In mid February this year, Google rolled out their new programme of using blocks of four paid ads at the top of many of their results pages, instead of the previously standard one to three. Obviously, this has some implications for the future of SEO: no matter how well optimised your site is, it’s still only going to appear fourth, possibly underneath the page cut. So how can SEO adapt to this new system?
Other Search Engines
Google might be synonymous with web searching, but other sites do exist – and people do use them. Of course there’s Bing, which has plenty of hidden potential waiting to be tapped by SEO agencies who want to stay ahead of the curve, and Yahoo, but other more niche search engines are also on the rise.
For example, DuckDuckGo is one of the fastest growing search engines around, possibly because of how it takes users’ privacy into account in this world of increasing concerns about security online. DuckDuckGo also only has one position on top for paid ads, leaving more space on the page for organic search results, creating a much better click-through ratio.
Social Media
If you’ve been paying attention to the changes going on in the SEO world in recent years, you’ll have noticed that the focus has shifted from Google to using social media platforms to drive traffic. Facebook is the most effective of these by miles, with Twitter and YouTube coming in second. BuzzFeed generates 50 million outgoing visits in a month, while Reddit and Blogger can also produce a lot of clicks through to your site.
Increasing demand for novel social media strategies has also lead to many companies deciding to go pro. This has resulted in numerous firms such as Dublin SEO agency www.rycomarketing.ie/ and others putting great effort into learning how to conduct effective guerrilla marketing campaigns across a number of social media platforms.
A Whole New World
It’s clear that times are changing quite dramatically in SEO, and the lesson to be learnt from these changes is diversification. Social media may be becoming the new Google, but that’s not to say we should ignore the traditional methods in the way that focusing on Google meant neglecting other means of drawing traffic. Spreading yourself carefully over a number of different traffic sources is the way forward.