I don’t normally get into predicting the future; somehow, the here and now always seems to present sufficient challenges. But I usually enjoy reading where the experts believe things are going, and of course have at least as many subliminal opinions on the subject as the next practitioner.
So it was good to come across Rebecca Lieb’s thoughtful piece over on ClickZ …actually, a review of points she made in a panel discussion at SMX (Search Marketing eXpo) – Advanced in Seattle. It’s almost like being there, so I definitely suggest clicking on over; but here is a quick synopsis of some of her prognostications about search…
More blended results …meaning more mixtures of video, book, news, local, etc. Such mixtures increased dramatically over 2008, from 17 to 31 percent of all search results. What this means for marketers is… stiffer competition for precious SERP real estate, since all those headers, thumbnails, and images take up space on the page.
More complicated SEO. Beyond just keywords in Web page text, you’ll also need metadata around images, audio and video transcripts. Also, more sophisticated algorithms will take the searcher into account, including location, search history and social affinities. As Rebecca put it, “It won’t be just about appearing in search results, but also about appearing to the right searcher at the right place, at the right time, and with the right media.”
Beyond the Big Three engines. In terms of queries, YouTube outranks everyone but Google; MySpace sees more than AOL or ask.com. In all reality, these are search engines, not just video sites or social-network platforms. If you can search on it, you can optimize for it; and you’ll increasingly need to.
Real-time results. Remember back in the late ’00s when the bots crawled around so slowly that search-engine indexes were always weeks to months behind Web content? Look for something closer to real-time; Google has all but said it’s working on it.
Searchable multimedia (music, pictures, video). Specialized search engines are doing this already; eventually, it will be integrated into the general-purpose engines.
Smart phones = smarter searching. Sergey Brin recently noted that 1/3 of Google queries in Japan come from mobile devices. Smart phones use search to help users find everything from restaurants to clean bathrooms.
All search, all the time. Rebecca: “Search will be an always-on utility, integrated into the devices you routinely use to perform everyday tasks. (It) will become the de facto way we navigate our lives.”
In considering this view of the future, I’m reminded again that ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’ My point is that it has always been about content.
The paradigm shift that’s been occurring is that now there are more content platforms, from delivery to devices; and with the emergence of social media, marketing is becoming less about interruptions and more about engaging your buyers, on their terms. One has to be developing content for all appropriate platforms and devices; website text content simply isn’t enough these days.
So what’s a marketer to do? Well, this is probably the last year you’ll write your annual marketing plan the way you’ve been writing it for the last ten years. If you are playing the game to win, you had better plan for copious amounts of content development; or else you had better budget more for paid search. Both are expensive, but experience indicates the ROI is better on the left side of the results page than the right-hand side.
