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Psychology and CRO: How are they connected?

Anyone who has been involved in sales will know that a little bit of human psychology goes a long way to improve sales. Just think about the way a seasoned market trader warms up their crowd, for example, and how fast their “unbelievable bargains” disappear into the crowd.

This is why having an understanding of human psychology is critical for success with CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation). After all, knowing why people buy and what stops them from buying is the key to successful CRO.

Unfortunately, there is no list of things to do that will trick customers into buying things, so if you are expecting that from this article – you will be disappointed. There is no way to really convince someone to buy something if they don’t really want to. So, how does knowing psychology really help?

When it comes to eCommerce, the most basic task is to help people see how your product can meet their needs by solving their problem in a way which offers them value for money. This sounds easy but is actually very hard – and knowing how people’s minds work can be a great help.

The difference with selling on a website, to being a market trader, is that it is really difficult to persuade people to impulse buy. People don’t easily fall for the “buy now or miss out” offers as they tend to take more time to consider purchases.

It’s not all bad news though – you can use psychology to persuade people that they should purchase now rather than later.

In B2C (Business to Consumer) eCommerce, the easiest way to persuade a person to buy is to trigger an emotional desire to own an item in them. If you don’t create that desire then it is going to be really hard to persuade them to make a purchase. However, on the flip side of this, creating the desire does not guarantee you will make the sale. ECommerce is complicated, and there are lots of hoops you will have to go through to get people to press the checkout button.

In B2B (Business to Business) eCommerce it is less about emotion and more about a functional need, and you will need to take into account price and service as well.

When we talk about psychology in CRO, we tend to look at it in four different ways:

#1 Creating Desire

The more a person wants to buy something, the less easy it is going to be for them to talk themselves out of it. The close they get to the checkout, the less likely they are to be distracted by doubts or distractions.

As humans, we tend to make emotional decisions quickly, and then backtrack and try and justify them using logic. We don’t really need to upgrade our phones when the latest models come out, we want to and then we justify our decision by telling ourselves it will do something for us that our existing, perfectly functional phone, won’t.

Our desire is driven by our senses, so in the past we have touched, smelt, and tasted things before we have bought them. However, when we are buying online, we can’t do that, so eCommerce sites have to work hard with the tools that they have available.

When you look at the typically high performing pages on an ecommerce site, they tend to be pages that do a fantastic job at creating desire. Photography is key, and so brands will spend large amounts of money to get their product shots just right as these are vitally important in creating that desire. If your product shots don’t stimulate a desire to own the item then you’ve failed at the first hurdle.

#2 Fulfilling the need to belong

Another human desire that it is important to fulfil is the need to belong. This is critical when it comes to eCommerce – especially when it comes to branding and website design. You need people to self-identify with your brand and so should actively encourage them to do so.

Group identity is a powerful seller, and to be successful at this you need to have a thorough knowledge of your target customer. What inspires your target customer, what are they motivated by, what are they interested in? What sort of group do they want to belong to, and how do you replicate that in the look and feel of your brand?

#3 Rational justification

As we have said above, once we have decided that we want something, we have to be able to justify that decision. This is where awesome product descriptions come in. Many retailers make the mistake of thinking that product descriptions are a way of persuading people to buy something. They’re not. They are a powerful tool which can help customers to reinforce the decision they have already made.

Customers don’t want over the top sales copy telling them they are going to miss out if they don’t buy now, what they want is copy which tells them they have made the right decision which they are not going to regret. Talking about product benefits in the description is really beneficial, as is cleverly answering any concerns people may have.

One way of improving your conversion rate when it comes to rational justification is to offer a live chat service. Have it as an option that people can use when they want it, to ask questions about the products and get them answered quickly.

#4 Building Trust

One of the best ways to build trust in your eCommerce site and the products that you offer, is to show product review on your website. Real product reviews left by real people will help to reinforce the fact that the customer is doing the right thing by buying from your website. It also helps people to believe that they are part of a group.

We believe in keeping things simple here at Dale Street Digital, and we have in depth knowledge of CRO that will help make your website super user friendly. If you want to work with us to shape an exciting future together, please get in touch on 0161 730 0530 or email us at enquiries@dalestreetdigital.co.uk

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What does the next decade have in store for business, design and tech?

The New Year has begun. We are midway through January already. But this is no normal new year – this is 2020 – the start of a new decade. The internet is part of our daily lives, and we are all much more aware of technology, society, politics and capitalism and how they all work together. All of this means that businesses have a great opportunity to redefine value and offer innovative products and services based on this. But what does the next ten years look like? What trends do the Dale Street Digital team think we will see in business, design and tech and how will they shape the brands of the future?

Trend One: Sustainability

Saving the environment is becoming more and more important as a business value. You only have to turn on the TV or flick open a newspaper to see reports on climate change and the social disruption it is causing. This is leading to more and more consumers demanding that the products they buy and the services they use are environmentally responsible in a way that is meaningful to them.

This means that many businesses are having to re-evaluate their fundamental values with some going so far as to say that profit is no longer their number one priority. Instead, they are looking at how they are impacting on the climate, our society and the world as a whole – and making changes to transform themselves.

Trend Two: A cashless society

Technology is having a massive impact on the world of finance and the way that individuals think about money. We are well on our way to becoming a cashless society, where notes and coins are a thing of the past, and digital money takes over. People are already well versed in using their fingerprint or face to authorise payments, and this trend only looks like it will continue to grow.

More and more of our personal data is becoming entwined with our money in a bid to bring about personalised payment possibilities that are seamless. The more data that is embedded into our money, the easier it is for brands to offer us various different products and services that are suitable for our needs.

More and more non-traditional financial institutions are entering the market and driving this trend forward, and we can see a future where payment systems are almost invisible. Businesses therefore need to ensure their payment experiences are evolving and changing to keep up with the market, and that they are continuing to offer their customers something different than their competitors.

Trend Three: Increased personalisation

Data and personalisation are not just restricted to the financial industry, they are forcing changes in other industries as well. The introduction of 5g and advances in biometric tech mean that we are sharing lots of data about ourselves whenever we are online meaning that brands can now use this to help them design products and services that may appeal to us.

Over the next ten years this will continue to develop to the point where our digital and physical selves start to blend, with hyper-targeted customer experiences becoming the norm. However, this trend does come with a word of warning. With all of this data flying about, privacy and security become even more important. Even when transactions are as seamless as possible, people still need to be aware that they have made a transaction and they are in charge of their own personalise experience – and things like GDPR will help with that.

Trend Four: Using AI to enhance human intelligence

AI is not new; it has been around for a few years now but in the past the focus has been on enhancing organisational efficiency through the use of automation. The focus is now beginning to shift more towards blending human skills with AI intelligence to power disruptive business strategies in a helpful and collaborative way.

The relationship between people and machines needs working on, to help us to plan more carefully for how AI may impact on economies and social trends. Design can help us to understand AI in the way that AI helps us to understand business.

Trend Five: Design for life

Similar to the first major trend of sustainability, people are now asking brands to offer them products and services that are reflective of the environmental, political and social causes they care about. In the past designers have tended to concentrate on designing just for human life, but now they need to take into account the life of the whole planet as well.

To conclude then, from 2020 onwards, people will be forcing businesses to care more about the planet and their impact on it – and this will be reflected in business, design and technology. Businesses will need to be responsive and innovative in order to succeed.

Helping your business to succeed is at the core of what we do here at Dale Street Digital. If you want to make the next ten years even more successful than the last ten years, get in touch with us today.

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What Can We Learn From 2019 To Help Us Rock 2020?

What can we learn from 2019 to help us rock 2020?

2019 has passed by in the blink of an eye, and what a year it has been. We have seen some interesting trends surface that we are sure will only grow in popularity over the coming years. The battle for customers is really on, and you need to know about these customer experience trends if you want to succeed.

Augmented Reality becoming more Widely Used

Companies have been dabbling in Augmented Reality (AR) for a while as a way of offering more convenience to their customers – such as YouTube with its AR Ad’s which allow viewers to try make up looks on alongside their favourite vloggers.

AR is a technology that is in its early stages and so we are just beginning to discover its capabilities but we think it will have a massive impact on brands in the future through things such as augmented promotions and personalised content.

Brands as Partners for Life

Customers are used to technology offering them more convenience and time saving options – it’s part of our everyday life now. Brands are therefore now looking at how they can become irreplaceable in their customers lives – a partner for life so to say.

The Dutch Insurance Company Centraal Behaar, for example, recently offered to help their customers with odd jobs around the house or install solar panels for them as a way of becoming a ‘Partner in Mobility.’ Another good example is the ‘Now.Brussels’ app which is a free real-time guide for people who want to explore Brussels while being inspired and guided by locals.

Looking to China for Inspiration

For many years China was behind the West when it came to technological advances, but this is not the case anymore – especially when it comes to AI. Many Chinese companies are trying to break into the West and are proving to be very popular with customers. The social media platform TikTok is a great example as it has taken a huge portion of Facebook’s users and now has over 500 million active users worldwide.

The fast rise of such Chinese companies has meant that many Western companies are now looking to them for inspiration. Google, for example, has just bought a video sharing platform called Firework while while Facebook is said to be testing a similar service which they are calling Lasso.

Service is King

We are used to SaaS (Software as a Service, PaaS (Platform as a Service), and MaaS (Mobility as a Service) but this year we saw the development of lots of other things ‘as a service’ and we predict that this is only going to expand.

Let’s take Apple as a business example. They are well known for their technology offerings, the iPod, iPad, and so on but the technology market is becoming stagnant and so they have started to look for other ways to grow and develop. So, this year they have added new subscriptions and video streaming and there are rumours that they are going to enter the finance market as well.

This is just one example of the way that companies are exploring new ways to offer service to their customers, and we are interested to see how other businesses will expand their offerings in 2020.

Voice search

Voice search is nothing new but it has grown and developed in the past twelve months voice search has been integrated into more and more devices across a much wider range of user applications. Amazon for example, recently announced that it there were 85000 ‘Works with Alexa’ ðevices available – 85000 devices! They are also working on wearable Alexa devices such as ear buds and eye glasses so who knows what the future holds.

Google is also working on streamlining as many processes as it can for its customers, in the hope that Google Assistant will become the primary search channel for people – the next step from Google Search possibly?

The voice search market is a huge market which is why so many companies are experimenting a lot and partnering up with other companies to try and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

So these are our pick of the trends in 2019 that we see continuing into 2020.

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Responsive Display Ads: What Do You Need to Know?

If you use Google Ad’s to promote your business – or your marketing agency does – then you will recently have received an email from Google telling you that they are replacing legacy display ads with responsive display ads. But what are they and what impact will this change have on your business?

History of responsive display ads?

Responsive display ads aren’t new, they were actually introduced back in 2016 as an alternative to the existing text ads. They became so popular that in the summer of 2018 they actually became the default ad type for people using the Google Display Network (GDN).

What are responsive display ads?

Responsive display ads are just Google’s answer to customer complaints that text ads don’t show enough and banner ads don’t say enough. Responsive ad’s were designed to incorporate both textual and visual creative assets.

When it comes to responsive ad copy, it is important to remember:

A short headline of around 25 characters
A long headline of around 90 characters
A description of around 90 characters
Your business name – up to 25 characters

Saying this though, Google will never show both your long and short headline – it will choose between them depending on the location your ad ends up in – and it may not show your description either.

Why is location so important for responsive ads?

Location of your ad is key actually, as it plays a pivotal role in the ad type. Google recently revealed it is using machine learning to test thousands of different combinations of your textual and visual assets in order to:

Find the message that resonates the most with your customers
Fill as much inventory as they can on the GDN

The ‘inventory’ they are trying to fill includes Banner, Native and Text ad spaces which means that Google has to choose different text combinations, truncate the text and scale the images in real time in order to deliver customised ads across the whole network.

As responsive display ads are eligible for a higher percentage of their GDN inventory, many advertisers in the past have run them in conjunction with more traditional display ads which often result in them seeing higher delivery numbers, higher spend and higher click through rates through their responsive ads.

What are legacy display ads?

In this article we have mentioned traditional display ads a couple of times, but what are they? Are they the same as legacy display ads?

Not really. Traditional banner ads that most advertisers use are not going anywhere. This is good news for many marketers who love the fact that they come in many different shapes and sizes such as banner, inline rectangle, half-page, leader board, and square to name just a few.

When we talk about legacy display ads being replaced, we are talking about two specific types of ads:

Legacy dynamic responsive template (ID: 491)
Smart display ads

So, if you know that you are using either of these two types of ads in your ad campaign, you need to be prepared for the fact that Google is going to remove them.

Exactly what is changing then?

Google themselves says:

“Starting November 2019, responsive display ads will replace legacy display ads in Google ads…With this change, any campaigns running legacy display ads may stop serving unless there is an alternate display ad available in the community.”

Clear enough then?

If you are running any ad campaigns that are relying solely on legacy dynamic responsive templates or smart display ads, then these campaigns are either going to seriously underperform in November, or stop altogether.

This will have an impact on your spend of course. However, Google are mindful of this and have taken some steps to help advertisers to easily make the switch from these old ad formats to the new ones.

In fact, Google has gone so far as to create brand new responsive display ads for you, and so if you have either of these two old ad types running in your account you should see new ones appearing shortly. However, the new ads won’t start running until you turn them on.

What do you need to do? This is a great opportunity for you to take a closer look at your ads and work out what is and what isn’t working as well as ensuring your textual and visual assets are up to date. You may also want to think about adding extra images, and tweeking your headlines, descriptions and logos. This will help Google test more ad combinations across the GDN and give them (and you) a better idea of what is working and what isn’t.

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Can immersive technology be monetized?

There has been a lot of talk around immersive technology in recent months, especially when it comes to Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality. Although the terms have been bandied about for a few years now, we haven’t seen it become mainstream as quickly as some may have imagined. But this could all be about to change.

The recent ‘2019 Augmented and Virtual Reality Survey Report’ by Perkins Coie LLP found that there is a belief amongst many immersive technology professionals that it will become mainstream and as widely adopted as mobile phones are by 2025. This could therefore be a great opportunity for businesses to enter the immersive technology market – but how easy will it be to monetize it?

Let’s take a closer look at some of the other findings in the report above, to see whether we can answer that question.

How is the future of immersive technology currently viewed?

In order to get a clear understanding of how current immersive technology is monetized, we need to understand two things:

What is the most developed content for immersive technology at the moment?
What are the barriers to market for immersive technology?

Let’s take a look at content. At the moment a lot of immersive technology content is centred around gaming driven by supply and demand. Findings within the ‘Augmented and Virtual Reality Survey Report’ show that 48% of those surveyed stated that the content they were currently creating for immersive technology was ‘video game’ related. Investment in ‘gaming’ was also where the majority of respondents (54%) felt would be the focus for the next 12 months as well.

Despite many respondents indicating that they were optimistic about immersive technology, they also identified certain barriers to market as well, with the most important one being those to do with customer experience. Cumbersome hardware and technical glitches are quite common in immersive technology at the moment.

The other main barrier to market identified was the lack of quality content and the amount of content available. This leads to another area of concern which is a reluctance of both businesses and consumers to embrace immersive technology. This shows that there is a commonly held belief that not enough people care about immersive technology enough to actually invest in it.

On the flip side though, more than half of those surveyed felt that the biggest investment in immersive technology in the future would be in gaming which raises another concern. If investors are worried about audience adoption of such technology doesn’t this show that the developed uses for such technology should be aiming to be more diversified to attract more interest?

Can immersive technology be monetized?

So, we come back to the original question, how can immersive technology be monetized?

Usually when content is monetised it is through either ads or subscriptions. Can immersive technology be monetized in the same way? The Perkins Coie LLP survey shows that this seems to be the current model of monetization with things such as in-app ads, product placement and subscription sales being cited.

So, where does the monetization of technology go from here?

69% of the respondents in the aforementioned survey stated that they currently monetized or planned to monetize via some form of advertising. This is interesting to note because many within the marketing industry still believe that VR ads are still a long way off. However, there is the possibility that AR ads might be worth investing in. The adaptability of AR seems to have been quicker than either MR or VR possibly due to the fact that it can be experienced on a smartphone, which most people already have, rather than having to pay out for an expensive and often cumbersome VR headset.

This ties in with the fact that 70% of the survey respondents stated they expected the AR market to surpass the VR one, with 49% expecting this to happen in the next 3 to 5 years.

Now, the question we asked at the start of this article was, can immersive technology be monetized? The answer seems to be yes although it won’t be easy. There needs to be a lot of experimentation and trial and error which could be difficult and expensive, but the opportunities are massive and there is a lot of room to grow.

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The Voice Search Revolution

So, we guess that title grabbed your attention! The voice search revolution no less. But is this true? Is it a revolution? Well, let’s take a look at some statistics to start with:

Google recently released some research which showed that 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search on a daily basis
Google also revealed that 20% of mobile queries these days are voice searches
Kleiner Perkins also released some research relating to voice search which claimed that according to Google Trends, voice search has grown 35 times since 2008

Now, if you are skeptical you might say that it is not surprising that Google’s statistics show that voice search is already here. What may surprise you is that other statistics back this claim up:

Branded3 has completed some research that shows that 25% of all Windows desktop searches are done via voice search
6 out of 10 voice-activated device owners say they can’t imagine going back to life without a smart speaker, according to Geomarketing

Why is voice search so popular?

I guess what these stat’s show us is that voice search is already here, and already being used – but why is it so popular?

Well, for one it is fast. Bing released some research recently that showed that most people can type 38 to 40 words a minute, but speak 110 to 150 words a minute. The faster you can search, the faster you get your answer. Secondly, voice search is made for mobile searching – again as it is so much quicker to speak into your phone than spend time typing on a small screen. Finally, voice search is much more convenient for people who are time poor – and they like the fact that the answer is read back to them.

Voice Search and SEO

But what does all this mean for you, the business owner? Well what it means is when you are considering SEO now, you need to make sure you site is not only optimized for search engines online but also for voice search as well.

Searching with your voice is vastly different than searching by typing something into a search engine. It not only changes how and when people search, but also what they are searching for. Let’s take a closer look at these differences:

How people search – When people use their voice to search rather than typing into a search engine, their searches are more likely to be conversational and therefore longer. For example, if you wanted to look up how to make a latte at home you might type ‘make a latte’ into Google whereas to your smart speaker you will probably say ‘Hey Google, how do I make a latte at home?’ Naturally, this difference is going to have an impact on both keyword research and on-page SEO
Where people search – As we have identified above, voice search is much more convenient for people and so it is being used more often and in more places every day. Research by Stone Temple shows that in fact people are much more likely to use voice search in public places, such as on public transport, in a restaurant with friends, or even in a public restroom! Let’s say you are in Manchester for a meeting, you go to the bathroom and spill water on your silk shirt. A few years ago, you would have had to go to the nearest place with wi-fi and type ‘clothing store for men Manchester’ into Google. Nowadays however, you can whip out your phone and say ‘where is there a men’s clothing store open near me?’ – very different searches as you can see.
How people get search results – Interestingly, Google is now starting to position itself as an ‘answer engine’ rather than a ‘search engine’ by introducing new features such as featured snippets and the knowledge graph. This means that when you type your search into Google, many people are now not clicking through to websites to get the answer, as Google is providing them the answer on the SERPs. Let’s say you wanted the answer to the question ‘how tall is the biggest tree in the world?’ if you typed it into Google a few years ago you would have been presented with 10 different results. But with voice search the answer is read back to you within seconds

All of this means that it is getting harder and harder for business owners to get their content in front of people unless their content gives searchers direct answers to their questions.

Now that we have convinced you of the need to optimize your site and content for voice search, how do you go about doing that? Well, that is where we come in. Next month’s blog will show you some of the ways in which we have changed our keyword research and on page optimization work to reflect this new revolution of voice search – but in the meantime if you want to hear more about how we can help your business take advantage of the voice search revolution, please get in touch with our expert team today.

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Is Social Media Really Worth Investing In For Businesses?

Our sister company SEO MCR published a post back in 2017 asking ‘is social media really worth investing in for businesses‘ and we thought it would be interesting to look back and see whether our opinion has changed since the original piece.

It’s no secret that social media has grown massively over the years and is at present pretty much everywhere we go. Not only is it now a crucial part of any business who wants to expand its customer base from local, to national to international (although we do still have clients coming to us having never had any form of social media or web presence prior to their meeting with us), we have now entered an era where people have even created, moulded and sustained themselves jobs for life (or at least the foreseeable future) from the content they post on their social media channels and how they fashion themselves.

These people go by the name (and job title) of influencers. These people are equally, if not more, powerful than the stand-alone social media channels in generating brand awareness for your business, due to their trusting and loyal following-base. By utilising like-minded influencers, you can almost personify your brand or create a present and vocal example of your target audience.

An influencer is an individual who has the power to affect the purchase decisions of other people, because of their authority, knowledge, position or relationship with the audience. Influencers in social media are people who have built up a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a particular topic. They make regular posts about their preferred topics, such as outfit posts, and they generate large followings of enthusiastic and engaged people who pay close attention to their posts and their views.

Social media is a powerful tool in pushing out the perception you want of yourself and your business. Although there will always be areas in which your brand could be exposed to negativity, as people are more likely to post about negative experiences than positive, there are ways to manage this by having a great team who is on the ball in tracking the ‘noise’ around your brand, where it be negative or positive. Moreover, there are many scheduling programmes, software’s and social listening tools out there that can help you do this.

So, in conclusion, our answer remains the same. Yes, social media really is worth investing in for your business and the most successful businesses are the ones who keep up with the latest trends and functionality of these platforms, whilst always protecting their customers’ data

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How Do Millennials Search – And Why Do We Care?

Millennials have been described as the generation who want it all, and want it all now as they are ambitious and confident with high expectations. They are, after all, the first generation of digital natives with access to all of the information they could ever desire at the touch of a button – or swipe of a screen. They are now entering the job market for the first time, having an impact on the economy, and influencing the way brands interact with and market to their customers. Their impact on the global economy is huge, and so it is vital that we take some time to understand them.

Let’s take a closer look at some statistics relating to Millennials, from CBRE Residential:

They make up 25% of the UK work population
They feel entitled to rapid work progression and frequent rises in salary
They expect to be always digitally connected, blurring work/life distinctions
They are digitally native and use their smartphone for selection, purchase and fulfillment
They expect the ecommerce revolution to continue and think that all retail activity in the future will take place online

As you can see business who aren’t targeting their products and services at Millennials are probably doing themselves a disservice – they are an important part of the population and a sector that is continually growing. It is vital, therefore, that we have a better idea of how they are interacting with brands online – whether this be on search or social – as this will have an impact on both user engagement and marketing campaigns. Knowing this will help brands to interact with this sector of society better.

How do we define Millennials?

Before we even start thinking about how Millennials interact online, we need to be sure about what the definition of Millennials is. They are generally defined as people who were born between 1980 and 2000 – however, there will be some technological adaption differences between someone born in 1981 and someone born in 1999 though. Millennials can now all be described as adults, as even someone born in 2000 will be 18 now.

Anyone born since 2000 then is known as being part of Generation Z. There are a lot of similarities between these two sectors of society but the way they use social media is subtly different. Millennials will tend to use social media for social reasons – to update their statuses and check in with their friends. Generation Z on the other hand, tend to use social media to find content and to entertain themselves.

Global Web Index recently published some research on how Generation Z and Millennials use social media, and they discovered the following:

To fill up their spare time (48%)
To find funny or entertaining content (45%)
To stay in touch with what my friends are doing (41%)
To stay up-to-date with news and current events (38%)
To share photos or videos with others (35%)
Because a lot of my friends are on there (34%)
To meet new people (34%)
General networking with other people (34%)
To share my opinion (31%)
To research / find products to buy (29%)

How do Millennials use social media and search?

One other interesting thing about Millennials is the way they gather information when they are looking for recommendations about things. Despite many people believing they would turn to social media first, only 5% of them did with the rest heading to the search engines like most other people. They tend to view social media as a place to gather the opinions of many people at once, but when they really wanted a more concrete answer they turn to Google.

It is also interesting to take a look at social media usage vs search amongst Millennials with 97% reporting that they searched online at least once a day compared with just 69% saying they logged into their social media accounts.

Looking deeper at the statistics on search in the Millennial generation, 62% reported that they searched online 5 times or more per day, and 68% reported that they did their searching on their phones.

What all this means is that search is still important in a marketing strategy that is aimed at Millennials as despite the fact they are more prolific on social media than other sectors of society, they still turn to search engines when they need find out information.

Conclusion

Social media is important as a way of sharing content, however search is important from a practical point of view. Understanding how Millennials interact online is vital if you want to come up with marketing strategies which engage them and help you to drive your business growth.

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Machine Learning is Changing SEO – How You Should Adapt?

The words ‘machine learning’ have started appearing in conversations more and more over the past few years – especially in the world of SEO. Machine learning is not a new concept, it has actually been around since the 1950s, it is changing and developing so rapidly at the moment that we must learn how to adapt quickly if we wish to take advantage of this new technology.

What is machine learning?

In Toby Segaran’s book ‘Programming Collective Intelligence’ book he defines machine learning as a subfield of artificial intelligence concerned with the algorithms that allow computers to learn. He further goes on to define artificial intelligence as the science of making computers perform task that require humans to use intelligence to do.

How is machine learning affecting SEO?

Google, the largest search engine, has shifted its concentration to focus on understanding users intent when they search for things – something we have seen in the past few algorithm updates. They want to know how to look better at things and provide searchers with the answers that satisfy their intent.

This means that if the websites that will rank highly on SERPs in the future will be websites packed full of content which adds value to users, and gives them a positive experience when they are on your website.

How does this affect us as SEO’s?

Content has always been important for SEO, and it is only going to get more so in the future. With the introduction of ‘RankBrain’ Google is sending a clear message that their focus is now on content more than it has ever been. They are telling us that they want to provide searchers with relevant and useful content across every channel they choose to search on – be that mobile, tablet or laptop.

Content should therefore be optimised around intent, ensuring it provides a high-quality experience for searchers wherever they are on the customer journey. Writing content can be difficult with many people struggling with questions such as:

What to write about
What topics are trending?

This is where having a strong content strategy and keeping on top of content development is key to finding the topics that people are talking about, and developing content that helps people with a particular problem they have at the moment.

Will technical SEO still be relevant?

Technical SEO is still important but more and more technology is being developed that means it will need less and less interaction. It is highly likely that Google Search Console (GSC) will soon be run completely on machine learning technology with little to no human interaction at all. This can be seen in the crawl error messages that GSC sends out at the moment, and we don’t think it will be long before Google fixes the issues for you as the machines involved get smarter and smarter. This almost removes the need for any human interaction at all, so what is left for us as human SEOs to do?

Structured data can help

We can’t stress how important structured data is enough – it is vital for allowing the search engines to better understand the content you are sharing, and allowing them to return a more informative result to searchers.

Using structured data to give the search engines what they want in a way they can understand it will not only increase your websites visibility and slot on the SERPs, but should also have a positive impact on click through rates as well. This can also help rankings as well, as having high click through rates is a signal to Google that your content is popular and that readers are engaged with it.

Are On-Page Optimisation and Links still important?

Many SEOs believe that on-page optimisation doesn’t have the same impact on rankings as it used to. If you take a closer look at some of the pages that are ranking highly, they don’t have the keyword in their main body or any of the other important elements. Yet they are still ranking highly for competitive keywords without these once vital SEO elements.

Links, on the other hand, are still important but we need to focus on the quality of these links rather than just going for quantity. If we want to rank highly on SERPs than not only do we need to be posting quality content but we also need quality links to this content from other highly ranked sites.

User Experience should be the Priority

As well as content, Google is also focusing on page speed – meaning it wants user experience on your site to be as painless as possible. Pages should load in two seconds or less, otherwise there will be a lack of user engagement which will have a negative effect on your rankings.

What Content Formats are Important

The answer box is a fairly new appearance on the SERPs and they seem to be something that is here to stay. Answer box optimisation is therefore important if you want to dominate the SERPs. Voice search results are also pulled from these answer boxes and so if you can get your site to appear in these boxes it is likely that your company will appear as answers to voice searches as well. This is important with the vast growth in voice search that we have seen in recent months.

Conclusion

Machine learning is already having an impact on SEO and will continue to do so in the future. It is important for companies and SEOs to focus on helping to connect searchers with the right content at the right time, to deliver them the best content experience on the web.

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What Does the Future of Data-Driven Development Hold for SEO?

There are lots of hot topics in the SEO industry at the moment, from voice search to machine-based learning – and these are all topics that we will cover in the coming months. However, we’d like to start by looking more closely at data driven development, and the impact it has had on SEO so far, and what the future may hold.

Data is everywhere these days, and some people may say we are almost at a point of complete information overload. As search marketers we can look on this huge amount of information as either a blessing or a curse – after all, how much data is too much? We could spend days and days sifting through all of the data available to us – but will add any benefit to our clients at the end of the day?

We take SEO seriously, it is our job after all, and so it is important for us to track our efforts to see what is working and what isn’t, but you have to draw a line somewhere. You can’t track everything just for the sake of it, as you will end up with more data than you know what to do with. Instead we should all focus on tracking the things that are important to our clients.

Is Information Knowledge?

There is a lot of confusion within the SEO world about the definitions of information and knowledge it seems, with many people believing they are one and the same – but they are not. Just because we are uncovering more and more information through what we are tracking, this does not mean that we are also uncovering more knowledge at the same time. We are encouraged every day to spend money on tools for analytics or tools for data discovery, but are these tools worth it – and will they increase our knowledge in the end? The answer is probably no for the majority of them.

At Dale Street Digital we break it down like this:

Knowledge is what we achieve when we have broken down the available data to give us a clear and thorough understanding as to what is happening on our client projects
Information, on the other hand, is just the data that we get from analysing these projects – the raw facts if you will.

What Information can data give us?

Target Demographic. The more information you can get on your target audience the better as this will allow you to tailor your products and services to them. You should look at things like device usage and peal traffic times.
Keyword Research. Data can also help with keyword and competitor research as well

What impact has data development had on SEO?

As a team of search professionals, our main aim is to increase the visibility of our clients brand or website through the use of organic and paid search, and to therefore increase the number of customers that they have the opportunity to engage with. The actual nitty gritty of how we do this can be very complicated, after all Google itself takes over 200 things into account with its SERP algorithms. Add to this a ton of complex information in the form of data, and we could easily end up getting tangled up in ourselves and failing on our number one aim.

That is not to say that we are advocating that we ignore data. It is extremely useful to us, as long as we stay focused on the important pieces of information that we need to know and keep our client projects goal in mind. Every client campaign is as different as the businesses they involve, and so each campaign will have different metrics we need to track and different information created that we need to analyse. By focusing clearly on each projects goal, we will be able to manage the amount of data that we consume and keep on track with the work that we need to do to make the clients project a success.

Data development in this digital age is amazing, and has given us access to the sort of analytics that can really help us to streamline our campaigns and keep them right on track, but we need to be careful not to be overwhelmed by it all. We can do this by sticking to the old adage: ‘quality not quantity’ and by using data on a ‘need to know’ basis and not a ‘nice to know’ basis. At the end of the day, this is what is going to help us to drive results.

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