Viral Marketing News

Manifest Destiny for the digital world. Digital marketers are constantly pushing the boundaries and wondering what else is possible, what else is next. Recently, we became more informed on search in 2017 from a Search Engine Land interview with Gary Illyes. Gary Illyes is a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, his interview was brief but exposed clear shifts from Google in three areas.

1. Machine learning
   • Recall RankBrain, machines that identify patterns in past queries and answers to understand what answers will work best for searches in the future. This requires analyzing a massive amount of data, not futuristic Hollywood thrillers. Gary did mention machine learning was not going to replace the core algorithm, but the natural question is how much will it impact the algorithm.
2. AMP- Accelerated Mobile Pages Project from Google
   • Allows lightning fast download speeds for mobile searchers. Continuing to research and develop open source mobile friendly initiatives (like AMP) will remain strong as it is becoming increasingly more common for people to use mobile devices throughout their path to purchase.
3. Structured data
   • Website content wrapped with structured data to deliver specific information to search engines. With the rise of voice search, structured data has only increased importance as it allows search engines and personal assistants to provide direct responses to questions in a quick manner.

So, why is Google focusing on these search trends and how can your business stay on track and gain traffic to your business?

The items laid out from Google continue to support their ultimate mission of providing the best user experience for searchers. Providing the best responses to searches is key, but equally important for 2017 is delivering this information quickly and across all devices. Google has emphasized mobile and you need to do the same to your digital strategy. From emails, to your content, to your website technology, mobile needs to be considered as a top priority.  Mobile websites will begin being indexed before desktops so you need to ensure your mobile design and content is allowing easy conversions for users and search engines.

How does this impact Milestone clients?

As a Milestone client, or prospective client, you may be asking yourself, “great…what do I need to do to get ready?” The good news is that, for the most part, not much. That’s because Milestone’s Galexi™ Content Management System (CMS) is already designed to take maximum advantage of features like structured data and is the world’s first CMS with AMP capability for the hospitality industry. But AMP is a relatively new feature, it may be worth a quick call to your account manager to learn more and see how you can benefit from AMP pages and the other innovative search-oriented features of Galexi.

Source: Paid Search