VIDEO: Yahoo's Kaushal Kurapati talks search engine optimisation

Kurapati, speaking about trends in search across Asia, said that search engine optimisation has become a staple in digital marketing strategies but there are still ways to get it wrong.

“The way to look at it, I think, is for the sites to focus on their users and their business models first. What they need to do is understand who their user base is – how can they make their site more accessible and navigatable for their users? And then search automatically, to some extent, takes care of itself,” he said.

Kurapati adds that some brands use spamming and other forms of maniupulation to attract traffic to their sites, which, once it’s uncovered by users, is detrimental to sites’ long-term success.

“There are aggressive tactics that sites tend to use sometimes, unfortunately,” he said. “When you see that kind of cloaking behaviour … it’s not something that will be beneficial to the site in the long run. Fundamentally they need to focus on what demographic they’re serving and what content they are trying to bring to the user and make it as simple as possible, very presentable and as easy to consume as possible, and the rest will take care of itself in terms of search rankings.”

Off camera, Kurapati added that real-time search that links engines to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter is a key trend, as well as rich-media search experiences.