SEO Management

Methods and Techniques to Achieve Success

Véronique Duong

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119681434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatique
• Subtopic: Technologies de l'information

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is arguably the most significant tool that marketeers have to push online content. As the hub of the computational engineering fields, SEO encompasses technical, editorial and link-building strategies, and is an integral part of our daily lives. As important as it is ubiquitous, SEO is needed for the development of a brands website and online reputation. When a website is live, one of its priorities is to drive organic traffic towards it, in order to attract visibility. In order to achieve such an aim, many proactive measures must be put in place, advice followed and tips implemented. There should also be an understanding of the holistic connection between a websites HTML sources, content management system and its relationship with external websites too (SEO off-site). There are many different search engines in the world and depending on the international boundary, one web browser usually dominates the landscape. Google features prominently in SEO Management, but this book also goes into detail regarding Baidu SEO (China), Yandex SEO (Russia) and Naver SEO (South Korea). There is also guidance given on how to manage a SEO project.

1
State of the Art of SEO

1.1. The market share of search engines

Before we talk about search engine optimization (SEO), we must first focus on the market share of search engines around the world. Indeed, in the West and Asia, we are not looking for information on the same engine. In European and English-speaking countries, the most widely used engine is the American Google. In China, on the other hand, Baidu is the most widely used. At the moment, Google and Baidu are the search engines with the highest market share in the world¹.

Figure 1.1. Google and Baidu worldwide market share. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/duong/SEO1.zip

Therefore, for these territories in the world, we must focus on Google and Baidu (and also its national competitors, such as Shenma, Qihoo 360 and Sogou). There are still other search engines for different countries in the world; here is the list:

• – in Russia, there is Yandex, which has a fairly large market share with more than 50%², while Google has less than 45%;
• – in South Korea, there is Naver, which has a market share of 25–30%³ (Google possesses the majority);
• – in Japan, there is Yahoo! Japan, a local search engine based on Bing’s results in Japanese and which has an average⁴ market share of about 30%, depending on the year (Google also has the remaining share of the majority in this case).

Every year, search engines evolve at faster and faster speeds. In this book, we will discuss SEO methodologies that apply to all search engines, since the different engines all have a common base: one or more bots (called crawlers or engine robots) that scan web pages, index them and then push them into search results in relation to a particular query.

1.2. Developed technologies and voice search

1.2.1. Google AMP and Baidu MIP

Since 2015, the two largest search engines in the world, Google and Baidu, have developed many technologies, such as AMP (accelerated mobile pages) at Google and MIP (mobile instant pages) at Baidu.

AMP and MIP aim to make the pages of mobile sites as fast as possible, so that they load in 3 sec maximum on smartphones and tablets.

Figure 1.2. AMP in the West, MIP in China

Google and Baidu wish to accelerate the Web, in order to take into account more and more data, to index them faster, with the objective that web pages represent the least possible use of their resources. To do this, the AMP and MIP versions of the sites are very refined: there is little JavaScript, few images and few CSS (cascading style sheets).

Figure 1.3 shows an example of a site in classic version and in AMP version⁵ (Google).

Figure 1.3. Classic web page versus AMP (or MIP) web page

The idea of these new HTML AMP and HTML MIP languages is to include only the essential information on smartphone users’ browsers. Advertisements, images and elements that are not important information for users are hidden or are not recalled in the mobile version in AMP or MIP.

Google focuses on AMP and is planning on deploying the technology in a major way from 2020. Baidu, for its part, announced that sites in AMP (the language developed by its American counterpart) could also be supported in their system⁶. The Chinese engine could then take into account both HTML versions, AMP and MIP.

1.2.2. Voice search and connected speakers

Voice search will become one of the most widely used channels in the West by 2020. We estimate that 70% of searches will be done using voice in a few years. According to a study conducted by SEMrush (a statistical tool for monitoring analytics), future searches will undergo a major change compared to current methods.

Figure 1.4 illustrates the primary representation of future search methods.

Figure 1.4. Evolution of search methods and device use (image source: Kalicube)

From 2020, the majority of us will be carrying out voice searches using speakers, such as Google Home, and we will use computers much less than before.

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