Why Google’s algorithms could spell the return to AAA marketing
Are Google’s top organic ranking factors for content and links designed simply to make its paid listings more trusted? Mikko Moisander discusses in this guest post.
Recent articles have again cracked the curtain a little on a great and all powerful search engine god.
To want to understand this marvel is no mystery. How benevolent this creation must be! A glimmering golem, giving only those who have worked hard a golden blessing in the form of a top listing.
The spirit of this great brand assured us that businesses that played by the rules got organic listings and the ads were a necessary tax for making sure you got the best of both worlds.
Look closer though and organic is likely not a signal for authentic anymore as competition for rank becomes even more pronounced. Will this mean Google gold turns into yellow paper due to the rules of the game it created and plays in?
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Google does not want you to click on the organic results. It is in its best interest to create such an unholy mess below the fold that its controlled, pin-pointed and paid for results become more attractive to click.
That is its main source of revenue and this is well under way. But users want businesses they can trust, not those that are good at link building and content, which is strangely what Google encourages.
So, much like in days gone by, the race to the top of the organic directory creates a distorted picture of legitimacy.
Whereas before you reached the top by calling yourself AAA Accounting, now it has become 600 words spun and sprinkled with intent keywords that is then linked to in some other 600 word blog whose authority is determined by having held the domain since 2007.
Or, much like adding a few As, if you want to rank higher these days, just create a longer listicle than anyone has ever done before. Yes, that sums up the state of SEO, in that the advice from one of its most promoted prophets is to just make things longer. No wonder it’s becoming harder to use Google.
The plot thickens when you read some of the other disciples’ advice. Buying expired domains and redirecting, buying links, reviews, weaselling onto educational sites and creating your own networks centred around the ‘money site’.
These are all accepted techniques to rank organically, which kind of dampens the whole ‘organic’ meaning. One can only imagine what secret methods the trade actually keeps to itself these days. Wait, but Google is working really, really hard on algorithms to counter these practices, correct?
Hold on to your foil hats. This may seem crazy, but Google is a business. Why wouldn’t it allow these practices to eventually turn the organic results into such a poor indicator of ability to fulfil the query, so that a searcher would begin to be more likely to trust paid results?
It could even fan the flames of competition periodically with rule changes designed to create arms races, currently being seen in the race to build pages upon pages of linked content.
Firstly, is the content prioritisation merely Google wringing what it can from its partner sites before ad-blocking truly takes hold, as more pages equals more eyes, but mostly, is the customer truly better served by all this content?
Therefore, how long before the good king Google steps in and saves us from organic listings completely? It’s not hard to imagine that the paid listings are then seen as more trustworthy – Google “Refined” by the consumer.
This would suit the Google brand personality of a just saviour and overcome the problem of avoiding ads due to the ‘inauthenticity’ of them.
It would perhaps announce that, reluctantly of course, in response to being unable to control the Serps (search engine result pages) any longer, and in order to fulfil search intent, isn’t it better that we moved the organics off page one altogether?
If you want to go ‘organic’ you can always risk page two. Of course, that would likely mean the end of the SEO industry *sniff* and with so many infographics left undone! Seriously though, what might this future look like?
More aggregate and comparison portals seem likely as PPC (pay-per-click) makes more sense for them. In what may already be a signal of what the future may hold, Menulog, HiPages, Finder, Oneflare are examples of local directories with big investments made in the last few years.
Compare the Market: a brand built to lessen reliance on Google.
Iselect, Compare the Market, Wotif and the REA Group’s pages are other examples of very large companies that have thrived despite or due to how easy it was for businesses to be found on Google.
When everyone is going content crazy for attention is it any wonder that sites that have the bare minimum, or that save you searching through its content, become popular?
It’s taken massive usability and architecture investments along with big brand building campaigns, but now they have the purchase intent traffic for their vertical seemingly sown up.
For top-of-funnel, it’s hard to see social and trusted forums reducing their influence, also due to superior authenticity to current organic content.
So, between the new directories, aggregators, Adwords, Merchant and Map listings, you would think the writing would be on the wall for investment in content for organic search purposes.
Not to mention all the effort put into artificial link building to actually make the content rank.
All Google has to do is point these tactics out to the public to remove trust from any listings it doesn’t get paid for.
Even if you don’t subscribe to this outlandish theory and value brand awareness at research stage, even the most ardent content marketer and SEO must realise we have developed content fatigue by now, and something’s got to give. Whatever that is, it will probably end up suiting Google just fine.
Mikko Moisander is a marketing manager specialising in SME at www.mikkomoisander.com
I agree re REA. Their SEO appears to be solid and Realestate.com.au is frequently at the top organically. Domain is not, yet the UX of Domain is so, so, so much better than REA. Be interesting to watch that fight in SEO. App wise Domain are winning big, which brings me onto Google’s fight; ‘Apps’. Their reviews are building in droves. Soon, why bother going to Tripadvisor or Zomato et al when the reviews will be there in the SERPS: too easy. AirBnB…? Well they have appeared to carve out a very quick spot; imagine how much search they have taken away from Google… Will Google do something about that?
The real game changer for users will be the ability to get things immediately, in Googles search results. We can with weather, equations, sports scores and more, plus shopping. Will the shopping model build far bigger? Take Carsales as an example of a website on borrowed time, (surely it is). It is slow, cluttered, hard to navigate and sitting there waiting to be bettered. Google could eat it tomorrow, couldn’t it?
It will be an interesting 5 years, lots of change, more and more competition for the current ‘rivers of gold’. Will Google be as mighty in 5 years? I think so. Relevancy is key to Google’s future success, as it was to it’s beginning. ‘Transaction’ is their big focus now surely. If you get get what you want and transact really easily: win. Clicking through to a sloppy site where it is hard to navigate and ‘transact’, is what, imho, is the real issue with Google. Paid v organic; it will sort itself out, it will. AAA listings? I don’t think so. Community reviews and AI, plus engagement metrics, will create solid results. I have a Google phone and the results are rocking.
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… Yet this piece aims to “linkbuild” to your own site.
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There are so many speculations and assumptions in this piece with rather flimsy back stories that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Google’s SERP’s are brilliant at delivering the answers that I need and most people would agree with that statement still. Any business that invests in advertising (weather that’s Google AdWords or creating brilliant content that ranks well organically) is simply investing in marketing. And in regards to the latter; content that ranks well generally shares well on social media (precisely because people like it), so there’s an added added bonus to content and links.
I think I get money focus, 1-2 decades ago that marketing investment went entirely to glossy ads in magazines and newspapers and and shiny TV commercials, now it goes to Google for pay-per-click budgets and goes to the content creators who create stuff that’s worthy of ranking on the front page.
Lastly, Google is very good at knowing what people like and don’t like, so if larger in-depth content is what’s ranking at the top of Google you can be pretty sure it’s because that’s exactly what people have tended to go for.
There is nothing new or Sinister about it this and organic rankings are now fairly well correlated with the amount of value a business is creating for it’s industry and customers. It’s just a new media landscape. Some people play it better than others and quite often the people that were good at the old game aren’t so good at the new game, and have a tendency to complain about it as their strategies work less and less efficiently in a changing world.
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“Whereas before you reached the top by calling yourself AAA Accounting, now it has become 600 words spun and sprinkled with intent keywords that is then linked to in some other 600 word blog whose authority is determined by having held the domain since 2007.”
It’s clear you have an understanding of how to rank in competitive verticals. Back in 2008.
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“Buying expired domains and redirecting, buying links, reviews, weaselling onto educational sites and creating your own networks centred around the ‘money site’” are hardly accepted practices in the wider SEO community.
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Yes, that was a simplified example of how I interpreted the three major ranking factors announced by google this year are being used. Most advice I’ve seen still points to word length, domain authority (with age being a big factor) on-page keyword use, and links of course. I was wondering if gaming that would lead to more people clicking on google ads or directories.
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So its all white or black with no shades of grey? I do see some are doing exactly those things, and they are promoted by the stars of the trade (albeit with a disclaimer). The more competitive it gets for organic the more I think it will rise. Its a bit like steroid use. Lots of seos play fair (by whose rules anyway?) and try and win but if your competitors are doing it without penalty and you’re getting pressured for results… I also wanted to point out that it might be in Googles interests to tar the whole industry with the same untrustworthy brush one day.
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Mate, I’m sorry, but “Rankbrain, Content & Links” are in no way summed up by your “simplified example”. It’s plain old misleading, and (bluntly) wrong.
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It’s fine to have an opinion and ask critical questions but as Matt says your opinion is misleading and wrong. I clicked on your link and you don’t reference any knowledge re SEO or SEM but are clearly young and just trying to get a job. If this article is your idea of content marketing to try and get yourself a job, then anyone with any knowledge of SEO or SEM is going to see straight through your lack of knowledge. In the industry this is called clickbait and most people will see through it. So you aren’t doing yourself any favours other than earning a link.
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I guess my previous reply didnt go through, but I wanted to share a much better article I found on the subject I found, after I had wrote this one, by Ryan Stewart on the Moz blog called ‘Why I stopped selling Seo services…’ He is obviously much more learned than myself so it might reassure you of the ideas discussed here.
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