So when Google starts making changes to its algorithm don’t fret and cause blame – get off your high horse and start innovating. Simple!
2012 was a crazy year for SEO. Algorithm changes brought on by cuddly animals (Google Panda & Google Penguin) changed the way people conducted their link building and business practice. The slow of foot were heavily penalised by these changes and bore the full brunt of new regulation in an industry that is still a dark art to many outsiders. Changes to indexing with Google Fresh and changes to how we as consumers gain information (Google Knowledge Graph) are all starting to shape the new world experience of search.
No longer is it for the general masses, search is now highly targeted to the user with deep changes based on a number of factors including social preference and web history. For agencies, this makes their jobs harder. You can no longer present to clients a proxy search of keyword rankings; you can no longer believe that keyword traffic is enough to reach their online goals. In short, you have to change to offer value.
What any agency needs to do now is lift their game and become a digital partner with their clients. No longer will we just focus on link building, no longer will we hide behind reports that clients barely read and rarely understand. The win for those that do will be a more important role in shepherding our clients as fast as Google changes and in doing so offering them a winning advantage. I do know that there are inbound marketing companies out there that do this already, but from my knowledge here in Australia they are the exception rather than the rule.
As Google starts to push even more social interactions and authority into the algorithm, how will your agency partner respond to that? Will they innovate and ride the right search waves, will they understand the need to become focused on incorporating social interaction within your content strategy and metrics or will you let it pass, wave it off as a fad until you get burnt for not changing?
To finish as we started on a quote, ‘If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading’. Lao Tzu