Marketers have more data at our disposal than ever before – and getting to the heart of it has never been more challenging.
Not long ago, a company’s chief technology officer (CTO) was almost entirely focused on technology infrastructure and engineering.
As the role — and the world in which it exists — evolves, so does the answer to the CTO’s mantra, “How do we use technology to achieve our organizational goals?” It is increasingly reliant on creating a great customer experience.
Today, customer experience often begins with a search query.
In this series, we’ve been talking with industry executives about how emerging technologies, evolving consumer behavior, and changing search algorithms are shaping the future of SEO.
In this interview, we sit down with Lemuel ParkCo-founder and CTO bright edge Talk data science and SEO with one of our expert contributors at Search Engine Journal.
What does it take to succeed and lead a data-driven organization in the current environment?
Convergence of SEO and Data Science
you recently told our audience”2021 is the year of accelerated search. “
How about this year – which trends in enterprise SEO do you expect to be important in 2022?
Lemuel Park: “First of all, I think this acceleration will continue.
mass rollout, e.g. Page experience update and core network vitality Will continue to drive demand for technical SEO.
This year, I saw the most important trends and opportunities for the convergence of data science and SEO.
Using our platform as an example, we know that in the past 18 months alone, the amount of data processed by the site alone has increased 11 times.
Additionally, according to IDC, global data will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025.
With this exponential growth of data, humans cannot handle it without being proficient in machine learning and data science.
I think data science will play a key role in further helping SEOs deliver more innovative, faster, and actionable data-led insights.
I believe this represents the future of SEO.
If you look at SEO tasks like research, on-site analysis, and user intent modeling, they all generate a lot of data.
Meanwhile, if you look at how many SEO tasks now overlap with data scientists, you’ll see more commonalities, such as:
- forecast and Prediction of future trends Combine business insights.
- Research to identify new market opportunities and spot patterns and changes.
- Understand, extract and automate insights from complex datasets.
- Build visuals and dashboards from different data streams.
As the functional requirements of a website have increased, so have SEO requirements.
At the same time, search engines have become increasingly sophisticated in how they interact with websites.
The result is a need to be able to capture, analyze and extract insights from large datasets.
Indeed, especially in an enterprise setting, SEOs make heavy use of data science methods and tools to process search data to gain insights.
This can be through statistical analysis, full API access to datasets, data processing algorithms designed for big data, or through free experimentation with how search data is collected.
The SEO platform of the future needs to put the capabilities of a data science infrastructure at the heart of its technology stack.
As a CTO, I believe it is my responsibility to make SEOs more effectively use data science to improve performance without having to be a true data scientist. “
What is a typical day like for you as a CTO?
Lemuel Park: “I don’t think about a day, but a week. Also, the principles that organize my week are based on what the business demands of me.
Now, at our stage, the company needs me to spend 1/3 on innovation and experimentation, 1/3 on customers and products, and 1/3 on management.
So Tuesday and Saturday are days of innovation and experimentation. I’m focused on understanding where we need to go one year, two years and three years.
It blends industry innovation, market research, and hands-on experience with real technology.My current jam is Google Colab and GPT-3.
Wednesday and Thursday are Product and Customer Days. I focus on product reviews in 12 categories, meet with a handful of clients weekly, and really focus on product roadmap execution for the next three to six months.
Monday and Friday are management days. The goal is to execute on a daily and weekly rhythm. Are we on a zero to three month roadmap? “
Plan your career in SEO
What led you to a career in SEO, and what would you tell your younger self to remove any speed bumps you’ve come across?
Lemuel Park: “That’s a good question. My dad was a computer scientist and I knew from an early age that I wanted to do something like that and make a difference.
However, when I was deciding how to do this, I hurriedly wrote “engineering” instead of “undecided” on my UC Berkeley admissions papers.
Ten years later, I interned at Siemens and worked for seven years in Ernst & Young’s Attack and Penetration division, ensuring that Fortune 500 companies have the right security policies and software.
In 2007, I met my co-founder Jim Yu through a mutual friend.
We already have a shared interest in engineering, and together we see businesses undergoing the biggest changes in decades.
At a time when traditional media is abandoning writers, search is exploding, and brands need a way to produce and optimize content.
Together we built BrightEdge.
The first few years were challenging but also one of the most memorable of my life.
Jim has a newborn baby and I live with him on the couch.
Then, working on the kitchen table with 10 servers below, we set out to build the BrightEdge data cube.
We build everything from the ground up – our technology and early customer base. We are delighted with the success that followed!
As for what I would tell my younger self, I would say, “Always be humble” and “It’s okay to take risks.”
Humility means we are always learning; never say we have all the answers.
In SEO, you have to constantly adapt to change, which fundamentally keeps us on our toes.
The same goes for building a company – always knowing you have to adapt to change, humility will make you open to new ideas and challenge yourself to get better. “
Explore the world of blockchain and decentralized technology
What do you think marketers need to know about encryption, Web 3.0, and NFTs right now?
Lemuel Park: “The trends supporting Web 3.0 are decentralization, blockchain and digital tokens.
Instead of walled gardens and centralized power by a few players, users can own their data.
This will lead to the rise of personalization, not just for individual sites, but for the entire Internet of consumers.
Marketers will need to incorporate personalization in a larger way.
Now that we’re talking about a decentralized web, it’s no longer the highest-bidding advertiser that attracts consumers.
Instead, power is given back to users, and sites need better structured data to win customers and deliver the best content.
Whether it’s a schema or a local feed, how these datasets are optimized is very important for Web 3.0. You have to reduce your brand to data.
There are many possibilities in the future, but we are seeing blockchain, crypto and NFT Now.
It will mature over the next five to ten years, and we will see major disruption coming.
It’s like early mobile web with WAP or online groceries with Webvan in the late 90’s. These ideas are visionary, but a little early. These trends will continue, but they need to mature.
The core principles and spirit of SEO will continue.
Every business must optimize its digital presence to win customers.
As the playing field will become flatter, the competition will become more intense.
But the principle is eat and authority It will be amplified as the network will continue to be optimized. “
End thoughts?
Lemuel Park: “Many aspects of SEO have been underestimated in the past.
If you asked a CMO a few years ago about SEO and its importance, they might have been a little confused. But, ask them today and they’ll know what SEO is and how important it is.
Specifically, SERP Analysis and Technical SEO (especially its importance to digital marketers) is underrated.
Now, especially as the pandemic highlights the importance and need for SEO, we’re seeing a shift to the mainstream. “
More resources:
featured image and Post image: Courtesy of BrightEdge
