“Change” will be, and always has been, the keyword of those involved in Online Marketing . We will try briefly to better understand what these changes are and to put them in line, both at SEO, PPC, and Web Analytics level, to reach the precautions to be adopted in the development of our Search Engine Marketing strategies in relation to all this. Indeed, one must get used to thinking of a constant evolution of this ecosystem in order to improve and react to changes .
Online Marketing in 2020: Google’s changes
In 2010, 8,152 <side-by-side> experiments were carried out which led to 516 definitive changes to the search engine algorithm . In a year, a constant flow of experiments and updates, basically 1.4 per day. This was in 2010, the year in which Google concentrated on the development of Google Plus as a platform to respond to Facebook’s increasingly pressing advance.
In the following years, the frequency of updates continues to grow , from 1.4 to 2.7 in 2015, the turning point for the Mountain View giant. The arrival of the current CEO brings with it a new strength, called Machine Learning , and a different mentality, transforming Google from a simple search engine to a place where basically the user is no longer just passing through, but we are left .
As Google himself initially said ” we are the only site that is happy when the user leaves our site “, today it is no longer true.
More and more often the user finds the answer to his query directly within the search results page , without having to click on the ads, causing a considerable drop in traffic to websites.
The result is the growth of the phenomenon of ” zero-click searches “.
Over the past two and a half years, “click-free” searches from mobile devices have increased by 11%, while from desktop they have grown by 9.5%.
This is because many new SERP features (paid ads, multimedia elements, rich snippets, etc.) have taken over and clicks on certain types of searches are no longer necessary .
Meanwhile, the acceleration of updates is constant, the 2017 data indicate an average of 6.7 algorithm changes per day .
Online Advertising: from Google Adwords to Google Ads
The Pay Per Click , PPC commonly called, was a revolutionary online tool for marketing companies over the past decade.
Today, however, simply creating a sponsored ad is no longer enough to continue driving traffic to websites .
The upgrade from Google AdWords to Google Ads offers many new features , including automatic and intelligent options, such as Smart Campaigns or Smart Bidding strategies , with new and updated tools integrated directly into the Google Marketing platform.
These updates have great potential for their online marketing strategies, but they could have both positive and negative effects for users.
While the new features open up possibilities for professionals, these same features could confuse and discourage novice advertisers. Experts, on the other hand, will be able to easily exploit the new potential of the platform, integrating the new automatic and manual functions, thus obtaining a real advantage.
Relying completely on the machine is absolutely wrong and will never lead to satisfactory results. Man and machine must work in synergy . In fact, the work of the SEA Specialist has also evolved and mainly consists in putting the machine in condition to work well.
To create a truly profitable online marketing campaign today, a significant amount of previous knowledge and experience of Google Ads is required.
How to react to constant changes?
Today probably, every single search carried out is based on a different algorithm, it is a continuous flow of changes that Google adopts to improve itself and create new experiences. Clearly not all updates have an impact on every type of search, some are purely graphic, visual, others alter entire SERPs instead, scrambling the positioning criteria and causing the famous Google Dance , so feared by those who professionally deal with SEO .
Here are some tips for reacting to online changes and making the most of the potential of online marketing:
Exploit and not undergo automation: with the development of Artificial Intelligence , automatic systems pervade different fields of application. Understanding the real opportunities and making the most of them means perfecting the reading and coding of information, data and analytics in order to optimize time and focus more on strategy.
Moving the strategic vision forward: not focusing on the immediate, but thinking about the medium and long term . The results, the important ones, do not always arrive quickly, and when they arrive, they do not always last long. There are no tricks, let alone shortcuts, work well to achieve lasting goals .
Optimizing is not doing better, but diversifying: we have seen how change in this landscape is on the agenda; ditto for our online marketing strategies. What works today is not said to be good tomorrow, so why wait and not act ahead of schedule? Continuous study, analysis and experimentation are fundamental daily ingredients.
Invest in Paid Advertising: The CTR of paid ads has grown by about 44% on desktop and about 125% from mobile devices.
