As a digital marketer, you are aware of the importance of optimizing your web pages for search engines to attract the right traffic and promote your brand online. Equally important is the need to remain updated with emerging search engine algorithm and tactics as well as advanced SEO tools to ensure that your business is visible to the right users. Aiming at providing accurate and the most relevant information to the users, search engines use complex algorithms which change from time to display the search results to what they deem most useful to the user. Popular search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo use search filters to generate personalized results for every query. In this post, we will look at search engine filters, how they affect your SEO and how to avoid them for your site content.
Why Avoid Search Engine Filters
Search Engine Filters are algorithms that determine which information to display to a certain user based on their personal information such as location, language, age, browser history and so on rather than the keyword relevance. This implies that two different people will get a different result when they search the same phrase since search engines use the information collected from the user to personalize such. Simply put, search engines use smart algorithms to personalize search results that are not only based on both conventional ranking factors and the user profile.
While this could save the server time by giving them the information they are probably interested in, the information is biased and even worse without their knowledge. The impact is heavy on the digital marketers and the SEO experts. While you could have made all efforts to improve your SERP ranking, your site could be pushed down the list just because the search previously visited your competitor’s site. Moreover, search filtering will block you from reaching a wide audience. For this reason, it is important to learn ways of evading search engine filters to enhance your brand visibility in related SERPs.
SEO Strategies to Evade Search Engine Filters
Before we get into the details of what you can do to avoid search engine filters and ensure that your website is visible to a wide audience in organic search results, it is important to understand the various elements of personalized or filtered search.
1. Location
Search engines know the geographical location of the searcher through the IP address or if the user has turned on the location feature on their device. Google may determine the location if the user has previously used other Google products such as google maps or G-Mail. With this factor, physical stores near the search will be ranked higher in the SERP.
2. Language
The search engine will personalize the search result based on the language of the query. This can impact your ranking, especially if you are targeting a global audience.
3. Browsing and Search History
Search engines keep a record of the previous search, pages visited and browser history to predict the user interests and customers the search results around the previous activities and experience.
4. Social Media
When joining a social channel such as LinkedIn, Google+ or even Facebook, you give a lot of your personal details, including age, hobbies, interests and profession among others. Search engines use this data to personalize search results.
5. User Device
The type of device the searcher is using could determine where the search engine will rank your site on SERP. If your site is slow, it may rank higher on desktop and lower on mobile devices.
How Do You Avoid Search Engine Filtering?
Though it is impractical to know all your audience and their specific traits, there are several strategies that you can apply to prevent benefit from personalized search.
Use Advanced Technology to Analyze your Audience
There are many SEO analysis tools such as Google Analytics that you can use to analyze your audience. With these tools, you can learn the type of visitors that come to your sites, the time they spend on the site, their specific queries and so many other things and optimize for them.
Optimize for Location
If you target a specific geographical region or have physical stores, it is important to optimize your content for that specific location. A good starting point is listing your business with Google My Business. This may not work for a global business such are a real online casino, but such businesses can also make the audience and the search engine know their target nations or regions through the content.
Using Social Media to Enhance Visibility
The importance of social media marketing in SEO cannot be overemphasized. Ensure that you create quality content that users will be compelled to share across various social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. Your interaction with your followers on social media can also increase visibility in organic SERP.
Language Optimization
Ensure that your language has multi-language functionalities to ensure that your global audience can access the content in different languages. However, multi-language sites should be implemented expertly, as they can affect user experience thus affect your overall SEO efforts negatively.
Targeting Multiple Device
The mobile-first SEO approaches are very effective in SEO, so building a responsive site for your business is critical. It is also important to test your website on various gadgets to ensure that it loads faster and perfectly as well as track your mobile and desktop ranking separately.
Conclusion
The purpose of search engine filtering is to personalized search results according to their interests as drawn from their demographic data, search history and web activities, aimed at enhancing the overall search experience. However, for digital marketers, it can affect their SEO efforts by narrowing their audience to a smaller bubble of people. Fortunately, you can follow the above tips to prevent search engines from filtering your website content.
