Chumney & Associates
What You Need to Know About the Future of SEO
What You Need to Know About the Future of SEO
What we know about search engine optimization (SEO) changes frequently; therefore, keeping up with new information is the key to your success for targeting shoppers during online searches.
Google and other search engines constantly tweak their methods of finding and displaying content to their users. These complex ranking systems will undoubtedly evolve and become more intuitive this year, so here are a couple of trends you should know.
Topic Clusters Instead of Keywords
For the future of SEO, Google and other search engines are looking at the intent behind consumer searches. They are shifting their focus from keywords to topic clusters. You might be wondering, “What on earth is a topic cluster?” It’s really quite simple.
According to Hubspot, topic clusters involve a pillar, which is like a major page for a website or a category page on a blog, and then multiple pieces content that all link back to the pillar (i.e. different blog posts, smaller website pages, and such). Linking clusters back to the pillar signals to search engines that this page is full of amazing, quality content related to the topic of choice. Over time, the topic cluster method allows your pillar page to rank higher, making it easier for consumers to find it during a search.
The Rise of the Featured Snippet
Featured snippets appear at the top of a search results page, and they answer consumers questions about who, what, when, where, why, and how. Google selects the featured snippet from a website that ranks on page one of the search results. This placement presents a huge opportunity for your content to sit above the highest ranking website page, and therefore, your link will be the first consumers see.
Featured snippets also play a vital role in voice search. Virtual assistants locate their answers by exploring featured snippets. With voice search becoming the rising trend among mobile searches, claiming the featured snippet with your page will drastically affect how many consumers find your content first.
What Does This Mean for You?
Now that you have more insight into the future of SEO, you’re probably wondering how this affects your dealership and your current website. This change is good if you already create great content about specific topics. However, if you’ve focused too heavily on keywords and a wide variety of topics without linking it all together, you’ll need to do some adjusting.
These search engine changes reaffirm that content is king and that internal linking matters for SEO. Moving forward, your website must focus on making your most important topics well-structured. This change doesn’t apply only to new content, but also to your old content. Clean up older blog posts or current webpages to make them more like the topic cluster model. Then you can link relevant pages to your main website pages and get those ranking higher.
At Chumney & Associates, our Digital Marketing team stays up to date on all the changes to search engine algorithms as we work to improve your websites and future content. The digital world is ever-changing, but we’re here to help you keep up. To learn more about our digital services involving SEO, contact us today for more information.
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1 Comment
Steve Momot
Autohitch
Scott, good stuff!
If I may add in- Where I see dealers lacking the most is actually creating valuable content outside of Sell, Sell, Sell.
Not that there is anything wrong with, let's say: A GMC dealership optimizing to show up when someone is ready to buy a GMC in their area,
BUT,
And I am sure I am not the only one that has read that when consumers are presented with products "BEFORE" heading to the dealership, they are actually buying them more. I believe the number was between 20%-30%.
What if you greeted the customer, not at your door, but before they even chose a model of vehicle? (Like the old days)
In my opinion (Whatever it may be worth), dealers need to start creating original and in depth content, not around what their potential customer will do when they are ready to head to the dealer, but content that appeals to their interests/needs when they are one of the 60% who don't even know what model they want when they start their search (Autotrader).
Pick them up early, when you can influence their decision and be their source of information.
You say you want to build trust and relationships, that is how you do it!
If not, you leave it up to CarGurus, or Autotrader, or better yet: Guys on YouTube that retired from selling cars and now get paid on clicks for trashing the sales process.
Examples of how you do this dealers:
- "How many seats in a GMC terrain?" (Easy term to rank for from what I see)
Then, you find related topics or questions that people might want answered next because remember: You are helping them, not selling them!
- What vehicles have 3rd row seating?
-What does and SL and SLE mean?
-Is the GMC Terrain a crossover or an SUV?
This is a super simple, extremely high level entry into this strategy, but for the dealers that can look ahead past the end of any given month, it will eventually bring you an evergreen supply of free traffic and organically rank you far higher than your competition in Google Search and Maps as you become an "Authority" on GMC's in your area.
Or,
You could keep throwing money at adwords where the traffic stops the day you stop paying, and your competitor can beat you with a higher bid at any second of any day.
Just my .02 cents, sorry if I got carried away Scott.