Building An Integrated Search Strategy

Digital transformation is here.

But is it truly Here to look for marketers?

according to GoogleAnd

“Now is the time to reset, pivot, and think big to transform your business operations to align with the new digital expectations.”

Search marketers need a shift.

Looking at all of your audience and connecting them to relevant search engines – not just Google – really allows digital marketers to convert.

Every search engine is different. in results, search patterns, and keyword purpose (i.e. the keywords we use are different in each search engine).

What you do on Google and think will work on YouTube and/or Amazon (or any other search engine for that matter) can’t be replicated.

As you begin your integrated search strategy, looking at one search engine can help you begin to consider others.

In general, we use:

• Google to find it.
• Amazon to buy.
• YouTube to watch.

When it comes to integrated search strategies, let’s start by defining our focus engine/s.

Determine your primary areas of focus based on your audience and analyze what the search engine is showing

Amazon is all about products.

Find out how your product is performing. For brands, this isn’t just about brand analytics via Amazon Seller Central.

Here are the primary and secondary axis of the “big three” search engines:

Review your Amazon performance and your visibility (eg, how high you rank) on Google. This will help you start building your keyword strategy.

You can do this by looking at the keywords that Google ranks Amazon for.

Are any of these URLs from your Amazon products? Do any of these keywords have a “double bubble” on Amazon?

This may be a stronger indication that this keyword has high business intent. So much so that Google has ranked Amazon more than once.

Amazon’s double bubbles matter most on Google when they occur in higher-ranking positions.

Likewise, if you see YouTube ranking, primarily, on Google (such as YouTube timestamps view), this may be an indication that those keywords are better suited to the video platform.

Keep an eye on YouTube’s ranking for a traditional score, too. It’s not always about timestamps.

When you see the usual varied Google layout, which has a lot of different search engine results page (SERP) features, it will be an indication that that keyword requires focus on the Google platform.

Since we are talking about integrated search, let’s look at just Google.

Google is a competitor to many search engines, including YouTube. (Although they’re part of the same company, Alphabet.)

according to E-Marketing:

“First-party data from Amazon about consumers’ shopping and purchasing habits provides an edge over the general online behavioral data provided by Facebook and Google.”

This is why Google has created things like Google Shopping and Google Jobs to fend off other big search engines like Amazon, Indeed, or Glassdoor, becoming more dominant.

Each engine contains unique data, search behavior, and results. Each engine your audience uses needs its own strategy.

Overreliance and underinvestment in looking at each search engine’s data will limit your ability to create an integrated search strategy.

Searching the site is helpful.

On-Site Search (OSS)

Because the interface (and the functionality of that interface) influences our search behavior, the main internal site search keywords (i.e. the keywords used by your website users in your search bar) within the website will not exactly match what you see in Google Search Console , For example.

However, it’s a good idea to continue to monitor your site’s internal searches to further develop your keyword strategy. There are some coins out there to help you advance the content you write about.

On-site search, a form of on-site search (OSS), is powerful because it is based on real user behavior data.

Whenever you can, look at OSS through a search engine.

Disclaimer: I work on a similar site. The company I work for has features using OSS.

Let’s take the product “air conditioner” as an example.

On Google, we search for a wide range of keywords, but most of them are branded keywords, for example, “LG air conditioner” or “Mitsubishi air conditioner”. In general, these keywords are general and less specific.

At Amazon, we’re more specific and tend to use more off-brand keywords — for example, “portable air conditioner” or “sliding window air conditioner.”

On YouTube, we’re interested in both pre-sale inspirational content (eg “best portable air conditioner”), as well as post-sale (eg “install a small split air conditioner”).

Any business that ranks on Google and produces videos needs to start creating separate strategies for Google and YouTube. Retailers also need to do this for Amazon.

Let’s take a look at how keyword research compares across sites.

Google keyword search:

YouTube keyword research:

Buyer Journey

Traditionally, before digital acceleration became a thing, we used to group keywords by “information,” “navigation,” and “transactional.”

These categories are outdated for integrated search, as groups are not easily aligned with search engines.

Group your keywords at these stages to get a better fit with the buyer’s journey and the primary search engine:

consciousness

• Primary search engine: Google (sometimes Amazon and YouTube).
• Keyword example: “paper”.

consideration

• Primary search engines: Amazon, Google, and YouTube.
• Keyword example: “printer paper”.

resolution

• Primary search engine: Amazon (sometimes Google).
• Example keyword: “A4 printer paper”.

Important

• Primary search engine: YouTube (sometimes Amazon and YouTube).
• Keyword example: “How to make an airplane out of printer paper.”

Buyer Journey Benefits

Easier search engine alignment and better performance insights.

Let’s take Google SERP features, for example. Are there more immediate answers for awareness keywords than for decision keywords?

SERP features help develop your Google strategy and digital assets on Google. Keywords with Videos SERPs shouldn’t guide your YouTube strategy.

The Buyer Journey helps you get started building an integrated search strategy across the big three search engines of Amazon, Google, and YouTube.

If you have low SEO resources that prevent you from focusing on this, try setting aside 30 minutes per week so you can slowly start ranking for the keywords for your most important business unit.

Over the following weeks, you will begin to gain valuable insights into an important area of ​​business.

This will automatically help you get the attention of other stakeholders internally, which will help you create a business case for doing more SEO activities.

This is SEO proselytism at its finest: engaging internal stakeholders.

The buyer’s journey is easier to understand for non-digital audiences than it is for a particular search engine ranking factor.

EAT content is required for every search engine strategy, but some are less so than others

If you need a summary (or refresher) about EAT, the SEJ Handbook explains it beautifully. Read it here: What exactly is eating and why does it matter to Google?

Now, let’s look at EAT (Experience, Authority, and Trustworthiness) from an integrated research perspective.

Google is more focused on EAT than Amazon and YouTube.

Amazon uses EAT to a minimum, as it’s still playing catch-up to improve algorithms for content.

But since the content is present in all three search engines, and to follow the best practices, we need to consider EAT for all three search engines.

Do not use generic product descriptions on Amazon. If you are reselling, do not copy content from external sources, including from the supplier if you are reselling.

Be engaged on Amazon with user-generated content, especially the reviews and questions/answers you receive.

Unlike Google and YouTube, you cannot send back a portion of your consumed text or video. So keep an eye on system defect rates, inventory levels, price, and conversion trends.

On Amazon and Google, keep an eye on reviews; Trusted and specialized reviews are important.

As mentioned earlier, Google is the most advanced algorithm when it comes to EAT. But really, EAT principles are like college essays.

Key questions to ask:

• Is the content unique? If so, how much against what else have we seen (in the case of indexed search engines)?
• Who else posted on the topic? What are their strengths and weaknesses?? How does this field compare in relation to this?
• What research has been done? Are there any references and to any authors’ sources/profiles?
• What questions were addressed? What questions/missing angles?
• What methods and formulas are used?
• What are the main points?

YouTube, like Amazon, puts more real-life metrics into its algorithm. In Amazon’s case, it’s defect rates and inventory levels. On YouTube, there are views, likes, gaining real subscribers, and comments.

Shareability is important for all three search engines but even more so for Google and YouTube.

Google, for the most part, uses backlinks to monitor shareability.

YouTube may also use backlinks but video sharing is more important. Make sure that video sharing is enabled under Options/Settings. Sharing is the key to YouTube.

How can I build an integrated search strategy?

Determine who your audience is and what their focus is.

If the goal is to target younger audiences who consume video, your keyword strategy needs to be different than simply targeting video consumers.

If your company is currently only doing search engine optimization (SEO), see how Amazon and YouTube are doing on Google. This is the easiest way to start getting teams thinking and getting them to understand that every engine is different.

Understanding Amazon’s performance over Google at the keyword level can add another dimension to keyword intent.

Categorize your keywords into four stages of the buyer journey: awareness, reflection, decision, and inspiration. This will help you align your keywords through the search engine as well.

Collecting buyer journey keywords will also add another interesting layer to your understanding of SERP features.

Address your content on every search engine you work on. Some of the engines have less focus, but remember that each engine is getting more complex, some at a slower rate than others.

Stay ahead of the game.

More resources:

• 9 essential steps to building a successful SEO strategy
• SEO Strategy vs Tactics: What’s the Difference? a lot!
• SEO Strategy: Complete Outline (+Template) [Ebook]

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