driven than Google, and this will change. Content-rich sites will suffer if they don't also have people linking to them.

I’m hoping they realize what a waste of time and money their Paid Inclusion program is for their search engine (not their directory listing), and discontinue it, but don’t count on this happening! It’s far too profitable harvesting cash from the uninformed (just like all those folks who charge for “search engine submission” services.

3. What are the changes that the other search engines will be making or must make to compete against Google and Yahoo in the future?

 

More relevant rankings. Indexing more of the "hidden web." Need to be less 'game-able' since that is Google's current Achilles' heel.

 

4. What are your predictions on technology that the search engines will introduce in the next year or two and its affect on website owners?

The Search Engines will concentrate on rich content, and broadband indexing, and weighting of such factors. Static websites that don't change much will get penalized. You need to refresh your content. More and more links will be important.

Google will continue its trend of de-emphasizing links from the DMOZ-powered and other directories, and will continue to increase the importance of link anchor-text and the contextual relevance of the text AROUND the link (on both sides of the link).

5. What do you believe website owners will have to concentrate on to have their websites either stay or become highly ranked in the search engines in the next couple years?

Links Links Links a) from relevant, respectable sites
b) with the right content in and around the links
c) unidirectional links (or at least ones that appear this way to Google)

It seems like Google’s #1 concern these days is Link Relevance. But Link Relevance within the context and prism of being contextually (e.g. like content to like content) appropropriate. Content is necessary to

a. attract links
b. get a good conversion rate from click to action, and c. win on the “long-tail” keywords.

6. Most people know that the search engines are cleaning up and de-listing a lot of the sites that have been created using bad site generation software. What is the future of sites that have been created using site generation software and what can current generated sites do about it?

Current generated sites should download a copy of their HTML, and have an inexpensive graphic designer or technical person who understands HTML replicate it as quickly as possible in straight HTML. Should be fairly inexpensive.

7. What are your predictions on duplicate content and how Google and Yahoo will filter this duplicate content in the future?

It will become increasingly penalized in the major search engines, exposing those folks who have relied overmuch on duplicate content to a muchly deserved helping of pain and suffering. If you are autogenerating content, you will need to be more and more sophisticated – this will not be a simply “Find and Replace” with just 3-4 variables per page.

8. There are many current sites selling private label niche articles to its members. What changes would you suggest someone make to private label articles before adding them to their websites to avoid being duplicate content and how would these changes affect search engine rankings?

Put the private label content behind a form, or on a page you are not optimizing. Have a several paragraph page in front of the duplicate content that has the right title tags, h1, alt tags, etc, and build your links to that page, not to the duplicate private label content

9. Additional predictions and, extra information you want to give the readers.

I expect there will be a shakeout in the SEO provider industry, that will get rid of many of the frauds, charlatans, pirates, and incompetents who currently crowd the space. The “old school” model of hiring a failed journalist for $15 an hour, writing lots of crappy content that conforms to certain keyword density ratios, and then marking it up 10-20 fold, and peddling it to a client, will finally get discredited

SEO Expert #3 Brad Fallon http://www.BradFallon.com

In 2004 Brad achieved a #1 ranking on Yahoo AND Google for Wedding Favors, generating 1,179,119 UNIQUE Visitors to his Brand New Website in less than 1 year. In 2005 MyWeddingFavors.com earned 3.7 million dollars.

1. What changes do you see Google making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

There will likely be changes that will impact all website owners and their rankings. Google’s primary concern with its listings is content relevance. Google will continue to improve its methods for screening content and it will become consistently more difficult to gain high positions in Google for sites that use black hat methods for building their search engine ranking.

As the Google Tool Bar and Google Analytics gets more popular Google will be able to gather more information about what sites are considered relevant search results to Google searchers. When Google engineers believe this information is coming from a statistically significant sample size they will start using this info as part of the search algorithm. Things like page views per visitor, total time spent at a site, and conversion rates could even become a large part of obtaining a high Google ranking.

2. What changes do you see Yahoo making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

I think Yahoo will be losing market share to Google and MSN. MSN will use deep pockets to attack with traditional marketing methods such as television. I believe that the new MSN search as well as Google’s dominance of keyword based searching will pressure Yahoo into providing new and better portal services such as email and IM.

Yahoo will not sit idly by. They will work very hard to protect their market share against Google and MSN. Yahoo’s dominance has always been in the area of portal services, particularly mail and IM. Yahoo does not want to lose this lead in these areas so they will devote a significant amount of resources to continuing their success.

Yahoo needs to find its next star. They need to attack Google by attacking the things Google does to get their market share. I think Yahoo will have to compete by promoting other types of search.

Even though Keyword Search will remain the most popular, Yahoo will target that part of the market that searches with Yahoo Directory, Shopping, Yellow Pages and others.

 

3. What are the changes that the other search engines will be making or must make to compete against Google and Yahoo in the future?

Google made it big by basing its search algorithm on link popularity. As other search engines catch up, the gap of having much better search results will continue to get smaller. When the gap gets small enough, key word search will become a commodity service. In the future all search engines will have to compete by providing new and better non commodity portal services such as email and IM.

The future search engine that will successfully compete against Google will be the one that can successfully copy what Google is doing while at the same time appearing that it is very different than Google. The search engine industry is an excellent example of an industry that is a non commodity industry. Differentiation will be the key.

4. What are your predictions on technology that the search engines will introduce in the next year or two and its affect on website owners?

The technology that search engines will use in the future will be designed to further filter out the sites that are using black hat methods to try and gain search engine ranking. Google will of course lead the way in this area.

Algorithms are currently being developed to make live chat programs write more like real people. Those same algorithms will be reverse engineered by search engines to filter content that written by programs and not people.

5. What do you believe website owners will have to concentrate on to have their websites either stay or become highly ranked in the search engines in the next couple years?

Content, Content, Content. Fresh content that people want to read; with links that people want to click on. Good content will also help to get inbound links from the right places. It has always been true that the better the content the more natural links a site will get, and natural links are always good.

It seems like Google’s number one concern these days is content relevance. The main question that website owners will have to ask themselves is whether they believe that their site’s content is truly important to people using the search engines. Website owners will have to constantly walk the fine line between too much and to little relevant content especially when dealing with keyword content.

Good and honest content will only go so far on keywords that result in millions of websites. To truly be successful SEO marketers will have to constantly stay ahead of the rapidly changing technology curve, avoiding poor choices in their viral marketing programs. This will require diligence, intelligence, and a lot of hard work.

6. Most people know that the search engines are cleaning up and de-listing a lot of the sites that have been created using bad site generation software. What is the future of sites that have been created using site generation software and what can current generated sites do about it?

Google will continue to crack down on non relevance and shady techniques in the future. Sites that have used bad generation software in the past will need to consider moving to different platforms and using better generation methods to increase their chances of staying successful. It’s always better to do as much with people as opposed to programs as possible in running an organic marketing program. See above question on new technology.

7. What are your predictions on duplicate content and how Google and Yahoo will filter this duplicate content in the future?

 

Search engines will continue to filter duplicate content, and continue to improve the way it’s handled.

8. There are many current sites selling private label niche articles to its members. What changes would you suggest someone make to private label articles before adding them to their websites to avoid being duplicate content and how would these changes affect search engine rankings?

Any changes you make to these types of articles, is better than making no change at all.

Search engines look at pages in “sections” so changes that are not part of the “article body” will not count nearly as much. The more changes, the better. Private label articles will need close inspection by webmasters in the future. Articles that have only been changed a little bit will be picked up as duplicate content. The way for webmasters to avoid the pitfalls of private label niche articles is to make sure the company that they deal with is on the level. Identifying a good source for articles will be very important. As more and more people use the same articles, search engines will find a way to continue to return results that are not duplicates of the same article. In the future it will be even more important to make your articles as unique as possible.

SEO Expert #4 Rich Blakemore http://www.richswebdesign.com

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an integral aspect of all sites that are designed by Rich's Web Design. "It is easy to create a beautiful web site, but if no one can find it, it is almost useless. Rich states; " I build sites so that they are accepted by the search engines and are formatted so that they appear as high in the rankings as possible.”

Monthly SE Rankings for ALL of Rich's Web Design clients are published here http://www.richswebdesign.com/rankings.pdf

 

Company name Rich's Web Design

Custom web site design services in Piedmont Triad North Carolina Kernersville, Greensboro, Winston-Salem with site upgrades, search engine optimization and graphic design.

1. What changes do you see Google making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

 

I expect Google to continue to refine their rankings process by emphasizing quality inbound links and sites that have quality content.

I would also predict that Google would begin to give some sort of ranking advantage to those customers who are paying into an AdWords campaign. Would you give your paying customers some sort of advantage in the advertising marketplace? I am surprised that they have not already begun this process.

2. What changes do you see Yahoo making in the next year or two and its impact on website owners and their search engine ranking?

 

I expect Yahoo! to attempt to copy the success of Google.

 

3. What are the changes that the other search engines will be making or must make to compete against Google and Yahoo in the future?

 

I would expect the other search engines to lean heavily on PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising.

 

4. What are your predictions on technology that the search engines will introduce in the next year or two and its affect on website owners?

I would hope that all search engines can further their focus on removing sites that use SPAM techniques. Whether it is artificial reciprocal linking or hidden links, these practices hurt the sites that have quality content.

5. What do you believe website owners will have to concentrate on to have their websites either stay or become highly ranked in the search engines in the next couple years? Web site owners need to continue to strive for quality content, fresh content and incoming links.

6. Most people know that the search engines are cleaning up and de-listing a lot of the sites that have been created using bad site generation software. What is the future of sites that have been created using site generation software and what can current generated sites do about it?

Current sites can make sure that they have clean coded sites. Generated sites can include many extra tags and codes that are not necessary. If they are eliminated, the sites will probably load faster and have better SE rankings.

7. What are your predictions on duplicate content and how Google and Yahoo will filter this duplicate content in the future?

I would hope that all search engines can further their focus on removing sites that use SPAM techniques. Whether it is artificial reciprocal linking or hidden links, these practices hurt the sites that have quality content. Identifying duplicate content may soon be a priority in their SPAM removal process.

8. There are many current sites selling private l