The SEO landscape has changed considerably but does it still retain its old relevance in a world where content is supposedly king? Victoria Clarke investigates
A few years back, every marketer paid lip service to SEO and as digital marketing started to take off, it often featured at the top of the marketing team’s agenda when it came to online activity. Paradoxically, however, SEO was often considered a dark art, and something only a select few ‘experts’ had direct involvement with. Fast forward to the present day and as a result of the SEO landscape changing beyond recognition, so too have marketers’ attitudes towards it. At a time when content marketing is on top of everyone’s to do lists and marketers need their content to be found, SEO seems to have slipped from their priorities. So what does the future hold for search marketing?
The content war
The explosion of content has resulted in every marketer trying to create the slickest infographic, the most shareable video or the most thought-provoking and insightful whitepaper. While every effort may go into the conception and execution of this content, often the technical SEO gets overlooked in favour of trying to create ‘the next big idea’. However, Louise Sylvester, SEO manager at Soap Media, emphasises: “Content is key to SEO and likewise SEO is key to content; they are now synonymous with each other.”
Kath Dawson, creative director at Strategy Internet Marketing, agrees: “Despite popular opinions that SEO has somehow been superseded by content marketing, it remains as important as ever for digital marketers not to take their eyes off the ‘SEO ball’. While content marketing has certainly created a huge industry buzz in the wake of Google’s Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird algorithms, there is an ongoing need to prioritise the technical SEO elements, giving content marketing efforts the leg up they need.”
Dawson’s right of course in that any content – regardless of how sexy or sophisticated it is – needs the right SEO behind it in order for it to be found. Ingo Bousa, head of natural search at Yucca (part of marcomms agency Bray Leino) goes one step further. He suggests great content will ultimately die if it is not found by the right audience, whereas mediocre content can fly with the right SEO strategy. He says: “Great content needs great optimisation and great marketing around it. The amount of content being produced has increased exponentially over the last three years, while the number of people consuming it has stayed relatively steady. There just aren’t enough people online to read the masses of stuff Google continues to encourage businesses to churn out. The result is that these days, bad content that’s marketed well will outperform great content that’s marketed poorly.”
Bypassing search
The need for strategic SEO in today’s landscape emerges as an important issue, but simultaneously it’s worth considering how SEO may not be the be all and end all it once was. For example, as social media interaction in B2B becomes more prolific, more online visitors are bypassing traditional search and instead relying on word-of-mouth in order to find out about new products and services. Dawson elaborates: “SEO is highly relevant to search when using a search engine as the user already has the intention of looking for something. In effect the ‘need’ state is already created and so the next natural step is to find what is needed or desired. There is, however, an increasing range of opportunities to create these need states. Examples include ‘similar items bought’ or ‘people who bought this also bought’ sections on sites such as Amazon, which in effect create a need state where there was none previously. In this type of scenario search hasn’t played a part of the process at all.
“There are many channels to market and many ways to create a ‘need’ or ‘desire’ for a product or service, all of which begin with the initial ‘awareness creation’ stage. It is possible to create awareness of a need through many channels and completely bypass search. In essence, all marketing angles need to be considered as that is most likely to maximise benefit, it is not simply a case of relying purely on search strategies.”
PPC remains relevant
Paid search is another issue experiencing significant change as a result of the shift in the SEO landscape. Most experts who contributed to this feature believe just because online visitors are taking more control of the content they consume, doesn’t make PPC less viable. In fact, according to Hannah Kimuyu, director of paid media at Greenlight, it makes it more interesting. She says because brands now have access to greater customer information they can be more targeted with their strategies, and she pitches audience targeting as “one of the biggest trends for 2014.”
Mike Flynn, CEO of Fast Web Media, captures the current relationship between SEO and PPC succinctly when he says: “Consider PPC as ‘SEO on steroids’. PPC allows you to be hyper-targeted, reactive, scalable and reach people with your content at exactly the right time.”
Dawson agrees the current SEO landscape makes for more sustainable PPC activity but considers this from all angles. She comments: “PPC is extremely viable in a world where users take increasing control over their content, namely because PPC represents a sizable revenue stream for Google. As such, Google is not going to stop improving the experiences people have when using search and ensuring they are presented with the best and most engaging results, which includes PPC front and centre.”
SEO beyond 2014
PPC is not the only aspect of search that is constantly changing. Joanne Jeske, SEO manager at Threepipe, suggests that while “gaining links and shares on social media isn’t necessarily proven to have direct correlation with rankings yet, social signals are starting to come in to play when it comes to calculating a website’s authority and value to a user.”
The growing issue of influential or authoritative authors in the social space as another key SEO development in the future was highlighted by several contributors to this article. Martin Dinham, MD of Channel Digital, stresses that already: “Social activities are critical in sharing your content and allowing your chosen audience to discover and reference it.” He points out how growing social activities in Google+ are supporting the concept of Google Authorship. This allows authors in particular niches to build up ‘authority’, which is then associated with the websites where their content appears.
Indeed, a few years ago Google put through a patent for a new search algorithm called ‘Agentrank’, which focused around ranking content based on the authority of the creator. Matt Barby, digital strategist at Wyatt International, comments: “Many experts within the field believe 2014 could be the year Google finally goes live with this new algorithm, which could turn the search landscape on its head.”
It might not generate buzz in the same way as other digital marketing topics, but SEO continues to prove its relevance, and in an ever-shifting digital landscape, relevance will always rule.
