Goodbye SERP’s Hello SMERP’s

April 23, 2011
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For me,  Search Engine Result Pages and Search Engine Site Position Reports are dead. I could really care less that non branded term keywords you think are important come up position one for you. And for those companies that espouse the virtues of their wonderful SEO working their magical powers to gain position one, bite me.

Traffic, stone cold traffic. Show me you increased traffic to my site for the keywords that make me money and then we can have a real conversation. Big misses that I see all the time are not just traffic from head terms but all the increase in concatenation from the head terms that are also driving traffic and conversions.

Show me that concatenated search terms increased, show me that the great content I have produced increased not just search traffic but referral traffic [organic link acquisition indicators] and then we can talk about you getting paid as an SEO “hexpert”.

So what is this thing I am calling a SMERP? My new acronym refers to Search Media Engine Realtime Page. I am so over text as the primary indicator. Lets get results reports infused with Images, Video, Audio and  Locations as part of the conversation.

Websites and citizen journalists are not indexed on text alone anymore and a results page is now inclusive of everything under the sun including realtime social context.

Search results: now to muck it all up is the personalization aspect of any search. Am I logged into a social site that morphs my results based on my friends and the social graph? If I am basing my SEO on traffic and not position then the conversation is now a moot point.

All together now, the keyword position is no longer the success metric. Traffic from keywords, content  and thematically relevant mixed media/channel relations are.

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Well David You are definitely correct in stating that now more than just ranking on specific keywords are being added into the mix to earn Google first page rankings.

Because of the growth of the internet and "social" the mix must now be recognized by Google and that is why they added +1 and finally Google's try at at social is finally gaining traction because of this reality.

Points are being adjust in the new algos to reflect this so if internet marketers and seo folks wish to stay current and effect in getting and maintaing first page rankings then they too must embrace the "convergence of technolgical social factors" which includes real time content as well as relevant pic & videos that make the total gestalt if I may.

And yes it is becoming more comprehensive as we begin to see what is more "real" about our products, services and benits we offer to to the social public.

Fair call as people are still selling in Google Places listings as "Rank First Page in Google"...

The only issue I can see with SMERPS is that it's something even less businesses or small agencies will have any control over... unless you can dedicate the time and resources to produce enough "noise" you will get drowned out of the SERPS...

What ever happened to the take up on the idea of conversion led campaigns... if that is the true reflection of your campaigns ROI how many businesses will be profitable outside of the next Google algorithm change?

Hey David,
the goal is to create content that is ubiquitous enough to transcend all file formats and platforms. Natural "selection" [organic results] will do the rest. As I watch SEO from a business standpoint I see less and less control over the SERP's and more efforts to exert control of the platforms. Hence the gaming of Digg etc...

Since result pages now return a variety of links for varying media, position reports should either indicate media type and the link/position or evolve into a more holistic view of the traffic to the site and everything inclusive of the conversion.

You are spot on that algo shifts and good blended campaign strategies should not effect the ROI outside of normal optimization efforts.