THE TRUTH ABOUT SEARCH 2.0

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Deirdre Reynolds
5 years ago
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1 THE TRUTH ABOUT SEARCH 2.0

2 SEO A WORLD OF PERPETUAL CHANGE Twelve months ago we launched the Truth About Search in a bid to simplify exactly what is going on in the world of search. Within the last year much has changed but there are an equal number of key issues which are as important now as they were then. We felt the time was right to build on the insights and authoritative commentary we created with the Truth About Search, with a second edition, The Truth About Search 2.0. One key thing that has changed is our name. Last time we were operating under the banner Lakestar McCann, having been acquired in 2012 by McCann Worldgroup. That acquisition is now complete and we ve been fully integrated into the McCann family, which means this year s report is published under the McCann Connected banner. McCann Connected is a top 50 UK digital agency according to Econsultancy s 2015 report and we re 140 people strong, spanning the entire paid, owned and earned landscapes including content production. McCann Connected was created to help our clients make sense of the complex journeys consumers make and develop marketing solutions without borders or bias and, by doing so, help consumers connect with brands, technology and ultimately each other. We believe the truths contained in this short summary document will resonate with you and help you make sense of the environment in which you are operating and maybe even act as a catalyst for a conversation about how we can help you address your digital marketing challenges. I look forward to speaking with and hopefully meeting you in the months ahead. Neil Yeomans Search Director McCann Connected

TRUTH 1 COMMERCIAL INTENT ISN T ENOUGH ANYMORE, MICRO-MOMENTS DEFINE HOW WE SEARCH Typically, search marketers look at keywords as being informational, navigational, transactional and locational in

People don t have a static browsing experience anymore, they experience the web in terms of micro-moments it s in their pocket or by their side at all times, ready to be picked up in an instant.

3 TRUTH 1 COMMERCIAL INTENT ISN T ENOUGH ANYMORE, MICRO-MOMENTS DEFINE HOW WE SEARCH Typically, search marketers look at keywords as being informational, navigational, transactional and locational in nature. These define the type of search query, but don t define what the searcher is doing. Mobile has changed everything. People don t have a static browsing experience anymore, they experience the web in terms of micro-moments it s in their pocket or by their side at all times, ready to be picked up in an instant. Google defines micro-moments as being: want-to-know-moments, want-to-go moments, want-to-do moments, and want-to-buy moments. It is Google s way of progressing ZMOT, or Zero Moment of Truth. A zero moment is the point at which a person develops a need, which they go on to research online before making a decision. Critically, it doesn t matter who is selling the desired product online at this point the internet empowers consumers to learn more about a potential product they want to buy it is pre-shopping. For brands to win in today s space, they need to be visible during these millions of micro-moments, before people have even searched for traditional money keywords or seen the brand s products and services.

TRUTH 2 WEB DEVELOPERS ARE LOSING TOUCH WITH SEARCH (AGAIN) We spent years advocating web standards and avoiding web technologies such as JavaScript and Flash to present content because the search

4 TRUTH 2 WEB DEVELOPERS ARE LOSING TOUCH WITH SEARCH (AGAIN) We spent years advocating web standards and avoiding web technologies such as JavaScript and Flash to present content because the search engines couldn t crawl them. We got clients to drop their splash pages and have a real homepage, and we got clients to use our SEO Guidelines for Web Developers framework to ensure that SEO featured at the heart of web development. Things became good, developers listened and issues were resolved. Fast forward to 2016, and Google is much better at crawling and rendering JavaScript-heavy sites, but there s been a huge uptake in developers creating websites that are heavily JavaScript dependent again using AngularJS or other JavaScript MVC frameworks to create an application rather than good old static HTML. What can look pretty on the front end can be invisible to the search engines; technical SEO expertise is more vital than it s been in a long time, because the web development rules have changed.

5 TRUTH 3 GOOGLE S ALGORITHMS ARE LEARNING FOR THEMSELVES Intent can be very fuzzy to an algorithm. For years search engines have tried to move beyond simple keyword matching to understand how humans search. You may be surprised to hear that of the 3.5 billion plus queries processed by Google each day, 15%, or an incredible 525 million per day, have never been seen before. Enter RankBrain it is a machine-learning/artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, which is able to make educated guesses about what a search query means. Better still, it can learn from its mistakes. Keywords are still critical to a search marketing campaign s success, but the correlation between keyword targeting and ranking has been decreasing in recent years search engines are much better now at going beyond keywords in a search query, and understanding human intent. They re getting very good at doing this for queries, however, the search engines still have armies of quality raters, who trawl the search engine results, classifying results based on relevance, quality of site, etc. Needless to say, it is only a matter of time before machine learning and AI are up to the task of doing the quality rating, and getting better as it goes along. This all signifies a great step forward for the image of SEO, because future-proof strategies are based on improving the user experience and quality of a website, using natural language and a deep understanding of the audience to drive search growth.

6 TRUTH 4 ALGORITHM CHANGES ARE NO MATCH FOR SOLID TECHNICAL SEO Each year, people put out their industry predictions in search. There s a lot of chatter around mobile/app indexing in 2016 and of course the usual Panda (site quality) and Penguin (link spamming) updates. These are all important topics, search is always evolving, but there is a refreshing constant how technical SEO is delivered. Solid processes built over decades of real-world experience in this area just don t go out of date, if you re doing the right thing. We have undertaken huge taxonomy projects, opening out highly specific category pages to the search engines, years ago and it still drives results today. This is because we have always looked at information architecture and web accessibility as fundamentally linked to technical SEO best practice. Search isn t just about finding the next new trend, it s about understanding what has worked, is working now, and will work into the future.

TRUTH 5 EVERYTHING AND EVERYWHERE IS CONNECTED From the internet of things and the connected home through to wearable tech, we ve never been as closely linked to the internet on a day-to-day basis.

7 TRUTH 5 EVERYTHING AND EVERYWHERE IS CONNECTED From the internet of things and the connected home through to wearable tech, we ve never been as closely linked to the internet on a day-to-day basis. From a technological perspective, web analytics can tie together multiple user journeys, across multiple devices, offering an end-to-end view of customer behaviour online. Search isn t just about SEO or PPC, it is about an understanding of how everything else around these channels can directly influence them. Search is about equipping anyone from web developers, to marketing managers, to PRs, merchandisers, copywriters and countless other roles with the tools they need to influence and understand the different micro-moments that prompt someone to research online. We re called McCann Connected for a reason. And that s because our search teams, UI designers, UX specialists, content producers, Conversion Rate Optimisation teams and social media specialists work without borders or bias to deliver connected customer journeys for our clients.

realised offering our thoughts on such a

booklet made us realise that many of the

incredibly broad spectrum of organisations

together in this booklet have been built on

different market sectors and with countless

We are confident they will raise questions

opposite and we d be delighted to share case

applying our thinking to these and other

8 THE COMPANY WE KEEP When we created our first The Truth About Search booklet, we realised offering our thoughts on such a broad scale may have been considered to be quite a bold claim. The reaction we received to our first booklet made us realise that many of the issues we touched on are faced by an incredibly broad spectrum of organisations and are not just confined to the clients we work with. That said, the insights we have brought together in this booklet have been built on the experience of working across numerous different market sectors and with countless different businesses. We are confident they will raise questions about how your business is approaching search. Some of the brands we work with are detailed opposite and we d be delighted to share case studies with you that show how we re applying our thinking to these and other brands we work with. We hope the truths that follow will provoke thought and discussion within your organisation and among your colleagues. They may even prompt you to give us a call for a point of view on your business challenges.

9 CONTACT DETAILS GARY WILKES NEW BUSINESS MANAGER M: +44(0) E:

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power up your business SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION) SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION) SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION) The visibility of your business when a customer is looking for services that you offer is important. The first port of call for most people