At the recent Yext Summit, 27-year search marketing expert Duane Forrester offered advice on how to become a better SEO and develop the skills to better predict where your search marketing is headed. shared.
Who is Duane Forrester and why his advice matters?
Duane Forrester is one of the few search marketers with experience on both sides of the search box. He has 27 years of experience in the search industry, nearly 10 of which he spent as a product manager at Microsoft. He helped build and launch Bing Webmaster Tools, authored the original Bing Webmaster Guidelines, and is responsible for the core search and spam teams, as well as Schema.org, Robotstxt.org, and Sitemaps.org. Worked with the team that built and maintained it.
5 steps to become a better SEO and predict future trends
Duane said no one is talking about AI in 2022. It's been exactly one year since then, and everyone is talking about it. He said this is an example of how SEO is one of the most rapidly changing industries, and that this has always been the normal pace.
What's happening with AI is just one shift in a history of change, not all of which is visible to the search community. Machine learning, neural networks, and AI have been part of search behind the scenes for years, but they're largely invisible and not always well-understood. This emphasizes the importance of learning.
Duane said:
“…This industry requires a dedication to continuous learning. There's always something new. …Big steps, small steps, but it's a constant.”
He suggested the following activities to establish and maintain a strong SEO foundation.
- 60 minutes of research per day
- Follow known experts
- Use official sources for SEO guidance
- Value of developer resources
- Predict consumer trends
1. Research for 60 minutes per day
Duane recommended setting aside time for research.
He explained:
“…devote at least 60 minutes to an hour each day to reading new sources and official and unofficial blogs.”
Spending a lot of time researching something you already know, SEO, may sound like a lot of time to some. But Duane is right, and I'll tell you why.
In 2005, I was surprised when Google engineers revealed that Google uses statistical analysis to identify unnatural links. That was the shocking moment when it became clear to me that I needed to start reading research papers to stay on top of search engine trends.
When I contacted Duane about this, he told me that SEO is changing so rapidly that at some point it may become inappropriate to call it SEO, so it's hard to research everything right now. We said it's more important than ever.
he said to me:
“Hey, if things continue like this, we're all going to have to learn a new profession. If it's at the forefront of what's coming, it won't be called SEO.
In short, if you don't invest in your work now, there will be no tomorrow. I'm sorry, but this train has stopped. A new train will be leaving the station soon, so please take a ride. ”
2. Follow known experts
Duane argues that it's important to be open-minded and absorb other people's opinions. This is probably because he is talking about how important it is for someone with 27 years of experience to read other people's opinions. So if it's important to him, it should be important to others too.
Duane recommends:
“Go find out by following known experts who have accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn threads, Bluesky, TikTok, etc. If you're moderate, sign up. If you're on Substack, sign up. Please upload it.
Make sure you have direct access. I don't want to rely on what someone says they've read. Read these for yourself. It makes a big difference in your understanding. Listen to our podcasts, watch our webinars, follow our YouTube channel and be aware of drinking from the firehose. ”
3. Use official sources for SEO guidance
Duane emphasized the importance of getting as much information as possible directly from search engines. As for the usual sources of official information (Search Central, Developer Blog, Webmaster Tools), he said to bookmark them so you can check them daily. But he also advised expanding your sources to sources that most people don't access.
He says of alternative sources:
“SEOs look for Microsoft, Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Baidu, Naver. But first, why Yahoo? It's because they've done a lot with search in the last year and what they're going to do in the next 18 months. Because they're ready to do more. So look at what they're doing. They don't invest in this because they think there's no reason to invest. They don't invest in this. We strongly believe there is a place for us in the market and I'm sure consumers will agree.”
4. Value of developer resources
This part of his keynote is interesting because it looks at what the industry will look like in 18 months. Part of being involved with developer resources is understanding the technology, but he also sees it as an opportunity to get ahead of others by knowing where consumers are going (because money is spent (This is because it follows the person).
Duane recommended developer resources from Meta, Amazon, Apple, TikTok, and OpenAI, companies that develop customer experiences that influence consumer behavior. He has a point. Shane has revolutionized the way clothing is marketed by targeting consumers on social media in a way that appeals to them and bypassing search altogether.
Duane said:
“We also encourage developers to take a look at what's going on. There's a very important reason for this. META, Amazon, Apple, TikTok, OpenAI, they're all developers that We have a dedicated location where you can come and avail of the latest products and services…
The reason it's important to pay attention to this is because these companies are developing customer experiences and understand how those customer experiences influence customer behavior and behavior. These are the official sources where those experiences are published, talked about, and where developers can engage with them. ”
5. Predict consumer trends
One of the things I found interesting was how he kept coming back to how technology impacts the customer experience and their behavior. When he talks about his Apple and Meta, it's in the context of how they influence customer behavior, and he also connects that to how money follows consumers.
For example, in our conversation, he mentioned the prospect of ad-free AI search and said we have to think about where that ad spend will go.
“This leans towards ‘staying on top of the game’ and we have to talk about how ‘search’ is expanding to new platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.).
So knowing how they think about things like business models becomes a very important part of the game. If ChatGPT launches an ad-free search experience and today's consumers adopt it (100 million monthly active users), what will this mean for the current search model built on ads? Will it have an impact? How will this impact how teams are allocated work within a brand, what skills are in demand, and where advertising dollars go?”
Can you see what he's doing there? He looks at today's technology trends and considers where they are headed and how that will impact what jobs are in demand and where advertising and consumer spending is headed. I am.
I've known Duane for almost 20 years and he always does things like put in context what's happening now and what it means for the future. . These questions of his show how to predict where the industry is headed.
His Yext keynote ended with a hockey analogy.
“You don't want to skate all the way to where the puck is. You want to skate all the way to where the puck is. The greatest hockey players who have ever played this sport know that and they do that every time they step on the ice. I acted accordingly.
If you skate to where the puck is, you are guaranteed to miss the point and fall behind. Skating to your destination is a way to get ahead of things and stay on top. And you can get there by being curious, continually learning, and building a robust network. ”
Watch Duane Forresters' keynote.
How to maintain SEO best practices
Featured image by Shutterstock/Artem Samokhvalov