Quick Insights from our SEO Queen

Our SEO queen Christiane works passionately in the Customer Care Team and takes care of everything concerning search engine optimization in the agency. She monitors Google algorithm updates, responds to important messages in the Google Search Console and derives recommendations for action. Her expertise is critical to monitoring ranking trends and visibility for our clients. Ready to dive into the exciting world of SEO?

Franka: Hey Christiane - cool that you're here today.

Christiane: Hey. I'm looking forward to giving you some exciting insights on the topic of SEO.

Franka: Very good - then here comes the first question: What does SEO really do for a brand and why is it so important?

Christiane: Search engine optimization helps a brand to generate sustainable visibility and traffic. In the rarest cases, websites are called up directly. Instead - you know it from yourself - you use search engines and enter your question there. For brands and companies, this means that a presence in search engines has become unavoidable. And because hardly anyone looks at the lower results anymore, good rankings are important in order to be noticed at all. This is exactly why SEO is needed - for a technically and content optimized website.

Compared to SEA, i.e. the placement of ads, SEO generates successes somewhat delayed, but the results are more long-term and also scale better in the long run. If I stop a campaign because my budget is exhausted, I generate neither visibility nor traffic via this channel from that point on. But if I have, for example, an SEO-optimized article on a topic that my target group is interested in, it can still have good visibility and generate clicks years after it was published. And I can do this without having to continuously invest budget or effort into this article. 

And last but not least: competitors are almost certainly also active when it comes to search engine optimization - so you shouldn't just leave the field to them.

Franka: How has search changed recently and how do you think it will change in the next year?

Christiane: Search has of course been heavily influenced by AI, ChatGPT and Bing Chat lately. It's suddenly not so much about Google anymore and in some cases the new smart chats are providing answers to questions so that here and there a visit to the website is left out. But even before the hype around ChatGPT, Google, for example, announced new features through generative AI to give users more context to their searches. For rankings, the EAT guidelines play a significant role, although even here there was another change at the turn of the year, with the addition of another E for Experience. This will continue to play a major role in the future - regardless of whether classic search or chatbot.

Depending on the target group, however, I can't ignore social networks. The under-30s in particular now like to use social media as a kind of search engine.

I think the next year will be exciting to see how much Bing can hold its own. As it becomes increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd and achieve good rankings, visual and supporting content such as videos, infographics and structured data will also become more important. Multichannel is now also inevitable to reach the young target audience.

Franka: I've heard that TikTok has changed the way Gen Z and Gen Alpha search, is that true?

Christiane: Yes, some evaluations have actually shown that and TikTok has also optimized the platform accordingly so that they index texts to be able to deliver appropriate results. That is the crucial difference to other social networks. But of course, we are still talking about a rather rudimentary scope compared to an actual search engine. However, a key advantage of TikTok is its timeliness to happenings or trends and its personalized algorithm. For brands, this can be an important channel to occupy their own topics and generate visibility.

Franka: Voice search is also said to have changed search to focus more on actual questions rather than keywords, is that true?

Christiane: Voice assistants and smart speakers are of course used differently than text entry search. By using structured data, tutorials or FAQs, your own website can help assistants provide the right answer. But through ChatGPT there is also something new here: apps for a video call with ChatGPT in the form of an avatar. This thus goes more in the direction of a virtual assistant and I therefore have an ongoing flow of conversation, so I naturally also formulate my question differently and do not just rely on pure keywords. Such voice assistants (e.g. Call Annie) are also very interesting for companies - they could be fed with the site's own content and thus also replace a classic chatbot.

Franka: How do you manage to stay up to date with all the rapidly changing technologies, tools and algorithms?

Christiane: It's actually not that hard, because I'm very curious in this area and want to know what's going on. I subscribe to various newsletters and social media profiles that go into more depth, check the relevant news on a selected website every morning, and regularly participate in webinars. I try out tools or use appropriate training, at best directly with an exam and certificates. The biggest challenge is actually rather finding time for all that.

Franka: I can understand that. Then thank you even more for your time and your interesting insights on SEO.

Christiane: You're welcome. It was fun.