Future of SEO: Change, Convergence, Collaboration

Forrester's Interactive Marketing Forecast for 2011-2016 predicts that 26 percent of all advertising spend will come from interactive marketing reaching a grand total of $77 billion by 2016, with $33 billion of that coming through search.
Although the report states that search will lose some share from 55 percent today to 44 percent of all interactive spend in 2016, it also states that “Marketers refocus their search marketing strategies on 'getting found' by users through any medium — not just search engines.”
While many posts have been written that address change in particular reference to Google, little has been said about how these strategic changes by Google are a result of, and indeed further catalyst to, convergence and collaboration.
Today, that is the main topic of my conversation – convergence and collaboration. It’s a big topic that requires a big post. Why? Like it or not, SEO has changed and its future relies upon a complex relationship with content marketing, social media, and collaborative technology.
The end result is a whole new way of thinking about utilizing SEO and social media strategy and technology.
What’s more, with the input of some expert insight, we will identify a whole new set of the new roles to the SEO landscape that are now totally justifiable – not just as part of a current SEO role, but as full-time roles in their own right.
With change comes great opportunity for the switched on SEO.
Trigonometry (from Greek trigōnon "triangle" + metron "measure"[1]) is a branch of mathematics that studies triangles and the relationships between their sides and the angles between these sides.

Change - A Brief Chronology of Google Change

  Chronology of Change (Content), Technology & the Search Engines

• Caffeine
• Panda
• Google +1
• Panda updates
• Google+ Launch
• SSL– Limitation of search referral data
• Freshness
• Closure of Yahoo Site Explorer
• Google+ Pages
• Google Search Plus Your World

Google has changed the way that people find information in search. Taking a step away from the hype and debate, Google Search Plus Your World was launched to solve issues regarding trust and authority of content by adding people, pages, and profiles that are all also fully integrated in search results. Hence, whenever I say change I also think content.
Google's changes over recent years, such as Caffeine and Google Panda updates, are mostly concerned with content and relevancy issues. Google’s SSL changes are driving many SEOs to change and adapt the way they work with a renewed focus on quality content, social media signals, and technology.
In parallel, the closure of Yahoo Site Explorer and gradual reduction in the number of free, reliable, relevant search engine tools has led to an increase in the number of new entrants into the SEO technology market.

Convergence - SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing

Changes in the industry and with the search engines (a.k.a., Google) represent the convergence of search and social media, data and personalization, strategy and tactics.
The increased prominence placed on social media content, seeding, and sharing (social media optimization) has meant social signals are now a standard part of any search optimization techniques. The convergence of SEO and social media has really meant that change is no longer imminent, but upon us.
A new breed of ‘inbound marketers’ aim to take advantage of the convergence of social media, SEO, and content marketing, according to the Marketing Sherpa 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report - SEO Edition:

• 60 percent plan to increase their social media budgets.
• 60 percent plan increases in landing page optimization.
• 57 percent plan increases in SEO.
• 41 percent plan increases in content marketing.

Change is the Convergence of Social Media, Content Marketing & Technical SEO

Google Search Plus Your World is, in its own words, “bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search” and while many argue the case for a level playing field and the inclusion of Facebook and Twitter data the fact remains that it has an impact on how SEOs work and collaborate with their peers in social media and content marketing as well as with their clients.
Not only do Google’s recent changes typify the convergence of SEO and social media, it also changes the way in which SEO and social media people plan to work together as increasing prominence is given to quality content from social media sources and new influences on rankings.
Suddenly, SEO is being built around circles of social influence with social link building strategies being built in parallel. Content then needs to be made easily sharable through collaboration across social networks through links, and for the time being, Google Circles.
SEO now has to be as conversational as it is contextually relevant and building a framework for optimizing conversational type marketing fits neatly into this.

Convergence - SEO Technology

As the role of SEO develops and converges with social media, we're beginning to see many changes in the SEO technology landscape. For some, this has meant building and adding features as a result of changes within the search environment and the convergence of SEO, social media, and content marketing strategies. For others, developmental improvement has been a continual process, with the major focus being on the importance of identifying and maximizing new SEO opportunities via collaboration with clients through enterprise and productivity based SEO systems.
If you need more evidence then Forrester's Interactive Marketing Forecast now includes a new category – SEO Technology – which will taper to a 12 percent compound annual growth rate.

What’s more, a recent survey from BrightEdge concluded that 72 percent of search marketers surveyed stated that they would spend more on search marketing technology in 2012 compared to 2011.
The changes we mentioned before by the search engines and the convergence of search, social, and content based strategies have meant that shiny new SEO tools and new generations of enterprise SEO platform are being built and developed. Enterprise SEO platforms enable SEO professionals and their clients to achieve a higher ROI from their campaigns by focusing attention on this convergence and focusing on opportunities for collaboration and overall increases in productivity and efficiency.

Tools vs. Platforms

It's important to distinguish between a tool and a platform.

• Tools: Most tools serve a single purpose and are specifically designed to help with one specific area of your business. For example, that could be keyword research, link analysis, and analytics.
• Platform: A platform provides a holistic solution to a number of client and business needs by offering a suite of integrated tools, most likely in this case, to include monetary, productivity, and relationship management type solutions.

Many SEO tools have developed in line with, or as a direct result of, the changes made by the search engines. The recent closure of Yahoo Site Explorer has given rise to a number of alternatives from providers such SEOMoz site explorer, Web SEO Analytics, and SEO Book toolbar, which all offer free alternatives alongside numerous other options such as Googlehacks.
The rise of Enterprise SEO technology is encouraging business and agencies to collaborate and take advantage of new developments and the convergence of SEO, social media, and content marketing strategies.
Intelligent systems are being developed that use data sources such as Alexa, Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO to refine data relative to business outcomes. These tools combine a number of elements from keyword research, site crawling, backlink analysis, reporting, productivity & CRM, and social media – all with different degrees of capability.
Tool based platforms like Linkdex, Raven Tools, SEMRush, gShiftlabs, Searchmetrics, Conductor, Sycara, and BrightEdge are all developing into enterprise SEO platforms of the future.
These platforms focus on change, convergence, and collaboration by introducing workflow and task management solutions on top on their SEO toolsets and analysis.

Many of these tools are beginning to look like enterprise SEO platforms, but the reality is that there are so many tools to choose from that finding the right can be difficult and depends upon the scope of your role and your client brief.
Companies such as Linkdex and Conductor also offer a suite of SEO tools with a large focus placed on ‘the business of SEO’ and the value derived from close collaboration and the culture of SEO within agencies and businesses alike. Platforms like Linkdex and Brightedge place an emphasis on seizing potential opportunities, something that I like to call ‘opportunity cost based SEO’ by placing monetary value on SEO opportunity and providing competitive comparisons while building enterprise solutions.
As social signals converge in the SERPs, enterprise SEO solutions providers are beginning to integrate and add social media elements to their offerings (i.e., Searchmetrics has been marrying together analytics, search and social media data).
Many other tool providers take a more comprehensive view of the relationship between SEO and PPC with Kenshoo and Covario teaming up on SEO, PPC, social, and local. Other tools such as SEMRush are launching AdSense advertising reporting and Facebook Ad data into their toolbars.
Many full service digital marketing suites now incorporate SEO metrics as they too focus on the convergence of search, social, and display media. Platforms such as IgnitionOne incorporate PPC and SEO data in their attribution systems and the Adobe acquisition of Efficient Frontier gives a deeper insight into how the wider search, social, display, and digital ecosystem appears to be evolving.
In 2012 I expect further innovation from SEO platforms such as integration with Google analytics and the convergence of data sets from Webtrends, Coremetrics, Hitwise, and Omniture. We're already seeing more convergence and collaboration in the SEO tools space partnerships with outside data sources such as BrightEdge and comScore partnership.

Social Media & CRM Opportunities

While SEO platforms develop there are also many gaps and opportunities to incorporate social media CRM tools into enterprise SEO platforms.
SEO relationship management is maturing, but there is still an opportunity to identify and manage influencers beyond backlinks. Manage and nurturing social media relationships with the people ‘behind the links’ presents even more of an opportunity to converge and collaborate on SEO and social media strategies.

At the moment it's probably too early to work out the best way to calculate these social media metrics but once more accurate becomes available more data can be measured beyond numbers of tweets and likes. Social media tools such as Trackur and Radian6 offer insight and features based on social enterprise beyond the current functionality of the majority of SEO.
Other tools such as Basecamp, Huddle and Trello, are collaborative tools that help SEO and social media people, departments, and agencies.
I would be tempted to say that this market may quickly move from segmented to fragmented. As a result, in 2012 I think we'll see:

1. Further organic and VC investment towards innovation in the enterprise SEO space, with a focus around social signals and metrics and API development – take away the theory of convergence and collaboration and this is your technical solution.
2. Many smaller SEO and social media companies sharing resources via merger and acquisition.
3. At least one SEO platform being integrated, via acquisition, into an automated content marketing or CRM platform, or even large agency network.

Collaboration

Hopefully you can see that changes in the search environment, the focus on content and social signals, and the growth, convergence, and development of enterprise SEO platforms fosters a need for collaboration.
The question for the SEO is, “Is your glass half full or half empty”?
I asked a few SEOs across the globe, and within my ‘social circle’, for feedback in this section.
Rather than resist change the opportunities to “reinvent the SEO wheel" are there to be taken by:

• Close collaboration with industry peers across content, social, PR, and digital media channels – from SEO to TV
• Utilizing the changes, convergence, and innovation in SEO technology to collaborate more efficiently and effectively with your industry peers, clients, and agencies accordingly.

For many a year we have seen white hat vs. black hat debate. In 2012 it could be that we will see a new argument – perhaps inbound marketing vs. black hat social media?
Will we see a new name for SEO, the inbound marketer, and will we (should we) expect more hats, 6 hats thinking, on the SEO table – maybe that’s one for our colleagues at SES to consider?

The Technician

From coding, crawling, keyword ranking, link analysis and link building tools to productivity social media, content and CRM - the opportunities for the technical SEO, developers and programmers to work together on integrated and innovative solutions are probably higher than they have ever been given the growth of SEO and social media technology.

The Social Media Specialist

While many argue and debate about the convergence of SEO and social media strategies the technical knowledge of how search engines work (to date) lie in the hand of the SEO.
Whether you're a strategist or a technician, social media people need to collaborate with you just as much as you and them.

The Psychologist

If there is ever a time to be inside the mind of the consumer it’s now. Looking at the psychology of sharing is something that SEO people have been doing for a long time and it’s important that strategies on social content, reach and conversion match the psychology of the link builder and buyer personas.
What makes someone tick isn't necessarily what makes people click. The experienced SEO knows this far better than a traditional content marketer.
Bas van den Beld, search & social strategist and SES speaker, makes an interesting point on technology and psychology: “Tools can help you find the way people use the web, they can help you understand how people think and therefore help you understand their perspective.”

The Consultant

The speed and volume of change in the SEO industry is so great that it can be a challenge for people in the industry to keep pace with change, and also communicate the effects of those changes to clients, in-house departments, and agencies. With the convergence of so many channels, the emergence of new social media platforms such as Pinterest and their subsequent relationships with SEO, the opportunities to learn, share, and educate are vast and continual.
The consultant can share knowledge, investment and SEO tips with social media peers. Clients have a thirst for knowledge but many lack the ‘know how’ and the available resources, to make the most out of change.
"The intention is often not malicious but suppliers usually benefit from pulling the wool over the eyes of their customers," said Kelvin Newman, organiser of UK search event Brighton SEO. "A mixture of growing maturity and ‘once bitten, twice shy’ cynicism is leading to greater transparency and openness and a need for close consultation and collaboration.”
The consultant can work with clients and peers to build and nurture trust and also combine SEO and social media strategies and data most effectively. The consultant works very closely with the technologist below.

The Technologist

Choosing the right blend of technology and utilizing many of the SEO tools and platforms mentioned in this article requires a consultative and collaborative approach. Each client and each opportunity will require a different combination of tools that can be split between keyword tools, link analysis, management and content/CRM. Those who choose a move to complex Enterprise Platforms will require significant levels of training.
The role of the technologist ensures that the selected solution fits your client’s needs by answering some basic questions:

• What specific tools will they use?
• Who will use the tool?
• Where will it be used?
• How many people will use the tool?
• Would an Enterprise SEO Solution be a better fit?
• Will the users be in-house – how much collaboration is needed?
• Are the users across the whole organization?
• Will specific tools alone complement each other? – social media and CRM?
• Who owns and control the data?
• If you use an enterprise solution – do we share costs and build alternative pricing models?

“I will have one client who won't know what meta data does, other use tools like screaming frog on a weekly basis” said Alex Moss, head of SEO at Pleer. “Eventually all prospective clients will have more knowledge of what you do as an agency and I wouldn't be surprised if they ask you what tools you'll use to perform specific actions with many wanting to be involved in the decision making and usage of the tools”
A technologist can help collaborate with consultants, clients, and in-house SEO departments to share access to some of the tools that help them and the client see the monetary value of SEO in their sector.
The growth of SEO technology, according to Forrester, will have an impact on SEO charging models and agency fee structures and for some (those who look backward in my opinion) SEO technology can be seen as a threat to agency fees. My argument would be that the the role of the technologist can foster collaboration, sharing data, and joint investment in SEO technology with agencies and clients.
New pricing structures are ‘naturally’ developed based on scalability and the efficiencies gained by the very adoption and growth of SEO technology. Technology is changing the way we work so it will naturally change the way in which it is priced over time.

The Trainer

Everyone suddenly seems to want to know about the convergence of search and social, so there should be much more focus on education and understanding towards clients. It’s vital to teach clients how things work and make them understand what they are doing, why are doing it, and what results to expect.
“We've found that clients knowledge of SEO and mindset has been shifting for the last couple of years, especially towards looking at SEO from a business/marketing perspective," said Kevin Gibbons, from SEOptimise and Search Engine Watch author. "For this reason education and training is becoming a very important part of the service you provide."
If you are a technologist then training people on the use of technology is a must. With such a high level of continual change in the industry there are massive opportunities to train and educate clients in the development of new techniques, technology, platforms, and integration and learning’s across social media platforms.
As many companies take some elements of SEO in-house and with the every expansive role of SEO and its convergence with other marketing disciplines agencies and clients need to find a ‘happy medium’ for consultation, training, and implementation.
“When I was on agency side I definitely saw a shift from having the agency doing the bulk of the work to being used in more of a training and consultancy role," said Simon Heseltine of AOL. "This is a shift that has really been gaining momentum over recent years.”

The Innovator

All of the above sets you well on your way to becoming an innovator. 2012 is the year of change in SEO with opportunities opening up all the time to work, outside the silo, closely with your peers and clients to expand the role of traditional SEO from content SEO, social SEO through to reach and frequency and viral SEO

Conclusion

The way you work, the tools you use, and your approach to SEO have all changed. We all know that, but taking action is a totally different ball game.
If you're open to changing the way you think about SEO and are willing to change the way you view the search world (as a marketer), then the opportunities, tools, and platforms are available for you to take advantage of right now.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2144350/Future-of-SEO-Change-Convergence-Collaboration

Under Threat Of Being Blocked Google, Facebook Comply With India's New Internet Censorship Rules

After China and the US, India is the third largest internet market in the world. But India has philosophically aligned itself more with China in pursuing a policy of censorship toward publication of content deemed “offensive” or “objectionable” by individuals, groups or the government.

A recently enacted law seeks to remove all such content from the internet in India. Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were sued under the law and had been arguing in Indian court that it was all but impossible for them to comply as a practical matter. The law makes online publishers potentially liable for the acts of individual users and third parties (think “offensive” blog hosted on Blogger or “objectionable” video uploaded to YouTube).

According to a BBC report Indian Communications Minister Kapil Sibal said the following in December about the desired impact of the new law:

My aim is that insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue. [The companies] will have to give us the data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it.

Google, Facebook and others had argued that they had no control over individuals and should not be held liable for their conduct accordingly. They said they cannot “pre-filter” material generated by millions of users. This is what would be called a “prior restraint” against free speech in the US.

Indian courts have been unsympathetic and demanded that the companies comply or be blocked entirely “like in China.” The BBC says that the companies have now complied and removed offending material at issue in a particular civil lawsuit.

However the overly vague nature of the statute on which these claims are based almost guarantees that Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and other online publishers in India will face a steady stream of litigation from individuals or groups “offended” by this or that image, article or video.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-facebook-comply-with-indias-new-internet-censorship-rules-110377

Google Blogger URL Redirects Censor International Users

When Twitter announced they were instituting a new censorship policy, the micro-blogging platform faced an immediate and severe backlash from the majority of the web community. Now, as a result of a previously announced change to the Blogger platform that was initially announced on January 9th, the Blogger platform has also come under scrutiny. The change, which deploys a country-specific URL to the Blogger platform, will allow Google to censor and remove content on a country-by-country basis similar to the new Twitter policy.

When required by local laws and regulations, Google has said they will remove content in a manner that impacts the smallest number of potential readers. The Google Blogger site says the following of the new change:

“Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers.”

The changes, which are already live in India, Australia, and New Zealand, enable Google to easily remove content on a per-country basis by redirecting users to an address that utilizes a country-code top level domain. For example, if a U.S. blog’s address is http://name.blogspot.com and a user with an India-based IP attempts to visit the blog, Google will send the user to http://name.blogspot.in. However, if the blog’s readers would prefer to reach the U.S. (non-censored) version of the site, they can add “ncr/,” which stands for “No Country Redirect” to the end of the URL (i.e. http://name.blogspot.com/ncr/) and the user will no longer be served the country-specific (potentially censored) version of the blog.

The new Blogger policy does not currently affect blogs that use the custom domain feature.
Do you feel that the new Blogger policy is necessary to maintain the continued free flow of information while simultaneously complying with local regulations?

[Sources Include: Search Engine Journal, Mashable, Economic Times, & Google Blogger]

The Enterprise SEO Guide To Response Codes

Response codes impact every page, image and file on your website.

A visiting search engine bot figures out what to do based on those codes. Incorrect response codes can cause:

• Indexation problems;
• Duplicate content;
• Site performance problems;
• All manner of other site higgledy-piggledy.

Enterprise SEO is all about big, site-wide wins.

Response codes are just that: They’re easy to set up. They have a broad impact. Seems like a slam-dunk to me.

And yet, when I checked 1,000+ large sites—’large’ meaning ‘more than 5,000 pages’—only 30% got their response codes right.

Thirty. Percent.

With that, I dust off my response code tutorials, and write this quick guide to response codes for enterprise website developers, SEOs and anyone else who will listen:

The Big Three Response Codes

There are three response codes you want to know the most about:

• 404. Page not found. If a file simply doesn’t exist, your server should deliver a 404 status. You can use a 410 response if you want Googlebot to retry the bad URL less frequently.

• 301. Page permanently moved. If you’ve permanently removed one URL and replaced it with another, use a 301.

• 302. Page temporarily moved. If you’ve removed something and will be putting it back, use a 302.

There are others: 200 means ‘OK’. Hopefully, you’ve got that one squared away.

Page Not Found Responses

Most important: If a browser or bot visits your site and attempts to load a file that does not exist, it should get a 404 response.

404 is how a server says “Uh, that file isn’t here.” It’s not a bad thing. It’s the right answer when someone clicks a broken link, or a page is just gone.

You can get tricky with redirection if you want to try to preserve link authority of a deleted page. But the default answer for a missing page should be 404.


The problem: Many sites deliver 302 temporary redirect, 301 permanent redirect or, even worse, 200 ‘OK’ response codes. This leads to massive site duplication and terrible crawl efficiency. Visiting bots spend their time crawling worthless content.

Possible causes and solutions:

• .NET loves to take over control of 40x errors, replacing them with a 302 redirect to a friendly error page. That’s nice. But totally wrong. Turn off .NET’s 404 handling and let IIS take over, instead. You can still have a friendly error page.
• A misguided developer may have thought that redirecting all ‘not found’ errors to your home page helps users. It doesn’t. It’s totally confusing, like going into a revolving door and coming out at some random location. Provide a friendly 404 page that explains something went wrong and provides options.
• Someone may have set up a redirect page that uses a javascript or meta refresh to then reroute visitors to a ‘best guess’ page. See the previous item—same problem.
• If your site’s on PHP, it may be using header('location: /'); die();. Try something like header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found");, instead.
• Your site just delivers a 200 ‘OK’ code no matter what. I have no idea why you’d do this, but I’ve seen 100-200 sites that do. Change it.

A 410 response is OK, too. It causes Googlebot to more quickly remove a URL from the index, and to retry the URL less often. You can read up on 4xx codes, and just about every other status code, on the W3′s Status Codes definition page.

What Kind Of Redirection?

Redirects are a powerful SEO tool. They let you consolidate authority in the right places. But you have to do ‘em right.

A 301 code tells a visiting bot or browser that the page it’s loading is gone, forever, and the URL of the replacement page. Use this to consolidate authority and resolve basic canonicalization issues.

A visiting search bot will transfer some of the authority of the old URL to the new one. It will also eventually stop visiting the old URL, replacing it with the new one.

A 302 code tells a visiting bot or browser the page it’s loading is gone, but only temporarily. A visiting bot will keep returning to the old URL, checking to see if the page is back.


The problem: As near as I can tell, large sites randomly mix 302 and 301. They lose authority in some cases, and force bots to crawl permanently-removed content again and again.

Possible causes and solutions:

• IIS 6 and earlier didn’t have a nice, clear button that said “Make this a 301 redirect”. Instead, you must check “A permanent redirect for this resource”. By default, that box is unchecked. So the default behavior is a 302, temporary redirect.
• You’re writing redirection into your Web application, but you left out the status code. Some servers are configured to default to a 302, temporary redirect if you don’t set the status code to 301.

It’s Not That Hard

No matter how complex the server infrastructure, getting the big three response codes —404, 301, 302— right makes for sitewide wins. If you’re running a big site, look to your response codes. Get ‘em right. It’ll boost SEO, performance and user experience.

7 Quick Tips to Keep Your SEO On Track in 2012

Once again, we've rounded the corner on a new year and many of us find ourselves re-evaluating our performance throughout many of life’s facets, whether it's how much we exercise or how well we eat. Just as we would to continually yearn to better ourselves, we have to take a moment and reevaluate what we’re doing to continually achieve within organic search visibility.

Taking a look at your overall SEO strategy from time to time is a great way to slow down, breathe, and see if you're still on track for SEO success. Any long-standing effort in life deserves an evaluation from time to time.

No SEO success is realized without solid benchmarks. It's important to continually compare progress to past dates to assess improvement.

A new year provides a great point to review year-over-year data to get a big picture of SEO success without the rigors of seasonality and other factors that can mar short-term analysis. Beyond assessing numbers and percentages, it’s also a great time to assess overall strategy, assess where SEO is going, and adjust accordingly. Plus, it’s nice to get away from all those numbers every once in a while!

It’s a New Year…Time for a Review of Your SEO Campaign!

So, you’ve spent the last year building that “sports car” of a site. In actuality, many of you have been trying to stay abreast with the fast moving world of SEO and find yourselves looking at something resembling more like a "Mad Max" vehicle. For those of you who aren’t Mel Gibson fans, I’m alluding to the fact that you have added to a site little by little and as new SEO opportunities and trends emerge you find yourself looking at a site pieced together that isn’t so pretty.

I must admit that I’m guilty of this from time to time. I’ll take a look back and see that we have added a link, page, content snippet, etc. here and there and when I take a look at the big picture I have multiple links to the same page on a given site page, over-usage of keywords, or – even worse – lack of intended keyword focus on site page. You’ve been so busy monitoring the day-to-day worries of rankings, traffic, 404s, 301s, duplicate content, and on and on and haven’t doubled-back to see what the compilation of your team’s efforts are portraying.

So, how do we review our SEO strategy and ensure we stay on track?

1. Site Mission and KPIs

Revisit the mission of the site/company as well as the KPIs for the site. We know where we want to go with the site, are we still on track.

2. Review Annotations in Google Analytics Timelines

Hopefully you're extremely organized and have notated all changes and implementation dates for SEO initiatives and don't have to fish through email for hours.

3. Look at Your Link Profile

Utilize a tool such as Open Site Explorer and review your overall anchor text counts. Have you gone hog wild in the last year with non-branded keyword anchor text and forgot about branded linking?

4. Assess Top Keywords

Review Google Webmaster Tools and assess the top keywords and their variations found on your site. This helps to provide a holistic view of what Google’s understands your site content to represent.

5. Review Internal Page Links

Stay in Google Webmaster Tools and review your most heavily linked internal pages. You might be surprised that you have unknowingly added certain page links across the site in navigation etc. over the last year and now these are showing as more important than other key site pages.

6. Are You Ranking for the Right Keywords?

Now, head over to your site. Review your targeted keywords, the intended pages for which you want to rank for, and the pages that actually rank for the terms. That is if it does continue to rank.
Ensure that if you’ve added additional content, whether it’s text or images, that it still helps to support the keyword theme of the page. Have you added internal links into the copy whose anchor text may be too similar to the respective page’s keyword theme, confusing search engines? In other words, don’t link from the bicycles page to a product page with the anchor “bicycles.”

7. W3C Validation

You have had a year of designers/developers making continual changes to the site. If you haven’t been continually monitoring this, run a W3C validation to ensure your code is still clean as well as page load tests to assess any page elements dragging down load time.

Summary

Granted, this quick spot check of your SEO strategy doesn’t ensure SEO domination in the new year, but you may be surprised that it can show from a 30,000 foot view that too many small steps to the left or right can leave you far off the path in your journey for SEO success. Now, hopefully you’ve cleared your head of any SEO insecurities and you have more time to get back to your other New Year resolutions!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2136668/7-Quick-Tips-to-Keep-Your-SEO-On-Track-in-2012