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The State Of Organic Search (SEO) Going Into 2015
The document discusses the state of organic search as it transitions from 2014 to 2015, highlighting the significant changes in SEO practices due to algorithm updates. It features insights from industry experts on the importance of creating valuable content, diversifying acquisition channels, and understanding data-driven strategies to succeed in the evolving digital marketing landscape. The overarching theme emphasizes that building a strong brand and user experience will be crucial for success in 2015.
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The State Of Organic Search (SEO) Going Into 2015
- 1. The State Of Organic Search Going into 2015 2014 has been a turbulent year in SEO, there have been a record number of changes, the SERP’s have changed in every vertical and the most recent updates have been some of the most discussed updates across social media and forums. The following article asks six questions to some of the best minds in organic marketing and SEO, the article provides insights into what happened in 2014 and what they predict will happen in 2015 including a number of recommendations for you to consider or implement in the coming months.
- 2. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Who Was Involved: Agency Heads Simon Penson -‐ Founder and MD Zazzle Media | @simonpenson ...................................... 3 Kevin Gibbons -‐ MD of Blueglass | @kevgibbo ..................................................................... 4 Barry Adams -‐ Founder @ Polemic Digital | @badams ....................................................... 6 Matt Beswick -‐ Director of Hidden Pixel | @mattbeswick ................................................... 8 Heads of Departments Paddy Moogan -‐ paddymoogan.com | @paddymoogan .................................................... 10 Stacey Cavanagh MacNaught -‐ Search Director @ Techmark, http://blogsession.co.uk/ | @staceycav ........................................................... 11 Justin Butcher -‐ Head of Digital Marketing at Return On Digital | @justin_butcher .......... 12 Paul Rogers -‐ Founder of http://www.paulnrogers.com/ | @paulnrogers ........................ 15 Michael Briggs -‐ Head of SEO at Skyscanner | @michaelkbriggs ....................................... 16 Stephen Kenwright -‐ Head of Search at Branded3 | @stekenwright ................................. 18 Independent Consultant Carl Hendy -‐ Digital Consultant | http://www.carlhendy.com | @carlhendy .................... 20 SEO Tool Manufactures Dan Sharp -‐ Founder of Screaming Frog | @screamingfrog ............................................... 22 Patrick Hathaway -‐ Director URL Profiler | @HathawayP ................................................. 23 Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 2
- 3. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Agency Heads Simon Penson -‐ Founder and MD Zazzle Media | @simonpenson With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates in 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? It’s a cliche but ‘good marketing.’ The web is now a mature mass media channel and the only way to truly build for the long term is to get the entire marketing mix right and create real value for your audience. Do that and they will follow you. Content, clearly, sits at the heart of all of that. Forget chasing the algorithm, find, understand and help your clients, customers or audience. the rest follows. Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? Education. Helping marketing teams to understand the above and stop measuring purely Cost per Acquisition metrics. That kind of KPI drives the wrong, short-‐termist, behaviour from search agencies. It is about working together on a long term plan that measures a host of different metrics to build an audience and digital brand presence of real value. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? Plan early and in detail. Put content at the heart of your strategy and use data to inform what that looks like. I spoke about this recently at Searchlove in San Diego and you can see one of our processes for doing that here. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? A move away from pure head term focus is going to be difficult to ‘sell’ in but is critical. Hummingbird is changing the way results are delivered and we see much more success in long tail traffic now. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? Probably the above! More traffic for those with great domains that put content front and centre and ensure it is aligned to search opportunity. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? Improve the consistency of results in different niches. Some are much better than others and no one likes inconsistency! Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 3
- 4. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates on 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? There's been more changes over the last 12-‐18 months, than I can probably remember over the previous 10 years! Whether that's pandas, penguins, pigeons or hummingbirds -‐ they've all had a common theme of fighting manipulation and anything which looks like an SEO footprint. It was never going to be a smooth ride for Google, but that doesn't mean it isn't the right way forward. One good thing that's come out of this is that we no longer have to ask the question of whether content is the right way to go or not, we have no choice but to build real brands in order to succeed. Where we're focusing at BlueGlass and believe will be most important aspect towards success in 2015 is in data-‐driven content -‐ I'll explain more in the next answer! The challenge for many has been because SEO has become too broad for one person now, and in the traditional sense I see the role being SEO strategists -‐ supported by content production and outreach/promotion specialists. We've structured our team in this way for a while now -‐ as the client lifecycle demands that you are good in each of these key areas (strategy, production and promotion) -‐ but they're all completely different skillsets and people. I've also trained a lot of large brands over the last 12 months on content marketing -‐ and the one common theme is that they are growing their digital teams rapidly, but there's a lack of structure behind where they are recruiting. Having the right mix of people in the team will be essential for anyone, brands or agencies, to get results in 2015. Otherwise they risk being over-‐taken by more agile and lean/nimble teams who can move quicker. The key starting point for all of this, as I mentioned in my last answer, is data. Strategy should always start with data, without this you can't analyse past performance, marketplace trends, or link profiles etc -‐ and more importantly you can't make key business decisions on how to best move forward. Data isn't just about being measurable either -‐ it's no co-‐incidence that data-‐driven content is where I always see the best success. Brands are now story-‐tellers and to be credible/trusted they need to based this on fact, data and insight that hasn't been seen before. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? My advice would be to build an audience and don't rely on Google. If you look at the sites that are winning in Google, they are the ones who are often the biggest brands -‐ look at Tripadvisor or MoneySuperMarket as an example. They want to capture as much traffic as possible from organic search, of course, and are very good at doing so -‐ but once you're on their site, they'd rather you remembered them and came back directly next time. That avoids the risk of you finding another competitor along the way, so I would advise you setup your call-‐to-‐actions around signing up for a newsletter, following on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, downloading an app etc.. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Kevin Gibbons -‐ MD of Blueglass | @kevgibbo Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 4
- 5. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard That way rather than going to Google to find your next holiday, you go straight to TripAdvisor -‐ likewise for MoneySupermarket with insurance. From a content perspective this is hugely important too. You want to make your biggest link building tool your publish button, so if you're continually adding to your readership and subscriber base the audience is always growing. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? Dealing with ever-‐changing algorithm changes has been the biggest theme of 2014. But one thing I wrote about earlier in the year was the influence of Google vertical search and marketers now have to consider how Google may be a more direct competitor with their own properties taking traffic away from them in the future. This is becoming an increasingly important threat towards a lot of brands -‐ it's worth ensuring that you can set your brand up to a) maximise as much of this as you can via schemas, rich snippet markups and the knowledge graph, and b) build a brand that your customers will prefer to visit rather than typing in a query into Google! Other key areas to look out for include, continued rollout of SSL on domains, mobile search experience optimisation, increase in importance of wearable tech and notifications, semantic search and sentiment analysis -‐ each could be a new topic in itself! Plus I'm sure they'll be new penguins, pandas, platypuses etc to keep us on our toes. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? Biggest prediction for organic marketing, is probably for greater integration with paid. Paid search has always been much more measurable than organic, but the growth of social advertising is huge -‐ especially given the targeting options available to marketers. Likewise content distribution channels provide a great reach to really push content much further -‐ so as content become bigger and more creative, I'd expect/hope to see the paid budgets shift more towards the promotion of campaigns. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? I do believe Google are on a good track with improving the quality of search results -‐ it's an unenviable task being a referee in any sport, that's essentially what Google is to businesses online. But SEO is now very much about building a strong user experience for people. That may sound obvious, but it hasn't always been that way -‐ and search engines are now secondary towards engaging with and building your audience, which is how it absolutely should be. I wrote an article 18 months ago on how I saw human engagement becoming Google's biggest ranking factor -‐ this is something I'd certainly expect to see improve in more so over the next 12 months. You can learn a lot, if not more, from Google's failures too -‐ and authorship would have to be placed in that category. However, it does show you what Google are trying to achieve, by ranking content by popularity and author authority, not just where it was published. So authorship might be dead, but Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 5
- 6. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard publishing high quality content from authority writers certainly isn't -‐ and if you were only doing this for SEO in the first place, you were doing it wrong anyway. Barry Adams -‐ Founder @ Polemic Digital | @badams With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates in 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? First of all you need to have a product or service that Google can't (easily) steal or copy. Increasingly we see Google wanting to be the end-‐destination, rather than the gateway, which is why they're using websites' content to provide answers directly in their search results (knowledge graph), or building rival services of their own (Google Maps, Flights, Hotel Finder, Credit Card comparison, etc). So make sure you have something that Google can't (yet) take over, otherwise you'll find yourself out of business very quickly. Secondly, you need to diversify your acquisition channels. Even if you have a unique product, there's no guarantee Google will show you in its search results. Organic search is likely to be your biggest traffic driver for the foreseeable future, but if Google can't take over what you do they'll damn sure try to force you to buy AdWords ads. So don't rely too much on a single traffic source. Diversify your digital marketing channels, and do them all as well as you can. Aside from preventing yourself from becoming obsolete when Google tries to move in to your niche, your biggest challenge is to do effective SEO whilst steering clear of Google penalties and algorithmic filters. There has always been a conflict between what works to drive organic visiblity, and what Google recommends you do. In recent years this conflict ignited into full-‐on war when Google started putting the onus of cleaning up its search results firmly on webmasters rather than on its own webspam team, and they've been liberally handing out penalties ever since. The problem is of course that effective SEO often breaks Google's guidelines. So, to avoid getting penalised, you have to be smart about what you do, how you do it, and the tracks that you leave for Google to discover. That'll be your biggest challenge. I also expect Google will keep shifting the goalposts, and tactics that work fine now will be re-‐ designated as spam at some point down the line. Preparing for that can also be quite challenging, and you'll need contingency plans for when that happens. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 6
- 7. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard As per the first point, diversification is key. I'm a SEO guy through and through, and I'm advising my clients to not rely purely on SEO. Yes, organic search is and will remain the strongest driver of growth for nearly all websites out there, but due to the increasingly adversarial attitude Google is adopting towards the web, you can't rely on organic search indefinitely. Google wants you to buy ads, so you better suck it up and start an AdWords campaign. When those paid visits arrive on your website, work hard to convert them into customers; use CRO and UX to make your website deliver tangible results for your business. And when you've won a customer, do whatever you can to keep them: use email marketing and social media effectively to retain business so you don't have to keep paying Google for the privilege of sending you new customers. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change in 2015? I'm not sure if 2015 is the year, but I'm convinced that in the near future Google will start using Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 7 brand sentiment as an alternative to link-‐based metrics for its ranking algorithms. A positive brand sentiment, as evidenced through positive customer reviews and mentions online, will become a crucial factor for businesses that want to gain visibility in search. If and when this is rolled out, expect to see a massive shift in search visibility for some major brands, as well as for many smaller players. Sentiment analysis is however a notoriously difficult nut to crack, but I'm seeing all kinds of interesting technologies appear in this space, so it's definitely something to keep an eye on and prepare for. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? See point 4. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? If I were Google I'd make damn sure I recognised my place in the online ecosystem. Google has broken the unofficial agreement they had with the web: that they could take websites' content to show in their search results, and in return they would send relevant traffic back to those websites. Now Google believes that they shouldn't be the middleman, but instead act as final destination, using whatever means at their disposal to keep people on their own sites so they can harvest more personal data and show more ads. Google still takes all your content, but increasingly it doesn't send traffic to your site but wants you to pay for it through AdWords advertising. It's a destructive development for the rest of the web, causing great harm to the online businesses whose websites Google used for building its empire the first place. Google needs to realise its position in the ecosystem and stop chasing after profit maximisation to the detriment of everything and everyone else.
- 8. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Matt Beswick -‐ Director of Hidden Pixel | @mattbeswick With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates on 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? Although the changes have been high profile, I actually think that 2014 has been fairly quiet when you compare it to the previous couple of years. Panda and Penguin pretty much changed the entire landscape over a couple of months but since then we’ve seen an evolution, and I think that’s going to continue. The ‘bar’ is lowering, so you can’t get away with as dodgy now as you could even at the start of last year, and that’s going to continue. Quality is definitely key to success now and it’s getting far more difficult to fake that. I also think we’re going to see Google putting much more focus into Mobile. This was something talked about at length at SearchLove this year, in particular by Will Critchlow (slide deck here) and if you look at user habits there’s definitely an accelerating shift away from desktop. Technology. More specifically, identifying where your business sits, and how to utilise the right technology to get your message to the right audience. Google have shown over the last few years that their problems suddenly become ours, even if it should really be their job to implement the technical solution. Disavow and hreflang are just a couple of examples of this -‐ the latter being incredibly difficult to get right even for someone who knows what they’re doing. Add multi platform into the mix and you’ve got a bucket of rel alternate / http header / redirect nightmares before you’ve even considered whether your content sits on desktop, tablet, mobile, or a mixture of the three. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? If all you’re worrying about is organic traffic you’re doing it wrong. I honestly believe that businesses need to be paying for traffic in one form or another (Adwords, Social, etc.) and should be putting more time into building brand equity so that they’re not reliant on Google magically giving them sales. Yes, SEO is still really important -‐ and will continue to be -‐ but whether you’re a plumber or a multi-‐national you need to be thinking about your overall marketing strategy and not just Google. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? This will almost certainly come back to bite me in the backside but I don’t think there’ll be any massive shocks in 2015. Penguin will probably go the way of Panda and be built into the continuously updating main algorithm, which will mix things up a bit, but other than that I think we’re in for evolution not revolution. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 8
- 9. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? Spam will still work, but not for as long, and even the spammers will start to come around to the “content marketing” way of thinking! The focus has been shifting very quickly towards “brand”, and that’s going to continue so doing everything you can to build that recognition is going to be the most powerful way of generating traffic over the long term. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? Honestly, I’d hit spam harder. There are still too many SERPs that are full of absolute rubbish that doesn’t deserve to be there. Yes, sites get caught in the crossfire but for the most part people who get hit by Panda and Penguin deserve it. There’s been talk this week of an “algorithmic penalty” notice appearing in WMT so if that rolls out and site owners have full visibility of what’s affecting them there really won’t be a reason for Google to hold back. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 9
- 10. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Paddy Moogan -‐ paddymoogan.com | @paddymoogan With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates on 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? To build a website that isn't exposed to algorithm changes that are designed to clean up spam or low quality results. Obviously we can't predict every algorithm update from Google and many will be beyond our control, but when it comes to spam, it is something we need to take control of. With all the UI changes to Google search results alongside this, the most important thing is to build up a loyal user base so that you're not as reliant on Google. This is easier said than done, but it's vital for businesses who operate online. I think we're going to see even more changes to the design of search results and we're going to see a stronger push towards predicting what users want. We're seeing things like Google Now and Google Inbox which are a clear signal of where Google want to go. This leads to the challenge of making your customers want to see your brand. If customers don't even notice when your brand isn't in search results, then you have a problem. Your customers need to want to see your brand and content so much, that they seek it out. This is a huge challenge for many businesses. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? Don't ignore mobile. Conversion rates from mobile devices are still usually lower than desktop which can be for several reasons, one of which being a bad user experience. However even if you provide a good user experience, you may still see lower conversion rates on mobile devices due to the mindset of users still not being in the right place and not trusting transactions on mobile devices. But this will change over time. Apply Pay is still in it's infancy, but it will grow and become more trusted which means that businesses need to be optimising for mobile experiences. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? I think we will see some kind of an update targeted at retailers. Google will move shopping results into even more prominent positions on mobile devices and I think they will also try to weed out low quality retailers and integrate more trust signals into rankings that have commercial intent. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? Organic results on a mobile will be focused on more by Google. We still see differing results on mobile vs. desktop, particularly in spammy industries and I think Google will address this balance -‐ or at least try to! This is important due to the sheer number of people using their mobile device to search rather than desktop. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Heads of Departments Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 10
- 11. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? I'd reduce the impact of short-‐term link velocity. Some spam websites only need to rank for a few days in order to make a worthwhile profit, a lot of this is driven by short bursts of spammy links and Google are still quite slow at detecting the links and taking action. I'd try to take an approach of stopping the links having an impact first rather than trying to clean it up afterwards. Easiest way to do this is to turn the dial down on big surges of links having an immediate effect on rankings. With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates on 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? The update I was expecting to have the biggest impact in 2014 was the long awaited Penguin update. But it doesn’t appear to have had the far reaching impact of previous iterations and, let’s be honest, there’s still a lot of sites that rank for some massive headline terms off the back of a load of Spam. But it was a clear message that the old tactics are still a prime target for Google to deal with. For me though, the biggest statement Google made in 2014, however, was on the mobile side of things. Over a year ago at Pubcon 2013, Matt Cutts made it clear that non mobile sites will begin to receive less traffic from mobile search. Then we saw mobile UX recommendations appear in beta (then out of beta) in the Page Speed Insights tool. And in the past couple of months, we’ve seen Google testing various icons in mobile search, designed to incentivise the clicks on the mobile ready sites. This culminated, just a couple of weeks ago, in mobile UX being added to Webmaster Tools. So what’s clear is that mobile UX is going to become an increasingly significant ranking factor in mobile search. And for a number of campaigns I work on, mobile search is over 30% of their organic traffic and it’s still growing. So I think as well as all the tactics changes we’ve made to deal with algorithm updates in the past few years, 2015 will also see a greater need for businesses to take mobile seriously – and that doesn’t mean just having a mobile site of any sort! It means investing as much into mobile user experience and speed as you would for desktop. I think 2014’s challenges will still be prevalent in 2015. The only sustainable ways to acquire the links we all still need to succeed in SEO now requires more content marketing and PR skillset and that’s a challenge we’ll continue to face. And as agencies and practitioners get better and better at it, we’ll see the competition increase, the content marketplace get fuller and we’ll see it get harder to get even the most spectacular content seen. But surely it’s the challenges that keep us all coming back? ;-‐ ) I can’t state enough how big a deal I think mobile is going to be for SEO rankings, traffic and therefore leads or sales in 2015 too. It’s not “the year of mobile.” That was 5 or 6 years back! But what we’ve seen is Google taking a real stance on it now. I would go as far as to call it a definite rankings factor Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Stacey Cavanagh MacNaught -‐ Search Director @ Techmark, http://blogsession.co.uk/ | @staceycav Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 11
- 12. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard that will increase in importance over the coming year. And believe it or not, there are still businesses out there without a mobile website. And there are businesses who think they’ve got mobile “boxed” because they have a crappy mobile site. Google’s addition of “mobile UX” to Webmaster Tools makes a statement. It’s not about crushing more content onto a smaller screen. It’s about designing and delivering the same simple experience you would deliver to desktop users across smaller screens too. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? We’ve already educated our clients on Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird and how to ensure they’re benefitting from that rather than struggling against them. I think most people in our industry will have already done that. So, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s back to mobile UX for me. If a third of your organic traffic is coming from mobile and you’ve got either no or a poor mobile site (while your competitors have nice slick ones) then next year could spell trouble. So I’d be advising clients to invest there. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? The mobile situation, I think. I reckon that will be the thing least people expect – to suddenly potentially lose a chunk of their organic traffic because their mobile offering was substandard. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? Aside from Google taking a more serious approach to mobile usability as a ranking factor, I think we’ll be seeing even more competition in the content marketing space. And ultimately, I think that will mean that organic search and content marketing teams need to rely more upon the services of paid media teams for paid content discovery through dedicated platforms like Zemanta and Outbrain and also through social media. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? I’d turn the dial up a bit on that last Penguin update, that’s for sure. It was great to see people who had worked hard to clean up recover some of their visibility. But it was disappointing to see so many sites still practicing so many dodgy tactics not see any detrimental impact at all. Justin Butcher -‐ Head of Digital Marketing at Return On Digital | @justin_butcher With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates on 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 12
- 13. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard In my view, the most important thing you need to do to be successful in organic search marketing, now and in 2015, is to understand the importance of people research over traditional keyword research. Although keyword research is obviously still an extremely important thing to be doing, these days it is only one small part of an increasingly difficult puzzle. Panda killed thin and duplicate content, Penguin has killed the easy link and Hummingbird means that you need to deal with user intent with your content more than you ever had to before. Google is also increasingly serving people results based on what they know about the user before they have even typed the search. Therefore your onsite content needs to be remarkable, your links need to be earned, not built, and technically your site needs to be as crawl efficient as possible. Nowadays, it sometimes feels like the way to win at SEO is to not do SEO at all; your performance in organic search is increasingly becoming a barometer of your other marketing efforts. And you can’t market to people you don’t understand. Over the last couple of years there has been an explosion in the amount of truly awful content being released in the name of “content marketing” or “online PR” because this is what SEOs are being told they need to do to get links. The reason why the vast majority of this stuff fails is because the people creating it have a very superficial understanding of the people they are trying to target, or the channels they are using to try and push this material out eg social or PR. Research the people thoroughly before you do anything else. Yes, look at search volumes and the search language that they use, and do use PPC data as it can be invaluable now that organic keyword data has all but disappeared. But also look into where they hang out online and offline, who influences them, what motivates them, what content resonates with them, where they would share it, what the common problems are, how they make purchasing decisions etc. Use as much data as you can but also don’t overlook qualitative research methodology to help you understand the people as intimately as you possibly can. I think, as an agency, our biggest challenge will be to ensure that we have the resource in the right areas. This means being able to anticipate where things are going and to hire accordingly. For example, in 2014 we brought more PR expertise in house as we anticipated that we would need it based on where things were heading in 2013. The way things currently look, for us I think 2015 will be about bringing in specialists in areas we haven’t necessarily invested in before. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? Firstly, I know that every year is touted as the year of mobile but for the first time in 2014 we have seen some clients starting to get more mobile traffic than non-‐mobile traffic. Make sure your mobile presence is as useful to a mobile user as your desktop presence is to a desktop user. To achieve this, you need to understand the differences between how your mobile and desktop users differ in terms Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? There are two bits of advice I would give here. 13
- 14. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard of behaviour and overall need. Segment mobile and non-‐mobile data and look at the differences in search behaviour for example, is there a specific mobile need that you’re not currently catering for? Secondly, I don’t think any vertical is safe from disruptive innovation in the current climate. From our experience of clients in industries that have been disrupted, and from working with clients that are themselves the disruptors, I would say that you really do need to nail why it is that people would choose you over the competition. As I said above, organic search results are now a reflection of the attractiveness of your brand and of your overall marketing efforts so having a totally different proposition gives you a massive advantage. Before we pitch or propose to a client we get them to fill in an information capture sheet and one of the questions we ask is “what makes you different from your competitors?” I shudder every time I see “good customer service” or “competitively priced”. Today’s empowered consumer takes both of these as a given. These days, we tend to be involved in strategic discussions at a higher level than we would have been previously; digital is no longer the after-‐thought that it used to be. More often than not during these discussions, we discover that the client does offer value that nobody else can replicate but they don’t play on it as much as they should. So my advice would be to do some comprehensive work in this area to insulate yourselves from future disruption. If you do it right, you may well even become a disruptive influence yourselves. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? I may be guilty of speaking too soon here, but we saw very little change the recent Penguin 3.0 update. The vast majority of our clients were pretty much unaffected, some saw a slight uplift but nothing to get too excited about. I have a feeling that changes in Google’s UI will be just as important in 2015 as algorithmic updates. Matt Cutts recently said that mobile search volume would exceed desktop volume by the end of 2014 so I think we’ll see a lot of changes in the appearance of the SERPS that will be motivated by mobile considerations. SEOs will need to start thinking much more about winning mobile clicks. I can also see there being a lot more prime search real estate being taken up by new paid search features, knowledge graph elements and other things which aren’t the traditional “10 blue links”. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? I predict that organic search will become an even more personalised experience, with Google serving more results according to what they know about the user’s context and past behaviour than they do currently. For example, they know what device you are searching on, where you are and where you have been before you type the query into the search box – all of that information will help them to serve you better results for your query. This is important because it makes it vital that to get under the skin of your audience and understand how, why, where and on what devices they search so that Google sees you as relevant as possible for as many search queries as possible. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 14
- 15. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard There is a massive trend towards personalisation in digital at the moment and in my view this is improving overall online experiences. I think Google will go further down the personalised search route, using what they know about you to serve more tailored search results. I know not everyone agrees with me but I think this is a good thing. Paul Rogers -‐ http://www.paulnrogers.com/ | @paulnrogers With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates in 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? I think link profile maintenance is going to remain key for existing websites, as Google's just getting better at targeting websites that have literally anything unnatural left in their profile. Recently, I've seen some examples of very clean websites being hit for a really small amount of low quality links (~1-‐ 3% of total links), which I think we'll see more of next year. For websites that are starting out now, I think it's going to be more and more about brand signals -‐ it's been a while since I've seen any real correlation between links obtained and direct improvements in rankings. Building value from a brand perspective is the only real way to sustain long-‐term value in SEO. I don't think this as impactful as lots of people say it is right now, but I assume it's going to go more that way next year and beyond. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? I know this is going to sound really scripted and generic, but look at SEO from a broader angle, don't just silo it away from other channels and marketing activity (and palm it off to an agency), it needs to be more of a facet of your overall marketing strategy. I think SEO needs to act as the nucleus really for heavily reliant businesses, with other channels feeding off of it. In the vast majority of cases, SEO is going to be your lowest cost of sale channel, and for that reason, overall business investment is key and a no brainer really. So when you're spending money on brand, you need to be thinking about how that can add value from an SEO perspective. When you're spending money on paid search and data, you need to think about how that can inform SEO activity. I think you get what I'm getting at -‐ SEO generally has a COS of 0.5% -‐ 3%, whereas paid acquisition channels are generally going to be more like 8% -‐ 20%, so, unless you're really struggling with volume, I don't understand why you wouldn't do this? What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? I guess just more iterations of penguin and panda -‐ although I do think Google will start to make it easier for businesses to avoid and recover from panda, as it's one of the main reasons why SEOs are still fundamental for large websites -‐ putting processes in place to avoid this at a higher level, would help them to reduce the need for SEOs, which is ultimately where they're trying to get to -‐ well eliminating the role of an SEO. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 15
- 16. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard There are still plenty of websites that possibly should've been impacted by penguin that haven't and I think this will happen next year. Also, more action against some of the more recently scrutinised tactics, such as guest posts and poorly conceptualised campaigns. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? Exactly what I said earlier -‐ more people will start to understand the value of organic channels in terms of the associated brand value (particularly around social and content) and the combined COS and sustainability against the paid acquisition channels. I'm speaking to more and more businesses (particularly retailers), that are starting to factor this into their activity and strategy. I think there's definitely been a shift in companies investing in in-‐house SEO resource of late too, John Lewis and House of Fraser being good examples. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? I'd probably go in the direction they're going in -‐ more focus on brand and signals of quality results (based on user interaction). This is clearly where they're looking and I think it's the only way they can take emphasis away from links without blindly looking at social signals, which, in my opinion, doesn't actually make sense in a lot of scenarios. That said, I definitely wouldn't move away from links -‐ I'd just try to reduce the reliance on it as a signal. Michael Briggs -‐ Head of SEO at Skyscanner | @michaelkbriggs With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates in 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? Truthfully the most important thing that is needed to achieve success is a change in the SEO mind-‐set and to stop playing in the field we have today and rather start looking to what the pitch will look like in search going ahead. Like all technology, search engines have got faster, the gap between iterations has shortened and the analysis deeper. This is not going to stop, if anything it will accelerate. Aspects such as Linked Data and sites becoming a reflection of their own knowledge graph and becoming in themselves a knowledge base feel more the way sites have to evolve and grow. As a search engine ranking in no longer simply a response to an explicit query (the textual input), content is surfaced by increasingly implicit signals (geography, friendships, technology etc) and balanced against the explicit query and looking to return dynamic answers to fulfil the specific needs of users. This change needs to be seized upon, understood and actioned by everyone who wants to be a success in the coming months/years. Biggest challenge in SEO will be scale. The industry has struggled with this for a long time. Content is becoming more important. And good useful editorial is the back bone of the web economy – search engines rank content so having useful, authoritative, valuable content has always been necessary but with the link graph being under constant review valuable content becomes the factor most likely to Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 16
- 17. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard impact overall value. Scaled content, that tackles the needs of users, and isn’t just content farm spam feels like the aspect most web businesses need agency support to tackle and solving this aspect would offer a benefit on both sides of the client/agency relationship. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? Build a better website that actually gives users a reason to return and from that develop a brand ecosystem that looks to not only rank but to retain visitors in a longer life cycle. And think of marketing channels in tandem to develop a visitor to a customer to an advocate and help the user move between the levels of interaction with the brand. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? Biggest change will be that the SERP layout is going to keep changing. And position 1 won’t be position 1 for click through; in many cases it hasn’t been for a while but the ten blue links mindset often seems to permeate significant portions of the industry. In recent weeks knowledge interceptions in result sets has grown fast and this will continue. Sites that don’t become authorities and mark up the answers to questions effectively will see that their visibility in search decrease without any simple remedy. This will also mean that the differential between visibility and click will change. As a surfaced answer to a question may no longer result in click through and instead becomes part of a wider brand exercise; as if a search engine gives an answer to a question why would someone need to visit your website? What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? Data driven journalism as the basis for organic marketing will grow and grow. Companies taking the data that they have to create stories will inevitably grow – as it’s a competitive advantage over newer companies and it allows large companies to develop an agile content function. Those that succeed will be those that uncover the ways to move from big data storage to developing big data insights. Companies who are willing to provide this information and create touch points at all stages of the user journey that assist users and search engines in locating and understanding value will be those who are able to deliver something of value to the internet. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? If I were Google and wanted to improve search quality I’d keep moving from being a list of documents as a result set and move towards a question and answers based engine, as the paradigm for query input is changing. We went from desktop to mobile and this changed the query landscape (shorter queries and pages that load faster etc) we are now past the point of desktop usage. The continued move into alternative interfaces; Siri and Google Now systems are the start of the interface from user to search engine changing and this requires a constant testing and refinement system that places the result set squarely in the space of user context and utility not simply on the voice of the crowd mentality of link based ranking factors. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 17
- 18. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Stephen Kenwright -‐ Head of Search at Branded3 | @stekenwright With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates in 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? Getting things done is always going to be difficult. More on-‐site work is required to get results – it’s no longer tweaks or adding copy to pages – which means more developer time is required and we’re competing with the rest of the business. Realistically the answer isn’t usually new title tags anymore, it’s often a new website, and that’s a lot harder to get actioned. The problem for SEOs is that we want to do everything, and we can’t. More ranking factors means more things need doing, and realistically, an SEO isn’t the best person to write content. I think we’re OK with that…but the kicker is that SEOs aren’t the best people to build links anymore either. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? It’s not always about links. I know from experience it can be really difficult to push back when a client is demanding links – especially because links are essentially the only deliverable from SEO, everything else requires attribution – but in many cases it’s worth it. We just won a Search Award for a campaign with absolutely 0 links built, fingers crossed for next year too. What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? I think the days of hard-‐hitting algorithm changes are over. I think (hope!) that we will see a lot more manual actions from Google in 2015. Algorithmically we’ve got to a stage where if you’ve managed to avoid a penalty so far you’re probably not going to get one…but there are plenty of people out there that still deserve one. This is something that’s going to hit SEO agencies hard in 2015 too – unless Google steps up there’s not going to be a lot of penalty removal work coming in and that will affect the bottom line. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? The prediction I made last year was that content marketing was going to become much more visual, and though it didn’t come true in 2014 (not in the mainstream anyway) I think more and more digital marketing agencies will be moving into video as standard, with other creative being high on the list. Realistically it’s hard to build links without creative now, and although there are ways to build links without designer/developer input, it’s only going to get harder. Secondly, the UK will have to get on board with local SEO. The US is waaaay ahead in local thanks to Pigeon and the requirements that their massive geography raises, and that aspect of the algorithm will surely be updated in the UK next year. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 18
- 19. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Manual actions. Give up with Penguin – keep it running so businesses who put the work in can recover – but at some point Google will have to accept that to wipe out link spam they’re going to have to do it manually. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 19
- 20. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Carl Hendy -‐ Digital Consultant | http://www.carlhendy.com | @carlhendy With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates on 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? Links -‐ boring answer I know, but the right links still drive authority which drives traffic. The right links will also drive traffic through those links, get as much relevant referral traffic as possible. How do you create links? -‐ you build content that differentiates you from your competitors, useful content (drives continuous links), content that is mobile / tablet friendly and easy to share. Easier said than done. SEO agencies will need to once again change how they sell SEO to clients. For the last few years it was "We will build you 10 links per month". SEO agencies will now need to sell in additional cost for content production, prove they can get top tier links and have the contacts to do that. Links are more expensive than ever to acquire no matter what route you take to acquisition. Clients that are on link based contracts will need to be changed and difficult conversations / education had although knowing how most agencies work this will not happen. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard Independent Consultant Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 20 • Is this useful for the visitor? • Does this content offer value? • Is this category page being built based on keyword volume or visitor demand? • Does this content really warrant acquiring links? • Does 3 blog posts and 10 tweets a day return ROI? Another conversation I seem to be having a lot is "You were lucky to have that traffic, the game has changed", this is usually where a website authority was artificially inflated by cheap and aggressive link building, however on the back of recent Google algorithm updates rankings have tanked. You now need to work even harder to earn that "free traffic". What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? For websites, especially ecommerce websites to be able to understand that less is more. Websites will need to be aggressive in trimming the fat from their sites. Website content strategy / planning will become more complicated, more man power required and big changes made to existing digital strategies. A blog strategy of 5 posts a week will no longer cut it.
- 21. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard You will need researchers, data analysts, front end / back end developers, SEO, social, PR all involved in content pieces build and promotion -‐ digital channels should no longer be working in isolation. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? There will be more SEO is dead post, links are dead posts so to go in the complete opposite direction my prediction is that more money will be invested into SEO than ever due to Google killing off traffic to websites. As Google focuses on website authority, user experience and penalising websites who do not conform. Online brands will look to SEOs to understand where this traffic has gone, although if they had employed good SEO's this could have been avoided. Digital channels will need to work closer together as agencies try to sell in the "Omni-‐channel" which in reality is not what happens, but this is what most brands want. Marketing managers are asking "If I give you £800k a year, where should I spend it?", the big data providers are scrambling to provide this data but its proving a huge challenge. Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? Provide more feedback to webmasters especially around Panda algorithm update. This data needs to be more bespoke to the website via Google Webmaster Tools. Webmasters are willing to make changes and invest if they have a little push in the right direction. Google is focussing too much on either the mega brands or the bad guys therefore the SMB's are missing out. SMB clients often produce much better content than mega brands as they are usually more agile and have little red tape and in most cases they offer a better customer experience yet the content is not rewarded as Google prefers to promote mega brands based on domain authority / trust. Google should come out and be more transparent about "negativeSEO" -‐ I have seen cases where it works and cases where it has not worked. Google claims its not an issue yet most SEO's disagree. Website owners are currently in limbo on negativeSEO so the matter should cleared up by Google finally. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 21
- 22. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard Dan Sharp -‐ Founder of Screaming Frog | @screamingfrog With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates on 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? I think really focusing on your user, their experience and engaging with them is the most important thing you can do online. It’s so obvious, but this seems to get completely lost in all the noise at times. We made a recommendation to a new client last week to remove 70% of their website as it had been built more for search engines, rather than the user and both users and Google Panda were not happy. It’s also more important than ever to add value, stand out or do something differently to be sustainable online (or offline too!). Businesses which don’t do these things will be easier for Google or the competition to wipe out. I believe a lot of businesses (big brands included) are struggling with content strategy, understanding exactly why they are producing content, its true purpose, its value and which areas in their customers’ journeys they should be prioritising. It’s something I have heard time and time again over the last year. I think it’s quite natural though, as brands and agencies all started to take content (and content marketing) more seriously and refine what they do. Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? First of all, don’t just rely on organic search. Google can change the landscape and do whatever they like, so your business needs to be able to survive in the real world, in its own right, regardless of ranking in Google. For example, we might be a search marketing agency which is pretty visible organically, but most of our business comes from referrals from existing clients or people we have worked with in the past. After that, my best piece of advice would be to keep improving what you do, brands which succeed are those which seem to have an almost unhealthy obsession at doing things better. When you really deserve to be ranking at the top of the search engines and users expect you to be there when they search, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to achieve it. Oh and stop creating content for the sake of it! Content must have a purpose, whether it’s for the user, traffic, conversion, to compel sharing (awareness, links, social signals) or a combination of all; without any of these, what’s the point? What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard SEO Tools Manufactures Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 22
- 23. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard I actually don’t think there will be a huge shift from where we are now, just a natural evolution. Google have been pushing businesses to focus on their user experience and quality in everything that they do (whether it’s content, links etc). So I think we will probably finally see some businesses have a greater realisation that they may need to consolidate, before they can move forward. What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? We all know that every year is the year of mobile, but Google will take this even more seriously in 2015. They already reduce visibility of websites with a really poor mobile user experience in the mobile SERPs (such as faulty redirects or smartphone only 404s etc) and all the signs are Google will focus more here as users’ habits evolve. Their PageSpeed Insights tool has for some time offered a user experience score for mobile (and desktop), while they started deep linking to mobile apps and have been testing Smartphone friendly icons. Google are now also reporting on mobile usability in Google WMT with errors such as small font size, or viewport not configured etc. I expect these signals to play a larger role in scoring in the mobile SERPs and potentially in overall site reputation and scoring as well. If you’re not taking some users seriously due to the device they are using, what does that say about your business and what you think of your users, are you really a brand etc? We are seeing even small businesses (with less than 5 employees) overhauling their websites right now to go responsive (or another mobile friendly set-‐up). Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? I’d consider placing a little more weight on brand search volume (for transactional queries in particular) and social signals. Patrick Hathaway -‐ Director URL Profiler | @HathawayP With the number of high profile changes and algorithm updates in 2014, what do you think the most important thing will be to achieve success in 2015? As much has changed as stayed the same -‐ consistently building/earning links is still obviously a massive factor, so I’ll ignore that for the sake of argument. I don’t see any reason to expect Google will do anything radical over the next couple of years, they have signaled their intent with both Panda and Penguin that they are going to penalise or downgrade sites that have attempted to shortcut content production or attracting links. We already know that Panda refreshes roughly every month, and there was talk that they are trying to move Penguin is this direction as well. We Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 23 know these things are out there and can hurt us, so the most important thing to remain successful is to put measures in place to ensure they don’t hurt us.
- 24. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard In practice this means regularly (every quarter, if not every month) auditing your link profile, and proactively disavowing or removing links that look unnatural. Similarly, it means regularly auditing site content, and clearing out or improving pages that are thin, have high levels of duplicate content or very poor engagement metrics. Content. There’s already way too much of it, and most of it is sh*t. It seems to finally be accepted that the only white hat way to scale linkbuilding is through producing content, which makes the challenge ‘how to stand out from the crowd.’ The most successful campaigns are those which manage to produce interesting content that also fits with their product/offering. And this is not easy to do! Thinking about how you think your industry or clients industries are going, what's the best piece of advice that you give all clients or prospective clients in coming weeks/months? As per my answer to question 1, auditing both your site and your links is the most important thing you can do right now (and fixing any problems you find, obviously!). In terms of more general digital marketing advice, I advocate experimenting with other traffic sources such as paid social ads; even if your site is squeaky clean it makes no sense to put all your eggs into Google’s basket. We have also been doing a lot of CRO audits for clients recently, and I think this is an area that every commercial site should be taking seriously – why would you not want to maximize the potential revenue of your hard fought users? What do you predict will be the biggest change / or hardest hitting change will in 2015? I think Penguin will get rolled into the algorithm at a more fundamental level, so they will be able to put out monthly rolling refreshes as they do with Panda. Regular Penguin updates will mean more regular winners/losers, and potentially a greater ability to react and recover. If this were to happen, I think it would greatly impact SEOs’ attitude to risk/reward, and it would be most interesting to see how this sort of thing might affect black hats, and how they would need to change to stay ahead of the game (if at all). What's your biggest prediction for organic marketing in 2015 and why is it important? The never-‐ending rise of mobile. More and more searches are being done on mobile, more and more content is consumed on mobile, and more and more content is being shared on mobile. Google have already started clamping down on sites that offer a particularly poor mobile experience, and I can only see that continuing. Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard The risk of not doing this makes it a no brainer in my opinion. Where or what do you think the biggest challenge will be in 2015? 24
- 25. The State Of Organic Search 2015 Created By Danny Denhard @dannydenhard We’ll need to start thinking ‘mobile first’ – designing content and websites to work perfectly on mobile first, then expanding out to bigger screens. What’s the point in spending £5000 on a fancy interactive infographic if everyone views it on mobile and it doesn’t work properly? Lastly, if you were Google what would you do to improve quality and search results? More and more we are hearing that Google care about, and act upon, engagement metrics. It is likely that Google are defining some sort of ‘Quality Score’ on organic results as they do for Adwords. I think this is a good thing, but I’d like to see more of it. We see rankings fluctuate a lot, but more so for results ranking outside the top 3, which stay much more consistent. Assuming there is some sort of Quality Score being implemented, the top 3 results are receiving a significant bias due to their position. Users trust Google’s results, so the top 3 results are much more likely to get clicked, and the user is naturally more likely to trust the page that they land on. This surely skews any kind of Quality Score calculation, as it does (by design) with Adwords. If it were up to me, I’d be playing around with this and testing more different results in the top 3 – more so for generic results than branded ones – so you can get a more accurate measure of what pages are Created by Danny Denhard | @dannydenhard 25 worthy of high rankings. And obviously it would totally piss off SEOs(!).