Re: SEO versus PPC - the unending debate

From: David Yancey <dyancey_at_adjunction.com>
Date: Fri 25 Mar 2005 21:59:23 -0600

Will Weidman wonders which end of the business spectrum I am referring
to when it comes to stating that professional SEO has limited value - -
relative to alternative ways to invest one_s marketing and promotion
budget. Am I talking about larger companies? Am I ignoring the millions
of small ones, especially the ones just beginning to understand that a
website_s main job for all but a few companies is to to explain products
and drive traffic to the store or the online order process?

Actually, I am speaking of all businesses. This is not to say their
needs are the same, of course, or that their options in using SEO/SEM
are the same, or that there is only one set of tactics that must apply
to all companies.

But, just to be clear, while I have a lot of experience in very large
companies, my primary interest these days is with the smaller ones. I
founded Internet Business Forum to serve mainly these folks, and our
Vivante search tool is expressly targeted at helping small,
medium-sized, and locally-oriented.businesses, as opposed to the
mega-companies.

Will also questions the sources for my prediction that, as online
marketing continues to mature, professional-level SEO will be of high
value (in terms of driving traffic) to a very small minority of
companies, globally.

I don_t blame Will for being quizzical or even skeptical about what
probably seems to most readers here to be a _negative_ outlook. How can
I say such a thing, when the SEO/SEM consulting mini-industry is
obviously booming? Or even, how *dare* I say that SEO has serious
limitations as a traffic-generation for probably 95%-plus of companies,
going forward, when almost every major name and expert in web marketing
is lauding SEO/SEM as the greatest new traffic promotional tool ever?

Please understand, Will, and the rest who wonder what I may be smoking
these days: I am talking about SEO, not SEM. SEM covers a much broader
set of options and techniques, and can be used by even the tiniest
company to good effect. And, far from being _negative_ about
search-based marketing, I even started a new company in the industry,
and built a state-of-the art search platform, which, by the way, is
intended specifically to help smaller sellers get targeted prospects to
their front page.

As for my complete _1% to 3%_ analysis, you_ll need to wait for the
book, I_m afraid. It isn_t really that simple, since it involves not
just the complexities of costs-per-click, but factors like the future
utility of web crawlers, and the likely evolution of search user habits
- - based on others_ research as well as our own. For example, most
_experts_ in our business don_t like to discuss the fact that _search_
only covers about 30% of a business_ potential prospects, at best. I
envision that proportion actually *declining* over time, not growing as
most commonly assume today. Smaller and local companies need tools that
give them a much wider reach.

Anyway, the full explanation is involved, to out it mildly!

But the underlying premise is not.

Take the premium-value key phrase _golf club_. I think we can agree
that, by, say, 2007 or thereabouts, at least 5,000 commercial sites and
online publishing sites will be desperate to draw traffic from _natural_
search results for that term. There will likely be at least as many
other web pages that the crawler indexing logic _decides_ to rank
highly, based on their algorithm, independently of any formal SEO effort.

In other words, 10,000 sites or pages of sites will be "competing"
(through the search ranking algorithms) for the top few slots for that
term. But we know that only about the top seven to twelve have serious
pulling power in terms of traffic. So, simply from the numbers, it_s
obvious that only a few companies can be winners at any given moment in
the _natural_ search results. Within the term _golf clubs_, obviously,
some companies will be ranked better some weeks than others. But we have
enough hard experience now to say that, almost all the time, the top
dozen slots will be _shared_ among no more than 20 to 30 contenders.
And, sorry to have to repeat it, these will be the companies with the
bigger budgets, and with the sharpest, highest-cost SEO experts either
on board, or under contract.

By 2007 or so, for *every* search term that has demonstrated *any*
substantial commercial value, it is an easy prediction that this
_performance pyramid_ will prevail. Adding localized parameters, such as
_golf clubs orlando_ or _golf clubs 20345_ will clearly help a
locally-focused business rise up the dynamic rankings. But at the top of
search pages, by 2007, we_ll see the same big sites, I predict. Whoever
has cleverly positioned Site X at or near the top of _golf clubs_ in
Google/Yahoo/MSN/Ask Jeeves (and, we can bet, one or two new players to
be announced,) will simply have figured out how to do the same thing for
Orlando-based searchers.

Therefore, in the _golf clubs_ sector, only 20-30 contenders of the
5,000 _commercial_ folks can *realistically* expect to see *significant,
sustained* traffic from the _natural_ search results.

That_s actually just a few *tenths* of one percent. Looks like I may
have been optimistic when I predicted up to 3% will be winners... ;)

This harsh logic does not require any _opinion_, or even any exceptional
insight. It is just numbers, coupled with the always-correct assumption
that, if there is a valuable term for driving commercially productive
traffic, the best SEO minds and firms will be on it like flies.

Will raises a very timely point IMO when he suggests that small site
owners do not have a clue about most of this stuff. I certainly agree.
But I doubt that most of them will learn the basic ropes from
consultants, since they cannot afford to pay true professional rates.
Instead, what will evolve rapidly is a whole DIY SEO/SEM industry, aimed
specifically at bringing the smaller companies on board.

But when these companies *do* understand the rudiments of SEO, they
will, I believe, tend to focus more on traffic driver alternatives where
they have much greater control of the results and ROI.

David Yancey
http://www.vivante.com



Received on Fri Mar 25 2005 - 21:59:23 CST