WHAT DOES FUTURE HOLD FOR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?

One of Bob Dylan’s most famously quoted lyrics is, “For the times they are a-changin’” Never has that been more prevalent than in the world of internet marketing. Just a few years ago getting number one rankings on Google was relatively easy. We as internet marketing specialists can only look back at those times and think of the good old days of “low hanging fruit”. Back in 1998 when Google was founded the company indexed 26 million pages of content, by 2000 that number had reached 1 billion pages of content. In the year 2008 there were over a trillion webpages of indexed content on Google! That’s a lot of information to keep track of; more importantly a lot more competition for those marketing online.

Regarding all of this new content, Google as well as other search engines, are constantly updating their algorithms to make searches more relevant and targeted to the user. Social search outlets as well as semantic web software (improvements in the working relationship between computer and man) are some of the new trends with search engines and search marketing companies alike.

THE RISE OF THE ACTIVLY SMART SEARCH ENGINE

Microsoft recently unveiled the new search engine Bing which works as a “decision search engine”. New additions to Bing over the old MSN include video and image preview within the search results, local information that is personalized in the organic rankings (traffic, business listings, maps, reviews etc…) and instant answers. For example, current information will be displayed first in the organic listings for sports scores, finance, airline flight status’, celebrity news, new products/services and many other search terms. Bing, in essence, is making search results based more upon geotracking, recent search history, account/profile settings and currently published articles. Search engines like Google, believe it or not, like to keep track of your searches. Other search engines like Yahoo, as well as industry specific vertical search engines are quickly adopting these new methods of indexing. internet marketing just got more complicated!

The big question still remains; what does this mean for businesses looking to get number one rankings? It means that a website can no longer solely focus on proper keyword text optimization. The term ‘Digital Asset Optimization’ has been thrown around some in the past years as a term to describe the practice of taking all of a company’s digital assets and promoting them through relevant marketing channels in addition to developing appropriate keyword and linking strategies. Digital Assets refers to various types of interactive media (video, image, audio, blog, podcast, ebook, webinar, RSS feed, news/pr, product/service, social media and networking sites). It was only a couple years ago that hardly and search engine marketing firms had adopted the use of Digital Asset Optimization, but in today’s economy more and more search marketing firms are jumping on board to stay ahead of the curve.

A poll recently done by Marketing Experiments, Inc stated that in the future 90% of B2B buying communication will be through video. Tools are already on the market for anyone to create professional looking videos with ease. Today’s consumer wants to be entertained while quickly absorbing information to make smarter purchase decisions. It is up to us as SEO and SEM marketers to incorporate search engine optimization strategy into interactive media. The same rules do not apply to interactive media as they do with traditional SEO or SEM. A common rule of thumb in search marketing is to create and publish a lot of content. Creating a lot of quality rich content will not only gain a prospects trust but also look first-rate in the eyes of search engine spiders. Marketing online is not simply about creating content but building an online presence that extends to hundreds or thousands places on the web. Your content should be considered a brand extension of your company.

No matter what trends may come and go one thing will always remain constant: Content is King. The internet is no longer a digital storefront for an organization but rather a venue for a company to engage and interact with its customers. SEO Marketers need to be aware of the challenges of creating, branding, promoting and optimizing new forms of rich interactive content for their clients. For those search engine marketing agencies willing to take SEO and SEM to the next level the long-term rewards will be numerous.