Visibility

There is no doubt that internet marketing and search engine optimisation have dramatically grown as industries over the last decade.  This growth has manifested itself in the increasing number of businesses using their marketing budgets to invest in SEO services when they might have traditionally used it to finance other forms of advertising – print, for example.  The availability of quantifiable and accurate metrics that measure traffic levels and conversion rates combined with ability to monitor user behaviour and fine-tune strategy makes it an attractive prospect for businesses looking for another way of reaching their target demographic.  As the search engines have grown, so has the marketplace and it is this constant expansion within the industry that has made the evolution of SEO agencies a necessity.

It is perhaps not long ago that a search engine optimisation campaign would largely consist of an expansive link building strategy, precise keyword research and solid on-page optimisation implementation.  While these techniques still often represent the foundations of an SEO campaign, a whole host of new methods have been adopted by SEO agencies to give their campaigns structure and substance.  Some of these new methods include content management and syndication, competitor research, keyword difficulty analysis, search vertical optimising (local, news etc.) and perhaps most importantly social media outreach.  These are the techniques that are pushing the boundaries of traditional search marketing and they are the ones that have the potential to yield the best results for clients.  To understand how these changes are affecting SEO agencies, it is worth understanding how these agencies are often structured.

SEO agencies are often departmentalised – on the business side there are the sales people and account managers that establish KPI's and goals for client campaigns, then on the technical side there are the copywriters, SEO programmers, marketing strategists, link developers and occasionally software developers.  While this departmentalisation is conducive to agencies that offer individual services such as an independent link building or web development service, holistic SEO campaigns now require employees to have cross-over knowledge to reach the maximum potential for success.  For example, producing high quality content regularly is now one of the most important aspects of a campaign – not only does it get a website indexed more often, but it can often be used to develop brand awareness and to build an authoritative and diverse link profile.  Of course, to reach its full potential, content needs to reach the readers and spread throughout the appropriate online community.  This is often achieved from good marketing through various industry relevant blogs, forums and other social media channels – the copywriter’s understanding how their blogs or articles will be marketed can contextualise their content, making it much more effective in an SEO campaign.

This principle can be applied to a range of combinations, but the point remains the same; with the increase in SEO techniques, clarity of internal communication is more important than ever and employees having a cross-over skillset can be hugely beneficial in SEO campaign management.  This is a new responsibility for SEO and search marketing agencies created by the evolution of the search engines and the more demanding requirements that must now be met in order to achieve a high ranking within the SERPs.  While this is a general change that might affect the entire order of an SEO agency, it is also worth focusing on some of the specific changes to SEO that have been bought about by the growth of the search engines.

Of course, the biggest change of this year and perhaps one of the most significant changes in the history of search engine optimisation has been Google's Panda update – a change in the algorithm that has significantly altered modern SEO practices.  The Panda update itself has the potential to be an almost unfathomably complex process, but its premise is quite a simple one.  Google quality testers analysed a collection of websites they thought were of high quality, and a collection they thought were of low quality.  Google then analysed the metrics of these websites and used machine learning to scale the results and work them into their algorithm therefore upgrading the sites that people thought were high quality and downgrading the sites that people thought were low quality.  The reason this affected traditional SEO so greatly is because it meant that producing good content, good accessibility and a strong like profile was no longer adequate enough to rank highly as this doesn't necessarily equate to quality.
In the post-Panda searchable web ecosystem, impetus is placed on design quality, improving all-round user experience and building a brand that people trust.  It is almost as if the definition of an SEO has evolved to more of a 'web strategist'.

The most successful agencies had been preaching about the importance of good design and creating a positive user experience before the Panda update was released.  Now, post-Panda, creating this positive user experience is a primary objective within an SEO strategy and will positively impact ranking position in the SERPs.  This is undoubtedly beneficial for search engine users and SEO agencies as it is another step toward producing content-driven results that avoid the ad-heavy websites that marginalise user experience in favour of monetisation. 

It is a fact for SEO agencies now that our responsibilities to our clients and to internet users have developed considerably.  It is no longer adequate to provide websites with technically accurate content or to build a website that might be biased towards more frequent search engine indexation.  We now need to be crafting intelligent, compelling, engaging content that visitors will want to share with their friends and we need to build websites that users with no interest in the subject would still think is wonderfully designed.  Modern SEO is about reaching beyond adequacies and striving for an innovative, creative yet professional end product that is optimised for search engine indexation and for user experience – observing how SEO develops from here will be fascinating.