(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...So, there is something about SEO or SEM and maybe Affiliate Marketing (but less so) that gets at my goat. I guess the thing is that if you are writing a blog about a topic, or an issue or what not you should get to be known and found because you write good content. This is the thing with SEO/SEM, it doesn’t reward necessarily quality, it rewards technical know-how.
I guess one could say this helps you get your message out there when people don’t know about your ramblings. Sure, I can see that. It is like you open up a new business and you go around the neighborhood and flyer the local cars, or you use the local paper. Makes sense. The thing is you can advertising your restaurant, but if it sucks no one will come back and you won’t make it into Zagat’s rating - no matter what you say, or what flashy signs you put up outside of your location.
But, from what I can tell, SEO/SEM doesn’t care. You can have a horrid blog, or site talking absolute crud and if you have the money and knowledge you can climb up the pages to the top rankings.
Correct me if I am wrong. Please. Perhaps I have this whole thing miss-read.
Suffice to say, it is weird that SEO/SEM is even something that has value. I mean why should I trust the sites that show up on the first few pages of google? For all I know they just happen to be a bunch of computer geeks who know nothing on the subjects they choose to write about, but plenty about the in’s-and-outs of SEM/SEO.
I am gonna have to think about this more and I hope to get some comments.
Filed under: Blog Ranking, Promotional SEO, SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Strategy, Search Engines
Loading ...
Saul
Now, SEM is the big daddy. SEO is a subset of it. There are, from what I can tell, two major aspects of non-paid search. One is optimization, SEO, and the other is the amount of links that go into a site. That second part helps solve the cruddy content but high ranking apsect.
Optimization is another ball of wax. Lots and lots of technical skill. And often I’ve seen if a site isn’t half way optimized properly, the content probably sucks. The usability is all off. More comments will give you greater insight.
SEM is not the big daddy and SEO is not a subset of it. That is false. They are mutually exclusive and I will soon tell you why.
However, it is a popular misconception, but the key difference has to do with durability. SEM is not durable — once the ads are removed, the benefit ceases. With SEM, you don’t need to optimize, you don’t need to care about architecture, you don’t need to think about UI or usability, and you don’t need to know how to make love to Google — with SEM, you don’t need a high page rank or anything else. You just need money to spend…
Okay, I am going to say that I am wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_marketing
“Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages (SERPs) and has a proven ROI (Return on Investment). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.[1] Other sources, including the New York Times define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings, different from SEO which seeks to obtain better free search listings”
Good to know.
Actually, I am right, because I am New York Time-class and my definition is shared by them and others, shown above,
“Other sources, including the New York Times define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings, different from SEO which seeks to obtain better free search listings”
I guess we’re both right and I have have to be aware of that because I am probably one of the world’s most amazing SEO ninja but SEM, ad buys, paid placement, paid inclusion mean nothing to me…
To me, SEM is a general term. A category. An umbrella term. Not a skill, not a practice.
SEO is a practice, a discipline, a skill.
But when someone asks me if AHLLC does SEM, I should say, “fuck yeah!” instead of “nope, we don’t do ads.”
Or, does SEM assume ads and so forth?
Yes, SEM assumes ads I would think. At least on Google. That’s what clients are likely to think. Maybe not banners on Yahoo!, but in the Google universe, I’d be most client types would view keyword buys as part of SEM.
Not only that, they’d put on the hat of the end user, who is staring at his or her computer screen after putting in “wooden rocking chairs” and “Tennessee” an either doesn’t decipher or barely decifers the diference between organic and paid. They’re looking for wooden rocking chairs. Period. They use Google, the search engine, to get there.
Hmmm. Okay, I guess what I am trying to get at is the non-ad thing. I know that when I utilize Google, I rarely if ever click on the “paid” results in the columns on the right hand side.
But, when I click on a website that comes up in their regular searches I expect it to be coming to the fore because of content relevancy and quality. Not because someone paid or has the know how to make it come to the top of the list.
If google or any other search engine goes this route I think a lot of the greatness of the net would be lost. It is about being available to anyone and not about how much money you have or tech skills but really about what your site says and its content.
Now, this is because I am about content not products. I do research into subjects or issues and I prefer not to get a result that is at the top because of reasons besides content quality.
People do click on ads. I make $1,000 from Adsense a month, which means thousands of people are clicking on Adwords ads a month. So, this is the truest thing I have ever observed, so “listen up.”
Online, people generally have no discernment: they click on anything. They behave much like barracudas do when they see glittery and shiny things. People don’t care if it is “paid content” or “real content.”
And, according to our experience, nobody (meaning very few) clicks through to page two results on Google, and only people “in the business” check to see what’s going on on page three-10…
Also, nobody ever uses advanced operators such as “” (quotes) or [] (brackets] to limit search.
I use a lot of these truths in my awesome, amazing, rockstar defensive SEO campaigns — and my promotional SEO campaigns as well.
Saul, you’re a Berkeley-educated high-brow academic researcher — what in hell’s name makes you think you are even remotely anything more than an outlier in this data?
I hate to say it, but behaviorally, you are irrelevant, mate.
[…] have a very spirited conversation going on in the comments for SEO/SEM - What value? Please, come join us. We would really love to learn from your […]
Saul
A few points.
1) Search engines aren’t at the point where they know what each individual would really, deeply value in terms of content quality. Getting better. but often words have different meanings or connotations.
2) Often top ranking doesn’t necessarily mean quality of content. It can, of couse, but it is keyword matching and link relatioships that have the biggest effect. Chirs would know more about this than I would. Relevency is more important here. That’s because it more reflects a direct relaitonship with intent. But the overall quality may be off.
3) A lot of companies (and this is where Abraham Harrison brings enormous value to the table) don’t have clue about SEO. Neither did the design shop that did the company’s website two and a half years ago. In flash. So the site is practically invisible to search engines. Telling them that they need a new site makes them cringe and look for quick fixes. This happened to me with a client a year ago. Through paid search, we increased their traffic by 40%. But they had their design firm redo the site…again flash, so the only way it showed up in search engines was via ads. Ridiculous. But their products (in this case, tractors) were top quality.
4) Smaller companies, one up from mom & pop, should use paid search if they’re running up against major competitors. Seasonal stuff and things like that.
Any company that’s looking to have a sold presence on the web needs to have an SEO strategy for their site. Because that’s often how we find them.
Okay, well thanks Chris talk about feeling irrelevant …;)-
Yes, I know that my views are often of the outliers area, but that certainly doesn’t make them irrelevant - unless all you are interested in is stats.
If you spoke to some of the guys over at Global Business Network like Peter Schwartz or read people like Pierre Wack (and I am pretty sure you have) the interesting stuff is in the areas that aren’t in most people’s targets - the unexpected, the future that most people discount is where the action usually is.
Isn’t this the big problem that traditional advertising is facing or the music industry. They never thought about the possibility of the outliers becoming the “in thing”.
You see, for me there are two levels to the internet one is the selling of products and the other one is the provision of information.
I think it would be a sad day if all the internet became about was the selling of products - like a big online mall.
It would be a mistake to think that people like me - them west coast Berkeley educated elite (as some would like to call us) hold no relevancy in the future design and the future demands placed on the web.
Information is after all the most valuable commodity and having a way of discerning the good from the bad from the false is extremely important.
It is after all partly why the blogosphere has grown into relevancy - large media has stopped placing a true value on relevant and quality information.
“They never thought about the possibility of the outliers becoming the ‘in thing’.”
Can’t happen. The education system in this country sucks badly enough that there are just too few of these outliers to ever become profitable.
Sure, you can target them, but real money is never made from snarky, over-education, people who question authority and turn off the TV during dinner.
You are too much of a pluralist. It is indeed charming and what a wonderful world it will be.
This has nothing to do with “getting it” or “the young kids get it more then we do” — it has to do with discernment, with thoughtfulness, with logic, with caring, with curiosity, with vigilance.
These are not developmental, they are cultural, and they have a whole lot to do with your parents, with a value in education, and with a curious passion to learn — to discern.
With no child left behind, I daresay that the progress can be officially shelved as devolved.
Geek may be in, goth may be in, and emo may be in, but smart, intellectual, nerdy, educated, trained, and rigorous… well, that’s sort of like leprosy in most places in the USA.
Sad but true….yes I know.
Sometimes I think it would be good if a couple more got left behind…
Saul
Here’s an example of why you should be less cynical about those ads on the right hand side.
I used to live in Alexanrdria, VA. There was a small children’s clothes retail store that had been there since the early 60’s. Mom and pop. Run by a nice elderly Jewish couple and they provide school uniforms for the local Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, and Lutheran schools. They also were the place to go to for Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Girl Scout uniforms. Their daughters, now adults, would come buy from time to time to help out. Some thing very nice about that. Gave it a small town or neighborhood feel.
But the problem is that the area is pretty transient. People will live in the area for 3-5 years and they’re gone. Maybe 15 away, but they’re gone. And there are a lot of malls in Northern Virigina, filled with kids clothes retail stores. And also, a nice and warm as it was, they couldn’t get by just on selling school and scouting uniforms. So they did some of those ads that you don’t like to click on. And it worked. It got people in the door and they’d be solid customers for those 3- 5 years. Or beyond.
They couldn’t compete with Gap Kids or any other place directly, but they could make their mark using search ads.
Just a thought.