What We Won’t See In SEO In 2013

We’ve read a lot of posts over the past few weeks discussing various predictions for the year ahead, and that got us thinking. It’s all very well planning for what’s going to come along over the next 12 months, but what about the things that we won’t be seeing in 2013? We all have limited time and resources, so we need to prioritise carefully, and make sure that we’re not spending too much time planning for things that just aren’t going to happen.

It has been said time and time again, but 2012 really was the biggest year in terms of SEO change since the internet began. We will certainly be seeing lots more in 2013, but here is a run through of our top 5 predictions for things that won’t happen:

1.) Google Will Not Lose Its Dominant Position

Bing and Yahoo have gradually been growing in search share over recent months, and this leads people to make all kinds of crazy predictions. We even saw one graph which mapped Google’s and Bing’s search share over the past 30 days (yes just 30 days) and said if this trend continued then Bing would overtake Google by 2018. Truly one of the worst pieces of data analysis we’ve ever seen. As for Bing overtaking Google, it’s not going to happen.

2.) Authority Rank Will Not Become A Key Ranking Signal

There has been a lot of talk during 2012 about author rank, authority rank, author authority, whatever you want to call it. This is the idea that the reputation of the person behind a site will be just as important as the content on it. We do think that the rel=author tag will start being a minor ranking signal, particularly given its proliferation last year. However, we think it’s going to take a good deal of testing with this as a ranking signal before authority rank is fully rolled out.

3.) Social Media Will Not Become A Key Ranking Signal

We’ve been hearing this one every year since Myspace hit the scene. It didn’t happen in 2003, it hasn’t happened since, and it didn’t even happen in year-of-change 2012. It won’t happen this year. However, this one comes with a caveat; Facebook and Bing have a unique commercial relationship between the social network and search engine, but no one quite knows the extent yet. Following the roll out of graph search, expect more from Facebook popping up in Bing.

4.) The Role of SEO Will Not Fade Away

This one we hear almost every month, so we’ll make another vain attempt to put the record straight. Regardless of how good search engines get at their job, two things will always remain true:
- There will always be a commercial incentive for getting higher placements in organic search.
- Search engines need us to help them find websites, and clients need us to do this for them.

SEO won’t die out in 2013, nor will this happen in any subsequent year.

5.) Mobile Platforms Will Not Overtake Desktop

This is another one that’s got everyone excited in 2012. Tablets have become a lot more popular, as have smart phones with full browsers, but one thing remains true: mobile devices are growing in popularity, desktop devices have no room left to grow. Everyone has a desktop, they remain the machine of choice for using the internet, and while we cannot ignore the growth of mobile, it will remain a secondary consideration. Desktop is king of the internet.

So there we go; our top 5 non-predictions for 2013. We will be keeping an eye on developments throughout the year, and will post again if it’s looking like anything we have bet against is going to change!