By Chris Lee

Search engine Google regularly changes the way its algorithms operate in order to improve the accuracy of results for its users. Earlier this year there was the infamous Panda update, which saw so-called ‘article farms’ – those with well-crafted SEO but little content value – punished in favour of thicker content.

NMK spoke with Andrew Girdwood, media innovation director at bigmouthmedia, and a leading SEO blogger, about the big challenges facing search marketers.

According to Girdwood, there are four major challenges facing search marketers right now:

- A multi-signal aspect of new SEO: ‘Old’ SEO was examined by a few signals, whereas new SEO is multi-signal, he argues. It includes authority, location, factual aspects, author authority and more

- Click through optimisation: “If your link in Google is pretty, people will click”

- Engaging content: You need to get visitors to share your content further as it affects the rankings, for example, the impact made by Google’s +1 button

- Influence and voice: How do you gain these signals, especially the social ones? You need to be visible, get a respected author - a blogger, for example, that posts frequently and sends out his own positive and ranked social signals based on reach and trust - to support you and encourage others in the industry to do the same and share it.

Out with the old...

According to Girdwood, a key difference in new SEO and old SEO is the ability to cope with algorithms and evaluation methods that look at large multiples of quality signals rather than just a handful of truly significant indicators.

“In the evolved SEO landscape even specialist agencies need to be able to provide creative content and ideas to clients as well being able to connect audiences with that content,” he told NMK. “For example, a boutique SEO agency today must be able to create an infographic and have the skills to distribute it to an audience of interested bloggers.”

Girdwood says that in modern SEO rankings are no longer absolute and unchallenged. Almost every search on Google.co.uk today is personalised and localised; people see sites in different positions.

“Both Google and Bing place annotations alongside their listings – such as author profiles or recent shares by friends – and these annotations can sometimes increase click through rates,” Girdwood argues. “A good annotation is worth as much traffic as being a position or two higher in the results. The best annotations are brand builders. SEO experts now need to persuade people to look at, share and discuss web pages.”

Search marketing today

Another key consideration for search marketers is that search engines today examine social platforms to understand connections between searchers in order to personalise results but also to see which web sites command attention and have authority. This allows algorithms to go beyond basic content and link analysis, Girdwood concluded.

“Today, SEOs need to be able to optimise sites not just for the Web but for mobile and other connected devices,” he said. “Mobile internet usage is soaring, mobile search results can be in a different order than web search results and the ‘portability’ of content is one of the very many categories of quality signals the search engines look at.”