Where is SEO Headed ?
Andrew Edwards wrote an article on Click Z asking the question, “Is SEO dead ?” Edwards seems to believe that Google taking away the keyword data makes SEO less valuable as a major support system has been taken away.
Edwards points out that it is in the best interest of Google to try to undermine SEO,
There is no good reason for Google to stop trying to stamp out SEO, because in effect, SEO damps the quality of search results for the user. Google is interested in the user – and, as you might have guessed already, it reduces the value of a paid AdWords link. Because Google AdWords is a form of SEO, which really is SEM (search engine marketing); in other words, you optimize your site’s Google performance by bidding on Google keywords whereby Google makes pretty much all of its money.
Edwards also points out the SEO industry is a large one at that,
SEO is a big industry. According to a site called State of Digital, 863 million websites mention SEO globally and every second 105 people search for SEO links on Google. Most of them seem to be looking for “services” or “companies,” which explains how there came to be so many SEO companies.
Edwards pointed out that the core principles of SEO make sense for all webmasters,
Certain SEO principles should not be ignored, simply as a matter of site-hygiene. A well-organized, content-rich site is a good thing to have. But most other SEO tricks and tips have just a little bit (if not a lot) of snake-oil in the recipe. It sounds like a great proposition to a site owner: drink a bottle of SEO and your site will zoom vigorously to the top of the heap. But too often, and partly because Google does not seem to want it to, it doesn’t work as advertised.
Read the full article here
There are about 15 comments on the article which do not necessarily agree with Andrew, they believe he painted all SEO professionals with one brush. There will always be a healthy debate around the topic.
SEO was never alive; exact-match is dead; domain blogging is next.
I believe I need to elaborate on why I say that SEO was never alive.
Search Engines, especially Google, claim that their formula is secret; akin to The Coca-Cola formula, which is has a secret recipe for syrup that bottlers combine with carbonated water to create its line of cola soft drinks. As a publicity, marketing, and intellectual property protection strategy started by Robert W. Woodruff, the company presents the formula as a closely held trade secret known only to a few employees. (Wikipedia).
Unlike Google, you could never see Coca-Cola employ a guy on Video everyday trying to tell you what’s in the syrup.
If a Company with a secret formula employs a guy on video telling you what’s in the secret formula, tell me, is it still a secret? It’s not, right?
It couldn’t be.
Therefore, what we see is this guy tells the SEO guys what’s in the secret formula, what to do to rank higher; they all will do it, then next month, the guy’s bosses upstairs deploys a ‘panda’ to put all the websites in the spam column; then the guy cuts another video saying here’s what to do, and they all do it, then the guy’s bosses deploys another something to put all the sites in the spam ledger; recurring…
On the issue of exact-match domains, the new gTLDs are mostly exact match domains; therefore, they either vindicate the claims of the exact match crowd, or they eviscerate them. I say the latter.
Finally, the domain blogs have sold their trade for a mess of porridge to the new gTLD operators. The success of the new scheme is inversely proportional to the success of domain blogging.
Hello Ray, Excellent Question?
Direct Navigation To Consumers Rescue ? Google Conspiring to Control ?
jeff schneider Independent Marketing Analyst/Strategist at UseBiz.com / (.COM ) URL Centric Marketing
Top Contributor
History demonstrates very clearly that consumers given true choice prefer actual choices not cattle shute platforms that inhibit their own creative choices such as search engines. Rebellion is coming soon and for good reason. Consumers crave a platform that involves their active participation in the creative process involved with their web experience destinations of choice!
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
WARNING) The Endless Search Engines Traffic Dilution Pool better known as Page Ranking System ! !
jeff schneider Independent Marketing Analyst/Strategist at UseBiz.com / (.COM ) URL Centric Marketing Top Contributor
The Search Engines Traffic Dilution Pools, come at great costs to the online business owners bottom line. They in effect are paying high extortion fees to both the Search Engine and at the same time paying extortion fees to their symbiotic SEO partners indefinitely! For what?
To dilute their recognized brand ! along with allowing the search engines to manipulate and interlope traffic meant for them.
Remember 100s if not 1000s will be in a search engines line up. This Massive line up of your competitors causes an Online business to be lost in the shuffle. (Market Saturation Obsolescence) is steering the SMART money away from SEO Manipulated Search Engine Market in droves.
What many business owners are not told by their Search Engine and SEO manipulator friends, is this key boondoggle of Search Engine and SEO Manipulated Marketing , and it is this !
Your businesses most dreaded competitors are often on the same Search Engine page as your companies are and are just one Click away from you as a choice. Remember you are paying a double barrel fee schedule by the Search Engine and their symbiotic partners the SEO Traffic Manipulators, whose fees last indefinitely for effectively losing your companies online identity in the Search Engines massive Traffic Dilution Pool (Page Rank System).
Now come on now, do you think this is Smart Marketing?
It may be smart for Google and their Symbiotic Partners, SEO manipulators ! But a very stupid choice for the business owner, We think.
This phenomonon can be TOTALLY, avoided by using Pure Play Direct Navigation .COM Generics,ONLY.
Seriously, the Smart Marketers are not swallowing Googles,SEO Manipulated Search Engine Kool-Aid here.
The Candid truth of this matter is the Smart End-Users are finding that Branding Internally, not Externally, through the use of a (Pure Play .COM site), are enjoying a Strategic Marketing advantage over their competitors, do to a residual recall response from Consumers at the Browser to their unique one of a kind Brand.
OCCAMS RAZOR
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Domain Master)
Hello Ray,
Googles ploy is to pump out inferior extensions they own. Truth is they screwed up in not getting into enough (.Com Traffic Grid Extension) Their hope is to control the field again to corner the market by suckering ,the small businessmen into an inferior Non-Strategic Trafficless plight supplied by them, so as to control the weaker players, if all goes well that is.
Avoid getting Punked again !
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Domain Master)
Might be the Bud, but I think Jeff actually has a point on this one.
accent me thinks its the bud lol unless you believe smart marketers dont use google and .com has magic powers and repeat ad nauseum hehe
Well there’s certainly a lot of waffle and confusion surrounding Google’s bet on the new gTLDs. It isn’t what domainers think it is and it certainly is not as happy-clappy as some Google fanboys and fangirls think. Some of Google’s IP ranges host approximately 1.29 million com/net/org/biz/info/mobi/asia websites. Google’s main play is towards being a serious player in the domains registration business as it would provide a far more efficient method of new website discovery than blindly following links. Google’s FUD about “unnatural” links has damaged the linkscape of the web to such an extent that sites are no longer linking to others. And as for Jeff’s waffle about .COM, there’s a big problem hitting .COM and the rest of the legacy TLDs at the moment and it is not due to the launch of the new gTLDs.
As for SEO, most of it is pure Cargo Cult by people who wouldn’t know one end of a search engine index from the other. They are a bunch of gizzard gazers rummaging in the SERPs for indications of the intent of their great god Google. There are some people who have a clue but they are scarce. SEO is not really dead. It is just becoming far harder for SEO practitioners to convince webmasters that they know what they are talking about when Google decides to nuke something upon which they had been relying for their position in the SERPs.
Smart marketeers don’t DEPEND on Google — If they can.
John you keep dropping these teases:
@John: ” there’s a big problem hitting .COM and the rest of the legacy TLDs at the moment and it is not due to the launch of the new gTLDs.”
Please explain.
The monthly net growth in .COM has been falling since April. The other legacy TLDs are struggling. New domain registrations are happening but a lot of consolidation is also happening as country level markets go ccTLD positive (where the local ccTLD overtakes .COM and the gTLDs). With the low cost of domains in some of the gTLDs, there is no real reason to develop and apart from the brand protection element, these domains are a liability for some businesses. And in tough economic conditions, these non-core TLD registrations are wastes of cash and are being dropped. The .INFO gTLD has been on a downward slide for the last few years. The .BIZ gTLD had to do a special offer last year to keep registration volume up (if I remember correctly). Some non-core ccTLDs like .EU are discounting and promoting. While the US is the engine of .COM TLD, the increasing inward focus in country level markets is going to reduce the growth velocity of .COM TLD. The problem for .COM is that the monthly net growth figure for .COM has fallen dramatically in a way that hasn’t been seen for some years. A Wells Fargo analyst downgraded VeriSign stock based on Q2 figures. (There’s a post about it here.) A lot of quants and stats heads are paying very close attention to what is happening in .COM at the moment.
How much of that drop in Com is Domainers dropping low quality names as an indirect effect of the new TLDs, as well as higher renewal costs and perhaps the decline of parking revenue? Those drops would have little effect on the premium aftermarket.
Do you know the percent of all Com names that are parked? I expect it to be large. Movements by domainers may outweigh changes in registration for use. Is there a change in the amount of new website construction on Com?
There is a natural barrier to the growth of CCs, and that is the border of the relevant country. That is fine for a local small business, of which there are many, but the Internet thrives internationally.
I’m not sure about the domainer drops being a larger factor than the economic situation. I ran a 110K domain web usage survey on .COM earlier this month ( http://www.hosterstats.com/com-website-usage-survey.php ). The domains were selected at random from the total list of .COM domains and should give an indication of the percentages in .COM as a whole. PPC only accounted for 16%. Holding pages of various types accounted for 10.2%. It was a statistical survey (selecting enough domains to provide reliable indications of overall trends in a similar manner to political polling rather than surveying every domain in the TLD). I have local Irish market data on approximately 156K .COM domains going back years but that’s a highly subjective set of data because there’s been a ccTLD shift towards .IE ccTLD that has been ongoing for a few years now but it might be worth checking.
The border of the country is a limiting factor for most ccTLDS but with open or large market ccTLDs such as .UK and .DE, the economy is a bigger driver. The other impact on .COM has been the use of the local ccTLDs by companies selling into a country level market rather than the previously used .COM or .COM with the brand name + country name. There is still a need for a global TLD like .COM but the rise of the ccTLDs has, in most countries, started to limit .COM as the first choice TLD. The problem with TLD surveys in isolation (just surveying the domains in one TLD) as applied to a country level market is that the country level market is generally made up of the ccTLD and an number of other TLDs and there are cross-TLD registration patterns and duplicate content and domains.
When Verisign used to include this data in its quarterly reports the number of parked pages was always around 10%