A bloggers view on search in Europe: Heini van Bergen

Let’s start with saying that in The Netherlands we have quite an easy job in search. Actually it’s not that easy, but compared to, for instance the UK market, the competition is a lot less. On the other hand, when you achieve top rankings in the UK, the potential volume is great. This was confirmed by several attendees of the most recent SMX event in London.

On a global scale, we have quite an exciting time ahead of us. First of all the down economy we’re right in the middle of. For everybody this is an uncertain period, which we could get out of pretty soon, or it could really get worse. I won’t be surprised if this economic situation turns into something far scarier than just job cuts.

A second development we came across is the way Google (and other search engines) displays its search results. We we’re already used to he blended results which incorporates “other” media like video, images, news, etc.. in the SERP’s, but now it finally looks like Google is really going for personalized search with their SearchWiki.

These developments require a different approach from a search perspective. Yes, these developments can be a threat to our business, but they also contain some huge opportunities.

The major advantage that we as search marketers have is the possibility to measure almost everything. Where other channels often have a grey area of visitor numbers, we have them all and can even track back to what keywords they have used. Even in a down economy sales must go on, because we can prove that our efforts really drive profit, clients can’t ignore search marketing anymore.

The advantage of personalization is that it will make it harder for black hats to spam the SERP’s. The power is in the user’s hands, so they will determine what’s best for them. With this in mind, SEO will transfer more from solely rankings in supporting companies to be the best in their industry and translate this to the web.

So, I’m very curious to know where we are in about six months, but what I’ve learned from almost 10 years in the search industry; It will never be boring ;-).