Enhance SEO with Engagement Objects – SEM Synergy Extras

Has everyone caught the WebProNews interviews with Bruce Clay and Matt Cutts conducted during PubCon? No? Let me catch you up.

During his presentation on the Top Shelf Organic SEO session (alternate coverage available), Bruce made the point that more and more, the future of search marketing is moving toward optimizing for behavior-based, intent-based and blended search. All these increasingly important factors will contribute to the devaluation of rankings as the prime metric for SEOs. What does a ranking mean if SERP placement varies from user to user due to personalized and behaviorally-targeted search results? Instead, Bruce said, SEOs need to switch their focus from rankings to analytics data, traffic, and conversions. The “Ranking is Dead” motto found a lot of word-of-mouth traffic during the conference, and on the final day of PubCon, Mike McDonald of WebProNews was able to sit down with Bruce, letting him share his predictions to the wider audience of SEOs.

Mike then sat down with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team and a Google spokesperson for the search marketing community. Mike asked Matt about his thoughts on whether or not ranking is becoming less valuable and, if so, how SEOs should alter their search marketing efforts. One of my favorite summaries of the two videos, which makes each experts’ points and counterpoints clear, is from Sixth Man Marketing. Go ahead and read that for the condensed version of events. Key takeaways from Matt include his acknowledgment that rankings should not be the end-all-be-all of search engine optimization and that Universal search is very useful for users.

On SEM Synergy today, Bruce further clarified and expanded on his comments at PubCon. In a couple weeks — December 17, to be exact — tune in to SEM Synergy for my interview with Matt Cutts. You better believe we talk about personalized search, Universal search, and algorithm factors that Google could be upping in value next year.

Until then, familiarize yourself with the various opinions that professionals across the search industry have expressed regarding the WebProNews interviews. A conversation thread was started over at Cre8asite Forums. The Milwaukee SEO recognizes the issue of devalued ranking importance as a conversation that isn’t new, but one that should be carefully considered. Joomla SEO looks at how SearchWiki plays into the increasing importance of personalized search results. Rather than the death of SEO, Global Entrepreneur stresses that Bruce’s predictions actually signal the evolution of SEO. And David Harry wants to see research that backs the theory that behavioral metrics and geo-location factors have a weighty affect on personalized search.

Check out SEM Synergy to get the word straight from Bruce. And of course, thanks to Matthew Inman of online dating site Mingle2 for coming on the show to talk about the engaging content that could be more important in the changing search landscape.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.