April 12, 2010 in Blog, SEO by admin

Googlenomics, Applications and the next big thing after SEO?

Its an accepted fact of business life that Search Engines (and by that we mean mostly Google) play a huge role in driving business to sites. It could even be said to have become conventional wisdom that this needs to be managed by a process, and that processes is ‘SEO’.

Trends in Search on 'SEO' 2004 - 2010

But like the tune ‘Clouds’ might have said, had it been written by geeks: I’ve looked at search engines from both sides now, and I’m pretty sure the most effective approach is one of good webmastering. Why?

• Google tell you what to do. They talk about quality of content and how to structure it. They WANT users to get good results so they don’t go elsewhere.
• We built traffic for one client to 1.5million visitors a year, with high conversion rates, without using any Pay Per Click.

How did we do this? The client was pursuing a strategy of putting very high quality media in accessible structures. We watched the kind of searches that people made, and specified content to answer their  questions. The volume of different search queries was huge.

But what’s the future got in store for us?

Well, SEO is now ubiquitious, and the cultural advantage that Google used to enjoy is being eroded.

The ’secret’ algorithm that Google use to rank pages and return the right results to the user is now quite widely understood, at least to a level which allows accurate campaign targetting. I will go into what the key criteria are in a later post, but these two can be used illustrate the key issues:

1. High quality content results in longer visit lengths to sites, and less ’short turn around times’ where people return to the same search engine and click another link

2. Large rises in anchor text links featuring a given phrase pointing to a particular page from external sites can move a site up the rankings for a search on that phrase

So sites that wish to attract business based on their search ranking either have the choice of putting out targetted high quality website product (a good focussed site) or by optimised anchor text link building (‘polishing the turd’).

Good common sense dictates the first approach will be the best in the long term in terms of reputation and conversion, but in the real world these things work out differently, how will the results pages suffer over time, given the rise of the SEOs?

You'd think there would be a hotel booking site here? Nope, look on the right hand side: this one is currently pushing keywords on other sites

They are already suffering, it’s a numbers game based on the value of the results and it’s inevitable that people will learn to game it.

Google as you would expect from a resourceful PLC, have a plan for dealing with this.

The battle for your attention is now migrating to the application space, and they’re following their own advice: make something useful that people will use, and keep using even while you get some subtle, relevant marketing.

Apple are jumping in too. And they’re not shy about where they’re going to sit in the market:

“We weren’t the first to this party but we’re going to be the best,” – Steve Jobs

The (iPad) update includes a mobile advertising platform called iAd that will be used to place adverts in applications made by third parties.

iAd marks Apple’s first foray into a potentially lucrative new market, and pits it directly against Google’s search engine advertising model.

Apple will allow external developers to pocket 60% of ad revenue from iAd.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8610610.stm

Will Apple take a bite out of the Google online advertising? As application developers, they have our attention.

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