Is your webpage tuned to evolved SEO Engines? Presenter: @OmarKattan - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Is your webpage tuned to evolved SEO Engines? Presenter: @OmarKattan CSO, Sandstorm Digital FZE Wednesday, November 25, 2015 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM in5 Innovation Hub Boutique Villa #7, Dubai Knowledge Village, Dubai

What you’ll learn today • Brief history of SEO • Search ranking factors then and how they’ve evolved • What the future holds for SEO and what you need to do today to future proof your business (9 key takeaways) But, the most important message today…

SEOs must think like marketers… • Have a clear understanding of who you’re trying to attract to your site • When planning your keyword strategy, think about your buyer personas and what keywords are relevant to them • Produce useful, informative & timely content that adds value to your audience journey • Develop relationships with influencers who will help disseminate your message

Brief History of SEO

An evolution into machine learning (Artificial Intelligence)

1990: Archie – First “Web Crawler” Downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites

1991: Rise of Gopher Lead to two new search programs, “Veronica” and “Jughead”. Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems.

1993: Aliweb Allowed users to submit the locations of index files on their sites

1993: AltaVista Was first among web search engines: it had unlimited bandwidth, allowing natural language queries, had search tips, and allowed people to add or delete their domains in 24 hours.

1994: WebCrawler Allowed users to search for any word in any webpage, which has since become the standard for all major search engines since.

April 1994: Yahoo Web Directory Would not build its own web search engine until 2002, relying until then on outsourcing the search function to other companies.

July 1994: Lycos Began as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University's main Pittsburgh campus

1995: LookSmart Competed with Yahoo! as a web directory. Competition made both directories more inclusive.

Google didn’t show up till September 4, 1998

And they had a mission

Ranking based on popularity was their secret sauce

They’ve come a long way since

What search engines historically looked for In a nutshell…

and…

This made it easy to “game the system”

Remember…

And so they were on a mission to rid the world of “spam”

Key Developments in Search (Primarily lead by Google) August 2009 – October 2015 And what they mean to you…

Caffeine – August, 2009

Caffeine in a nutshell • Promised faster crawling, expansion of the index, and a near ‐ real ‐ time integration of indexing and ranking • Aim: to provide more accurate real time results to search engine users • Key takeaway: Produce regular fresh content updates on your website to improve ranking performance

Schema.org – June, 2011

Started with rich snippets in 2009

Schema.org in a nutshell • Initiative from Google, Bing and Yahoo! to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages • Now adopted by only a *few but growing • Aim: To provide site owners with ability to better explain meaning of content • Key Takeaway: Implement Schema.org standards to gain an edge over competitors *Searchmetrics found that only about 0.3 percent of domains are using the markup code on their websites.

Feb 2011 & onwards… Google’s Relentless Race to “AI”

Panda – February, 2011

Panda in a nutshell • Initially dubbed "Farmer" update to combat content farms • Links not a part of the Panda algorithm. It is all about on ‐ site quality • Aim: To show high ‐ quality sites higher in search results and demote sites that may be of lower quality • Key Takeaway: Create amazing content that provides unique value to your audience

Penguin – April, 2012

Penguin in a nutshell • Targeting unnatural links (link schemes) • Updated regularly and brutally! • Aim: To decrease rankings of websites that violated Google’s Webmaster Guideline • Key Takeaway: Avoid unnatural links and focus on creating amazing content that attracts links naturally

Knowledge Graph – May, 2012

Knowledge Graph in a nutshell • System that understands facts about people, places and things and how these entities are all connected • Aim: Used both behind ‐ the ‐ scenes to help Google improve its search relevancy and also to present Knowledge Graph boxes, at times, within its search results that provide direct answers • Key Takeaway: Provide useful amazing content with facts and stats on your website

Hummingbird – September, 2013

Hummingbird in a nutshell • A complete overhaul of the entire Google algorithm and now the official name of Google’s “Algo” • Enabled more semantic search and more effective use of the Knowledge Graph • Aim: for Google to better understand a user's query and serve smarter results • Key Takeaway: Create semantically coherent content that answers users queries rather than just trying to rank for a particular keyword

Pigeon – July, 2014

Pigeon in a nutshell • Launched to provide more useful, relevant and accurate local search results • The algorithm returns better results for queries that use both the conventional term for a local neighborhood and the colloquial term for the same neighborhood • Aim: to improve distance and location ranking parameters • Key Takeaway: Include location signal within your content to outrank global players

Mobilegeddon – April, 2015

Mobilegeddon in a nutshell • Significant mobile ‐ only ranking algorithm • Google forewarned about this update and provided Mobile ‐ Friendly *Test tool • Aim: to give a boost to mobile ‐ friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results • Key Takeaway: Provide users with a better user experience on mobile via a mobile ‐ friendly website *Mobile Friendly Test Tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile ‐ friendly/

Where is Search Heading?

RankBrain – October, 2015

RankBrain in a nutshell • Part of Google’s overall search “algorithm” • Utilizes machine learning (AI) technology to help process search results • Google says is the third most important factor for ranking Web pages (they don’t say 3 rd to what) • Aim: interpret the searches that people submit to find pages that might not have the exact words that were searched for • Key Takeaway: Keep your guard up. Know that search engines will not rest and will continue evolving to understand human intentions before humans do.

Are you ready for the future? What can you do today to future proof your business…

Takeaways Summary • Produce Regular fresh content updates on your website improved ranking performance • Implement Schema.org standards to gain an edge over competitors • Create amazing content that provides unique value to your audience • Avoid unnatural links and focus on creating amazing content that attracts links naturally • Provide useful content with facts and stats on your website • Create semantically coherent content that answers users queries rather than just trying to rank for a particular keyword • Include location signal within your content to outrank global players • Provide users with a better user experience on mobile via a mobile ‐ friendly website • Stay a breast of developments in search – the future is closer than you think…

And remember, always think like a marketer • Develop a content marketing strategy tailored to your audience not “keywords” • Create an editorial calendar based on your strategy and stick with it! ‐ Be regular and consistent • Integrate social media. It is arguably a ranking signal • Know your audience (buyer personas) and answer their questions • Focus on user experience and especially on mobile. It matters now more than ever • Reach out to your influencers and include them in your strategy

For Further Information Contact Concord Tower (6th flr) Omar Kattan P.O. Box 126732 Managing Director Media City, Dubai, UAE Sandstorm Digital FZE www.sandsotrmdigital.com Tel: +971 (0) 4 454 97 72 Mob : +971 (0) 5 62743783 Fax: +971 4 454 23 10 e. omar@sandstormdigital.com