Over the past decade, some people have claimed that “SEO is dead.” In reality, only the traditional ways of doing things are dead. This is because this form of marketing is continually changing and it always will be. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of opportunities for anyone who wants to successfully market their business in this way. There are a few things you’ll need to know along the way though.
Nobody is an “Expert”
Most people view SEO professionals as being trustworthy, confident, knowledgeable, and dedicated. However, this is usually a façade since most of these professionals are too busy to work on their own self-confidence. In fact, some of these professionals will even go so far as to tell you that they’re not really an expert – they just make things up as they move along. When you stop and think about it, this makes a lot of sense since there’s no concrete roadmap available here. Practitioners have simply learned how to adapt to whatever gets thrown at them. This is proven over the years as they’ve been told that implementing various tactics will increase a website’s rankings and visibility but ultimately these tactics don’t hold true to their promises.
Old Strategies are Dead – New Challenges Lie Ahead
- Although promises obviously hold no weight, there are still some important parts of SEO that marketers need to pay attention to, including:
- Google has introduced a variety of SERP features over the past two years. This has resulted in organic results getting fewer clicks.
- It’s getting harder to find new organic results for certain queries. This is why it’s becoming common to see a SERP that only has two ads, one Knowledge panel, related searches, and a total of 6 websites. (In the past, there were always at least 10 available.)
- A growing number of search queries are featuring snippets in their SERPs. Marketers believe this will grow as Google continues to revamp their featured snippets and implement new ones too.
- Recently Google increased the length of meta descriptions from 150 to 300 characters. This may pose a threat to SERPs in the near future.
- Google properties now own a large part of the SERPs in niches like travel, shopping, and videos.
- Voice search is on the rise today. Marketers believe that it will consist of about 50% of searches by 2020.
Seizing New Opportunities
Even with all of these potential threats, SEO is still a good way to invest your marketing budget. After all, search volume continues to grow even though people are clicking on less of these searches. There’s also no doubt that Google is still the top source of traffic online today.
With these things in mind, there are some opportunities you’ll want to take advantage of, including:
- Featured snippets have lowered organic click-through rates, but if you get this position you’ll also get a lot more traffic – including a massive amount of voice search opportunities.
- Google’s “People Also Ask” results are expanding. It’s important for websites to be optimized for these questions.
- It’s important to implement AMP regardless of what type of website you have. This will help increase traffic.
While many parts of SEO remain the same, others continually evolve as Google learns how to give its visitors the best search results possible. It’s important for your business to keep up. Since you’re already doing a lot, you’ll want to hire a marketing firm with proven results. I SEO U will help your business adapt and stay ahead of its competition. With over 20 years of experience we’ll help you seize the moment and bring great returns to your business.