Future of SEM: What WILL and WILL NOT Matter
| Manoj Jasra - Thursday, March 29, 2007 10 Comments |
The SEM Industry is rapidly changing, this includes the search engines (their SERP algorithms and spiders), SEO Tactics, and SEM Strategies. Off the top of my head I have come up with 5 things that WILL NOT matter in SEM in the future and 5 things that marketers should stay on top of.
Things that WILL NOT matter:
- Meta Tags: Meta Tags, especially the keywords version, are already losing their importance. Meta Description is still often used to distinguish site pages but I believe both types of Meta Tags will continually lose their SEO value.
- Page Size: The majority of Internet users are already using high speed connections and this number will continually increase, therefore to some extent page size won't matter.
- JavaScript Code: Very often SEOs will recommend externalizing JavaScript or removing it from a site's main navigation, however with search spiders continually getting smarter I feel spiders will eventually be able to comprehend various types of complex JavaScript code.
- Location of Content: The higher up the content (within the page code) the better search engines and their spiders will like your site, correct? Maybe, but as I mentioned before spiders will get smarter and as long as you have good content, location won't matter anymore.
- Search Engine Ranking: With the introduction of personalized search are the days of ranking software numbered?....It's very possible. I have always felt that this metric is useless without traffic and conversion numbers attached to it.
- Website Messaging: As personalized search becomes more prominent it's the messaging of websites that will compel users to click through and remain on a given website. Website owners will really have work hard to build the perfect personas for their target market so they can lure visitors with the right messaging.
- Competitive landscape: Knowing your competition is always important but in the future it will be even more imperative. As visitors are presented with the results they prefer to see, website owners need to make sure their messaging and offerings are comparable to their competitors.
- Rich Media: Audio, Video, Podcasts, Flash and AJAX are continually getting more popular, I believe this trend will continue to rise and this type of content will eventually all be spiderable by search engines.
- Usability: Things like focus groups, A/B testing, Eye Tracking will be normal practices for all marketing professionals. If your site doesn't cut it, visitors will simply move to the next one.
- Widgets: Almost every website offers some type of widget because everyone loves widgets (they're great for link bait too). We'll see more interactivity with widgets and more widgets from Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Labels: SEM
All the points are good ones and I especially agree with the growing importance of usability, analytics and testing.
What about social media? You mention the importance of messaging but maybe these messages will be more distributed and there will be more emphasis on messages on other websites, blogs, forums etc
Following on from that - online reputation management will be important.
one more ... although I'm not sure whether this specifically affects the search engine marketing industry as such. I think a solution may have to be found to productivity in the workplace with the growing addictions to social media sites and stats showing the amount of time people spend at work engaging in this way.
Good post, but I'd go further and say that for the "WILL NOT matter" we have to let go and admit that they havnt mattered for awhile (JavaScript excepted).
Rankings, Meta Tags and Page Size are not major issues anymore.
Rankings is mostly good for ego, but it has some competitive value (for now) in what kind terms of understand what terms your competitors seem to rank well for.
For example, if you run 500 keyword variations on the Wii and another 500 on the PS3 on your competitors. If your competitor gets higher rankings for Wii-related keywords, that information maybe useful for competitive purposes - until personalization hits full swing that is.
I don't think it is likely that the meta description will lose any of its importance. As long as they are shown on the SERPS, they will be extremely important (more in regard to click-throughs than position).
Christine, I think you're absolutely right about Social Media, in fact it could play the biggest role in SEM in the upcoming future.
Daniel,
I think we're both on the same page about rankings and that's why I believe a given ranking needs to be tied to metrics that are measurable such as the amount of visits or conversions
Martin, The reason I mentioned Meta Description is because a given company can copy another's so easily without being penalized by search engines. Therefore things like Brand and Page Content will be considered more important than the meta description tag.
I think Meta Desc. is important for the future, because in most cases human beeings read this snippet on the SERP and made their decisions: Click or not click?
I mention Meta Description because if you exclude it from a page, spiders will scrape the body content instead allowing for a more diverse and natural snippet (based on the user's search query).
Great article! I completely agree with all of your points...I would definitely add social media and bookmarking to the mix... I think communities will weigh in heavily (and rightfully so) in determining relevancy even more so in the near future.
Personally, since doing SEO and managing SEM since the very beginning, I'll go out on a limb and say everything matters. I'll take another step and say SEO will reincarnate into SMO.