According to latest statistics, at the moment we have around 7 Zettabytes of data on the internet. And that number is increasing as we speak. So, where’s all of this data coming from? Simply put, we all create tons of data every day. For instance, we upload 576,000 hours’ worth of video on YouTube every day; Facebook has around 1.3 billion active users daily, who post pictures and videos almost on an hourly basis, and we are going to create a lot more data in the future.
Today, most internet traffic comes from mobile devices and according to the Pew Research Center, a staggering 77% of Americans own a smartphone. As smartphone usage rates continue to grow in the rest of the world, we can expect the volume of data to grow as well.
How does Big Data impact SEO?
In simple terms, Big Data is used to describe huge volumes of data “ both unstructured and structured “ that floods an organization on a day-to-day basis. If you want to use all of this information properly, you have to realize just how Big Data is related to Search Engine Optimization.
For starters, Google is the biggest Big Data organization in the world. And as SEO expert Jiyan Wei explains in this Search Engine Land article, Google has become the company it is today by analyzing large amounts of data, creating automated interfaces and providing information for their customers.
The future of search will be determined by all of this data. Consequently, it will also determine the manner in which organizations optimize their sites and content. Big data is what makes the growing amount of content online decipherable and it is how small organization are now able to compete with industry giants through well-calculated content strategies.
The connection between SEO and Big Data
If you’re new to Search Engine Optimization “ or SEO for short “ we should point out that everything starts with a look at Big Data and seeing how it interacts with Google’s algorithms. I order to help you get started, here are just a few ways SEO and Big Data can work together to produce concrete results:
New optimization tools
Thanks to big data, small companies have access to a number of optimization tools that can help them optimize their pages and in turn, maximize conversions. For example, you now have A/B testing tools that check different versions of one page in order to discover what works and what doesn’t.
Also, you can use a handy SEO reports dashboard that allows you to track all data from your analytics tools in one place. Tools like this will save you more than a few hours every month doing time-consuming copy-pasting and allow you to concentrate on more important aspects of your marketing strategy.
Create better user-experiences
For years at this point, organizations have been focused on getting a better ranking in search engines and following a unique set of formulas for improving it. Getting a top 3 ranking in Google is still a top priority for most companies, however, the way in which organizations attempt to climb to the top has changed in the last few years.
User-experience is now one of the most important factors when it comes to search engine rankings. With Big Data, we are now able to find previously hidden patterns and access data that allow us to create better user experiences and engage users more than ever before.
More tangible competitive analyses
In the end, Big Data simply gives your business a chance to conduct more accurate competitive analyses that drive better results in terms of advertising, marketing, and branding. Thanks to a number of modern tools, you can now easily check on your competition.
You can see how other companies are doing in terms of ranking, which keywords perform best on the market and what can you do to improve your SEO efforts. More capable organizations are now able to tackle Search Engine Optimization with objective data and not just subjective theories anymore.
The bottom line
Some people look at SEO as its own thing , however, when you start digging beneath the surface, you can clearly see that it’s impossible to approach SEO without utilizing the power of Big Data. No matter if you’re a first-time business owner or a full-blown SEO expert, make sure you fully understand the relationship between the two.
