FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING
clear that the search giant is less forgiving
when it comes to any form of manipulation
– justified or not – which we expect will see
SEO as a practice come under much closer
scrutiny for companies relying on search
traffic for the bulk of their business.
Apart from the above more fundamental
shifts across the industry, we wanted to
highlight a few developments, which while
seemingly futuristic today, could define the
next five years.
●●Search is about answering queries
as best as possible and needs to look
beyond word-based content
More and more, search engines need
to refine the ways in which they index
and retrieve information as the way we
consume media online is changing, away
from predominantly text based html to rich
media, video and audio. Google has filed a
number of patents, all focused on delivering
better search results across its index, even
if that is based in rich media (audio, video
or images) or even a combination of both.
These innovations follow closely behind
advances around “semantic search”,
we believe it will be developed further,
which will open up a whole new avenue for
optimisations and content creation.
●●Schema markup will become more
widely adopted to return the correct
answers in their fullest forms
Schema is not a new change and many
have already adopted it. However, there
are still many brands that don’t invest
in this search factor. Ultimately, this
is because there is no correlation with
rankings improving, but that could be
about to change.
Answer Box is growing in presence and
is available for many more queries, and as
we explained above, the search term does
not even have to be phrased as a question
for it to pop up with an answer.
The most important question here has to
be how is Google going to decide what is
populated in the answer box? It’s thought
that the search engine giant could rely
on marked up content using schema in
order to populate that information, adding
further importance to the use of schema
throughout your strategies.
“It’s thought that Google could rely on marked up
content using schema in order to decide what is
populated in the Answer Box.”
and interpreting user queries against the
wider context and intent. By way of an
example, if someone searched “weather
London” Google knows that we are asking
a question, and interprets the query instead
as “what is the weather like in London?”,
so it returns the most relevant results in
images and text.
The same applies for someone
looking for an artist and a song title; it
automatically reshuffles the query to yield
the most relevant results. This is currently
already happening in the knowledge graph,
and some queries that trigger the Answer
Box. However, it’s still in its infancy and
●●Enhancing
search results by
determining TV proximity
Google has filed a patent that could
potentially target those who are watching
a specific TV show via their mobile device,
calculating their proximity to this in order
to deliver the best results.
This will enable Google to deliver more
precise, user specific answers which take
into account what you are watching. For
example, someone could be searching for
“Lions” because they have just seen an
interesting documentary on them via the
TV and enter a search query. Google knows
the intent of the search and can yield the
most relevant results to that user.
This means different information can be
delivered to those who are engaging based
on those watching the programme.
●●What do these three factors tell us?
What the three examples clearly
demonstrate is that organic search will
remain to be incredibly important, and
is far from dead. What is undoubtedly
changing however is the way search
engines crawl and index content, and
SEO has to adapt to this. There will be
a much larger breadth of content that
SEOs can leverage to drive traffic and
we fully expect the scope of SEO to
increase accordingly to cover of all these
developing opportunities.
BRENDAN ASHE is an
Account Director at The
Media Image specialising in
the iGaming vertical. Brendan
works alongside some of the
UK’s largest gaming operators and
affiliates and is spearheading their foray
into the social gaming space. Brendan
holds a master’s degree in international
marketing and is an avid sports blogger
and rugby fan.
CHRIS AVERY is Head of
SEO for The Media Image.
Chris has 10 years of digital
marketing experience, and
has been at the helm of some
of the most successful online strategies.
Having worked on both local and
international brands, he specialises in
leading people from all spheres of the
digital realm.
iGB Affiliate Issue 52 AUG/SEP 2015
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