Why You Need To Change Your Search Strategy

The world of search marketing sure is changing which means your search marketing strategy has to change. There are always a bunch of algorithm changes that happen every year and last year we saw an unprecedented number of changes to the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). Now we’re seeing impacts from just raw competition along with a dramatic shift in how people are using search engines.

When you put all of this together, you have a marketing environment that requires you to rethink your search marketing strategy on a year-to-year basis, if not more frequently.

the rise of mobileWe are all aware of the quick rise of mobile usage for online engagement. In fact, Google told us in May of 2015 that search queries on mobile devices had surpassed search queries on desktop computers. And, according to Statista, there has been a 55.88% lift in mobile’s share of organic search engine visits in the US.

Then late last year, Google announced the release of their mobile-first index, which looks at your website to determine if it’s mobile-friendly or not and whether or not it is mobile-friendly impacts your ranking.

How This Impacts Search Marketing Strategy

All of this change and movement toward a mobile world is creating a lot of chaos for search marketing. iProspect released their survey results on Paid Search Trends for the 1st quarter of 2017 and some of the data brought surprises while some of the data simply confirmed market observations.

First, Google’s AdWords data showed growth in mobile for both click-through and impressions for CPC ads (no surprise). And, they showed a slow down for both click-through and impressions for both desktops and tablets (desktop no surprise, tablet a little surprise).

As a result of the demand for mobile search, the 1st quarter of `17 also saw the average cost-per-click rates increase. Mobile ad CPC was up 40%, but still lower than desktop ads. Not only did the cost of a click increase, but click-share for mobile went up as well.

This all means that mobile is definitely the place to be, but you will need to be smarter about how you market your company. You have to be much more strategic about search marketing campaigns.

What’s Next

As if this isn’t happening fast enough for you to try to keep up with, now we’re starting to see big increases in voice search. With Google Home, Amazon’s Echo, and the mobile versions of Siri and Cortana, the way that people search is changing pretty dramatically.

Back in the day, you just had to pick the right key-phrase, optimize the page on your website
for that key-phrase and everything was good (ok, this is an oversimplification, but you get the idea).

Now, voice search is going to require you to optimize the content on your site to answer questions because that’s how people are interacting with these virtual assistants. They are asking who, what, when, where, and how questions.

To further complicate things, because this is how they get the information that they want from these virtual assistants by asking questions, now they are following the same pattern online. Queries that are typed into the search engines are more frequently questions as opposed to phrases and the questions are getting longer.

Are You Ready?

As you can see, there is a lot going on with search marketing. And, this is just what has started to happen in the last 6-8 months. This is why you have to reevaluate your marketing strategy, both online and offline, on a regular basis and make adjustments as necessary.