People soshalize. They don't care how it's spelled. They just do it.
There are always going to be those who are real experts offering real products or services with proven strategies and the ability to make changes to their techniques as the market and industries change. There are also always going to be those who put on the uniform, slide on the aviator sunglasses, and pretend like they know how to pilot a passenger jet. Sadly, the latter is starting to outnumber the former, particularly in the world of search marketing.
The statistic or something similar to it has dominated the sales pitches and marketing materials of search engine optimization companies for a very long time. I just saw a mention of it in an article from 2005 and it’s been reiterated again and again ever since. Nearly every study seems to come to the same conclusion. Nearly every study is wrong, at least from a business perspective.
Let’s first take a moment to let the cover image of this story wear off a bit. It’s pretty freaky, I know. Once that’s done, let’s talk about how the evolution of search marketing has come to the point that we need to use freaky images to get your attention.
It isn’t always possible for small businesses to have the resources available to employ an SEO agency to take care of their search engine visibility.
Some may try to call me out on the title of this post. “Don’t you mean ‘strategies’ plural?”
The rise of content marketing and more importantly the focus that Google and Bing have put on website content engagement have changed the way we view the types of content we put on our websites. It’s no longer sufficient to focus all of your content on the basic search engine principles of keyword targeting. You have to have content on your domain that draws in the important social signals and time spent on site.
Let’s call it what it really is, shall we? Despite efforts by Bing/Yahoo to stay relevant as well as efforts by Facebook and Twitter to enter the search game, there really is only one. For years, I’ve always had to add the caveat when discussing search marketing that “When I say Google, I mean Bing and Yahoo as well.”
Experts can offer whatever reasoning they want about why sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest became successful, but at the end of the day it’s a no-brainer that they turned pictures into the ultimate addictive hook to their sites and apps. We are visualizing creatures. We love to see things more than we love to read about them.
There are still many in the search engine optimization industry that are fighting the concept that Google (and Bing) is taking social signals into account at a high level when determining search rankings.
