SEO is Changing and We Are Too

SEO is a rapidly changing space. This is because Google continuously seeks to improve the searcher experience and updates its algorithm hundreds of times per year. 

In a nutshell, Google's primary objective (other than profit) is to help people find the best and most relevant content as quickly as possible.

Some of the key changes from Google over the last few years to help them achieve this include:

• An increasing focus on featured contextual 'rich snippets' in search results that keep people on Google's search page by answering their queries immediately
• Local results appearing ahead of traditional organic results
• Google is getting smarter and is increasingly interested in 'searcher intent
• Google Ads appearing less 'ad-like' and more like organic search results.

The changes in search algorithms, increased competitiveness for SERPs real-estate (Search Engine Results Pages), combined in with the constant addition of new websites published every day, are making it increasingly difficult to "rank" and get organic good quality traffic for broad terms.

Fact of life.

In just the last few weeks, Google has taken this up another level and has made a big change to how they process queries with the release of their 'Bert' update.

So, what exactly is Google Bert? Well, there's already a lot published about the release so I won't regurgitate it here. Instead, I'll encourage you to read this great article from Neil Patel on how Google Bert will affect content marketing.

The TLDR; of this article is:

• Google is getting much better at understanding user intent behind their keyword (note the examples in the Neil Patel blog)
• It's not about content length directly but content quality, uniqueness and relevance. It just happens that longer content often tends to be better quality because it takes more effort to produce
• When producing content you need to be super specific and not broad. You need to focus more on long-tail terms that solve problems and answer questions.

While our SEO clients are up nearly 60% on average in organic traffic compared to last year, we want these improvements to continue over the coming years and we acknowledge that things are continuously changing.

Just as SEO changes, so do we. We don't rest on our laurels.

Moving forward, we'll be managing SEO a little differently:

• Focus less on specific 'keyword rankings' and more on organic traffic that converts
• Working more on 'keyword clusters' and long-tail keywords that help people solve problems
• Helping our clients to produce better, world-class content. If you want great, unique content, it must be produced by the subject matter experts - you the clients are the subject matter experts
• Assisting our clients to do outreach and promote their content. The days where you simply publish great content and get traffic are gone. You must aggressively promote your content
• Focusing more on rich snippets and other on-page strategies
• More transparent reporting

Next week, our newest team member and SEO guru, Guy, will be reaching out to each of our SEO clients to get the ball rolling on this new approach.

Please let us know if you have any questions by contacting us.

Regards
Simon and Matt