“Know your enemy, know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster...”
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
I wouldn’t say Google is the “enemy”, but all too often they’re far being from a friend. Understanding Google and understanding yourself will set you up to avoid catastrophe.
Here on SEOmoz, we love reading about tactics. Smart, repeatable, step-by-step processes you can implement and see results from right away. Everything else is a frustration, right? So, if you'll kindly bear with me... we're going to talk strategy rather than tactics. How to future-proof your marketing from Google. Deep breaths.
First, let me paint you a picture…
Imagine, YOU are Larry Page.
You have billions of dollars to spend...
(Image Credit: One Billion Dollar (Most Expensive Artwork Ever)
You have thousands of super-talented software engineers. You also have thousands of super-savvy marketers. (Image Credit: Joel on Software)
You derive almost all your revenues currently from selling adverts.
Oh, and you also have thousands of shareholders and analysts breathing down your back.
What do you do?
Some ideas that come to mind...
- Turn commercially-focused searches such as shopping into a pay-to-play game.
- By-pass parasitic “search within search” sites and own other multi-billion dollar industries such as flights and hotels. Start experimenting with disrupting job search, insurance comparison, credit card comparison, people search, lawyer search, real estate search, Google+ dating… and put forward the convincing argument that it’s better for users (at least in the short term?).
- Use Adwords data to find other high-paying industries where Google can cut out the middleman, setup shop on their own, and take a higher margin.
- Buy out or joint venture with successful incumbents to gain rapid market share and infrastructure in these high-margin industries.
- Replicate the total dominance of Adwords in search in other media channels. Google TV, intelligent and responsive outdoor media, and Google Glasses (or whatever becomes of that) coupled with inevitable integration of everything with Google+ to give Google unparalleled reach and targeting to advertisers across every media channel.
It begins to get very evil, very quickly...
This is a new world we could be entering into. Basic rules of SEO may begin to go out of the window. Building anchor text links to “hotels in New York” is meaningless when Google has rolled out their own solution straight into the search results.
It sort of feels like this.
So what to do about the 600lb gorilla in the cage? Here are five strategies to get you thinking.
Strategy #1: Optimize Search Demand, not Search Supply
This isn’t experimenting into influencing Google suggest, running Superbowl ads, or other similar short-term wins. You need to build something that, once someone knows about you, they’d be crazy not to come back to each time they need to buy. Brands, as companies and as products will perform better against Google. Building a brand stops both people and Google treating your products as commodities. They'll come to you first.
Zappos, for instance, strives to delight customers. Whether it’s the fast, free delivery and free returns for up to a year, or the huge resources pumped into phone calls to build relationships with customers, Zappos has built a truly great platform for customers. ~75% of their sales are from repeat customers.
Being remarkable is important. Instead of relying on unbranded search terms for shoes, it's better to use word of mouth marketing by your delighted customers. They might start at Google, but search instead for your brand rather than the product they want. Google, outranked!
Similarly, invent your own search demand. Apple didn’t make a “tablet PC”. They made an iPad. The ensuing onslaught of consumer searches was for the “iPad” - a branded term. Since users love brands, and Google says it will continue to serve its users interests first, Google will steer out the way.
You don’t even have to be a massive company conquering a massive industry to do this. The brand new startup Dollar Shave Club pulled off a one-hit video stunt, but the long term marketing win that delivers lasting value is people talking about their brand.
Action: Build a Brand
Branding isn’t just a name. It’s what other people call it and why they identify with it. (Fast Company has an excellent primer on brand building). How do people identify with your company and products? You need to spend time mapping this out and defining a brand for current and future customers. The community on Inbound.org has some great links on branding too.
Of course, you have to make sure your all set up to win your branded SERPs. Here are two Whiteboard Friday refreshers for you on Dominating Your Brand SERPs and the Renewed Value of Branding.
Your Small First Step: Answer These Two Questions:
- What information is so critical to your customer’s next purchase that, if you had it on your site AND they knew about it, they’d be crazy not to check it out?
- What in your company can you brand so that you can manipulate search demand?
Strategy #2: Build Genuine Permission Assets
If customers really care about you, they don't need Google to find you. You need to build a customer base who want to hear from you, and who can buy from you in the future. These customers will be people who will come straight to you because they know and trust you.
I bet you’ve read countless articles and guides on growing larger email lists, getting more twitter followers, and earning more likes on your Facebook page. That information is great, but the trouble with this scoreboard mentality is that it focuses you on building sheer numbers rather than real engagement. A list of 100,000 subscribers isn’t really a list of 100,000 loyal fans. 50,000 Twitter followers aren’t really 50,000 people who will go out their way for you. 1,000 Facebook Likes isn’t really a list of 1000 people who will passionately defend the webpage and content if it’s ever criticized. The bar in and out is set too low.
You have to gain genuine permission assets from your audience by their loyalty rather than numbers. What have your followers done for you lately?
Look at some of these examples...
- TheOatmeal has a clear, loyal following. His tribe rallied behind him during his recent legal spat.
- Seth Godin has a clear, loyal following. His tribe helped him convince publishers to put his upcoming book in physical stores.
- Zappos has a clear, loyal following. Their tribe post rave reviews and testimonials publicly on their Facebook page. In their thousands...
If your business closed down, website disappeared and employees disbanded today, would your customers, audience, and community miss you tomorrow? Or the next time they need to buy?
Action: Build a Loyal Tribe of Customers
You need to build a loyal audience and community or customers that will go out of there way for you, even if that means just skipping Google search results. Find the people who will miss you dearly when you’re gone. Those loyal few are your strongest asset. Don’t measure your audience by numbers, but measure their responses instead. How much revenue do they generate? How often do they send enquiries? What kind of email do they send to you?
Build an community. Connect your followers together, and build a stickier brand. Jen Lopez put together an excellent, pithy post on using community as an Inbound marketing channel.
Your Small First Step: Connect a Dozen People Together
See if these people would be interested in forming a community that aligns with your brand values by seeding a relevant conversation. This ties in closely with the actions in Strategy #1, building a brand.
This could be online (Twitter chat, LinkedIn group, webinar, G+ hangout) or offline (drinks, meetup, conference, breakfast).
BONUS! Buy Tribes book by Seth Godin and/or watch Seth’s TED Talk on The Tribes We Lead (It's 20 minutes. You can watch it in your lunch break.).
Strategy #3: Prepare for Long-Term SEM
If Google shopping and Google flights are any indicator of the future, it's likely Google will put you on a diet of some kind of Adwords-type service you must adopt in order to keep you in the SERPs. That means you must be getting ready to master online advertising in your niche, which doesn't work without knowing your lifetime customer value, costs per customer acquisition and conversion rates. Who’s to say you can’t thrive under Google?
In search advertising in particular, where Adword’s quality score appears to tie more closely with SEO (relevant pages, strong social signals, passing “the panda questionnaire”), continuing with traditional SEO appears to be the future for staying in the SERPs. SEOs and Adwords folks appear to be getting closer anyway, and there's more and more relevant information we can learn from one another.
In the long run for both, in competitive niches especially, knowing your numbers and driving down costs to acquire customers will only help win, be that for increasing PPC budget or SEO spend on content, outreach, acquiring data or anything else. Conversion rate optimization is the key to unlocking a prosperous future with Google. You need to get your team on top of this.
Action: Conquer Conversion Rate Optimization
In order to truly win at SEM and the Adwords game, you must conquer conversion rate optimization. Thankfully there are many great resources on CRO here on SEOmoz; my favourite so far is by Stephen Pavlovich. Send this to your team.
I’ve always loved Conversion Rate Expert's case studies for insights to processes as well as for reinforcing the case for CRO. Here’s an example of a case study where they doubled a companies conversion rate, making them £14 million extra that year, and another slightly older case study, but with a familiar face.
SEM is process driven. CRO is process driven, too. The asset you need to build is a process for testing and winning at CRO. You need to bring your developers, designers, other marketers, and C-level execs on board with the idea of incremental benefits to CRO, and get them onboard with a continual process of testing new ideas. Incidentally, the same skills will be needed for mastering Adwords, when the time comes.
Consider a rolling contest for people to suggest things to test, and if they move the needle by a significant percentage, a significant reward be dealt out. Keeping that in mind...
Your Small First Step: Setup One Small CRO Experiment
Read through the guides above, and pinpoint one small test you can implement. The first test might be painful as there are no processes in place to make it all happen easily, but once you’re setup you can run more and more experiments.
But start with one. Today. You could have tangible results at the end of the week. More money, please!
Strategy #4: Overseas Conquest
Our search comrades in Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, and many other countries will still benefit from lack of Google dominance... for the time being, at least. Focus on targeting places where Google is not inherently strong and is unlikely to invade within the medium term. There will still be good money to be made here, and often these are high-growth, emerging markets. Who in travel doesn’t want to be selling holidays to the emerging middle class in China?
That said, “understand your enemy." How long until Google, Microsoft, or even Facebook makes a move for Yandex, Baidu, Naver, and all the foreign incumbent search engines?
Action: Optimize for "unGoogled" Emerging Markets
First, take care of the essential technical SEO to target foreign countries. Rand put together a Whiteboard Friday on international SEO a while back, and Matt Cutts also has some suggestions for using unique domains to target specific countries. Take a look at this detailed list of country domain extensions.
Yandex, Baidu, and others all have broadly similar interests algorithmically, so you’re not going wrong following Western SEO advice you get from SEOmoz or Google’s user guidelines. A few links worth following and bookmarking:.
- An excellent blog on SEO for Russia, and Yandex in particular at Russian Search Tips.
- Yandex Webmaster Tools (in English)
- Baidu Webmaster Tools (not in English currently, but usable by auto-translate in Google Chrome)
- Submit your site to Baidu (sounds ol’ school doesn’t it?) here if you aren’t already indexed.
- SEO for Naver, by Search Engine Watch
If you've got any additional helpful links to add, please post them in the comments :)
Although it’s horrible, overwhelming advice... you’ll need to have language skills on your SEO team. Bring bilingual SEOs onboard by recruiting internally and externally. Foreign language skills are going to become invaluable for tapping lucrative emerging markets. Like having talented designers, developers, and marketing processes, you either have them or you don’t. Put yourself ahead of the competition.
Your Small First Step: Find One Bilingual Helper
Search within your organization, on LinkedIn, Facebook, maybe via local universities and colleges for people who have an interest in online marketing and language skills in emerging markets. It needn’t be something full time and permanent, but at least someone you can turn to and ask about their local market. Just one person who can speak Russian or Chinese or something significant.
BONUS! Buy your .cn, .ru, .kr etc. domains
Strategy #5: Build an Essential Step in the Chain
Search is only one step in the chain. You can construct your business to force people and/or Google to come through you before or after visiting Google. There are two ways to do this: you can either win the context war (pre-commercial search) or you can win the fulfillment war (post-commercial search).
Google can’t create contextual information surrounding a search without degrading their search quality. If Google starts inserting flight and hotel search results whenever you search for “Maui,” maybe looking for pictures for a project or something, it’s going to frustrate users. This is where you can win.
Amazon jumps early on the e-commerce chain by becoming the canonical source of reviews and product research information. What’s stopping you from listing products on Amazon? Similarly, TripAdvisor drives huge volumes of traffic by becoming the canonical source of information for hotel reviews.
Win the fulfillment war by becoming the one and only way of fulfilling a certain good. This might mean proprietary products, proprietary software or complete monopoly over a certain, specific market. Apple owns the supply chain for sales of their goods, but you don’t have to be a pan-global company to have a similar effect.
Travelocity earns commissions from selling tickets. They launched a Travelocity rewards program for regular customers and offered various ways to earn points redeemable on more travel through booking tickets through them and using Travelocity-branded credit cards. This encourages people to keep returning to book through Travelocity, while still maintaining other loyalties and benefits such as frequent flier miles with the airlines they actual travel with.
Action: Build an Essential Step of the Chain
What content would be so incredibly useful that users would have to go through it? Take a look at Rand’s Whiteboard Friday from a few years back on The Path to Conversion, and use it to work out where you can add incredible value in your market.
Alternatively, what value-add could you build into the chain that Google can’t touch? Could you add a loyalty program with unique rewards?
Your First Small Step: Map Out The Buying Process from Research to Fulfillment
… then brainstorm ideas around each one where you might be able to add value that can’t be copied easily.
In summary.
Google has a ridiculous amount of resources and motivation to disrupt your market. They’re going to take your cake and eat it too, unless you can fight for your turf.
Use these five strategies to fend off their advance:
-
Build a Brand - Start by identifying your brand positioning
-
Build Genuine Permission Assets - Connect a dozen people together + Buy book/watch Tribes talk by Seth Godin
-
Prepare for Long-Term SEM - Start a small CRO test
-
Conquer Emerging Markets - Find one bilingual helper + buy your foreign domains
-
Build an Essential Step in the Chain - Start by mapping out the buying process, from research to fulfillment
PRO Tip: Do all of them!
... but if none of these hit the spot, consider this ...
"Strategy" #6: Can't Beat 'Em? Join Them!
Image Credit: This Green Machine
Of course, if you can’t find a way of outranking Google in the long run, consider giving in. Expect Google+ to encircle your industry. Embrace G+ now, and win in the long run.
Alternatively, consider selling out to Google.
Or you could give up completely. Google is hiring. ;)
... and on that bombshell!
I think it’s time to end! See you in the comments for more serious strategy talk, and also more “If I was CEO of Google I would _______________________” :)
All true, but...
If Google continues competing with the organic SERPs, soon it will not deliver the best results for user's query. Once users start noticing that some other engine is getting them better results Google will start losing industry share, fast!
Thinking of Blekko? Because I don't see Bing anywhere near as M$ doesn't have a clue.
I'd love to see Blekko succeed but as of now it's not a threat for Google. Most people don't care enough.
Yes, they will need to dramatically gain marketshare in order for people to do it. But not in the microsoft way where they burned billions of cash. :)
Sure.
But I'm pretty sure Google know's to respect users. Danny Sullivan gets right to the point in this Whiteboard Friday (skip to ~24:20 in the video) on saying Google has got to screw up its relationship with its users first.
Their HotelFinder tool is still an experiment and in beta... they haven't rolled it out universally because it's not ready yet. When it is, it'll cut down clicks for users and make for a faster, better user experience.
Local SERPs I think show best where Google has used it's own properties to completely outrank other organic results. Short of looking at much data, its sticking around arguably because users appear to prefer it.
I've written about google controlling clickstream in hotel industry - this will be a hard blow for the hotels as it will be nearly impossible to get the revenues they once got (not to mention the agencies or affiliates who are forced out of the market). I know this niche extremely well since I was working in one travel agency for some 2.5 years - many agencies will die due to this "thin affiliate" by google.
Agree with Toni. And in that context, Bing (can't say about Yahoo) is constantly making efforts to be loved by the searchers. Its constantly increasing search market share from last 2 years is showing that people are slowing getting diverted towards something which is attracting them more than Google.
That is true. Today I was searching for "calendar" and guess what was #1? Google Calendar, of course. It was pretty irrelevant to what I wanted. I should have searched "calendars" apparently.
I think semantics are key though to be honest. I have competed with Google on a number of occasions and the 'battles' I'd won were all because of semantics - Google popped up when it was clear that its not what the searcher wanted.
I agree that if Google competes too much with its own organic results, it will render itself less relevant. However, there is a caveat to this. When it comes right down to it, the more commercial the search term, the less the organic results matter.
To the consumer, there is little difference between Amazon, Walmart, and Google Shopping. If they can find the product they want at a decent price, that's all they really care about. People may care about brand reputation in the sense that they may prefer an iPad to an Android device, but very few actually care whether that iPad comes from Amazon or Apple.
For the most part, the organic results only matter to users that aren't looking for something to buy. And the less commercial the search term, the fewer search ads you see (sometimes none at all). Unless Google starts cannibalizing these results, most searchers probably won't notice a change in relevancy. They might even see things like Google Shopping as convenient if they only show up when they're actually looking for something to buy in the first place.
That's why it's not necessarily safe for SEOs to say, "It's okay, Google can't replace me with AdWords because they will lose relevancy and eventually their audience if they do that." If you're just an affiliate site or an eCommerce site, I wouldn't be so sure. Not at all.
It's a scary thought. Google could enter any industry and probably become market leaders within no time... well any industry except for social media anyway, hehe!
Some super points there! While you've made it sound scary that Google could eventually enter any industry and steal business from the many small mom and pop businesses that exist online, I think that such a fear is a good thing and should actually be the driving force behind the strategy of an existing web business.
I believe you should build a web business as you would a real business and depend only on Google as one of the many marketing means to attract visitors to your site. The moment a business is too heavily dependent on Google and doesn't have enough repeat visitors driving its traffic, then that's a sign of something seriously wrong. People often look at their analytics and see how many new visitors they've got from search engines and don't really see how many returning visitors are there or how many people found them by "direct" searches. Those are some aspects that should be looked into and if those figures improve, that's a sign of being Google-independent. Building a "brand", as you said, is key!
Larry Page recently announced that the Internet Marketer who can shout at the top of His Voice in front of the whole world "I DON'T CARE ABOUT GOOGLE" will receive tickets to Disney land. Although a lot of internet marketers did participate in this contest and did exactly as was told to them, Larry Page did not spend a single penny. You know why? Because all those people were already living in Disney land. :P
OK sorry for the bad joke, but the reality is that we don't live in Disney Land but in a real PRACTICAL world. At least for the next 5 years we cannot ignore the mighty G. Theoretically its all good but practically not possible.
- Sajeet
Of course, but 5 years is a long time online. Look at what happened to myspace. It's all about the users. If they decide to go somewhere without ads and without "evil empire" then what?
I knew when I saw the word tribe you'd have seth godin's book coming up!
Absolutely corrects points A++
Strategy #3 is a great point. Businesses should be prepared for more Adwords-esque programs to maintain a big presence in the SERPs.
Also, CRO is something everybody should be trying out. It's very interesting and who doesn't want increased conversions? ;-)
Man, you might be a teenager but your approach is highly professional. Thank you for a bunch of strategies/ideas. I am bilingual myself, so Yandex is not a problem for me.
Keep it going, you gonna shine as one of the SEO stars.
Great post, I really enjoy the Reading! But some questions come to my mind once finished the article:
Build a Brand: how much can cost that? I mean, “word of mouth is powerful”, but it can take some –long- time to spread out your brand, right?
Build Genuine Permission Assets: no doubt. But what if your target doesn’t spend time using social platforms? How can you build an online community?
Prepare for Long-Term SEM: big brands spend big money. What about the "small ones"?
Conquer Emerging Markets: not sure if you can´t handle your target first.
I do believe Google still the king of search for some big part of the planet –at least on America. So, small companies’ can´t ignore the “power” of SERPs and Google know that.
So, Google will keep collecting more money from ads, services, data, etc. the “small ones” don’t have other choice to play “Google´s game”…at least for now.
“If I was CEO of Google I would setup a retargeting program for sites like adsence where sites can "rent their retargeting codes" and continue to take over the world.
I think you make some great points and they all kind of boil down the same thing--how would you market your company if Google didn't exist? Obviously you can't afford to ignore Google completely, but that doesn't mean you have to rely on them 100% for your business. What other ways do you have of connecting with your customers? These channels are getting more and more important.
I agree it's important to focus on channels which aren't dependent on Google too, but I'm not suggesting to think and act as if Google doesn't exist. Think and act as if Google does exist, and they're taking on the market you're in.
One thing I don't expect is for Google+ to encircle anything.... Not until they up their game considerably and realise what the average person wants, not a google engineer.
Anyway, Ed, good post, good read. I always find it a little hard to imagine putting some of these methods into practice for certain industries or products, but it's always good to aspire to them none the less.
You're 16?! Way to go - a good, insightful post. It's funny but by carrying out the suggested work you outlined in your article you're effectively embracing Google anyway. By building your brand you're building your web content and your exposure in whatever industry you're in. I'm not saying you shouldn't embrace Webmaster Tools / GA or other analytical tools (you'd be a fool not to) but by not necessarily conforming to the expected search engine optimised stereotypical website you're more focused on your business and what you want it to do. This is the philosophy behind Google really - build websites for people, don't build them for search engines.
Totally agree - the paradox of Google; the less you need Google, the more Google needs you! Except perhaps for targeting Korea, China and Russia... ;)
Was 16! I turn 19 this September...
Very nice one. I especially like this that Larry Page has his shareholders on his back :)
But the truth is that when the time passes, Google will try to aggressively monetize all their properties. Don't be evil :)
I wrote about it in my blog:
https://www.webiny.com/blog/2012/04/04/why-don-t-you-love-us-anymore-google/
Was that a Top Gear reference at the end? If so, you're my new SEO hero!
So where do I find a good branding expert for my company? Any company or individual you recommend?
Maybe an advantage of smaller search engines is if they attract smaller businesses. Google being dominated by $$$$ industry such as the example given might be bad for it. The internet equivalent of customers who like to go to an independant restaurant instead of Burger King.
Bing is certainly one of the most attractive search engines out there, image of Olympic Park in London on UK version this evening is breath taking.
Surprised does not get a higher % of market share.
Sometimes I do think that Google is a little bit like Sauron - I love the Lord of the Rings photo reference. It takes a mighty warrior to be brave and do good internet marketing. Haha, well I guess that is a little bit geeky of me.
Can't believe i missed out on this post, it helped me understanding a thing or two about growing my online community even better (Especially that Fever post you linked it).
However, slogans don't always work... and outranking Google could be a plotline for Mission Impossible 6. I would focus more on social media presence and PPC rather than waiting for my brand to overcome organic KWs.
Excellent read Ed.
Without a big budget, I don't think you can not put Google as one of your top priorities. It shouldn't be your only channel, but it has to be considered one of your major channels.
Amazing insights, Ed. Your summary is, in fact, applicable up to this day. It simply proves that they are timeless strategies for future-proof site marketing. Genuine and natural efforts are the common points.
If I was the CEO of Google I would buy an island.
Phew must have taken a hell lot of time to write this piece. grt job!
I would suggest not think google as your competitor (unless you are in search domain itself) but rather a medium or a touch point in your customer life cycle. google can only dictate till the point your customer touches you. Once this happens its upto your brand, service, or any differentiator for which your costumer will keep coming back to you even if one day google crashes all together. So treat google as a medium, and this medium is also depended on customers because users feel, google = best results. But one day if this theory fails, this medium will also be obsolete. So i feel google is never going to betray this trust for its users.
Having said that, what will people remember is what your brand stands for and not what medium they took to reach you. So its really important to build something unique for which people will trust you even if only medium available to reach you is direct channel. Fryed7 : what do you think ?
Rightly said by Seth godin, its important to stand for something out of status quo and charisma will come to you.
P.S Fryed7 Loved they way you have structured this article with videos and theory's. Grt job again.
"It's really important to build something unique for which people will trust you even if only medium available to reach you is direct channel."
So long as what you're building has lasting value (think of the SEOmoz blog, SEOmoz tools etc.) and people can still find you! :)Help existing customers find you again; a "sticky" website may have a blog, email newsletter or some other permission asset. See strategy €2Drive new leads through new and current channels
I also think this raises the importance of blending online and offline marketing. Good ol' fashioned snail mail letters and post cards are, in some of our markets, cheaper and convert better than those $6 Google CPC.
Totally agree. Last week I was setting that up with a client! :)
If I was offered CEO of Google I'd refuse - it's a hiding to nothing. Pushed to achieve significant quarterly growth in a flat line business model reliant on virtually only one source of income offers no sustainable solution. Google has to erode their market relevance in organic search to achieve ongoing ad revenues - or find new ways to create value. Sure they are attempting this with Hotel search, Google + (possibly dating!) - but the underlying model relies on AdSense.
It's analogous to a TV network basing its whole ratings season on launching the Home Shopping Network.
I remember back in years when I met someone at SES who told me he is doing SEO for BMW. My initial response was "Why on earth BMW needs SEO??" So here go two of your named "Word of Mouth" and 'Build a Brand" strategies. But seriously, would BMW care if they don't rank for "German luxury cars"? Would they care about their organic traffic for "industry terms'? But to get to this point it is a looong way to go for a company. For the other 99% Google is still a necessity and sometimes the only channel.
It's very interesting how much Search has changed in recent years. While Google continues to maintain a high level of market share, other search engines are cropping up to take advantage of some areas where they are slipping; such as the sway from transparency and "Don't Be Evil" to black-box big business thinking. Blekko, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and so on provide additional options. It's almost like the options are gravitating towards, "How do you want to search?"
Very interesting read, thank you!
Google is going to move into high profit areas. I love the idea of catching the traffic during the research phase and building a relationship with them.
Invest in assets you can control. Everything else should be nothing more than a tool to accomplish that including SEO.
Very intelligent, well thought-out article with great suggestions. Thanks very much. I would expect much natural linking to such stellar content.
So, I agree with probably everything you said and, when in times of deep thinking, trying to decipher the existing state of search and web marketing in general and understand the current trends and where it's all heading, I come to the same conclusion that I think this article comes to, which is something like: It's getting crowded out there.
Hi Freyd,
Quite an interesting blog! The level of content and the precise details provided are indeed helpful.
Just around your Strategy #4 - Go Overseas, I would like to emphasize a point. The content of any website is the key to its success. I have seen so many websites that ranked well on Google.com or Google.co.uk but far later listed (i.e. not on the first search page!) on other Google multilingual/multinational websites. Reason ? Website content is not translated professionally. The website owners should hence make sure that their websites are translated professionally and the content of their website is not compromised - whatever the language. They should at least get the top landing pages of their websites translated professionally via low cost translation websites like https://www.appliedlanguage.com/ , https://www.translatebyhumans.com/, etc. before getting into the global/multi-lingual market.
Well written and very entertaining but I`m unconvinced.
This is still very much a Google world.
Go ahead, try Baidu and Yandex, and please let me know how it goes for you...
(I`m especially eager to hear about your experience with Yandex's "one word at a time" KW research tool)
Trust me, I`m that "bilingual helper" you are looking for, and let me tell you: the only word that needs to translation is "Google".
The "big G" is almost 14 years old now, and it ain't stopping for no one, and yes many others have failed (and many others will), but if you think that Google will not be relevant in next 5 years, please don`t post it here as it will be mighty embarrassing when your grand-kids will "Thought-Google" it on their flexible, look-through, Chorme OS powered, emotion monitoring, Android v66 tablets.
On a more serious note, I still see a Google as a very positive force that actually empowers many small and medium business by leveling the playing field and providing an equal competition terms. (or at least "more equal" ones)
Where else, if not in Google SERP, a small one-man-working-from-home business can advertise side-by-side with multinational billion dollar corporation?
And where else a teenager can use his/hers own wits to create a steady stream of passive income, almost our of thin-air?
Yes, Google isn't perfect and yes - god forbid - they are profit-oriented, but so what?
For me this is still the modern re-incarnation of the Great Library of Alexandria, a vast temple of shared knowledge where all humans thoughts and ideas await.
Hey Igal,
I never said "Google will not be relevant in the next 5 years". This isn't a dig at Google. Quite the opposite; what will you do as Google gets ever more dominant, and have more of a stranglehold on your niche. What will you do when your market is searching through flexible, see-through, Chrome OS, emotion monitoring Andriod v66 tablets? ;)
In terms of levelling the playing field, sure... it can do that, but only to an extent. 10 results per SERP doesn't give much room to level the playing field completely. Someone's always going to be #1, be that a small guy or a big guy. The question I'm posing is what if that #1 actually IS Google?
In terms of getting to know Yandex/Baidu/Naver, it's a "in the next 5 years" proposition. Find a bilingual helper, pick some of your best content to translate and experiment with getting it to rank and convert to sales on foreign search engines. Hopefully there own tools will advance in the next 5 years too (!!) but in the meantime, rely on your analytics packages.
Hi
True, there are only 10 first page results but there a lot of different first pages. I`m not saying there is an infinite room here (no media offers that) but there is a lot of ground to cover and, even as we speak, many SMB generate organic leads from niche KW.
Also, I don't believe that Google will ever successively force the #1 result. They already kinda do that with Adwords (if you think about it, for many SERP, 1-3 is already "Google") and yet, for 9 of 10 cases, these do not receive as much traffic as the organic results.
The reason, in my opinion, is that many (most?) people are smart about their search process. We look at results, not simply click the first link we see...
Other search engines are fine, you should always keep you eggs in many baskets, but as of today they offer very limited tools (comparing to Google) and have a lot more issues.
Also, If you are worried about Google ethics, believe me you should be extra worried about these other players, which often work in a very "loose" communication, legal & economic environments and worry much less about negative PR and other regulatory measures.
The 5 year remark was made playfully and it addresses one of the comments, not the article itself.
As I've said, great read and also some very interesting ideas (+1).
I defiantly see your point, but still hold a different opinion.