Good assessment of why SEO is basically DEAD

[max99x]

So ironically really generics and EMDs will become more valuable if you want to drive people to your website, since it'll have to be something they can remember.

Great point!

I do believe that it'll be in next few years where 90% of google searches result in paid clicks rather than organic, then everyone will have to ppc!

 

[thecat]

yandex?

 

[JMOT]

Sooo... in the last 7 days we've had a panda update, a new EMD filter and today a penguin update and people believe...still... that SEO isnt dead??

There is evidence all over the shop that SEO is becoming more and more obsolete:

http://searchengineland.com/organic-click-thru-rates-tumbling-study-97338

http://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-ads

I dont know why I bother banging on about this tbh. What Google is doing is massively raising the barrier to entry for new businesses online. No longer in reality can you chuck up a small crappy site, put relevant content on it, put some ads, make money, grow, re-invest, grow...turn into something bigger... which is how nearly everyone who made a lot of money over the last 10 years started out!

You now have to start out having the cash to pay for clicks because forget about doing that with SEO now as 1) you get less and less CTR from it and 2) Google is playing silly buggers with the algo's so much now that if SEO/Free is your only way to get something off the ground then you are basically buggered.

Unless of course you have something genuinely brilliant that everyone goes WOOOOOW at and you start getting loads of natural links and word of mouth/social etc....Good luck.

There are winners and losers to every update. The only consistent winner is the house. Google.

 

[murph]

^^ agreed

 

[mally]

Should be government action to allow fairness, google have a massive monopoly, something which Europe dislike

 

[Marcoose]

No longer in reality can you chuck up a small crappy site, put relevant content on it, put some ads, make money, grow, re-invest, grow...turn into something bigger... which is how nearly everyone who made a lot of money over the last 10 years started out!

Then don't build a small crappy site?

I do agree though in that I wouldn't want to just be getting into the game now.

 

[thecat]

Should be government action to allow fairness, google have a massive monopoly, something which Europe dislike

This is self defeating though and impossible to control.

 

[vizzo]

This is self defeating though and impossible to control.

It may not be the government but the European Union who take action.

Just stopping one company getting too big may not be possible.
However there are areas that could be looked at, such as the way Google promote their own services, that search embedded into android is google by default, that they put their own service as an "advert" for price comparison, the personal information they hold for "searchers" who are signed into their services.

 

[tifosi]

Agreed. Google are getting very close to the anti-competitive rules that the EU for all its faults do crack down on. Microsoft found that out with IE & Windows. If Google carry down the route of their products taking up primacy in search then the EU will act. A matter of time I think.

 

[cc976a]

This is always going to a 'chasing your tail' situation.

SEOers and Internet marketers have - of bloody course - been learning about ways to get to the top of Google.

- Google ranked sites in the early days with meta and title tags. Everyone followed, became abused, so removed.

- Then it was backlinks quantity. Again backlink quantity was removed and replaced with quality

- Then 'content is king' was the buzz term and people saw the ranking sites were regularly updated with articles and info. So everyone followed suit - guess what, now with the latest Panda update it's been penalized (people only added the damn content in the first place because it was what Google used to rank sites on - no poor sap wanted to become an article churner)

Soon, when this settles down, the next big buzzword will happen - and will all start again......

Personally I'm not giving up on SEO, BUT I will only build something where I can earn recurring fees from customers or can build a marketing distribution list. At least this way if G drops the site quicker than a bag of spuds off the Empire State Building - I will still have an audience, a market and would have been built up a lot cheaper than PPC

There will still be ways. Use them, abuse them and play the system. Gloves are off now, no more Mr Nice 'Squeaky Clean' Guy

 

[murph]

They have effectively declared war on the entire webmaster community, except brands. It seems like they've reached the "milking the cow" stage of their G product lifecycle. Perhaps the threat of bigger sites such as Twitter and Facebook means they need to cash in fast??

 

[thecat]

It may not be the government but the European Union who take action.

Just stopping one company getting too big may not be possible.
However there are areas that could be looked at, such as the way Google promote their own services, that search embedded into android is google by default, that they put their own service as an "advert" for price comparison, the personal information they hold for "searchers" who are signed into their services.

So it wont affect the serps and rules.

 

[zehrila]

Seo and Dead? not happening any time soon!

 

[djbw]

Surely pushing organic results below the fold and making those solely brands is going to begin alienating users? Non-tech friends have actually mentioned to me Google is being weird lately. If they destroy the user experience at the expense of profit they may find it comes back to bite them.

 

[cc976a]

Surely pushing organic results below the fold and making those solely brands is going to begin alienating users? Non-tech friends have actually mentioned to me Google is being weird lately. If they destroy the user experience at the expense of profit they may find it comes back to bite them.

They have such a large share of the market, with such brand awareness - it would take a very long time to happen

 

[thecat]

They have such a large share of the market, with such brand awareness - it would take a very long time to happen

It would not take long at all for a significant shift to happen - this could be as little as 1 or 2 % in share.