Search marketers have to get personal now

Search has changed significantly in the past few years. Google has released several updates that have made us revisit our link strategies (Penguin Update), our content strategies (Panda Update), our local strategies (several updates) and well... just about everything else.

A lot changes in five years, but one thing has remained the same: Search is about people. People still need to find an answer to their questions. They look to find information about a product or service, and ultimately as marketers, it’s still people we are dealing with. This should be key: search marketers should be optimizing for people, not search engines.

To be perfectly honest, this is not a new concept. Google has always said that when you are a website owner, you should put the user (or the searcher) first.

However Google has really accelerated this concept in the past few years. Along with the aforementioned updates, Google has been busy developing their search engine into more of a personal assistant.

The other night I was playing with my mobile phone with my kids. They were asking Google all sorts of questions: from ‘Who is the president of the US?’ to ‘Where am I?’... The results showed that Google has personalised these experiences completely, and search marketers have to learn and adapt with this. This is the future of search, and actually, it’s already here.

The question then is how? Well, it starts with understanding the user.

Several years ago Google showed us what they understand the buying process to be. They started talking about the Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT). Google showed how people’s buying decisions are made based on moments.

These moments are different for everyone. However brands do need to be there at every possible moment. It means that SEO these days is about being there at those ‘right moments’.

Brands need to be creating content for every part of the consumer funnel. The reality is that many brands focus mainly on the last part. For this reason the biggest gains actually lie in the earlier parts of the funnel.

Let’s give you an example. If someone is buying a TV, there are several phases they go through. The majority of brands will feel they need to be there at the actual moment of sale. This is why optimizing for keyphrases such as ‘buying a TV’ or ‘best TV’ used to be priority. The problem is that is now a crowded space. Just look at the search results page above.

In such situations, it is nearly impossible to get your page visible for searchers.

So… search marketers started to change their attitudes. They targeted the ‘long tail’. Keywords that might get less traffic, but more ‘attention’. This was the start for getting the ‘consumer focus first’ mentality back in place.

These days we are taking ‘the long tail approach’ a few steps further. This is firstly because Google is doing things differently, but even more so because users are doing things differently. Users don’t just want to use Google to buy things anymore, or even to research. They use Google for various reasons – at every step of the journey.

Brands, smaller and bigger ones, need to look at all the different stages of the consumer journey. They need to decide where they fit best.

However, there is one problem: this all sounds nice and it is something everyone wants to do. But can marketers actually do it? After all, how do we know in which part of the consumer journey the consumers actually are at any one moment? And what is it exactly that they want to know? How do we find out where we can help?

The simple is yes, you can. With data. With the right data it is easy to figure out where people are, what they are doing, and especially: how you are doing against their expectations.

Looking at the data in the right way will make search a completely different ball game. Instead of optimizing for the ‘old’ keywords, you will then be optimizing for people. And guess what, that’s exactly what Google wants.

Bas van den Beld, Digital Strategist, linkdex

Tel: 020 3757 2600

Email: marketing@linkdex.com

Web: www.linkdex.com

Twitter: @basvandenbeld; @linkdex