In the last post, we talked about search engine “personalization” and its impact. If you know and are implementing only basic SEO techniques, you’re on borrowed time. Google’s ability to “learn” your search trends and adjust its list rankings accordingly will overwhelm your SEO efforts if the searcher is logged into Gmail or some other service that activates data recall. (And it’s not just Google; it’s most of the major engines.)
We’re beginning to see this happen more and more: People who think their site is in great shape-say Page 1; Position 1 for a relevant search term-are running analytics and finding that they’re not getting nearly the number of clickthroughs they expect. That’s because their Page 1 listing might be Page 3 for someone seeing “personalized” results.
One recent client contacted us looking for some help to improve his search position for a rather generic and competitive term after realizing his rank had noticeably slipped. We made some recommendations, and he made those changes. After a couple of months, we ran a Google search to see how his site was now doing. He had actually jumped from Position 14 to Position 5 in a relatively short period of time, which meant he had implemented our recommendations.
So, we sent him a note congratulating him on this marked improvement. But he replied with an e-mail saying, “No, I’m not in Position 5; I’m in Position 10!” We sent him a screen shot to prove our point, but he sent an exasperated response saying, “Well, that’s not what I’m seeing.”
This is search engine personalization in action.
Once we realized what was likely happening, we told him to log out of his Gmail account and re-run the same search. Now he saw what we saw. He was almost off the page when running a personalized search but was in far better shape once logged out.
So, that’s the problem we all face. How do you overcome this barrier of personalization?
Honestly, there’s no easy fix. It requires an understanding of more sophisticated methods than basic SEO and putting all those tools to work on your behalf. It requires “themes” of quality content utilizing series of standard Web pages but also blogs, optimized press releases and other associated techniques. With an army of related, coordinated content, you can overcome personalization, and even beat sites that have “good” SEO applied to them. The phrase “Content is King” is really what we’re describing here.
In our Bay Area Search Engine Academy Advanced and Master Skills workshops, we do cover this topic quite extensively, showing students the available tools and teaching them how to use them most effectively.
It’s true that search engine personalization can be a big hindrance and stand in the way of the Web traffic you want. But it’s also true that once you understand how to “beat the system,” you can leverage that information. You can be a member of the well-informed minority who knows how to get through the noise. That can be a distinct advantage if your competitors don’t have the same knowledge and ability.
So, personalization isn’t necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just the way we’re headed, and the sooner you jump on that bandwagon the better off you’ll be.