The Half-Truths of Talking Frogs
When Dave Pasternack first began running his mouth off about the death of organic SEO, I decided it was best to refrain from commenting. I came to that decision in large part due to the amount of respect I have for Kevin Lee. Kevin’s an extremely intelligent and savvy guy. He has also been in the game a long time, and he is clearly the pioneer of modern day ppc marketing.
I also didn’t really consider David’s comments newsworthy. After all, he certainly isn’t the first PPC zealot to write a shitty article telling the world that SEO consultants were a high-risk waste of precious marketing dollars, or that organic SEO is as simple as hiring a monkey and giving them the URL to Google’s webmaster guidelines. And to me, the fact that David and Kevin are part of the same company didn’t necessarily mean that Kevin shared David’s ideas on the topic. So I kept my mouth shut.
Apparently, I was wrong.
It looks like Kevin is clearly on the same page as David. Here’s a little snippet from Kevin’s latest ClickZ article where he is pushing the idea that that search engines will eventually show a greater percentage of ads for all “commercial” terms because paid ads are more relevant:
"There’s no reason organic search should be more relevant than paid search. Quite the contrary. SEO spammers don’t care if they manage to get a high position for keywords and keywords phrases that are less than perfectly relevant, because a high SEO position delivers clicks for free, be they perfectly targeted or only marginally relevant. PPC search marketers, however, have no such luxury. They pay for every click, and any click with a poor chance of converting due to poor relevance has an ever-increasing cost." (emphasis mine)
And here is another from a recent interview:
Q: How important is the golden triangle in Paid Search vs. SEO?
"As the paid listings get more relevant and the search engines get more and more SEO spam, I predict that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft will allocate increasing screen real estate to paid listings. As the relevance of the paid listings approach or surpass organic results it’s actually in everyone’s best interest to show paid listings." (emphasis again mine)
His spammer comment pains me for a few reasons:
1. The hypocrisy - What David and Kevin have neglected to tell everyone is the fact that long before they became the kings of PPC, they specialized in organic SEO. They even sold books containing “SEO Jedi Knight Secrets.” . In the late 90’s you couldn’t surf through Infoseek or Alta Vista for more than a few minutes without tripping over Did-it doorway pages. If they are now going to bash an industry segment that they were once a part of, I think they should at least fess up to the fact that they actually pioneered many of techniques used by the "edgy" SEO firms David mentioned in his original article.
2. The complete inaccuracy of the statement. – Kevin’s relevancy argument clearly implies that the sites showing up on the left side of the screen are using “risky” spamming tactics that will ultimately cause irrelevant pages to show up. He is pushing the message that allocating money for organic SEO is synonymous with being a spammer.
While it may be true that the “throw a bunch of shit against the wall and see what sticks” strategy was common in Did-it’s organic era, it’s certainly not the case now. Let’s be honest. We’re not talking pills, porn and casinos here. We’re talking mainstream commercial search terms for products and services my Mother would be searching for. And for the most part, the sites that are dominating the organic listings are doing so with extremely relevant content.
That content is relevant because many of use who work in the organic world do so using the same type of ROI / performance based models commonly found in the PPC world. That means that if our work doesn’t convert, we don’t get paid. It also means that we actually spend a significant amount of time doing PPC ourselves. We do PPC because it allows us to quickly collect conversion data that helps us focus our organic strategy. That being the case, the odds of organic SERPS becoming dramatically less relevant than PPC ads any time soon are quite small.
3. The harmful impact to their clients – If organic SEO is really as easy as David says, then he should make it his mission to pass that simple bit of information on to all of his clients. Hell, if he can help them gain the organic listings they dream of, while at the same time help them break free of their over-priced SEO shackles, he’d be a frickin’ hero. (And he’d also free up more money for ppc).
But it doesn’t look like that has happened.
Here’s a quick example:
Matchmaker.com (Did-it client)
Organic Listings: 104
Paid Listings: 150
Hmmm… A 1997 PR7 domain has barely managed to achieve 100 organic listings in Google. And of those 100, the majority are brand specific. They either never received David’s email explaining how easy SEO was, or they’re following Kevin’s advice because no one should ever risk being called a spammer.
Meanwhile, they’re getting their asses handed to them by Match.com
If you spend any time at all digging through any of the major PPC companies’ client lists, you’ll find more of the same. Dozens and dozens of companies who have drank the PPC Kool-aide. They are forever addicted to their monthly spend, and they honestly believe they are doing the best they can do.
Now that’s a great situation if you’re the person selling the Kool-aide. There’s nothing a drug dealer likes more than a loyal, dependent addict. But it certainly isn’t the best situation for the client. While they stumble along in their drug-induced stupor, their competitors are walking away with buckets full of cash. But they’ll never get it because people they trust are constantly telling them it isn’t worth the effort.
4. The total disregard of the SEMPO Membership – It’s exactly this kind of crap that keeps me from ever joining any type of industry organization. The fact that the Chairman of the organization continually bad mouths a segment of the SEM industry that makes up a large chunk of the membership is a perfect example of why the whole idea is stupid. The people in power at organizations like SEMPO are not there because they have a burning desire to represent the interests of all their members. Instead, they are there because it helps them promote an agenda that improves only their bottom line.
While the rank-and-file members sit around waiting for SEMPO to provide them with the ammunition they so desperately need to convince a new client that they should invest significant money in organic SEO, Kevin and his cohorts are writing articles, and crafting surveys whose sole purpose is to kick the red-headed step-child we call SEO out of the SEM house.
To me, that kind of behavior is simply unacceptable. Search Engine Marketing doesn’t mean pay-per-click. It encompasses anything that has to do with putting a message in front of someone who typed something into a little white box. And the fact that the leadership of SEMPO doesn’t understand that is pathetic.
Maybe what we need is a new industry organization. One that truly represents those of use who are still competent enough to actually make a living helping companies excel in the world of algorithmic search. I don’t know, maybe something like the OSMA(Organic Search Marketers Association)
Think of all the fun we can have with that. We could elect our own version of Kevin and then send him/her out on the mission to write and promote a bunch of one-sided propaganda pieces whose sole purpose would be to convince every Marketing VP that PPC is a complete waste of both time and money.
I think that would be a great thing for the growth of our industry. Don’t you??
Comments
19 Responses to “ The Half-Truths of Talking Frogs ”
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Very well said. It will be interesting to see what response they give… if any.
Lets do it then - the Organic Search Marketers Association. I would love to help start something up like that.
I’ll rephrase one of your above soundbites above to cover what I think is their campaign’s purpose; to convince every Marketing VP that organic SEO is a complete waste of both time and money.
Like you, I also waved off the recent Did-It Fud-and-Linkbait blitz. I still don’t really give a rat’s ass about who says what about organic …in fact, I’m hoping everyone will believe them and abandon organic so I can play undisturbed.
I can come up with better reasons for not joining SEMPO, but you’re right - it’s totally unacceptable for someone to be on a board to promote their own agenda. If you’re going to attempt to do harm to a majority of the members through public statements, step down and let someone else be on the board.
I like Kevin personally, but that statement really didn’t set well with me.
great post. why can’t they just once and for all for pete’s sake clear up the fact that there’s ‘optimisation’ and there’s ’spamming’ - they should be treated as mutually exclusive terms - either you are a SEO-er or a SES-er (no offence to search engine strategies there - but you get my drift. ) i find the statement offensive, but hey, I agree with rcj - leave me to play
I’m please that others are pointing out that there is a HUGE difference between SEO and SEO spam. Based on current definitions of SEO spam, Dave and I were definitely SEO spammers for a couple of years in 1996 and 1997. We thought of what we did as paid inclusion (we never misled the engines as to content but instead developed lots of cloaked doorway pages), we realized that as the engines rolled out paid search and Google pioneered PageRank that in the long term SEO would favor relevant istes. So, SEO agencies would have to look for clients with great content (or the willingness to invest in it), and clients who could get quality links. Most site owners and CEOs want top position whether they deserve it or not. some SEOs or the salespeople working for SEO firms sell SEO as a way to get a site to the top of he listings and never ask (or mention) that the marketer’s site will actually have to be both relevant and respected (based on links) to stay there.
By the way, Matchmaker hasn’t been a Did-it client in several years, (they were owned by Lycos at the time and are now owned by the same company that owns date.com). I have n knowledge about what the current owners are doing either with SEO or PPC.
I’ll go on record, and Dave Pasternack will agree. If your site has poor SEO and you aren’t getting the organic positions you deserve, put in the effort to fix it. I’d recommend that you and your team start with the Google Webmaster page read WebMasterWorld, attend a conference or two, take the DMA or SEMPO training, and take care of the basics. Then if you still need a professional, call one in. But don’t get sold a bill-of-goods about #1 positions for power keywords being right around the corner, just sign this one-year retainer agreement.
The truth is for many top keywords Google, Yahoo and MSN have more than enough relevant listings and the ones that happen to make it to the top were the ones that executed better on the fundamentals of SEO and perhaps are even a bit more relevant. If for some reason an irrelevant listing has crept up to the top, Matt Cutts and his peers at the other engines will find a way to shake things up. That’s their job, just like it’s the job of SEO spammers to use black-hat techniques to manipulate the results.
I will say that if you are a brand new site and in a competitive search market PPC will probably produce the best ROI over the first few years. Competing against sites with thousands to hundreds of thousands of links is virtually impossible for a new site. However if your website is a sustainable business you would be a fool to ignore SEO even if you know you won’t gain much traffic at launch.
Anyone who looks at the split between clicks on organic listings vs. paid will quickly realize the vast majority of available traffic, i.e. potential customers, comes from organic. If Matchmaker or any other company that focuses solely on PPC were forced to come clean to their shareholders that they were willfully ignoring up to 80% of their total customer base I think the spend on SEO/PPC would be very different.
As to Kevin’s argument that PPC advertisers are more relevant since a non-targeted click is a waste of money it does make sense on paper. If every business operated in a rational manor then targeting only the most relevant keywords would be the order of the day and paid listings could in fact be better matches. However, anyone who has managed a PPC account knows that companies do not always act in a rational manor.
Between CEOs with ego search demands pushing the prices of keywords up beyond any reasonable ROI targets to search managers with traffic volume targets tied to bonuses PPC is rife with irrational behavior. As any economist will tell you when externalities invade a marketplace the market equilibrium is thrown off.
Google is perfectly aware that the PPC market does not represent perfect competition and until it gets closer to that ideal is not trustworthy enough to emphasize over organic despite the potential increase in their bottom line.
To sum up, both PPC and SEO are successful marketing strategies to blatantly ignore one or the other is foolish.
Great post Greg. I wish I could say as usual but it’s been a while since you posted on a regular basis
I hope this relative plethora of posts in the last few weeks continues.
Best take-down of the PPC schmucks and their self-serving ideologemes I’ve ever read. Great job, Greg - a big salute to that!
This is a pointless attempt to promote PPC over organic. Any good search engine marketing agency who knows how to present a solid strategy to a client for maxium exposure knows that doing BOTH is the ideal solution. I would rather pull teeth than do PPC but fortunately we have staff who would rather pull teeth than do organic and our most siuccessful clients kicking butt in their industry are doing both.
Greg
I did want to make one point clear regarding SEMPO. When Kevin writes, as he did, he’s not writing on behalf of SEMPO. He’s writing on behalf of himself and stating his opinion. Kevin does sit on the board, but I’m the Chair of SEMPO currently. Not that that makes any difference, as I routinely state my opinion as well. Kevin doesn’t have an audience because he’s on the board of SEMPO, he has an audience because he’s a very smart guy that has great things to say, whether you agree with all of them or not. He had the audience, and the ClickZ column, before SEMPO, and he’ll have it after. If you disagree with Kevin, that’s one thing. If you disagree with the mission of SEMPO, that’s also your perogative. But please don’t confuse the two. Kevin, and Dana Todd, Chris Boggs, Bill Tancer, Bill Hunt, Dave Williams, Jeff Pruitt and the rest of the board, including myself, have worked hard to promote the search industry and to educate those unsavvy in search, both within and outside of SEMPO. Do you suggest that we should never state our opinion because of our position on the board?
This discussion is completely useless.
I expressed my opinion at SEJ (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4045), which also points to the original post because I left the real comments there to not leave the post sitting there at DMNews, alone without any real challenge for the uninformed visitor, who might thinks that the information provided are great. Dave’s first post was not really challenged. The amount of comments for the second one that were challenging the post was larger than the actual post itself.
Blogging about it at your own blog does not help much unless the post you argue against has trackbacks enabled that readers of post you challenge can find your response.
Think about this. DMNews is being read by Internet Marketers that do a lot more than just PPC and/or SEO. Most of them are no expert in everything and read every blog there is to Internet Marketing. They only see the posts at Marketing Blogs and News sites like DMNews, iMedia Connection, Marketing Profs, Marketing Vox, Adotas or Clickz.
It should be in your own interest to challenge such rubbish posts or news articles right at the source visible to THEIR readers or you risk loosing business, because your potential customers never got to read your view on this. If done well, it will blog right into the face of the person who starts writing junk like that because nothing is more hurting reputation than getting beaten up (intellectually) on your own ground, you own home-turf, in front of your “fans” and “followers”.
Finally, what everybody should keep in mind is the fact that SEM and SEO are each only ONE element of a clients overall Internet Marketing Strategy. There is no best type of Advertising. In today’s online business reality is it critical to engage in all major types of marketing that have considerable reach. More important than just doing any of them is to align them and support and leverage each other.
Analytics of all incoming, outgoing and on-site traffic, Email Marketing, Web Site Usability and Conversion Path Analysis and Improvement, Affiliate Marketing, Display Advertising, PPC Advertising, SEO etc. etc.
The debate between SEO and PPC is like the Kidneys discussing with the Lungs which of them is more important and if the person can live without any of them. No, he can’t! If not dying quickly because being kept alive artificially, he will eventually die, because BOTH are vital and you can’t live without any of them an extended period of time.
Greg, you are definately one of the most lazy bloggers in our space but when you blog it is ALWAYS worth a read. Thanks again for a great post!
> The debate between SEO and PPC is like the Kidneys discussing with the Lungs
I absolutely do not agree with that anology. For a lot of verticals PPC CPC’s are pushed to a level that makes it impossible for most (if not all) companies to profit from. And I certainly do not agree that you should keep fueling money into a marketing channel that proves not to be profitable for you.
And sometimes its the other way around (although, I don’t see this as often) - organic competition being extremely high and PPC CPCs very low. However, I never see this in high profit verticals. Usually more in (European) educational stuff.
But will organic SEO die out?
Please, please, please believe so! Please! It will only make it so much easier for the rest of us to rank
Joke aside, I have been in this business since the early days of the late/mid 90’s and I’ve heard this song every few months: SEO will die, it will all be commercial results, the engines will outsmart the SEO’s bla bla bla. So far that trend has yet to show …
Is SEO getting harder?
No, it’s been getting easier and easier ever since I started - that is if you calculate it based on the profits most skilled SEOs on a per hour basis. I know I am not the only one making far more koney now, not working more, than I did in 1997. The profits of effective SEO is still going up … The ROI is great!
In my opinion, it really depends on what type of site you are putting up that will denote how you want to bring in the traffic. I am far from an expert on SEO or PPC. I have only been doing SEO for a few years and PPC for even less.
I think if you are putting up a site to contain good content on a niche topic and the site is in for the long haul then, applying proper SEO techniques to the site is paramount to its success. I always apply the twelve or so rules I use to have a chance a high-rank listings to any site that falls into this category.
If a site is only a short term or quick hit site to advertise some one-page niche topic then PPC is a better way to bring the traffic. In this case, a site will not be around long enough to get those high-ranking SERP listings. I have found that PPC is also a good way to test a niche market topic. You can quickly find out what type of response, look and conversion is possible. If type of test can tell you all kinds of things and in what direction, you can take a niche.
I think PPC vs. SEO sucks. They supposed to work hand-in-hand and which one is used more is based on a case-to-case basis. And I believe all good SEO/PPC advocates will acknowledge the presence and strength of the other.
And about certification… hmmm I don’t believe in it right now. So far forums, podcast and chatting with people in the industry has given me a lot of information already. And the only reason I plan to be certified is simply because I believe it will help in selling my services using the “Certified” logo as a marketing badge to help me sell my services in the future.
Good post.
Mikel, even though you disagree with my analogy do I believe the we agree with each other overall.
SEO and PPC are two of several online marketing methods.
Each with their own strengths and weaknesses and the ability to leverage each other more or less. How important each method is for you depends on the vertical you are doing business in.
But ignoring any method flat out without checking is the wrong decision and cost you business.
That was actually what I was trying to bring across with my analogy. Every organ has a function which is different than the function of the other organ. Each Organ by itself is more or less useless, only the work of the organs in conjunction make up the living organism.
I hope that makes sense now.
Cheers and Happy Holidays over there in Denmark.
Carsten
Greg, I’m chalking one up for the good guys. Nice work. Can we just call Kevin the Bill O’Reilly of search now? Someone get his phone bill…Those comments made me want to take a dump.
The logical fallacy in Kevin’s original rhetoric re-appeared in his comment. It’s either A or B with him. I feel as though I’m watching a tirade by my Dad (or Bill O’Reilly).
First, there are 2 conditions before real SEO is even justified?
If your site has poor SEO and you aren’t getting the organic positions you deserve, put in the effort to fix it.
The competitive spaces are FULL of sites that have mediocre SEOs… what rankings to those sites “deserve”?? When is anyone actually content with their rankings?
Secondly, the dualistic A or B paradigm is totally offensive.
…If something’s wrong, then fix it. …But don’t get sold a bill-of-goods about #1 positions for power keywords being right around the corner, just sign this one-year retainer agreement.
The notion that one can either “fix it” viz. G’s guidelines page & some conferences or else the company can hire some “guaranteed ranking 100,000 SE submission” company is RIDICULOUS. Really chaps my hide.
The problem that so many exclusive PPC managers have is a lack of *creativity*. There is no “link baiting” in PPC-SEM (I can’t just call it SEM here anymore…). They can’t fathom the talent involved. Such talent, original & extraordinary creativity breeds organic search traffic that converts better, clicks through more, stays on the site longer, and carries a better conversation.
Real SEO at the highest levels involves that tremendous creativity, which no one can afford to lose.
OSMA sounds just too guerrilla
great article, well written.. very well written.. much respect..
i’d be in to help with OSMA… i’ve been president of AAF chapter, on the board of directors for district and on the national addy comittee for websites.. and i’ve been a paid directory editor for yahoo! and DMOZ (97-99) and some of the rules i wrote on what sites we did or didn’t include are still used today.. SEMPO is biased.. and did-it.com kevin and dave ARE assclowns.. etc..
Count me in with any help necessary to start OSMA. I think it’s an organization that is long overdue.