Search engine optimisation is a risky game and it’s always be. However, over the last two years it’s becoming clear that too much relying on Google traffic can be disadvantageous.
It’s true that many brands are performing extremely well via organic search. Some of them are great at PPC, others are good social media. Yet, it’s getting more difficult and with more competition, which needs bigger budgets and tighter margins. Many companies seem to be squeezed and you certainly need to be more creative now in order to stand out from the crowd.
Traditionally if you ranked number one for your top performing keywords, you would expect to see a clickthrough rate of 50-60% (56.36% to be exact, study from 2006). However, now this numbers have dropped (this varies for each query based on search intent, with branded search obviously generating a higher CTR), but on average this was recently reported at 33% on average.
Interestingly, your biggest competitor is Google itself. It has your mindshare and when you want to find something, or buy a product, it’s all too easy to turn to a search engine.
How do you defeat Google?
It’s not about outranking Google at all, that’s the wrong question. It’s about providing the best experience possible within your vertical, so that you make Google irrelevant.
If you’re in competitive spaces such as finance or travel, Google is making it more difficult and wants to control as much of those vertical searches as possible with its own comparison engine. For example, Confused.com currently ranks number one out of 499,000,000 results organically for ‘credit cards’ in Google UK . This is a great achievement, yet this is what the Google SERPs look like:
It’s an increasingly competitive space, and Google’s compare listings give it a bigger slice of the pie, at the expense of pushing down organic results.
Basically, the price-comparison sites are having two choices in this scenario:
- Accept it. That means they will need to launch their own products, in this particular case that means credit cards and look to secure a listing in Google Compare results in its own right.
- Provide a better user experience than Google for price comparison.
The first option might be the safest one, as they need to consider in the future. However, to really win the race, it’s not just about how you can optimise yourself to maximise the amount of traffic you are generating through Google. It’s about how you can build a brand that stops people thinking about Google and start thinking about your brand instead. This is the ideal scenario as it completely by-passes Google altogether.
Still, don’t misjudge it. Google traffic is important, but your brand is more important. This means you really need to optimise the whole experience so that people remember your brand, and willingly to come back.
MoneySuperMarket is a great example of this. Google has now even started to place its comparison blocks between ads and organic listings for brand search terms. Try searching for “Moneysupermarket” and you will see the result page similar to this one:
None of these brands are happy with this.
Google+ on the right-hand-side is another one, where a more balanced result would surely include Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (which is of course its own too). Still, if you are searching for a brand, it’s a navigational search where you know the exact destination where you want to go and that should be made as straightforward as possible by Google. That said, MoneySuperMarket has the choice. Accept it (after all it’s Google’s search engine!) or build a brand that provides a better experience within the finance sector than Google.
And here comes its Facebook Page:
You will see a consistent brand experience throughout, this spreads from offline print advertising, TV campaigns to the website, content and social channels. Ultimately, it is providing a brand experience. The company uses marketing as an acquisition channel to get people in the first time and it’s much cheaper to get them back if they remember you. That way, you look to get people hooked in as many ways as you can, making Google less reliable to them.
In order to achieve this, there are six types of action you want visitors to take:
- Signing up to a newsletter. 44% of email recipients admit they made at least one purchase last year as a result of a commercial newsletter, so provide them with fresh updates and promotions, as it’s unlikely they’ll be ready to buy straight away on the first visit.
- Become a social media fan. Following on Twitter, liking on Facebook, subscribing to the YouTube channel is a great way of allowing you to push content to people and continue to get your brand in-front of a targeted audience.
- Subscribe to blog content. Once you know more about your customers and their demographics/interests, it’s much easier to target publications with your content strategy and to publish branded content to subscribers.
- Download an app. Mobile usage is huge, the year of the mobile is no longer here – it’s been, but definitely not gone. 50% of emails are now opened on mobile – so consider making it even easier for them with an app, and a direct way back to you.
- Participating in SEO. Optimising for brand terms to make sure you’re easy to find, and competitive terms if they are still considering their options.
- AdWords/social remarketing. Both via display, but also using AdWords remarketing for search, so that your PPC is more targeted and acquisition costs can be higher based upon users who have engaged with your brand before and are therefore more likely to convert. Likewise you can specifically re-target people via social media, advertising using Twitter, Facebook or YouTube to keep your brand presence prominent.
These are all different routes for a potential customer to find you again, both direct or indirectly. Google plays a key role in this too, but it’s no longer just about search. In fact, all of the above is retargeting in one form or another. Basic sales advice will tell you that you’re unlikely to convert a customer on a single point of contact.
Always remember that:
- Google wants to provide the best user experience possible, so that it retains/improves market share.
- Google is a huge growth company which wants to continue providing a similar rate of return to shareholders.
It’s a business, a very big one at that, and one that has to make business decisions like anyone else. If it annoys too many people, it works against Google, as brands will cut spend and searchers will turn away. So it’s always been about finding that balance between providing the best user experience and driving revenue through ad clicks or additional streams/products.
The additional revenue streams is something that Google will be under more pressure to push, because let’s face it, Google is doing a pretty good job already in market share. It’s only natural that efforts would be placed in:
- Retention of high market share territories.
- Underachieving markets where they feel that they can succeed (and there’s a market opportunity behind it).
- New products and additional revenue streams.
Vertical search falls into that new products/revenue stream category, and it makes sense. That’s why it appears to be taking this one market at a time, it’s prioritised by value. Take a look at travel, as another example. SkyScanner currently ranks number one organically for “flights to New York”, with CheapFlights second.
Yet these are the results returned above the fold:
Again, these sites are facing the challenge of how can they compete with this to capture traffic, when they don’t run an airline. The answer again is to be better than Google in travel. And that is what TripAdvisor are doing. If someone need to book travel, they wouldn’t start at Google. They would research travel reviews, view photos, find some videos, ask questions via social media. This is a much more personal experience and gives you far greater insight into a destination at the research phase.
In comparison, if people do a search in Google for “Beach in Dubai”, for instance, they don’t want to see ads and web listings. They want to see images and maybe some videos.
Interestingly in Google’s new SERP layout, it has been interchanging the web, images, maps, videos and news links. This suggests there is more user intent analysis going on here, so it can match this to the type of results you are hoping to see at a query level.
Still, you need to remember that Google is an algorithm, a very clever and fast evolving one with gigantic data. However, as long as people trust other people, the brands that can provide the most personalised experience are more likely to be more trusted.
Funnily enough, by having the realisation that Google is slowly starting to compete in the same track with you and becoming a competitor, you’re aligning your goals exactly with what it wants to reward more of in search. You’re building a brand. As a result of no longer being as reliant on Google and having a more integrated strategy across channels, you’re sending a wider range of brands signals which strengthens your position in search.
Conclusion
Gaining traffic is still important. Everyone always wants to attract new potential customers. However, it’s really about taking that next step in making them remember your brand, and giving them a way back, that can take things to the next level. Google listings across verticals are only going to be rolled out more heavily this year as the huge Knowledge Graph data is put to use.
This aspect applies to music. Just search for any “[Band Name] Songs” query and you’re presented with something that looks like this which then links through to YouTube video content:
This might be a very good user experience and this is just one example of many, but if you’re a business that is a vertical specific comparison/portal site, then you need to be thinking about how to be a market leader. The goal is to be the Amazon of books, Rightmove of property, AutoTrader of cars, eBay of auctions. These are all sites where you would likely go directly to in order to make a purchase, rather than relying on search engine results. With brands being pushed down by vertical search result listings, the best option left is to compete with Google. Then, rather than losing market share, you gain more. As a result, you might even get rewarded in the search engines as part of the process for being a more recognised brand.