We talked about this interesting topic last week at the 2018 Engage Conference. The theme of the event centred on the question: does the old digital adage ‘content is king’ still hold water?
We wanted to present a fresh angle on this, based on observation of the actors involved, the interlocutors that comprise the conversation on the web: because content, and web content in particular, must be of interest to someone, it is the raison d’etre of its very existence.
This means that there is a user looking for it and a search engine that can act as a check and match, matching the results as closely as possible to the search. Or answers to the questions. Which, perhaps, is the same thing, isn’t it? But we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
Evolution of user behavior
In the beginning it was the chaotic and unknown web: a huge hyperuranium full of every possible element, every idea, concept, image, video, text – all human knowledge.
Before discussing the evolution of SEO and SERP, we need to bear in mind how users are constantly evolving: always-on and aware, and searching in a more and more natural way.
This led first-generation users to feel like the “secondary” party, human and imperfect, when faced with such a huge body of information: this was also why in the past search queries were merely mechanical, with people speaking the language of the machine, having to learn a new shared code to track down what they needed on the web.
However, users has been evolving considerably over time, moving from being occasional users operating from just a few restricted locations and through limited access channels (their own home or work PC, sitting at a desk, exclusively from desktops) to be physically in possession of their knowledge source: in fact, today we keep our smartphones on us round the clock. And how many of us would give them up? How many of us feel suddenly lost, vulnerable, and even a little scared when our phone battery has died or there’s no signal?
Evolution of Google updates: colloquial queries and mobile devices
Today, therefore, the perspective has completely reversed and the web has become as common currency as pop music. It’s no longer the complex universe in which only the most computer-savvy felt at ease, but today it’s a welcoming place for everyone.
The algorithms are all geared to the same goal: to meet the needs of users, in terms of immediacy and speed, offering quality multi-channel content.
The reasons are many: of course, the evolution of the web itself is key i.e. the continuous transformation of the algorithms of Google & co, has led to the selection of content as high quality, immediate and meaningful as possible, that really responds to user queries.
We have Panda to thank if the web has stopped being populated by poor quality directories, and content farms offering questionable content with thin text with no substance, all resulting from keyword stuffing. And, following on, it is thanks to Hummingbird that the web has started to recognize more colloquial search queries, product of human thinking processes.
As we mentioned before, the advent of the mobile-first era has been instrumental in changing the way we search, both in terms of where and when, but also how. Think of voice search and the number of times you have asked your smartphone or voice assistant to search for information in an absolutely impromptu way, for an immediate need, in the micro-moment, talking to the device in the same natural way that you would when requesting information from a passerby or a shop assistant.
The search engine gives users what they want: targeted, fast answers
Google has already been doing this for some time: responding directly to the user, through its own internal resources and zero-result SERPs.
So what is the search engine doing? It’s becoming a response engine: it is estimated that 25% of SERP results are now provided directly by Google as knowledge-graphs, carousels, or images or as zero results via featured snippets.
This means that it is prioritizing the immediacy of the answer, to make users happy in the first instance, but also to ensure traffic remains as targeted as possible.
And it is not just relevance, quality and immediacy that drives the engine’s responses: another essential feature is speed. In this regard, we carried out a detailed study on the notorious Medic Update this summer and we have come to a number of really interesting conclusions … these will be the focus of our next blogpost!
How to achieve top SERP rankings in 2018? Conclusions
We have seen various stages of online content evolution: if in 2013 we liked synthetic content and in 2016 instead we came to prefer long, detailed articles, what has best practice been in 2018? In a nutshell, we could say that it is focused content, targeted content, in the broadest sense of the word.
Targeted as regards topic and discussion, targeted in terms of being an answer to the users’ questions but also in the sense of being fast and on demand.
