The State of Search Marketing in 2015

I recently spoke to a group that I’ve been repeatedly invited back to speak to over the last 5 years. At one point in the conversation the topic turned to keyword usage. Jaws dropped as I told the audience to stop worrying about keyword densities and usage throughout their content. While I still think a keyword is great to utilize within the title of a post, for the most part I believe you’re better off focused on writing well rather than trying to write for search engines.

That wasn’t true a few years ago, we needed to be programmatic so that search engines understood the context of our content. But it’s my belief now that Google’s advancements take a ton of variables into consideration – including the site’s history, the author’s topic authority, citations like brand names, product names and geographies – to determine the relevance, authority and ultimately the ranking of pages.

When I’m asked by people who are starting new businesses where they should focus their online marketing, search marketing is usually near the top of the recommendation. Of course it depends on the level of consumer intent or demand for the new service, i.e. how many people are searching for products and services. The importance of search marketing today is shown by our new infographic created by JBH Marketing. It shows the importance of search drawing on the latest data from SimilarWeb on the level of consumer demand through searching and including practical advice and analysis from some of the top places to learn about search like Moz, Search Engine Land and Searchmetrics. Dave Chaffey

This infographic breaks down the lay of the land of search marketing nicely, including both paid search (pay per click) and organic search (natural ranking). Search engine marketing is still a dominant medium online and should not be disregarded. While we’re not huge fans of the SEO industry and manipulative strategies that consultants often deploy that put their clients in danger of being de-indexed, it’s still an incredible resource for our clients to recognize what their prospects are seeking and how they’re responding to the content that’s written and shared on our clients’ sites and our own.