I’m going to say one more thing about Penguin/Panda/whatever-new-update-is-making-waves-in-the-SEO-community….
Outside those who actively are trying to rank in Google, no one else cares. No one else talks about how Google’s recent social infatuation is ruining search. No one talks about how some website is managing to rank with no content. No one complains about the spammy results that us marketers see that our websites were replaced by.
No one cares. This isn’t me being apathetic to your (or my) plight. It is simply the truth.
And outside of the SEO community, no one is going to sign a petition to kill the update. It may make you feel better to know that you aren’t alone. But trust me….my wife hasn’t said a word in favor or against the search climate. Neither has her mother, her friends, her co-workers or her colleagues.
Google makes a change and the rest of the world doesn’t even notice.
And will continue to use google’s search engine.
For Google, their problems have nothing to do with desktop search. Their issues go more into staying relevant with Facebook and how people are searching in the first place. That’s changing. And that is what you should probably concern yourself with more as well, if you want to stay relevant.
No one said Marketing is Easy
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that while SEO marketers are in panic mode, most of the other marketers are simply shrugging it off. The bottom line is that Google updates simply don’t affect them because they don’t use Google as an ad medium.
They don’t have a dog in that fight.
What’s most interesting about this is the screaming from people who used the sneaky linking strategy complaining about how the juice from their legitimate links no longer helps them.
Yes, a lot of site owners had the notion that the way to deal with their lack of patience was to build legitimate links through normal channels over time, and “speed up the process” with campaigns of junk links. Garbage blog comments, profile drops, and forum spamming. -via Paul Myers Newsletter
Search Marketing has been the easiest form of marketing to game because marketer’s can bask in anonymity, focus on topics that would otherwise not have any business being in, and simply attach product to need. 2 years ago, there was a segment of the marketing community that not only focused on not bringing value to the visitor, they recommended and taught it. Ugly websites with links.
It was easy. A person with an internet connection and a 5th grade education could rank for things that required doctoral degrees to explain.
The other way isn’t easy because you aren’t trying to fool an algorithm. You are ingratiating yourself to a community.
But that way is much, much harder. You have to be an expert. You have to actively go after your market. You have to know what your market wants. You have to create useful stuff for your market. You have to play well with others.
In the very least, you have to be entertaining…
And it doesn’t come that fast either. Sure, it may come just as fast as waiting for search to favor you but it just doesn’t feel as fast. And this is the problem. It’s much easier to look forward to a potential 1,200 search queries a month when you are 3 pages back than to stare at a mailing list with 10 people (including your mother). Being behind 30 other competitors in the rankings feels a lot better than growing a list, one person at a time.
But it is safer. And you are moving your business forward, old school….
one.customer.at.a.time.
Image Attribution- http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgc/6605660/
No related posts.
Twitter: rtcunningham
says:
Awesome. I couldn’t have said any of it better. Outside of my circle of “SEO friends”, no one even knows or cares. If we keep that simple fact in mind, life is a whole lot easier.
So we have 450,000 people on our email list, we spend thousands per day in Ad networks, and we’re on the shelves at GNC, Wal-Mart, Costco and a slew of others. If we already dominate the ‘other’ traffic mediums your suggestion for my seo team then is to what?
Nothing. The whole point in these changes is to confuse SEO people.
Jeff recently posted..By: Jeff
If you are already dominating all the other markets, then chances are very good that people are talking about you already. And if you are spending $1,000′s in ad dollars like you claim, then you can afford to spread your content across the various other channels that will help you build a strong link profile.
But if what you are saying is true, then you most likely already have a strong link profile and chances are good you weren’t hit by Penguin because you spent the necessary money to do it right and weren’t slamming Google with unnecessary links that could be damaging to your business.
And if you were hit, your case is remote because the advertising arm that you have is long enough to withstand the hit….unlike most of the ma and pop businesses that ultimately relied on one ad medium for traffic.
I’m not exactly sure if you are really asking a question or questioning what I am saying here. It really doesn’t matter one way or another. If your SEO team is doing it’s job right, then they are focusing in on finding links that not only support your link profile and help with SEO but also brings traffic in from the links themselves.
If they aren’t doing that or if they have hurt your rankings by doing what every other search marketer does, then perhaps you should find someone else to employ.
For some audiences, providing doctoral level research produces the same lucrative results as writing crap used to.