SEO Is Evolving What Should Your Business Do Now?

by Christina on Wednesday 26th May, 2010 at 12:05 COMMENTS (0)

How has SEO as a practice changed over the last few years?

Over the last few years, "real estate" for organic searches has been increasingly hard to come by. Search engine results pages (SERPs) have begun to include not just organic and paid (PPC) listings, but also real-time search results from micro blogs and Twitter. Google even announced recently it is working on archiving every tweet ever disseminated and allowing users to search for tweets grouped by topic from specific time periods. "Twitter timeline search" is designed to make search engines even more relevant to an individual's tastes.

Ranking at the top of the search results is becoming harder as the number of pages being indexed increases. There are now over 10 billion pages indexed in the search engines. With increases in competition as well as the search engine algorithms changing, SEO needs to constantly evolve. Searcher also change their way of searching for products and information as they become more experienced.

Is being at the top on the search engine results page important?

Research has shown the higher a site ranks for a particular search term, the more likely it is to be clicked on. The search engines are also returning up to date topics from Twitter, Facebook and blogs, it is now also important to have a social media presence, e.g., Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc.

Google, Yahoo and Bing have established themselves as trust worthy sources of information. They have become increasingly more sophisticated at returning appropriate information the searcher is looking for. Businesses that rank higher appear more credible. This credibility leads to more traffic, leads, and most importantly, a better bottom line.

Is search engine Page Rank important?

Page Rank is a quality score that Google gives to every page on a site. This score ranges from a low of zero to a high of ten, and indicated how popular a webpage is. Although this score was regarded highly and considered a strong indicator of the number of inbound links from other websites. Google recently removed this score from the Google Webmaster Tools, indicating they are moving away from this metric.

In our experience we have found page rank did not affect a website getting to the top of the search engines for competitive keywords.

How have localisation and personalisation changed the relevance of search ranks?

From the individual user's perspective, localisation and personalisation of search results are great. Sometimes I actually think Google knows what I'm looking for before I do.

From the perspective of a company, it is going to be harder to be seen at the top for your chosen keywords when localised and personalised search results are also included. With real time results appearing it is harder to maintain prime spots within the organic listings. Google and Yahoo have proven that they will serve up localised and personalised results even for users who are not signed in to any personalised accounts such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail accounts.

Search rankings are especially important now. If companies don't spend the time to rank as highly as possible, they will simply become invisible to potential customers.

What will be the impact of social media inclusion in search?

Search Engines are including real-time results due to the speed in growth searchers are adopting social networking as their way of communicating, and the search engines are placing these results above the organic listings.

It is no longer just a question of out-manoeuvring nine other organic listings, but also of ranking highly enough that users see the organic listing at all after reading past the real-time results, making the battle to rank on the first page that bit tougher.

What is the most important thing a small business can do to improve organic traffic?

Get educated on the virtues of website optimisation to become search engine friendly.
Once a business understands the effects that optimisation can have, and the return it can bring, he or she will see how vital it is to engage in SEO. With the ever increasing competition to get to the top, getting started right away is the key to success.

Summary

SEO is still very important, but it needs to be used along side remarkable content that people want to read.
Social, Real-time and Video content are critical components of today's content and optimisation mix. If you are not already doing it, now is the time to start.
There is no point obsessing over Page Rank or the SERP number, you need to learn which keywords will drive traffic to your website, creating leads and sales. As each searcher will have a different experience you can not guarantee placement, but you can measure improvements in the business metrics that matter. E.g., bottom line.

Whether you use free tools, paid tools or consultants, there are a variety of ways to create and measure optimisation content - start now if you haven't already.

It isn't too late to start. It is too important to your long term business goals to ignore.

What will happen if your business doesn't start today?