Matt Hopkins founded Vertical Leap in 2001, he wanted to run an SEO agency with transparency at its core. The principle of giving clients complete visibility of their SEO campaigns is one that is still one of our core values.
Here’s what Lee Wilson had to say about the company and the future of digital marketing:
For those who aren’t familiar with you and your company, please tell us a little more about your company.
We are an agency of search marketing and digital specialists. Since 2001, our agency started as an SEO company with transparency at the heart of everything we do – something that holds true still today. We combine intelligent algorithms with smart people to deliver unique insights to drive forward the success of websites spanning all search and digital mediums.
What would you consider the most important development in digital marketing in 2015? What are your top 3 digital marketing trends that you think will dominate in 2016?
The most important change in 2015 was the introduction of Google RankBrain. Whilst machine learning is not a new concept, Google bringing it to the forefront as the third most important ranking signal suddenly thrust deep data, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in front of many new audiences.
My top 3 digital trends for 2016 are:
- Quality. In every area. From adverts to on page copy, quality signals will dominate SEO tactics and rightfully so
- Deep data. Gut feel is becoming a thing of the past and being replaced with depth of data fueling decision making
- Understanding. Since Hummingbird and then RankBrain, context, relevancy, and broader understanding of content/service/market offering and more is paramount for SEO success
Most business owners want to follow their competitors’ digital marketing strategies. Do you think this is a good or bad practice, and why?
Understanding your competition, monitoring and reacting to competitor change is important – following them is not. You need to become a thought leader in your niche – more so in the digital environment than anywhere else. It is the differentiators which form the genuine value based propositions, and support long term online success, so I would suggest that companies focus on this, rather than following everyone else. You never lead the market by just following it.
Today, a higher Google rank doesn’t mean you’ll get more organic clicks. What are your thoughts on this?
Ranking is only one aspect of Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is every interaction online with your brand, website and industry niche. From pre click to post click, and everything in between, SEO can make a substantial contribution towards total website and business success. Ranks can be a tricky beast. Sometimes ranking at the top of page two can offer more clicks than ‘post top three’ on page one.
Google Knowledge (or answer) snippets in search results can often provide greater clicks than the traditional first position. Mixed content types, local listing and even search topics can impact click through rates. The key to optimising for this (more clicks) is getting a thorough understanding of how your business and industry behaves (including your changing competitive environment) and using this to create a competitive advantage. This brings you back to deep data and human/machine collaborative working for ultimate potential gains.
What’s the single most effective way marketers can leverage big data in their marketing strategies?
By deciding from the outset what they want to achieve with big data and building everything around that goal. Diversify too much with big data and you have lots of disperse data sets without any clear volume based advantage, or means to create easy meaning from the data. It is important to move from ‘data’ towards ‘information’ as quickly as possible. Data doesn’t yet have a practical application, information when combined with expertise becomes actionable insight, and is ready to make things better.
Do you think the other search engines like Duck Duck Go / some other will stop Google’s Monopoly?
Stop? No. Having said this, people are becoming much more proficient at using search engines and the demands placed on search engines to deliver increasingly diversified needs has never been more challenging than it is right now. This means that searchers will start to create a search experience that suits them more as an individual and this will lead towards the continued growth of other less widely adopted search engines like Duck Duck Go. I also feel there may be a time when countries start placing greater restrictions on Google monopolisation and people (notably anyone delivering SEO services and digital marketing) need to factor this into the approaches they take with SEO delivery.
Even now, search engines other than Google can offer substantial reward when effectively included within digital marketing strategies.
