The search industry is highly dynamic. Frequent changes to search engine algorithms should be expected and companies should act fast enough to take advantage of web marketing opportunities. Some website owners saw their rankings take a nosedive after very minor adjustments. Meanwhile, it seems that others dominate the first three pages whether or not changes are made.
Whatever the case, no one really knows the exact formula used in the algorithm. What is important is to stay updated and conduct regular testing to find out the best SEO strategy for the website. Trial and error is usually important in web marketing.
Meeting the Demands of Today
The demands of the global marketplace play a big role in defining how search engines work. Aside from the pressure to deliver better service to users, search engines also need to react quickly to technological changes all around them. For example, the popularity of mobile internet will influence of web marketing. Right now, greater focus is also given to intent-based search and behaviour-based search. Let us take a look at these trends:
Intent-Based Search – basically, this is defined as the reason why people use the search engines. It can be categorized as either buying intent (ecommerce) or research. There are specific keyword phrases that are obviously for ecommerce and web marketing and there are others that are commonly associated with research purposes. But we won’t tackle how keywords are differentiated here. Rather the importance of using geo-targeting must be stressed. If ecommerce is the reason why the visited goes online, for example, the search engine results page (SERP) must display pages that is relevant to his needs, in his area.
Behaviour-Based Search – the behaviour-based search is tailored on the history and search behaviour of the user. “Java”, for instance, has many different meanings. However, if the user’s history shows a lot of interest in programming, then the results should be more in-line with this. “Java” is also associated with travel and beverage. Individuals who are into these should have results that are more relevant to their behaviour.
Blended Search – in any web page, there are a variety of different items that can be included. Among these are video, images, maps, news, books, and news. Since search engines want to improve user engagement, blended search will become more dominant in web marketing. It enables “blended search” (ie a number of different objects) to be displayed on the results page. This is considered to be better than text-based only results.
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