Tag Archives: seo

Jun 04 2018
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Business, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Strategy

The Future of SEO: Good Digital Strategy is the best SEO

Intrigue Summit 2018

Intrigue Summit 2018

On the last Wednesday I participated in interesting panel in Intrigue Summit 2018 about SEO and content marketing. Here are three main topics I was speaking about:

  1. Era of black magic quick fix SEO has been over for a long time

Google has for a while been blocking sites that do keyword stuffing or content with many (but weak) backlinks. I already wrote five years ago about how SEO is dead, when Google Hummingbird algorithm was launched. Then security search and semantic search were some of the key drivers then to change SEO landscape. Now the content quality (in the context of fake news) and mobile-friendliness are key drivers determining your search ranking.

Although SEO landscape has changed dramatically, I see surprisingly many SEO practioners in the marketplace talking like it would still be 2005. SEO tweaking is not a silver bullet.

  1. Search is not just the Google search bar

YouTube is the second most popular search engine. Amazon is the most popular search platform for product searches. Voice searches will contribute to 50% of all searches by the 2020.

How much of your search strategy is focusing on video, eCommerce and are you already optimizing for voice? You need to approach your search holistically and it might even be that for your brand Google is not the most important search engine.

  1. Relevant content and great user experience is the best SEO

Even nowadays I encounter clients who think that SEO is a quick fix for their problems. Unfortunately, quite often we found out that actual SEO is ok, but the site sucks. Brands should first focus on delivering the best possible user experience and relevant content. After that you should take care of SEO. Your SEO tricks do not really help if your site is loading too slowly or is not mobile-optimized. 53% of the people will abandon your site if it takes over 3s to load. Google will roll out mobile-first indexing this year, which means that Google will use the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking the site on their search engine. If you cannot serve your customers in mobile, game is over.

If you create content that it is interesting to the humans it is easier to tweak it to match search engines than other way around. If you create content solely for search engines, you end up with boring content. The bad thing with boring content is that no matter how much traffic you drive to it, it does not convert.

Capturing people while they are searching is still essential part of the of your digital strategy. Search just is not separate line item in your strategy but closely connected to the whole digital experience you are providing. If you are able to provide great user experience and relevant content to your audience, making your SEO work is relatively easy.

 

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Nov 11 2013
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Business, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Strategy

Is SEO Finally Dead?

SEO is dead.
I have never been specialized in search. I have many times worked with search specialists in various projects and I appreciate the work they do. Understanding the meaning of Google in consumer life is crucial, but SEO (or SEM for that matter) is just a part of a bigger picture. Remembering the time when clients believed that SEO is a silver bullet, I have always had my firm principals on how I approach the search:

1)   SEO is competitiveness, not competitive advantage.
Making your website search engine optimized is easy for your competitors to do as well. How do you differ from them when they have are optimizing same way as you do as well? This is apparent in highly competed fields of traffic. Tabloids or online travel portals compete head-to-head and the number one search position changes hourly. Of course if you have not made sure of the basic hygiene issues, you have most likely lost the game already. Doing search well is something that is not enough to differentiate anymore.

2)   You should create your content for people not for the search engines. 
I have blogged for almost 10 years in various instances. Sometimes I have done tests and wrote the content more with the keyword-glasses on. What I have noticed is that good content will always become popular no matter what words you use. Some of my most read posts have had actually really mundane titles and go against all the rules of the traditional “write for search engines” –rule. Of course I know that I am not Perez Hilton or Seth Godin (or do I?), and my blog post is only a tiny-tiny-tiny fraction of what is happening in Internet in general. But so is majority of the web content. Companies should first concentrate on how they can be useful & interesting, and then think about keywords. Not the other way around. Being useful & interesting is hard and there are not short cuts to it.

3)   Real Popularity is the most important optimization
Google likes content, which is popular and which is shared. After Google Panda-algorithm change two years ago, the traffic to news sites and social media sites surged whereas “content farms” really slumped (and majorly have not been able to come back). We also now that Google has increased the weight to social sharing with its search algorithm. Social media shares are harder to fake. You really have to be useful & interesting to get those shares, because they are done by real people.

These principles are still valid, and with the recent algorithm changes (like above-mentioned Panda) more accurate than ever. Google is aiming to eventually stop gaming the system and also make search to emulate more human way of searching the information. With latest Google Hummingbird there has been maybe the biggest leap in search, and the following changes will change the search game totally:

1.  Security Search is now the Default: Less visibility on why your visitors are visiting your site
In conjunction with Hummingbird-algorithm change, there was also other major change in September. All the Google searches are now secure by default. Basically this means that you do not know what keywords your site visitors have used when they arrive on your site. This change was eventually inevitable, but still makes traditional SEO harder. There are also certain workarounds to try to capture the traffic.

2. Enter the Semantic Search: Forget the keywords, give answers
More and more searches are currently made by mobile and in the future increasingly with your voice (Siri & Google Glass). Traditional “googling” is not a normal way for people to find what they are looking for. We have taught ourselves to use keywords, but what we really are trying to find is answers.
Giving right answers tailored to you is the direction where Google is going. It takes account your device, previous search history and location and gives tailored search results based on your existing and expected future behavior. Some of these developments we have already seen. Google corrects your misspelled words and proposes alternatives to what you are trying to search. Knowledge graph tries to guess what you are searching on the right side under the search bar.

The search game is totally different than it was couple of years ago.
Do we still need specialized SEO-agencies or is search business nowadays mainly SEM?

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