A quick glance into the future of SEO and brand engagement | Heart Internet Blog – Focusing on all aspects of the web

Hopefully, if you're as keen-eyed as the rest of us; you won't have missed the announcement of Google's latest algorithm, Hummingbird. In light of this update, I thought it would be nice to discuss some of the emerging trends in website search engine optimisation and how this might begin to impact us as webmasters in the not so distant future.

The core of this post is centred around one of the most noticeable improvements in online web presence and search engine rankings; brand engagement and social influence.

Brand engagement and influence, it seems, are becoming increasingly more fundamental to how Google ranks your website in Search Engine Result Pages (sometimes shortened to SERPs). Engagement, being the notable keyword. The success of your website's content is most likely to be best demonstrated by totalling social network sharing, mentions and interactions.

As more genuine, real-world, people share or approve of your content; not only are you gaining backlinks and extra coverage for your site, but you're also building a level of trust around your brand. The more people that interact with your brand, the more favourable prospective customers will look upon it. Undoubtedly, as your brand engagement increases, so will your online influence. Your online influence is your ability to direct attention and attract crowds on the internet.

Noticing the need to publicly standardise the online influence of individuals and brands in one central location, primarily for easy comparison; a new service named Klout emerged. Through the use of complex and secretive algorithms; Klout are able to rate each account on a scale of 1-100. Also worth a mention, are the perks you can unlock as you increase your Klout Score – rewarding you with freebies such as free business cards or tickets to red-carpet events.

Klout allows users to give 'Klout+' to their fellow influencers. Essentially, giving “K+” or “Klout” to somebody is showing your appreciation and means you value their contribution to the topic in question. Interestingly, you can find both Heart Internet and myself on Klout, where we're already tracking our social influence – why don't you join us, give us some K+ and spread the love?

Bearing the need to standardise influence in mind, it is clear to see why measuring brand engagement, as an indicative factor of search engine ranking, is a logical choice for safeguarding search users against spam. From reputable sources comes trustworthy content. It seems only inevitable, that one day in the not-so-distant future; brand engagement and influence will be the zenith of Search Engine Optimisation. Your online brand or identity will be your passport to the internet, which in turn will help to identify your activity online – ensuring your content reaches your audience wherever you may appear on the web.

We have to also remember that social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are ranked very highly (in the eyes of a search engine) in the UK [for relatively accurate statistics see: https://www.alexa.com/topsites]. It is the immense PageRank quality that social networks dominate which makes social sharing receive more precedence than ordinary backlinks to your content. Simply because a real human has taken the time to read, evaluate and appreciate your content; we can trust that assessment far more than we could a robot analysis of the same content. That's not to say you shouldn't look for backlinks, but I truly believe your attention could be better spent elsewhere; by focusing on improving your content engagement with your audience!

As a freelance website designer myself, I see – far too often – business-owners and webmasters alike trying to actively force their PageRank to increase. Although, I agree there is a market for Search Engine Optimisation and backlink packages, I can't help but feel people are missing the point…

Your content is central to your online success!

Loosely speaking; your content is everything – from your website's: features, functionality, brand and image to the, obvious, message portrayed by your copy (or text).

The stern-cold reality and bottom line in the online world is that if your website doesn't provide a function for a purpose, or just isn't worth revisiting – it'll never deserve to be ranked highly on the search engine result pages. Don't you agree? Of course, there may be one or two exceptions to this generalisation, although usually, your website has to provide something that your audience just can't help but tap into on a regular basis. If you look at what makes most of the popular websites successful – it's usually pivoted around the central theme of 'sharing engaging content'. The posts that don't receive many 'likes', 'favourites' or other interactions are the one that gets left on the shelf to gather dust.

Hopefully, it's starting to make sense that a huge amount of effort should be put into your content and function ensuring both are fit for purpose and, more importantly, your audience. Great content that your audience loves, receives effortless Search Engine Optimisation [SEO]. Your brilliant website visitors generally take the hassle out of it, by sharing your meaningful content in all four corners of the internet – and that's the beautiful, open nature, of the web. As a welcomed consequence, all this social-buzz your content creates gives off strong quality signals to on-looking search engines.

A good way to look at this is to take a subtle cue from the name, Hummingbird. Now, I know Google may have their own reasons for choosing this name, and other bloggers have been open to sharing their interpretations – nonetheless – I thought I'd give you mine:

What does a hummingbird do? Yes, it flies. But. It's the manner in which it does so that is significant. It's frantic flapping and buzzing energy created by the rapid movement of their wings could be comparable to the social buzz and engagement I've been getting at this entire post. Just a thought!

I think Google decision-makers are really starting to hone in on the importance of delivering accurately targeted results to their user base. They have to come up with a way of doing that, which isn't reliant upon factors which can be easily forged. Everybody knows that you can purchase thousands of (irrelevant) backlinks for not very much investment. Although, this makes it unjust for any crowd-worthy articles that haven't employed such aggressive tactics. So, rightfully, Google are combating this on a daily basis by inventing new methods and releasing silent-patches to their algorithms.

If you are going to spend time any time at all on backlink campaigns – the ones you need to concentrate on are quality backlinks. Ideally, they should be natural, a recommendation from someone without prompt from you (especially payment – unless it's an advertisement). If you want organic visitors, it's only right that we have naturally occurring brand appearances on the world wide web. Search Engine Optimisation isn't the same as advertising, so it shouldn't be performed so brutally. SEO is not as explicit as advertisement and there's far more going on behind the scenes. If we take things out of context, expecting lots of organic traffic from your forced keyword campaigns is like expecting organic tomatoes by planting and growing tomato seeds with the aid of harsh chemicals. Success if it happens, is likely to be ugly. In the web world it would be frowned upon and potentially penalised.

Now, I'm conscious that this is my first contribution to the Heart Internet blog, and it's been rather a long read. So I wanted leave you today with an epic-scale word of advice which was coined by a client of mine, Mr. Alan Harder (from Canada), whilst arriving at his own conclusions:

“[…] I'd bet those SEO fees would be better spent hiring a freelance journalist to write 20 top quality articles a month?”

I, personally, think Alan hit the nail on the head with this one. I don't think I could have put it better myself. It makes sense if you think about it. As much as SEO is usually considered a long-term investment; search engine algorithms change, as we very well know – which messes up the rankings for some unfortunate people. Whereas, on the other hand, content curated and owned by yourself, or on behalf of your brand is a life-time asset, providing the longest possible return on any investment. Great content also adds tangible value to your website that the general web user can physically identify and appreciate.

Remember that Search Engine Optimisation is predominantly designed around processes intended to improve a robot's ability to read your website. Though, in the more modern era of the web, consider that Google are trying to move away from this rigorously systematic, “expert-only”, approach by becoming more intuitive. They are aiming towards levelling-out the playing field for niche websites, so they too can have their chance to shine.

I do however, believe there will always be a market for Search Engine Optimisation experts, and the fancy behind-the-scenes wizardry that makes websites more openly accessible. What I want to drive home, primarily, is how important a content-first approach is to any website.

Now is a better time than ever to stop worrying about the nitty-gritty and forced-SEO; let your content do the talking for you. Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Written by Ben Newton | www.bnewton.co.uk | @bnwebdesign

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