How Google Instant may end up killing SEO…
At least the SEO that we know and love…
As my colleague, Rob Greenhill mentioned in his piece about Google Instant last week, it’s not necessarily going to kill SEO, but help it evolve. I’ve talked about how SEO is constantly evolving as the Search Engines make changes to their algorithms, and us SEOs have to adapt or get left behind, so, I don’t think this’ll prove to be anything different.
Google talks about how Google Instant will “help you get better search results, faster” and it’s been suggested that this will change the way people perform their searches. The thought process is quite simple, give people the results before they finish searching, and go further and give them a snapshot of the results before they commit to click on a site. So, how will this affect SEO?
Crystal Ball Gazing…
Well, I predict that many sites will see a decrease in their Bounce Rate, people are now given the opportunity to alter their search as they search, so the unnecessary click on an unsuitable site will become a far less likely event… Surely? It’s widely known that a high bounce rate will do you no favours in terms of SEO – if people aren’t satisfied with your site for whatever reason, they are going to look elsewhere, and of course with Google in the know about your bounce rate, the chances of you staying in the top position for that keyword are pretty slim. So, it an indirect way, this may end up helping your SEO, even if it does mean your visitor numbers may take a hit. But, at the end of the day, you want visitors that want to be on your site, that want to buy from you or employ your services. Not visitors that have no intention of using your services or buying your products, because they want something else entirely.
Over at David Naylor, David Whitehouse talked yesterday about “Alphabet Searches” and how a site can rank for the first letter of their brand name. This is great if you’re a household name (such as Argos – the first result for the letter ‘A’ in the google.co.uk results), but what about the rest of us? Could it be possible to optimise a site for a particular letter? Well, surely anything is possible; it may well prove to be a difficult feat to achieve, but who doesn’t love a challenge? I predict that listing for a single letter will prove to be a popular request from some quarters.
And, finally, what about the effect this will have on users? Don’t forget that searchers are becoming more and more search savvy, and that everyone thinks slightly differently. A couple of weekends ago, I had dinner with a friend who had spent all day filming an advert for a local tourist board, and one of the things she had to do was dress up in a green morph suit. The local press picked up on her antics around the area, and turned up in droves to take photographs of her in this unfortunate guise. That night she told me to search for the photograph, and I was struck by how longtail her suggested search terms were. I would have searched completely differently, but this is the point I am trying to make. Not everyone will search for your chosen keyword in the way that you expect them to. I think my colleague Pete Campbell, was absolutely right to predict that Google Instant will make people change their searching behaviour more towards the longtail.
How can you adapt your SEO Strategy to take Google Instant into Account?
You need to look at your keywords. Do they lend themselves to the longtail? Can you see your keywords within sentences that people use to search for stuff? Can you then provide content that uses these sentences and satisfies the users wants and needs?
Look at your brand name; can you see your brand becoming one of the lucky ones that Google uses to make predictions as the user searches, by first putting in a single letter? You will need to build your brand up, and you can’t do this on a small SEO budget. You need a full internet marketing driving force behind you to make use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, you will need to constantly remind people of your brand name, and what it represents. You will need to increase your efforts to achieve this holy grail of search results. You will very likely need to invest in a full internet marketing campaign, if you want to stand a hope in hell of achieving this.
So, what’s really changed?
You need to look at this objectively. What does Google Instant mean for searchers? Faster results and hints on different searches. So to achieve success in today’s Google, keep to the basics: Make sure your site is packed full of useful content, update your content on a regular basis. Use the tools available to you, get into Facebook and Twitter. Get involved with your online community. With link building, the bread and butter of SEO, keep to the same old rules: choose relevant quality site to approach for links.
The long and short of it is, the basics of good SEO haven’t really changed at all, the tools at our disposal have, but that’s just the way this industry is. That’s why I enjoy working in SEO, it’s constantly changing and adapting to today’s search climate and I wouldn’t want it any other way! Bring on the challenges…
September 17th, 2010
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September 24th, 2010
I don’t think Google Instant will effect SEO at all. Google instant was aimed at people who type really slow and this enhancement somewhat similar to the predictions as you type which was introduced sometime back.