One of the interesting story lines we often see immediately come out at the beginning of the year on blogs of all kinds is the trends that will occur across the internet for the new year. Often they are published shortly after beginning of the new year without really any observation or discussion to support the opinion of the trend that may come. This is partly why we wait a little longer before stepping out into the opinion on trends that may or may not transpire across the internet.
With that said; we have broken down the trends into categories that we think touch upon several different key aspects of the internet as it continues to evolve.

Search
Search is very important on the internet. There will always be change with the search engines and the most popular of the search engines being Google is always changing. As Google like all other major search engines; they continue to leverage their services and the key one being ìsearchî and how to bring in more revenue for search based services. Eventually; and no one should be surprised when it does happen; you will see page 1 results being reserved for those that pay to be there. It will be then the challenge of SEO firms who operate in the organic search realm to offer their services for page 2 ranking and results. This may sound crazy as a trend; but from a financial perspective it makes all the sense in the world to greater monetize search services such as Google.

Social Media
Social Media continues its forward and upward momentum. There is no argument that Facebook represents the most significant player in the social media realm. Twitter is another social media outlet that is showing significant gains and popularity; especially in the business sector. If you are a business and not on those two social mediums and not contributing in some fashion to them you are not where your potential customers are.

Web Development
Google Chrome as a browser continues to become more popular. Just recently Google Chrome was estimated to have reach 10% penetration of the browser market. While Explorer is still the leader in terms of overall usage; it has shown continual market loss to Firefox and Chrome. Appleís Safari browser as well continues to make strides in their market share and it is estimated at 6% of the overall browser market share.

Email marketing is experiencing a return. Email marketing and creating targeted lists for direct email marketing efforts to current clients or potential clients will continue to rise. Companies such as MailChimp and Constant Contact are extremely popular as an email marketing solution with social media add-ins available that allow the end user to share your marketing efforts across social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Search Engine Optimization
Local search continues to be the primary driver of the majority of businesses that want to make a significant impact on their company, services and products in being found on the search engines.

Mobile, video and social media SEO while not entirely new; they started to show significant strides and momentum of interest by business. Whether it will translate towards businesses that currently have traditional SEO services looking to expand their SEO strategy to video, mobile, or social media will depend on whether they embrace those technologies.

Mobile/Tablet Devices
There is a belief in some that the honeymoon with all things that are ìappî related is over. A lot of companies created apps and others will continue to do so; mainly on the basis that their competition has an ìappî and so should they. Maybe so; but if your app offers little in terms of value; the chances are your app will be downloaded but rarely used; if at all. Look at your current smart phone and then look at all the apps you have currently installed. If you have not used a specific ìappî at least once in the past month; chances are; living without it wonít be a problem.

Where there is definitive return on investment and more bang for the buck is the creation of a mobile version of your current website. Design and development for cross platform mobile browser compatibility is by far less costly than designing ìappsî specific to a mobile OS platform.

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

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