Posted by randfish

I'm thrilled to have spent some time here at Pubcon. While it's the least commercial/business focused of the conferences I've recently attended the level of discussion is incredibly high. The knowledge levels of the average participant far exceeds that of an SES Ad:Tech or other private conference that I've seen which makes for some great professional sharing.

Today I spoke on the topic of linkbaiting (you can see the presentation online here) and had a fun time doing it. My co-panelist Lawrence spoke eloquently and engagingly on widgets and his site Sexy Widget is certainly worth a read. The link potentials in that sphere are phenomenal.

I thought that since I've gotten a lot of fascinating information during my time here I'd try to document some of it and share some predictions (guesses in some cases) about what will happen over the next 6 months:

• Google's Webmaster Central will offer full link information about your site (like the old link command before they broke it)
• Yahoo! will open a Webmaster Central type portal
• MSN will try something similar possibly including some additional tools to help them get more attention from webmasters
• Digg will reach its height of publicity and begin to wane as other verticals in the space take off
• SearchEngineLand will become the definitive source for search-related content; most in the industry foresee SEW becoming irrelevant very quickly
• Linkbaiting will continue to grow in opportunity and popularity - many more firms will begin to offer services in that sector
• The best SEOs will continue to work for themselves. Honestly the most eye-opening part of this conference has been meeting people far more capable than I at exploiting gaps in the engines to gain rankings - their wealth and capablities astonish me at times.
• A few SEO-backed projects will become big brands in the online world. I think the next Zillow or MySpace or YouTube will have its seeds in this industry - so many capable people are hard at work on fascinating projects.
• Google will continue to make it more worth spammers while to take white-hat routes as they close off link spam opportunities and make authority sites impossible to resist.
• Blogs will find more creative ways to finance their growth - and while blog number growth may slow down a bit web traffic to them will continue to skyrocket.

What trends do you see? Think I'm crazy or on the money?

p.s. Many thanks to both YPN and MSN for hosting us at their parties in the Palms. The Hugh Hefner suite and Kingpin suite were both incredibly impressive. Barry has some nice photos on Flickr.

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