You Ask, I Answer: Google SEO Strategy in 2020?

In today's episode, Heidi asks, what do you make of Ranfishkin's statement that in 2020 Google will be our biggest competitor for traffic? This is, by the way, a blog post over at SparkToro and uh like a 78-slide slide deck that uh Rand's been talking about. The premise is this thanks to Google's own properties, such as the Google Jobs, Google Weather, Google Maps, etc., combined with uh what are called uh informational searches or zero-click searches where type in, for example, weather in Boston, Massachusetts. Google presents an answer there, and you don't have to leave Google, you can see the answer right on screen. Type in a math calculation, type in uh lyrics to uh your favorite song, and you'll see results that don't require a click.

They don't send you anywhere. And according to Rand's best estimates, uh, you know, 14% of clicks go back to Google itself in some way. And depending on the area in the industry, you can see anywhere from you know 10 to 50% of uh those search results just not send traffic anywhere. People just stay on Google. And so the question is, is this correct?

Well, yes, the it is correct. The the data is something you can't argue with a whole lot. Um he uses jump shots data, uh, which is third-party data, mostly from mobile devices. Um, but it's not wrong. What is happening is that Google is attempting to get answers to you faster.

And in many cases, uh, especially given some of the uh, shall we say, credibility and trust issues with third-party websites? When and where it can, Google's providing the information itself or providing summarized information uh on uh on its search results so that you don't go anywhere. That in turn means that organic search traffic declines uh for basic informational queries. So if we think about the types of search queries that someone's gonna do, there's really sort of three major types, right? There's why, what, and how, and within those, there's two sort of branches.

There's uh branded and unbranded. Let's say we have a coffee shop. Uh there really aren't a whole lot of why uh search queries that are relevant to a coffee shop's ownership, right? You don't need to explain to people why they need coffee. You do need to explain why they need your coffee, what makes you different.

Um there are sort of the what questions, uh, what coffees do you have? And then the how questions, how do I get to your coffee shop? Because it's one of those things that uh it does not appear magically at your house. Although I would hope you're not using like Uber Eats to have someone just drop off coffee, that'd be crazy wasteful. So you have that sort of six-box matrix.

The more in-depth a query is, a question is, uh, the more likely it indicates not only greater uh thought given to the query, but also deeper research and deeper content than is going to fit inside of a zero-click search, a one-box search, right? What are your coffee shops' hours? That doesn't require a whole lot of research, right? Where is your coffee shop? That's something that Google can provide pretty easily.

Why should I choose organic sustainable coffee uh from fair trade versus you know big box coffee? That's not an as easy an answer, and if that's a differentiating factor for you, that's something that definitely belongs on your website and is definitely something that you would want to compete for when it comes to search results. So from a search perspective, from an SEO perspective, you definitely want to be focusing on queries, keywords, phrases, topics, topics most of all, because of the way Google does natural language processing, that can only be served up by you, right? The information is too dense, too uh verbose, too in depth for someone to just get a very quick answer. You still want to have the very quick answer data available, especially if it is transactional data, like when is your coffee shop open.

Do you necessarily care where you whether you get the click or not for that? No, you want people to find out that you're open and come over and buy coffee from you as as quickly as possible. Um the second part, and this is the part that I think should be the defining characteristic for all marketers in 2020, is as best as you can own the relationship to your customer. So that means two things. That means one from a technology perspective, focus on the channels that you own.

You own your website, you own email, your email list, um, and you own private communities that you administer that are not on a social network. I would lump also text messaging in into uh email. Anything where there is not an intermediary between you and the customer, those are channels that you own. You need to own that relationship. That's part one of the strategy.

Part two of the strategy is you have to focus on your brand. This is something that brand that Rand also says in his uh slide deck as well. Branded search is much more indicative of intent than unbranded search. Coffee shop near me is pretty much up for grabs, right? Your coffee shop by name, your product line is something where yes, competitors may be bidding on those keywords or phrases or terms, but if somebody's looking for you specifically, they have much stronger intent, right?

Electric vehicle is one thing. Looking for a Tesla model Y is much more indicative, like yes, this person wants this thing by name. So to the extent that you can invest in and build the brand that people search for, you will do better across all your channels. You'll do better across social, email, search, you name it. People should know who you are.

When you think about voice, right? These lovely little assistants here, these things will deliver up just the first search result. Right? So if somebody is not searching for you by name, and you should be ranking number one for your name. If you're not, you have a lot of work to do.

But this is how you get to win at voice search, right? People search for brand. And when you search for brand, if you're not number one and you should be, it should get you to, or it should get the consumer to your to your website, to your properties, to something much, much faster. So that's the takeaway here. One, own the relationship, two, build the brand.

That's your recipe for success in 2020. That's your recipe for success, and has been really for a few years now. But as social networks like Facebook turn the screws, as search engines like Google turn the screws, you absolutely positively must have these two things in place. So that's your focus. That's uh my perspective on Rand's article.

He's not wrong. He is not wrong at all. His data is not wrong, and it would behoove all of us to take those two basic strategies build the brand and uh and own the relationship. As always, please leave your comments in the comments box below, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter, and I'll talk to you soon. Want help solving your company's data analytics and digital marketing problems?

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