A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of traveling to the Pacific Northwest for my very first time to attend Search Engine Land’s SMX Advanced conference in Seattle, Washington. If you’re not familiar with what SMX (Search Marketing Expo) is, it’s one of the leading events for SEO and SEM professionals and I was eager and excited to rub elbows with the best search marketers in the industry and gain new skills and insights into the ever-changing landscape that is search marketing.
Without getting into how we plan to utilize some of my learnings for our own homebuilder client’s SEO and SEM strategies, below are some of my biggest Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing takeaways from this years SMX Advanced conference in Seattle.
SEO Takeaways –
- Google rolled out a core algorithm update at the start of SMX Advanced week on 6/3/19
- Google’s Danny Sulivan confirmed that this update would be 100% noticeable
- Google also rolled out another algorithm update called the Diversity Update
- The diversity update aims to show more diverse results in the SERP from different domain names
- Google is keeping users longer and changing or “hijacking” the organic customer journey
- The customer research, purchase and conversion stages are changing
- SEO head traffic will shrink
- SEO will become an enabler for other channels
- Periodic Table of SEO Factors has been updated for 2019 – Search Engine Land’s Periodic Table of SEO helps to understand the elements essential to a winning SEO strategy.
SEM Takeaways –
- The average position metric is going away
- Gone are the days of bidding for position 1. If this was your SEM strategy you better rethink, and fast!
- Keyword match types are becoming less and less precise
- Exact match is really “exact-ish” match
- Search query monitoring is going to be a MUST with all keyword strategies
- Microsoft’s Audience Network – high quality native and cross-device placements
- Is it time to consider Bing display as part of your paid search strategy?
We’re eager to implement and address some of these recent changes in the search marketing landscape for our homebuilder clients and continue to deliver them the best possible results for Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. If you’re not satisfied with your current homebuilder SEO or SEM strategy contact us today to see how we could help!
If you happen to find yourself in Seattle, keep an eye out for any ONeil Interactive sightings 😉
