SEO and its Role in Your Business

According to SmallBizGenius, 93% of all online activities start with a search engine. Moreover, 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results.

Those are impressive stats that indicate how important Search is in a consumer’s path to purchase. It also shows how SEO continues to be essential to any brand’s marketing strategy, just as much as traditional ad campaigns. 

These new stats shouldn’t be too surprising. In the omnichannel world that we live in, Search continues to be at the center of how we research a product before we buy.  

At the very least, these trends also should reveal how important SEO is within the marketing mix. And what’s more, many companies still diminish the impact that SEO brings. 

These stats are only the latest in a slew of data that says any marketer should be utilizing SEO as a powerful tool within your marketing toolbox. Here’s why:

Search Experience Optimization

At its core, SEO is about optimizing all aspects of the searcher’s experience, aiding their journey to find answers.

While some will consider SEO a temporary solution (or at worst snake oil), it's really the process in which a website’s health, performance, and visibility are improved. 

SEO, when done well, is focused on establishing a foundation that includes designing an effective user experience, writing great content, and providing a clear path to conversion. From there, more technical SEO tactics can help improve performance and provide a faster, more responsive experience for the user.

E-A-T for Results

Today, SEO is a blend of art and science. It’s also more about the quality of content and UX  than anything else. But it can be summed up by one acronym—EAT. 

E-A-T stands for: Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

Google's algorithm is ultimately searching for content with these attributes. It shows preference for and ranks sites that achieve it. 

Sites that rank well for competitive keywords are those that show expertise in a related field, prove themselves to be an authoritative source of information, and demonstrate they could be trustworthy. 

For many websites that demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, organic search quickly becomes one of their top performing channels for traffic. The bonus is that it’s free traffic; you don’t have to pay for each visitor!

Sure, there’s also the ability to run ads in search, and paid results can be easy wins that are also important to an overall marketing strategy. But it’s an organic search strategy that leads to a brand’s ability to really saturate the first page of results for a query in Google. 

Your Brand and SEO

SEO takes time, which isn’t always a luxury that all brands have. 

Perhaps you have a new content content management system (CMS) that isn’t SEO-friendly. Or worse, you have a homegrown or proprietary CMS that doesn’t allow certain SEO elements. 

This is a common challenge, as many brands have a CMS that isn’t built with canonical tags, no-index tags, or schema. Moreover, some e-commerce CMS options help brands sell directly to consumers, but won’t necessarily have the URL structure to accommodate custom queries, or navigation to support natural SEO queries. 

If this sounds familiar at all, it is worth looking into how to upgrade your CMS. Finding workarounds to basic SEO challenges are essential, but also finding helpful SEO professionals to fine tune the content you have already might be worth investing in as well.

Help Customers Find You

As mentioned, SEO takes time. It isn’t a flash in the pan, or guaranteed quick fix. But it is part of a long-term strategy that certainly drives return. And more than likely, it’s something your competitors are already employing. 

SEO principles won’t just help you keep pace with your competitors, it will help you build stronger relationships with new customers actively looking for your product. The key is remembering the EAT concept, and to consistently create pages that are credible sources of information about a specific topic that provide real value for users.

Digital Marketing Will Evolve in 2019. Here's How.

Keeping up with the latest trends in all areas of digital marketing including search engine optimization, social media marketing, web design, and user experience, is naturally essential for small businesses and large brands alike to reach consumers who are glued to their devices. But just because you’ve conquered digital marketing in 2018 doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re positioned for automatic success this year.

Digital marketing is in a constant state of flux; changing and evolving, shaped by new technologies and the habits of users. With this in mind, marketers need to be masters of adaptation.

By integrating these six strategies into your digital marketing plans this year, you’ll gain optimal traction with your customers while your competitors flounder in your wake.

Prepare for Google’s “micro moments”

We live in a fast-paced environment where we predominantly access digital content through mobile devices in short bursts on the train, waiting in line to get coffee, or (let’s face it) in the bathroom. The changing nature of our interactions with digital content is not making attention spans any longer. Today’s users don’t want, but demand instant gratification. They’re less likely than ever to take the time to scroll deeply or make dozens of clicks to navigate through your content.

Google understands this and its “micro moments” is a mental model for marketing that’s already changing the rules. This model distills user behavior into three distinct micro moments including:

• “I want to go” moments

• “I want to do” moments

• “I want to buy” moments

These are the moments in which a user will now instinctively turn to a device. They will do so out of a desire to “go” and learn something through a specific piece of content, to “do” something like signup or registration, or to make a purchase and “buy” a product or service. These are fleeting but critical moments which are ripe for opportunity. How will you capitalize on them in 2019?

Users have been conditioned to expect brands to deliver exactly what they want when they want it. It’s incumbent upon businesses to be able to meet users’ needs faster with fewer clicks. This means producing more content, prompt and responsive user assistance, real-time communication and a range of options for a more personalized user experience.

Embrace video marketing

It may have killed the radio star, but video can also be a kingmaker. In a time where users’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, long form written content still has its place. However, video is fast becoming the preferred medium for the kinds of time-strapped users upon whom you have your sights set. Video communicates ideas quickly, making them more effective than text and even infographics.

Video marketing grows more important with each passing year and it is expected to reach new heights of importance in 2019. Consider this: brands that use video get 41-percent more search engine traffic than their counterparts that don’t. Businesses with a wealth of competitors who need every inch of inside track they can get in terms of SEO are tempting fate if they don’t embrace video marketing.

Content is still king

 It’s as true today as it was when Bill Gates first said it in 1996. However, in a “mobile first” era, it stands to reason that the way in which your users consume said content will be different to how it was when the only way you could access the internet was from a desktop computer with a dial-up modem (go ahead and remember the sound of an old dial-up with fond nostalgia).

Mobile use has been the primary means by which users consume digital content since 2016, and as such it behoves marketers to consider how your content looks, how it feels, and how it is navigated through, on a mobile device.

Sure, this means that your web design will need to be responsive, but you must also consider how your content is laid out, how easy it is to navigate via touchscreen, and how long your content takes to load through a 4G or even a 3G connection. Remember that a page load time of just 7 seconds can increase your bounce rate by over 30-percent! 

What’s more, in the wake of Google’s “mobile-first” index, failing to keep mobile optimization at the heart of your content is SEO kryptonite.

Tell more social stories

In an era where brands are stepping over one another to get the attention of their audiences, a little authenticity goes a long way. Authenticity helps users to establish a personal connection to your brand and allows them to invest in it emotionally. It adds to the value your brand provides and ensures that users will consider you before your competitors.

Let users peek behind the curtain with behind-the-scenes content. Allow them to get to know your employees a little better. Use polls to provide a degree of interactivity and ensure that your users feel that they have a voice. Use instagram stories to give users a flavor of daily life in your business. While it’s understandable that you may want to save time and resources by outsourcing much of your content, make sure that you leave plenty of space for some User Generated Content to give your content marketing strategy the personal touch.

Social stories are quick, fun, and easy to consume, and they also help to add that much-needed human dimension to your brand.

Champion user-centered design

Gone are the days when web design was all about aesthetics. No longer is it enough to merely have a website that looks beautiful and professional. Everyone has that now! In 2019 the future of web design is about User Experience (UX). UX is especially important in the “mobile-first” era as your content must be easy and intuitive to navigate through.

Today’s users are web savvier than they would have been 15, 10 or even 5 years ago. They have been conditioned to expect polished and seamless UX, and failing to provide it could be damaging to your brand. In an era where 55-percent of users spend less than 15 seconds on a website, brands can’t afford to send their bounce rates through the roof with an impenetrable UX.

Think about natural language

Digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant continue to evolve, and as they become more sophisticated users are entrusting them more and more. Needless to say this is bound to impact the way in which people seek answers to questions, make purchases, and otherwise interact with brands.

With this in mind it, marketers should think about the natural language used via voice searches and how it differs from a traditional typed search engine query. Today 39 million people in the US alone own a voice operated smart speaker. As they grow more sophisticated and reliable, that number is likely to rise proportionately. With more and more users turning to voice search, it is increasingly considered to be the next SEO frontier.

These machines derive user intent from conversational voice commands as well as previous search queries, and the better you’re able to understand how they work the more luck you’ll have tapping into the vast and growing market of voice search users in 2019.

Closing thoughts

The year ahead offers some exciting opportunities and new challenges for brands of all shapes and sizes. However, when you keep this digital marketing checklist in mind, you’ll be perfectly positioned to respond to user demand in 2019 and beyond.

SEO is Dead. Are You Ready for Search Experience Optimization?

Search engine optimization has always been an exciting space full of changes and ever-evolving algorithms. Figuring out how to exploit those algorithms has been the main objective of countless SEOs.

These exploits have really given SEO a bad name in the process. Scaling the development of low-quality content, purchasing links, getting meaningless directory inclusions, and many other offenses that were focusing on optimizing for search engines, once made a difference.

That was then. Today, Google is much smarter and has refined its algorithm to better understand what makes a great website. In short, a great website — one that Google will rank higher — is one that can provide a great user experience. A website that is optimized for people, not just search engines.

What Changed?

Over the last few years, experienced SEOs have been calling for a rebranding for what we do. Many have settled on Search Experience Optimization (often abbreviated SXO).

The term search experience optimization better marries together a few disciplines, including search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, and user experience. In addition to SEOs becoming more focused on optimizing for the user, search engines have made significant changes to how they evaluate content. Among the most crucial updates to Google's search algorithm was Panda, a series of updates that that includes real human evaluations (along with algorithmic assessments that mimic these human evaluations). These changes help Google gauge the quality of a website more efficiently.

While Google doesn't explicitly divulge much when it comes to their ranking factors, it's advised that SEOs and all web professionals adhere to Google's prescribed best practices to avoid any ranking penalties.

How to Optimize for Experience

Good SEO has always been about upholding a great user experience. Unfortunately, some unethical marketers have given the field a bad name, seeking to game Google’s algorithm while failing to consider the user.

Focusing on search experience optimization is really about legitimizing what good SEOs have been doing all along. This includes improving all aspects of the searcher’s experience, including:

• Building content that meets of expectations of the searcher.

• Ensuring that content loads quickly.

• Making content that speaks directly to its intended audience.

• Aligning on-page SEO elements with the topic so that Google and users alike know exactly what you’re setting out to communicate.

These are just some of the basic tenets of optimizing content to provide a search engine friendly website. But the evolving demands of good SEOs now incorporate aspects of user experience (UX) as well. These include:

• Making sure content is accessible across all browsers and all devices, ideally through a responsive design.

• Building a clear information architecture (IA) so that users can easily perform their task or goal with little friction.

• Taking a more active role in wireframing and prototyping processes to ensure the IA informs the content strategy throughout the website.

• Upholding the accessibility of your website, ensuring that all of your potential users, including people with disabilities, have a decent user experience.

User Experience and SEO

SEO still manages to play a significant role in search engine results and influences how websites get found online. But SEO has become much more than simply trying to stay ahead of Google and their algorithm tweaks.

These days, it's important to have a broader perspective. To better satisfy a user's needs, marketers might have to turn to focus groups, web analytics data, keyword research, field interviews, and usability tests. It's no longer enough to gather search data alone. Data on interactions, as well as finding insights direct from users, will be paramount.

Truth is, the search experience is just one part of the larger overall user experience, and SEOs need to adjust their thinking and processes to better address UX. Ultimately, introducing new designs, features, and structures will likely keep users more engaged. This in turn, will have lasting results on your rankings.