Obsessed with SEO and SEM: A SMX Advanced Recap
A few weeks ago some Risers on the search team attended SMX Advanced in Seattle. This event is one of Search Engine Land’s yearly conferences and is designed for experienced SEM and SEO marketers as it facilitates advanced discussions on how to be successful within search. We’re sharing some key insights on what was discussed as the search landscape continues to evolve.
1. Local Search: Customers are continually looking for a more personalized experience, and convenience is becoming more important to them. To combat this, Google is releasing new shopping products like Local Catalog Ads and Product Price Benchmarks. This will not only help provide a better experience, but also allow retailers to offer same day delivery, as customers are now looking for immediate gratification from their purchases.
YouTube will also be rolling out an Affiliate Extension that will display the nearest location a user can make an in-store purchase.
2. Data Security: Beginning July 2018, Chrome will start tagging all http sites as ‘not secure’ and will prominently highlight this in the URL bar. With data security being a hot topic, providing an HTTPS encrypted site will become more important for brands. AdWords will also start to automatically send users to an HTTPS site if there is one available.
3. Search Intent: As search marketing evolves, providing a personalized experience for users is becoming more important. With this comes the importance of determining the intent behind a user's search query. Google is starting to serve both informational and transactional results based on previous users’ interactions. To get ahead of this, brands should build out content that provides solutions for users with either intent.
Along these lines, Bing is starting to serve different points of view for queries that may have a bias or multiple points of view. This allows the user to receive diverse search results, as the true intent of their search is not always straightforward.
4. Ranking Factors: It is important to understand what is most relevant and useful to users when it comes to format and length of content. The niche segment a brand falls into impacts ranking factors significantly, as different users are expecting varying types of content. For example, schema markups are more relevant for recipes than for dating websites and videos are more relevant to fitness websites than for divorce websites.
In the end, understanding your target user base and what they need is essential for brands to be successful.
Overall, it was a great few days of learning, networking, and fun—especially with Rise winning Search Engine Land’s SEM Agency of the Year! We’re already looking forward to the 2019 event.
To discuss your search marketing strategy and how you may want to implement a few of these insights, reach out to Rise today.
*Disclaimer: Not all of the features discussed above have been rolled out yet and no launch date has been provided.
