As a marketing professional, you likely already have a significant array of skills at your disposal. Yet, it's also important to keep finding nuanced skill sets that can boost your marketing prowess.
In an increasingly digitally reliant landscape, advanced search skills are becoming more recognised as valuable attributes. Many people believe they know how to Google something. Yet, leveraging the technical and linguistic elements of search engines to have a positive impact on your marketing is more involved and powerful than you might realise.
So, why should you dedicate your time to something as seemingly insignificant as searching?
Simply put, learning how to search makes you a better marketer in a range of ways. Firstly, the abilities related to effective searching — critical thinking and ingenuity, among others — support other areas of your marketing career. In addition, as the linked resource states, "your ability to construct precise queries can also increase your ability to produce quality content". This is because advanced search skills enable you to more effectively self-edit in ways that better clarify and serve the goals of your content.
"...advanced search skills enable you to more effectively self-edit in ways that better clarify and serve the goals of your content."
Learning how to search more effectively also makes you a more agile marketer. You're better able to identify and find the most valuable resources for your campaigns. This includes academic papers, potential influencer partners, and hosts for content and backlinks, among others.
A set of skills that supports advanced searches begins with cultivating abilities related to specificity.
One of the mistakes too many people make is being overly broad or vague in their methods. By using tools that narrow or widen your searches in appropriate areas, you can ensure more relevant and actionable results.
"By using tools that narrow or widen your searches...you can ensure more relevant and actionable results."
As such, some of the skills to develop here include:
Boolean logic is an algebraic methodology that has long been used in research. In essence, it uses so-called boolean operators — “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT” — to gain more control over looking for and retrieving the most relevant results.
In searches, you can utilise the “AND” operator to narrow your search results by ensuring all specific keywords around the operator are included. Using the "OR" operator, however, expands the results you receive by confirming that any of the specified keywords can be present. Rather than utilising the traditional “NOT” operator, you can utilise “-” to exclude specific keywords from the results you receive.
"...it uses so-called boolean operators - “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT”..."
It may seem like a simple tactic, but learning to effectively use quotation marks in your searches is a powerful tool for specificity.
Essentially, you enclose a search term in quotations in order to ensure any results that return include that exact phrase. This can be particularly useful when your collection of target keywords for your campaign can have various contexts if they’re not used in a specific order.
"...you enclose a search term in quotations...to ensure any results that return include that exact phrase."
Another effective element in search specificity is looking within sites.
This action is especially relevant if you’re looking for certain subject matter on popular websites or when you’re looking for relevant evergreen content to negotiate the insertion of backlinks. By using the prefix “site:” before the target website URL and your search keywords, you’ll receive results limited to that website.
"By using the prefix “site:” before the target website URL..."
Being able to find credible sources of information is essential for any content marketing campaign.
This is particularly true if you’re operating in Your Money or your Life (YMYL) sectors — such as finance, health, and law - as search engines are unlikely to rank your materials highly if they're not supported by clear examples of authoritative and accurate expertise. Not to mention that poor credibility can lead to negative publicity for your brand. Therefore, you need to develop search skills that enable you to confirm credibility.
"...search engines are unlikely to rank your materials highly if they're not supported by clear examples of authoritative and accurate expertise."
These include:
When you've found content that you'd like to refer to, it's important to evaluate the credentials and expertise of the author.
Therefore, you need to get into the habit of utilising search engines to assist with this. This could involve using quotation marks and boolean operators for terms, like "author name AND qualifications". You can also search the author alongside keywords related to their purported area of expertise to find other papers and articles that support their experience.
"...it's important to evaluate the credentials and expertise of the author."
Knowledge changes over time. Therefore, information or content that was credible a few years ago may not be at the time of your marketing campaign.
You need to learn how to search to ensure that no new information has surpassed what you believe to be current. Most search engines have advanced search tools that enable you to narrow down your results by date or filter by the most recent update. By adopting this in your search protocols, you have a better chance to secure the most current sources of information.
"...information or content that was credible a few years ago may not be at the time of your marketing campaign."
Biases - unconscious or otherwise - that drive the creation of content or influence academic papers can affect their credibility.
As a marketer, it's not just important from a technical standpoint to minimise the presence of biased sources, it's also an ethical obligation. Therefore, you can use the site-specific searches we've previously covered to investigate the author or publication connected to a source. This enables you to see what other items they've published in relation to the subject that may indicate skewed perspectives.
"This enables you to see what other items they've published in relation to the subject that may indicate skewed perspectives."
As a marketing professional, learning how to search effectively can boost your contributions to campaigns. Take the time to enhance the specificity of your searches through the use of boolean operators and quotation marks. You can also more effectively ensure the credibility of sources by using search skills to evaluate credentials and establish objectivity.
"The better you can understand how search engines operate, the greater the competitive marketing edge you can gain."
That said, it’s important to remember that search engines are constantly developing. It’s important to stay on top of changes and additions to your primary search tools so you can keep utilising them effectively. The better you can understand how search engines operate, the greater the competitive marketing edge you can gain.
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