As the release of several major search algorithm updates has marked the world of digital marketing there has been growing interest for the evolution of search capabilities and their impact on search engine optimization and search marketing in general. From “basic” keyword recognition to natural language processing, search engines have made huge leaps in their ability to understand both online content and what users want and look for. I believe that understanding where search is going is fundamental if you are going to stay ahead of it.

Related:
• How Search Engines Index and Crawl the Web

The Growing Semantic Web

A lot of search marketers and other industry professionals were utterly taken by surprise every time Google launched one of its colorfully named updates like Caffeine, Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird. However, all these changes in the search landscape are the result of a natural evolution toward a more structured, linked and eventually qualitative web.

The concept of a Semantic Web powered by linked data is definitely not new and according to Tim Berners-Lee, father of the Internet, has been in the making for a long time. When he coined the term some 15 years ago, the semantic web and its goal of “weaving a Web that not only links documents to each other but also recognizes the meaning of the information in those documents” (Frauenfelder, “A Smarter Web, 2001), was certainly a dream. Today, it is happening right before our eyes. Google’s ever more powerful and insightful search products such as the Knowledge Graph are great examples of how far we’ve come. Thanks to linked data, the widespread use of structured markup and growing machine learning capabilities, search engines are becoming capable of understanding and connecting data in a way that enables them to provide progressively more refined answers to queries.

I use Google’s Knowledge Graph as an example as I find it to be among the most advanced forms of data processing, entity recognition and result presentation. To understand how this type of result can be provided, let’s look at the path followed by search bots. Typing a query such as “charles de gaulle” in Google’s search box triggers a search across all of the search engine’s indexed content. Ten years ago, machines would consider keyword occurrences as indicators of a page’s content. Today, they are able to use massive connected datasets (such as DBPedia or Freebase) filled with data as well as semantic markup directly implemented by developers, and combine it to their own language processing abilities to serve results that are much more relevant and useful.

Image: From a web of linked datasets (screenshot from Tim Berners-Lee Ted Talk in February 2009) to a “human-readable” search result (Knowledge Graph screenshot for Charles de Gaulle query).

Machines Are Learning & Search Habits Are Changing

These technological advances, combined with the mobile revolution and the ever-increasing number of internet users, are having a tremendous impact on search habits, or more specifically on how people use search. Where search results used to consist of 10 simple blue links, they are now much more complex, reflecting how people are searching today. The development of voice search and “personal assistants” such as Siri or Google Now means that people are using increasingly more natural, conversational language as well as longer and more precise queries. They also expect results to be more relevant and personalized, providing them with instant answers to their questions.

The progress made in machine-learning areas is quite astonishing with huge developments in speech recognition, computer vision and natural language processing. In an interview from August 2013, Jeff Dean, a Google Research Fellow, discussed his team’s work to develop search engines that are capable of combining both supervised and unsupervised learning capabilities in order to enhance their predictive abilities and understanding of human searches. To put it simply, their goal is to build search engines that are capable of understanding and answering queries that they have never seen before. Before, in order to find specific information, users would have to refine their own searches, for example using additional keywords or variations. In the future, search engines would be able to respond with relevant follow-up questions and operate the search refinement on their own.

This is already happening (to a limited extent) with the auto-suggestion tool in Google. Using semantics and linked data, Google is able to understand that a search for “Charles de Gaulle” could have a variety of intents. Is the user looking for information about the person or the airport? The auto-suggestion tool is already able to refine the search for you (see Google search box screenshot below).

What Does It Mean For SEO Now And Tomorrow?

As we all know, search is rapidly becoming one of the most essential technologies in human lives and is likely to continue evolving to follow increasingly technology-dependent people. What does it mean for search engine optimization professionals? Well first, that they shouldn’t worry. Their industry is not going anywhere but actually likely to become one of the most prominent in years to come. Second, there will be no rest as they will have to keep reinventing and expanding their capabilities as search itself changes.

So what is coming for SEO? 2014 and the few coming years will be dedicated to improving the quality of search and SEOs/digital marketers will need to expand their reach in order to remain ahead of search.

Here some areas that will become more and more important to focus on:

1. Predict what users want and give it to them

Search marketers will need to pay even more attention to users, what they are really looking for, and how, as it will be essential to provide them with the right type of content. For this, you will need to know exactly who you are targeting. Defining business goals, user personas, and content targets is already at the core of search engine optimization and is likely to remain so. This will only be possible if you are able to successfully merge big data analysis with customer-level insights using both large-scale data and actual interactions with people to understand what your audience is looking for.

There are a number of tools available to get large-scale data, one of the most accessible being Google Analytics. Looking at geo-location reports as well as the newer demographics and interests reports can help you identify high-level consumer types with age and gender analysis or interest-based reports. These can provide invaluable insights into your consumer targets, which in turn is essential to develop highly targeted content specific to your audience before they even knew they were going to need or want it.

Image: Google Analytics Screenshot from Demographics & Interests Reports

This is demographics data for a healthcare-related business. At a glance, we can tell that the large majority of visitors is in the over 50-year-old segment of the population (baby boomers). So I can probably assume that they are more interested in learning how to deal with aging or maintaining health and wellness, rather than the next extreme workout fad.

However, it’s easy to get lost in the massive volumes of data that are available to us and lose sight of the person behind it. Engaging in smaller, real life customer surveys and getting to know your community is essential to counterbalance the de-humanizing effect of big data. You can read this great Moz post on Personas to learn more about building consumer targets.

Utilizing this type of data and insights into your target audience can help you understand their needs but also how and what they search for. This in turn is a starting point to define target search entities and understand how they connect. To go back to the healthcare example, if I’m offering an online health platform, chances are that my visitors are interested in a range of related topics and activities including fitness, beauty, healthy cooking, etc. This is the type of connections that search engines will be capable of making by looking at entities, linked data, and users search behaviors/social networks. Integrating these into your online strategy is key to broader appeal and relevance for users.

2. Cross-Platform Engagement & Optimization

With mobile search and use in general quickly taking over desktops and tablets, making sure that all your optimization and content marketing efforts are integrated across all types of platforms is key. This means making sure that your entire online presence should be easily accessible from various types of devices, but also that your story is coherent and consistent from one device to the other.

It will become more and more crucial to understand what people are looking for with this specific query, at that time, in this location and with this device. Using a combination of user agent recognition, geo-localization and search queries, websites should be able to serve specific content to match the user behavior. For example, if the visitor is coming to your website from a mobile device within two miles of your store location, they may be looking for directions/contact information. If they are within 100 feet, they could be using their device as an in-store companion and looking up product specs, prices, etc. Optimized online presences will come from the ability to provide this type of highly personalized experience.

Some fundamental elements to integrate into your mobile online strategy include are mobile sites (with appropriate user agent detection and redirection), dynamic content serving depending on device/screen size, responsive design sites, mobile app development with proper search optimization (structured data markup, promotion, support, updates, etc.), and of course mobile-specific content and local optimization.

Screenshot from desktop and mobile platforms (Visit Carlsbad Tourism)

An important consideration is that search behaviors are not the same depending on the device used and are quickly changing with new advances in technologies. A recent research published by Microsoft found that queries made using mobile devices are longer (on average 3.05 words according to the study) than desktop or tablet queries with higher use of auto-suggestion tools. This makes for more refined queries than basic keyword usage. Tablet search behaviors are also widely different from desktop or mobile with distinct intent, mobility, query length, etc. The type of language used in search is also changing with more natural, conversational searches. Digital optimization and marketing in the future will need to take these elements into consideration in order to provide users with device-targeted content and services.

3. Less & Higher Quality Content

The concept of content shock or fatigue is becoming more prevalent (see Rand Fishkin’s blog for more on this) which means, to put it simply, that users are getting overwhelmed with the amount of content available to them. Marketers, businesses and brands will need to reevaluate and refine their content strategies to focus more on what is really valuable content. It’s not going to be about how much content you are able to produce but about the quality and of course interest that you can garner.

Your content needs to be more detailed, more useful and fresh. According to a recent study, 71% of buyers trust brands that provide useful information without trying to sell something. Content should be there to answer a demand or need and not simply to promote your business. If you are surfing on a trending topic, make sure that your content adds some value to what already exists. Unless you are breaking a story, leave news reporting to news sites (and everybody else) and focus on more analysis, value and in-depth content.

4. Focus on Expertise, Authority & Reputation

Even though Google recently announced that they are reducing author-stamped results to focus on relevancy and quality, authorship is quickly becoming the #1 way to become an expert in your industry and gain exposure for your brand. What will be of essence in the near future is to develop “real” authority, meaning that it won’t be so much about how many people are following you or are in your circles but who, how they talk about you and your overall ability to engage your community.

Of course, since it’s intricately integrated with Google services, Google+ is a great platform to start with. But don’t forget other social media platforms that can give you the ability to build a strong followership. This will mean contributing, engaging, sharing expertise, showcasing value, and more importantly, developing a unique brand voice/personality that will appeal to people. This means using all the features at your disposal (great visuals, inspiring videos, high quality photos, discussions, interactive experiences, etc.) to tell a unique story that people can identify with.

See how the Van Gogh Museum managed to gain over 4 million +1s and their consistent use of great visuals (beautiful paintings, educational videos, cultural events) to maintain engagement and interest.

5. Structured Data, Information Architecture & User Experience

As mentioned earlier, linked data and the move toward a semantic web will heavily rely on how people start publishing their content and sharing their data. The more available data we have, complete with structured markup, the faster we call all work together toward the development of smarter search engines and a higher quality internet in general.

Making sure that you provide machine-readable data, namely through the integration of semantic markup to your code, is the first step toward greater relevancy and enhanced visibility in search. In fact, the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) announced on February 25, that RDF 1.1 (Resource Description Framework) has become an official recommendation, which makes a strong case for the importance of jumping into the semantic web for optimum digital optimization.

Finally, and although we all know it a reminder is always good: every page should be perfect. It means that each single web page should be fully optimized for one topic, feature fantastic user experience, be easy to navigate with clear call to actions, and provide value.

The focus is shifting from the dominating home page to a variety of pages within a site targeting informational or transactional queries, while the home page is becoming essentially brand-centric. Websites will need to be carefully planned to provide sections of information, types of content, and device-centered experiences for all kinds of users and intents. In parallel, brand awareness and expertise development will help position the site as a trusted authority and resource. Your digital optimization strategy will only be successful if these two elements are fully planned out and implemented hand in hand.

Conclusion

I believe that these five elements will be at the core of successful short and long-term search optimization. To summarize, successful SEO will rely on:

• A better understanding of audiences at both global and personal levels
• An optimized user journey across devices
• Less and more user-centered, personalized content
• The development of “real” expertise and authority
• Being proactive in semantic web standards adoption and optimization