NextGen Search

• How will users KNOW about our brand & products ? How will users FIND about our products ? How will users PREFER our products ? How will users BUY from us ? How to GUIDE users right from the get go ? All these are possible through NextGen search – SEO/SEM/Enterprise Search – gateway to everything we do online .

• THE SEARCH ENGINE’S GOAL : is to find & understand all the content in internet and then DELIVER RELEVANT and AUTHORITATIVE RESULTS for the search term ENTERED by user

• SEARCH SUCCESS MANTRA :isto make sure all our rich CONTENT - driven by extensive KEYWORD research from user’s perspective - there in all search engines INDEX Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu - with extremely high RELEVANCY - so as to match user’s QUERIES to TOP results in SERP – as well as UNIFIED, PERSONALIZED, AI-ML drivenENTERPRISE SEARCH – resulting in HIGH CTR and ultimate CONVERSION RATE

• SOME KEY SEARCH STATS: More than 7 B searches per day in Google, 49% of marketers report Organic Search provides best ROI, #1 result in Google gets 32% of clicks, 53% of people research products in google before buying , About 2B websites today , about 58 B unique indexed pages in google, people spending more than 40% of time searching for information across repositories

• FACTORS INFLUENCING SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS :

• Relevance,

• Authority

• Competition

• Other key sites linking to our websites,

• People feedback & perception ,

• Sentiment & Personalization

• Vote of Trust

• Content Effectiveness

• SEO : Search Engine Optimization : The process of making improvements on all the on the internal & external web properties to gain MORE EXPOSURE in search engine results which in turn will result in more visitors finding you ORGANICALLY . Also referred ORGANIC Search ( FREE ). Users prefer & trust Organic results more than Paid as these are recommended by the Search Engines itself . This is a very intensive & require little more time to accomplish our goals BUT it's high value & worth the effort. Search done in EXTERNAL SEARCH ENGINES/PAGES - Displayed Organic Results.

• SEM: Search Engine Marketing : The process of showing our Advertisements in Search Engine by putting some dollars behind high quality keywords to drive traffic to our web properties and ultimately assist in conversion. This is referred as PAID SEARCH. This approach is quite beneficial to increase awareness & conversion in SHORT TERM and definitely should complement SEO Initiatives to enhance our pipeline & revenue.Search done in EXTERNAL SEARCH ENGINES/PAGES - Displayed Ads Results.

• ENTERPRISE Search: The process of providing ability to users, prospects ,customers, employees to search for any information from all the repositories & web properties owned by an Organization based on their access & authorization levels. This provides an ability to users to find any information in a unified place without searching across various siloed & fragmented web properties. Search done in COMPANY OWNED WEB PAGES - Both Organic Results + Best Bets Ads for highlighting new products / services, key features etc

• SEARCH ENGINE ARCHITECTURE:

• CRAWLER :

• Spiders the web,

• Identifies & Follows Hyperlinks,

• Retrieves new & Changed Content

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• INDEXER:

• Analyze content,

• Analyze Link Graph,

• Relevancy Ranking

• 
  

• QUERY DISPLAY RESULTS:

• Interprets query intent & context,

• Retrieves documents from index

• MAIN KEYWORD ATTRIBUTES

• Relevance

• Search Volume

• Competition

• With proper keyword research , we can get as much relevant search volume with less competition

• CRAWLING PROBLEMS:

• Link Structures in sitemap.xml

• Gated Content through forms

• Non textual Content in images video

• Dynamic Content in javascript AJAX

• Blocked in Code robots.txt

• Duplicate Content

• CONTENT PROBLEMS

• Uncommon Terms

• Mixed content signal

• Language Variations

• Location targeting

• Images not optimized for device

• Description not proper

• Meta Tags not defined

• URL, Title, Heading, Alt Texts, Micro formats not appropriate

• Link Anchor text not mapped to actual content

• User's Intent based targeted keywords not leveraged

• User Intent through targeted keyword not mapped to actual content description

• Content not Optimized for Search Engine

• SEO CONTENT IMPROVEMENT AREAS:

• Dynamic Sitemap page

• sitemap.xml update

• Page/Image/Asset Name

• Page/Image/Asset Tagging

• Duplicate Content

• Redirects

• Title

• Description

• Keywords

• Related Content/ Canonical

• nofollow

• no index

• Alt tags for images

• Proper Anchor tags

• URL structure

• Microformats for digital properties

• No link from javascript/flash

• Social Sharing

• Freshness/New content

• LINK BUILDING STRATEGIES:

• Get Customers to link

• Get Partners to link

• Build Company Blog with rich content

• Create content that inspires viral sharing

• Create rich content for natural linking

• Educational Institutions to link

• Research Scientist to link

• Provide Seamless Social Sharing from various web properties

• Non Profit Organizations to Link

• Brand Ambassadors to Link

• Key Bloggers to Link

• Key News Sites to Link

• Key Web & Industry Specific Directories to Link

• SEM STRATEGIES

• Identify commonly used search keywords from user's perspective

• For all those keywords , add rich content URLs to drive traffic

• Identify the top keywords for the key product pages that we want to increase awareness

• For all those keywords , add content urls to drive traffic to those product pages

• Follow all the best practices for providing rich, relevant & unambiguous content that users love

• Identify the right LONG-TAIL keywords along with short ones to get better ROI & accomplish business goals

• Target all search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu ( if targeting China/APAC )

• Perform competitive research around keywords , backlinks to increase the relevancy of our content etc

• ENTERPRISE SEARCH GOALS:

• Find information from everywhere, everything & using every device

• Show important & most relevant Information first

• Ease of access to detailed information

• Ability to search any content type video, audio, image, code etc.

• Targeted Search for assisting Sales, Support, Engineering Users

• Identifying rich content accessed frequently and where it is needed

• Quick access to SME for individual results

• Easy Service integration Plugins

• Mashing Knowledge & Data from external search engines

• Identifying user behavior, attracting new visitors

• Support for I18N & I10N etc

• AREAS TO LEVERAGE SEO TOOLS:

• KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS

• TECHNICAL SEO TOOLS

• COMPETITIVE SEO TOOLS

• CONTENT SEO TOOLS

• OFFSITE VISIBILITY SEO TOOLS

• SOME KEY TOOLS:

• Google Search Console

• Google Diagnostic Tools

• web.dav

• Google Test My site

• Google Lighthouse

• Screaming Frog

• KWFinder

• Google Structured Data Testing Tool

• Moz Keyword Explorer

• Buzz Sumo

• Google Trends

• SEMRush

• AHrefs

• Siteliner

• AnswerThePublic

• Google Analytics

• Adobe Analytics

• Wordstream

• MEASUREMENT & INSIGHTS:

• Organic Search : Impressions, CTR , Conversions from all Search Engines

• Paid Search : Impressions, CTR , Conversions from all Search Engines

• Content Assets : Usage & effectiveness

• Most popular Content

• Most popular landing pages

• Pages Views from Organic Search

• Average Time on Site

• Bounce Rate

• Social Stats : Tweets, Comments, Like, Share

• Revenue Metrics: Leads, MQL, SQL, SAL, Opportunity, Revenue etc

• Will cover in more detail about Understanding User Intent --> Mapping Intent to Right Keyword --> Mapping Keyword to Relevant & Trusted Content --> Developing Backlinks to Site for Link Building --> Technical SEO --> Content SEO & the various tools in depth in later upcoming posts !!!

• NextGen Search with innovative approaches embedded with Unified, Personalized, AI/ML driven Voice Activated Search - from all three Search Avenues - SEO, SEM, Enterprise - from all search engines - have the potential to drive revenues exponentially

• More in next post !!!