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.

[Shepherd]

Was just searching google for (freelance writers) with the hope of finding websites from which to hire writers. Thought that would be a good search term to find what I needed. All of the ads provided were for websites where writers could be hired. Non of the organic results were.

[RedBar]

All of the ads provided were for websites where writers could be hired. Non of the organic results were.

Everyone here knows I am not a G defender however G's SERPs algo can only deliver what IT deems the nearest possible result from its spidering:-)

The vast majority of websites are NOT updated weekly/monthly, let's be honest, not even yearly, therefore anyone searching for something is very unlikely to find a reasonably relevant result in the regular SERPs whereas an advertiser can target their keywords etc...

For example, I run a very popular hotel/bar site, it is updated several times a week, G knows this and the SERPs are reflected by this and it does extremely well both as a website and the high occupancy rates at the hotel. This was driven by both myself and the owner after I explained a few years ago how the SERPs and "other activities" generated interest plus improved rankings.

Then again I have my own business websites which are, to all and intents and purposes, evergreen sites, and getting G to update ANYTHING apart from it initial spidering etc, is a ruddy nightmare. These sites have to be absolutely "spot on" from day 1 otherwise G simply couldn't give a fig about them no matter how good and authoritative they may be.

G's doing a 50/50 job insofar as my experience is concerned across several business areas, really well in some and absolutely abysmal in others.

My consclusion?

G's strength is in mass, popular, predictable stuff.

It's weakness has no understanding whatsoever in many specialist and technical areas unless it's OEM produced details.

Every day I see glaring widget trade errors/mistakes in the knowledge box, every day I report these, obviously NO ONE takes any notice.

[Mark_A]

I am rethinking my G SEO strategy. We paid 6 months of SEO work, during that period our organic traffic went down. At least with PPC you get visitors for your money, with SEO there are no guarantees at all.

[aristotle]

Thought that would be a good search term to find what I needed. All of the ads provided were for websites where writers could be hired. Non of the organic results were.

Google has changed its algorithm to interpret search terms much more broadly. If you want results for a specific term, the algorithm looks for results for broader less-relevant terms. Google calls these "super synonyms". This is a big reason why google's search results have gotten worse. I noticed this problem a few weeks ago and started a thread about it then.

[Shepherd]

I agree with the "super synonyms" issue. However, this is not the case for this search. This is an example of lack (removal) of commercial organic results from the SERPs for a search term (freelance writers).

[aristotle]

Well if the algorithm fills up the first page with less-relevant results, then the more-relevant commercial results get pushed down to lower pages.

[Shepherd]

Another search, another set of manipulated organic results. (email marketing service) returns no "expected" results until pages 2-3. Thankfully the ads are all on point.