OK, users, journey, search, verbs – got it. Users are important and many of them start with a search, so search is important. But why is SEO important? Isn’t SEO just a developer thing? I heard there was a plugin for it. Can’t Google and Bing just figure out my website?
We started this story with a Gates quote, but it was Google rather than Microsoft that took the philosophy to heart.
Things like Hummingbird, Panda, Penguin, RankBrain, Mobilegeddon, Possum, Pigeon, entities, and AMP essentially have all been attempts by Google to adapt its search algorithm to move from words to actions – and help users accomplish whatever tasks they may be focused on – but they aren’t that simple to understand.
SEO has come a long way from the days of meta data. Sure, there’s a lot of best practices involved that “should” be covered by the development team or a plugin (or built into a framework *cough cough* angular, react, I’m looking at you guys) – but often they aren’t.
Today’s websites are more application than they are a website, and applications come with lots of fancy features that don’t always play nicely with search engines (hi again, angular and react.)
Good SEO Today
A good SEO can not only focus on content, but also help:
• Navigate through multiple versions of the same page. • Solve tech issues that render content invisible to search engines. • With proper server settings. • Integrate with social media, content, creative, user experience, paid search, or analytics. • Find ways to speed up your site.
A good SEO professional not only understands the searcher, but the competitive landscape as well. It isn’t enough to just understand the user’s task, search marketers need to understand what other options are in the marketplace, and how they can fill the gap to provide a better solution for the user’s task.
We’ve come a long way from keywords on pages to full-service marketing. SEO pros get to wear multiple hats as they help connect development, information architecture, user experience, content strategy, marketing, social, and paid media teams. It’s a game of give and take – all in an attempt to create something that works for search engines and users.
There are plenty of cautionary tales about things as simple sounding as a site redesign or new CMS system causing a site’s traffic to drop or disappear leaving businesses scrambling. The simple fact of the matter is, most website changes these days affect SEO – and only by including SEO up front and throughout the project can a business hope to see positive results.
So Why Is SEO Important?
Search matters because users matter.
As technology continues to evolve, SEOs will constantly deal with new ways of searching, new devices to search on, and new types of searches (like voice search, or searches done by my oven) but the one thing that will remain constant is why people search. The verbs aren’t going away.
One day we might be overrun by AI or upload our consciousness into the singularity – but until then we’ll still need to solve problems and accomplish tasks – and some form of search will always be involved in that.
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