It’s that time of the year again. The new year is approaching rapidly, and I’m a little bit stunned how time is flying. 2008 was a year full of exciting, dramatic and tragic events – also for the internet business. I am sure that I’m not the only one who wonders what 2009 has in store for us.

I browsed through the web and collected the most interesting internet related predictions for the upcoming year:

- Mediapost: Digital Will Impact Five Key Areas Next Year
Great list on ‘Marketing Daily’. My favorites:

• Conversation is king in 2009 because Web presence alone no longer is enough for individuals or brand.
• The Semantic Web will create more sophisticated, intuitive, refined ways to filter information and services.
• Savvy companies and brand marketers are starting to trust consumers and enlist their assistance in product design and development.
• Another notable trend is the transmission effect, or the speed with which conversations and content spread everywhere like rapid-fire– beyond the reach of editorial controls, sites or institutions.

- Junta42: 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009
Interesting predictions of the Junta42 community. Among others:

• Twitter will be officially mainstream, but here will be a backlash against company Twitter accounts.
• Social Media Marketing will become a more mainstream approach.
• Combining traditional media with electronic media will increase.
• More brands will developing a personality or a persona to represent the core values of the company. 2009 will be the year of the personality.
• Americans are showing more and more interest in RSS.
• There will be a “gold rush” for social media as new frontier marketing platform.

- Emarketer: Predictions for 2009
Great statistical insights by Senior Analyst David Hallermann and several collegues:

• Search marketing spending will grow by 14.9% in 2009, to $12.3 billion. (Good news: Search marketing is not recession-proof, but it is recession-resistant.)
• Video ad spending will run counter to overall economic developments, rising by 45% in 2009 to reach $850 million.
• Total US Internet ad spending will increase to $25.7 billion in 2009, an 8.9% growth rate.
• Multicultural marketing will gain intensity online. More African-Americans and Hispanics are going online, through their PCs and their mobile phones, and marketers will follow.
• Online retail sales (excluding travel) will grow by only 4% in 2009—the first full year to feel the impact of the economic crisis.
• E-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social network sites. Expect both MySpace and Facebook to enhance their self-serve advertising systems to allow consumers and businesses to buy and sell real-world goods and services.
• Advertising in the traditional media will continue to decline in the new year more than any other medium. Industry-wide cutbacks will continue, and there will be some consolidation.

- Search Insider: Search Trends To Watch in 2009
Great thoughts by the sharp mind of David Berkovitz. Three predictions which stood out for me:

• More and more consumers reach marketers through intermediary properties, likeblogs, social networks, photo sharing sites, Twitter, Wikipedia, and countless other social sites. As a result, marketers have to shift their mindset from optimizing their Web site to optimizing their Web presence.
• This fall, YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the second-largest search engine. Marketers have to adapt their strategies to n these nontraditional search sources.
• Search will shift even more beyond the PC. This includes not only mobile devices, but also television models (delivering a hybrid TV-Web experience) and GPS systems in the car (with inbuilt restaurant, attraction etc. search function). Marketers need to reach the target audience on these devices.

Other articles and blog posts with predictions for the upcoming year:

- FolioMag: 117 Magazine And Media Predictions for 2009

- ReadWriteWeb: Social Media in 2009: Our Predictions And Desires

- Fast Company: 8 Experts Predict How Web 2.0 Will Evolve In 2009

- Vator News: Consumer Internet Predictions for 2009

- Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions for 2009

- CSM Watch: Technology Predictions for 2009

- Web Video Unleashed: 9 Online Video Predictions for 2009

- Appirio: Top 10 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Plus: On Twitter you’ll find a great list of Enterprise 2.0 predictions. They are aggregated via the hashtag #e20predictions. Add your own prediction!

If you’re interested in general what will happen with the web not only in 2009, but in next 10 or 20 years, you need to read the report “The Future Of The Internet III” by the Pew Internet & American Life Project” (PDF version). Three interesting takeaways:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

Any thoughts on this? Or did you find any other great posts or articles with internet related predictions which should be added to this list? Let me know!

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A quick follow-up to to my note about the increasing demand for search engine optimization specialists:

Tim Dineen, Online Marketing Manager at job search engine Indeed, found out that California is the no. 1 state for SEO jobs. Meaning: On the US west coast, you’ll find the highest density of job offers for Search Marketing professionals. His findings are based on an analysis of the @SEOjobs Twitter account (great idea, by the way!), which is populated via a feed from Indeed.

Here is his map:

Onward Search did a similar analysis, which was based on the SEMPO member roster – and came to the same conclusion.

I was curious to find out about the “demand” for SEO and did a quick (non scientific) research with Google’s great tool “Insights for Search”. As the chart shows, the search volume for the query “SEO” in California has been far above the national average in the last 90 days.

Conclusions: 1. There a lots of choices for California based businesses that are interested in hiring an SEO Consultant or SEO agency. 2. The competition among SEO professionals in this state will continue to increase. Hopefully, this will also lead to a more mature industry with higher education and ethics standards.

P.S. If you’re interested in becoming an SEO professional or are just curious to learn more about this industry, check out the following links:
- SEOmoz: How To Get An SEO Job?
- SEO Journal: 10 Tips To Making It In The SEO Community
- Onward Search: Where In The World Is SEO Talent?
- Reality SEO: SEO Salaries, Jobs And In-House Surve
- SEMPO: In-House Search Marketing Pays Well, But Not Dot Com Hype Levels

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“There’s no two ways about it – SEO is hot again”, writes Rand Fishkin, CEO of the Seattle based SEO company SEOmoz, in his latest blog post. He observes that not only his firm has received a higher than normal volume of requests for consulting, but also various job sections for SEO professionals are thriving.

The employment trend chart by job search engine Simply Hired shows a 147% increase in SEO jobs in the last one and a half years alone:

  

Seo trends

Seo jobs

Fishkin lists 8 reasons why Search Engine Optimization is becoming more attractive to companies in a down market:

1. The Web Outperforms Other Sales Channel
2. It’s the Right Time to Re-Tool
3. Paid Search Drives Interest in SEO
4. SEO is Losing its Stigma
5. Marketing Departments are in a Brainstorming Cycle
6. Search Traffic Will Be Relatively Unscathed by the Market
7. Web Budgets are Being Re-Assessed
8. Someone Finally Looked at the Web Analytics

While I never would dare to compare my one man consultancy with a well-known SEO agency like SEOmoz, I personally can confirm that there is an increased interest in SEO. Although, as Search Engine Watch summarized recently in a great post, “the SEO process still requires an introduction at the onset of any presentation.”

Indeed, the majority of companies still seems to have a lack of knowledge when it comes to SEO. They either want you to be the miracle worker (”Can you help me to rank no. 1 in Google for keyword XY in one week?”), or prefer a paid search campaign only. As Rand explains perfectly in his post, SEO being discovered because company delivers more bang for the buck in times of marketing budget cuts.

Additionally, Forrester’s Kim Le Quoc and Jaap Favier stated in their report titled“How to Stimulate Consumer to Buy Online”:

“Creating preference with online buyers starts with search engine optimization (SEO). As search increases in complexity, marketing leaders need to move their teams toward advanced search marketing programs.”

These are my personal 4 tips when talking to a potential client:

• Consider SEO, because it doesn’t require a huge investment (unless you’re working with a top-tier agency that charges an excessive amount of money);
• Have an audit performed of your site to see where your site;
• Implement a simple rewrite of your URL structure. Often times, it can be enough to move your site into a position to be indexed by the search engines;
• Check to make sure that your navigation and pages are properly built with text links and easy to understand text. This can really help improve your site’s accessibility to search engines.

Do you have other suggestions?

As I mentioned in my previous post, the thing which surprised me most about my experience at this year’s Blog World Expo in Las Vegas is the fact that all the attendees – including the famous and successful A-Bloggers – were super cool, friendly and willing share many blogging “secrets”.

As a long time fan and avid reader of the infamous blog Problogger, I am especially pleased that Darren was kind enough to give me a couple of minutes of his valuable time, accepted to be “dragged” to a quiet conference room and was willing share his wisdom about blogging in a one on one interview (ca. 5 minutes).

In this interview, I ask him…

1. Why you should start blogging today
2. What his most important advice about maintaining a blog is
3. What his personal biggest rewards of blogging were so far
4. If microblogging (the latest trend) will be becomr bigger than old fashioned blogging
5. What the future of online media is (mainstream media vs. blog networks)
6. If he will still be interested in blogging in 5 years.

For those who don’t know Darren: He is one of the world’s most popular and respected authorities for blogging, the voice behind the no. 1 blog for blogging tips, Problogger, and the Vice President of training and development at B5 Media, one of the largest blog networks on the planet (which he launched with three fellow bloggers in 2005).

Besides Problogger, he also blogs at Digital Photography School, a blog with tips and product reviews around digital photography. According to Wikipedia, these two blogs get around 15,000-20,000 page views a day and over $20,000 in total ad revenue a month. (Impressive numbers, I have to say!)

If you’re interested to get more of Darren’s useful blogging tips, I highly recommend that you read his (and co-author Chris Garrett’s) recently published book “Problogger: Secrets Blogging to A Six-Figure Income”. It’s contains a wealth of valuable information how to start a blog, increase your readershop and make money with it. (Darren himself became a Six-Figure Blogger in September 2005)

Another tip: Follow Darren on Twitter (@problogger) and to check out his online activities on Friendfeed. It’s worth it!

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