Unique Original Articles » How Will Personalized Search Affect SEO?

Background on Personalized Search



What exactly is personalized search? Personalized search is the result of Google analyzing your personal search behavior. Google web history provides you the ability to view all of the sites/pages you have visited including all of your searches done using Google. Google has the ability to use your click history to and in effect “learns” what your favorite sites are and ranks them higher on future searches you perform.

Personalized search has been available for those who have Google accounts but now this functionality has been generalized and is available to anyone doing a search on google. Your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) will only be affected for searches that relate to you web history during the previous 180 days.



The real question is how will this affect Search Engine Optimization? Do you Still Need SEO?



There are issues to think about that should cause us all a little concern from a marketing standpoint:



1. Will a customer be able to see your site if it already favours a competitor's site?

2. How does personal preference affect site rankings? Won’t they be skewed by personalized search?

3. Will keywords be important anymore?

4. What does this mean in regard to content? How can I know what a person’s personal search behavior is?

5. How long before personalized or live search is picked up by BING/Yahoo and other search engines?





Needless to say, personalized search is changing the rules of the SEO game.

You won’t be able to see consistent rankings anymore and the importance of competitive keyword optimization and link building will be decreasing. This will make it exceptionally difficult for new brands to break into the market.



There is some good news regarding personalized search. We can assume that most people will not be choosing to click on worthless websites. With personalized search these websites will be pushed out over time. That means good websites with great, well written, relevant content will slowly move up in the search results naturally.



With personalized search result pages, it is easier to get attention when 'new' content or remarks appear. So new and fresh content from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and blogs will become more important. The relevancy of your content in the Google Search Results Page will need to be even more tightly focused. It will become increasingly more difficult to rank for single keywords.



For those sites that receive regular repeat visitors rankings may improve organically.

Now more than ever one must recognize that SEO involves more than great keywords and rankings. SEO is becoming more and more driven by social media. Website structure, usability and content will be key to driving traffic to your site and converting that traffic into actions. Although keyword research and selection are still very important 'relevancy' has the edge in the market so the right keyword selection is even more critical.



For the moment if you don’t think personalized search will benefit your site you can put your effort into optimizing for BING/Yahoo or other search engines but it is probably only a matter of time before all of the search engines begin using some form of live search.
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