On Sep 26, 2018, AIS Media CEO, Thomas Harpointner, joined an esteemed panel of search marketing industry veterans at ‘FoundConf’ in Columbus, OH. Thomas draws on over 20 years of digital marketing expertise to share his unique perspective on the future of search marketing.
Technical innovations and shifts in search engine user experience present both challenges and opportunities. Buyers will continue to migrate towards faster and easier ways to find what they’re searching for. Innovations that reduce friction present exciting opportunities to capture market share.
Marketers who recognize and successfully leverage these opportunities stand to gain an early mover advantage. Marketers who fail to adapt could suffer frustration and high cost of trying to catch up.
What are the key innovations you need to know about to help you defend your current rankings and increase your positions? What emerging technologies are shaping the way marketers reach their target audience?
To answer these questions, we asked our in-house search marketing experts at AIS Media to compile their thoughts on “The Future of Search” – from the perspective of those who live and breathe it every day.
“Quality will become the most important component for higher rankings. We will see black hat techniques become mostly obsolete in the next five years. Why? Google’s RankBrain machine learning will make things like content relevance, context, and value more than dominate ranking factors. Furthermore, Google continues to improve how it analyzes visual content, from videos to infographics. Visual content will have to focus more on search marketing by optimizing keyword targeting, descriptions, tags, and video length, while also maintaining high quality, sharable content.”
– Mary Early, Search Specialist, AIS Media
“With the expansion of AI, the future of search will be less about targeting specific keywords, and more about matching a searcher’s intent. As people begin to use their voice assistants more often than their computers, they won’t be going right to Google and typing in a few keywords to find the answer to their question. They will ask their devices and the devices will answer without ever once entering a search engine. Great content still needs to exist, but it won’t be as heavily targeted to keywords as it will be to answering the searcher’s question.”
– Stacey Selz, Content Development Lead, AIS Media
“Over the next few years, we’re going to see a focus on technical SEO, born out of necessity. As new methods of search arise – voice search, AI assisted search, new mobile search developments – good technical implementation will be necessary to navigate these new waters. If new advances like blockchain technology or augmented reality cause a change in search algorithms, they will demand technical compliance to maintain or gain rankings.”
– Gordon Murphy, Digital Analyst, AIS Media
“I predict businesses that will be most successful in the future are doing the right things now to prepare. They’re producing the types of content that suit their target audience, and are rewarded with engagement, backlinks, and ultimately, rankings. No matter how search engines change over time, maximizing exposure is dictated through rankings. Having a content strategy in place today is the best way to build and defend rankings in the future.”
– Sam Saidman, Client Success Manager, AIS Media
If your search marketing strategy is not built for the future, your market share may be at risk. We are able to help you plan for the future. Give us a call us 404.751.1043 or contact us online to learn more about how we can help.
