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With recent Goto-AV deal announced it is about time that this thread [webmasterworld.com] resurfaced. The original question was a good one back in July and is even better now.
Here's my cannon fodder: I see the SE world as handling (at a very high level) two different kinds of searches; 1)commercial searches 2)non-commercial searches.
Commercial searches: hotels, vacation resorts, retail goods, online services, mp3, pokemon - basically anything that has a revenue stream attached to it.
Non-commercial searches: college students doing research for history papers and political science papers, general information on non-revenue producing topics.
So what does this mean to us in the light of PFP and PPC? Well, obviously AV is trying to dig out of a big hole of red ink and they see that those upstarts at goto are making money from listing website - a service that AV has been giving away for free. They also see that Looksmart is charging money for inclusion and they haven't gone out of business yet. Let's not forget INK and their new pay for listing but not necessarily ranking program.
That leaves us with Google and Fast as the best remaining free spidering engines. Is that going to be enough to support the world of SEO? I don't know. Here's the problem for SEO'ers out there - all of a sudden our prowess at optimization is less useful if we can just buy rank at goto and have that filter into Netscape, AOL, MSN and so forth. This is what will happen for the commecial types - they have the money to do it. Granted there is still room for free listings (generally non-commmercial types) - but here's the rub: those that will use the free listing services are not the people that have the money to pay us to optimize their pages. Let's also not for get the free listings are buried beneath the fertile soil of the paid listings.
It's like I wrote to rc in a recent email: Folks are more willing to pay for a bunch of new html in the form of doorways or envelope pages but they aren't as willing to lay out money for something that is guaranteed. They'll pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for html but they won't put $1000 bucks in a goto account that is guaranteed traffic. This is good thing if they are a competitor and a bad thing if they are a client.
The upshot is us SEO types are between a rock and a hard place. None of my clients are willing to pay out the bucks to get listed everywhere. They simply don't understand how it works and if we tell them too much they can go and do it without us.
I know I haven't answered the question but it is food for thought.
Edited by: rcjordan
A lot has to do with the level of client. Redzone is still going to be battling away on "mortgage" for the big banks, or so I suspect. I think most second-tier, Fortune 5000 companies will stay. But the third-tier guys are just going to see this as another level of complexity in an already bewildering system. Also many of the SE setups are PPView and not PPClick, so the results are going to be far from guaranteed on those, same for PFPlay like INK -no promises there.
As you say, another factor is what the client is "converting." If he's been driven by online ad revenue, then he must extract $10 CPM from his clients to just break even at .01 CPC. A tall order in today's ad market -particulary for a mid-size site.
Most of all, for the small businessman it will be the negative perception of "renting vs owning."
[typo!]
Edited by: rcjordan
I really doubt Google will hold out from PPC on their own site too much longer. The keyword ad system is nothing more than a "system test" for them to move to PPC. How long that will be is anyone's guess. Now that some of the voices in the wind (eg: rumormill) has Yahoo telling google they aren't interested in purchasing them at this time, I think it frees up Google to pursue their own thing on their own site - that includes ppc.
And with that, we will be to the point of the SE's leading the final transition from the web as a global community to the web as the earth mega mall.
I just don't see how there is any future for low profits or non-profits on the web via search engines. You can't dangle your feet in the waters of the web anymore. You either layout a 100 grand to start a serious site, or you are going to have to figure out an alternative means of promotion.
The big question I see for the future, is how to do away with unproductive traffic. With se's now routinely out spidering their referrals on many many small sites, the trend away from "all traffic is good" to true targetted traffic is here. That is where PPC fits into the equation. The more we can produce follow up results with our kw buys, the more a site will be willing to dedicate to se promotion.
Maybe it is time we change our mantra from Search Engine Promotion to Search Engine Advertising?
While I have never described myself as an SEO, I do descibe myself as a web marketer. I get good results from SEs, but they have always formed just a part of the overall marketing plan.
I think in the commercial arena PPC could well be a Good Thing, as it frees up the site description etc for pure marketing ie killer descriptions et al with keyword choice already dealt with. As Brett said, it's more akin to advertising / marketing than optimisation.
As to non-commercial sites, I think researchers / students etc will already be using non-mainstream engines such as NL and niche sites and so PPC will have little bearing here.
Now I've just got to plant the idea of PPC in my boss's mind in preparation for the inevitable ;)
What I was getting at was that people using SEs for serious research tend to be more savvy than the ordinary user, and will use the site that gives them best results eg niche directories etc. If PPC lowers the quality of results (for them) on the big SEs, they'll know there are other options.
I too tend to use Google for research because I can usually find answers to obscure questions, but if that stopped happening I'd use Fast, NL, whatever worked for me.
With the PPC yes no worrying about how your description will come out in the engine. Target the market you are looking for...
Disadvantage.. that I find is that the PPC will be much higher now. Webmasters that were paying 1c a click at position 18 will now have to pay from 7-12c per click as now more will be looking at that area of promotion. It is going to become more competive and costly.
I can't remember where I saw this quote but it sticks in my mind..... "He with the most cash will get more traffic"
What will have to happen is that webmasters will have to budget this in to the scheme of things. They will have to pay the big dollars for VERY specific Keywords.
A separate domain for PPC is a must imho.
There must be a system in place to accurately track conversion rates.
There must be a formula to determine the true cost of the conversion and that must be subtracted from gross profit.
Then the trick for us is to be able to "average down" the PPC cost without degrading the conversion rate.
Retention and return visits as well as referrals "tell a friend" may be even more important now.
Community Building is another way of keeping them coming back and telling others.
[ends ramble]
Now this puzzles me. Do SEO-types view optimization as something stand-alone from advertising? I never have. Developing our keyword lists is simply a specialized form of demographic/target research. Selecting the proper category is no different than deciding whether to run your 1/4-page ad in the editorial or classified section of the newspaper.
>We need to start getting into the PPC mindset. It is coming to clients are going to need to pay for traffic. The sooner we all start to realize and promote the fact, the sooner we will see clients expecting to pay for traffic.
I've been seeing evidence of that already. This movement monetize searching is going to be a bonanza for established content sites with focused traffic. Small sites will seek them out to get placement, i.e. buy ads.
I've always considered SEO to be more in the way of keyword densities, judicious use of certain tags, cloaking, the old doorway/hallway/hidden-text type of thing.
Certainly nowadays I think the lines are becoming more blurred between good design, good marketing, and good SE strategy.
That's basically what INK will allow you to do.
< gore > Bribe them with $25 < / gore >
Seriously though we need to put an hourly price on our head and hook these guys up, thats the route I'm going. Luckily I am with a decent sized SEO company and we have some recognition it will be much harder for newbies to get the contacts.
That's my opinion for whatever its worth.
That is dead-on. They do not. IMO, it's either PPC or consulting now. If you're PPC the cost of acquiring the click is just another cost of business you'll have to factor in.
BTW, I've just now returned from making a quote to a real estate firm that wants to sponsor my regional travel and relocation webzine. Based on the "new order of the SE universe" I tripled the asking price and guaranteed focused traffic (conservatively). The director of marketing snapped up the deal.
2M
The mad rush of SE's to get part of the PPC revenue to ensure their survival will not be smooth.
If you plan to spend "real money" at goto, get an account executive ASAP.
RC...I agree with you, this seems to be the reality right now, the current state of affairs..but, how long will this last? The way the system is right now, it CAN'T possibly last long! It's just too easy to spam...in fact, it's not just spam we're talking about, the problem will be exacerbated because we're talking cash here...Spam in google, oh well...spam in GoTo will cost the person being spammed by competitors (person whose site is clicked on) a LOT of money...You'd be opening up a Pandora's box...especially for competitive shopping/business categories...I guess the justification would be that nobody would be able to afford to stay at the top for too long, so it'd be fair becuase different competitors will have a chance at being at the top spots...However, large companies with lots of money WILL be able to afford to stay at the top..and they will also be making the most money from the exposure...For us as SEO's (or wannabe's :-), this is disastrous...How are you going to explain to a client that invested $1000 in GoTo that his money dissappeared in one week (probably without enough conversions to make it justifiable)? Maybe I'm being too grim and pessimistic about this...but we all know that everyone is always looking out primarily for themselves, and GoTo's system is going to unleash the hounds...
As to their new partnerships...of course other companies are going to partner with GoTo..they're all in it for the money, and they only stand to gain from this...the only ones that lose are the investors...
I understand that this is the reality and we should somehow try to transform this new trend into something profitable...and I don't mean to be complaining about this...I'm just stating my belief that this won't last...In the meantime, I'll just observe from a distance how this whole thing develops without wasting more money.
Mike: Thanks for the advice, but I just don't think it's worth it.
2M
"Although they must now make serious concessions to their own business models and take steps to increase revenues from search traffic, search engines and directories must continue to act primarily as great referees, or the game will lose its meaning. We referred in an earlier column to GoTo's status as a 'high-octane bazaar,' and speculated that it would fly because a bazaar is often what consumers are looking for online. Often, but not always. Let's not fool ourselves into believing that all search engines can turn into unfettered advertising vehicles without some form of consumer backlash."
-AND-
Paul Bruemmer's The Homogenization Of Web Search [clickz.com] does a good job of rounding up all the current GoTo players. (Added: Which, come to find out, was copied from Laisha's post here in WebmasterWorld!)
Edited by: rcjordan
But, theres one part of all of this that I cant wrap my mind around.
Its been a dog fight up until now with each engine spending fortunes on building their portals and databases to try to attract the lions share of the online audience.
Marketing has revolved around each promoting that they have the biggest database or that they have "secret" technology which allows them to provide more relevant results then their competitors.
Is this not one of the underlying core premises upon which each of the various models are built. That if you select us as your engine, there is a greater probability that you will find what you are looking for and hence return when conducting your next search
By introducing PPC, are they not compromising the one way that they can differentiate themselves. Why would I select AV over Google or Go if all the listings were taken up by bidders with big pockets?
Somehow, I think that this transition into PFP and PPC is going to be far from elegant.
Although the average Internet user tends to view them generically, all online search engines are not alike.-article here [bergen.com]So Web surfer, beware: Ignore the differences, and you won't know what you're missing.
Knowing how search engines work is more important than ever, now that money-losing search companies are increasingly making business deals that affect their products' results.
Related past WebmasterWorld thread: the ethics of a SERP [webmasterworld.com]
