The Future of SEO in a Big Brand, Google-Only World

[tshirtdeal]

Okay, sort of a hypothetical...

I have been doing SEO really since the day it was invented but not with any real success until the last say 7 years...

In that time Google took over, and for me my only money comes from Google... Right now all my money is gone because whatever Google is doing.. All is fair in love and war... I still get my other traffic, it does not make me a dime.. Google took away 1/3 of my traffic total and 100% loss in sales

Anyway, over the years it use to be people surfed different searches, then Google became the standard... The wide array of building profitable traffic got narrowed into one place. It use to be you had to be on the first three pages, surfers got less interested and lazy, realizing anything they want could be found in the top 5 choices... They trusted Google as they should, it is what Google works at...


Then over the last couple of years big business realized, heck we should just put teams together and dominate the top five, we have the resources and money and natural links and everything else to dominate... They say "we don't have to dominate the search" as they do not, because anyone would naturally just type their well branded name into the browser... Yet, they can dominate the top 5 and should because odds are the people up their are just affiliates or ad sellers that are selling for them...

Sure they are making a profit anyway, but less of a profit. For the profits they were giving away they could just invest half of that and dominate...(and do huge branded companies really want nobodies and anybodies marketing their model but them, I WOULD NOT! It was a gold rush and they wanted in, now they do not) Google naturally respects them anyway because people naturally link to them, they are huge, a name they can trust , G hates affiliates...

Now G must realize that really all Adsense is is affiliate marketing... people making a little something for people to get to the same place they knew they needed/wanted to go anyway... In the end, the way people have been trained to the net, top 3 maybe 5 in Google... that is as deep as the net goes on any serious level...

Oh yeah, and with smarter surfer's comes less used keywords, only a few keywords now make money and everyone in the entire world is competing for it... Sure their are keywords no one is competing for... Because they make NO money...

To be honest what once seemed like a limitless world to me for marketing my ideas now seems like the most narrow... It has been reduced to 5 places that can make money, and closing in on three with competition through the roof... Hell I could teach a 5 year old how to build a nice SEO site... SEO use to be a talent, web deign a secret skill... it is SOOO saturated... I think I can stand on the corner of my street and gain more attention, respect and income in the Long term then SEO. I see door-to-door sales as more a lucrative future.

This is not an anti-Google or SEO thread... I just see the noose tightening... I always felt so long as I just put out my content and have a small place to operate I can succeed and felt it would always be available in SEO... I am to the realization that it is not...

So the question becomes, how can you survive in such a limitless environment with SEO... We are down to one search engine, and 3 to 5 spaces...

[karter2]

Thing with ppc, is not running out off money before it becomes self sustaining, my few attempts to date have been scary :)

But, I do believe you 're right

[tshirtdeal]

My problems with PPC has been that it is just way more saturated then organics, organics convert better and PPC costs money...

My major problem is that it takes no skills, yes it may take skills to become profitable but every newbie is on there and doesn't have to have any skills to be on there...

I gave up PPC awhile ago because for the few bucks I made I would rather put the time and effort into organics... Again if I had my own patented product or specialized service skill I would be all over them though.

[tedster]

You need a balanced attack in this business

And your SEO needs that diversity, too. Too many marketers have a narrow view of how organic search can build their business. We often see messages, especially from the newly arrived, that show they are aiming at a narrow set of keywords - or even just one. There's a world of possibility from watching those odd keywords that are currently bringing in a low level of traffic. Sometimes it can change an entire marketing plan, generate all kinds of content ideas, market insights, etc.

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I like Lapizuli's concept of how generational change will filter into the marketplace and offer an alternative path to the big-brand-centric status quo. To make that work for your business, you definitely need to get out of the box in your thinking and watch your market very closely - as well as mine your server logs and respond to what you learn. Listening to social media can be a valuable part of that vigilance. And all you need to do is listen, at least at first.

[HuskyPup]

this may sound strange, but I think we're trending toward more middlemen, not fewer

@Lapizuli - I know where you're coming from with this and I have no idea which way it will go however I do feel that so much has been outsourced to Asia and too many have become reliant on pushing buttons and tapping keyboards.

I have been working with Asia for 40+ years and I know which way all the companies I work with are going. They want to take more and direct control of their production sales and paramount in this is people actually knowing their real world business and markets and not just being mere speculators buying and selling on price.

Why are my businesses successful? Because we deal with real products and they have to be right and all of our staff have to know the industry inside out. There is no one anywhere in my industry who "knows it all", it's impossible to do so, but having a real in-depth knowledge is possible.

What does this have to do with anything?

Find something in the real world that few else are doing and specialise, there's serious money to be made from quality products for which there is always a demand. I turn down loads of great opportunities every year simply because I do not have the time to devote to it and mainly because I cannot find anyone who is prepared to learn and develop it.

Only today I was offered something from my office in China, I had never heard of it before yet it could be a great Internet and real shop product. What more people need to do is actually go and see what is available elsewhere and bring it to market...yeah, the rise of the middlemen again!

[fabulousyarn]

It has taken me two years to really start to get some traction with PPC - and a whole lot of $$$$. But, it does work, there is no denying it. A mixed blend of all the possibilities, and no sleep, works for me.

[fabulousyarn]

I would highly recommend the book: surfing the himalayas to anyone with an interest in philosophy, surfing and the ability to surf (both literally and, as tedster so aptly interpreted nutmegs post, figuratively. It is the only way our businesses will survive. I experience this on a daily basis. It is like being in the waves at costa rica - get up, slam, down, get back up, slam your down, get back up, catch a good one, slam, your down...a lot like google and the serps.

[Lapizuli]

They want to take more and direct control of their production sales and paramount in this is people actually knowing their real world business and markets and not just being mere speculators buying and selling on price.

Absolutely agree. I wrote a long, long post touching on this that I ended up converting into an article but I should modify it and publish it here one of these days. Essentially, I think the retailer is becoming the inessential middleman (what do we need them for anymore?), and individuals who have real opinions and real experience are the new points of sale. Those individuals are still needed by manufacturers, though, because they are a third party far more trusted than the manufacturer, himself, who says "I made this and it's the best!"

The noise-cancelling capability of trust really is important to people with, to misquote Chris Anderson, infinite choice of product. In a zillion-product world, people need some way to figure out what to buy.

Think about this (and like about 99% of the ideas I spout, I stole this one from my spouse). Imagine a world where if you want to buy green widgets, you go to your favorite three different green widget experts. These experts each independently have tried every single green widget there is - each has an exhaustive expertise in one micro-micro-micro niche, worldwide. Each also receives commissions from the manufacturers on every single widget sold through his site.

Rather than being biased toward one brand or model of green widget or the other - after all, they profit from them ALL, and higher-end widgets will sell less but bring more commission, while lower-end widgets will bring in lower commissions but sell more - their only inbuilt bias is in promoting green widgets over yellow or orange widgets.

In competing for a customer base, each person builds up a reputation of trust that is, if not invulnerable to bribery and incentives, then a pretty good defense, so each has a stake in being honest and thorough. That's their business. Arranged directly with the manufacturer. Why not?

Only infrastructure - and it's a big "only" - is keeping us from that now. Language barriers, legal barriers, transportation barriers, and technological barriers. It seems to me only a matter of time, though, before something of this order comes around - if not this model, than something else where the "little guy" rises again. The pure mass of product seems to require it.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

If we want free search traffic, then we MUST be ready for change and learn how to surf the wave.

That's a little tough to do when the ocean becomes a pond with all the water being diverted to what amounts to a paid directory. Ranking naturally at #1 but only appearing on page #2 suggests the change may require cutting off Google, there's no good reason to provide Google with ANY content at that point.

No matter how big Google gets they will always be a "googlebot noindex" and a "cookie block google.com" away from being nothing. They are pushing the limits right now...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Also, I really don't want to sound anti Google on this. With change comes opportunity, no doubt!

I just find it unfortunate that Google is migrating to becoming a webmaster liability (for free traffic sites that don't make money) when it was such a force for all webmasters in the past. Wall st is the problem imo.

[ken_b]

Thing with ppc, is not running out off money before it becomes self sustaining,...

That's been a problem B&M business start-ups have had to deal with since forever.

[tshirtdeal]

That's been a problem B&M business start-ups have had to deal with since forever.

Yeah, what is it , B&M has to eat up 2 years of profits just to get off the ground and make it (and the odds of making it on that over the last years probably dropped the success rate down 100%)...

Another reason why online appealed to me so much... The risks and expense can be kept to around ZERO and you can be in profit in months... If you are good at other ways of generating revenue besides organics you can be in profit in days with ROI strategies...

And I finally learned how to do that box quote thing here, crazy I ever made money at this crap...

[londrum]

google are having a good laugh reading this thread. half the people are bemoaning the fact that the SERPs are being diluted and our sites are being crushed, and the other half are quoting from the google bible and saying you've got to spend out on PPC.

google takes away the traffic... but offers a solution... which is pay more money to google.

no doubt the PPC people will say "well you cant rely on free traffic", which sounds fair enough. but its not free, is it. google dont just give us the traffic out of the goodness of their hearts. they owe us the traffic because our sites provide them with their entire business.

in the good old days they took, and gave something back. now they just take. and if we want something back then we have to pay for it.

the OP wants to know what the future is? that is the future. if we want traffic then we'll have to pay for it, whilst the big search engines like Google get all their stuff for free.

[Tallon]

whilst the big search engines like Google get all their stuff for free.

There's actually a fine line to this that Google has to be careful of crossing...if webmasters don't see a worthy return, or realistic opportunity of a worthy return, in allowing google to index their content, large chunks of the internet will become inaccessible to Google. Why let google index your content when there's nothing in it for you? And then the paid link buys/selling and black hattery tactics skyrocket because no one fears google anymore (since there's nothing to lose).

Google HAS TO give back in order to have something to offer to its searchers. Otherwise, all hell breaks loose.

[Reno]

Google HAS TO give back in order to have something to offer to its searchers.

I'll say the same thing I've said before: Google is in the catbird's seat until something better comes along.

And don't think they don't know it.

..........................

[Tallon]

Google is in the catbird's seat until something better comes along.

I don't think anything bigger and better needs to come along (although it would be awesome). If a good portion of the net can only be found on yahoo and bing, and MIA on google, that's all it will take for a seismic shift of users to make the migration away from google.

The flaw in my theory though is that webmasters are notoriously short sited when it comes to Google and they know this (keeping the google coffers overflowing by continuing to monetize their sites with adsense aka webmaster welfare is one prime example), but it wouldn't even need to be a significant portion of the net to block google--just enough big sites publicly removing access to their content from the google index would cause enough chatter and chaos.

If I had little to no chance at a reasonable return for letting google use and have access to my content...there's nothing in it for me to let them play with and profit from my goodies. I know I'm not the only webmaster who's on high alert in this regard. There's one eye on the scrapers/mashers and another eye on Google.

[Swanson]

I rarely get involved in a discussion about SEO and the problems of it nowadays but I thought I would give a bit of my slant on this.

Firstly, if you rely on Google for traffic and/or income then you have to get real with your attitude to how you sustain it.

The main point being you have two choices - build your own site by rules that you think are in place or just go for an alternative plan that puts you in the centre.

I know that the classic advice is about building a site and doing lots of good stuff to promote it.

However if you really want to make actual cash from Google traffic then you need a whole new mindset - and it has to be one that is at odds with probably many people that are giving advice on forums just like this.

Ironically nowadays people have cracked on to the idea that making money is more important than playing by the "rules".

The harsh fact is that at the basic level you need several sites that are set up differently and that you get links to by different methods.

Those methods are controversial here but they pretty much revolve around bending the rules.

I would love to give a summary of how the real earners do it but I am just not yet in the zone of giving that info in this forum as it's not what it used to be and there are other places you can find out how to use alternative techniques.

But I would say that you need lots of sites to cover problems like this - you need a few "brands", you need loads of "non-brand" sites - you need to have links of different types to these sites and it needs to look natural.

You need to know that "natural" doesn't really mean what we think it does - it just needs a lot of work to make a computer algorithm think it looks good.

For all those guys that spend so much time on "crafting" stuff - well I have to say that in these times you are way off the curve and it might pay a few thousand a month at a real push but that's all it will ever do.

[Swanson]

By the way I am in the camp that believes that nothing better will come along.

We are now in a situation where the functional web has matured - we use Facebook as our gateway to the internet and we use Google to search for things we don't know.

That is how it is now, anything else will just not happen - just in the way that Windows is the OS of choice, everyone said that free Linux systems would kill it.

But it didn't, and the world moves on with Microsoft still in our lives!

As I see it the Internet gateway is ruled by Apple Apps and that is the market everyone else will try to go for.

[CainIV]

I once got thrown off a 6'5" guys back, in grade 6, after trusting him to show me what a suplex was (true story)

I quickly learned after this that life is about learning lessons and innovating.

While many are joining in on the big brand Google train, others, like those who have been suplexed, got up, dusted themselves off, and found ANGLES in marketing that Google doesn't want, or care to touch.

The people that are doing this are next years' big brands. (No word of a lie)

Innovate, look outside the box.

[tshirtdeal]

Swanson,

I will disagree with you on Google and Facebook equaling what MS has done...

I think both Google and Facebook could easily be knocked out if someone wanted to do it today... Even after the government had to get involved to bring down MS I don't see people changing OS twenty years from now at all.

One reason I think Google was able to fly under the radar, and perhaps intentionally because I don't study them or their business plan is simply because no one saw any money in what they were doing (or any of the search for that matter)... I mean while they built and developed all they were was a free search engine...

I think the main difference between Facebook and Google is they both have had predecessors who are still competition, MS has never had any competition or anyone to compete against... yeah now they have Apple but they really are still dominating. I think it is possible that something like MS never occurs again... Search engines and social networks will change a lot before I pass on.

Last point, Google and Facebook have a "fad" type marketing gimic...Part of why Google won out was because it was a new hip thing to say that hit the mainstream from popular television shows... I bet for over 50% of Google users it has nothing to do with liking the search results, it has to do with years ago when it was cool to "google".

Facebook simply won over when it wasn't cool to Myspace anymore...

[tshirtdeal]

I think both Google and Facebook could easily be knocked out if someone wanted to do it today

Let me rephrase that... I don't think it would be easy nor done in a day... I think people can put together a business plan to overtake them in the future... At least a whole lot more and easier then one could try to do to MS...

[tshirtdeal]

Alright, I'm gonna go further and get blabby...

When you look at how Gates tried to compete in the search market it is actually interesting... He was trying to win by loading IE with his default MSN search and build a search around his browser... They built a nice homepage with (what I consider) good news and so forth... Things like MSN finance have been superior to me...

Google fought back (defended itself) with Chrome...

Gates realizes Google got it's push from it's trendy media hyped name and restructures with the media hyped catchy and flashy Bing to capitalize more market share...

I know this is all common sense but it is interesting to say the least... MSN couldn't make a dent with substance and is making a bit of noise with hype...

[Jane_Doe]

tshirtdeal, I wouldn't worry about the macro outlook between major players like Facebook, MSN and Google long term. Just go with the flow.

Just experiment. Sometimes the oddest stuff will make a pile of money. There are still lots and lots of untapped niches out there. Make some new sites in different niches. Unless you are a savvy black hat type just make sites that comply with Google and Bing's guidelines. Thin affiliate database sites are not easy to get to rank any more and that is probably only going to get even more difficult in the future. Unless you have a black hat business model, make sites that would pass a Google human review with flying colors.

[tshirtdeal]

Hi Jane,


Yeah, I am not talking so much about my future , just opening up discussion.. I am a "cup half full guy" I pretty much consider my days of SEO and web done... If I can come back with what I built I will, if not as I said it would take a lot for me to get back in it... My biggest regret would be not pursuing an education in web design which really is my favorite part of the entire deal. I really wish I focused on that when I was young and pursued it in formal education.

Sometimes the oddest stuff will make you a ton of money

If all fails, that is what I will bank on to return... My own products... patented...

[netmeg]

It also could be useful to comb your logs, analytics and sales to look for emerging trends or niches. I noticed a particular traffic pattern this year that caught my eye for the first time; went back over the past five years of data and found steady growth, and now I am having a site developed in a niche that, as far as I can tell, *nobody* has tapped before. At least I can't find anything like it, and I know how to find things. But it never would have occurred to me if I hadn't been eyeballing my stats, looking for anomalies.

[tshirtdeal]

Thin affiliate database sites are not easy to get to rank any more

The funny thing is though my site had been growing, (In traffic, not sales) the last six month unbelievably .. Google was eating up my content and without any solid link structure at all... I haven't even got a link I tried for really (other then writing an article and just putting it out "free for grabs")in 2 years.

I mean I would throw up a page on a competitive keyword and be on the 1st or 2nd page in a week and it hold....

I just made a dumb mistake, I believe I know what it was (thanks to someone on this board)and hopefully Google will see some compassion with me as I try to restructure...

[zett]

I think the OP has some valid points, but from a content producers point of view, I can not be bothered. I see that the "big places" do not "produce" content, let alone "quality content". They re-use existing stuff, usually by either scraping the content (e.g. Google for its search engine), or by attracting user-generated content (UGC). It is worth noting that a lot of the UGC is also not original content created by the users but just scraped content from elsewhere. So we see a lot of junk and very little quality content.

With that in mind, it is rather easy to keep on making a business on the Web. All you need to do is create original high quality content and attract traffic through ALL available sources (social networks, SEO, link building), not just search engines.

The problem is certainly to be recognized as a "quality" site instead of a junk site. if you manage to do that, however, you can sell your own services, sell (useful!) links, and still make money off the web. And while this happens, Google and other search engines gets less important every day.

SEO as a function will be important for a while, but the tactics will move away from trying to re-engineer SE algos and tweak the HTML code towards a wider understanding of what users see in and want from a web site.

[kumar_r]

Just my opinion:

They way I see it is that G is a content aggregator, They have to play with Numbers which make sense to them, you have a content site, and goog sends you x – traffic, it expects that you put adsense, so that it makes money out of the traffic sent to your site, if they don’t make money they would eventually trip you out of the system.

2nd Case, you have a content-website, and if your other source traffic is more than google, and on top of it you are sharing your ad-rev with Goog, logically they would like you more, and they would keep on liking you till the time the time your other traffic source is more than GOOG 

3rd point to ponder.. if you don’t put Analytics, they can get your website traffic stats, through adsense, or through their admanager or their toolbar.

4th The Best Part, They don’t need the above Data anyway (they could simply see how much traffic sent to your website and how much money was earned from the website)

Finally.. if a right guy is running a goog, he/she would have put a price on each of our web-site, and his job would be to get that amount from that website on monthly basis, to achieve this he would throttle the traffic in such a way that he achieves the target :)

I rest my case by saying, that you need to get direct traffic to your website. And that should help your SEO effort to work (we all do SEO, more or less the same way, it is just that when it does not work, we find another variable to blame the reason for not working ;)

[londrum]

i think google and facebook can be knocked out too.

i really dont understand what the attraction is with facebook. how did it get so huge? as far as i can work out, its just a glorified chat program. it's just an address book, photo album and blog all stuck together. the only reason that it will be difficult to shift is because its got such a massive user base behind it. people wont move over to another site if all their friends remain with facebook. even if something better comes along, it doesn't matter, you'll stay where your friends are.

google, on the other hand, is different. user loyalty could be gone in a day. there is no reason to stick with chrome if a better browser comes along. no reason to stick with their search engine if Bing improves. no reason to stick with google news if something better catches your eye.
gmail is probably the only thing that i'd stick with, because it would be too much hassle changing over my addresses. but how much money does that make google?

if i had to put my money on which one will still be at the top of the tree in 10 years, it would be facebook.

[lexipixel]

My ideas to dethrone the kings of the hill:

How to Kill Facebook: Create client software for a peer to peer social network -- one where the only thing you share with "the network" is a username and password. When you are online (using the client software) the info you have on your computer that is marked for "sharing" would be available to your peers.

How to kill Google: build a distributed search engine. It would be similar in structure to DMOZ (The Open Directory Project), except the editors would "own" their listings -- the core of the engine would be a nightly build of indices -- not the data, that would reside in thousands or millions of databases... If someone searches for "blue widget" the search client would geo-target them (if applicable) and search indices that were geographically close to them first for "blue widgets" and also search the index of the "widgets" category editor. Google could never catch up and never kill it -- and of course Google would be blocked from "scraping" the indices and data.

This Google killer, (a distributed search engine), is something I've talked with many people about. Lets say you are running a niche site for "Skydiving in Montana" or "Best Brownie Recipes" -- you would use open source "directory" software that would presents the results to users on your site -- at the same time, you would allow a bot to pick up an XML index of your directory, (META data only, no "content"), then if someone on the MT Skydiving site, or any other site which participated in the network searched for brownie recipes, they would be directed to your site --- it's a totally democratic, decentralized database -- nobody would ever own it, and you would be rewarded with traffic for keeping your sub-set of the data current, well written and free of spam.

[plumsauce]

... but from a content producers point of view, I can not be bothered.

In some of my very old posts, I made the assertion that in the "content is king" arena, the most unique and valuable content is web services that are impossible or difficult to duplicate.

If it is a useful service then sites talking about it can only link. Scraping is of no value because the service cannot be accessed by mere page duplication. The customer has no choice but to go to the origin site.

Some of these services command middle $xx per click in adwords. It's a useful edge to be on page one in the organics when competitors are paying to be on the same page.

At one time, the internet was small enough that everything was a unique find. Now it's flooded with clones of every imaginable type made by those who do not have the stomach to build something of lasting value.

Content is still king. It's just harder to make.