What’s the aim of search engines?
The aim of search engines are to deliver relevant results to the user. Over the years the search engines criteria for what ‘relevant search’ is seems to have converged. Back in the 90s when search engine optimisation started I can remember having different content for Google, MSN and Yahoo as there were such marked differences. The search engines were also very unsophisticated in the manner of their indexing and were easily spoofed by spam.
The Google sandbox
With the use of meta redirects by black hat SEO people and other unscrupulous techniques, Google become un-trusting of new sites. The sandbox was the infamous area in Google where new sites were put until they came of age or proved (by meeting the link and content velocity algorithms) that they were ‘trustworthy’ to be put main stream.
This completely backfired on them that Christmas 5 years ago when that tsunami hit – and people wanted to donate online, but they couldn’t find the sites as they were new and were in the sandbox. So over the past few years the sandbox has been phased out, as it was proven that up to date information was key to delivering relevant results.
Tracking search trends
With the launch of Google trends and insights, we can start tracking the seasonal and cyclical variations in the search patterns on key phrases. So why is thus useful?
Have a look at the example above – I can review my monthly visitor statistics and put them in context, such as ‘is the decrease in visitors in August as seasonal variation or does it represent a decrease due to the downturn?’. Which is useful management information when having to report back to clients and line managers.
Puts it in context of the news and other happenings over that period. Google is tracking search trends, so if there’s an influx in people searching for a specific information then they need to ensure that they are delivering relevant and up to date information on this.
Real time search results
With the rise in the usage of Twitter and the launch of Bing, meant that for the first time in a era, Google were starting to face stiff competition, not something they have had in a while. More peoople are using Twitter to find out the up to date information / news but not using Google.
With the launch of Google Caffeine, this is a fundamental change in how Google works. They have accelerated the updating of the information from the robots to the search results. I have seen articles that have been published 3 hours ago.
Google is also recognising the different formats of result and you can view the results by web, blogs, review or forums.
How can this boost your SEO?
For search engine optimisation campaign this means quite a lot of change.
- You need to respond to news in your industry. If it is something that people will be searching for. You need to ensure that you have got a blog post or article on your website with your commentary and response to the news. Whether that’s fuel tariffs going up or a response to the budget, if it’s information that people are searching for, then you need to make sure your website is at the top of the key phrases people will be searching for.
- Comment on other people’s blogs on the same subject. Not only will this be another inbound link, but it will be putting your company name in the frame, and boosting your online credibility and authority on the subject matter.
- You need to ensure that you have got the metrics and alerts in place to be able to pick up on new trends. Set up your Google alerts around core phrases that people will be searching on and recognise trends early on.
- Make sure you have the resource to write the content and get this published PQD, so you have that competitive edge and are first to release content on this.