People don't need reminding about the recession. Two years of near
constant bombardment by news stories about financial cuts, job losses
and almost absolute economic meltdown, have left everyone hoping that
the green shoots of recovery sprout soon. It's now, with this wonderful
gift of hindsight, that I look back and think how fortunate I was to be
working in a sector that, overall, seems to have had one if its biggest
periods of growth while most industries appeared to be in turmoil. But
why was internet marketing largely resistant to the recession, and will it continue?
As the Managing Director of a UK based company, I write this from a national perspective, but it seemed to me that the dismal economic climate of recent years left a large number of business managers with an ultimatum - either rethink how you're running your company or face financial ruin. This led to budget reconsiderations, and more often than not, the money being used to fund offline marketing was redirected for use in the online domain. And that is where internet marketing professionals were able to step in and offer their specialist knowledge to help keep these companies alive.
It appears that people were almost forced to consider the huge benefits that web marketing, and specifically SEO can have. Offline marketing can be incredibly hard to monitor. If you pay good money to have your service listed in a phone directory or posted on a billboard there is no real way to measure what effect that particular advert is having on potential consumers. This contrasts with internet marketing; a process that can, when managed effectively, produce precise and quantifiable marketing results. Accurate and powerful analytics and metric visualisation software gave us the power to give valuable data on user activity. How many people were clicking through to a website? How long did they stay? What did they look at? Using this information, we were able to help them improve the amount of targeted traffic as their sites were optimised, gradually climbing up the SERPs. The result of this; more profit delivered in a more measurable and sustainable fashion. It became apparent that a better ROI was almost guaranteed with well implemented online marketing, and so the industry I was in flourished into what it is currently.
It has been over these difficult years that there has been a noticeable change in the attitude towards search engine optimisation. SEO was once believed to be the industry of choice for manipulative con artists, and perhaps some of those conceptions were warranted, although not to that extreme. As search engine intelligence has grown, both in terms of security and algorithmic changes, our industry has had to evolve too. Black hatters and spammers no longer enjoy the kind of freedom they once had, and the SEO people with good intentions are now more often prevailing in the battle to secure higher rankings.
As mentioned, the algorithmic updates – and they occur frequently - have now equipped search engines with the potential to produce results that are more relevant and authoritative than ever. This isn't just good for the users, but it's good for the entire web marketing industry. No longer is it possible to just rely on keyword stuffing to ensure your clients will soar up the ranking pages. Recent changes include accounting for page load speed, the dismissal of content farms and the ever growing influence that social networking appears to be having on SERPs. It is the expansive nature of this industry that allows proactive marketing professionals to thrive under the pressure of staying in touch with the search engines.
Of course, there are still those out there who think that we are nothing but polluters of the SERPs – believing that Google is God and SEO is the Antichrist. To me, this defies logic. Google is the platform where the majority of our business is exhibited, and to be warring against that platform is senseless. As I said, it is our job to keep pace with the search engine algorithms, but this doesn't involve breaking the rules. We play fair, we rank well. That's the way the search engines like it, it's the way SEO professionals like it, and it's the way that generates the best user experience. Because more and more people are becoming aware of this, our industry is still expanding.
I firmly believe that while this change in attitude towards SEO is a hugely positive step, there is still more we can do as a community to put an end to these perpetuated myths. A large part of it can be put down to education. Many people that discredit SEO may not fully understand it. If more people knew of the benefits that internet marketing has, including marketers from other fields, then our industry will become much more accepted. It can be thought of like this – throughout the development of the internet and search, there has always been manipulation, and there will always be manipulation. Ethical SEO is needed to counteract that manipulation. Search, no matter what it's for, is a very human process, and while humans still use search engines, SEO's will still be in business. I find this knowledge bodes well for the future.
This idea is reinforced by the role that social networks now play in search results, as mentioned earlier. While Google, arguably, has consistently failed in its attempt to attach its brand to social networking, the incorporation of social sites into the algorithms appears to be a success. Tweeting links and sharing on Facebook is now the way the majority of internet users seem to tell their friends and peers about content they like. It is how this concept evolves within the search engine algorithms that, I predict, will be the biggest influencing factor in how SEO develops in the next few months and years.
But the biggest reason I believe that our industry will continue to thrive is a simple one - we help people fulfil their online potential. Our specialist knowledge can aid struggling and new businesses by driving appropriate traffic to their website, which will eventually result in more sales and increased revenue. I tend to see it as the promotion of entrepreneurial spirit. By enabling these new companies and brands to reach an audience they might previously have struggled to connect with, we are contributing to the growth of the economy on a local and global scale. The progress we have made as an industry is phenomenal, and with the good work SEO's are putting in around the world, long may this progress continue.
Matt Bullas , Click Consult
www.visibilitymagazine.com
As the Managing Director of a UK based company, I write this from a national perspective, but it seemed to me that the dismal economic climate of recent years left a large number of business managers with an ultimatum - either rethink how you're running your company or face financial ruin. This led to budget reconsiderations, and more often than not, the money being used to fund offline marketing was redirected for use in the online domain. And that is where internet marketing professionals were able to step in and offer their specialist knowledge to help keep these companies alive.
It appears that people were almost forced to consider the huge benefits that web marketing, and specifically SEO can have. Offline marketing can be incredibly hard to monitor. If you pay good money to have your service listed in a phone directory or posted on a billboard there is no real way to measure what effect that particular advert is having on potential consumers. This contrasts with internet marketing; a process that can, when managed effectively, produce precise and quantifiable marketing results. Accurate and powerful analytics and metric visualisation software gave us the power to give valuable data on user activity. How many people were clicking through to a website? How long did they stay? What did they look at? Using this information, we were able to help them improve the amount of targeted traffic as their sites were optimised, gradually climbing up the SERPs. The result of this; more profit delivered in a more measurable and sustainable fashion. It became apparent that a better ROI was almost guaranteed with well implemented online marketing, and so the industry I was in flourished into what it is currently.
It has been over these difficult years that there has been a noticeable change in the attitude towards search engine optimisation. SEO was once believed to be the industry of choice for manipulative con artists, and perhaps some of those conceptions were warranted, although not to that extreme. As search engine intelligence has grown, both in terms of security and algorithmic changes, our industry has had to evolve too. Black hatters and spammers no longer enjoy the kind of freedom they once had, and the SEO people with good intentions are now more often prevailing in the battle to secure higher rankings.
As mentioned, the algorithmic updates – and they occur frequently - have now equipped search engines with the potential to produce results that are more relevant and authoritative than ever. This isn't just good for the users, but it's good for the entire web marketing industry. No longer is it possible to just rely on keyword stuffing to ensure your clients will soar up the ranking pages. Recent changes include accounting for page load speed, the dismissal of content farms and the ever growing influence that social networking appears to be having on SERPs. It is the expansive nature of this industry that allows proactive marketing professionals to thrive under the pressure of staying in touch with the search engines.
Of course, there are still those out there who think that we are nothing but polluters of the SERPs – believing that Google is God and SEO is the Antichrist. To me, this defies logic. Google is the platform where the majority of our business is exhibited, and to be warring against that platform is senseless. As I said, it is our job to keep pace with the search engine algorithms, but this doesn't involve breaking the rules. We play fair, we rank well. That's the way the search engines like it, it's the way SEO professionals like it, and it's the way that generates the best user experience. Because more and more people are becoming aware of this, our industry is still expanding.
I firmly believe that while this change in attitude towards SEO is a hugely positive step, there is still more we can do as a community to put an end to these perpetuated myths. A large part of it can be put down to education. Many people that discredit SEO may not fully understand it. If more people knew of the benefits that internet marketing has, including marketers from other fields, then our industry will become much more accepted. It can be thought of like this – throughout the development of the internet and search, there has always been manipulation, and there will always be manipulation. Ethical SEO is needed to counteract that manipulation. Search, no matter what it's for, is a very human process, and while humans still use search engines, SEO's will still be in business. I find this knowledge bodes well for the future.
This idea is reinforced by the role that social networks now play in search results, as mentioned earlier. While Google, arguably, has consistently failed in its attempt to attach its brand to social networking, the incorporation of social sites into the algorithms appears to be a success. Tweeting links and sharing on Facebook is now the way the majority of internet users seem to tell their friends and peers about content they like. It is how this concept evolves within the search engine algorithms that, I predict, will be the biggest influencing factor in how SEO develops in the next few months and years.
But the biggest reason I believe that our industry will continue to thrive is a simple one - we help people fulfil their online potential. Our specialist knowledge can aid struggling and new businesses by driving appropriate traffic to their website, which will eventually result in more sales and increased revenue. I tend to see it as the promotion of entrepreneurial spirit. By enabling these new companies and brands to reach an audience they might previously have struggled to connect with, we are contributing to the growth of the economy on a local and global scale. The progress we have made as an industry is phenomenal, and with the good work SEO's are putting in around the world, long may this progress continue.
Matt Bullas , Click Consult
www.visibilitymagazine.com
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