Re: SEO versus PPC - the unending debate

From: David Yancey <dyancey_at_adjunction.com>
Date: Tue 29 Mar 2005 17:02:47 -0600

In his post, Jeff Swan in Dallas acknowledges that the fight for the
top-of- page rankings for commercially useful keywords will be fierce.
And he rightly points out that if a local business has a chance (using
SEO practices) to show up in the top 10-20 positions, then they can
perhaps get some useful traffic.

He also cites cases where SEM can be effective. No one is suggesting
otherwise. It is hard-core SEO that I have been challenging in this
thread. Here_s why:

A typical locally-focused business who today spends a total of, say,
$250,000 on promotional advertising probably splits that budget with
35-40% for Yellow Pages, 35% or so for newspapers, and perhaps 15% for
DM-type campaigning, with the balance spent across a range of programs,
including the website.

*In the coming five years, the typical local business will need to
re-allocate its advertising and marketing budget dramatically, with,
probably, over 50% being diverted to _online_.* The question, therefore,
is what kind of budgeting priority advice can those of us in the
interactive industry offer these busy, non-technical business operators?

My intention is to put professional-level SEO in this tough spotlight.
Should it be near the top of the new priorities list? Or close to the
bottom?

Jeff_s points are OK, as far as they go. But being in the top 20 results
is just not going to generate much traffic, in the great majority of
cases. After the (typically) 7th to 10th position or so, the likelihood
of a click-through falls off dramatically.

Jeff_s main example concerns shops that sell golf clubs. He suggests
_golf clubs Dallas_ as a search term that could be useful for local
merchants in the DFW area. His choice gives us a wonderful example of
the limitations of SEO.

In Google, the top nine positions for _golf clubs dallas_ are occupied
by golf clubs, that is, the places one goes to play the game. This shows
clearly how keywords can often mean more than one thing. It also shows
how the search engine crawlers do a lousy job of differentiating the
various meanings in such cases.

The tenth position is occupied by eBay, a national seller; hardly the
sort of site a local shop wants to go head-to-head with!

Going down the page, I see no golf club sellers until maybe the 40th or
50th slot. (I always get the top 100 results at a time -- but the normal
person never even realizes they can have more than ten on a page; and
typically gives up after a few pages -- yet another obstacle to driving
traffic with SEO.)

At first, it would seem that Jeff is right. Looks like there is a great
opportunity for a few local golf shops in the Dallas area to get their
web site ranked up at the top. But one has to wonder how to persuade the
Google indexing algorithm to distinguish between a club that is for
people to join, versus a golf club that is actually a golf *course*,
versus a club that is for breaking when you miss that eagle putt on the
18th hole.

Hmmm... Dare we speculate as to how many *shoppers* for golf clubs will
be coming back to Google if they can_t see even one local seller on the
first 4 or 5 pages of results. This problem, the one of turned-off
shopping and product info searchers who fail to return, is not even
mentioned by our industry (outside the private confines of the webmaster
forums.)

OK. So much for Google; let_s check Yahoo. The top site is, Yay!, a
Dallas golf shop.

MSN? A disastrous hodgepodge of choices in the first few pages.

Both of which demonstrate another point, namely that successful SEO for
one search engine often isn_t the same process for the others.

But wait. What about the shoppers in Dallas, Oregon? Or the *ten* other
_Dallases_ in the USA? Or the several Dallas Counties? Once again, a
weakness in search engines that no amount of clever SEO will be able to
combat by itself. My guess is that people living in cities named
Franklin, Jefferson, Lexington and several hundred other common-named
places are beginning to feel more than a bit miffed by Google_s cavalier
intermixing of results from all like-named localities.

Trying to explain away the inherent logical weaknesses in search engine
linguistic capabilities, some search gurus have been telling us for
years that people will gradually get smarter, and will even learn how to
refine their search expressions to sift out more of the affiliate SPAM
and other useless results. That thinking is, I fear, wishful. The sad
truth is that, globally, perhaps just 20% or as little as 15% of all web
users are using search engines with any regularity, due, in my judgment,
to the too-often flawed results. Almost all of these folks could learn
in five minutes or less how to make Google or the others perform much
better. They won_t take the trouble, anymore than a busy Mom will cook
hamburgers for supper when she is driving past three fast-food joints on
her way home from her second job.

And then there is the even scarier conclusion, namely that all of this
is *before* SEO is really understood by the big-time national golf club
makers and sellers.

The point? I am suggesting that once the talented SEOs begin to
effectively educate their clients on the powerful reach of the web into
local marketing, we can expect to see the _golf(ing) clubs_ in Dallas
pushed down the rankings, to be replaced by the listings of chain stores
with one or more branches in Dallas, the national sellers, and (with
luck and serious expertise) maybe one or two local-area golf shops. The
several hundred Dallas/Ft. Worth area shops selling golf clubs and
equipment are going to see very little from their SEO efforts for that term.

To perform effectively, SEO takes *hard work* folks. By all means use
it, but realize that there are brilliant experts out there who eat these
sorts of linguistic and textual inference problems for a tasty pre-lunch
snack. Most businesses who rely over-much on SEO are apt to end up as
the main course for these pros.

To milk Jeff_s example one last time, SEO is much like a golf swing:
anyone can swing a club and get the ball at least part way down the
fairway, or in that general direction. But only a *pro* is going to have
her or his swing so well developed as to consistently out-distance the
rest of us.

Don_t get me wrong: the SEOs I respect get paid well because they *do*
well. I predict their mini-industry will continue to flourish. But they
can only realistically expect to push a very small percentage of
businesses up to the top of the _natural_ search rankings. And given the
demand by the top marketers to be up there at the top, pulling the
lion_s share of traffic for the better key phrases, you can expect the
fees the SEOs charge to rise accordingly in the next few years.

[Self-promotional note to those interested in search engine design:
Jeff_s example of _golf clubs_, and the confusion as to which _Dallas_
the user is targeting, just happen to be two stunning examples of the
limitations of _natural_ or _organic_ search engine indexing and ranking
processes. For a different concept of how to solve this problem in a
user-friendly way -- a way that *also* works for advertisers -- go to
http://www.vivante.com. Enter the single word _golf_ (quotes not needed)
into the search term box, then enter the word Dallas into the optional
geo term box. You_ll see how Vivante lets the user *choose* exactly what
they want to find, and where... ]

Jeff makes the point that the web is opening great opportunities for
smaller and local businesses to reach new prospects. He_s right, and I_m
on record for the last five years in arguing just that, encouraging
thousands of readers to take advantage of the new methods -- including
SEO. But what we are discussing here is the *relative* value of putting
US$10,000 of, say, a $50,000 local promotion budget into professional
SEO *before* trying other alternatives.

In running a business, you need to be concerned with where things will
be a year or two from now. If you are going to commit to $50K in
marketing expenses for a year, you need to have a solid understanding of
the likely ROI you can expect for each component of that budget, over
the full year.

David Yancey
http://www.vivante.com



Received on Tue Mar 29 2005 - 17:02:47 CST