The Instant Google Went Instant
Everyone said everything is dead. Again.
Steve “SEO is Dead” Rubel led it off only minutes after the official announcement. (And, no, he does not get link for it) From there we were subjected to various other types of “dead”: paid search, analytics, long-tail keywords, short-tail keywords, etc.
It’s the status quo with the SEM community; if it’s new and foreign from a way of doing things, then the immediate reaction from the community is: IT’S ALL DEAD, MAN! GOOGLE JUST KILLED IT ALL!
Those of us who know the score sat back and watched the house catch fire. People were screaming out for Matt Cutts to set the record straight on this (again, per usual).
So let’s set the record straight: it’s not dead. It won’t be dead. SEO will never die. If Google ever discounts site content and links, then, and only then, will SEO die. Since that isn’t happening, we’re all fine. Everyone ok on that? Great.
What Every Major Google Hub is Saying About Instant
Yes, that’s right, beyond Matt having to shush the SEO Chicken Little’s out there, Google’s 3 major hubs and Google itself put out official posts on how Google Instant will affect the resource.
2) Google Analytics on Instant
3) Google Webmaster Central on Instant
This in No Way Kills SEO
Sorry. That’s the facts. If you step back for a moment, all GI (Google Instant) has really done is allow people to search faster and offer suggestions, or as The GOOG put it, “mind read”.
Fact #1: There was heavy personalization BEFORE this update
Yes, indeed. Google was helping you, and still is, by honing in your IP address and by search history. Not much has changed there.
Fact #2: Google Suggestions have been around as early as 2008
Again, nothing changed. Those suggestions that still appear below your query, Google helping you refine your thoughts before you hit enter, they’re still there. What has changed is that GOOG is tacking them in your actual query string now, guessing/mind-reading at what you might be looking for.
Fact #3: SERPs Are Still SERPs
Yes, I think the instant update also came attached with some algorithm tweaks. Anecdotal searches I’ve performed thus far tell they’ve tweaked some things; yes, I’ve seen upward and downward movement in my sites’ positions for business-centric keywords. That said, the SERP is still being constructed based on your site’s content, authority, relevance to the query at hand, and off-site SEO.
Why would GI want to mess with a good thing? This update just allows them to serve those SERPs faster.
What’s Going to be Different for SEOs?
A few things are going to change. Keyword research is a premium now. If you were lethargic and lazy about your keyword research prior to this update, you’re in for a real treat. It seems that the GI update, again only from anecdotal searches conducted thus far, that the long tail is much more of a priority and seems to be pushing users in that direction.
What that means? It means that a lot more users are going to be engaging in long-tail search terms. It means this update, is essentially teaching run-of-the-mill searchers how write better search queries to find their information. What I am not saying is that one and two-term keyword phrases are useless, I personally don’t think these will be as much of a traffic force in the coming months. Hence, if you’re an SEO, you better get your keyword data-sloshing boots on, cause’ it’s going to get thick.
The solid SEOs/SEMs out there are already doing this. The hacks will have to play catch up: actually have to consider the content they are putting on the page. Consider dropping in long-tail terms within pages, being strategic with content.
Keep Moving Forward.
Yes, I did. I stole this quote from Meet the Robinsons. The past is the past; let’s all take a moment to reflect on it. [Reflecting]
There. That was great. Now move forward. Google is always going to be innovating, for better or worse, well-thought out or not, and always for the next big payday. If our profession didn’t change, not many would stick around. We’re a dynamic bunch of people; we institute change for others, we strategize how to create dramatic change in conversions and profit online for clients, and change happens to us both professionally and personally.
Stop buying into this ridiculous rhetoric that “SEO is dead”, that the game is so radically different now. It’s not. Put your game face on, buckle down, and get to work.
Note To Small Business Owners: Unlearn
The Need To Unlearn
It went official this week: Google now has behaviorally-targeted PPC Ads. Before we talk about the ramifications of this act on small/business owners, let’s figure out what this actually means.
Explaining Google Behaviorally-Targeted PPC Ads System:
Google has raised privacy concerns with its newly launched interest-based advertising, which displays ads based on users’ previous searches and page views.
The new Google advertising system, currently in beta, links “categories of interest” to the user’s browser, allowing targeted ads to appear even when the user is looking at a page totally unrelated to the ad’s subject matter.
Let’s not forget to mention, even though Google’s not saying it, they’re targeting by IP Address as well. Meaning, you don’t have to be logged into your Google Account to get “personalized”, behaviorally-targeted ads. And, this is just the beginning folks. While it’s not fully-instituted in SERPs (search engine results pages), the SEO/SEM community has been following this trend for over a year now, and we’ve seen instances of “personalized” results peeking in and out of the SERPs already.
If you read my November 2008 post, I discussed this topic there as well, but briefly.
Why Small Business Owners Need To Unlearn What They Know About SEO:
Small/Business Owners Need To Unlearn Their Obsession With Rank
Unlearning is about the most difficult thing to ask anyone to do, let alone small/business owners who just got on the SEO bandwagon and want to see RANK. For years they’ve resisted, were reluctant to throw their hat in the search/web marketing ring. And, sadly, for them, the rules have changed.
SERP Rank is Dead
RANK is dead. The introduction of behaviorally targeted, personalized search with PPC has now opened up the flood gates. In this new era, it hardly matters where you “rank” for certain keywords. Users will have the most relevant results served up to them based on previous search habits and geographic locality.
Mind you, this does not mean SEO is dead. Far from it. SEO is more important than ever. With this new spin on search, comes decreased visibility for terms that national/global users would have found you for. Competitive or not, you could have sloppy SEO and still do well. Add in the fact that “brands” now have “higher trust”, thanks to the Vince Algorithm change, it makes it all the more important to have solid, core SEO built and implemented onsite.
All this aside, for years owners have been duped, in large part by the SEO community itself, to focus on where you RANK for keywords. And, boy, did they buy in. It consumes them. It perpetuates a never-ending cycle of calls about less-than-business-centric keywords, because they did a search and saw that they went from Position 7 to Position 10. They’re not taking into account the one thing they all got into business for in the first place: to make sales. To pad the bottom-line with profit.
Unlearn Your Obsession With Rank
Yes, that’s right. Stop thinking about it. If you need something to do because it’s a rainy day, or you don’t have meetings, then look at them (and then throw them away). Otherwise, stop it. Instead, focus on if you’re site is converting users to a sale, to a purchase, to an anything, as long as it drives more business through the doors. And, considering, the downward-spiraling economic disaster looming in the coming months, this should be your only focus: get more business coming through the door.
Rank is a luxury. Sales aren’t. Quit wasting your time talking about why a keyword dropped from 3 to 5, and start focusing on if your site is fully-optimized onsite, if your user paths are clean and concise, and if your forms are painless and easy. Once again, in the near-future, everyone’s SERPs are going to be different for the same keyword, based on numerous factors and habits. Make sure you’re focusing on sales and conversions, that’s all that really matters.
Is it the Links, the Traffic, or What?
Is Linking the End-All-Be-All of SEO?
We all know that Google Personalized Search is coming: Search 4.0 (if you’re keeping count). And, we are already seeing instances of it surfacing within the SERPs. Or if you need the skinny on it, check out Danny’s post on Search Engine Land.
Knowing all of this, SEOs must still work to optimize client sites. With a bear economy, companies have begun shrinking marketing budgets, as well as personnel, giving SEOs, in most cases, smaller budgets to work with. Our management and maintenance fees aren’t shrinking, so we’re left with finding the few essential services that need to be done in order to keep our clients converting and feeding the funnel to keep the potential conversions coming in.
The list for most of us looks something like this:
- On-Site Optimization: meta-data, optimized URLs, link juice sculpting, and optimized anchors
- Link Building: via directories, link baiting strategies, social media linking strategies
- Reporting
It’s pretty safe to say that #1 and #3 are indispensable, but is link building really the answer to SERP ranking issue? Is this really a major part of the algorithm and a determining factor of placement? For years we’ve been professing that a solid linking strategy will, in fact, create solid ranking within the result pages because the Google Algo, which revolutionized the SERPs based on this factor of trust, spawned copy-cats through Yahoo, Live, and a majority of others. But there are other factors outside of on-site optimization that we also believe to be at work; factors that may actually play a larger role in determining where you place in the SERPs.
A) Site Traffic and Bounce Rate
B) Domain Age
With the advancement of SEO tools available, we’re able to see exactly what’s driving search results for particular queries (under the assumption you don’t have your own personalized searches on) and get glimpses into the algorithm. Of course there are other factors that do influence the site’s SERP position, trust, and relevance, such as number of 301 redirects, C Class, and others, but we really want to look at major influences for this session. Which is not to say that those factors could not cause a site’s SERP position to crash dramatically, but they’re less of an issue for the majority of sites.
That said, let’s look at some data I pulled for what I think would be traditionally consumer and B2B searches.
B2B Data
Search: “belt conveyors”
SERP Page 1 and Data for each Site:
When you examine the data, the links don’t really give us an indication that they have influenced the position of a particular company; for example, the 10th position company has quite a few more links than any other company on this SERP (excluding, of course, the directory sites). It would seem reasonable then that this company should be in the first position, or at least in the Top 5.
However, it could be that this site’s on-site effort is not good at all and the linking effort alone has catapulted it to the first page (there are subjective items that cannot be taken into account through this data). Yet this data does not clearly indicate linking as a sole factor for position, so we move on to Traffic Data to determine if this is the factor that placed the company on top?
Traffic Data:
 qcindustries.com |
709 | |||
 thomasnet.com |
960,230 | |||
| dornerconveyors.com |
3,312 | |||
| directindustry.com |
98,740 |
This does not really clear up the SERP position picture either. Based on linking data and traffic data, there is no reason that qcindustries.com should retain the top position for “belt conveyors”. The only advantage this site has over the other companies (not directory sites) is that its domain is older, and not by much.
The answer comes when we look at the site. The entire site is dedicated to “belt conveyors”, multiple types of belt conveyors. So the site’s content and keyword density for the term “belt conveyor” make it the obvious choice.
QC Industries Text Only
Conclusion:
Based on the data above, it can be concluded linking and traffic did not directly influence this site’s SERP position. And, I think with more targeted, keyword-rich optimization, this site could potentially “box-out” competitors for this keyword for a long time to come. Let’s check the B2C search term.
B2C Data:
Search Term: “search engine marketing services”
SERP Page 1 and Data for each Site:
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When you examine the data for the “search engine marketing services” SERP, on the surface the links appear to a guiding indicator. But then you see bruceclay.com. And again the simple theory of “more links = better rank” fails us.
Bruceclay.com has the oldest domain on the list, the most links (outside of Google itself), and the most high quality links. Everything says this should be the most trusted site for this particular query right? Well, then it must be a question of traffic; bruceclay.com must not get nearly the traffic marketingleap.com or highrankings.com gets. Let’s see.
Traffic Data:
| marketleap.com |
65,392 | |||
| highrankings.com |
98,723 | |||
| submitexpress.com |
111,266 | |||
| mannixmarketing.com |
6,481 | |||
| bruceclay.com |
102,679 |
The traffic does not really clear up the SERP position. Based on linking data and traffic data, marketingleap.com should not be in the top position for “search engine marketing services”. This site does not have any comparable advantages over those sites listed below them. Could this be another case of onsite optimization
Conclusion:
In my opinion onsite optimization leaves something to be desired as well. So if it’s not the links, the traffic, or the onsite optimization efforts, what could possibly have this site ranking as well as it does?
In my opinion it is a test slot for a company or URL. I have seen this happen in several other highly competitive search terms, which leads me to believe this is the case. In this manner Google can “see” if this site is worthy to hold the number 1 spot for this highly competitive search term. Is it possible that this site has hit the precise number of backlinks, has the exact right keyword density, and accumulates the right amount traffic to warrant a first position slot for this search term? The odds are astronomical as well as improbable.
Overall Conclusions:
The data above leads me to believe that onsite optimization is inherently the most important thing a site can do to increase it’s visibility within the search engines, particularly Google. Within highly competitive terms, I would recommend that link building be an essential task. However, having said that, competitive research must be done in order to gauge the amount links needed to enter the first SERP.
It makes very little sense to pile on links for keywords, if your competition has weak link building efforts. The site being optimized should garner a “comfortable gap” of link-separation between its competitors. There’s no need to get 10,000 additional links if the competition is holding steady around 500 – 600 links. In this case, it might be more “normal” to Google if the your client site built 1000 links over the next 6 to 12 months. It will have the same effect, i.e. showing site relevance and trust, without drawing attention to the site.
Traffic may certainly play a factor within the SERPs, but it does not seem to effect a site already within the top 10 positions. Traffic may be a factor for sites on the cusp of first SERP, but once there, it seems to have very little direct implication. The only thing that would seem to matter is that the traffic stays steady: no large dips and peaks. We’re looking for a nice x-axis upward slope.
I think link building should still be a recommended measure to include within any optimization campaign, but don’t expect it to be the savior. It can be concluded from the data above that inbound links do effect placement within the SERPs; however, the main focus should still remain on onsite optimization of targeted content, link juice sculpting, and optimized link anchor text.
