Bruce Clay’s SEO Predictions for 2014, Google Trends and More in the SEO Newsletter

This month’s 2014 Trends Edition of the SEO Newsletter, features Bruce Clay’s exclusive 2014 predictions for the SEO industry. Readers will also find an article on the many ways to use Google Trends for research and data visualization and the monthly roundup of Internet marketing top developments, shifts and happenings.

Bruce Clay’s 2014 Predictions for the SEO Industry

Clay, an Internet marketing thought-leader since 1996 who is widely known as a founding father of SEO has shared his SEO predictions every year since 2006. In this eight annual installment, Clay identifies the changes he expects to see when it comes to spam treatment, SERP makeup, mobile search, local search, video search and voice search. Among Clay’s insights:

• “Google will introduce enhanced features to local results that businesses can buy, much like exists with PPC, or coupons with local listings. Local search results will be displayed for more than half of all searches across all devices.”
• “Google will continue its crusade to root out spam and in doing so may extend the breadth of its net so even ‘minor offenses’ will be identified and punished. Negative SEO will be treated by Google as a major penalty offense, with Google detecting it and punishing it at the highest end of the spam severity scale.”
• “Google will drop the number of ‘blue links’ organic listings on the first results page to five.”

10 Reasons You Should Use Google Trends for More Than Just Keyword Research

In this month’s back-to-basics article, Chelsea Adams dives into the features that make Google Trends much more than a keyword research tool. Be sure to review 10 Reasons You Should Use Google Trends for More Than Just Keyword Research. The multidimensional view provided by Google Trends can directly inform marketing strategy as you learn search trends and corresponding factors, including seasonality, geographic location and media coverage. The advantages of using Google Trends are many:

• The data is extremely visual and dynamic, which is especially useful for visual learners (65 percent of the population).
• You can assess and graph five keywords simultaneously.
• When performing a query, Google Trends operates on inferred intent, meaning that it includes misspellings and synonymous words/ideas.

January’s Hot Topic features Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s outlook for 2014, as shared in recent appearance on Bloomberg TV’s “Ask A Millionaire.” Schmidt reveals his predictions for 2014’s biggest change, 2014’s biggest disruptor and 2014’s biggest disruption. In Education Matters, get the 411 on the Internet Marketing Conference Calendar that lists every major Internet marketing conference the world over in 2014.

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Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.