Once in time, SEO was just SEO. (Cue Mr. Incredible Meme.) Whether you were a billion dollars national fire or a teenager with a spice girl’s tumblr, you played the same game: Trying to get your page in the ten blue links.
Now, two marketers may not even play the SEO game in the same field, what so much with the same rules. So how do they hope to win?
If you are in SEO, today’s master need no introduction. If you are not, all you need to know that he has made SEO for more big brands than you have your fingers to count them.
Kevin Indig
Growth advisor for Hims, Toast, Reddit, Dropbox & More
- Claim of fame: Doubling organic traffic at G2, growing Shopify’s traffic by over 75% in 12 months or provides Ramp’s organic traffic. Of course, for any of these results, Kevin recognizes that he can’t take credit alone, but gives it to a whole team of talented people.
- Fun Fact: He used to be a club DJ in a previous life and played performances in front of thousands of people. He also competed in strength lifting and weightlifting competitions.
Lesson 1: Find your vertical-specific strategy.
These days, the type of search you are performing can lead to a very different experience. A product search can bring you to Google Shopping while an information search brings up an AI overview. That is, if you are searching on Google at all.
The result is that SEO can mean radically different things for otherwise similar marketing people.
“Based on what vertically you play in, you may not work with the same tools,” says Indig. “You may not even optimize for the same platform.” And A vertical-specific strategy is the only way to stay ahead in the new search game.
He gives the example of a SaaS or B2B brand fighting for real estate in Google’s AI listings.
“AI overviews source of a lot of quotes from YouTube or LinkedIn,” he tells me. So a business that wants to emerge in Google -Seger results may … not focus on their website or Google.
In the meantime, marketing a B2C product “is much more about Google Merchant Center than Google Search Console. [It’s] a completely different game field and [there’s] Completely different ways of winning. “
“The pattern here is fragmentation,” he says. “We can’t just talk about SEO. What form Of SEO are we talking about? “
But no matter what vertical you are in, “SEO should not just be on Google anymore.”
Lesson 2: Determine where you want to be.
Indige simply means that good SEO is bigger than just Google these days, but it raises the question of Google’s competitors. So I asked if marketers should even focus on Google in the first place?
In real SEO -MATE, the answer is “It depends.” (It’s comforting to know that some things never change, right?) And what it depends on is – again – your vertical.
So if you are a small business with a physical presence?
“When it comes to local search, I can’t see anyone getting close to Google in the next decade. [It still] have an absolute fortress.“
What about Ecomm?
“I would argue that Google never won. Amazon still has that space.”
And our fictional saaS do you want to appear in the summaries? This is where things get a little more gray.
“When it comes to the informative space, I think there is a realistic chance that an LLM like Chatgpt can take a significant market share.“
(Now seems like an acceptable time to connect our AI -Search Classing? #Shamelesplug #butitesactually relevant …?)
But that doesn’t mean it’s time to jump ship on Google.
Indige suggests thinking about your digital presence in the same way you might consider what kind of store your product belongs to: Where will your ideal customers look like? And in this metaphor, Google is a big OL’s mall.
You may go to the mall “If you are not sure what you need or you just want to browse.” But if you’re after [name a very specific thing]you can go toward [specific thing store].
Lesson 3: Stay comfortable with experimenting.
All of these changes make up a truth: SEO is not a plug-and-play strategy anymore. And as challenging as it can be, it’s actually a good thing.
“It’s a little cool because it feels like the early days of SEO,” says indigen, growing nostalgic. “There wasn’t an accurate Playbook – and there was much more experimentation.”
If you have done SEO in less than … let’s say 10-15 years … you might not remember there was a time when no of us knew what we did. There was no strategy to follow. Instead, there were simply people who discovered tactics that worked (and then kill them. But it’s not the poengget.)
“And I think a lot of people are new to SEO, they don’t know that world. And they go into that world right now. I think An important skill is really to understand how to experiment, how to learn, and then how to act based on your findings.“
Lingering questions
This week’s question
Right now, it feels as if so many brands are investing in beautifully produced, curated, experiential moments that are intended to create awareness and divorce (and probably very expensive).
How do you think new brands with limited budgets should approach this tactic and still manage to cut through the mess? – Jackie Widmann, VP for Marketing, Due Brewing
This week’s answer
Indig says: In my experience, the highly produced moments mean something at certain moments, such as when customers are considering a purchase but what often Catching their attention is the very authentic, unpolished moment.
Therefore, influencer works -marketing. So as a brand with a limited budget, I would focus my budget on a few well -produced marketing assets (like videos of product images) and the rest of authentic, raw moments that build confidence and curiosity.
Next week’s question
Indige asks: What is the most underrated marketing channel right now, and why do you think it deserves more attention?
