Maybe the Mayan's weren't trying to indicate the end of the world in the year 2012 but the end of the old school of search engine optimization as we know it? Come on don't laugh, what it's going to take to get your site ranked in the organic results going forward is probably going to be considerably different than the techniques that you use up to this point.
Okay, maybe the whole Mayan thing is a bit of a stretch but anyone that has a website or a number of websites it's constantly trying to stay up with the latest changes being made to Google's search algorithms.
One thing that is an absolute when it comes to Google and its algorithm is that it will always be a work in progress.
There are subtle hints that I believe are important issues to address for all webmasters as we move forward trying to optimize our sites for better organic listings.
Search engine optimization maybe more skillful observation then any sort of precise scientific evaluations.
What I mean by that is simply too better optimize your websites it is imperative to look at the websites within the same category better already being ranked well by Google.
From recent observations of course these are not by any means Google gospel, but there are definite hints for trends if you like that are being shown to be important ingredients in the overall ranking factor for sites with in the organic search results of Google.
One of the factors seems to be an increased importance of on page optimization and less emphasis being put on the amount of back links that a site has.
Along with the on page optimization various apparently a increase in the importance of the quality, originality and relevancy of the information on the pages which are being returned in the organic search for Google.
The speed that a webpage loads that also seems to be part of the ranking factor, which makes total sense based on the amount of handheld devices that are being used today to access Internet search with.
Mobile search is definitely going to be playing a much larger part in search engine optimization moving forward.
I base this on the simple fact that mobile devices such as phones that now have access to the Internet for Web browsers outranks desktop computers on an average of four to one.
So it would only make sense that optimizing your webpage's in your websites for mobile search is going to be a very worthwhile investment of your time and SEO efforts.
The main goal of Google and all of the search engines within the competitive and very lucrative search environment is to return the most relevant information possible.
In order to do this they not only have to grow their search algorithms define more relevant pages to rank but also to limit the way that people can game the system.
By that I'm referring to buying rankings through purchasing back links and other techniques that Google any other search engines frown upon.
All in all the factors that are going to play in my opinion the biggest role going forward in search engine optimization of your website is going to come down to optimizing your pages to perform quickly on mobile devices and have a notable presence in the social media environment such as the amount of bookmarks, retweets and references on the major players in the Web 2.
0 community such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace etc.