It’s official. The SEO game has been altered.
That’s the buzz in a new and ever-evolving world of search. In fact, things are changing so quickly that they’re difficult to keep up with. We no longer live in a world where we can simply grab hold of what matters in SEO because it changes on a constant basis.
We grasp one new reality – like the significance of local search – and another one pops up right behind it.
It can feel impossible to stay up to date – and yet stay up to date we must.
When examining the evolution of anything, it’s smart to start by examining – at least briefly – what used to be. In the realm of SEO, that’s a relatively short timeline, but one that’s jam-packed with updates, modifications, and rethinking.
In the earliest days of SEO, search was all about keywords. Webmasters would fill their pages with keywords confident in the knowledge that this practice would pop their sites up to the forefront of any search engine’s results page.
Then Google came to play and turned search upside down. Their refined algorithms prioritized quality over keyword stuffing. Suddenly, SEO pros were discussing backlinks and content and things like that…
… And then the algorithms changed again.
Local search became a fad – and then mobile searches surpassed desktop searches and Mobilegeddon happened.
Now, SEO professionals have been hit with a slew of new and updated search options.
First on the list is mobile search. If you’re thinking, “Wait, Mobilegeddon happened already! Why do I need to think deeply about mobile search?” then pay attention – because things have been adjusted.
When we fret about mobile search now, we’re not talking about using Google on your phone. In fact, mobile searches in that sense have become so commonplace that they’re hardly worth talking about. In the US, over70% of all internet usage happens on phones!
Here’s the thing though – most of the time we spend online on our phones isn’t on traditional search engines like Google. We’re actually spending approximately92% of our time on mobile apps – and that poses a real SEO challenge.
Previously, the only option available for in-app searches was Spotlight. Now, there are a multitude of options – and while some were originally designed to work only for GPS, they’ve expanded beyond that to regular geographical searches.
Google Maps plays a role in many mobile searches too, and it makes sense given how much information is included in a single Google Maps listing.
Voice Search and Personal Assistants
Just a few years back, speech-to-text technology was uncommon. It existed, but it wasn’t something that people turned to when they wanted to search for something online.
Now, the widespread use of digital assistants like Siri (the iPhone assistant) or Alexa (Amazon’s entry in the market) has brought a whole new facet to the world of search – and to SEO. And it’s not just digital assistants – televisions, lights, and other household items are all connected through the internet of things.
What does this mean for search? Well, for starters, Alexa doesn’t even require the use of keywords to give users what they want. A casual, “Where should I eat tonight?” is enough to get a list of local restaurants. These digital assistants are smart enough to see beyond normal human speech and understand what’s being asked without keywords.
These new search options expand search beyond our devices. Activated with the sound of our voices, they can take our personal histories and past actions into account to give us the answers to our search inquiries.
Another big change in search engine opitimization is the way people use social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to look for content. When these sites were launched, their search functions were basic – intended only to help users find their friends.
Today, though, more people are using social search engines to find local businesses and services. They know that if they type local search words into Facebook, for example, they’ll get a list of companies whose pages they can peruse.
There’s also been a change in that it’s now very easy to use social search to find content instead of brands. If you log on to Instagram, you’ll realize that their algorithms give you recommendations based on your activity on the site. If you look at a lot of wildlife photos or take frequent trips to San Francisco, you’ll see those preferences reflected in the content that Instagram suggests to you.
Using the proper hashtags and descriptions can help algorithms recommend your content to the people who are most likely to patronize your business.
Messenger apps like Facebook Messenger are also playing a huge role in search. In fact, if you’ve used Messenger recently you’ve probably noticed that if you use certain words – like “song” for example – you’ll get a message that says, “Find songs now.” In other words, there’s a built-in search engine working behind the scenes.
There are messenger apps like Pegg, which gives financial services to small business and start-ups – and some companies are now using messenger bots to handle routine customer service questions.
This is yet another example of casual, non-keyword speech being used to deliver search results in the moment. And it shows that anybody clinging to the old, keyword-centric SEO of the past is missing the boat.
Finally, we have the problem of topic clusters – a natural outcropping of the move away from traditional keywords and toward casual and contextual search results based on natural language.
Topic clusters require businesses to link pages of related topics together to provide context and meaning for your content. Rather than being forced to write repetitive blog posts, you create a pillar post around one topic and then create other posts and pages that link to it (and from it) to build your site’s architecture.
If you do it correctly, the result is a website that is specifically built to recognize a user’s intent and provide them with the means to jump from one related topic to another. It can boost your search engine visibility and ultimately, help grow your business.
Don’t Let the Changing Face of SEO Intimidate You…
These modifications are good because they pose a chance to move away from optimizing for broken phrases and awkward keywords and into a future where human speech and intent are recognized by search engines without keywords. With any luck, these trends will bring in a new age of content that’s designed to help users and businesses connect.