Changing
Faces of Search Marketing
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
November 30 2005
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A year of unprecedented change in the search engine landscape and online
business environment has forced many SEOs and SEMs to alter and, in some
cases, drastically rethink the services they offer and the techniques
they use. For some SEOs, the changes represent a world of opportunities
to expand their services and experiment with emerging techniques. For
others, the changes in the search world have hit with the repetition and
intensity of a series of destructive environmental disasters.
Before getting into the changes to services and techniques, a quick look
at how the search marketing sector has changed is in order.
To begin with, I need to stress that a news time deadline and word limit
of 2000 or less permits only a very general overview of this expansive industry.
There are exceptional SEO and SEM practitioners working far beyond the fringes
of the mainstream SEM world. The growing numbers of SEOs employed by global
corporations are an example of an exceptional group outside the typical
small or micro-business SEM shop model. Similarly, traditional advertising
firms have started to understand the importance of search marketing and
are hiring or sub-contracting their own in-house search marketing teams.
Regardless of who works for or with whom, or who has what resources to work
with, the same general factors affect the products of our toilsome tinkering.
As the search marketing industry matures the knowledge base that supports
it grows rapidly. The numbers of practitioners grows every year as well
with thousands of new SEMs annually entering the field. The field they enter
is already well populated with established firms, some quite large and some
much smaller. Fortunately, there is more than enough work for the sector
to continue expanding. Very few SEM shops went out of business for lack
of clients this year.
It is important to know how SEMs tend to make their money before considering
how search industry changes affect the SEM sector. The two extremities of
the professional SEO/SEM practitioner world are those who do it for their
own online ventures and those who work for outside clients. The vast majority
of SEM practitioners are found somewhere in between those two extremes with
the bulk tending towards the latter. There is however, an apparent correlation
between the choice of SEO tactics and the spot on the spectrum of a practitioner
or specific project.
Those working on their own web properties exclusively tend to see revenues
from participation in affiliate programs or paid-ad distribution programs
offered by Yahoo and Google. SEMs who take outside clients tend to see revenues
from service fees and commissions. Ultimately, for small business SEO and
SEM shops, financial planning and scheduled money management are the essential
skill sets that bridge the gap between success and failure.
SEOs and SEMs who achieved most of their revenues promoting their own website
properties have been the most adversely affected by the changes at Google,
Yahoo and other search giants. This side of the sector established itself
in the early days of the late 90’s finding ways to tempt web surfers
into affiliate program sales, gambling industry sites and of course, adult
entertainment sites. Until recently, the “anything-goes” attitude
formed around those sectors, and the inability of the major search engines
to keep up with them, allowed self-interest SEOs to use obvious and highly
creative algorithm exploits to get their sites ranked higher.
During and just before the recent Jagger Update at Google, many of these
sorts of sites found themselves virtually unfindable as Google delisted
or degraded their placements. Google took action for a number of reasons,
the greatest of which was the long-term incompatibility of Google’s
PageRank based algorithms and the various (and often amazingly intricate)
link-based exploits used. To be honest, incompatibility might be exactly
the wrong word. Many of these exploits were designed specifically to maximize
the behaviour of Googlebot but often forgot about the content to keyword
contextual relationships Googlebot is searching for. Eventually Googlebot
started acting like a jilted suitor, especially after reading about such
exploits (or people bragging about them) on various search related forums.
Frequently, SEOs and SEMs working solely for themselves stray towards what
has been labeled the “black-hat” side of the search marketing
sector. Basically, black-hat SEO is technique that does not follow the stated
guidelines posted by the search engines. As the sites they promoted, for
the most part, belonged to them, any sanctions faced stemming from a violation
of search engine guidelines would ultimately be less severe for them then
it would be for SEM practitioners working on someone else’s sites.
It is much easier to sluff off damage your actions caused to your own property
than it is damage caused to the property of others.
SEOs and SEMs who work as agents for other businesses tend to be more like
traditional advertising firms in their relationship with and reliance on
their clients. Agency type SEO and SEM shops tend to adhere to a loose and
unregulated code-of-conduct that includes a commitment to following search
engine guidelines. For the most part, this group, and by extension their
clients, tended to come out of the Jagger Updates in fair to fine condition.
Those who view the search engine guidelines as a quasi legal-code are often
labeled “white-hats”.
Algorithm updates are more of an interesting inconvenience to this group,
a thunder and lightning storm with obvious destructive potential that is
compelling and wondrous to behold. In such storms, some stuff might be damaged
by rain, hail or even lightning and it is not entirely safe to play in the
water but at the end of the day, if you play it safe you’ll probably
be ok. Sudden and unexpected algorithm changes at Google might have minor
effects on techniques used by “white-hat” SEO and SEM practitioners
however algo-shifts don’t keep them up at night.
The growing segmentation of the search world and the adoption of emerging
technologies and trends is what keeps them awake into the wee-hours of the
morning, trying to figure out exactly what is happening and how provide
expert services in a rapidly changing environment. As most SEO and SEM shops
are small to micro-businesses, daytime is for operating the business and
nighttime is for reading and experimenting. Things were much simpler for
three years ago.
The introduction of several new types of search engine makes the job of
a search marketing practitioner more complicated. Where once we thought
about Google, we now have shopping and comparison search tools, local search
engines, RSS, music and video search, blog and podcast search appliances
to think about. Not only does the SEM need to have a working knowledge of
how each type of search engine works, they also need to know how to write
and/or code for them. Over the coming year, expect to see the SEO and SEM
sector start to segment to offer specialized service packages for specific
types of search appliance.
Electronic commerce dominates our economy. From individual consumers and
Christmas sales to the flow of global capital, the Internet has become the
backbone of business everywhere. As more and more people become Internet
savvy, the environment moves towards becoming more professional. Information
begets information and the more of it we have, the better we can run our
businesses. Site statistics and established industry metrics drive a lot
more of the decision making than they used to. As search develops from the
$12billion industry it is today to the $25billion industry predicted in
five years, the ability to offer analytical services to clients is going
to be emphasized by expanding search marketing firms.
An assumption made about both Google and Yahoo is that each place increasing
importance on the intent of a document in their indexes and the relationship
it shares with other documents in their index. The relationship between
document A and document B is further judged by the relationships both share
with other documents found in Google or Yahoo’s indexes. Expect the
link-generation business to evolve and become far more professional. In
order to seriously sell links, link brokers will increasingly need to be
able to vouch for the contextual relevance of the links they establish between
documents.
Furthermore, both Google and Yahoo take an interest in user behaviours.
How a user acts when they visit a document found in search results has an
impact on how important the search engines think the document might be.
This leads us to conclude that usability, or the ease of use of a website
or document, will play a greater role in rankings on both Google and Yahoo.
We expect to offer a greater range of usability consulting options and urge
current clients with questions about usability to contact us.
Lastly, the introduction of Google
Base and Microsoft’s very similar
Fremont.Live will force SEOs and SEMs to add a number of hours to client
accounts as product and service offerings should be inserted into both systems
as quickly as possible. Base and Fremont are both sort of mysteries in development.
They appear to be the equivalent of classified ads but given the intent
of their owners and the feel of the systems, are obviously designed to be
something greater. Whatever they become in the long-term, it only makes
sense to put client information in them as soon as possible, a process that
could unfortunately take hours per client.
The face of search marketing is changing and those changes pose a lot of
challenges. New services, more analytics and a greater volume of work per
client are expected in the coming year. Finding and training staff is going
to be one difficulty faced by smaller firms. Retaining staff will continue
to be a challenge for larger ones. Fortunately, given the array of tools
at our disposal, attracting new clients, retaining old ones and achieving
strong rankings for all should be the least of our challenges.
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