I’ve been a search engine optimisation enthusiast for a while now. In fact, back when I first started trying to figure things out, I was messing around with search engines like AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, and of course everyone’s favourite at that time: ‘you-could-have-bought-google’, Yahoo!
Back then I never imagined that SEO would become a massive industry in itself. It was just too easy. In fact, at times it barely took including your keyword in the title and having it littered around your article; and boom – you’re on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) 1. Of course, once people started figuring this out, we began seeing all kinds of ‘SEO hacks’ like keyword stuffing, which often made articles unreadable, and even comical tactics like keyword masking – which would have been laughable if it didn’t actually work.
Whitespace wasn’t just a ‘design’ thing then
Clearly, the wild wild west of the world wide web needed to be tamed. The search engine world was just waiting for the right cowboy to come to town.
OK Google
In many (arguably, most) parts of the world, the word “Google” has become synonymous with the word “search” – we no longer say “let’s search for it”, we instead go “Google it”. The ability of a brand to alter human vocabulary is both fascinating and frightening at the same time, isn’t it?
Let’s start with the fascinating part; we’ll get to frightening later.
Google’s origins can be traced back to 1996, when co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a search engine called Backrub. This original name for the search mammoth we know today as Google is more significant that you think: it tells you what Google’s secret sauce is.
What Backrub did different from other search engines at the time was create a better piece of software (what’s commonly referred to as a ‘crawler’) that analysed links between websites to help determine their importance; which consequently would ‘rank’ websites on the SERP.
Think of this like an extended family tree, that also included all your friends, acquaintances, and even exes (an apt analogy for ‘nofollow’ links, perhaps?). If you could be linked to someone important, then by virtue of association, you too must be somewhat important. How close that link is, and the context of that link would also play a part.
This is, of course, a very simplistic explanation of how backlinks work, and over the years Google has poured billions in bucks and brains towards perfecting their art. As we all know now, Google’s RankBrain algorithm has become so sophisticated that people build careers out of trying to decipher its ever expanding and elusive inner working.
Googling Myself
I’ve had some history with the big G. While working as a copywriter at an advertising agency back in the early 2000’s, I was tasked with writing clever copy for press and billboard advertisements, brochures, as well as the occasional television or radio script. There wasn’t anything particularly strategic about being ‘clever’ back then – no keyword volumes or competition levels to consider. If your words could capture attention, entertain, and lead a campaign to win an award; that would be clever enough.
When I left advertising in search of entrepreneurial adventure, ‘clever’ writing took on a whole new meaning. In a way I had created a search engine of my own, that crawled through other pre-defined websites, pulled information into mine, and presented my website’s visitors a list of car insurance prices. I had built Singapore’s first motor insurance aggregator website that fetched car insurance prices in real time from (almost) every insurer.
While I didn’t have powerful SEO tools like Ahrefs or even basic ones like Google’s Keyword Planner and Analytics, I knew that with almost 500,000 cars on the roads here, a little over 1,300 car owners would be renewing their car insurance policies every single day. Even if only 10% of those searched for “car insurance” online and if 30% of those landed on my website (typically you could be assured of receiving about 30% of search volume for the respective search query if you ranked #1 back then), I would have myself a pretty sweet business. ‘Clever’ writing hence became all about getting my website ranked at the very top of Google’s SERP, and then converting my site’s visitors into customers.
And that’s exactly what I did. The website turned an operational profit within its first 6 weeks of launch and was acquired 8 months later.
I’ve been keeping busy with Google since then. I was one of the founding members of MoneySmart (which still is among Singapore’s top personal finance sites), a website and business model that was built on strong SEO – the idea being that we would rank for valuable search terms like “home loans”, “credit cards”, and of course, “car insurance”, and then monetise that traffic.
Over the years I’ve also run an umpteen number of SEO experiments with several businesses and websites that I own – sometimes just to challenge myself in industries where people say ranking on SERPs is impossible like for Gambling/Casino related keywords.
Took a gamble on that one.
And sometimes, just to prove a point.
And…also me.
Dancing To The Tune Of The Algorithm
A rock star once said, “Nothin’ lasts forever, and we both know hearts can change”. Turns out he wasn’t all that wise, but the verse certainly was.
While it may seem unperceivable now, there well could come a day when all of mankind will no longer “Google it”. Alternatively, there could also come a time where that’s ALL they need to do. If your business or website operates in an industry that Google has decided to venture into, then you probably already know what the latter means. Try Googling “online stopwatch’ and then ask yourself how much traffic the top-ranking websites on that SERP receive. Websites in the hotels, flights, and lyrics space are gearing up for the same fate as we speak.
It must be particularly disheartening for the travel industry where it’s common knowledge that millions of dollars are poured into SEO budgets every year. That’s a lot of investment slowly but surely evaporating into thin air.
Google has come up with plenty of updates not just to their algorithm but also on their SERPs in recent years. We now see things like Knowledge Panels, Map Packs, My Business Listings, Image Results, Video Results, and of course, if you’ve been keeping watch, a lot more Google Ads than we used to. In fact, on mobile devices you often don’t even see an organic search result without scrolling down.
Jessica Bowman, Search Engine Land’s editor at large recently observed that Google is becoming less search engine and more portal. That’s a big shift; but it comes as no surprise. Google makes over $100b in advertising revenue a year – and none of that comes from organic search. To keep that number growing, Google will have to increase its ‘pay to play’ functions, something a portal stands a better chance at facilitating than a seemingly neutral ‘directory of search results’.
Search Engine Obliteration
Google made a big move recently with its June 2019 Core Update. There were some that seemingly got lucky, but there were many (far more than usual) who ended up losing substantial amounts of organic search traffic. So much so that one online news publication made a very public and impassioned plea for webmasters to take a stand against Google’s autocratic rule over online search – before announcing that the most recent update cost them their business.
They do, however, appear to be very much alive.
While it may have been a publicity stunt on CCN’s part (or perhaps even a sneaky move to improve their navigational search result numbers to compensate for the loss), the open letter and its underlying message seemed to resonate with many within the SEO community – forcing ourselves to ask: how did we end up putting all our eggs in one basket?
I’m not saying SEO doesn’t work. I know it does, having personally benefited very much from it. But SEO works because Google allows it to work – and I’ve not had much reason to think they would ever stop doing so; until now.
Past, Presence, Future
I’ve had my fair share of web traffic ups and downs. I run quite a few websites in a variety of verticals (a Mobile App, eCommerce store, Blog, Freelancer, etc.), all of which started off as SEO or Digital Marketing experiments but eventually morphed into paying hobbies. They also allow me to run tests every now and then – which in turn keeps me clued in on what’s the latest in online marketing. As a website/business owner, and even as an investor, the most important lesson I’ve learnt can be summed up in just two words: Always diversify.
As kind as Google has been to me, the reality is that Google usually isn’t the best source of my website’s conversions. It isn’t all that surprising when you really think about it – SEO in theory and SEO in reality are sometimes two different things altogether. The one thing that SEOs tend to neglect when devising their search engine optimisation strategy is the increasing rise of zero-click searches. That number has been steady growing over the years, and in fact now almost half of all searches that happen on Google end up not going anywhere. You may argue that this is an over-generalisation and if we were to get granular and break it down by Informational, Navigational, and Transactional keyword searches the numbers would look different – but even if you cater for certain discounts on different types of search intent, there’s no denying that the growing numbers of clicks being taken away from (or simply not happening at all) organically ranking sites are a frightening reality.
At present for one of my websites, traffic originating from a particular forum has been most valuable, followed by traffic from YouTube. For another, it’s traffic from Instagram, followed by Reddit. And yet for another, it’s traffic from Quora. Instead of relying on what Google Analytics tells me, I make it a point to reach out directly to my customers to understand the true journey that brought them to my web property – and often glean some incredibly enlightened insights from those who are kind enough to indulge me.
At least 7 out of 10 times, I hear this: “I saw your name on this other website and Googled you”.
Search Presence Optimisation (SPO)
In the world of SEO, Navigational traffic (ie. search traffic that contains branded keywords) tends to suffer from the middle child syndrome. It’s a member of the family but doesn’t quite get the attention that’s bestowed upon its Transactional and Informational traffic siblings.
BIG mistake.
Not only is Navigational traffic your most valuable source of traffic, it’s also the most susceptible to being hijacked by competitors (bidding on a competitor’s brand keyword on Google Ads is almost expected of any decent search engine marketer).
Fun Fact: Almost 10% of Google’s traffic comes from people Googling “Google”.
If someone’s specifically searching for you, they are likely close to the bottom of the marketing funnel – shouldn’t you do everything you can to protect that?
SPO FTW
For the non-millennials, FTW = For The Win.
As we’ve established, search queries face a different SERP landscape than they used to. You’ll often find things like Map Packs, Google My Business, News Articles, Images/Videos on SERP 1 – and navigational search terms are not exempt from this. What someone sees on SERP 1 when they search for your brand could make or break you.
Search Presence Optimisation is a strategy we’ve developed here at Cognito that leverages on our global public relations expertise, and marries it with our digital marketing prowess – creating a truly integrated online communications solution.
Not only does SPO work on increasing the volume of relevant navigational searches for you by placing your brand and engaging your audience where it matters, but also ensures that you dominate SERP 1 for what truly matters – your brand.