Online marketing and, above all, search engine optimization as one of the most important disciplines are now processes that go deep into internal company processes and can only achieve significant success if they can identify with the entire marketing concept of the company. Smooth cooperation and communication between all departments involved are the basis for advertising campaigns on the web. Traditional working methods and structures may have to be broken up here and merged into a new unit.
Multi-channel SEO And Risk Diversification
Search engines are currently one of the most vital traffic and sales channels for most online shop and website operators. The majority of them also focus on search engine marketing (SEO & SEA) with Google, as this is where users are currently getting the most relevant results for their search queries. However, depending on one distribution channel can pose an enormous business risk. Online marketing and, above all, search engine optimization (SEO) should focus on several tracks to minimize this risk. Online platforms such as eBay, Amazon, social networks, price comparison portals, and industry portals all have an internal search engine worth optimizing.
No Relevant Competitors From a Customer Perspective
On the Internet, as a transparent platform where information can be accessed from any Internet connection, it is essential to establish marketing strategies that competitors cannot imitate. Otherwise, whoever has more resources will always have a competitive advantage. The art of SEO lies, for example, in filtering out terms/keywords that the competitors do not have on their radar and in designing internal processes that cannot be copied. To do this, the entire customer journey must be analyzed and optimized. From the determination of needs to the conclusion of the purchase, the individual steps must be thoroughly planned to create a simple, trustworthy, and pleasant purchasing process. Only if website operators offer unique added value and promises of benefits for their customers (USP) can they succeed in the long term. The challenge is to ensure that there are no relevant competitors from the customer’s point of view!
Multimedia Is Becoming Increasingly Important For SEO
The topic of multimedia is becoming increasingly important for online marketing and mainly for SEO. The interaction of images, videos, texts, and graphics can offer users content that invites them to stay longer on a website and search engines. As a result, Receive signals that indicate a relevant and exciting website for the user, which is worthy of being better positioned in the search results. Search engine operators regularly expand and improve their search algorithms to provide searchers with the best possible results. For website operators in industries with high competition, it has become essential to constantly improve and update their websites to achieve better rankings in the long term.
Due to the rapidly growing flood of data on the Internet, microdata is becoming increasingly important to identify website content for search engines and enable connections between the data. Website operators who carefully enrich their content with additional information can expect higher rankings and improve their click rate and generate more clicks through more conspicuous snippets (price and availability information, star ratings).
With all optimization and marketing measures on the Internet, the focus should always be on the users, who come even if a website has not ranked in the top search engine positions for a while.
This also implies that the quality of the offer increases through constant optimization of the range of products and services and ensures satisfied and returning customers.
Holistic approaches considering the industry, products, and needs are the basis for successful online marketing campaigns. Advertising on the Internet can only ensure profitability and justify high investments through the appropriate combination of several sales channels and disciplines that release mutual synergies.
Outlook: What’s Coming Up For The SEO Scene
Since the introduction of the Knowledge Graph, which enriches the standard search with further information on personalities, events, places of interest, etc., Google has increasingly developed into a semantic search engine and thus enables more comprehensive information searches than ever before.
Semantic searches on mobile devices will continue to increase over the next few years and will thus permanently change the search habits of users. There will be more and more requests in the future that are made via voice input. For young people who grow up with a smartphone, it is now nothing unusual to speak to their device and give them commands, send a voice message via Whatsapp, or start an Internet search by voice input. Online marketing will change permanently as a result and face new and exciting challenges.
Website operators and those responsible should therefore always first analyze the needs of their customers more deeply and “think more from the customer’s point of view,” such as how users would look for certain products and solutions, to then align their content accordingly. Before you start marketing a product over the Internet, the following questions should be answered:
- Which event triggers a need to search for a specific solution or product?
- What are users’ intentions when they enter something in a search form?
- What questions can users ask search engines to find what they are looking for? ( W Questions Tool )
To accommodate users, the content on the website or blog can then be aligned to it.
Example:
Someone wants to start their own business and is interested in business plans to convince investors. The searcher may not (yet) be aware that there are business plan templates.
A search query could then look like this:
- How do I write a business plan?
- What does a business plan include?
- Write/create a business plan.
Personalized Search Is on The Rise
The personalized search is also presenting search engine optimizers with entirely new challenges. There is no longer the “one” ranking. Google, in particular, can now individualize search engine results depending on your search profile, the search settings made, and the respective location. Information from social networks and recommendations from friends are becoming more and more critical for your search results. This trend is called social search, which gives users more power because they can ultimately shape the search results of other users from their circles/friend lists.
The fact that most buyers trust recommendations from the social environment more than the classic advertising measures of manufacturers and dealers before making a purchase decision will further strengthen this trend. The resulting benefit of more relevant search results is offset by the downside of censorship and critical objectivity, which can help ensure that people will only consume content that search engine and social network operators believe is “right.”
Due to the rapidly increasing amount of content, offers, and the almost unlimited possibilities on the World Wide Web, the topic of relevance will continue to gain enormous importance to achieve higher conversion rates in the future. In his blog, Karl Kratz describes how multilayer landing pages (dynamic landing pages9) can be used to coordinate content based on the selected channel and the respective interaction element (e.g., advertising banner). In this way, website content on landing pages can vary as desired and specifically adapted to the particular context depending on whether a website visitor lands on a website through AdWords, email, social media, affiliate, or organic search.
The “Internet of Things” Will Change Everything.
Research into the ‘Internet of Things, a world in which computers are increasingly disappearing as devices and being replaced by ‘smart objects,’ has been pursued by various institutions for years. In the future, networked services will enable these “intelligent devices” to coordinate with one another, anticipate our needs and respond to them. Large corporations and online providers who raise the resources will in the future also be better informed about the needs and wishes of users and will be able to make them the right offer at the right time.
If a user is logged into a social network with his smartphone, the search and purchase behavior can already be evaluated personally and used to individualize offers. The personal assistant Google Now integrated into the Android operating system also attempts to provide relevant information before requested. Likely, people will no longer have to search for information, products, and services themselves as often in the future because a lot of what they need to know and “need” for life is presented to them on a serving plate by smartphones, data glasses or other “wearables.”
SEO Trends
We can already see the future of search results on smartphones today: all-important search results page features of the last few years were first played out in the mobile search results and only later, with a sometimes long delay, also in the desktop search results.
It is foreseeable that Google will increase the proportion of knowledge panels and keep users on their pages more and more. That is why SEO for search queries that Google answers in the form of an automated preview will become more critical in the next few years: it will no longer be the click, but attention to a brand in the search results that will become more relevant. Especially for information-related searches.
Here Are a Few More Exciting Trends:
- Artificial intelligence: for search engines, machine learning is the future. You will increasingly be able to make connections and answer questions yourself. As the website operator, we can monitor the development closely and adapt to the changed circumstances.
- Core Web Vitals : (Metrics for website usability) is now one of the most important ranking factors for Google. More information at:
- Video: since internet video and YouTube are almost synonymous, and YouTube belongs to Google, we can assume that more and more video content will also be displayed in the search results in the future.
- Local SEO and Local Ads: one of the significant growth areas for Google. As soon as the demand for “real” shops and places noticeably increases again after the pandemic, Google will intensify the marketing of Google Maps.
- Reviews: Many good reviews have been proven to lead to more and more secure conversions.
- In addition to Google reviews, websites like Proven Expert are a suitable platform for studies. With many customers and contacts, the topic can also be automated quite well with email marketing software.
What do you think about it? Feel free to exchange ideas with me and leave your questions and suggestions in the comment box below. I would be happy to share the article with your community on Facebook, Google, or Twitter if you liked the article.