Is SEO becoming a less reliable way to control the marketing of your website?

[Harold Mansfield]

I've always had a love hate relationship with SEO. While I believe you need some, for about 2 years now I've stopped believing that it is where you should spend a significant part of your online marketing efforts.

Out of all of the things that you do online to market your website, SEO is the one that you have the least control over because the best you can do is follow vague theories, and information from the past, since Search Engines don't completely divulge their algorithms.

Combine that with the fact that Google seems to be getting more and more secretive, and making it harder to get any exact information on keyword information, and it seems that spending significant time trying to self manipulate your rankings is a waste of time.

I'm now finding articles that agree with me...or I agree with them. Not sure which came first.


...despite continued growth in user search activity and increasingly sophisticated keyword analysis tools, 2013 is shaping up to be the first year that social media eclipses search as the leading source of referral traffic to publishers.

Two parallel trends are driving this sea change. The first is Google’s recent shift to encrypt search keywords (http://searchengineland.com/google-to-begin-encrypting-searches-outbound-clicks-by-default-97435) for a significant segment of search referrals. This move—followed by corresponding browser updates in 2012 by Firefox (http://searchengineland.com/firefox-14-now-encrypts-google-searches-but-search-terms-still-will-leak-out-127831), Safari on iOS (http://searchengineland.com/ios-6-change-google-traffic-from-safari-135002), and now Chrome (http://marketingland.com/chrome-to-gain-encryption-31085) to use Google SSL search by default—means that up to 39 percent of keyword data (http://searchengineland.com/google-search-referrers-not-provided-139416) has vanished from publisher analytics systems. Less keyword data means fewer content insights, and fewer content insights means lower ROI from SEO.

Source: For Publishers, Social Media Trumps Search - Greg Levitt - Blogs Audience Development @ FolioMag.com (http://www.foliomag.com/2013/publishers-social-media-trumps-search#.UTDkwldo-BA)

What do you guys think?

[Dan Furman]

I get tired of it. Plus, in our business, people look to us for the magic answer - they think because a few keywords are thrown in they will be top 10 in Google next week. Yea, they can be for garbage keywords - we've shown that here time and time again with posts.

I have said for years, do the "basic" SEO (like page titles, descriptions, H1's, etc), and beyond that, just be the best, most informative site you can be and SEO will take care of itself. Google wants to give the best, most relevent results, not the ones that have the best tricks. Be the best result.

[Multimedia Marketing]

The things that seem to matter to Google post Panda and Penguin are things like bounce rate, visitor duration, social signals etc. And all this can be cured by having great content and engagement factors on the website.

Negative SEO is possible which is a bad development. A competitor can "take you out" blasting your domain with xrummer and other bad links, if they have the resources and you have no control over this. Really I think "bad" links (in the eyes of Google) should not count against you they should just be neutralized.

[Harold Mansfield]

A few years back, when Page Rank was all the rage, I figured out how to put up a new site, throw some content on it, run it through a couple of bookmarking and directory scripts for back links and get a PR 4 by the next update. Those days didn't last long and have been over for quite some time, although many people are still operating based on stuff they read back in 2007.

These days, much like the economy, you need to have a balanced approach to have any chance of sustaining any long term significant growth.

[Marcomguy]

SEO done right still works, though I agree that you can't call it reliable the way you used to. There's too much competition chasing too few keywords. Customers, too, are more attuned to SEO than in the past. Two years ago, very few of my prospects for new websites mentioned SEO. Now they all do.

Should a company do social media or search? It depends on the type of business and their resources (time and money). One of my clients, a counseling company, is getting calls and business from my SEO work. But they don't have time for social media. For them, the choice between SEO and social was clear.

[dianecoleen]

SEO is still a good start to newly built online businesses. I at the same time believe that once you started it in the right way, you'll be able to gain good results whatever the update may appear. I guess, SEO is once less reliable, because of the spammers and because of some person who is looking for a short-term goal. Once these spammers will be vanished, the future of SEO will move forward. I also believe that the progress made by the search engines through its algorithm is an advantage to reliable businesses; Giving a high-quality search result may give a satisfaction to the users. Therefore, providing a good ROI. It's a matter of getting into the latest trend while following the T&C of the search engines.

[cjjohnson]

A great strategy is to take advantage of social media by setting up profiles on Twitter, FB, Google+, Linkedin etc. Not only do you establish yourself as an expert in your field in the eyes of Google, but you can connect with targeted leads that would benefit from the service or product you have to offer.

[BobbyD]

SEO should be a part of the marketing mix, but on a passive level at best. It can be argued that it applies to social media efforts as well. When you look at the ROI of both activities, SEO can lead to no results or results for a while until an algo update. Social media still has ROI issues from an organic point of view, the time spent tweeting and Facebook posting for the sake of followers and likes is rarely worth it. I admit, things have gotten better on the social side but requires the creativity and resources to make it work.

There is the social / search combo that seems to provide value to many websites lately on the engines. I think that like link building, it will be figured out by the engines and all those doing it non-organically will "poof"... be gone soon.

Good Content (value to the Internet), advertising (done right with a good site), and email marketing (developing a connection with your customers) are the 3 areas I think are the best for businesses to focus on.

[Business Attorney]

I don't think you can make any sweeping comments about the importance of SEO or any other marketing strategy. You have to be where your potential customers are looking. Just as some businesses used to find being in the Yellow Pages was critical while some found it nearly worthless, the same is true of any specific form of marketing today. Some types of businesses have customers searching on the web. I'm sure that there are other types of businesses or occupations that are only rarely searched. It may also vary within an industry based on factors such as size and sophistication. While a homeowner may search for a general contractor on the web, I doubt that an experienced developer of office parks is going to resort to searching for his contractor in a search engine. The latter probably already has a short list or will get recommendations from other developers.

Similarly, a person pulled over and given a DUI is much more likely to search the internet for an attorney using keywords while the general counsel of a large corporation is more likely to look up a specific person by searching his or her name or the name of his firm. That's a large part of the reason that keywords like "DUI lawyer" and "mesothelioma attorney" go for big bucks in AdWords while "securities attorney" or "business litigation lawyer" go for a fraction of those prices.

If your business has a lot of first time customers who have no better mechanism for locating you than looking on the web, then SEO is going to be as important to you as ever, even if it is harder to do, less effective and more costly. In other cases, the increased cost and greater certainty of SEO will likely make other marketing channels a more cost-effective alternative and reduce the importance of SEO in the marketing mix.

[vangogh]

I don't think you can make any sweeping comments about the importance of SEO or any other marketing strategy.

Yep. SEO is one potential marketing channel among many potential marketing channels. You don't have to market through any of them. However as far as marketing channels go, search is a pretty good one.

I think a large part of why some might not see seo as worthwhile has to do with what people think of as seo. If you view it as stuffing a few extra words here or there for some quick benefit in search results or you see it as finding a few easy places to add a link to improve where your page ranks, then yeah seo isn't going to be worthwhile. I don't think those things are seo though. They might have been 10 years ago, but not anymore.

The way I look at seo is I do what I can to understand how search engines work and what they look for when deciding what to rank where. Then I use that information to help me make decisions about my site. For example I know search engines put importance on the page title of web pages. Well every page I create on my site needs a title anyway. So if a page is about "some keyphrase" I'll try to get that keyphrase or something similar to it in the page title. If I can't I don't worry about it. I'm writing the page title mostly for real people, but usually it's not to hard to write one that also includes something a search engine might also like.

Another example is I know search engines still place a lot of weight on links pointing to your site. Not necessarily any link. More typically links that come from a site search engines trust and one that probably has content related to yours. So if I see an opportunity to get a link from one of those sites I'll put a little more effort into getting the link than I might otherwise. That doesn't mean submitting as many links as possible to unknown directories, but rather spending a few hours writing an article for a site that I'd like to link to me.

Search engines are one among many marketing channels. They happen to be a very good one. You don't need to do well in search engines to do well in business, though it'll probably help. I don't think most small businesses need to put everything they have into seo. At the same time I don't think any of them should ignore it. A lot of what seo comes down to is making good decisions about your website. You do need to understand things well enough to recognize good decision from bad though.

[BobbyD]

Agreed, it's all about balance. What a business does and at what intensity is specific to them and their industry. Too many businesses think that its all about SEO, which is not case.

[vangogh]

Balance is good. It's the don't put all your eggs in one basket advice. SEO is still a great way to pull traffic to a site. It's hardly the only way though. Like I said in my previous post learn seo to help make better decisions in general. You can explore other marketing channels while still improving your situation with search engines.

[KristineS]

I think SEO still has its place and is important, but it's like everything else in the world of web design and e-commerce, it was a buzzword for a while and people figured out how to game the system, so the big players changed the game and moved the goalposts. Now the "experts" are pushing social media as the next big thing. It is, as you all have already said, about finding the balance that works for your business, about testing your results and about knowing your market. Wasting time on things that don't put you in front of your target demo is dumb no matter whether the thing is SEO or Facebook or QR codes.

Still, I do think a basic knowledge of SEO is good if you have a website. It does help you gain a better understanding of how selling online and websites work.

[vangogh]

I think seo has always been more than a buzzword. The simple fact is most people use search engines. When they're looking for something it's one of the primary places they start. Being visible in search engines is a good thing. When you run an ad somewhere part of what your ad needs to do is capture someone's attention, which is not an easy thing. You have to convince people they want whatever it is you're selling. With search you don't have to do that. They're already convinced. They're actively searching for what you're selling.

The reason people think social is the next big thing is because we're more likely to trust the answers to questions when they come from people we know. Social sites like Facebook are trying to implement search with results backed by friends. Google is trying to do the same thing with Google+ These things aren't just buzzwords that some "expert" is trying to convince you to use. The "experts" jump on board because these things work and we want help working them. And whenever there's money to be made you'll have snake oil salesmen joining the game. That doesn't mean the game isn't legitimate or that there aren't legitimate people involved and offering useful advice.

[KristineS]

Good points. Buzzword was a poor choice of word. I guess I just get tired of the snake oil salesmen jumping on things and giving people half answers or making promises that aren't realistic.

SEO is important and anyone who has a website should have at least a basic understanding of how it works. Social media is also a good tool for many businesses, if their target market is using whatever social media outlet is being considered. The point I was trying to make, and apparently didn't make well, is this: knowing how things work is important, but testing your results and understanding where your target market is will help you get the best results.

[vangogh]

The snake oil salesmen will jump into any industry where they see money to be made. That's especially true of industries where making money is the business. I think where seo is concerned it's easy for them, because most people don't really understand how search engines work and rank web pages. People focus on the technical side and since they don't know the technical stuff, seo is all a bit of magic. When people stop and pay more attention to seo as marketing it all becomes clearer and it becomes easier to spot the snake oil peddlers.

There is a technical side to seo. I don't want to imply there isn't. I also realize most people aren't going to deal with this stuff on their own. However, even if you aren't going to make the technical changes, a few nights of reading over the couple of weeks is enough to give you the information to know who to hire to make those changes. The key though is for people to stop seeing seo as technical magic and start seeing it as marketing. SEO isn't about placing the right words in the right places in your code. It's about generating the best content you can and then promoting that content.

[semaphore.v]

The things that seem to matter to Google post Panda and Penguin are things like bounce rate, visitor duration, social signals etc. And all this can be cured by having great content and engagement factors on the website.

Negative SEO is possible which is a bad development. A competitor can "take you out" blasting your domain with xrummer and other bad links, if they have the resources and you have no control over this. Really I think "bad" links (in the eyes of Google) should not count against you they should just be neutralized.

True I think the fluctuation is too much, business owners are not wish to spend money on SEO they think PPC is more reliable

[broudie]

The last couple of weeks I've spent my time entering new marketplaces. Foreign language markets of US based entities like Amazon DE, FR, JP. Also foreign-owned marketplaces such as Rakuten.

Some people don't search in english, or will be willing to buy from a US-based site.

[steveschmidt85]

Before the Panda and Penguin updates doing basic off-page things will easily help you to improve your ranking easily but now it's not working. You can do 100% on-page SEO like optimizing content, images, title, description, site navigation and other things. But off-page SEO is very hard to do because everyone is doing the same things for creating backlinks and if you want to stand-out from all of these competitors than you need to get quality backlinks which are better than others. Search engine prefer backlinks from quality pages which has good page authority as well good domain authority. If you want get quality links to your site than it's best to create a good content and post it on quality sites weather it your own blog, guest posting site or any other tutorial site. The backinks from such kind of pages hold lots of value and help your site to get more link juice.