4/29 SEO & Content Marketing Trends: AI, SERPs, & Data

Search Engines Are Leveraging AI & So Should You

• AI has become a crucial component in how search engines rank pages. Search engines are using AI to identify quality content, keyword stuffing, and irrelevant backlinks.
• Search engines are using AI to better match customers’ needs and getting a better feel for what customers are looking for. Over the years, algorithms have evolved to show more, and more varied, images when users conduct searches.
• For SEO, AI allows “hyperpersonalization,” dynamic content, and unique user experiences.
• Hyperpersonalization: the personalization of messages to their targeted consumers, enabled by the existence of AI.

“79 percent of organizations that exceeded revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy”

• Starbucks takes advantage of hyperpersonalization: the brand gathers data through their loyalty cards and mobile app data. Starbucks then uses this data to provide personalized menu recommendations on smartphones based on the customer’s proximity to a store. On top of that, Starbucks uses all of the data gathered to create new products and plan the locations of new stores.
• Why does this matter? AI can give you the leg up you need to present compelling content to your customers. In a world full of digital marketing campaigns, it is crucial to take advantage of every opportunity to distinguish yourself from your competitors.

Featured Snippets, Images, & Videos Dominating The Top 3 SERP Positions

• The top of the Google search results are showing an increasing amount of featured snippets, video boxes, and the image search.
• “RankRanger is showing a 32% increase in desktop video carousels being shown on the Google web search results.”
• Interestingly, in his Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA), Gary Illyes declared that SEOs tend to overlook images and video search.
• Why does this matter? While the top three spots in the SERPs are highly coveted, it is important to consider the landscape you are targeting. As the results begin to shift, your strategy should as well. Utilize the appropriate schema and take advantage of image and video visual assets.

An Effective Marketing Strategy: Data Turned Dollars

• Comcast’s Xfinity Mobile is a new type of wireless service plan. Cellphone providers belong to an already a crowded category; knowing this, Comcast had to take a unique approach to break in.
• Comcast’s unique advantage is that they have a network of millions of Wifi hot spots to help consumers save money on data.
• Comcast crafted the “Data In Dollars” campaign, with the objective being to show customers how much watching a video (or data usage) actually costs them.

“Using Google data about video megabytes, we could determine how many megabytes would be required to watch certain videos. We then took the number of megabytes and used the available carrier costs to calculate the actual cost per video for more than 2,000 videos.”

• The campaign effectively monetized day-to-day activities that resonated with the customer base. Comcast targeted popular categories of YouTube videos. A six-second Comcast ad showed before the video users selected to watch. The ad showed them how much the video would cost to stream using data from their current cellular provider, e.g. a six second video stream could cost a user around $1.31 based on the company’s findings.
• Xfinity Mobile “experienced a 113% lift in brand interest, 3X increase in search, and … gained thousands of new customers since the campaign launched.”
• By leveraging available data, Comcast’s campaign effectively told a story and presented the audience with actionable insights.