Search marketing, or any other aspect of digital marketing for that matter, cannot thrive in the absence of flexibility. In the span of less than two months, in 2014 for instance, Google launched the soft Panda update followed by the official Panda 4.0 update, increased the SERP font size by 2px and changed its SERP layout.
In addition, Google’s Matt Cutts has been on record stating that Google will not hesitate to change title tags and other factors in their algorithms if they believe the changes will provide a better user experience. Google algorithms are constantly being measured and changed to provide better search results for users, which means that no SEO can survive by adopting an inflexible stance to their marketing campaign.
Strategies that were highly lauded just a few years, even months, ago can become completely obsolete with a single update. Therefore, it’s as likely as death or taxes that you will be continuously tweaking something or other in your strategy to suit the current changes.
Comprehensive and manual research
For instance, the way Google bots/crawlers interpret language is slightly different from natural language rules. For instance, a search for the word “Hilton” is immediately interpreted as a search for the hotel. Therefore, businesses that want to succeed must carry out comprehensive research into performance of title tags using bot-speak and natural language.
This may reveal differences never before thought of, which, when corrected, could give your business the exact boost it needs to improve visibility hence traffic, leads and conversions. Manual research is also a helpful method of conducting research. Too many businesses have become completely reliant on tools to accomplish different SEO tasks, but manual audits can help pinpoint inconsistencies in brand presence on various platforms.
Consistency in local search
It’s critical, especially for small businesses, to ensure that business citations within the local search environment present fully consistent messages. Larger enterprises have the problem of scalability of solutions, hence the heavy reliance on tools. However, through careful sampling, even larger enterprises can unearth shortfalls that no tool had yet revealed.
In addition, measuring performance using more metrics can provide a more accurate picture of the performance of an SEO campaign. This will also better identify critical areas that need adjustment, which is important with a landscape that changes as frequently as the search environment in which SEOs must operate.
