The Changing World Of Search
There have been a number of changes in Search of late with new iterations of Panda impacting on sites large and small; Google Search Plus Your World becoming increasingly important to the search space; Google withholding key data from non-advertisers and the integration of all Google’s privacy policies.
While these changes are all impacting on how Search works, the bottom line is that the single most important aspect of any offsite promotion is utilising the links graph. This is the building block of search engines and is unlikely to be changed any time soon no matter how many of the new Social signals the search engines are utilising. So having a robust and varied natural links profile is key to any Search campaign. It’s too easy to generate volumes of low value links and hope that this alone will impact on your search campaign - it will - but probably only in a negative way over a period of time.
Always look to add high value relevant links from trusted and authority sites, don’t overcook it and always think of the user. If the link looks out of place for the site user then it not likely to add much natural search value, so don’t place it.
What is also crucial to any campaign is creating great unique content. This hasn’t changed over the years but what you need to think about now more than ever is the ‘shareability’ of that content. Not only do you need to understand who you are writing for (i.e. your audience) but also how are they going to interact with it. Content should not be a passive experience, at least not if you want to increase your brand profile and web presence across as many properties and touch points where your clients are engaging.
Research into what sort of content your customers or clients will use and share; make sure you have embedded the technology to enable the easy share; think about rewarding the calls to action on ‘shares/likes/+1’s’and always monitor and evaluate the cause and effect of any campaign. What does work and why, against what doesn’t.
Google has made some sweeping changes in terms of withholding data from Google Analytics when users have been logged in, therefore not allowing you to see what keywords have been searched on to find your site. While only a small percentage, this is likely to grow in the future. This information is available to advertisers on the paid platform raising concerns over the fairness of this but there is little you can do about it just now.
Google is also aligning its privacy policies but again while it has raised some concerns, there is little that you can do unless you choose not to use Google or any of their own web properties. Their reasoning is to make it easier to move from one web property to another but it should also make targeted advertising easier to deliver, as well as gather and combine data.
Finally, Panda. The ongoing algorithm update continues to affect many sites but as the aim has been to reduce the rankings and visibility of poor quality content, there won’t be too many tears shed for some of the very feeble content that has been cluttering up the internet.
What is clear is that Google is determined to deliver great quality content to the users of any of the properties based on the fundamentals of search, which is great content and authority citations from other sites and users. The fact that search engines are now incorporating social signals how important it is to think beyond the narrow old confines of Search and focus on your users but draw back your learning’s into an evolving Search and Social campaign.
