2011 was a year of very dramatic change in the world of SEO, with the most notable change coming from Google’s Panda updates, which significantly changed how the search engine processes and ranks web pages. Since Google typically sends most sites in the US about 80 percent of their search traffic, this algorithm change had a pretty dramatic impact.

While most of the dust has settled on that update, we expect more changes to come that will significantly affect SEO strategies. So, what exactly is it we expect to see in 2012?

1. Mobile surfing will overtake desktop surfing.

Mobile usage continues to grow at an astounding rate, and tablets are definitely contributing to the growth. Whether it be a mobile site (built in html 5) or a mobile app, having a mobile strategy will become critical to our success as marketers. That said, mobile SEO is really not very different from traditional SEO (See Seven Mobile SEO Myths Exposed).

2. Voice Search will change search behavior.

With the release of SIRI voice, search will finally take off. Searchers want answers, not a bunch of results they have to navigate through. Since SIRI gets its answers from multiple sources, making sure you are present in each of those sources can ensure that SIRI recommends your site. A small study by The Arora Report followed 40 iPhone users and their Siri vs. Google usage. All 40 users saw no need to use Google ever again. 27 of them hadn’t used Google since they got their iPhone, and the other 13 only used it twice. Of course this was not a comprehensive study, but it is pretty suggestive of where things are going. (more…)

At the beginning of every year, alleged precognitives from around the world gather to spout their own flavor of predictions, from potential meteor impacts to new fashions. While our office psychics are a little light on apocalyptic or Lindsey Lohan-related assertions this year, we have dimmed the lights, rubbed our crystal balls and focused really hard on our Lipton Tea bags to bring you seven seismic predictions for the coming year.

In all seriousness, though (we only have one crystal ball and we use Outlook meeting requests to book it), at CUnet, we’re in a unique position to make some startling predictions about what the higher education marketing space will experience in 2012. Not only do we work closely with the majority of schools in the for-profit sector, either providing inquiries, managing inquiries through agency services and technology, or providing marketing tools and services, we also have over one-quarter of all higher education inquiries running through our systems each month, approximately one million inquiries from over 250 schools. Drawing from our working relationships as well as the trends we see in inquiries, we’ve identified seven big trends ranging from program diversification to the expanding reach of not-for-profits into the proprietary education space that we expect to see over the coming year:

1. COMPLIANCE: Schools will shift their compliance focus from planning to execution.
With most of the fear and uncertainty around the Department of Education’s regulatory changes behind us, schools are now actively moving into “enforcement” mode. While many of the larger schools were early adopters of compliance-focused solutions (implementing in 2011), there remains a large number of schools that are still reacting to the changes and evaluating how to effectively respond. With compliance guidelines largely in place, these schools will now be eager to start implementing more “complete” solutions to enforce these guidelines and ensure audit trails are in place early in the year. In response to the increase in schools implementing compliance solutions, we can also expect to see a rise in the number of vendors entering the compliance solution market as the recognize the increasing importance that schools are placing on the people, processes and technology that are required to create comprehensive compliance response.

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