Last week, Google pulled the rug out from under many companies when it adjusted its organic PageRank algorithm. As a result, sites, both large and small, dropped significantly in search result rankings, causing their parent companies to squawk disapproval all across the web. The explosiveness present in the reaction from the advertising industry points to a trend toward increased dependence on search-related marketing campaign strategies that is mirrored (and most likely driven by) a similar increase in budget allocation toward SEM or “Search Engine Marketing” (see graphic at left). SEM refers to a range of marketing tactics whose goals are all the same: drive traffic to the company’s website through online search networks. This can be accomplished by organic “SEO,” search engine optimization techniques that involve engineering a site to better ensure its prominent inclusion on relevant search results pages, and “PSC,” paid search campaign tactics that deal 
more with purchasing key words, rankings and sponsored ads (see graphic at right). By integrating the two general strategies, companies can develop a strong web presence that should lead to higher, more targeted, consumer traffic through their sites.
is listed. The graphic to the left shows a simplified version of directional linking that indicates site C would have the highest rank (taking only linking behaviors into consideration). Advertisers do not pay for these rankings, nor do they have any outright control over the results. But with general knowledge of PageRank procedure, marketers have worked to reverse-engineer Google’s algorithm in order to strategically place their clients’ sites on search results pages by creating invisible text or false links, for example. This strategy may not be effective though. As Phil Craven of Webworkshop.com reports, “Not all links are counted by Google. For instance, they filter out links from known link farms. Some links can cause a site to be penalized by Google. They rightly figure that webmasters cannot control which sites link to their sites, but they can control which sites they link out to.” It was just this sort of ‘cheating the system’ mentality that forced Google to revamp its ranking algorithm in order to return to a more realistic, organically based search experience.
The problem that comes with SEO is that in the rush to employ the tactics involved in gaining higher page ranking, advertisers overlook the importance of a well-made site—the phenomena that search engine algorithms were designed to discover in the first place. Rather than focusing on ways to cut corners and out-smart search engines, resources should be put into optimizing sites through their characteristics. “Better rankings,” says P.J. Fusco of the ClickZ Network "come with better linking. Better linking starts within your site. Having a site map is a no-brainer, as are non-graphical site-wide navigation, footers, and related deep links … Implementing the 20 most fundamental elements of SEO best practices … should provide you with a straightforward approach to better visibility for your Web site in the major search engines.” By re-evaluating the algorithm, Google is forcing marketers to refocus their efforts, which will, hopefully, lead to more effective site building and link integration in the future. Even if it fails to accomplish that, perhaps in time, the cyclical pattern I see (marketers discovering ways to cheat the system, search engines responding by honing their ranking practices and the marketing community throwing a fit until they can find new ways to cheat) will produce positive results: an internet search so well tuned that it connects consumers with exactly the companies and products they need and want, while minimizing the waste absorbed by companies eager to connect with their targets. Either way, Google’s decision to update signals an opportunity for the marketing industry as a whole. The question now is how will that industry respond?
1 comment:
Dear Abe,
Thanks for the interesting post. Google has become increasingly prominent in society (I especially enjoy that people no longer “search” for things online, but rather “Google” them), and a significant change in Google’s operations definitely warrants further investigation.
Firstly, I think your images are relevant to your topic, and add to the quality of your post. I like the third image the most, as I feel that the simplicity of the labels (A, B and C) and the arrows make the subject of your post easier to comprehend. I feel your post would benefit visually if the images were spread out more, but that might just be a personal choice. However, I think your second image (sponsored ads) would be more appropriate if it were an image taken from Google, not Yahoo!.
Also, I think your linkroll is strong and provides quality resources for your readers to view, and your feed items are also interesting and informative. I enjoy being able to view other articles related to your topic, so I am glad you included them. However, I feel your post (and blog as a whole) would benefit from better labeling of posts, as some tags are relatively broad (like Google and Search Engine Optimization). I feel that your readers would benefit from labels like internet technology, which would apply to other posts in your blog as well. Then, your readers would be better able to find your posts on related topics.
I think that for the most part, you included excellent links, as it is clear that you spent time researching and evaluating your topic. Perhaps you could have chosen another source for your first link, because although registration is free, the registration process seems to only want people working in public relations to register, so it seems that most of your readers would either have to lie or not view the source.
The main concern I have with your post is that after reading it, I still do not entirely understand what Google did. You open your post with the sentence, “Last week, Google pulled the rug out from under many companies when it adjusted its organic PageRank algorithm.” However, you do not provide any contextualization of what Google did when it “pulled out the rug from under many companies,” and the reader must go to the outside sources to learn the specifics about the changes. I strongly believe that your post would be better if you analyzed and explained Google’s changes in non-technological terms, as your sources do.
Another reason that the topic is hard to understand is that some of the sentences are rather wordy. For example, in your first paragraph you state: “This can be accomplished by organic “SEO,” search engine optimization techniques that involve engineering a site to better ensure its prominent inclusion on relevant search results pages, and “PSC,” paid search campaign tactics that deal more with purchasing key words, rankings and sponsored ads (see graphic at right).” This long sentence, while important, would be better if it was broken up into two sentences, and the topics expanded. These topics may be well understood by those well-versed in advertising, but for the average reader, these topics will need further development. Otherwise, readers will not understand what you mean when you reference those terms later in your post.
However, I do want to point out that I really enjoyed “the cyclical pattern” you mentioned in your conclusion, as “an internet search so well tuned that it connects consumers with exactly the companies and products they need and want” would be a fabulous invention. That being said, I am not entirely sure exactly what you are referring to when you state that the new way of searching the internet would be “minimizing the waste absorbed by [those] companies.”
Overall, I think you wrote an interesting and informative post on a topic that will have important implications on the global economy. I encourage you to revisit this topic in a future post later on!
Thanks for reading,
-mhs, http://lawandsports.blogspot.com
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