The Search Marketing Evolution and Why You Need to Care
By Dennis House, Interactive Media Director
Long gone are the days of stuffing 20 or 30 somewhat relevant keywords into a meta tag atop your page with hopes of ranking on page one of Google search results. At this point, Google is far more intelligent than basic meta tag data, and as a business owner or someone involved in marketing, you must be aware of this. I can’t stress enough how much SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is more than a meta tag with keywords in it. SEO is quickly becoming an industry as intricate and as quickly evolving as any other part of the marketing mix. If SEO still means meta tag keywords to you, please allow me to throw a couple ideas out there that can help you get in the right mind set when thinking about SEO initiatives.
By now, you should be integrating SEO efforts into your overall marketing strategy, or you are falling short of your potential to have a successful marketing campaign. For example, I recently saw a short talk by Rand Fishkin, a leading voice in the SEO industry, a published author, and owner at seomoz.org. In his discussion he touched upon the recent changes in the Google algorithm, dubbed the “Vince Update.” These changes place a larger weight on personalized search results. What this means to you is that for users who type in your keyword and end up clicking your link at #4 or #5 on the page, as opposed to the #1 result, Google defines as someone preferring one brand over the other. Thus, they will personalize results for related keyword searches for that user. For example, if I type “jewelry stores Indianapolis” into Google, the results show Hofmeister as #1 in the organic results, and G Thrapp Jewelers as #4. By clicking on G. Thrapp’s website at #4 instead of Hofmeister at #1, Google will then assist G Thrapp’s search results when that same user searches for similar terms like “engagement rings Indianapolis.”
A more widely discussed example was a 2007 Pontiac Super Bowl commercial, where the call to action was to “Google Pontiac and Find Out for Yourself”. At first it may have seemed like, “Okay cool, that’s a nice way to drive some traffic to your site”. But in reality, if Pontiac was still around and ran that same ad today, after the Vince Update, they would have gained massive value from the personalized results of millions of individuals clicking Pontiac’s name. The next time someone googled “Car Dealerships Seattle”, for instance, a local Pontiac Dealership would receive a boost via the personalized results.
With Google exploring tactics like this, it changes the playing field for SEO and requires a brand centric approach and a clear integration between your overall marketing strategy and your SEO efforts. This is one very small chapter in an ever evolving book that is SEO. To read more chapters from this book, rarely found or read by many of today’s marketers, email us at suits@fruchtman.com
By Fruchtman on March 2, 2010 :: Filed under Technically Speaking
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