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November 18, 2008
How many times each month do you visit Google and run a search on one of your target terms? If your answer is more than Zero, you better start looking for another way to measure success! Several Months ago, Shoemoney posted that SEO Had No Future… at the time, I questioned the reasoning behind it. Guess what - He was Right!
If you follow any of the popular search engine discussion forums, there’s no doubt you may have recognized large amounts of noise over the past few months. Site rankings drops, complete deindexing of sites, etc. I got an email from Otis (A reader here) this afternoon asking about a post by Chris Crum over at WebProSearch.
Everybody who does a search will end up with different search results based on their prior search history. Personalization is going to be “web-wide” using third party cookies and things.
To those who measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, but their rankings in search engines… you will no longer a way to measure!
Step back 10 years… when you went to the fledgling site called Google, you entered your phrase into the search box and got a reply! The listings were based on things like relevance, titles, keywords, descriptions and keyphrase density.You could literally make a site change and see the results of your efforts in search results, within just a few days! Those days are long gone…
According to what Bruce Clay forecasts in the very near future, the first quarter of 2009, search results are going to be tailored to the user based on a combination of many factors, including:
Essentially, just those two methods above will return a completely different results page for different people! To see it in action, just go to google right now and type the word “weather” into the search box! If you have used the Google engine more than once, chances are pretty darn good, you will see your local weather displayed first!
How about this little tidbit from Bruce:
If you don’t have video and your competition does, Bruce thinks we’re going to see a big shift in rankings. He thinks if the top ten sites don’t have video, they may lose their ranking over night.
Forget about how your site ranks in search results - today! Focus on attracting visitors to your sites with content, and how you will convert those visitors into customers! Whether you convert them into a customer of your own, or a customer of the site you are partnered with, like ePN.
Measure the effectiveness of your efforts on how many visitors you get to the site, how many pages they view,and very importantly, how many of them bounce away after coming in!
If you do not use Google Analytics, now is a great time to start and get yourself used to the info the free tool provides!
2009 is going to be an interesting year! Looks like it will start out with a huge bang across the industry!
14 Responses to “SEO Just got Flipped on its Head… and it Died!”
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Mark, you said “focus on attracting visitors to your sites with content”…..but the way we’ve always done that is by ranking for specific terms, and now that might be impossible. Are you saying to just add the content that we think will be helpful and relevant, and eventually the visitors will come regardless of how we rank for specific terms?
I don’t know about you, but what with trying to keep up with all the changes at Google and the latest ePN malfunctions, not to mention wrestling with affiliate software and tweaking my sites, I think I’m suffering from AAD - Affiliate Anxiety Disorder.
Anyone know a good therapist?
@ Mark G -
Not at all… I will continue “Targeting Visitors”, but measuring the progress can no longer be done in the form of how well it ranks in search results.
Right now, you may target a term and base the success on how high you get that term/phrase to rank in search. THEN on how many hits you get from the phrase… before ultimately, how many convert to buyers.
Going forward, we are going to have to continue targeting the phrase, but measure the success on: 1) How many times that phrase delivered a visitor, 2) How many of those visitors were engaged by our content, 3) How many of those visitors purchased via our links.
@ James - I am 100% with you!
I have seriously cut back on sites, to less than 10 in total!! The rest, I am either dumping to a parked page, or just letting sit there.
Mark
Just use Yahoo instead. Their search results are more relevant than Googles anyway. It seems you have to have money to pay for links to get ranked #1 in G. whereas Yahoo actually pulls sites according to what’s relevant.
@ Me Rant -
I actually fear that Google is stepping too far away from search in an effort to shape the search results a bit too precisely…. but thats another post!
I do target Yahoo and actually prefer the look and feel of the live.com search engine.
Truth is though… Google owns about 70% of all web search right now, so we have to work by their rules, or find alternaticve means of getting traffic.
I also feel that the way they continue to coax the algo, the real reason is to “encourage” any kind of commerce website into buying adwords to get visitors.!
“I also feel that the way they continue to coax the algo, the real reason is to “encourage” any kind of commerce website into buying adwords to get visitors.!”
Hi Mark,
I’m not so sure that’s such a bad thing. I’m really split on this issue. As someone who gets commission from BANS sites, I like the fact that people find them in the search engines and purchase from my stores.
However …
As a user of search engines, nothing is more annoying than typing in a term looking for information, and having to wade through sometimes a whole page of either affiliate or MFA sites before I can actually find a site with useful and relevant information.
Who knows, it may turn out better if we end up primarily with visitors who are actually looking for sites where they can buy something … as opposed to those who come looking for information (because we’ve used good SEO), and who we hope will click on our links or auctions.
Will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Todd
To be honest I feel that those changes are a bit annoying. If I wanted information about the coffee java I could just type “java coffee”. I don’t like my search tems to be manipulated, then I feel less in control.
To tell you the truth, Mark, I had decided to stop checking my Google rankings a couple of weeks ago after a particularly hectic article marketing campaign. I found absolutely no change in the G SERPS for my main keyword…but…my unique visitor count trebled!
As you said in an earlier comment, it will come down to how many hits I get for a phrase that will become important. As long as you begin with plenty of content to pick up long-tails to widen your net.
Some of the best advice I ever got was “keep Your Bounce Rate Down” I took this advice to heart and it is so true. Keep your visitors on your site for atleast 1 min. Time how long it takes you to read whats on your home page. Also use text links to other content pages in your text towards the bottom. Keep them reading!!
I think this has been ongoing for some time now. The reason I say that is because for the longest time I have not been able to find listing in the same position as a friend of mine in the US.
I live in Canada and he lives in West Virginia.
I have compared his keyword and where they can be found in Google.com but when we do compare we find that the positions in Google differ from each other.
I find it really frustrating when that happens and have had no idea why but your post makes it sound more logical now.
I have noticed for a while now that it is difficult for me to access US results. I am in the UK and I have one US site. I am currently researching keywords for a 2nd US site and am having a great deal to trouble getting Google to give me US pages. If I set the search to “search the web” all I get for pages and pages are UK results. I can’t see why this is necessary as we do have the option to search “UK only”. I have to use the advance search and tell it to (-.co.uk, uk) in order to see US pages. An extra step, which takes more time and I have no idea how accurate the results are as regards the importance Google places on each page.
It is not just an issue as regards keyword research. It is limiting our ability to shop from US stores online, which can’t be good for your economy. I am so frustrated by it today, that, after this post, I am going to make a complaint to Google (for all the good it will do!). I know there are various tools I can use for keyword research (and I do) but there are still times when you need to go directly to Google.
Will it get to the point where you do my US keyword research and I do your UK keyword research! lol.
Great post.
This is what I was getting ready for. Again this new “bang” is going to change the industry, those who will be able to go with the flow will survive, those who not, I’m sorry, they will probably fail.
I also wrote a post why you should or shouldn’t use google’s internet browser - google chrome. The post is here - http://www.themoneyac.com/google-chrome-another-step-closer-to-domination
I mean, do you really think that Google has enough of the search engine market (more than 75%) ? I think not, Google just wants to dominate the internet completely, and we can’t do anything about it, for us - internet marketers, we need customers, and how do our potential customers mostly navigate trough internet ? Of course - search engines, ie. Google.
Just be ready for the new trip.
Cheers,
The Moneyac.
Streching me again eh Mark.
Thanks.
Jamie
I guess I am failing to see what the big change is. Google has been doing tailored search for a long time. As long as the searcher has cookies enabled it will manipulate the results.
Google will always rank pages higher or lower based on the links too it and the words on the site, with some manual editing now and then.