I’ve been working in the online world for over a decade now, and after a pretty tortuous 2013 for SEO, I’m now casting my mind to what 2014 is going to bring.
After Penguin 2.1, many SEO practitioners breathed a sigh of relief when Matt Cutts announced these were the last “big” updates for 2013, but is this last quarter of the year just the calm before the storm?
This is my very personal take on what I believe is in store for online marketing firms in 2014, and particularly my own:
Great Opportunities to Market Local SEO Services
It is not news that Mobile is BIG business and is where the marketing game is being dragged. Mobile Search is driving the number of search inquiries up and up, and with it are hordes of marketers looking to capitalize on the boom. YP.com springs to mind in this regard, and I increasingly find that while they have a slick offering and a skilled sales force, it is pretty easy to take business from them at the local level.The bottom line is that Local SEO and Mobile SEO are inextricably intertwined, and the likes of YP.com are charging far too much for what is effectively an online directory. Typical cost for a placement in one of the geo-located directories is around $500 per month, and that gives precious little in terms of real SEO value of any form.
Taking that budget and developing a broader Local SEO campaign is pretty easy pickings, especially when clients see how little value they are getting from the likes of YP.com and others.
Working Both Sides of the Fence with PPC and SEO
Why is Google so hot on not giving out keywords in Analytics for your SEO traffic because of privacy issues, but is quite happy to hand the data over if it’s PPC traffic?Hmmm…
Is there another explanation for all the ranking volatility we’ve been seeing for the last 9 months (and more) in Google?
I believe probably so…
Is there a problem with a search engine being dependent on a business which derives 90% of its billions of dollars of revenues from paid search?
Yup...but I doubt anything will be done about it.
Strategically, I do believe that there is skullduggery afoot with Google – and this is a personal opinion backed by nothing more than my own thinking. If you are deriving 90% of billions of dollars from paid search, what is there in it for you if you create SERPs volatility?
For starters, businesses enjoying #1 slots suddenly find a need to replace all that lost business if their SEO is flushed down the toilet with Panda, Penguin or whatever next (Polar Bear? Platypus??)
And if your SEO is in the toilet, isn’t the next best thing PPC?
Kerchinggg!
But what about all those newbies suddenly catapulted into the search engine limelight?
If you are plucked from obscurity and propelled into #1 slots (or at least page 1 spots) and are a business that has never experienced this kind of traffic/online sales before, then you think great!!
Until you get knocked off that perch and after being suddenly awakened to the ROI from the search engines, isn’t PPC screaming out for a budget too?
Kerchingggg!!!
I’m sure there will be plenty of SEO technocrats who will spout wisdom and technical analysis that disputes this (including Matt Cutts…sorry Matt but I am not buying Amit’s Separation of Church and State claims with so much money at stake). If you cannot see a massive conflict of interest here…then Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the Lone Gunman on the Grassy Knoll.
What that means for SEOs is they also need to be good at PPC – if your client loses SEO placement then PPC may be a commercially viable. And it may not be the same client: I am taking inquiries on a regular basis from potential clients who have lost SEO placement. Either they are: (a) a potential SEO client (because we’ll do it right), or (b) a PPC prospect.
Either way it’s “kerchingg!” for the SEO/PPC firm who wins the contract to advise them.
In this regard, I think Google is like the IRS – it changes its complicated tax code so often that clients need an expert to guide them through the maze they have created.
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It doesn’t matter how many changes Google makes, all that happens is clients are driven into the arms of the “experts” – my personal definition of an expert is an “ex” is a has been, and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure.
What annoys me is that for all that “kerchingg!” it is the clients who are the ones who have to pay for ever increasing complexity.
Moving Into Selling Product
There is a saying that those who can do, do. Those who can’t do, teach.So it goes with consultants, including SEOs, i.e. us!
2012 was the year we moved into creating sites to sell product, and by “product” I mean physical product we either dropship or fulfil from our own warehouse.
I’d like to report it has been a huge success.
As we approach the end of 2013, I am somewhat contented to report that we did OK.
Handling product is fraught with difficulty. Logistics, customer calls, service, simply having product crashing around the office and the need to create warehousing/staffing (or create a budget for it) make this a big deal for a firm used to the virtual environment.
We had some success in 2013, but frankly the biggest ROI we earned out of the exercise has been a far greater appreciation of the end-to-end issues clients’ face in reality. A typical product-driven client has (a) physical product, (b) a warehousing function, (c) a shipping function and (d) a customer service function – all interacting with their ecommerce store (and everything we are familiar with a shopping cart/payment gateway).
With all that comes staff issues (my dog has a sniffle, Great Aunt Petunia has hemorrhoids), banking issues (this is your merchant account supervisor and we’d like to discuss why you are not underwritten for this level of transaction so we’re freezing your money for 6 months), tax issues (this is the Cornucopia County Sales Tax Department and we want to know why you shouldn’t go to jail for 10 years not filing a THX-1138 form).
I kid you not.
Bluntly, it’s hell.
BUT!
When you talk to a potential client with this first hand narrative in place, it’s heaven to see their eyes light up, because very quickly, they appreciate they are not talking to a “teacher”, but someone that “can do.”
Conclusion
What do I see for 2014?SEO is not dead. SEO practitioners are going to get squeezed commercially, but SEO itself is not dead.
Smaller practitioners are going to be put under pressure and firms will tend to grow larger or specialize.
SEO and PPC are going to become far more than uncomfortable bed partners – if you do SEO you should be doing PPC and vice versa. Local SEO is volume business which can be very profitable for SEO firms looking to take on the big names operating on their turf. Just how local can a giant conglomerate really be?
Clients will become much more demanding than they are presently: 2013 has been a fraught year for them with algorithm volatility, when what they are looking for is business stability.
Karl HindleAbout the Author:
Karl Hindle is CEO of Andersen Hindle Inc based in Richmond Virginia.