Search Engines have traditionally been our gateway to the Internet. With so much information out there, we needed portals to help us find what we were looking for. In the beginning, there were sites like Ask Jeeves, Yahoo and Alta Vista. Then came Google – and that changed everything!
Google became THE search engine. That is still true, but today it is only half the story.
Over 500 New Websites are published every minute
During the last decade, web pages have exploded to over a billion, and the count continues to grow. (Every minute over 500 new websites are published.) With so much information out there, Google had to write a set of rules that helped it decide which websites would be displayed at the top of its search results pages (SERP). Its rules seemed to change by the minute and keeping up with the many changes in order to remain high on the results pages became a nightmare for most website owners and web developers.
A new industry was spawned
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies grew up almost as fast as websites were published, and each promised to get customers high on search engines. Most often their suggestions for optimization were all about trying to figure out Google’s latest algorithm changes. And staying current on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines continues to be quite important for website owners. This includes on-page, technical and off-page optimization, as well as monitoring the many analytics that tell the story of how successful a website is at attracting customers
SEO is now is now only a small part of the story.
Over the last few years, online behaviors have changed radically — fueled by the ascension of Social Sites, mobile devices, and a more tech-savvy audience.
Keeping up with the Joneses is now more important than ever
People tend to trust the opinions of their friends more than what a website has to say. They tend to want to use the same products their friends use, visit the same restaurants and see the same movies. They even prefer to hear what people they don’t know think about the products and/or services they are interested in. And that means that while people used to search for products and services on Google, they are now often starting their search on Social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Mobile Dominates Web Searches
Over 80% of internet users access it from a mobile device. Since young people today highly favor mobile devices, that number is sure to grow. And while some mobile users start their mobile searches on search engines, over 50% start on branded websites (including social sites) or branded apps. These searches make Google (and SEO) irrelevant.
SEO Isn’t Dead
Many people, including us older folk, continue to use Google, and SEO is still an important part of website development. But even Google admits to using Social Signals as part of its algorithm, and advocates adding shareable content, including Social Posts and Blog posts to the overall web presence for all companies. Even for Google, the old rules are changing.
The point is that if you are still relying only on SEO to attract customers without fully understanding and adopting some of the many other search options available to your customers, you may be wasting a lot of time and money.
You Might Still Need SEO, but…
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