Transcription
Artificial Intelligence is one of the biggest topics of conversation and debate within the world of marketing. In fact Google came out earlier this year and announced that their entire philosophy is shifting from one of mobile first to AI first. In other words, that’s the thing that’s going to drive their decision making more than anything else over the coming years.
Inevitably this is going to have significant implications for all areas of marketing, but I think the most profound implications will be seen within SEO itself. Historically we’ve tended to approach SEO in quite a tactical and reactive and almost slightly cynical way. So each time they’ve introduced a new penalty or new ranking signal and the entire SEO community has reacted to it, irrespective of market, irrespective of whether or not that specific thing really matters to their audience. So if Google has come out and said that they’re favouring websites with SSL certification, or those sites with great mobile UX, or those sites that develop great content and social communities, then everyone in SEO has responded and said “Right, we’ve got to prioritise that thing”. However, that isn’t really how SEO should work, because Google’s only objective is to reflect what matters to the audience, and what matters to the audience is going to vary from market to market.
So maybe there are some markets where social media isn’t that significant, and maybe there are some markets – and I know this sounds outrageous – where mobile UX isn’t that important, because perhaps in that particular niche 90-95% of the traffic still comes from desktop.
So I hope that this move towards machine learning is going to encourage us all to think a bit less reactively and a bit more strategically, and focus on the thing we should have focused on all along, which is creating great content that resonates with our audience and allows us to really build our brands.
See you next time!
Dan
