Search Metrics' Tom Schuster Talks Google Search Trends

Key Takeaways

[Music] Hello, I'm Marin Nuland with Search Engine Journal. I'm at the Search Metrics Conference in San Francisco. Today I'm speaking with Tom. He is the CEO of Search Metrics. Obviously within his role very much looking forward the the future of the company, how they can work with customers and what do they really need and how do they satisfy those demands. Tom, what would you say are the current um sort of challenges in SEO, digital marketing and where do you see that going and how are you really helping people? I think the big challenge today is really all the changes that Google has been making which are all extremely positive but uh it's resulted in uh people having to really rethink their strategies and to go about developing longerterm strategies reworking some of what they've done in the past and also really understanding what Google is all about. What are the main things that people are coming up with just like okay wow this is a problem and how are you helping resolve those? Well what Google is doing is they are saying that they want people that use their search engine to find very swiftly the right thing for the right reason and then do something about it. So that means that Google is promoting uh anything within the website and the way that the websites are built uh if they serve that goal and they are penalizing if you're using tricky methods in order to achieve the ranking uh and they're going to do more and more of that in the future. So what we need to do is ensure so what we do is we help people to get found for the right reasons and that's what we do and uh the so what we what we do is not only enable you to to rank well on the keywords that you want but we need to go more into the content itself so that the content ranks we need to go more into the structure so that the structure ranks so that all of these as Google expands It's the the areas that it uses in order to to create the ranking that that we are presenting that. And of course, uh with that also goes the the user behavior. So, Google's not just looking at the way that you structure your website, but also how does the user behave when they come onto your website, what's the bounce rate, all of those things. So, we have to take into account the user as well. Uh and when you put all of that together, then you can have a really fundamentally uh sound approach uh and as Google continues to make changes which they will and they do it at an everinccreasing rate uh you'll be we have to make sure that people are able to keep up with it and continuously understand what's the effect been on them and how do they react come up with a new strategy and turn what might be an adverse situation into a positive and and a winning situ. situation from a uh business perspective. Uh servicing your clients, that's going to mean an ever you're going to have to be evolving at an ever faster rate in order to keep up with satisfying their demands. That must be hard. It's complicated. It's not it it's hard in that only very few people can do it accurately. So the uh and we have the advantage at Search Metrics that we gather our own data completely. We're not dependent on anyone else to gather the data. So that means that we have full control and uh as changes happen we can expand our data gathering uh whether it's frequency or depth or or you know or breadth of what we search for and uh so that's the first part. Uh the and that's very hard to do but we've been doing it for a number of years and we're very very good at it that we're unique in the world in that uh aspect. The second thing is uh so you need accurate data and you need to have make take that data and really understand the data and use write good algorithms and and business intelligence so that you can extract the right information from it and again we have extreme expertise in that area and because if the predictions that you're making are not good then it's not going to be helpful and then finally the uh the market uh the the search market is getting more pervasive throughout the whole online marketing spectrum. So it means that more and more people are consuming the results of the search and and need to be putting their input into the process. So we have to uh present the uh both the plans and the results in business type terms so that the marketing people can can take part in the discussion take part in the decision track whether whether one is on target and then in the end decide whether it was worth it or not. All of those things if we carry on doing all of those things properly then uh we'll carry on being very successful in in supporting our customers. Fantastic. If people want to find out more and contact you, how do they do that? Well, I'm uh on email t.ista searchmetrics.com. And we'll uh we'll include the name Shusta in the uh description below so everyone can find it and know exactly how to spell it. Thank you very much. This looks like a great show today. I'm really impressed and um thank you very much. Thank you, Murray. Thank you. I'm Murray Nuland with Search Engine Journal. I'll see you next time. [Music]