Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Content Discovery and the SEO Conundrum

About 2 years back, the trend of calling SEO as DEAD started. Many blogs made nice page views with catchy headlines. But now the scenario is quite different. The SEO experts and researchers are genuinely confused on the future course of their profession. 

There is almost a vertical split among the practitioners. SEO Agencies are already beginning to see varied results for their optimization efforts. Apart from the Hummingbird update, there are at least 3 key factors affecting discoverability of content on search engines and elsewhere on the net. 

1. You are a digital native...already : This is a "No-Login, No-Logout" age. People end up clocking their search preferences and even buying patterns with Google. This makes it easy for the search giant to personalize SERPs, thus negating any effect the agency guy might have on the buyer's search patterns. 

2. You are in a hurry to eat:) Or drink Or Shop or Rest. Enough has been said about mobile search. One thing we may forget
to remember is that people have different search patterns on mobile  for the same set of services compared to desktop / tablet search. The fact that you are "on the go" dictates you to finish the search and find the results faster. 

3. You like that App in the corner of your smart phone::) Restaurants, Taxis, Hotel Reviews, Caller Details, you name it and there is an App for it. It's like saying "good-bye Google, see you soon". And you do see Google soon, for it is too big to ignore. But the discovery of content is now no longer the monopoly of Google. All the more pressure on Google to ensure SERPs stay relevant to the user's context of search.

SEO will not die ( not so soon), but will evolve to become something that the agencies are not inherently capable of delivering with their existing tools.

No comments:

Post a Comment