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Personalization and Universal Search Engine Optimization
Direct Marketing News
In their quest to provide high quality search results, on an ongoing basis, major search engines are trying to better understand their searchers intents, interests and search habits. Google has been leading the way by offering personalized search results based on your past queries.
There are two main ways to track people's actions and behaviours. First, utilizing cookies associated with each computer. However, this approach is not very accurate and scalable. Second approach is to get users log in to an account where you can track them more accurately and efficiently.
When Google launched GMail as part of its product mix, many people saw it just as another free web based e-mail platform which has very cool features and a huge mail storage capacity. However, this was Google's first major step toward making search personalization a reality.
Shortly after introducing GMail, Google came up with the concept of Google Account which could be used as your authentication path to all products/services offered by Google. Different products that spring out of Google Lab or are added to the mix through business acquisitions help Google build a diverse user base who frequently log in to their Google Account.
Google can incorporate its users' search history as a variable/lever in its algorithm and provide personalized search results. Even though there are so many obstacles in generating an accurate single view of all searchers (e.g., business account vs. personal account, sharing the same account, shared computer), this is a great step in the right direction.
Impact of personalization on SEO
It has been argued that search personalization spells the death of search engine optimization as it is going to be virtually impossible to know how you rank on each and every user's search results.In my opinion, personalization not only does not hurt SEO, but it also makes a comprehensive and aggressive SEO strategy a necessity. Without a doubt, it makes optimizing your site for search engines more challenging. However, with any challenge comes an opportunity for those who learn how to adapt. To succeed you need to get more creative and take a 360? approach to your SEO initiatives.
Before I get into some of the old SEO techniques that are now golden rules, let's have a look at Google Universal Search and how it might be incorporated with personalized search.
Google Universal Search
Google recently launched its ambitious and long anticipated project: Universal Search. According to Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products and User Experience, this project which was first introduced as an idea by her in 2001, is Google`s approach to bring down the walls between their various vertical search properties and provide users with a more diverse and robust search results.To better understand the implications of this initiative by Google, first we need to have a closer look at the various verticals Google owns. Some of these verticals (e.g., code search, patent search) are very niche and might not affect many businesses. However, other Google search verticals such as local, news, finance, blog, video and image search are more main stream.
As a result a comprehensive and all inclusive SEO approach which used to be considered as a best practice is now considered a necessity. Web owners cannot anymore rely only on optimizing their text content and links. They should produce and optimize images, videos, local listings, blogs and news.
Optimization for Personalized Universal Search
Now as a flash back consider the fact that Google is going to incorporate personalized search into its Universal Search. This highlights the importance of three strategies:1. Being Everywhere Your Audience Eyeballs Are
It is important to make sure you have a strong presence wherever your audience are. Some of the tactics you can take into consideration are:
Utilizing the Long Tail of Search
By implementing the long tail strategy, you will make sure that you target the majority of possible phrases that your audience might use to search for your products and services. Because it is usually easier to get higher rankings for the long tail keywords, you make sure that you reach a large number of diverse audiences.By gaining high ranking and clicks for a large number of keyword phrases, you will get the chance to influence the future results for more general queries for these long tail visitors due to the personalization effect.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
In order to provide more accurate results based on the searchers' intents, search engines are using LSI technologies. By keeping LSI concepts in mind when doing keyword research and writing content, website owners can help search engines understand their site more accurately and return their site as the relevant result. This will increase the Click through Rate for your search listings, which in turn helps listings in the long term in a personalized search world. Furthermore, LSI will help you rank high for a wider variety of keyword phrases which can help expand your reach.Adding Images and Videos to the Mix
Even though from the early days of SEO, it was recommended to optimize images and videos for search engines by selecting the right file name, size and format, they used to be ignored during optimization process. With the presence of Google Universal Search and the growth of social media and popularity of programs such as YouTube and Flicker, not only is overlooking the optimization of images and videos not an option anymore but also you have to take a proactive approach towards marketing these media.Communicating with Audience through Blogs
In addition to providing you the tools to communicate with your audience directly, blogs help you generate valuable keyword rich content for your site. By keeping your blog interesting, interactive and informative, you can attract new visitors and keep the current ones engaged and keep them coming back to you. As Google incorporates its blog search into its universal search, the importance of blogs will be even further accentuated in the coming years.Google Local
Google local/maps was among the first verticals which was incorporated to the Google SERPs. Given the fact that results from local search are usually placed on top of the organic results, it is vital for companies with local presence to optimize their listings in Google Local to make sure they find their way to the top of the search engine results.Google News
Similar to Google Local results, contents on Google News also find their way to the top of the search engine. So, it is important for organizations to make sure their newsworthy content and press releases are optimized and distributed so that they would reach search engines' large audience.Viral Campaigns
It is crucial to put your creative hat on and come up with viral campaign ideas that transcend your reach from your current visitors to new audience. Social media and user generated content are great ways to generate hypes, word of mouth, brand awareness, back links and targeted traffic. As a successful viral campaign can have a huge reach, it can guarantee your success in a personalized search environment.
2. Being Persuasive Enough to Attract Them
Even though it is crucial to make sure you are everywhere your audience are, your will not succeed unless your presence is relevant and compelling enough so that they notice and select your listing instead of those of your competitors. Below I cover some of the strategies you can use to increase your CTR.
Title and Meta Description Tags
I talked about being persuasive enough to lure visitors to your site. Even though it is important to have a high ranking on search results, it is more important to make sure your Title and Meta tags are relevant and enticing enough to encourage searchers clicking on your listings.You will get an edge over your competitors if searchers select your site as their destination. Because you are already selected by those searchers once you will have a better chance of getting high ranking for their future queries.
Videos First Frame
Before a video gets played, audience will only see the first frame. No matter how interesting and brilliant your video is, unless your opening frame is an exciting, informative and inviting one, the chances of getting viewed will be slim.To make sure search engines understand what the video is all about it is important to use keyword reach and a descriptive file name and caption for the video.
Search engines are going to use the popularity of videos as an indication of their importance. So, after creating an appealing video, it is important to upload it to YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video and other video sharing sites. Then try to create viral campaigns around it to make sure more people view, tag and recommend it.
3. Being Sticky Enough to Keep Them Coming Back
It is great to generate new traffic to your site. However, as it is usually more expensive to acquire a new customer than keep one, it is important to make sure that you take advantage of your traffic by making your site content rich, user friendly, searchable and efficient.
The key to success is creating a great user experience that encourages visitors come back. Time is luxury and visitors are usually in a rush online. They want what they are looking for right away. If they can't find it, they will leave your site and find it somewhere else. So, don't waste your visitors time by making them think!
The site structure should be designed in a way that makes sense to your visitors. It should contain different scents based on various personas to guide visitors through the conversion funnel.
Internal Search
In a mortar and brick business, the conversion rate is anywhere between 20-80% (e.g., a general bookstore such as Indigo has a conversion rate around 30%). As you may appreciate this is much higher than any online store. This is mostly due to two main reasons: First, competition is one click away and secondly, there is no salesperson online who help people find what they are looking for.To make sure your site is self serve and has a high conversion rate and visitors can easily find what they need, especially in sites with large number of products and pages, provide visitors with a search box. An internal search engine has two advantages: First, it makes sure you do not lose a customer because they cannot find the information they came to your site for in the first place. Secondly, you can analyze the search queries people use on your internal search engine to optimize your site's content, design and linking structure.
Bookmarks
To make sure that your audience find their way back to your site and optimize your site for the personalized search, make sure you take advantage of book marking and social tagging tools such as Google Bookmarks, del.icio.us and Digg.Link Bait
If you provide useful, interesting and viral content on your site people will love it and link to it. As a result, you will get new traffic, page rank and positive points for personal search.Universal Search and Web Analytics
I have been advocating the use of Web Analytics for the last few years. With so many elements entering the mix, it is as important as ever to utilize Web Analytics to understand which strategies, media and content works best for you and which ones need further optimization.Search Personalization and PPC
Personalization should not be viewed only in the silo of organic search. It can have major impact on all aspects of the web.Personalization in search is designed for making organic and algorithmic search results more relevant. However, natural search does not exist in isolation. It coexists with paid results. As a result search personalization can affect PPC market as well.
Search engines have been trying to make their paid results as relevant as possible through introducing factors such as Quality Score and Quality Index in their paid ranking algorithms. As a result SEO and SEM best practices are getting closer and closer. Now a well optimized page can help you improve your quality score, reduce your cost per click and increase your return on investment.
For years there had been a myth that paid search advertising can help your organic ranking. However, this concept has been denied by search engines and SEO experts including myself. This is due to the fact that organic and paid engines use different algorithms, crawlers and data centres.
What I am going to bring up here is going to be a little bit controversial. I would like to argue that with the new developments in search algorithms and introduction of personalized search this myth is becoming a reality!
I still believe that organic and paid results are using two different algorithms. However, paid traffic can help your organic traffic in few ways:
- You send traffic to your site that cannot find your site organically. This audience might find your site interesting and
- link to it - this will help you increase your page rank
- bookmark it - this will bring you repeat visitors and help you with personalized search
- recommend it to their friends - this will attract new visitors to your site
- Increase document traffic - this is a relatively new factor in calculating a document's Page Rank.
Personalized Search and the Rise of Branding
Personalized search can make the branding exercises even more important. We all know that brand names usually create the highest click through rates and conversion rates due to the trust factor.
If you develop a strong brand in your niche, you will make sure that you get higher CTR and attract more traffic and generate loyal customers. These loyal customers will act as your raving fans who bookmark your site, recommend it to their friends and talk about you in social networks. These all translate to a higher search ranking in a personalized search environment.
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