Time to Rethink the Strategy of Trying to get google Organic Traffic

[Shepherd]

I don't know what I don't know but I can tell you this: If you are trying to get organic traffic from google you are now competing directly with google. You will lose. google is too good at what they do.

The primary function of the SERPs is to generate ad clicks. Try and sugar coat it all you want with altruistic sprinkles but at the end of the day google is a business and their business is generating ad revenue. And again, they are very good at it. How good? Well, google reported that in the third quarter 2018 they had a 62% year over year increase in paid clicks on google properties from the third quarter in 2017. That's pretty good.

How did they do this? "Optimization" Specifically optimizing the SERPs to encourage ad clicks. Every move made now and forward will be with an eye towards this goal. Every change will be measured by AI to determine the affect on ad clicks. Ad clicks are/will be the first and most heavily weighted metric considered when analyzing changes to the SERPs. Every component of the SERPs will be tested, the layout, the ads, the widgets, and the organic results.

Many will dismiss this, that's fine. While you contemplate links, structured data, and article word count google's only concern will be whether or not your site in the organic results has a negative or positive affect on ad clicks. No website is immune from being judged by this metric. I have seen a website backed by google ventures and spending millions on ads find their organic listing on page 3 after years of dominating the organic results. Being backed by google ventures you can bet they had the best SEO advice available.

I don't have the answer as to what you should do now but know this, keep toiling away trying to get that free traffic and you're spitting into the wind.

[EditorialGuy]

I should add that Google only takes a small portion of ad-revenue when it shows AdSense ads but when it shows ads on its own property it takes 100% of the revenue. So Google isn't fully indifferent, it prefers to keep users on it own properties.

But Google can't just keep people on its own properties, and in some cases (news sites, for example), people are likely to bypass search or use the ad-free Google News to get where they're going. That's why Google has AdSense and other ad platforms: There's an advertising world out there that's much bigger than Google Search.

[justpassing]

How many small sites do you know that have been white-listed by adblock?

971 non paid whitelisting. 5 of them are mine.

And are they doing more with the imposed restrictions in ad quantity and placements?

The restriction are only for Adblock plus users. You can server anything else you want to "others". It works pretty well for me.

Any way this is not the main problem many of us are facing at this moment.

I think it is. Your comment is showing it, you want everything to be smiple, easy and free. A whole generation of web publishers believe everything is owed to them. You press a button and wordpress is installed and configured, you type random articles, and Google has to deliver free traffic in mass, that you'll turn into money, and be rich. Simple and easy. I know that lot believe for real, they produce a hard work and that Google ruins it. But in reality, real hard work is not doing SEO to rank better at Google. Real hard work is when, you succeed to build something, which is not relying on Google's mood. You build original content, if needed your build your own tool to publish this content, you federate around your content people, community, clients, etc... So yes, it's not given to everybody to do this, but who said that the first comer is supposed to earn big money free immediately? After 20+ years, my sites rely on Google for 30% of the traffic roughly. 70% is totally independent. It requires lot of constant work over and over again, if you provide a good content, then people will always finish by finding you, and return. It may takes years, but this is it hard work.

Time to Rethink the Strategy of Trying to get google Organic Traffic

- The strategy might be to focus on other things than Google organic traffic, diversify your source of traffic, is THE strategy to apply.
- And about Google's organic traffic, then the strategy is to cover things that Google is not covering, or things which cannot be answered with a couple of lines. In my case, I've built communities since 20+ years, message board, cooperative work, etc... There are barely no ads showing on SERPS for my keywords, Youtube videos are not making sense in these domains, and since these niches are based on dialog/exchanges between people, there is not really answer boxes either, or they are totally off topic,

[iamlost]

It is discouragingly sorrowful to be having this conversation every year for the past decade.

Yes, Google modifies results pages to withhold referring traffic, that's why answer and knowledge boxes et al.
Yes, Google modifies results pages to redirect traffic to own properties such as YouTube, image search, maps, etc.
This is NOT new. Get over it.

If Google's AdSense revenue stream maintains or increases year after year, as it has, ipso facto many/most publishers do NOT will NOT experience decreases let alone continuing decreases - the silent majority is doing quite well.
Silently.

Every business aka most sites should have becoming a destination as a critical business goal. A destination is simply a business with return visitors/customers; the greater percentage of repeaters the better the destination. It need not be some behemoth, i.e. a corner grocery store can be an awesome destination business.

SE traffic, especially Google traffic, is, particularly for smaller sites, almost entirely 'new'. A great many sites are either so bad or so narrowly optimised at converting first time visitors they fail at reasons to return.
Destination fail by design.

A site that can not attract return visitors is also likely to be a site unable to attract other sites 'natural' links.
Note: there are exceptions, I can think of several, but generally the above holds.

Listening to so many so regularly voice the same complaints leads me to wonder if Canute's apocryphal demonstration of limits actually convinced anyone.

Yes, one should be getting traffic before - and after - and from Google: it's known as traffic diversification; it has been recommended since before there was Google; yes, there was a time before Google.

One can have traffic from multiple search engines, from multiple social applications/platforms, from multiple referring sites, all at the same time. Honestly. I know I'm far from alone in this.

Is it easy? No.
Is it harder now than previously? Probably.
So? What did do you expect?

[scottb]

I largely agree with the logic of the original post. I'll make two related comments:

1. The reverse of what you are saying means that Google doesn't want people to click on organic search results. Yes, it makes sense if Google wants to emphasize ad clicks. But it comes with a risk of discouraging people from coming to google.com if both the ad results and the organic results are weak.

2. Regarding this sentence: "Well, google reported that in the third quarter 2018 they had a 62% year over year increase in paid clicks on google properties from the third quarter in 2017." It's also possible that Google is shifting more and more high-quality ads away from partners for the sake of increasing its own revenue and profit.

Google used to report indepth details about partner revenue and clicks when they were increasing year over year, then stopped a few years ago. It seems likely they didn't want partners to know they were taking share away (except for YouTube).

[MrSavage]

You can't dismiss the dead webmaster community. Right. The majority are killing it. That silent majority? Oh the negativity drove people away and people are killing it with their websites while avoiding webmaster world.

Talking about success with a website that is 10+ years is IRRELEVANT. If you can't figure out why? Circumstances are in your favor. You are not a web expert because of prominence achieved at a time when there was a partnership between Google and webmasters.

The financials don't lie. How did Google make more now than EVER before? It wasn't by sending traffic to more websites that's for sure. Ignoring facts is a good way to misguide people or support your flawed view of the health of the web.

Go ahead and say you 10, 15 year site properties are indicative of how to kill it in 2018. Provide theories why the post count is what it is on webmaster world.

[Malanje]

I'm not a professional webmaster. My visitors are from regions that use massively Google to conduct their searches. I am at top positions in search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo, Lilo, health247, izito, etc. but they represent less than 2% of my organic traffic.
Yes I do depend of Google and I cannot do anything about it. I wish I had a clue of what to do. Every time Google ask to me to dance, I'll do it. G+, Responsive, Amp, HTTPS, you name it.

Even Google search results are very volatile in quality. I invite you to a little experiment that hope it works in the same way as with me. Go to google.es and type PERNO Y CORONA in the search form. Among the results I get two with the same website, one after another, with almost the same page and description. With so few places in the SERPS 1st page why a website gets two places with the same stuff?

[robzilla]

I'll just leave this little tidbit for anyone convinced Google's year-over-year growth is due to "optimization":

India will be a key driver of Android revenue growth as the number of smartphone users in the country grows from 300 million in 2017 to 585 million in 2020. Currently, 96% of all active smartphones in the country run Android. Other emerging markets where Android is dominant like Indonesia will also see rapid growth, with 55 million smartphone users in 2017 growing to almost 100 million in 2020. Countries, where iOS has traditionally been dominant, have also seen a slight increase in Android’s market share, such as the United States where it went from 45.7% in October 2016 to 48.3% in November 2017.

Insights into the 2.3 Billion Android Smartphones in Use Around the World [newzoo.com]

That's just a few countries. Some 1.5 billion Android devices are shipped each year, roughly 150 million people newly gain access to the internet, and daily time spent on devices continues to grow, to name just a few relevant facts. What do you think that does to the number of Google searches, YouTube views, and, by extension, the number of ad clicks?

It's true that "the financials don't lie" (I hope), but they don't tell a story either. If you're going to make a guess, at least make it an educated one.

As for the premise: yes, diversification of SERPs and increased competition make it more difficult to get organic search traffic. The web is always in flux, and you'll need to adapt, but I see no end to the inclusion of SEO as part of a healthy marketing mix. If organic search is not working for you, and that's your only strategy, then obviously you'll need to rethink that; if you don't, that sense of "spitting into the wind" is on you.

[edited by: robzilla at 10:33 pm (utc) on Nov 3, 2018]

[Shepherd]

- The strategy might be to focus on other things than Google organic traffic, diversify your source of traffic, is THE strategy to apply.

Exactly. There's no point in the futile effort of ranking in the google organic results, especially if it is completely out of one's control. ( I say this because ranking in google used to be fully within a webmaster's control) That effort is better spent elsewhere now.

It's also possible that Google is shifting more and more high-quality ads away from partners for the sake of increasing its own revenue and profit.

How does this increase "paid clicks on google properties?" (That's not a snarky question, I'm genuinely interested in what your talking about.)

[Shepherd]

roughly 150 million people newly gain access to the internet, and daily time spent on devices continues to grow, to name just a few relevant facts.

Excellent points Robzilla, however, increased volume of searches does not account for a 25% drop in organic CTR on desktop and 55% drop in organic CTR on mobile in recent history. Just out of curiosity, why is it that you so firmly believe that google is the only business online that purposely does not optimize their web pages for conversions?

[MrSavage]

Hint: it rhymes with hill...

[robzilla]

increased volume of searches does not account for a 25% drop in organic CTR on desktop and 55% drop in organic CTR on mobile in recent history

I'm not aware of that being a general trend, and certainly my own statistics point in the opposite direction. So if that's something you're seeing on your properties, I can see how that would be frustrating, as well as a call to action ("rethink the strategy"), but I don't see how that proves that Google is "optimizing the SERPs to encourage ad clicks". Many factors play into CTRs, and that one seems rather unlikely, given that...

why is it that you so firmly believe that google is the only business online that purposely does not optimize their web pages for conversions?

I think you may have the wrong idea of what a conversion is to Google. Whenever someone uses their search engine, the best possible outcome for Google is that the user intent is met, and that the user has the best experience possible, because that's what keeps them coming back for more (with new opportunities for clicks on ads). Sometimes that's going to be a blue link, other times it's an answer box or what have you, and sometimes it's going to be an ad. It's not possible for an ad, a blue link, or any other SERP feature to always offer the best answer to any given query. That's why we increasingly see a mix of these features, and new ones being added or experimented with all the time. Now, if you intentionally downgrade the quality of the blue links, the statistics are going to show you a peak in ad clicks and short-term revenue, but they'll also show increased abandonment rates and lower return rates (not to mention the brightest minds in information retrieval quitting their jobs), all of which is likely to snowball and negatively affect long-term growth. In the end, keeping users happy, even when they're not always clicking ads, is a much more profitable long-term strategy. That's the way to have your cake and eat it, and Google is in it for the long haul.

[Shepherd]

I'm not aware of that being a general trend, and certainly my own statistics point in the opposite direction. So if that's something you're seeing on your properties,...

Not my statistics, data is from a recent study relating to organic CTRs on unbranded, transactional (commercial) search terms.

Your view of what a conversion is to google is altruistic at best. I've reviewed many quarterly reports from google and I don't recall ever seeing any "number of searches where searcher intent was met" statistics reported. google's customer is the advertiser and a conversion on the SERPs is an ad click. The quality of the blue links (organic results) and searcher "happiness" are not mutually exclusive. In many transactional searches, especially on mobile, the searcher never even sees an organic result, they never make it below the fold.

[robzilla]

While the case study [moz.com] you're presumably referring to has its flaws, I don't necessarily doubt the conclusion. The landscape is changing, as it always has been, and you can't expect to hold on to your share of the pie forever, but none of this is new, as iamlost noted, and none of all this in any way suggests Google is (or even has a need to) manipulate organic results.

I've reviewed many quarterly reports from google and I don't recall ever seeing any "number of searches where searcher intent was met" statistics reported.

They're financial reports. The investors probably don't care, and to Google that would be private, competitive data.

Google is a business, so I don't have any illusions of it being driven by pure altruism, nor am I denying that that 62% year-over-year growth may partly be a result of more ads being shown, or ads being shown differently, or searches shifting to mobile where ads are more prominently visible, and so forth, but I don't buy into the idea of full-on egotism either, where they're funneling everyone towards ad clicks. It's not so black-and-white, a balance needs to be struck where user satisfaction is ensured along with continued growth. That only works if users trump advertisers, the philosophy [google.com] being that if you focus on the user, all else will follow.

[Shepherd]

Fantastic, all great points.

However, you're making the assumption that "user" satisfaction would be harmed by a "tweaking" of the organic results on the SERPs.

Being that the majority of users (searchers) do not differentiate paid ads from organic listings and that for many, many transactional searches the organic listings are displayed "below the fold" on the SERPs it could be said that the great minds at google have determined that organic listings are not the integral factor in user satisfaction they used to be. It would not be far fetched to think that flipping the #1 organic result with the #3 organic result would have much less impact on user satisfaction than displaying organic listings section below the fold.

Sure, the old "company line" is that the organic results are sacred but things change. There was a time when doctors recommended some very unhealthy behavior based on "company lines."

Below the fold, re-writing titles, re-writing snippets... the organic results are not the sacred cog in the machine they once were.

[NickMNS]

I made the argument somewhere above and I will restate it. Google has a trade-off to balance, it must provide the best organic search result and it it needs to sell ads. In a world of true competition, as when Google first started, Google needed to tip the balance in favor of the best organic search results. Had Google jumped on the scene with more ads the results everyone would have laughed and left. But over the years the competitive environment has shifted, Google no longer has any meaningful competition in search and this allows Google to tip the balance towards more ads in the search results and more links to its own properties. The balance could never be shifted completely towards ads as there will come a point that users will leave and seek out new alternatives, maybe not another search engine but something else. So there should always be room for organic traffic. But the room for organic results will decline (or maybe it's reached its limit already?) and the number of players fighting for those spots will likely continue to grow.

[EditorialGuy]

So there should always be room for organic traffic. But the room for organic results will decline (or maybe it's reached its limit already?) and the number of players fighting for those spots will likely continue to grow.

I think the "room for organic results" may decline for types of queries (e-commerce, for example, where shopping ads and such are useful content) but not for others (informational topics where ads are non-existent or are less likely to meet the searcher's needs).

Some of us are old enough to remember when Yellow Pages phone directories, mail-order sections of magazines like POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY, and publications like COMPUTER SHOPPER were important. It isn't too hard to imagine the commercial SERPs of Google, Bing, etc. becoming digital-era analogs of those publications from the not-so-distant past.

[iamlost]

@robzilla: thanks for linking so I didn't have to go searching!

That Moz piece has its problems (most short non-academic articles do) such that I'd like an hour or two of discussion before I'd actually be willing to 'use' its conclusions beyond broad trajectory points. That said, it does illustrate that what is (was a year ago) is but a point down a path of change over years. Something that a few of us here have been mentioning for just as long.

The most pertinent, to me, point is the following quote:

The good news is that this is impacting everyone in e-commerce equally, and all those search clicks are still happening — in other words, those users haven’t gone away. The growth in the number of searches each year means that you probably aren’t seeing huge losses in organic traffic; instead, it will show as small losses or anemic growth. The bad news is that it will cost you — as well as your competitors — more money to capture the same overall share of search traffic.

Where I differ is that, unlike Mr. Wood who as a site SEO is focussed on search, that being his job, I can look beyond Google and search generally, to maintain/grow traffic being diverted by new features. He mentions adding PLA and paid search to make up the difference/loss. I say simply go elsewhere for traffic - especially as search is often the lowest conversion value traffic. There is increased cost either way; which is most diverse least likely to be pulled out from under one? Again.

Organic traffic is not confined to G nor to search. Breaking an addiction is never easy and always agonising. It would have been less so a decade ago or last year but remains a valid solution.

Or one can keep complaining that the tide heeds one not.

[robzilla]

Sure, the old "company line" is that the organic results are sacred but things change

Things mostly change around the organic results, in that they now have to share the real-estate that used to be mostly theirs. They're still the essence of the Search product, and just as sacred, but, especially for competitive commercial queries, ads increasingly push them down the page. These also often tend to be the types of queries where the difference between ads and organic results are relatively small. Search for "hotels in London" and, from a user experience, it doesn't really matter if you click an ad or one of the top blue links. But I'm generalizing a bit here.

Also note that there are SERP features that, in turn, crowd out the ads. A search for something like "books on space" will probably show you that. If everything on the SERPs is, in fact, optimized to promote ad clicks at the expense of other features, that wouldn't make any sense.

[Shepherd]

I think I understand the position...

google does:
Push the organic results below the fold
Re-write the titles
Re-write the snippets

but the line in the sand... no way will they re-organize the organic results that they organize... got it.

[Shaddows]

I think I understand the position...

google does:
Push the organic results below the fold
Re-write the titles
Re-write the snippets

but the line in the sand... no way will they re-organize the organic results that they organize... got it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "no way will they re-organize the organic results", but equally, there is no way that they would deliberately degrade the user experience, because that would reduce their revenue trajectory for the next few quarters. They want to maximise revenue tomorrow, as well as today.

I'm not saying they wouldn't do it out of principle. They wouldn't do it because it is counterproductive and reduces revenue over the medium term.

Which the same reason all info sites don't produce substandard articles on the spurious basis that it will encourage people to click the affiliate links.

[nettulf]

But Google is not a info site. For most people in the world Google IS the internet, they do not know about anything else. It has 92.3% market share as of September 2018 according to WIki.

When people type something in the address bar they are on Google. When they use their Android phone they are on Google. It even has its own verb!

Google can get away with a lot more than any standard info site. People will go there anyway. And I feel like they are trying out how far they can go with all the latest changes. My personal opinion of course.

[justpassing]

One must not forget that, if ads are pushing down organic results, this is because, some are paying ... and its normal that those paying, be shown "higher". Also, and as I mentioned at another topic, this is not because ads are showing first, that it means that organic results are ignored. If ads are irrelevant, people will not click on them, if the landing page of the advertiser is irrelevant, or deceitful people will come back to the SERP, until they can get what they are looking for.

[Shepherd]

there is no way that they would deliberately degrade the user experience,

Yes, I agree with the premise. However, I still put forth that minor tweaks to the organic results (fine tuning) does not necessarily degrade the user (searcher) experience.

There is constant flux in the how the SERPs are displayed; testing.
There is constant flux in the ranking of organic sites; testing..
Searched for "red widgets nebraska", Missing: nebraska; testing...

Personalized search. A "re-organization" of the organic results based on the searcher.

The organic results is no longer a list of websites ranked by algorithm in order of relevance to the search term. The "organic results" is a section of content displayed on the SERPs, content curated by google. I love this statement from google: "There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well."

At the end of the day I started this thread not to bash google, they are a business and they are not doing anything that the rest of us businesses are (should be) doing. I merely wanted to point out that ranking in google organic results is likely out of the webmaster's control and maybe we should get back to business instead of chasing rankings.

[robzilla]

ranking in google organic results is likely out of the webmaster's control and maybe we should get back to business instead of chasing rankings.

It is and it isn't, and "chasing ranking" and "getting back to business" aren't mutually exclusive. Things aren't so black and white.

But "chasing rankings" does have connotations of applying tricks to try and get ahead, and that's certainly something you need to leave behind (or should have years ago). SEO is primarily about making your site as "search engine friendly" as possible, about choosing your keywords wisely, the basic stuff. More and more, we're moving toward search engines that reward good user experiences, so if you've got the basics down all you need to do is focus on improving your business, on the user, and "all else will follow". As with anything, though, not everyone can come out on top.

[Mark_A]

Google users are not dissatisfied with the ad model, as far as they are concerned they are still getting valuable results to their searches, some of them are even unaware there are ads. Meanwhile Google has transformed into a money making machine. As long as search users are satisfied, and businesses continue to pay, it is hard to see how the situation will change.

[EditorialGuy]

Yes, I agree with the premise. However, I still put forth that minor tweaks to the organic results (fine tuning) does not necessarily degrade the user (searcher) experience.

But Google doesn't need to tweak (a.k.a. corrupt) the organic results. It doesn't need to lie to the public about a "Chinese wall" and piss off its search staff. Simply tweaking the user interface, as opposed to the organic results, is likely to be far more productive. That approach has certainly worked well for Google so far.

[Shepherd]

But Google doesn't need to tweak (a.k.a. corrupt) the organic results.

One wouldn't think so... but they do.

They do re-write titles.
They do re-write descriptions.
They do show "personalized" organic results.
They do omit keywords from the user's search.

All "corruptions" to the purity of the organic results.

[MrSavage]

Let's no forget about search results that are void of some or all the words a user typed into the box. Ads aren't void of search terms or relevance are they? Ads are important to Google obviously and if you pay to show up for "oranges" yet they place you in "grapefruit" searches, anyone suggesting advertisers would be okay with that? On the flip side being a relevant ad on a results page that doesn't quite match the users inquiry? That's great for ad business.

[scottb]

How does this increase "paid clicks on google properties?" (That's not a snarky question, I'm genuinely interested in what your talking about.)

If Google controls the distribution of ads to partners, it can control where ads are placed and the probability they will get clicks based on their quality and click potential. So Google can increase the number of clicks on its properties (and revenue) by shifting higher-quality ads with higher click potential from partners to Google websites. As a result, it means more profit and revenue for Google and less for partners.

If you go look at older Google financial reports, you'll see a gradual decline in metrics for partners. Then Google really shut off the partner data so we couldn't see how much money they were moving from us to its own properties.

I'm pretty confident those high-paying, very clickable Carnival cruise ads I used to get on my travel site are now showing up on Google properties. But at least I'm getting some great belly fat ads. :)

[tangor]

View G with a script or ad blocker and it is just a search engine.

Browsers are headed that way, users (some, not all) are already there.

YMMV

A look from the user side, and not what webmasters want to hear...