The Evolution of Search: From Broad to Conversational

No matter who you are or where you work, when you think about both old-school and new-school SEO and Internet marketing, one tactic or idea probably stands out the most: keywords. Keywords are the basis of search, and the fundamentals of search engines. Put simply, people search for what they want or need using words. Fundamentally, if you have what they want and your website says so, that's how you'll be found.

The biggest difference between old-school SEO and new-school Internet marketing is this: Google can no longer be tricked. It (thankfully) will no longer display a crappy free software site, just because the word "software" has been put on it about 1 million times by one of those black-hat SEOers out there. This was called keyword stuffing.

Then vs. Now

Keyword stuffing used to work because, not only was Google less sophisticated, but so were searchers. Before we expected Google to be at our every beck and call and finish sentences before us, we typed in much broader search terms. No matter what kind of software you were looking for (free, Windows, word-processing, etc.) in the early 2000s, you probably would have just typed in "software" and filtered through the results yourself.

Don't believe me? Can't remember back that far? Check out this graph. This is a Google search trends graph for the word "software". Pretty amazing, isn't it? You can see in this one graph how searches became more specific and more conversational over time. Google and its searchers became more sophisticated together.

 Now, doesn't the Hummingbird update make even more sense? I say, props to Google for seeing what's going on. Their job is to keep up with and ahead of how we're searching. We're looking for conversational search, they saw that, and they went with it. Kudos.

Now the question is, how do we harness this conversational way of searching in Internet marketing? Keywords are still important, yes, but so are conversations. Talk WITH your audience instead of just AT them. I could go on here, but that's another post for another time. Happy conversational searching!

Want to talk about how conversational search is impacting your Internet marketing plan? Contact us today!