There’s been loads of chatter within the EC community on this subject in recent months. Is SEO dead? Or is it alive and kicking?
We thought we’d take the opportunity this month to settle to score once and for all. Well, we thought we’d try at least!
In the red corner, voting “Yes, SEO is dead!” is Google AdWords expert, Laura Moxham from Your Business Angels and long-standing EC member David Browne
In the blue corner, voting “No, SEO isn’t dead!” are Glen Piggott and Anna Mace from Soundwave, Kieran Blck from OptimiSEO and Sam Monaghan from TomatoNetwork Ltd
Yes, SEO is Dead?
“As you may know Adwords is my thang – I absolutely love it. But the way I see it, is SEO has one foot in the grave.
Let’s do an exercise and draw your own conclusions. Go to your PC now, put your fingers to your keyword and type in a search – I’ve done ‘emergency dentist St Albans’.
The search results page are engulfed with ads like this, right?
So there you have it. The problem for SEO is that the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are dominated by paid ads. The ads smack you between the eyes and the organic listings are lost.
Look, Adwords is not going away. Google is a publicly traded company with a responsibility to their shareholders to increase profits, and they’re constantly rolling out new things that get more people to click on ads. An annual revenue of $75bn is not too shabby, and 90% comes from advertising.
If you want to get to the top of Google, then I’m afraid ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to have to pay for it, and you’re really going to need to know your stuff.
Here’s why…..
CONTROL: Adwords is one of the world’s most advanced advertising platform – it’s controllable, scalable and monitorable. It takes time, testing and ongoing tweaking, but set right Adwords is effectively a sales machine. It’s capable of generating you, on tap, new leads and enquiries every day.
MONITORABLE: You can accurately measure how much you’re spending and how many leads you are getting for it. So then you can spend more on the ‘good’ words ones making your phones ring, and the bad – well turn the blighters off sharpish. Not so with SEO.
IT’S INTROCATE (do the hard stuff to make the sales easy!): Years ago you could slap up a few keywords and use it like a point and shoot camera. Having a basic search campaign now, which we see all the time, just won’t cut it. It’s now like a high-powered SLR camera with all sorts of knobs, bells and whistles to get the picture just perfect.
There’s call, location, sitelinks, call outs, rich snippets and table extensions, bid adjustments, Gmail, RLSA, You Tube, remarketing campaigns, adgroups, keywords, queries, ads, bids, settings, rules, targeting, extensions, scripts, landing pages, exclusions, data feeds, audiences, conversions…. Phew the list goes on and is ever advancing.
SEO IS GETTING LESS CLICKS: Recent changes in Adwords will have affected your SEO efforts. They will have shunned further down the page:
- the removal of the right hand ads (end of Feb.)
- more room for paid Google Shopping ads
- the introduction of the 4th ad position at the top of the search results page
So even if you’re in position 1 organically for your dream keyword, it probably won’t show at the top now and will need to need to scroll down the page.
And if your ideal client is on mobile, then forget SEO. There’s no SEO traffic on mobiles above the fold:
SEO ALGORITHMS ARE CONSTANTLY CHANGING: The one consistent about Google is it’s always changing. The algorithms change periodically with no prior warning. That is no fun when you’ve invested in a 6 month campaign to get your keyword at the top of Google to find their criteria has changes and the carpet has been well and truly pulled from under you.
TRUMP YOUR BIGGEST COMPETITORS: By having your Adwords set up properly you have the opportunity to trump your biggest national competitors rapidly – something that would be a real stretch from SEO. Here’s an example of our local florist client who’s able to take on [ahem and beat!] the big guns – Interflora, Serenata Flowers:
With this in mind, are you happy to invest in a media that is not controllable, scalable or monitorable? Any business owner that is serious about their business needs to be on paid search now.”
Laura Moxham – Your Business Angels
“Frankly, I don’t really care whether SEO is dead, on life support or just visiting the doc. Clarity is required here as to exactly what we, as marketers, define as our objective. Surely it’s to systematically and rhythmically find new clients just like the good ones you already have.
SEO is like planting an apple seed and waiting for it to grow. It takes a while and you may or may not reap a harvest after a period of time. On the other hand, paid traffic is like knowing that you want some apples and you nip into Sainsbury’s, hand over some cash and leave with apples. Its quick, you get exactly what you want and when you want it.
Personally, I’ve never got really excited about my natural listing being on page 24 of the Google search results when I can be in positions 1 to 4 of the paid listings and get great traffic looking for exactly what I’m selling.
However, I think Google can shed some light on the SEO is Dead argument given that they just squeezed the natural (SEO) listings further down the search engine results page. Let’s be brutally honest here – Google controls both the paid for and the natural listings.
Google answers to its shareholders who want maximum profit. Big revenues come from paid ads (getting close to $20 billion a quarter) and there is no revenue for Google at all from the natural listings.
Which one do you think Google shareholders vote for? I seem to recall seeing a quote from Larry Page where he stated ‘SEO is theft from AdWords.’
I rest my case M’Lud.”
David Browne – 48 Hour Launch
No, SEO isn’t Dead?
Okay, now let’s hear from the people who believe that SEO is very much alive and kicking.
“Is SEO dead? That depends… if you still think search engine optimization involves listing as many keywords as possible and having to have 100’s of pages of content then yes those “old fashioned” SEO techniques of 10 years ago are well and truly dead, non-existent, kaput, out of here!
However, just because those particular methods are long gone doesn’t mean SEO itself has. SEO is alive and kicking in 2016 and is more important than ever before, but maybe in ways you didn’t realise…
Google Will Never Ditch SEO
Imagine if Google were to display only paid ads and no natural listings, they would become just another directory style website.
Google aren’t silly, they know that they need to provide the best and most relevant search results and the natural listings play a massive part in this. Without the support of natural listings, Google would not generate the jaw-dropping revenues they do.
Treat SEO as One of Your Marketing Pillars
SEO requires ongoing maintenance so including it as part of your 90 minutes would be a very clever thing to do. SEO done well works… but its takes time and effort, measuring the results and continuing to improve.
Google regularly updates its algorithm (about 600 times a year we’re told) so it is very important to keep up because a certain SEO method that was once effective may become ineffective or even worse, starts to penalise you.
Great SEO = Great Visitor Experience = Conversions
If you spend all your time on getting people to visit your site and ignore what happens once they’re there, then your website won’t convert.
Modern SEO should be focused on giving quality relevant content that’s aimed at your website visitors, not Google.
Chances are the people that say SEO is dead and doesn’t bring in results, don’t have a SEO problem, they have a conversion problem.
Not Just About Google.
Don’t forget about Bing and Yahoo too. Especially if you invest all your efforts into Google AdWords and think you don’t need to worry about SEO, be very aware that as a result you may not appear on all the other search engines at all.
But there is another important factor to consider and that is visitors that come from Bing and Yahoo often convert into sales or leads at a much higher rate than visitors from Google. In other words, they are more valuable.
Specific is Terrific
SEO is great if you work within a niche or are targeting a very local geographic area. Avoid using general keywords and terms, be really specific and targeted. Have your ideal avatar in mind and ask yourself what they would be searching for, and write your content that answers it. Using phrases like “how to…”, “what is…” or “where is…” is a great place to start.
SEO is Also Linked to Accessibility
Best practices for SEO and accessibility have many overlaps, and with little effort, you can actually make your website both more searchable and accessible at the same time. This includes making sure your website is readable and usable on a mobile phone and tablet.
Search engines are in a sense blind, for they cannot ‘see’ images, video content, and JavaScript. The ability to have web page content interpreted and rendered mechanically is therefore of great importance to both search engines and users of assistive technologies like screen readers.
Fix any accessibility issues and you’ll boost your SEO.
One final point.
This isn’t an anti-AdWords stance. AdWords is one of the most incredible developments for businesses in the history of all things online! But it should never be about choosing between AdWords and SEO, it’s all about embracing both. Having all your eggs in one single AdWords basket may prove to be fatal.
Ignoring SEO will hurt your business. Vote no!”
Glen Pigott and Anna Mace – Soundwave
Next up, we’ve got Kieran Black from OpimiSEO. He believes that SEO is – and should remain – one of the most important marketing pillars in your business. Here’s his take on the “Is SEO dead?” debate:
“‘SEO is dead’.
That’s what I heard recently on the train while making my mindless commute to work. I get what the fellow was trying to say, traditional techniques once used widely across the industry no longer have the effect they once did.
Guarantees can no longer ethically be provided, that by following a pattern of tried and tested steps, you will be able to climb the rankings ladder.
The end goal hasn’t changed, increased positioning increases traffic, maximising sales potential, but there is a whole new dimension to SEO, being more of an art form than the science it once was.
While there are common pitfalls and things search engines frown upon common to every website, each site also needs to be analysed on its own merit. There has been a shift away from the one size fits all solution.
It doesn’t matter what you call it, SEO, inbound marketing or content strategy, you want to deliver content in the best way, to help you get results. Staying mindful both of how search engines and users perceive your site will help you achieve this.
It’s similar to dating, there are no hard and fast rules to what works but turning up to a first date wearing Bermuda shorts and a raincoat probably won’t rank you very highly.
SEO isn’t dead, it has evolved, and should remain a vital part of your strategy.”
Kieran Black – OptimiSEO
Last but not least in Team No, we have Sam Monaghan, an SEO Expert from TomatoNetwork Ltd. Like Kieran, Sam admits search engine optimisation as we used to know it has changed. But thinks there’s still some value there:
“The SEO landscape has changed a lot over the 10 years I’ve been in the business, back in 2004-2006 we had to explain to people what SEO stood for and could get sites ranked on page one in a matter of weeks.
The outlook today is very different and the purpose of SEO has gone beyond generic keyword results. Users are a lot savvier and the advent of natural language search via OK Google and Siri is moving forward at a pace.
With this in mind, traditional methods of SEO are dead, although certain principles remain very similar.
The two most important ranking signals are content and links, myself focusing on building a brand and attracting links from press/media.
There are of course many other things Google now look at to understand what your site offers such as reviews, citations, Google My Business and the knowledge graph.
In summary, organic search results still make up a big proportion of traffic to the a lot of websites out there and using “SEO” methods to position yourself within these results is still a valid process, but things are changing very fast.”
Sam Monaghan – TomatoNetwork Ltd
