With every tweak and change that Google brings to its search result pages, the "potential-ROI" balance on search tips ever more towards PPC and away from SEO. I realized this when I read Aaron Wall's Marketing Lessons from Google.
Search marketing leaders demand results, so it's irrelevant that the means of practicing SEO remain the same. What is relevant is that Google is decreasing the ability of SEO to provide stable, measurable results. As Aaron points out in his post, Google seeks to undermine competing business models.
Aaron's written before about how Google has been promoting informational results to encourage marketers to buy AdWords, but I always dismissed that as standard SEO-Wikipedia-jealousy. Of course, Aaron's discrete about the industries he works in (though his frequent mortgage-oriented posts are probably a good hint), so I couldn't compare notes, making it harder to appraise the accuracy of his argument.
But as Rand's bullet list indicated, it's not just about demoting e-commerce sites. Consider the effect of the following:
- Multiple images listed at the top of the search results
- Side-by-side video blocks (from YouTube, naturally), often in the top three positions
- Greater Google Books distribution through Google's search results lately, which has (affiliate?) links to Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and certain other book stores
- News articles and other Onebox items
- Personalized results making sites that aren't even in the top 100 otherwise show up top 10
- Further personalization of the search results as users manipulate their own listings
- Geo-targeting making results change even within cities and certainly across regions and countries - this is huge, imho
- Maps featuring all your competition, including those that aren't even online with a website
The effect is that a number 1 ranking is no longer a #1 ranking. It's a #1 ranking on your computer while you're in that city...until tomorrow when some jerk uploads pictures to his authority site, while you're logged in, as your keywords stay out of the news, and until the next algo tweak decides your link profile sucks ...
Risk scares people sh*tless. PPC already has most of the corporate search marketing budget cornered because you're guaranteed X clicks so long as you bid roughly the same amount. Plus Google keeps producing 'lite' versions of industry tools that help people optimize their spend (unknowingly helping Google skim part of that back through AdWords, perhaps...) .
All these changes introduce more risk and more uncertainty into the SEO equation. Not to mention that as people get used to generally relevant results, they stop scrolling and places 6-10 decrease in value to where a 5-result SERP wouldn't bother folks. Thus, SEOs have to compete harder as the zero-sum game divides the spoils even more sharply.
It's why I couldn't cut a deal with Action Coach, a business coaching company that approached me for SEO services to help them rank in Google.ca.
Their site is already ranking #1 in Google.com. (Uh, at least when you turn off personalized search and check the American - not Canadian - Google.com.) So I should have been ecstatic to gather the low-hanging fruit and rank them in Canada, right?
Well, my philosophy towards SEO is that I want a win-win for the client and myself. So if I don't think the ROI potential looks good, I'll tell them. My Toronto SEO friend Dev Basu and I were just discussing this last night, discovering that we both decline leads where the search volume is too low to justify the SEO spend. And I'm proud to say that I've always included testing with paid search before running SEO in my proposals. Which is where things stuck, I believe, with Action Coach.
The search volume for their keywords is dramatically less here in Canada than it is in the US or elsewhere. And while I might be ignorant, I've yet to see research indicating that ROI on a set keyword is equivalent across regions or countries. If anything, AdWords' geotargeting capabilities suggest the opposite.
So when I wrote in the proposal that I wasn't prepared to take on the contract unless we tested via AdWords first (which, in not responding, it seems they declined to do)... That's not to say there isn't some value in measuring ROI based on rankings, but that's diminishing every day as they fluctuate constantly. It's already hell to project how your SEO ROI is going to look, and the trend towards it is only getting worse.
The next time a panel moderator asks that generic "Where will search be in 5 years?" question, the answer should be obvious: organic will be even more fractured, so therefore you had better be a PPC Rockstar by then.
p.s. @ Rand - Please don't take this personally. I wouldn't be fortunate enough to do SEO at all if SEOmoz hadn't taught me so much when I was a newb. And I'm fully aware that you're still light years ahead of me in this game, as this eye-opener demonstrated :).
@YOUmoz readers: Please, make it worthwhile for myself and others to keep writing for you guys. Take a minute to thumb, comment, Sphinn, get YOUmoz's RSS feed or <shameless plug> swing by my blog (go search for it :) ) for more</shamelessness>.
Is this an elegy for SEO? If so, it’s premature and exaggerated.
Getting sites to rank is harder than it used to be. There are more sites and more pages about every topic and plenty more people doing SEO and with an understanding of the basics. Five years ago I’d tell people I do SEO and get a blank look. Now all sorts of people know about it. More competition = harder.
That also means the ROI (however, and to whatever extent, we can measure it) has declined. It used to be that a local business could pay about the same for a yellow pages ad as for a basic SEO package, and the SEO package brought in much more website traffic and ultimately business. Nowadays a couple thousand dollars spent on SEO isn’t going to get them much, mostly because that small business’s competitors are all using basic SEO, too. More competition means more money is required to compete, and the denominator on the ROI calculation rises.
Given that the amount of content on the web and knowledge of SEO is expanding faster than internet usage, it is inevitable that ROI would decrease. The denominator is increasing faster than the numerator. But it doesn’t follow that ROI will decline to zero or that SEO is doomed.
I also disagree with the suggestion that PPC is where it’s at just because the search engines want us to advertise.
As with SEO, it’s also true that PPC is substantially harder than it was circa 2001. Back then, there was less competition and nobody knew anything. Analytics were primitive. People spent money on banner ads and PPC was an afterthought. As analytics started improving, people realized that banner ads were overpriced and PPC ads were underpriced. PPC generated great ROI in many markets because the ads were so cheap. Until the word got out, and competition eroded those profits.
Later the PPC platforms (e.g. AdWords, YSM) started making their systems more complicated to practice price discrimination and squeeze more money out of advertisers. The easy PPC profits of yesteryear are gone.
The search engines may want you to advertise, but they don’t want you making high profits from your advertising. They want to price the ads so that they, the search engines, capture most of the value you derive from the ads. AdWords, YSM, and AdCenter have all moved in that direction in the past couple of years.
I agree that it is harder to make money search marketing than it once was as the engines (Google) keep more for themselves. But it does not follow that SEO is over or that PPC is a superior path for the marketer. I don’t know what strategies will be effective for the search marketer going forward, and it is likely that different strategies will work in different industries.
Gab,
Nice post. It certainly demonstrates the potential pitfalls (ie risk), associated with any SEO campaign.
That said, the bottom line is that this comes down to the age old "supply & demand" equation that everything else market driven hinges upon. At the end of the day - the market corrects itself.
Regardless of what Google strives for, such as squeezing every last cent out of a keyword advertiser, based on a supply and demand equation, the fact is that diminishing returns tend to cause a shift in behavior.
Take gasoline for example. When the price of the supply is too high, people cut back (drive less), or look for other alternatives (ride bike). Once this shift occurs, the cost of the supply comes down due to the diminished demand (gas prices drop by 50%) - to bring the demand back - which, if supply is limited, draws the price higher once again.
The same equation exists for PPC verus SEO at a very micro level. Each keyword has a default price associated with it (PPC highest bidders). The question becomes - how much do I need to invest in SEO to garner equal or better conversion rates (not click throughs), for those particular keywords, and in what timeframe can I expect it?
The challenge of an SEO, is to shift the question. The picture we should be painting for a customer is "long lasting benefits that are dervied through building a quality site, with quality content". In this manner, the likelihood of generating clicks from a wide range of keywords is increasingly improved (both targeted and untargeted), through the overall domain power which is built over time. Not onyl will they receive some traffic from the highly targeted keywords, but they willl alsogarner traffic from untargeted words. Both will bring soem value. The greater the overall domain power, the greater it's ability to rank for both targeted and untargeted keywords.
In other words - SEO should be viewed from a long term and holistic perpsective to define the true value, as opposed to PPC which is very micro and very targeted. They are two entirely different games that deliver two entirely different sets of results. The beauty of SEO is that success builds upon itself, and generally speaking, the results diminish slowly over time when the garden isn't tended to. Conversely, the moment the PPC campaign comes to a halt is the moment that the benefits cease.
thank you for this insightful post, Gab, I have enjoyed reading the communities comments too. I agree that there are some concerns out there for us SEOs as Google is continuously challenging us with their changes, and I also agree in that their search results strategies are too PPC-focused/biased. However I would like to think that all the SEO skills gained during these years are, for the most part, transferable. As Matt Cutts pointed out in his last video on webpronews, he sees SEOs adopting a role more geared towards that of the eMarketer, which is in many ways the job we do the moment we start thinking about campaign ROI and customer acquisition. For those that have not seen the video yet: https://videos.webpronews.com/2008/11/18/matt-cutts-on-changes-at-google/
As a marketer and communicator, I believe any SEO effort has gotta start with a marketing objective. Otherwise, how will you know if you're really making a dent or reaching your goals?
Too often I see business people going after keywords and phrases that are too general in nature or offbase with their products, services or messages. The logic behind this is "We're branching out" or "We're getting into our customers' heads" or something about a "positioning proposition."
I also think it's pretty adaptable - it's gotta be as Google et al keep changing the landscape. It would get boring otherwise.
Gab, SEO is a permanent changing field, is not about PR or rankings anymore... it's about personalization, universal search and geotargetting, most important is to keep delivering results for the client: Best ROI. This is what I like about SEO it's always exciting and changing.
"Bruce Clay: Ranking Is Dead!Instead of focusing on ranking, Bruce recommends SEO’s to look at analytics and measure traffic, bounce rate, and action closely. Also, among his advice is the idea to embrace these implementations such as video, images, audio, maps, etc. Not only will this help to engage your customer, but also Google."
Check this great video: https://videos.webpronews.com/2008/11/17/pubcon-bruce-clay-ranking-is-dead/
I like what you have just said. It's actually no more about universal .com ranking but personalised & geo-targeted search. Thumbs-up to you and Bruce ! :)
I agree. While some of my client sites are not always Top10 for every search term optimised for, they do receive thousands of visits daily. I am now spending more time of late on site structure, usability and enhancing the review to purchasing process than the regular SEO considerations of the past - Ensuring I maximise the ROI of current site visitors before attempting to attract even more users. Checking bounce rates and booking/purchasing process filtering is key.
Gab - no offense taken. And thanks very much for the excellent post!
I think that you're right on when it comes to Google wanting budgets to continue to open up for spending on PPC traffic. However, I also think Google recognizes that from a quality and value perspective, they gain when SEO is done well - more content becomes accessible, people use the web more, searches result in better paths and more searches are executed. Great organic results help Google's business, too. That's why Webmaster Tools exists and it's why Google has become less reticent about providing information and employing people to speak with the SEO community.
SEO doesn't always lead to great organic results, though, and Google may recognize this. Unfortunately, many businesses that do have the budget for SEO (and I'm not neccessarily speaking from experience) don't have websites that we would objectively consider being the best resource for their targeted search terms.
But when SEOs are hired (especially in tough times), their job is to promote that site and increase rankings and traffic, whether or not that means overhauling the entire site to make it truly deserving of a top spot.
Hey, BW,
Thanks for another excellent post.
Search will, indeed, change dramatically as SEs gather more user data to create customized SERPs.
So, when I enter a keyword, my SERPs will differ from yours based on past search history.
Think about the impact this will have on SEO. Optimized for whom? Results will be specific to individuals, not "throw everything out there and let the SE user decide."
Thanks, again, for your thoughts.
I'm not so worried about people shifting the rankings themselves because nearly everyone I've spoken to, including someone at Google, has said that no one is really using the self-ranking stuff.
As far as personalization is concerned, clients aren't really seeing any difference in rankings between my computer and theirs. I'd imagine that the sites I work on will appear higher because of my browsing history, but it's really not making a difference. I've also been checking stuff on my girlfriend's computer who has no browsing history related to the sites I work on and there's very little movement. (I know I'm a nerd!)
Really, the consistent first page rankings for YouTube videos, Google's internal projects ranking well for keywords regardless of link strength, the new SEO guide which dumbs down SEO so much that clients may start saying, "Why should I pay for this?" and skyrocketing PPC costs are what scare me.
I clicked on one of the sites I was doing SEO for to make it number one. I just wanted to click one once to see what would happen. It was lame and I don't feel the need to ever do it again.
Next morning, when I WASN'T logged in to my Google account, the site had dropped 30 positions for its top three targeted search terms...
Coincidence?
Great post- raises some really good points that echo what I read earlier today in another SEOmoz article: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-a-google-monopoly-is-bad-for-search-marketers
Excellent post Gab.
Now its hard for SEO to get ranking of website and stay stable in the SERP. You can see there is daily changes in the SERP.....
But PPC is not affordable for all business.... like for small and startup business.
So as an SEO we should to find out other way which gives us targeted traffic and business..... like find out the alternative search engine, try to get local business through local optimization.... etc.
In short we should to use different strategies for different industries' websites.
Otherwise start to learn PPC .... :)
Yes, indeed. particularly in my country where the currency exchange is very low against USD.
I also see the daily changes in Google SERPS that sometimes makes me frustrating. but don't forget that we still have Yahoo or MSN that can bring traffics and their SERPS is quite stable.
SEO or PPC? I think it's depend on several factor such our target market, country targeting, potential traffic and mostly our budget. In my opinion SEO is still the best way in Asia, that's why I think netconcepts.com open a new office in China just now in 2008.
I think that in the long run the growth in PPC spending will be very beneficial for SEO. The growth rate of the spend combined with the very unbalanced way that AdWords sells clicks will cause many people, small-to-medium budgets, to get edged out of positive ROI.
SEO has a growth in available outlets, but PPC territory is pretty finite, and becoming more crowded.
So, holding both organic and sponsored positions on the same page will probably become a major performance indicator for many clients who are intent on maximum value from the Internet.
It may not be as soon as some of us would like, but the gap between SEO & PPC will probably start closing soon.
Interesting stuff Gab.
You may be interested in checking out this Enquiro white paper from a while back which offers a fascinating insight into what search results may look like in 2010 - universal, personalisation, geotargeting, etc.
Yes, search is changing, forever, but as SEO Practices says above, search is always "changing forever"! OK so we can't rely on one definitive set of rankings any more but personalisation is only ever going to be a minor ranking factor, imo.
I feel that although the tactics of SEO will change (probably dramatically) over the next few years, the strategy and basic principles will always stay the same - search engines will always try to rank content (whether its text, video or flash) that is worth ranking. Forcing youtube vids to appear when they're not relevant to the query is not in Google's interests because its not in the searchers' interests, and Google (or Yahoo or MSN) lives and dies by the quality of its SERPS.
You can still demonstrate results from SEO - its just that the way of achieving and measuring results has to change. I don't think its such a fundamental change - but thumbs up for the fascinating food for thought.
So SEO is going to generate less money in the future. You guys didn't see this one coming? Go back to the days when tv-advertising was the "big thing". If you could afford being on TV, you would make money of it. People even used slogans such as "as seen on TV". And boom, those days where over. We have experienced something similar with SEO and PPC. To begin with, it was all great. Small budget could give excellent results. Those days are soon over. So what's next? I'm not going to try predicting the future for how we will be driving targeted traffic to our campaigns in the future, but I do know that people will start focusing on what they can do with the traffic their already getting. Re-design to sell, usability, web analytics and other factors that increases the ROI of a website - that's what we'll be playing with in the future.
Great post! Regarding the pesky image/YouTube/article listings that often push our targeted listings down, they are also beneficial in that they create additional channels for optimization. Instead of having 1-2 listings on the first page for a specific term, it's possible to have these as well as multiple YouTube videos or articles flooding the page and ultimately leading users to the same destination.
Hope I didn't miss this point being already made, but what about the fact that studies show users click on the organic side by a ratio of at least 5 to 1 versus PPC, if not more. I can't come up with a citation right this second, but in fact I even saw these stats reinforced by a new study in the last week or so.
Accepting that 80% of users click organic versus PPC as a general rule, what does that mean for a business that 'drops out' of SEO tactics to focus on PPC only? Sure, they get their clicks etc, and can track everything, and their budget is 'traceable' all the way through the process, but they may be missing out on about 80% of their potential customer base!
While that may not matter in some industries, there are others where that would be totally unacceptable. I wonder how many of those businesses who focus only on PPC because SEO is too 'weird' realize just how much of their potential market may be passing them by?
All right, Toadys, SEO is not as much popular as PPC. Everyone needs to involve in PPC in place of all SEO activities Because no one wants to expend so much time and efforts too on seos but they need to invest in PPC. And Its gud well for going there.
I couldn't agree more! Fantastic post.
I've been missing out a little and not able to contribute as much on SEOmoz and YOUmoz lately, but the size of our staff has grown rapidly in the past few month, so look for me to be back in action.
We are still seeing great ROI for most of our clients and top positions for most competitive phrases are still not out of reach... for now that is.
My biggest fear is the possibility of Google rotating top 20 or so results on a somewhat regular basis. This could severely limit the traffic for any one site from organic results in competitive industries and cut traffic for the best of us. This would further drive companies to Adwords for more consistent traffic.
To get any term in Canada if you already have it in the main index it's a problem of Google not believing it's Ca.
I'd disagree with much of the premise for this because I've always thought measuring SEO success by anything other than ROI is just plain stupid.
An SEO's job is to get the client found. So... if the OneBoxes and Vids are a problem then it's our job to tell the client how to do it using what we need to get into those spaces in the SERP. Personally, just weeks after Google bought YouTube I told my clients to start adding vids. Why... no one spends over a $B with no plan! I knew we'd see vids in the results... just like froogle crept in. Also vid is "the content" in demand by users. Google always gives users what they want.
To think that PPC will replace SEO is to just not get it! You don't have one without the other. Plus if everyone is using PPC the bids will become so high that they will make most campaigns unprofitable. No profit for advertisers and pretty soon no one wants the ads... at any price!
The more I read articles such as yours and the numerous comments, I feel I will always be a newbie. Very good stuff to ponder and wrestle with.
Thumbing down for the "business coaching" and "Toronto SEO" link spam in your blog post. Please....
It's true that #1 is no longer #1, but searchers are much more discriminating these days, so the changes could be semi-awash. I scan results heavily when searching, and I know everyone else does do, some more than others. As these changes happen, searchers are adapting and taking more time to decide before they click.
I think an important thing to remember (or maybe that we don't forget) is that SEO is still in its infancy, not just in calender years, but this is also a takeaway, if you read between the lines, from the disparity of PPC vs. SEO. True, there is more competition today, but the science of SEO is far from being understood by all (specifically within organizations or by clients) and has yet to reach that critical point of market saturation. I appreciate this post by Bookworm SEO because it also reminds us that recent changes in the SERPs (ie. blended and vertical search) are here to stay and need to be taken seriously by SEOs.
Well I think the user altering their results on their home computer is kinda lame and depending on how those results may change or if the user must change them could pose a problem. Kinda defeats the purpose of a search engine if your seeing the results you made pop up.
Now for local businesses, they might want to go to the local library and log all the computers in to a bogus google account and set it to stay logged in and makes sure they put their business to the top of any relevant searches.
As stated above, Google can't be the search king forever and if they get out of hand. The webmasters truely hold the power if they can get control of their greed and just DISALLOW:Googlebot. Of course that's only needed if Google goes to far. It's up to seomoz to let us all know when to pull the plug on Google =P
great post bookworm, always right on the money... or well if you gave up your morals maybe a little more from Canada...
i just wonder why i ripped apart my site structure, since ive dropped out of the rankings for seo, sem & optimisation terms... i say this because i run a query from a wireless static ip address, vs my 3G card, vs DSL and they all give different results, it even affects my ranking checking software.
ive noticed google is stuffing around with the results, the spelling mistake now shows the first 2 results above everything else, which is great because u dont have to click the link, but if you are spelling English (UK) vs English (US) you shouldnt be offered "z" over "s" results...
the interesting question is that does clients Action Coach want to rank in geo locations because they just want to be #1 everywhere, or do they find that a majority of their visitors and enquries are US based where they dont operate?
i would be interested to see how personalisation is affecting Adwords campaign results, anyone heard anything?
Excellent post Gab.
Personalized search, geo targeting results, youtube videos and book resutls at the top of the SERPS - Is this transforming SEO more to SEM?
Now speaking with our clients we need to not only recommended SEO, but content syndication (video, content) to other platforms that appear on SERPs.
So would submission to YOUTUBE with a video optimized for a keyword, with the goal of getting the video on google SERPS, transform into a SEO strategy?
All and All I agree with you.
when Google starts throwing curve balls we need to adapt, hit a few fouls, and go for the home run!
Really nice post Gab.
Your post is forcing me to think of a situation, when the CPC value of keywords makes impossible for the people to bid with more and more people biding on the same keywords and Google reserving the top spots (page) to play basket ball (for wiki, images, youtube n bla-bla). So SEO & PPC both becoming equally challenging.
Now, where do the medium & low budget advertisers go...FaceBook??
If we look at the past, the key to Google's success was the abillity it gave small companies to compete against big guns on the same plat form one way or the other (organic or PPC listing).
Is Google loosing it's vision?
I totally agree with you on this one. Nothing gets me going more than having my hard SEO work slammed to the ground by YouTube videos or Google maps featuring the competetion.
I also agree with you on ROI potentials, if their not good, pass on the project. I want to have a client that is so happy with all the business it genterates that they spread the word. If they only get minor results they will think that the money they spent was a waste.
Great post!
It only makes sense that they would try and monetize their traffic at all levels...
"Google is decreasing the ability of SEO to provide stable, measurable results"
Just out of curiousity, outside of Aaron Wall blog posts, do you have any evidence to back this statement up?
SERPS is changing. And Does anyone has seen a top down arrow button on every side of the website listed on Google SERPS to personalized the SERPS on Google ?
I did once.