How does your marketing agency see digital marketing changing?
Introduction
It’s a question that a lot of digital marketing agencies will get asked very frequently- that is how does they see digital marketing changing in the not too distant future?
That’s to say how does the agency see organic SEO, link building or how a business improves its local SEO changing over the next say six months?
How will Google further improve its algorithm?
That’s to say how will the algorithm change? How should websites be designed so that they help improve a company’s SEO?
What our SEO consultant’s think
Well, as we have many knowledgeable SEO consultants that work for us here at Top Space, so we thought we would put our heads together, and write a blog post on just that.
We as a digital marketing agency here in Cardiff have to be forward thinking, that’s to say we have to think how will Google’s algorithm change.
Plus, our consultants must have a good knowledge of Google’s past changes to its algorithm, that’s to say, how the Google Hummingbird update, or the Panda updates changed seo.
Then when a new business asks us to improve their SEO one of the first things that we can do is evaluate the site, to see if it flouting any white hat seo practices.
For example, a common problem that we see is when an a company approaches us, is if they sell products that the product description is normally duplicated by copying and pasting from the manufacturers website.
So, our agency will normally start be rewording product descriptions, so its sometimes not just a matter of thinking, how will Google’s algorithm change, its how can the site be made so that it adheres to white hat methods of SEO.
This is why all businesses, no matter if it’s a large business or a small business, the business must comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, if the business does not comply, then the business could incur a penalty.
By incurring a penalty, a business could be “de-indexed” which means that its taken out of the index, this is why its so important that a business complies with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
This blog post will therefore offer our thoughts on how digital marketing may change:
Zero Clicks
Our marketing company believes that zero click results will increase this year, and your probably now thinking well, what are “zero click searches”- well, let’s say you want to purchase an electric car.
So you search “what is the best-selling electric car” and let’s say just as an example, instead of going on a bike manufactures website, instead in the SERP’s you are told that the best-selling car is made by this manufacturer, and what the model is called, and then you have the source of the information, lets say a famous motoring magazine has published that answer, but the answer is in what’s called a “knowledge panel”- so this means the answer is in the SERP’s.
So, instead of in the past you might have had a car manufacturer being able to work their way to the top of the organic results, now instead of say a car manufacturer you will have let’s say a knowledge panel, and Google taking a paragraph from say a car magazine.
So, this just means that us seo agencies, and digital marketing agencies here in Cardiff now have to work that bit harder, as the business may obtain less visitors, so it will become harder possibly to convert this visitor into paying customers.
What do we mean by this?
Well, with Knowledge Panels the answer to a question is directly within the SERP’s, so the shopper doesn’t need to read what the best-selling electric car is in different countries on say three different websites, instead it will have the answer in the SERP’s.
Obviously, a car manufacturer would much prefer if a shopper landed on their website, and read about their cars, the offers they have available and perhaps a finance deal they are offering on that brand of car.
So, if the answer to say the best-selling electric car was to appear in the SERP’s, then the shopper may bypass a few businesses, and go to whoever sells the best selling electric car, so this is one way that SEO could change more in the future.
More low-quality websites removed
There are some businesses that still do not use white hat seo, a lot of businesses will have been removed through the Google Panda and Penguin updates, yet we believe even more algorithm updates are going to be implemented, which means more businesses removed because they have not used white hat seo.
At our agency we only use white hat methods, yet there are still a lot of businesses that do not use white hat methods.
So one way that we see seo changing is for more and more businesses that flout the rules, such as by building low-quality backlinks to be removed.
However, we also see websites which are too focused on just improving their SEO to be removed as well.
And what do we mean by that?
Well, we think that the best digital marketing agencies will make their clients websites a useful website for the business’s customers.
So for example, lets say that your business sells power tools, the marketing agency may well offer a lot of free DIY advice on their website.
And you may say well, what’s the point in giving away free advice?
Well, its because that business may earn a lot of high-quality backlinks, so the business may rank higher on Google, and that’s because the website offers quality advice in relation to power tools and DIY.
Now if the power tool company was to hire the wrong agency, lets say the marketing company said that the business should write “power tools” and “drills” and “electric screwdrivers” over and over again, and place these words in a repetitive way then this will cause a penalty.
So, its really important that you hire a white hat agency, that’s to say that you hire a company that follows Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
As a business that doesn’t will get hit by an algorithmic penalty, and if they don’t get hit straightaway by a penalty, then they are likely to incur one in the future.
Greater focus on quality
We believe that the businesses that will rank the highest are the businesses that offer the best quality advice. We believe that more and more businesses are going to invest more into offering more advice, and less business promotional blog posts, as this will allow the business to obtain more visitors.
So many businesses have asked company’s to write blog posts for a fee to a set word count.
That’s to say, some businesses have thought that if they keep adding blog posts then this will improve their SEO.
However, as any good agency will tell you, its much better to add quality work, as if the work is “content thin”- meaning it doesn’t really have anything useful to say, its just 500 words say of complete rambling, then its this content marketing that will damage a businesses seo.
And if you were to ask our agency what will change in SEO over next say year, we would say its going to be an even more focused effort to remove businesses that keep posting content thin articles.
That’s to say al lot of businesses, from estate agents through to plumbers may have purchased articles that have been written poorly, that’s to say written to a set word count.
So just as Google clamped down on low-quality link building, we think that Google will also clamp down further on websites that post low-quality content marketing that’s “content thin” as is just aimed at trying to get the website higher for a set amount of keywords.
Now, some reading this may think, well how would Google’s algorithm know if the work is good quality or not?
And there’s a simple answer to that and it involves all of these factors:
· Bounce rate
· Time on site
· Google’s Knowledge Vault
Now, it would take too much time to go into every single point here, but let’s just say this, if the website has a super high bounce rate, that’s to say the majority of the readers are leaving the page in matter of seconds, and are obviously not spending much time on the company’s website, then why would Google keep that business ranked high on Google?
The search engine will obviously want to move up a business which has a low bounce rate, which has a lot of facts on its website which it can check with Google’s Knowledge Vault, then if the website has a high time on-site figure, say over 4 minutes on average, where the other business only has a time on site figure in comparison on average of mere seconds, well, that business is likely to move up and the other website down.
So, this is where Google’s RankBrain could be used, that’s to see which businesses are best answering the query.
Algorithm changes which change where businesses rank more often
So let’s say your business is number one for “Cardiff digital marketing agencies” today, well we believe that if you check it in just a few hours it may change, that’s because we think that where businesses rank will change not just on different days or weeks, we believe that results could change as much as each hour depending on how good a company’s SEO is.
How our digital marketing agency can help:
We can offer:
· Organic and local seo
· WordPress websites
· Content marketing
If your business is based here in Cardiff, and you require a quote, then why not call us?
