James Gibbons On How Search Has Changed, SEM Instruments & Other Search Sources Of Traffic

In part one with James Gibbons, the senior customer success manager at quattr, we mostly spoke about how search tools can help you make decisions, and we also spoke about his history. In part two we spoke about what has changed in search marketing, more on SEO tooling and other sources of search traffic.

How Search Marketing Has Changed & Diversification Is Key:

James explained how the Google Ads use to be marked in yellow and were clearly able to be seen. He said half of the people would not click on ads, but that is changing and maybe people are trusting the ads more or maybe they are less aware that they are ads. I brought up an old search or golden triangle eye study from 2005, but I have not seen recent studies on this.

James said search marketers need to be aware that searchers and users are not getting to your content the same way. People can use head terms versus more long tail terms, he explained. James said you should go beyond your main keyword space to gain more users to your site. We also spoke about other platforms and verticals, like Google Discover, Google Ads, and more. But we kind of dug more into the Google Discover topic there for a bit.

More On SEM & PPC Tooling:

We then went back to the topic of SEO and SEM tools and should you build or buy. Of course, James was all for buying and not building. We spoke more about SEO recommendation engines and how the AI ​​works with it. He said instead of building the tools, skip that step and just use a tool that has it so you can start immediately seeing your SEM success.

I brought up some of the first SEO tools, like Web Position Gold and others. How the tools themselves have grown in their capabilities over the years. It is amazing how far tools have gone over the years and where they are headed in the future. Google obviously uses a ton of machine learning in search and ads – but how much will AI take over is the big question.

Other Sources of Search Traffic:

We then spoke about how to find search traffic sources from Google but use sites that are already ranking well. You then get your site on those pages that are not yours and gain top ranking through other platforms. This includes sites like question and answer platforms, affiliate sites, review sites and so on. So you can use outreach, displays, affiliate, influencer or other methods to gain access to those sites and those rankings that those sites rank for.

You can learn more about James Gibbons on LinkedIn or @jamesfgibbons.

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Forum discussion at YouTube.