SEO is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups

Many of the today’s most successful informational sites such as Yelp, Wikipedia and TripAdvisor relied heavily on SEO for their initial growth. Their marketing strategy (whether deliberate or not) was roughly: 1) build a community of contributors that created high-quality content, 2) become the definitive place to link to for the topics they covered, 3) rank highly in organic search results. This led to a virtuous cycle where SEO drew more users, leading to more contributors and more inbound links, leading to more SEO, and so on. From roughly 2001-2008, SEO was the most effective marketing channel for high-quality informational sites.

I talk to lots of startups and almost none that I know of post-2008 have gained significant traction through SEO (the rare exceptions tend to be focused on content areas that were previously un-monetizable). Google keeps its ranking algorithms secret, but it is widely believed that inbound links are the preeminent ranking factor. This ends up rewarding sites that are 1) older and have built up years of inbound links 2) willing to engage in aggressive link building, or what is known as black-hat SEO. (It is also very likely that Google rewards sites for the simple fact that they are older. For educated guesses on which factors matter most for SEO, see SEOMoz’s excellent search engine ranking factors survey).

Consider, for example, the extremely lucrative category of hotel searches. Search Google for “Four Seasons New York” and this ad-riddled TripAdvisor page ranks highly:

(TechCrunch had a very good article on the TripAdvisor’s decline in quality).

In contrast, this cleaner and more informative page from the relatively new website Oyster ranks much lower in Google results:

As a result, web users have a worse experience and startups are incentivized to clutter their pages with ads and use aggressive tactics to increase their SEO when they should just be focused on creating great user experiences.

The web economy (ecommerce + advertising) is a multi-hundred billion dollar market. Much of this revenue comes from traffic that comes from SEO. This has led to a multibillion-dollar SEO industry. Some of the SEO industry is “white hat,” which generally means consultants giving benign advice for making websites search-engine friendly. But there is also a huge industry of black-hat SEO consultants who trade and sell links, along with companies like content farms that promote their own low-quality content through aggressive SEO tactics.

Google seems to be doing everything it can to improve its algorithms so that the best content rises to the top (the recent “panda” update seems to be a step forward). But there are many billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people working to game SEO. And for now, at least, high-quality content seems to be losing. Until that changes, startups – who generally have small teams, small budgets, and the scruples to avoid black-hat tactics – should no longer consider SEO a viable marketing strategy.

http://yallaguy.com aarondelcohen

Given how immature the tools are for taking advantage of social graphs to market, I think this is a very problematic post for the early stage economy. @Anyclip we were betting on SEO for a huge percentage of visits because of high volume off searches for movies. Google seems to be handicapped by an emerging “Law of Large Internet”. They are struggling to do what they know is best for users because there is simply too much to do and it’s all too complicated to consider and make big leaps. In Ken Auletta’s Googled, he repeatedly writes about meetings where Sergey and Larry pushed their teams to take more risks and think about more daring, game changing solutions. Will be interesting to see if they can shape up what can only be a fast growing bureaucracy.
http://twitter.com/willlytle Will Lytle

Nor has it been for quite a long time.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

i anecdotally estimated the date where startups weren’t seeing success
with SEO around 2008 (startups that started before that/after that),
but maybe it’s earlier.

Anonymous

Good write up Chris, and so so true. I’ve personally witnessed some of these very issues and it can be quite frustrating especially when your focused on providing the “real” best content on your pages for the customers your product is intended to benefit.
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http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

I am somewhat mixed in my response to this post. While there is no doubt that many start-ups will not see a huge benefit from SEO, most start-ups won’t see a benefit from any marketing they do and will in fact fail, so not sure that SEO is the problem here. Post-2008, I have seen both ends of the spectrum – start-ups that got minimal traffic from search in the first year and those that got huge traffic in their first month. In each case the SEO success was directly correlated to 1) the quality of the site and 2) the amount of effort the company put into marketing itself. I consider not making your site SEO-friendly and not having a SEO strategy from the get-go a strategic mistake – you have to be in it to win it. Of course I wouldn’t bet the farm on SEO solving all of my problems. And of course I am biased as I make my living helping other companies with SEO strategy. I don’t think the problem is so much that high-quality content is losing the SEO battle. The problem is that most start-ups don’t produce high-quality content. So perhaps we’re in agreement – if your user experience blows, there’s probably not much benefit in working at SEO except to make $ off Adsense. So get the UX right first, but at least get the basics of SEO right while you’re at it. Unfortunately, given the way search dominates Web usage, ignoring SEO is a bit like ignoring breathing.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I am definitely not saying sites shouldn’t make themselves search engine friendly etc and even hire SEO consultants to help with it. I’m saying SEO used to be the core business strategy. TripAdvisor, Yelp, Wikipedia etc are to Google as Zynga is to Facebook.

http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

To continue the hair-splitting fun – I still think SEO as a core strategy (perhaps not “the” core strategy, but “a” core strategy) is still viable, provided you excel at it. In that respect it is not dissimilar to any other core strategy where success depends on many factors outside of your control.

http://www.jacobslevin.com/ Jacob Slevin

Any company relying on one marketing strategy alone is likely to fail, whether it’s SEO or something else. It’s typically the right balance and blend of complimentary tactics to rule the day. However I do agree aged, stale content pages shouldn’t be rewarded in organic Google results. It’s never made much sense to me. You’d think Google would be normalizing inbound links a bit more — almost like a time value of money drill — an inbound link today is worth more than 10 inbound links last year. Interesting conversation though. Would love to hear what Google folks thing.
http://twitter.com/RossHudgens Ross Hudgens

I agree that SEO shouldn’t be *the* viable marketing strategy for your start-up. If that’s your path to gaining traction in any market that can make you a real amount of money through organic, it’s largely already been harvested and/or millions of dollars have been thrown at establishing ranking positions – such as “cheap flights” or “car insurance”.

However, in subsidiary markets where the volume isn’t as large, it’s a valid marketing channel for ancillary revenue streams. Much like retargeting or PPC or having a Facebook fan page, in these markets, SEO won’t be your *thing*. It will simply be *a* thing, because the volume is significantly lower and often times, in the “startup” environment, what you’re offering isn’t necessarily something that people know how to search for.

If your aim is for the long term, throw out the bait and continue building for some long-term keyword like “cheap flights” – but in the seed-investment environment where traction must occur quicker and something positive must be seen *somewhere* – trying to achieve such a keyword would be a suicide mission, and as such, would make this post an accurate take.
http://twitter.com/bvantil Brett VanTil

Brings up an issue though, which I would suggest is at the core of the issue – what is a ‘good’ user experience? As you said “cleaner and more informative page”…but would that necessitate a ‘clean design’ algorithm? penalizing too much visual noise (#slipperyslope). Add to that the subjective multi-dimensions of user experience; design, core information, relevancy, breadth and yes, even cross pollinated / linked content that was a core intent of the net in the first place (“huh, that’s interesting” paths). Feels like that battle will only be won once self defined search and aggregation tools can innovate in enough different ways to allow users to find their own flavor(s) of an algorithm or approach that works best for their intention and purposes when searching (attempts like Blekko & Wolfram…and Hunch:). So…is (Google) SEO viable for startups? I agree not (at least as a focus of substantial resources at early stage), and is probably becoming a forgone conclusion based on the SEO ranking factors you mention. I think the opportunity for startups to ‘be found’ will rise in different ways as innovation happens in that space – when different kinds of filters can be tweaked to users’ search preferences (like design or efficiency or experiential factors) – in essence delivering the most relevant sites as defined by the user, not the engine. Appreciate the post.
http://zippykid.com/ Vid Luther

So.. what’s the alternative? While these generic statements are very easy to make and defend, I think offering a viable strategy(ies) would be more helpful for readers like me.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I try to write lots of blog posts on marketing strategies. see
http://www.cdixon.org/contents

http://zippykid.com/ Vid Luther

I’m aware of the stuff you’ve written , sorry for sounding like a complete dick in the first comment btw.

I’m just suggesting, that this blog post with specific strategies or even specific blog posts, would’ve been a little better. It’d be nice to be able to point people to this post, and say, now go see if some of the other things he recommends apply to you.

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http://technbiz.blogspot.com paramendra

SMO – Social Media Optimization.
http://technbiz.blogspot.com paramendra

SMO – Social Media Optimization.
http://joelaz.com Joe Lazarus

I agree that you can’t rely only on SEO and that it’s tough to compete with black hat companies today, but I’m not sure I agree with the notion that SEO hasn’t been an effective strategy since 2008. Twitter, for example, didn’t really take off till after 2008. They rank well for many people’s names today and I imagine they receive significant traffic from SEO. SEO was / is an effective strategy for Twitter in that they focused on a less competitive area of search… people’s names… and lots of people link to Twitter profile pages.

It’s harder to compete in commercial categories like travel, but I’m sure some companies have had success in those verticals since 2008. I suspect a lot of startups struggle with SEO not only because they’re up against black hat competitors, but also because they don’t understand white hat SEO.

Lastly, even if Google squashed black hat practices all together, I still think it’s possible that TripAdvisor and similar sites would still outrank a company like Oyster simply because the former is more popular with mainstream people… for the same reason Brittany Spears outranks more talented musicians on the Billboard charts. I bet there are far more legitimate links pointing to TripAdvisor than there are pointing to Oyster simply because TripAdvisor is a well-known, established brand. Our definition of quality doesn’t always win.
http://twitter.com/lisat2 Lisa Thorell

When the search engine rankings predominate in determining position on SERP Page 1, over human UI experience, and despite human UI experience (as you well illustrate with your hotel example), then SEO is done for.

I tend to agree with commenter paramendra – startups need to look at social media optimization where the predominant human filters make this less gameable —–at the present.

I shall look forward to what SEOmoz says about your observations. You raise an excellent point: Has so much gamification occured that there is no game anymore?
http://twitter.com/cavezza cavezza

Chris,

Few questions, points, and clarification requests…

I’m a little confused on your definition of startups and your reference to 2008 as the decline of results.

By startups, are you referring to post P/M fit startups seeking high growth? Or are you referring to all startups including bootstrapped startups?

Pre P/M Fit startups should try all low-cost strategies to build traffic (seo being one of them). Not all of your focus should be on SEO, but it should be somewhere in the back of your mind. It’s possible to have a great user experience while optimizing for SEO.

Inbound marketing is not always associated with SEO, but is very important. Great content and SEO work together. Backlinks = better search results (all other on page factors being equal).
http://twitter.com/cavezza cavezza

Quick observation: Oyster.com is pretty bad at seo because most of their pages are optimized poorly for SEO. Why the slashes instead of hyphens?

This Trip Advisor page is 1 directory away from the home directory.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g60745-d94371-Reviews-Colonnade_Hotel-Boston_Massachusetts.html

This Oyster page is 5 levels down from the parent directory.

http://www.oyster.com/hawaii/hotels/roundups/best-hotels-for-destination-weddings-in-hawaii/

Google gives much less “link juice” to the oyster page because it considers it 5 or 6 levels down from the home page.

About usability and great experiences: If you really are interested in great usability. Why not put a few extra links on the homepage? It’s below the fold, and a vast majority of users probably won’t ever see them. It doesn’t effect the usability, but can drastically increase long tail seo.

I bring these up because I just don’t understand why SEO and great experiences can’t go hand in hand.
http://docsheldon.com Doc Sheldon

Sorry, but I’m afraid that your screenshots of two sites are… less than convincing.

I think Andrew makes a valid point, in that many start-ups, with or without SEO and with or without any marketing of any sort, are likely to fail. Just like in any existing and aged business, there are many factors that will determine the effectiveness of an SEO campaign. And as you know, there are MANY different types of SEO campaigns.

Will SEO solve all problems? Of course not. But that doesn’t make your position that it’s not a viable marketing strategy for start-ups, in general.
http://twitter.com/gregpettit Greg Pettit

Not all inbound link-building is black-hat. If you communicate with external sites that are like-minded and publish actual content (ie. not just link-farms, which Google will penalize anyhow), there’s nothing wrong with trying to get links to your site in as many valid channels as possible. “Oh, you’re a sports blog that seems to have constant quality content? That’s the kind of site many of our readers would like, I’d be happy to send some traffic your way.” Nothing black hat about that any more than it’s shady for me to tell my friend that the best crepes in the city are still found at Cora’s.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I agree. nothing wrong with legit inbound. but SEO world is
dominated with illegit inbound.

http://www.seopros.org Terry Van Horne

really? Dominated? haha clearly you are hanging with the wrong SEOs if that is the case. What is more likely is you don’t know what are legit techniques, what thin content really is or how misguided your statement about ads is … but you’re not alone,,, you are preaching to the gullible who believe the same things you do. This is just linkbait and National Enquirer type linkbait to boot! IMO, not much different than what you claim SEOs do. Used to think you were pretty clever… suggest you stick to what you know… you are actually quite good at that .

Bill

I have a small site with about 8,000 pages of unique content. I ranked very well, getting about 4,000 visitors per day from Google. Unfortunately, Google did an update last June that completely tanked my ratings, putting me on the second or third page of results. These results seem to have been made permanent. I hacvent gained anything from Google’s war on content farms.

I also note that Google provides me with a lower CPM on ads than it used to; a double blow to my site’s profitability.

The G giveth and the G taketh away…

http://docsheldon.com Doc Sheldon

@Bill – it sounds quite possible that you have more significant problems, to have gotten that kind of a fall. Are you certain you didn’t get slapped?
http://www.yougomedia.com James Cordeiro

Bill, can you provide me with the url? I will take a look for you. DM me on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/yougomedia if you prefer anonymity

The G if she taketh away, there is understanding once was was good, shall be good again. If penalized, then fix the penalization ! It’s simply determining the root cause for the tank in ratings.

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http://www.briandeyo.blogspot.com Brian Deyo

You demonstrate a general misunderstanding of SEO if you think Google incentivises putting ads on the page.

Seriously?

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

that’s not at all what i said

http://www.briandeyo.blogspot.com Brian Deyo

Read your post again.

Specifically the paragraph after the trip advisor oyster comparison.

What exactly did you mean by that then?

Luc

Seems pretty clear he was referring to the value Google places upon the longevity of the site. . .

Tripadvisor has greater longevity and more ads . . . Oyster is newer and has fewer ads . . . if the amount of advertising is a negative signal for quality, yet Tripadvisor ranks higher than Oyster, then it must be that longevity is considered a more important signal than the amount of ads on a site when it comes to SEO.
http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

i said this in a comment above but just to make sure it’s clear:

Obviously I’m not saying ads help SEO – they help monetize the site and pay for things like SEM since SEO doesn’t work as well for new sites. Another reason sites like TripAdvisor get so ad cluttered is the broken ad attribution model where “top of the funnel” sites don’t get paid properly. See http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a…
http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

i said this in a comment above but just to make sure it’s clear:

Obviously I’m not saying ads help SEO – they help monetize the site and pay for things like SEM since SEO doesn’t work as well for new sites. Another reason sites like TripAdvisor get so ad cluttered is the broken ad attribution model where “top of the funnel” sites don’t get paid properly. See http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a…

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

>> Obviously I’m not saying ads help SEO – they help monetize the site and pay for things like SEM since SEO doesn’t work as well for new sites. Another reason sites like TripAdvisor get so ad cluttered is the broken ad attribution model where “top of the funnel” sites don’t get paid properly. See http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a…
http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

>> Obviously I’m not saying ads help SEO – they help monetize the site and pay for things like SEM since SEO doesn’t work as well for new sites. Another reason sites like TripAdvisor get so ad cluttered is the broken ad attribution model where “top of the funnel” sites don’t get paid properly. See http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a…

http://game-changer.net Jorge Barba

Hi Chris,

Your are right. SEO tends to benefit older sites and has been for quite a while. Also, because the dominant logic is to make money off advertising, startups live and die by the ‘page view’. And in the effort to ‘get more page views’, keyword stuffing becomes the norm and the user experience fails. The whole advertising model drives this monster.

FB, Twitter, AirBnB and others are good examples of a startups that did the opposite and focused on the user experience as it should be because while content helps drive organic traffic, a useful service people enjoy using will always help create positive word of mouth.

Cheers,

Jorge

http://www.yougomedia.com James Cordeiro

Hasn’t anyone ever heard the term “respect your elders”? Of course websites who have been around for a long time are more rewarded. Elders know more, are more respected in most cases, and usually have great experience in there subject, better reading, better answers, simply and usually better.

Register a domain for 1 year is telling search engines, even me, that you don’t plan to stick around very long. Any website that I know will do well, or I plan to make a business of, or the clients who are going to be in business since they have already been around 10 years, I spend and anyone else should, spend the $100 to register the domain for 10 years, claim ownership of your online real estate and let the world know you are going to be here for the long haul. Give the concept of age and elderly status.

Excellent examples used for “user experience” Jorge … falls into the “Focus on the user and all else will follow” philosophy — #1 Google philosophy by the way .

It is ALL about the user, who is it on the website, who is visiting and why. How can we serve them better. SEO is just a small portion of the overall objective of a web development process and service.

http://twitter.com/virtualvip Jeff Yablon

Chris, I love the examples you gave, but I have to jump all over the broad theme.

(Full disclosure, ahead of time: I’m in the SEO business, and I’ll sign this with a signature that includes a self-serving link in that regard.)

SEO is, no question, getting “harder”. Every time Google adds something to the algorithm, black-hat stuff becomes less and less useful. That’s GREAT.

And scrape-y, no-point-except-to-woo-the-search-spiders stuff . . . that needs to go away, too.

But that doesn’t mean that SEO is dead, dying, or anything of the sort. What’s going to happen next is that SEO will become about understanding the link (excuse the pun) and symbiosis between creating good content (not just “content”) and making both humans AND machines like what you create.

Enter new writing skills.

The problem is that for all the angst about the change in the “journalism” business (quotes included for ironic emphasis), there’s been very little change in the way writing is taught/done.

Bear with me; this gets ugly right about now.

I have a writing “background”, which is to say that I’ve been doing it in various professional capacities for quite a while. I don’t consider myself a journalist, but I do consider myself a communicator. And what I’ve come to believe/learn/whatever is that the less-than-perfect storm that the combination of short attention spans, pithy comments passing as journalism (ha!), and instant informational gratification has created means that writing for BOTH readers and bots is now . . umm . . . uggh. . . OK.

Bastardized craft? Maybe. Reality? you bet. Practical point? The craft of writing may have been bastardized compared to what used to be “good”, but this isn’t about bastardization or even necessarily degradation; it’s about CHANGE .

Almost nobody likes change; it’s painful. But it’s here. It’s time.

The model under which SEO was employed by the content farms is clearly now impractical; GOOG is catching up to the existing practitioners and making it all but impossible for new ones to get a toehold. But if the context of this is that start-ups who wish to advance themselves via SEO have a problem, I say that it’s only true if they wish to go huge. Start-ups or anyone else can still do SEO and do it successfully. They just need to SEO something other than SEO itself.

They’d just better not try to be Mahalo (sorry, Jason Calacanis; you happened to come to mind).

Again, I speak from the perspective OF an SEO practitioner. And I assure you that my clients (some of whom are in fact start-ups) are still advancing their businesses through what we do for them.

Now let’s start teaching better writing and a better understanding of the technical skills that go with it.

Rant concluded

Jeff Yablon
President & CEO
Answer Guy and Virtual VIP Computer Support, Business Change Coaching and SEO Consulting/Search Engine Optimization Services

http://www.yougomedia.com James Cordeiro

Sorry Jeff, after viewing your website I have to be a bit direct. Although interesting overall response.

You really need to change your SEO Results page phrases, since they aren’t exactly targeted in a marketing perspective – http://answerguy.com/search-engine-marketing-sem-search-engine-optimization-seo/seo-results-key-phrases/ … and wow, what is with the amazingly long, impossible to remember url? I thought you are an SEO consultant? Your the type of SEO consultant that puts the bad name on our industry, and probably passes the false information that doesn’t benefit a company in the long run which is where I come in 2 years later, charge them $50K to fix all the errors a bad SEO guy caused.

Did you read a book and suddenly believe you can be an SEO Consultant?

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

OMG James, thanks for taking this one on. Jeff, please – go get a job selling dishwashers or something while you take the time to learn how to improve your SEO skills. Answer Guy and Virtual VIP blah blah blah? I’m sure if you take the time to learn at least intermediate SEO, you’ll improve dramatically. Until then, you’ll spare yourself, your industry, and your clients from further embarrassment.

http://twitter.com/virtualvip Jeff Yablon

Guys, I appreciate your candor, but the techniques we employ results happen to work, and pass muster with Google.

Whatever you think of the branding (and , what an overused, under-important concept), what matters is results. Am I aware that the “PAY ATTENTION TO HOW GOOD WE ARE AT THIS SEO STUFF page(s) are a bit . . . strong? You bet. But the content we produce isn’t like that, and gets the job done. That scare you or something?

By the way: as for the question about the long url: You must be kidding; frankly, you’re making it sound an awful lot like you don’t understand the topic even fractionally as well as you’d like others to believe. I don’t care one whit whether the long URL is remembered or typable sans error. Links to deep pages and SEO success cover the need for a short URL a la “SEO.COM”, unless I’m running a radio, TV, or print ad. And guys? You may not see it, but we have that covered, too.

Yikes. Hate the game, not the player.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Jeff, Jeff, Jeff,

I am by no means kidding. Your complete disrespect for user experience is nothing less than deplorable. I know. You don’t care about users. You’re blinded by the money you claim you make. Respect for users is irrelevant to your way of thinking. Congratulations. You’re at the top of the heap from a bottom-feeder mind-set. If there were an award for such sleeze-ball methods, you’d be its first recipient.
http://www.yougomedia.com James Cordeiro

Jeff, you fall into the comment http://sphinn.com/story/176483#80551 by ShariThurow which is damn close to my view of your services and your above response. Your comment simply places you as a bias, book educated, search engine optimization provider with very very little experience in long term projects.

You fail to remember `who your service is supposed to be for`!

“Hate the game, not the player.”, Jeff, Search Engine Optimization is not a game, and you are failing to be a player. You will never reach the end or beat the game with the way you are playing if this is what you assume of SEO.

“You must be kidding; frankly, you’re making it sound an awful lot like you don’t understand the topic even fractionally as well as you’d like others to believe.” <– really? you lost your argument, not like you have one after saying this. This comment alone proves you read someones article, thought "yep that will work", but failed to listen to the 10 philosophies of Google, philosophies of other search engines including Yahoo, all btw which clearly identify what you should be paying attention to for long term optimization objectives in a "business".

I'm done ranting to someone who has no idea what they are talking about, a falsely educated web designer who fell into articles on SEO or a book purchased from clickbank. Just my opinion though, not like it matters.

http://greenmi.net/category/green-home/ green

Any business that goes about anything 1-dimensionally will eventually fail. All the “SEO startups” you mentioned also all had very viral tendencies. They could all be shared very easily and they were unique to what other sites offered at the time. SEO was not their only strategy, neither should yours; but it should be in your arsenal.
http://Twitter.com/Ed Ed

Same as it ever was. Web start ups by their nature are new(ish) properties/domains
(in some cases/when not an add-on),
and have an anxiety to reach critical mass faster than most entities.

They have time and money invested, but also feel the need to reach critical mass very quickly,
for several reasons. Just a few:
1) Fast growth (peer adoption) is one of the make/break elements of convincing users they like the new xyz
2) Avoids investor worry
3) First to market still helps stave off competition (Oh yes it does)
4) See #1

Start ups are well aware of all these pressures and opportunities.
Shops are widely varied mix of talents, and each someone who supposedly “gets” SEO.
That can range from; Has studied Danny Sullivan, Aaron Wall, and Rand Fish well,
to ‘bought a ClickBank ebook for $47 once’

The temptation is great to do whatever, wherever.
And the companies with darling insiders (known founders or VC’s),
get a free pass compared newcomers who play 99% clean but drop one bomb.

The bottom line if any young entrepreneurs bother reading my rambling comment;
-Do lots of traditional whitehat SEO
-Build something great that gets a lot of props in social media across time.

Up and to the right public, web-borne user feedback is the new ticket to
up and to the right books.
Ram

so what does a start up do to get high on google ranking? if seo is out and we dont have marketing dollars …
David Lancashire

Amen and thanks for the post. My startup (http://popupchinese.com) is 2.5 years old at this point and on page 7 for the keyword that matters. 95% of the sites above us are spam. Almost all of our traffic and growth is word-of-mouth.

We could be more aggressive about SEO, but it would hurt the user experience, and defeat the point of actually doing what we’re doing.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

David,
Since your site lacks many core SEO best practices principles, it’s no wonder you’re on page 7 for whatever phrase that you believe matters. No offense to you personally, it’s just that this is a perfect example of the bigger problem of site owners (startup or otherwise), not truly knowing or understanding what real SEO is from an on-site optimization perspective.

One example – your “Learn Chinese” main page is all links and no content. How could that site ever be designated as truly relevant from an on-site SEO perspective without being clear in its topical focus intent?

No, the problem is not that SEO is dead, as has been claimed ad nauseum for ages. It’s that people don’t really implement true SEO.

David Lancashire

Alan,

Good usability for membership sites usually involves having a short call-to-action with evidence of social proof and high-quality content to encourage people to explore further. We do everything to signal the focus of our splash page to search engines save adding random text on the page to up keyword density, which is what I think you’re referring to when you say “focal intent”.

I appreciate that we could make changes, but our community doesn’t come to our site day-after-day to read SEO text designed for search engines. Chris’ point is that SEO improvements aren’t pareto optimal after a certain point because they come at the expense of building better experiences for users.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

David,

Your description of SEO once again shows your true lack of understanding of professional SEO. At this point we’ll just need to agree to disagree. Because personally, Conversion Optimization is critical to the SEO services I recommend and provide.

http://twitter.com/slowernet Eliot Shepard

Based on this and your other replies in this thread, you sound like precisely the last person I would employ in any consulting capacity.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Eliot

That’s the beauty of the world we live in. If how I communicate or what I communicate causes such a reaction, then I wouldn’t want you as a client. It wouldn’t be a good fit for either of us.

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com AJ Kohn

David,

What Alan is communicating is that there is no such thing as ‘SEO text designed for search engines’ and that SEO is not in conflict with UX.

Alan points to a page (http://popupchinese.com/lessons) that has essentially no content. He’s asking what benefit that page actually provides to users? There’s no context here. How does this page tell me how to learn Chinese? “Anyone Seen My Boyfriend?” Huh?

And how does that page differ from the Chinese Lessons page? (http://popupchinese.com/chinese-lessons) They seem identical. Might this cause some confusion to a new user trying to understand your site?

In contrast, your How To Learn Chinese page (http://popupchinese.com/how-to-learn-chinese) is full of great information which is one reason why it ranks well for that term. Unfortunately, you’re ranking for (http://popupchinese.com/help/how-to-learn-chinese) which is a duplicate page.

Put simply, SEO and UX are complimentary. I hope you take this the right way. I’m really not trying to pick on you. It’s just that people like Alan and I become frustrated because we see missed opportunity.

MT

I could not disagree more. We have hundreds of startup businesses that use our tool to improve their SEO (and SEM) specific to conversions and in 80% of those cases they have significantly lowered their overall marketing budgets and invested in SEO as the conversion ratea are higher, and when you have insight its still possible to get high SERP placements – especially given Google’s recent changes to the algorithm to rid bad content sites from the rankings. I will bet my data against yours anyday that you are way off base with this article.
http://www.HubSpot.com Dharmesh Shah

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m generally a fan of yours, but this article had a number of things that I think were weak or misguided. And, I’m not an SEO expert (my friend @randfish is — but I think he’s busy so I thought I’d jump in).

1. The startups you use as examples (like TripAdvisor) which are primarily content-based sites represent a very small fraction of startups overall. Even if your arguments were true for these sites — to say that “SEO is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups” is a over-generalizing. There are thousands of startups whose businesses are based on selling a product (not user-generated content, monetized through advertising).

2. “As a result, web users have a worse experience and startups are incentivized to clutter their pages with ads and use aggressive tactics to increase their SEO when they should just be focused on creating great user experiences.”

Not sure how startups are incentivized to clutter up pages with ads for SEO. That doesn’t make sense. Ads don’t help with search rankings. Also, in terms of black-hat tactics for aggressive link building, Google has gotten better at detecting this, so if anything, since 2008, it’s more dangerous to employ these tactics and most savvy marketers and SEOs stay away from them.

3. There is certainly a market for black-hat tactics, but they don’t represent the majority of what is going on in the SEO world. That was certainly the case many years ago, but the market has gotten much better educated.

4. The fact that startups have small budgets actually means they stand to benefit more from SEO (in the long-term) than bigger businesses. Bigger businesses can afford pay-per-click ads and other forms of advertising. Startups are often competing based on their creativity. If they can create and promote their content, they can draw visitors in from the search engines.

SEO may not be the most effective marketing channel for startups (it takes time and energy), but we shouldn’t dismiss it as non-viable.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

my responses:

1. The startups you use as examples (like TripAdvisor) which are primarily content-based sites represent a very small fraction of startups overall. Even if your arguments were true for these sites — to say that “SEO is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups” is a over-generalizing. There are thousands of startups whose businesses are based on selling a product (not user-generated content, monetized through advertising).

>>sure, but name a big startup winner whose core strategy was SEO post 2008. 2001-2007 and demand/supply imbalance in SEO was a core strategy for many startups and investors. you would hear pitches that were all based around SEO and often it would work. now it is very very rare.

2. “As a result, web users have a worse experience and startups are incentivized to clutter their pages with ads and use aggressive tactics to increase their SEO when they should just be focused on creating great user experiences.”

Not sure how startups are incentivized to clutter up pages with ads for SEO. That doesn’t make sense. Ads don’t help with search rankings. Also, in terms of black-hat tactics for aggressive link building, Google has gotten better at detecting this, so if anything, since 2008, it’s more dangerous to employ these tactics and most savvy marketers and SEOs stay away from them.

>> Obviously I’m not saying ads help SEO – they help monetize the site and pay for things like SEM since SEO doesn’t work as well for new sites. Another reason sites like TripAdvisor get so ad cluttered is the broken ad attribution model where “top of the funnel” sites don’t get paid properly. See http://cdixon.org/2010/02/19/a-massive-misallocation-of-online-advertising-dollars/

3. There is certainly a market for black-hat tactics, but they don’t represent the majority of what is going on in the SEO world. That was certainly the case many years ago, but the market has gotten much better educated.

>> Not my impression at all. Even venture backed companies like Conductor were built on link exchanging.

4. The fact that startups have small budgets actually means they stand to benefit more from SEO (in the long-term) than bigger businesses. Bigger businesses can afford pay-per-click ads and other forms of advertising. Startups are often competing based on their creativity. If they can create and promote their content, they can draw visitors in from the search engines.

>>Yes, that’s the theory. It’s just that in practice it’s not how it works anymore for new websites.

Anonymous

Chris,

I don’t know if you heard about this — Conductor just sold its link building business to iAcquire. It’s getting out of link building — it’ll be focusing on selling their search light product, which is a SEOMOZ-like offering for larger enterprises.

I think to some extend this indicates that black hat SEO firms are concerned about crack down by Google.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

that’s good for conductor but too bad they didn’t just shut the black hat stuff down.
Anonymous

IAcquire coming out of no where and purchasing their paid link service is pretty convenient:
http://www.alan-rothstein.com/2011/03/from-linkexperts-to-conductor-now.html

Also why are they still listed as a paid link service, convenient that IAquire is right beneath them:
http://www.topseos.com/rankings-of-best-link-building-companies

http://twitter.com/JadedTLC JadedTLC

You must be smoking weed. I say this truly the nicest way possible. Your site has sucky traffic and this is your jason calcanis solution. Good Luck with that. Jason at least has better pizazz.

http://twitter.com/SeoMemphis Mary Rabalais

I 100% agree with you, Dharmesh. None of my past clients, even start-ups as recent as December ’10, have suffered in rankings due to the last Google and Yahoo updates. The SEO basics we learned 12 years ago still apply – except for the SE’s not reading the keyword meta tag, and that may change back, so I still include it.

Basic SEO is truly the cheapest way for startups to get some attention. Effective SEO, with a mix of social networking, will never hurt – only help. So don’t diss SEO (onsite or offsite) for anyone – it’s not an option, it’s a necessity.

http://stickermule.com/ stickermule

Our experience mirrors what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t say SEO isn’t a viable strategy. It’s just not a high-ROI strategy for a startup at this point. We’ve grown quite well since launching in April 2010, but it has little to do with our search rankings.

We still get relatively little traffic or sales from search despite an enormous effort to boost our rankings. Despite that, our sales continue to grow because people are learning about us and coming directly to our site or searching specifically for us by name.

I guess my big take away is focus on links that get you relevant traffic as opposed to links for SEO value only.
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com AJ Kohn

You’re correct that there are many people who seek to (and continue to) abuse the link graph. But that’s not really SEO.

Sure, you can get caught up in the mainstream media outrage and read SEOmoz and walk away with the impression that links are SEO. But think of SEO as ‘benign advice for making websites search-engine friendly’ and you’ll likely get just that. Because the SEO industry is filled with people who really don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ll gladly take your money.

When you find someone who really understands SEO, you’ll realize it is actually far more about UX. In addition, SEO is simply one part of a marketing plan. It should never be relied upon as a ‘just-add-water’ type of strategy to success. Real SEO takes time.

I’m not going to pick on Oyster except to say that I see some clear areas where they could improve the product from a user (and search engine) experience.

As a counterpoint, wouldn’t a good example of a post-2008 start-up which succeeded with SEO (the right way) be Stack Overflow.
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http://gibsongoff-theenlightenedtraveler.com Gibson Goff

I don’t want to sound liken uneducated generalist, but does anybody really know what drives Google and what specific results can be derived? I don’t think so. I wonder if someone found result ‘X’ on Google for input ‘Y’ on their blog or website this week, and then went back the next week and tried to duplicate the exact same thing, (not another attempt) if they would get a different result.

I subscribe to SEO blogs, reports, courses, ad nauseam, and every last one of them is different.

I can only surmise we will never know that which Google wants to hide from us! We’re all right, and we’re all wrong!
http://secretswede.net/ Hessam Lavi

The way you describe it is you either do SEO, OR you focus on your users – this is very misleading imo.

To build your website so that search engines can have efficient access to your high quality, relevant, and targeted content is not “SEO” but rather common sense – startups who don’t do this are closing the door to a massive chunk of search engine traffic and potential users. You obviously need a great product to convert those visitors, but it’s not a zero sum game.
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http://mirceapasoi.com Mircea Paşoi

Quora seems to be ranking highly in name search and they’re a pretty new startup, so I guess it’s still possible to benefit from SEO.

http://www.biggerpockets.com Joshua Dorkin

Quora also has sites like TechCrunch promoting it at every possible opportunity.

http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

Seriously Joshua, you’ve got your head up your ass if you think TechCrunch is the only reason Quora ranks for content.

http://www.biggerpockets.com Joshua Dorkin

Dave – Did you read what I said? Did I say anywhere that TechCrunch was the ONLY reason Quora ranks for content? No, I did not.

Perhaps before you start attacking people, you may want to make sure you’re not misquoting them.

Thanks.

http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

sorry if i’m misinterpreted your remark, but i thought you were saying Quora was doing well on SEO because TC wrote about them… not that they were broadly relevant to a wider audience. apologies if that was incorrect.

http://www.biggerpockets.com Joshua Dorkin

I appreciate the apology, Dave; thank you. If I had said that, I would have had my head up my ass.

http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

Excellent point.

http://twitter.com/exploreto (Explore To)

There’s a key component of that presumed marketing strategy. Yelp was never a pure SEO play it’s got a great user proposition and the final aim of SEO is to convert that traffic to typed/bookmarked/direct.

SEO is still a great tactic and strategy, provided your analytics tell you the users arriving via that channel are actually connecting with your market proposition. If not, it’s time for a rethink.

As previous commentators have said – Google only sits between demand and supply as a broker.
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Shall set you free

You only like to think you’re white hat. All SEO is black hat.

stop living in denial. nothing you do or say is benign.
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http://avc.com fredwilson

i certainly agree that SEO driven businesses are less and less interesting to me as an investor.

but one of our newer portfolio companies, Stack, gets a fair bit of its traffic from search

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

yeah, I was thinking of stack overflow specifically when I made an exception for previously unmonetized areas (yeah there was experts-exchange but that’s kind of a minor anomaly.) the idea is programmer questions haven’t been ruined for startups by years of link building etc the way say travel has.

http://avc.com fredwilson

exactly. and stack didn’t set out to build an SEO driven business. but in
some ways they have done just that

http://twitter.com/marcgayle Marc Gayle

Chris & Fred…what about github ? I think what you find is that there are many applications that either by design or luck, benefit significantly from this strategy. So I don’t think it is dead, and no-longer-viable, it just has to be tweaked a bit.

I wrote a post about Github here: http://marcgayle.com/githubs-brilliant-organic-traffic-acquisition

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Jmperdriat

If SEO is no longer the right strategy, what is a good strategy ? Would you say SEM ?
http://www.Spidvid.com Jeremy Campbell

A good mix of SEO is needed, but it’s certainly not the end all like it used to be for sites! #Winning takes much more now!
http://www.facebook.com/chipsdigitalpc Troy Alexander

Hmmmmm. . . .

when I let my (e-commerce) site stagnate, my visitors and sales go down. But, when I write a new post on my blog, add a product or two, change up the home page, create new interlinks, etc, my visitors and sales usually go up substantially over the next few days We are less than a year old. Maybe its just luck???
http://twitter.com/TheNextCorner Dennis Goedegebuure

Before or after 2008, SEO should never “be” the marketing strategy.
SEO should rather be “one” of the traffic acquisition channels which fuels the growth engine of any startup.
This still holds true for today, yesterday and tomorrow.

Traffic acquisition channels might change over time, where the newest buzz word in any meeting right now is “social”. Mobile is another acquisition model.

For any startup to succeed, the business model, engagement with the costumer and brand building capabilities are essential needs for success. SEO should not be an afterthought, but neither be the business model!

And that comes from a 8 year SEO veteran!

http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

Excellent reference Dennis. That comment should be read by anybody with a business that depends Web traffic

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http://www.kidmercuryblog.com kidmercury

siding with the haters here — i think your post is off base. here’s why:

1. google is not the only game in town and in due time (less than what most expect) the trip advisor problem will be solved.
2. white hat/black hat throws morality into search. this is fine if one wishes to, but any discussion of “search morals” without a discussion of the search engine’s (google) morals as well and how that plays into it is incomplete.
3. there are many ways to do SEO. rather than white hat/black hat, i prefer to think in terms of low risk/high risk — with what is often regarded as “black hat” also often being “high risk” as it is going to show up on google’s radar. the sweet spot is low risk, high reward SEO. companies that can efficiently hit this sweet spot are going to find SEO to be highly lucrative and worthwhile.

i run a content-based startup that relies on SEO as the primary marketing strategy. thus far it is working well for me.

http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

Appreciate how you framed seo morality Kid, but the end of that most excellent comment is missing a signature. Change of truth tactics? If it’s intentional I think it’s a good marketing move for idea sharing. I don’t bring up religion or fetishes when pitching, some ideas are best served at the right time and place.

Look forward to learning more about your latest project.

http://www.kidmercuryblog.com kidmercury

lol, well i can only add the signature if i think it relates to the
comment. unfortunately i didn’t see an opportunity!

http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

surprised you didn’t catch this smack down comment by Chris and “rub it in”.

from Chris to Dharmesh: “lol. I guess I should have expected all these
attacks response from companies that sells trivial and mostly useless
online marketing services. ”

I was slack jawed at it’s over the topness and Dharmesh being the
target given solid reasons for SEOs value.
link: http://cdixon.org/2011/03/05/seo-is-no-longer-a-viable-marketing-strategy-for-startups/#comment-161631028

Anonymous

Content farms that monetize via adsense seem to be doing pretty well. Seems like the only sites that rank above that mess get hand-picked and boosted by Google. Or they just have content that nobody else has, like StackOverflow.

Chris Dixon