The Year Ahead
Posted On: 2009-01-01
Ok so it's New Years Day and I'm feeling really good ... and so I should because, even though Steve and I went out for dinner with friends last night we didn't stay out late. So today I'm ready to bounce into some work and start the new year off on a very positive note!
In the next few days we'll be spending time winding up some almost completed projects for clients and we'll be starting several new projects that we're quite excited about. They're quite different to anything we've done before and we're really looking forward to the challenge.
So what are you looking forward to in the new year? Are you really approaching it with a positive mental attitude or are you letting all that financial gloom and doom that you hear wear you down before the year has even started?
Sure there's plenty of that gloom and doom around and there are even some very obvious tremors beginning to appear in mainstream marketing and SEO circles but if you approach the coming year in a positive fashion then you will have a much greater chance of succeeding. If you let all that gloom and doom color your hopes and dreams then you're screwed even before you even start.
Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't be aware of the problems that still lay ahead or pay attention to them, the financial crisis that the world is facing still has a very long way to run and it could be years before we're over it. But there's always opportunity in adversity and we need to be looking for that opportunity and making it work for us.
While there really is no difference between December 31 and January 1 now is a good time to take stock of what you have been doing and where it's going to take you in the months ahead. You need to do that because in times like these you don't have time to waste on things that aren't going to make you money. So you need to know what's making you money and what isn't.
You also need to look at what's likely to affect your business in the weeks and months ahead and factor those in to your decisions about what projects to focus on and what project to put aside for the time being.
One thing that could be coming in 2009 is the way that Google and the other search engines rank websites in their results pages. We've already seen some of that during 2008 but it's going to become even more important in the year ahead. Several months ago Bruce Clay ... a long time SEO and CEO of his own quite large SEO company... was saying that ranking as we know it is just about dead. In his view Google and the other search engines are on the verge of showing people results that are skewed to what the search engine believes actually interests the person making the search.
In a video interview Clay used the analogy of three people searching for the term 'Java'. The first person is interested in the coffee, the second person is interested in the program while the third person is interested in travel to the island. Clay suggests that the major search engines can now serve up results that are based on each person's interests if they search for that term. It won't matter if they're using personalized search or not ... the search engines will know via cookies etc. just what interests and individual person has.
Clay also suggests that other metrics are going to come into play perhaps as soon as the first three months of 2009 and they will include things like bounce rate and the amount of time someone stays on the site. The lower the bounce rate and the more time people spend on your site the more chance you have of ranking well according to Clay.
Others are suggesting that Clay is not far off the money and if that's the case and those changes are coming then you should be factoring those changes into your plans if search engine traffic is important to you.
There are plenty of other factors that you should be looking at too. Some of them will be things that all of us should be looking at while others are strictly personal. The importance of each factor may vary and what's important to you may not be important to any other webmaster you know so don't be influenced by what others might say. Look at your own circumstances and work from there.
When you know where you're going in the coming year and how you're going to get there don't be afraid to put your goals and plan down on paper. Those goals and your plan will help to keep you focused on the work you have to do in the weeks ahead and further into the year will remind you of what you have already done and why you've done it.
2009 looks like being a great year for us and for our business ... I certainly hope that you have the confidence to make 2009 work for you too.