Category: News

If there’s one thing the marketing profession loves, it’s buzzwords. And by all accounts, Brain Engine Optimization (or BEO, for short) appears to fit the bill.  No, it doesn’t have anything to do with Google’s RankBrain Algorithm (even though by all accounts one would expect it to). 

As noted by Marketing Week, it’s a phrase created out of a quote by John Bradshaw, founder of marketing consultancy Brand Traction:

“The most important search engine is still the one in our minds.” 

Alright, so our brain is a search engine, then? What does that mean, exactly?  More importantly, what does it have to do with marketing? 

Bizarre analogies aside, the concept of BEO actually has quite a bit to do with marketing and search. First and foremost, we all know the push Google’s been on recently—how it’s making every effort to reduce the importance of technical search engine optimization (SEO) in favor of something more holistic and intent-based. In short, it wants businesses to optimize their website for people rather than for robots. 

To consider what their visitors want and need instead of what will help their content play nicely with the algorithms. 

In other words, it’s meant to optimize your content for how people think.  This is where you rely on a combination of intuition and research. For every piece of content you create, you need to answer the following questions: 

• What do my customers want? 
• What do people like about my brand?
• What customer needs does this content serve to fulfill? 
• What mental associations does this customer have with my brand, if any? 
• What emotions do I want the customer to experience when associating with my brand? 

Realistically, this is just a roundabout way of advising you to create and maintain ideal customer profiles. This advice applies to business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations. Although the sales funnel for each is slightly different, the same knowledge is invaluable in both cases. 

There’s a bit more to the topic of BEO, like category entry points and memory generation. But it all ultimately boils down to what we’ve already said. As a marketing professional, knowing and understanding how your audience thinks, browses, and shops is more valuable than any keyword or sentiment research. 

So, brain engine optimization. Is it another largely unnecessary buzzword? Most definitely.

At the same time, it speaks to an important truth that underlies every marketing strategy, regardless of industry, sector, or demographic. The more you know about your audience’s thought process, the better-equipped you are to approach them in a way that captures their attention and holds it. And the deeper your understanding of your customers, the more success your brand will likely enjoy in both the short-term and the long-term. 

There’s no question that Google dominates the world of search. Its algorithms handle roughly 90% of all search queries worldwide. Its closest rival, Bing, has a market share of a paltry 3.33%; the next runner-up, Yahoo, clocks in at 1.34%. 

With the above in mind, it’s hardly a surprise that the majority of search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on playing nice with Google’s algorithms. It keeps with one of the most basic tenets of doing business—be where your audience is. But could we actually be sabotaging ourselves? 

Could it be better to expand our focus, even in the face of seemingly minuscule returns? 

Why Bother Looking Outside Google? 

We’ve all heard that adage about putting all your eggs in one basket. Google’s algorithms may form the backbone of the Internet as we know it, but it is, at the end of the day, still a business. And if you optimize exclusively with Google in mind, you’re arguably leaving your website at the mercy of that business. 

After all, everyone’s heard at least one story of how a single algorithm update brought an entire company to its knees. 

That isn’t the only reason you might consider shifting your attention away from Google. If you know for a fact that your target audience is incredibly privacy-conscious, then there’s a good chance you might not even find them on Google. They’re far likelier to use a search engine like DuckDuckGo. 

It’s also worth looking at each search engine’s market share not in terms of percentage points, but search volume. Bing, for instance, saw roughly 1.2 billion unique global visitors in May 2022 alone. That may pale in comparison to Google’s 89.3 billion, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. 

If you could capture even a fraction of those unique visitors as leads, one could argue that your efforts have more than paid off. 

Finally, a lower market share arguably means there’s less competition on the lesser-used search engines. It may potentially be easier to rank on Yahoo or DuckDuckGo than on Google, which could, in turn, lead to more traffic. 

Optimizing for Other Search Engines

Here’s the good news—for the most part, SEO on other search engines isn’t actually that different from Google SEO. In the case of Bing and Yahoo, the process is almost identical. You might need to do a bit of extra keyword research, but optimizing for Google means you’ve effectively already optimized for other search engines. 

That said, there are a few differences that you should keep in mind:

• There’s evidence to suggest that Bing may treat social shares as a ranking factor, something Google has yet to do. 
• DuckDuckGo places considerable emphasis on usability, privacy, and high-quality backlinks, even more so than Google. 
• Because DuckDuckGo doesn’t track user data, you’ll need to adjust how you target your keywords. 
• Some search engines, like Baidu, require you to submit your URLs to them directly. 

So, to circle back to our original question, is it worthwhile to optimize for search engines other than Google? Most definitely—at least in part because you’ve already done most of the work.

To hear some people talk, search engine optimization (SEO) is some sort of arcane, incomprehensible craft. Those are the snake oil salespeople of the SEO sector—we’ve warned you about them in the past. The truth is that SEO isn’t actually as complicated as you might think.

Though with that said, it can be overwhelming, particularly if you’re new to the discipline. With that in mind, we’re going to break things down to be a bit more digestible. At a high level, SEO can be separated into four distinct pillars.

They are, as defined by Search Engine Land, your main areas of focus—and the primary determinants of your success. 

On-Page SEO: What’s On Your Website

This is what most people immediately think about when you mention SEO. It includes keyword research, website metadata, URLs, internal links, and page titles. There’s also a great deal of overlap between on-page SEO and technical SEO, as both are concerned with user experience. 

Technical SEO differs from on-page in a few key ways, however. 

Technical SEO: What’s Under the Hood

Technical SEO is, in many ways, the most complicated of the four pillars. It’s focused on your website’s backend—the factors that influence page speed, security, responsiveness, and overall performance. Technical SEO is also concerned with the way search engines crawl your site, as defined by your XML sitemap, robots.txt file, and meta directives. 

Generally, mucking about with technical SEO is something that’s best left to the experts—failing that, most decent SEO tools provide you with the necessary functionality to tweak the technical side of things. 

Content: Your Bread and Butter

Content, as they say, is king. In addition to being a crucial component of any inbound marketing strategy, effective site content is a pillar of SEO. Good content is not only high quality, but also highly relevant to your audience. Your goal with content is to provide visitors with exactly what they’re searching for, whether that’s a food recipe or guidance on how to build a deck. 

In most cases, you’re going to want to strike a solid balance between content that’s sales-focused and content that’s audience-focused. 

Off-Page SEO: Promoting Awareness

Last but certainly not least, off-page SEO is sort of an umbrella term for everything that doesn’t fit under any of the other three pillars. It’s all about how people find, perceive, and talk about your website and brand. Unsurprisingly, there’s a great deal of overlap between off-page SEO and social media marketing. 

Off-page SEO is also a cornerstone of local SEO, as that requires that your business maintain a Google My Business Page and monitor factors such as reviews. Inbound links are another element of off-page SEO, alongside your business’s outreach strategy and any mailing lists you maintain. 

Content is king. SEO is dead. Relevance, relevance, relevance. 

You’ve heard it all before, the buzzwords, sweeping assertions, and half-truths. We’d wager you’re just as tired of it as we are. 

See, although content is important, it’s only part of the equation. You still need a strategy—something to inform what you write and to whom you address it. The best way to achieve that, believe it or not, is still with keywords. 

So with that in mind, let’s discuss what it takes to successfully target keywords in your blog posts in 2022.

Initial Research

What are people searching for? 

That’s the first question you need to answer. Look at Google Trends, examine your own analytics data, and assess competing websites via a keyword analysis tool. The goal here is to identify keyword opportunities that fit into your brand and niche. 

Generally, though, you’re not going to directly use any of the keywords you discover during this research. Most of them are going to be too broad in scope, too competitive, or both. Your next step will be to narrow things down. 

Topic Ideation

Once you’ve established a few broad keyword opportunities, it’s time to narrow things down to come up with topics that are a bit more focused. Consider what you know about your audience. Not just the search terms they’re using, but the intent behind those terms and why they chose to visit your site specifically. 

Drawing on this knowledge, your goal is to generate a list of topics that align simultaneously with your brand, their interests, and their intent. 

Topic Keyword Research

Next, for each of the topics you came up with in the previous step, you’re going to drill down a little further. The goal here is to come up with subtopics and related keywords for each. In particular, pay attention to the questions people are asking on search—these are all questions you will likely want to answer in your content. 

Optionally, you can check out Q&A communities such as Quora for both inspiration and information. 

Content Creation & Optimization

Finally, it’s time to start creating. By now, you have both your topic and a general outline in place. All that remains is creation.  To that end, there are a few best practices you’ll want to follow: 

• Make sure to identify whether you want to create Horizontal or Vertical content before you put the pen to the paper. This is the true measure of whether you understand the searchers intent.
• Make sure your URL and meta title both contain your core keyword. It’s recommended that your meta description does as well, but that won’t directly influence how you rank.
• Add internal links to any other relevant blog posts or pages on your website. Ideally, you’ll want to anchor those links to relevant keywords. 
• Once you’ve finished creating and your post goes live, promote it. Share it to every social network on which you’re active. 

Remember back in the earliest days of search engine optimization? Back when the Internet was akin to the Wild West, and tactics like keyword stuffing and link farms were still relevant? We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we? 

Especially lately. It seems like every single one of Google’s more recent algorithm updates have been released with a single goal in mind—to gradually depreciate the importance of technical SEO in favor of content quality and relevance. As far as we’ve seen, they’ve done a pretty good job thus far. 

That isn’t to say the technical side isn’t still important. It most definitely is. It just plays a slightly different role these days. 

Backlinks are included under that umbrella—and recently, we’ve seen plenty of people wondering what their purpose, role, and relevance are to SEO in 2022. 

Not Quite Irrelevant

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front. Backlinks are still incredibly important and should be a centerpiece of any successful SEO strategy. With that said, it’s important to understand that not all backlinks are created equal. 

For instance, backlinks from a site that’s considered authoritative in the consumer electronics space isn’t going to do you much good if your niche is industrial machinery. As the first step in your backlink strategy, you’re going to want to do a bit of research and figure out: 

• Which websites related to your niche have the highest E-A-T score.
• Who the top thought leaders and influencers are for your sector.
• If there are any websites you should avoid or brands that are considered toxic. 

Once you’ve put together a shortlist of sites that are worthwhile from a backlink perspective, you’ll next want to check if any of them have guest editorial guidelines. Now, it’s certainly possible to reach out and get a piece placed on a site that doesn’t have a clear program in place. However, it’s also a great deal more difficult to even get a response, particularly if you try to reach out via a cold email. 

Beyond exchanging guest posts, the best advice we can give is to simply take a collaborative approach to content creation. What we mean here is that you should look to establish yourself not just on social media, but also in any communities that are relevant to your niche.  Focus on building partnerships and cultivating relationships first and foremost. 

With any luck, you’ll find some valuable backlink opportunities as you do so. Also, check out our post on vertical and horizontal content to get a better understanding of how you should structure your informational pieces. The way your content is written and the audiences it appeals to should be considered when you’re trying to build backlinks.

Even in Backlinks, Content Remains King

Ultimately, the best way to get yourself out there and start generating backlinks is through the creation of high-quality content. If you can establish your brand as a thought leader,  then people will naturally start linking back to you.  From there, you’ve nowhere to go but up. 

People are obsessed over how virtual reality and augmented reality will disrupt the marketing sector. Unsurprisingly, with hype comes buzzwords. And the latest phrase that seems to be on everyone’s lips? 

Virtual Environment Optimization (VEO). It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Just as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves tweaking your website’s performance and content to appeal to search algorithms, VEO represents all the proposed tactics, strategies, and technical adjustments required to market to users in virtual reality. 

But is this actually a trend we should all prepare for, or is it like the metaverse—an overdone buzzword referencing technologies that have already existed for decades? 

Honestly, at this point, the jury is still out. While it’s true that all the talk of a completely immersive, completely interconnected virtual world is largely bunk, it’s also true that we’ve already seen some very exciting applications of VR and its less advanced cousin, augmented reality. For evidence of this, we need look no further than online apparel and home goods retailers. 

Seeking a means of replicating in-person retail during lockdown, many of these eCommerce brands turned to augmented reality. Users could visualize how a particular type of furniture would look in their space or how a ring would look on their finger using their smartphone. They could compare the sizes of different types of products, browse dynamically-generated lifestyle photography, and generally enjoy a shopping experience that was the next best thing to actually being there.   

Of course, that alone doesn’t mean we’re on the verge of a deep dive into full immersion. There are still far too many roadblocks for the technology to reach its full potential. If you recall the shape of the smartphone market prior to the early 2000s, it’s a very familiar picture:

• Current VR headsets are far too expensive for the general public and are held back further by issues with availability. 
• VR technology is either too bulky or too uncomfortable to be worn for an extended period of time. 
• Immersion-breaking technical and performance glitches are still far too common. 

It’s important to note here that we’re not saying VR will never be a reality, nor are we denying the notion that someday, VEO will be every bit as important as SEO. But the simple fact is that we’re just not there yet. For now, marketing through virtual reality is a niche pursuit at best, and at worst little more than a pipe dream. 

Learn about it if you so choose. But don’t expect to see practical applications for that knowledge for at least a few years. And for the love of everything sacred about SEO, please stop talking about the metaverse—it’s not going to happen.

Not in the way people who promote the concept believe it will happen, anyway. Interested in more SEO content? Check out our monthly blog, and posts on topics such as Three Potential Reasons You’re Not Ranking on Google!

One not entirely unexpected side effect of the coronavirus pandemic has been a technological renaissance for augmented reality. Amidst quarantine measures and distributed work, multiple businesses—especially those in the ecommerce sector—began exploring ways to simulate an in-person experience online. Augmented reality technology offered exactly that. 

Many in the marketing sector further recognized that the potential of AR extends far beyond interactive product pages. AR has the potential to completely revolutionize multiple segments of marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO). Potential which, we expect, will be realized within the next decade.

Here are three of the most compelling innovations we’re likely to see from this. 

Visual Search Gains Ground

Imagine the following scenario.

A customer is trying to mount a monitor, but they can’t quite figure out how to remove it from its base. They pull out their phone and take a snapshot of the device, at which point Google automatically detects the brand and model number. From there, the customer is able to quickly find a digital product manual and solve their problem. 

This is a concept known as visual search, best exemplified by Google Lens. Instead of relying solely on text or voice search, visual search creates queries based on real-world items, a sort of natural ‘next step’ from standard image search. It’s also a technology that’s been around since at least 2017. 

Renewed interest in AR will likely bring about a resurgence for visual search and its associated technologies—high-resolution product photos, accurate keywords, and optimized alt text, titles, and descriptions will quickly become more important than ever for SEO. 

A Bridge Between Digital and Physical

Once the pandemic is well and truly over, and everyone can return to a semblance of normalcy, we expect local search to undergo a period of explosive growth. AR technology will allow users to view a business’s Google My Business page, reviews, and even social posts. Again, this is an innovation we’ve already seen some leverage to a limited extent. 

In order to ready yourself for this shift, all you need to do is ensure your business follows general best practices for local SEO: 

• Ensure your Google My Business page is up to date.
• Submit your business’s information to all relevant directories.
• Create a Facebook Business Page. 
• Monitor online reviews, and take action to address negative ones. 

Immersive Web Design Will Become the Norm

We already briefly touched on how AR will make ecommerce product pages more interactive and immersive. Moving forward, we expect to see an increasing number of websites leveraging immersive design. Real-time feedback, environmental overlays, and features that leverage the visitor’s smartphone camera or webcam are just a few examples of what this will look like. 

Websites will need to account for how AR technology changes the user interface and user experience, and redesign their frontend and backend accordingly.

Facebook—or Meta, as it would rather be known— is everyone’s favorite whipping boy these days. This is hardly without reason, either.  Between October’s embarrassing outage, The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files, and the recent news that Meta’s shares have tanked through the floor, the social network/corporation has been having a rather bad time of late. 

We’re not here to talk about any of that, though. We’re here to discuss a symptom of Meta’s slow erosion. To be frank, Facebook advertising is terrible, and it’s been getting progressively worse. 

You’ve likely noticed it yourself if you still spend time on the social network. Low quality, word salad ads with nothing in the way of actual targeting. Constant stories of ads being rejected without explanation or cause, often for completely nonsensical reasons. 

And all this is tied together by a backend that can charitably be described as cumbersome. 

To be frank, it’s a disaster. But as with any disaster in the marketing world, it represents an excellent learning opportunity. Here are a few search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) insights that can be gleaned from this mess: 

• Control your ad network.  We’ve made no secret of our belief that modern advertising is broken, perhaps beyond repair—and that the blame lies almost entirely with ad networks not properly policing their content. Facebook is a microcosm of this wider problem; its advertising algorithms clearly aren’t up to the task of maintaining quality.  
• Targeted content is crucial.  There is one foundational rule that unites content marketing, SEO, and SEM—know your audience. The more effectively you can nail down who they are, what they’re searching for, and what they want, the better your content will perform. 
• Technical SEO is no substitute for quality. You’ve probably seen your fair share of ads about how robots are stealing your traffic or auto-generated content is the future of marketing.  How many of those did you actually click on, though? Even though they’ve been delivered to the right audience, these error-laden, rambling ads simply don’t seal the deal.  
• The quality of your tools matters.  Managing SEO for a smaller site is something you can usually handle on your own. However, as your web presence and business both continue to grow, you can either bring in an agency or start relying on paid SEO tools. If these tools are not simultaneously intuitive and effective, they’re likely going to do more harm than good. This is evidenced by Facebook’s Business Tools, which suffer from the same design problems noted by UX Collective.  

SEO and SEM have evolved in recent years. By contrast, Facebook has remained largely stagnant. There’s another lesson there—if your business does not evolve and adapt with the market, it will ultimately be left behind.