Wow - None of you are talking about the Google Update today
- Thread starter eliquid
- Start date
or...
we are such smart shmucks we got the fuck out of SEO years ago and moved on to much greener pastures, so we didn't get penalized.
OR some of us don't even do internet marketing and are just here for the dickrolls.
:338:
How many of you here do actual marketing as opposed to just SEM / SEO / IM / AM ?
Just out of interest.
Just out of interest.
I now have found 2 of our sites that were put on mothballs after penguin penalties are back and fully indexed. When I get back from holidays I will have to spam the shit out of them again so they get back in the money... thanks Google
Internet marketing is still in its infancy. To date, it delivers a higher ROI and easier to quantify results. It is a whole lot easier to justify to management to say if we spend $50k on PPC, we're going to generate $250k in sales, and be able to influence product mix by essentially flipping a switch. With traditional/offline marketing ventures I've been involved in, you can drop $50k and not be able to directly attribute any revenue to said spend, plus there is going to be a lot more legwork involved rather than plugging in a credit card number.
I assume that volatility will keep increasing for SEM/SEO until the point it reaches an equilibrium with traditionally "inefficient" mediums, simply from Google fighting to keep growing own-site revenues by obfuscating what advertisers are getting for their ad spend. Google's CPCs keep falling, and PLAs aren't going to help raise CPC price, but it will help increase click volume.
Google has to offer a decent enough product to keep users from defecting (to who?), but offering the best organic results possible that deter people from clicking on paid results isn't in the best interest of shareholders, as it will result in less total revenue in the short term (myopic view, would Google risk long term success for short term?), but until other competitors emerge and search becomes a competitive market, any *responsible* business should be diversifying as much as possible.
</cynical rant>
I was just reading an article a few minutes ago where Google's former CEO Erich Schmidt basically said that Googles goal is to provide people with direct answer, not to provide traffic to websites. With that in mind, that should make any business that relies solely on SEO have a scary outlook.
I just realized this updated removed MyName.com when searching for my name...what the shit. Dem SEO skillz!
Lots of legit websites are now from page 1 to page 2 - 10
These penguin updates crack me up. That being said, I will be working my ass off for the next few weeks. It creates a nice opportunity to rank fast, and make some quick $$ in doing so
THIS.
You have to focus on providing answers. It always goes back to "the consumer." Build a website and optimize it for the user, not the crawlers.
And in reply to vgeek's post above. I definitely see that Google has to appease to the shareholders HOWEVER, no one is going to want a page full of ads when they search a query.
Just because a company may have an unlimited budget to spend on PPC for a query does not mean that their ad itself has the answer to what the user is looking for. So the whole statement that Google's job is to provide answers and not traffic to websites is a broad statement and in my opinion, should apply to both SEO and PPC.
Focus on providing value to the user and you'll be fine no matter what. And for fuck's sake, focus on building a real business and you won't be shitting your pants in anticipation of the next Google update.
This is a huge problem. The companies with the most money are going to be the ones who can speak the loudest, but that is bad for the consumer. For tons of queries, most paid ads are lower quality than most organic listings (general statement, but you know what I mean), but in an environment where investors expect continual growth, how can Google site revenue keep growing indefinitely, especially when CPCs keep falling and the number of queries aren't likely to significantly increase? Intuition implies that the next big move is introducing PLAs to mobile queries (without the option to bid differently by device), then downing the number of desktop organic results per page to increase impressions?
