I’ve long held that search engines were a dying breed. Recent data has started supporting this view.
The main problem which Google and others have is their addiction to advertising. This is part of their business model and is taking them into the tank. Now, I don’t doubt that Google has some of the smartest people around working for them. And their ability to provide incredibly appropriate search results is amazing. However, they support their programmers by selling advertising.
Advertising is generally a scam. Because they use your emotional buttons to get you to buy – you aren’t simply invited to sample their wares and make an educated decisions in order to improve your life quality.
I have always favored the bazaar model, where you are able to sample or inspect the goods before you buy. Social media is heading in this direction. And they have their own internal search engines. Google is running to keep up and has ramped up both local and personalized search.
Of course, that plays hob with advertisers who are trying to get the entire national market cheaply. They are now going to have to compete on extreme long-tail niche models, which are far more expensive. The kicker for me was when I heard from one of my friends and mentors that he had seen a rise in “organic” rankings when one of his clients ran a PPC ad series.
And it’s also pretty widely known that sites with Adsense will rank higher than those without. Meaning that Google is selling advertising to make their living. Simple. They would prefer that people and companies remain addicted.
People who are working for getting top Google positions in order to get traffic are going to be in a bind shortly. Just because not only is Google a moving target (as always) but they are now beginning to split up the market they have in order to segment it. That’s personalized search.
So my research keeps taking me into another realm. I’m going back to looking up what actually gets traffic. Now the single SEO newsletter I still subscribe to is investigating someone who has started moving away from Google. And when I see his review (I don’t need to spend money on stuff I can figure out myself) – then I’ll tell you all what comes of it.
The line of research goes directly to the communities you are part of. Narrowing down to these few communities and joining in on the conversations. Giving out samples of your goods so people can see what you have to offer.
There is still some use for broad promotion. Pixelpipe and ping.fm, among others, where you can syndicate what you are producing and talking about. Also, article directories (the key ones) and press releases. The work you want to do is on finding buyers, not “dominating the search engines”. You want clients, not visitors.
Any smart company knows that it’s proven leads which is what you want – not people who take your pencils and tshirts at your booths. You want email addresses, phone numbers, and people who need your product to improve their lives. Right now.That’s real lead generation. These “internet marketing” guru’s are simply selling scammy products to the naive.
The current strategy I’m testing is to get your content out on as many social publishers as possible, in as many formats as possible. Then people searching through these lines will then find you. Don’t worry about ranking in the search engines just for the sake of ranking. Sure, you use your SEO data: the 5 basic points to keep in, plus your LSI theming – just so search engines have an easy time of it. But simply concentrate on how to get usable data in front of people who need it. I’ve found that my percentages of repeat traffic have more to do with my non-search engine traffic.
So search engine traffic is not your priority. If you look at search engines for anything, look at how many spots you cover in those search engines for the various versions of your posts for a given keyword. You aren’t trying to “dominate” any given term or phrase in the SE’s, more that this is telling you how well your various publications can be found by the SE’s – what your reach into the different types of social media consists of.
Another interesting point is the mainstream media. These are also a scam, like advertising. Because they are tabloid oriented. Again, they are working to get your emotions to tell you subconsciously what you need to spend your disposable income on. Their idea, like search engines, is to boost their ratings (viewership) so that they can sell advertising. Getting in “the news” is simply being controversial enough to boost their ratings. Because they think controversy keeps people watching their drivel.
This is the same thing which ruined “moden art”. And art students are being taught currently that the purpose of art is to “explore controversy” in order to “start a conversation” – when the actual purposes of art have either been 1) to record an historic event, or 2) to provide an aesthetic environment. When art and artists are used to forward and emotional message (as politicians use them), this is the true bastardization of the arts. But artists who are controversial just for controversy’s sake are no better than those bastards above.
Marketing is supposed to be finding or creating a market for a valuable good which improves the lives of users. Anything else is poppycock.
And this includes search engines.
Thought you’d be able to use this data. (And note that this site isn’t searchable by any of these SE’s – so the data you get here is just for your own use. But share it all you want.)
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