Common Search Marketing FAQs | Answers from Hill Web

FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions and Answers About Search Marketing

Simple answers that address a long list of search marketing topics.

Many of Hill Web Marketing pages and blog posts offer specific in-depth answers to Frequently Asked Questions that our clients, peers, or partners have posed. Below we have added relevant links to help you find the answers you need.

20 COMMON SEARCH MARKETING FAQS

1. What is a customer-centric organization?

ANSWER: Digital marketers that serve customer-centric organizations understand what customers want, and rely on customer data to garner customer insights and share this across the organization. Brands that are committed to customer-centricity focus first on what their clientele wants and needs, and develop new products and services based on that.

Customer centric marketing is a process of doing business with your customer in a manner that yields a positive customer experience before and after the purchase in order to drive repeat business, customer loyalty and profits. Being a customer-centric company is much more than a company that offers good service; it is always knowing the intent and preference of your consumers.

2. What is SEO?

ANSWER: Search Engine Optimization or SEO is basically the ability to understand search intent so you can deliver content that meets users’ needs and that offers the best solution.

Effective SEO campaigns include the following:

  • Marketing that is based on a solid understanding of the framework of the Web
  • An approach that keeps current on how people use the Web to find answers, products, and information
  • A knowledge of the information flows earned search, social networks, postings, off-site factors, and media channels

3. What is semantic search?

ANSWER: A method of data searching by text or a voice-activated technique where a search query aims to not only find keywords, then it can be used to establish the intent and contextual significance of the words a person is using for search. Semantic search is a search query, a question, or an action that produces meaningful results returned on the web even when the retrieved items contain none of the grey terms or the search involves no query text at all.

Semantic search is about search engine’s process of interpreting the context and intent of search queries rather than the exact text on its own. Marketers who already leverage machine learning models for text analysis, disambiguation of topics, keyword concepts, content entities, and classification are gaining semantic search advantages.

4. What is a concept search (or conceptual search)?

ANSWER: A concept search is a robotic information retrieval method that is used to search repositories of big day computerized unstructured text (for example, scholarly journals, email, scientific literature, research, case studies, etc.) for information that is theoretically similar to the information provided in a search query. This means that the viewpoints expressed in the information retrieved in response to a concept search query closely align with the ideas encompassed in the text of the query.

Savvy marketers know how to use Concept searching to find information without a precisely phrased query by applying a block of related text against the database to find documents of similar conceptual content. A concept search performed in Relativity Analytics uncovers conceptual matches that correspond to the query and the online content.

5. What is customer journey mapping?

ANSWER: It’s the process that helps a company to understand and personalize the individual’s customer experience from they begin to consider a purchase to buying. It maps the target buyer’s search intent when they first research a product and continues through the stages and across devices until they reach a solution. Across the globe, marketing funnels have reshaped and companies must tailor processes to engage each customer’ journey to purchase individually. Integrated data insights and analysis skills combined with adequate marketing, technology, and data science resources makes it easier for organizations to develop an accurate picture of their customer journeys.

Empowered by near-instant access to information, the journey your customers take is a part of doing personal research to inform you of their purchase decisions. Advancing digital technology offers brands more opportunities than ever to stand out once they align better with buyers. Consumer behavior research across multiple devices reveals what information they’re looking for, and where they go to find it.

6. What is Social Media SEO Marketing?

ANSWER: Social media SEO marketing, or a social SEO campaign, is the art of combining social media and SEO strategies to improve your business’s user engagement and search rankings. Social media marketing strategies and Search Engine Optimization strategies are frequently planned and implemented by varied team members, departments, or hired marketing consultants, and are poorly managed as independent marketing tactics.

Social media SEO is the skill of successfully promoting your content directly to your followers. It applies to the process of gaining relevant traffic or visibility through social media sites. Social media is often a catch-all phrase for sites that provide exceptional conversations that trigger social actions.

7. What is attribution modeling?

ANSWER: The multi-touch attribution model gives marketers a comprehensive look at the impact every user interaction has on the end goal of better understanding what’s working, what’s not, and what effects what in this giant, cross-channel puzzle. These insights vastly produce the potential for marketers and brands to make smarter marketing decisions. Digital marketing teams must optimize their budgets towards various channels and tactics that produce the best results for their clients. We must embrace more than attributing credit to the last touch in a consumer’s journey.

In today’s complex digital landscape, most mobile site visitors will interact with your business through multiple touchpoints before triggering a purchase.

8. What is schema markup?

ANSWER: Schema markup is a microdata set that was produced through the collaborative effort between the major search providers like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex. The goal was to construct a set of code snippets that permits web developers and site owners to identify specific data types. This information is then parsed by search engines and is used to provide improved relevancy in search results. Using data gleaned from indexing and user experience, they can take that information and present it as a separate section within the search results, typically located on the right-hand side of the page. Structured data is the bonus information that viewers see next to a website and Meta description.

9. What are Google Now Cards?

ANSWER: Google Now cards intuitively offer a lot of information at a glance. Android users who have a Nexus or Google Play edition device can swipe a finger up from the bottom of any screen on that mobile device. With the Google Now Launcher installed, swipe left when on your phone’s Home screen. Google Now is an intelligent personal assistant developed by Google. Google Now is available within the Google Search mobile application for Android and iOS, as well as the Google Chrome web browser on personal computers.

10. What is the Google Knowledge Panel?

ANSWER: A knowledge graph or the Google Knowledge Panel result is general information gleaned from all across the Internet and your site but doesn’t offer navigational links to a specific page. The Google Knowledge Graph consists of the relationships between things, concepts, entities, and places. It is one of Google’s most up-to-date ways of answering search queries and delivering immediate and highly visible information to the user.

Google introduced its knowledge panel (“KP”) in 2012, and it has played a key role at the top of Google’s search results ever since. The KP incorporates key facts, images, reviews and ratings, questions and answers, and even social profiles related to your search query. It’s Google’s way of attempting to get someone to the information that they are looking for faster, with fewer clicks and less reading. Since the Knowledge Panel is so visible in Google’s search results, especially mobile, it can be a great branding opportunity for your company.

11. What is Google Maps Marketing?

ANSWER: At its core, this is the process of using Google Maps’ functionality to ensure that your business is easier to find. Your Google My Business Listing is a free tool from Google for any qualifying businesses and allows you to manage your online presence across Google products, including Maps and for changes of inclusion in the Local Maps Pack.

Maps is one of, if not, “the app” that Google spends the most time testing, refining, and improving. New features continually roll out and the results are impressive. If you are a local business that is dependent on local foot traffic, investing in this form of search marketing is essential.

12. What is local search marketing?

ANSWER: Local search marketing is optimization strategies to help your business perform better in local searches when potential customers are searching for a business like yours. It includes the correct setup of your Google Business Listing and online content that richly answers queries with local intent.

Local SEO often referred to local search engine marketing to increase foot traffic at brick and mortar shops. It is an incredibly powerful form of marketing your local business online, as it helps companies of all sizes promote their products and services to local individuals at the exact time they’re looking for them online. This is accomplished by a variety of marketing methods, some of which vary greatly from what’s practiced in traditional SEO, and some of which are far easier to accomplish and can require talented local SEO service providers.

13. What is search intent?

ANSWER: It is the capacity to understand what prompted a web searcher to conduct a search query. Digital marketing campaigns that focus on consumer-intent signals better align with what online consumers what. Search intent is what inspires a person to carry out a query that uses a search engine. Understanding and optimizing for your customers’ intent is an essential component of search marketing. How buyers search for information and make purchasing choices is often triggered by emotional impulses. This, in turn, created the need for personalized responses from business owners.

Google, Bing and other search engines are rapidly improving their ability to interpret user intent and search context to provide better results. Semantic search intends to provide better search accuracy by understanding a searcher’s intent through contextual meaning. Semantic search brings about an enhanced ability to decipher the searcher’s wishes and has the ability to extract answers, and deliver improved personalized results.

14. What are Accelerated Mobile Pages?

ANSWER: The Accelerated Mobile Pages program is both free and open-source. Not only do these pages have load optimizations that display a full page instantly, and they leverage prerendering. It’s basically a stripped-down form of HTML. AMP (an acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a web component framework and a website publishing technology created by Google with the purpose of providing a user-first format for web content.

The technology behind AMP makes lightweight pages possible that load more quickly for smartphone and tablet users. Page speed has become increasingly important as more individuals use mobile devices over desktop computers.

15. How are Content Marketing and SEO Integrated?

ANSWER: A business that uses a website that intended for other businesses that need search marketing will curate content about SEO and share related information and tips. If it is a tourist information site, it will produce travel tips, top-rated vacation spots, and add quality, fresh content regularly that answer tourist’s questions. Search marketers who have the skills to manage marketing teams will understand Google algorithms and patents, know how search engines rank content on web pages, and how all major search engines crawl and index web pages on the Web.

Too often content marketing misses the key interest topics of their customers and is more about pushing the brand. They must be integrated to effectively provide compelling user experiences.

16. When is short versus long-form content best?

ANSWER: It starts by first understanding the purpose of the page or channel. Long-form content is best for informational pages. Short-form content is more ideal for something like your “Contact Us” page and also takes its proper place on social media channels. Which type of content you create should depend on the audience’s intent that brought them there. Research pages should be more in-depth, other users come and fly fast seeking oodles of media. Google has proved that it favors long-form content on search when it comes to blog substance to help ascertain your expertise.

17. What is data-driven marketing?

ANSWER: Data-driven marketing encompasses search marketing strategies and decision making that leverages smart data insights to know what customers want. Once you’ve grasped the “who, what, where, when and why” of how consumers engage with to your marketing efforts, you’re able to more accurately enhance and personalize the customer experience. It means using data sets, which are a collection of related sets of information that is composed of separate elements but can be manipulated as a unit by a computer, according to a Google search.

Data-driven marketing is the executed plan by which digital marketers glean insights and trends by analyzing company-generated or search market data. The real skill is how to apply these insights into actionable decisions informed by reliable numbers. The end goal of data-driven marketing is to improve marketing processes. Search strategies that cater to evolving SEO trends and the unique demands of consumers can leverage data to gain an edge over their competition.

18. What is JSON-LD markup?

ANSWER: JSON-LD is an acronym for JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data, which consists of multi-dimensional arrays (example: a list of attribute-value pairs). It is an implementation format for structuring data analogous that explain entities with Microdata and RDFa. It was established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to improve a website’s representation in search engine result pages. While you may start by marking up your images with JSON-LD, use it for all entities when it fits the content.

The use of JSON-LD does not guarantee to win a featured snippet; however, it certainly helps. Google, the technology giant of our time, currently recommends using the JSON format over other options. JSON implementation may produce expanded snippets in the knowledge graph, quick answer boxes, and numerous other forms of modern search features. This code allows the search professional to place information in context, which is determined by specifying entities and describing their properties.

19. What is Predictive Analytics?

ANSWER: Predictive analytics includes a mix of statistical techniques from predictive modeling, machine learning, and data mining that evaluate current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events.

Every business seeks to utilize their data for optimal decision-making gleaned from their Google Analytics data. These hold the critical insights to advantageous organizational analytic capabilities for a smart path to increased business ROI. This isn’t just having a list of charts and spreadsheets; there are multiple prerequisites to successfully leverage organizational analytics. Google Alphabet handles big data in a remarkably sophisticated manner and demands SEO’s to resolve technical SEO issues.

20. What type of Internet marketing or SEO audit do I need?

ANSWER: Before you invest in a professional SEO audit, first have a conversation about your business goals, history, capacity, target audiences, competition, and budget. Then a clearer view as to the state of your search marketing status will help make the best decision. Common on SEO tactics mistakes can be avoided that may otherwise slow the crawlability of your website and success and lead generation.

A thorough Internet marketing audit can cover all key aspects of your online business while discover new opportunities for advancement in search. By performing one or all of the following 12 types of website audits we offer, Hill Web Marketing is confident it will improve your search rankings.

With the rise of importance in semantic markup, auditing your web pages for schema markup drift is important.

Additional questions?

We know that it is impossible to answer all your digital marketing questions in this dialogue. So I invite you to contribute an additional Q & A that intrigues you. What questions are you still seeking answers for? Or provide your answer(s) below if you like to. It is all about adding value to our readers.

We’ll be adding more answers to Common Search Marketing FAQs. Meanwhile, call Jeannie Hill: 651-206-2410