The Future Of Search Marketing

January 3rd, 2007

Well, more my thoughts on where things could be heading, trying to predict the future is asking for trouble but a discussion I had yesterday got me thinking a bit more.

Search Engine Optimisation

Natural or “organic” optimisation is a rapidly growing market, with more webmasters realising the importance of search engine visibility. As the Internet grows in both size and complexity, so does the need to accurately catalogue and index this information. Google’s success came with the development of analysing link structures around the World Wide Web, rather than relying solely on keywords and content of web pages. The original method of searching through meta tags, keywords and content of pages as a primary ranking factor was doomed to failure as soon as people realised what made the search engines tick, a spanner was thrown in the works. While trying to get the competitive advantage, websites began exploiting these methods until the ranking algorithms - and therefore the search engines became next to useless, leaving you trawling through pages of misleading spam to find what you were looking for. It is for this reason that major search engines pay no attention to meta tags anymore.

Google characteristically keeps its lips sealed when it comes to the “secret sauce” of its ranking algorithm, not because they’re bad people however. Releasing precise ranking algorithm details would open up the floodgates and give people an easy way to find exploits and unethically boost their search engine rankings. Instead, Google provides us with some rather vague webmaster guidelines. So this means all is well? Unfortunately, things are never that simple. The thirst for knowledge in the SEO community can never be satisfied, the number of forums, blogs, guides and consultancies is growing every day, millions of websites optimising, link building, content writing, competing… It’s the new arms race online and it would be fair to say it is contributing to the size and wealth of information on the Internet as people are rewarded for fresh, unique content.

The problem with a whole mass of people knowing how something works is that they tend to break it. I believe that web technology and so called “black hat” search engine optimisation will outgrow the search engine algorithms, until the next leap is made. So, where do we go from here? Although the coined phrase “Web 2.0″ does make me feel off colour, there are a whole bunch of innovative, community based, collaborating websites out there. Social bookmarking and tagging are all collaborative methods of sorting vast amounts of data by a kind of Internet “pseudo-democracy”. Could this be the future of search? With a seemingly infinite amount of past, current and future surfers, the image of people tagging the very best of the Internet does seem plausible. No longer would small companies need to fear the corporation who can afford to blow a £2M marketing budget, if they have something great - it will be recognized. Spammers would have difficulty operating; being typically “one-man” (or woman) operators, how would their methods prevail in the face of such attrition? Nobody is going to start tagging and bookmarking spammy “buy more Phenergan” sites are they? However, as Kathy Sierra explains so well in her post “The Dumbness of Crowds”, such attrition can lead to nothing but mediocrity.

Vertical Search

How people use search engines is changing. They are quickly becoming intrinsic to our web experience with a staggering 90% of people using a search engine to find a web pages, even if they already know the URL! It’s always quicker to pop “myspace” into Google (which is your homepage of course!) rather than typing the www….. Since you now use search engines more than your microwave, you can allow some time for experimentation. For instance, whereas 3 years ago it was common for people to search the web using a single word, it is now far more common practise to use 3-4 words to refine your search criteria. However, we are still waiting for the majority to really get into search and play with advanced search query features.

Vertical Search Engines are specialised search engines that search one particular narrow niche, such as yell.com which allows you to search for local businesses. Google actually provides many vertical search services (how many do you use?) such as Google Base, Google Maps, Google Code Search, Google Blog Search - the list goes on and on. Part of Google’s success is definitely “built in” with its simplicity, so encouraging people away from the main search box to explore these other search avenues is hard work. Even if people were aware they’d get a quicker, more accurate result, there’s really no accounting for being lazy

Google have been quite innovative and actually started to integrate these vertical search engines into the main window. For instance, performing a search for “Turkey Recipes” will give you this:

Clicking will take you to Google Base which will give you this specialised recipe search engine. It doesn’t end here either, other people have discovered other “trigger” searches as well. Where does this leave us then? With so many emerging technologies and constantly evolving behaviour patterns, how can you plot your course? The old adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” has survived the ages for a reason, things can change very quickly, especially on the web, so look at using all of these technologies to see what is working for you and most importantly, ask yourself if you are truly serving your customer. Websites that launch with the sole intention of profit rarely succeed when compared to websites that truly provide a truly good product, or a valuable service.