Why SEO is a big fat lie

[Jexley]

Originally Posted by Samith

...end of the day what matters is return on investment, and that's different from business to business.

Pretty much says it all.

The value in SEO or AdWords is only seen after it's done usually though, and that's what's hard for people to figure out.

"Do I need SEO? AdWords? Magic? Ninjas?"

Folks don't seem to know where to start, and when they ask a lot of "experts" they're typically answered with, "Whatever I can charge the most for, that's the least likely to be scrutinised."

What this industry needs is a tool/service that can help folks figure out what they need and how much of it.

K, off to go and build that now...

[NickMorris]

Originally Posted by seocourse

Each Algorithm change it's pushed by Google towards more profits of their core sponsors... not towards "improving the search result" for the end user.

I don't think that's entirely accurate... isn't it roughly the same as a TV station that needs to provide quality programming in order to attract the viewers in order to attract the advertisers in order to make money? If the programming sucks then they'll just go elsewhere, similarly with search results.

[seocourse]

Originally Posted by NickMorris

I don't think that's entirely accurate... isn't it roughly the same as a TV station that needs to provide quality programming in order to attract the viewers in order to attract the advertisers in order to make money? If the programming sucks then they'll just go elsewhere, similarly with search results.

the comparison you put makes no real sense Nick.
If a program in TV sucks, you change channel (fair enough)
But the average end user in a search engine, doesn't understand the accuracy in search. They don't know if the "search sucks, like in TV".

We are talking about my mom, the grandma that googles and the none "tech savvy" user.
That's why comparing TV with a search engine doesn't really fit.

Google takes advantage that 99.9% users, don't really understand that the result in front of them is set by Google profit-hunger instead of providing the "best possible result'

* I also don't know of any TV agency that owns 70% of the TV market....

[WAHE]

What are you talking about, SEO is not dead...

[Aidan]

Hi All,

I'm just dropping back in here to point out there is is no requirement for seo work to be done on your sites or landing pages to rank well in the AdWords sections of SERPs. It simply isn't true.

I work with many sites and landing pages that would have zero hope of natural rankings, they are not full of content because that would take away from their purpose of lead capture nor are they even linked to (internally or externally) so have zero authority. Many are also meta tagged as noindex.

They have no problems with quality score, (the biggest driver of QS by a long, long shot is the clickthrough rate).

The landing page does need to be relevant but it does not need to be optimised in an seo fashion.

That may change in the future but it has been the case for many years now...

[JohnW]

Originally Posted by JamesMillar

I was wondering if any of the experts here could comment on the value / strength of a number 1 organic google rating versus a number 1 google Adwords presence.

Hi James,
A different way of providing an answer for you...

I have one client with 2 websites for the same products - content is different on each site.

One site uses no SEO and $5k per month of Adword budget. The other uses SEO but no Adwords. Both generate around the same SE referrals and business enquiries.

This business has been buying Adwords for its site since 2005. What is interesting is to go back over the average cost per click. Dec 05 = $0.13, Dec 11 = $0.82.

There have been huge escalations in the costs of Adwords in various sectors. As this happens, it makes SEO even more valuable - thank you G and all your Adword buyers.

Regs,
JohnW

[NickMorris]

Originally Posted by seocourse

the comparison you put makes no real sense Nick.
If a program in TV sucks, you change channel (fair enough)
But the average end user in a search engine, doesn't understand the accuracy in search. They don't know if the "search sucks, like in TV".

Ok, its not a perfect analogy but I still think the concept is sound. TV is a much more mature industry with more choices and an audience that can easily discern between good and bad quality programming.

But I do think that there will be a point where the search experience is bad enough that people will actually switch. Google got to its powerful position, in part, by having a better search experience than its competitors so I don't see why it can't go the other way.

[trixxta]

an interesting graphic but i have to agree with the majority of posters here that SEO is still very very important. I work for a large ecommerce site and SEO traffic absolutely dwarfs social media referrals. I think someone has been drinking the social media koolaid a bit

[clintmaher]

SEO is here right now and it changes every day.

Social signals are now an important consideration.

Will SEO as we know it be around in three years time? Perhaps not, I left my crystal ball at home.

Opinions mean nothing, you just have to keep adjusting as you go.

Do what works, and do it well.

Interestingly enough what worked best 5 years ago still works best now. Awesome content that people want to read and share. My crystal ball prediction (opinion) for 2017 is that quality content will still fuel best practice SEO.

[WW2010]

Its taken them long enough. But there finally showing some attention to the elephant in the room

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401732,00.asp

Damn SEO pirates! be gone!