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://www.architexa.com/ Vineet Sinha

I generally agree with what you are saying. But the problem that you are pointing out to is a problem for search engines (having bad results) versus startups (providing support for search engines).

The trend you are pointing to means that Search Engines will need to start paying more attention to this – perhaps by using more social indicators, and the competition in the search engine market will at the very least force Google to do the same. And Startups will therefore not be able to just focus on their content and link structure, but also on one or more of social media, user experience, and ‘viral’ features.
http://twitter.com/SEOWebHelp Web Designer SEO

I think this all goes with your SEO company. Most people hire big firms that bring on junior SEO people to run their campaigns. I have plenty of clients in the 1-2 million visitors (not pageviews) range and I still consistently bring them an average of 12% more traffic from search every month.
http://twitter.com/SEOWebHelp Web Designer SEO

Might I add – without using any Black Hat tactics.
http://www.acceleratedonline.net/ David Lelong

I wouldn’t bet the farm on using SEO as the only way to raise awareness / drive traffic, but it continues to be a critical component of the online marketing mix. For a small business, it can easily be the most sustainable way to build underlying assets that create visibility.
http://twitter.com/webwright Tony Wright

Mint.com? OkCupid? SEOmoz? UrbanSpoon?

All came from behind in ridiculously competitive SEO arenas.

SEO continues to be an outstanding strategy, IF you have an unfair advantage of some kind in generating inbound links. That’s the challenge with TripAdvisor. It’s relatively trivial to build a service that’s better (just scrape their content, aggregate with others, display it cleanly with less ads). But it’s hard to imagine a service that is an order of magnitude more linkworthy. This is compounded with the fact that some SEO-powered sites (like TripAdvisor) have a small army of people who are working on link-building.

But not a valid strategy, just because someone is currently dominating the rankings? Like startups in general, ALL YOU NEED IS AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE. You should have one or two in your hip pocket or you shouldn’t be playing the game.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Mint.com? OkCupid? UrbanSpoon?

>>I don’t believe any of those sites were built primarily through SEO.

http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

Nope, that’s absolutely incorrect.

It’s definitely the case that Mint.com used its blog content and SEO strategies extensively for customer acquisition. I’m slightly biased here, as some of my consulting work for Mint.com in early 2007 was the basis for these strategies, but regardless whether it was my suggestions or others, it was a big part of our early success.

Again as a counterexample to your statements, Mint.com was very successful in producing blog content that ranked highly for SEO among a very competitive playing field for personal finance content, in a rather short period of time.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

ok so let’s look at mint. on mint’s home page footer is a link with
anchor text “pay off student loans” linking to a very nice page
http://www.mint.com/solutions/student/
now type that exact anchor text into google (“pay off student loans”)
the top results are content farms and mint.com isn’t on the first page
of organic results. mint SHOULD appear on the first page but the
black hats are winning.

http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

chris: one data point is not an empirical argument, and besides that’s one of the MOST competitive terms for SEO.

if you’re going to argue with me about a site I spent time on *personally* that developed a “viable” strategy using blog content for SEO then I think you’re stretching your argument beyond credibility.

again not saying search isn’t changing and perhaps waning, but it’s just not correct to say SEO isn’t viable or relevant.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

i just picked that phrase at random. show me some counterexamples…
what categories of keywords drove significant signups for mint? what
are some examples? i’m not trying to pick a fight, just trying to
learn.

http://twitter.com/webwright Tony Wright

Not primarily SEO (of course, I didn’t say they were). But you are saying that it isn’t a viable strategy- would you suggest that all of those startups would’ve been better served investing investing no time in keyword research, writing linkbait, deploying widgets linkback strategies (and stuff like the SpoonBack: http://urbanspoon.wordpress.com/2006/12/07/spoonback/ )?

It’s all about looking at your particular SEO landscape and figuring out whether you can win it. Look at the SEO-savvy of your competition, the quality of your offering, and whether you feel like you have some sort of clever social hack to outlink ‘em. White-hat folks win all the time (Quora? StackOverflow? Both attacking mature search markets, both #winning).

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Mint.com? OkCupid? UrbanSpoon?

>>I don’t believe any of those sites were built primarily through SEO.

http://amandapeyton.com amanda peyton

What about Twitter? Twitter ranks extremely well for super-long-tail search terms like individual names, which I can’t help but think has accelerated their growth. While it’s likely not the #1 source of traffic for new sign-ups, I bet it’s up there.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Google licensed Twitter data and pretty clearly special cased them – they display Tweets differently that other web pages etc.
http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Google licensed Twitter data and pretty clearly special cased them – they display Tweets differently that other web pages etc.

http://amandapeyton.com amanda peyton

Not tweets specifically (another booster surely though) – I mean organic search results for individual names. Example – a Google search for “Chris Dixon” yields your Twitter account as the #5 result, at least for me. Perhaps that’s as a result of the deal with Google, but just as Stack Overflow gets inbound traffic from Google as a result of long-tail programming terms, I bet Twitter gets a significant amount of inbound traffic from long-tail name searches.

Point is – I do think that there’s a tiny opportunity for help from SEO with the very end of the long tail of search terms. Sure “hotel rooms NYC” is a waste of time to try and SEO, but maybe “Charlie Smith, Minneapolis” isn’t yet. Just a thought.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I would argue that Twitter got popular through word of mouth etc and
then got SEO either by being special cased by Google or just being a
place people link to a lot when they mention your name.

http://armorit.myopenid.com/ Chris

I beg to differ on this one Danny. I know that big budgets will always be able to produce certain improved results like buying up paid and sponsored adspace, but Google is pulling up several of my clients 2-3 month old sites in 1st through 10th spots on yet unfinished websites. Just Google “install tires saskatoon” and look for A1 in the listings. This site is 2 months old and getting 5500+ impressions and plenty of hits from Google. Some areas are more competitive and might take 6 months to a year yo pull ahead but money atracts vultures and they often leave clients in the lurch with some minor recoding and paid ads only. Fire them and all the traffic stops, new companies still need to focus on SEO to ensure they get long term results as their site ages. I will give you, content is above a lot of other SEO factors but still much to be done if one wants good rankings.
http://armorit.myopenid.com/ Chris

I beg to differ on this one Danny. I know that big budgets will always be able to produce certain improved results like buying up paid and sponsored adspace, but Google is pulling up several of my clients 2-3 month old sites in 1st through 10th spots on yet unfinished websites. Just Google “install tires saskatoon” and look for A1 in the listings. This site is 2 months old and getting 5500+ impressions and plenty of hits from Google. Some areas are more competitive and might take 6 months to a year yo pull ahead but money atracts vultures and they often leave clients in the lurch with some minor recoding and paid ads only. Fire them and all the traffic stops, new companies still need to focus on SEO to ensure they get long term results as their site ages. I will give you, content is above a lot of other SEO factors but still much to be done if one wants good rankings.
http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

Chris, you know I’m a fan, but this is just flat out wrong, both actually & logically.

While I agree there is broad, long-term trend that IS happening which is reducing the primacy of search and leveling it with respect to both social & mobile platforms, to suggest that SEO is no long viable for startups is dead wrong and bad advice.

Whether or not Google is losing the spam war isn’t even the right logic to make your case — in fact if anything the fact that so many people compete for SEO is strong evidence for why it IS still relevant, along with the fact that Googke still sends hundreds of millions of searches per day to top SEO results.

Over the next 5-10 years, it’s possible that social & mobile platforms and customer acquisition channels will eclipse search channels, but we are FAR from that actuality, and it’s not clear search will EVER go away entirely.

I respect your opinion, but you’re way off base here.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Hey dave – what I’m talking about is that it used to be SEO could be
the whole basis of a business plan. The core idea of TripAdvisor was
that people were searching for lots of things where there was very
poor content in search results (I think of this as a large
demand/supply imbalance of content). Now SEO has become just one tool
among many and in many cases a not very effective one. (Can you name
any startups in the last 2 years that were built primarily through SEO
in competitive keyword categories?).

http://500startups.com/ Dave McClure

Your reply here and your post headline — perhaps SEO linkbait?!? — are not consistent.

Your reply he says: “SEO is one of several [viable] marketing strategies for startups”, which I DO agree with.

your headline says: “SEO is not a viable marketing strategy for startups”, which I do NOT agree with.

(If you had modified your headline and post slightly to the former, I wouldn’t be in such a hissy fit

If what you MEANT to portray is the rising importance of social and mobile channels relative to search, and the [slow] decay of search, then I’m also in agreement… But that wasn’t what you wrote.

As for startups that use SEO as a primary strategy, we’ve funded at least 3 in the past quarter. (sorry, not at liberty to state them publicly)… Not sure which of us is wrong, but I’m betting it’s you

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

Let me try to clarify. I certainly think all startups should make
their sites search engine friendly (i would call this a “tactic”) and
do (white-hat) things to generate inbound links. I wouldn’t count on
SEO since you are so dependent on the whims of the Google algorithm
team but there is always possible upside in trying for SEO so overall
there is positive ROI in SEO in most cases.

Back in say 2005 you’d see a bunch of business plans where the primary
business premise was about a gap in supply/demand of content in search
engines. TripAdvisor was a famous example among VCs (a few million
invested -> $250M exit, almost all traffic through SEO) and led to
lots of “SEO plays” getting funded. Some of those worked. I’m saying
those days are over and that SEO should no longer be a primary
business premise (what i call a “strategy”).

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Chris,

That’s the issue here. The title and the core message in your article are very misleading, as it’s been pointed out in other comments. Any truly intelligent person who has any real business experience should know better than to build a business plan around a single channel. Companies that did so or are doing so and hit it big are the very rare few. Most have always failed and most will always fail, regardless of the medium.

Part of the problem dates back to the original DotCom boom/bust. Hype and marketing spin got funding – which should NEVER be the case in ANY business model. The VCs however, apparently didn’t learn their lessons and that’s as much a part of the problem today as anything.
http://twitter.com/lauralippay laura lippay

My background is in the roots of the SEO industry and I’ve worked with startups + enterprise for many years.

The bottom line is that “SEO” (which needs to be rebranded) has changed. It is an industry born out of manipulating search results and as search algos have been improved over time, they reward less content built for search engines and more content built for *audiences*. The point of a site shoudnt be to be valuable to search engines, the point of a site should be to be valuable to it’s audiences.

Old school SEO (for startups or otherwise) = mostly code and link manipulation to gain rankings and traffic and make money from search (whether that was the only channel or not).

Todays SEO: Is two things, of which the first still needs a shit ton of education/awareness:

1) Content strategy based on knowing who your audiences are, what their needs are, how that translates to searches that they do, and how your site can meet it’s goals and satisfy those audiences (therefore making it a site *built for audiences*, and if successful, will be *valuable to audiences* who will link to it, share it, visit and revisit it – signals to a search engine that this might be a quality site.

2) Tactical optimization: A site (startup or not) still needs to be search-friendly. A search engine needs to be able to find the site, index the content, and determine the context of the pages, the site, and the sites and pages connected to it. This type of tactical optimization has changed over the years and at this point is much more closely aligned with W3C standards for accessibility than it is aligned with old school SEO manipulation tactics.

So it’s not dead, it’s not useless, it’s not not viable. It’s just that an entire industry of SEOs and the people employing them need to wrap their heads around how to optimize a site for audiences, with search as an integrated channel, not a primary business model (agreeing with alanbleweiss sentiment exactly).

http://twitter.com/richstaats Rich Staats

brilliant response. that is all
http://twitter.com/localseoguide Andrew Shotland

right on the money Laura

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

Great contrast of experiences and convergence on best strategies and specific tactics. SEO isn’t enough, it takes too log and places a startups success in the hands of a third party (vulnerability). But it’s also an inexpensive way to generate impressions on people that are expressing interest in your market.

Anonymous

Dave I think you nailed it with this reply. A pure SEO strategy is very risky.

Ideally startups will have many customer acquisition angles to test and optimize. All channels get more difficult over time as they get saturated with more people piling in.

But as long as people are using Google to find things, it is important for businesses to work hard to be found in Google. SEM is an easy shortcut, but this should be complemented by SEO efforts. I actually think Google’s crackdown on low quality content farms favors brand new startups with nothing invested in Google’s old algorithm.
http://www.HubSpot.com Dharmesh Shah

Dave, you captured my sentiment exactly.

I made the same “mistake” you made in terms of mis-reading the original post and headline.

I’d agree with the position that building a startup based on the SEO strategies of yester-year is no longer a viable strategy. But, that was not clear from the post or the title. It sounded like Chris was saying “SEO doesn’t work for startups”, which I don’t agree with.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

lol. I guess I should have expected all these attacks response from companies that sells trivial and mostly useless online marketing services.

http://www.HubSpot.com Dharmesh Shah

Wow. That’s a bit harsher than I think I deserved given my two comments on the post (which I didn’t think were overly critical).

I’ve been called a lot of things, but “trivial and useless” cut a bit deep, particularly given the source. Guess I’m overly sensitive.

Note to self: I *knew* I should have listened to my original instincts to resist the temptation to jump into the comment thread on this post. I wish Disqus had an “undo and pretend it never happened” button.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I’m sorry but I wrote a post that is considered obvious and passé by everyone in the VC/founder community I know yet I spent the day being accused of maligning, link baiting, attacking the seo business etc. maybe I am oversensitive after all of that. If I offended you I apologize.

http://www.HubSpot.com Dharmesh Shah

No worries. Looking back at it, I can see that you’ve had a long day. (I’ve had one or two of those myself in the past). Thanks for the response (I’m the kind of guy that would have otherwise lost sleep over this interchange).

Now, back to “real work” so I can someday be non-trivial and somewhat useful.

Cheers.

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

I see it It as a reflexive emotional reaction.

From a guy who observes part of your digital shadow your efforts are anything but trivial and useless. And your comments and messages are always respectful and courteous, undeserving of the kind of remark you received.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Whoever you think qualifies as “everyone” in the VC/founder community I assume are not the entire VC/founder community. If it is, they’re fools. Why? Here’s just one example. A 2 year old startup I provided SEO consulting for last year increased their revenue (national market, highly competitive) by more than 38% from the additional organic SEO work that came out of my consulting. In December, they were acquired by one of the top two companies in their market. One of the primary deciding factors was the tremendous growth they obtained when the majority of players in the market floundered during the same time period.
http://twitter.com/lauralippay laura lippay

Might I add: http://searchengineland.com/seo-remains-a-viable-marketing-strategy-for-anyone-67141

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Chris, seriously? You just said that? Tell that to the clients I serve who bring in millions of additional dollars a year in revenue after I help them. Tell that to the startup owners I’ve helped become discovered through organic search. Startups with local focus. Startups with regional focus. Startups with national reach.

No – you’re just being a total ass now and this “conversation” has devolved into your ego exploding all over the page.

Ihatehaters

+1

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

Where’s the dislike button. Grumpy uncalled for reply.

http://www.christine.biz Christine McCarthy

Maybe this example SEO Is not good. But I have to disagree with you. I have been using SEO tactics to get my site up and running for the last two months and am doing pretty well.

SEO is viable for startups.

Hey, this is one of those controversial posts to get lots of comments, huh? Nice job!

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

I have heard the sentiment of this post from so many VCs and
entrepreneurs that I almost thought it was too obvious to post, but
apparently the SEO community disagrees.

http://www.elieseidman.com Elie Seidman

Rand is a friend of mine and Eytan’s so I say this with the utmost respect for Rand -and everyone else in the SEO community. The SEO community has something of a vested interest in SEO being a powerful tool that you can work if “you just know how to do it right” and work with the right people who understand SEO. I think Oyster is a good example of knowing more than enough about the mechanics of SEO and the search engines still not solving customer problems as well as they could/should. Ultimately, where the search engines need to excel is in finding the best answers/solutions for customers. Entrepreneurs and innovators should be able to work hard on providing those solutions with the confidence that if and when they do bring them to market, the search engines will find them. It’s not the case in mainstream advertising that the best solutions get to the most customers. Arguably it should be that way but I believe there are plenty of examples of inferior products advertised more effectively being a strong competitor by virtue of the awareness they’ve bought through advertising. As a consumer of the search engines, I’d like the best products to rise to the top of the engines and would prefer that entrepreneurs and innovators can invest their resources not in SEO (the optimization of their sites for the search engines) but rather in making a better product for customers. I don’t think that’s where things are today.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Elie,

Read my last reply to you. Quality search of billions of pages of content is not such an easy task to get right. It’s made worse when site owners believe they claim “knowing more than enough about the mechanics of SEO” even though their sites are not truly optimized.

The reason many in the SEO community take the position that “”you just know how to do it right” and advocate that site owners need to “work with the right people who understand SEO” is because those are very important truths.

I also do acknowledge that just because someone claims to know SEO does not mean they know it well enough to provide the best answers for highly competitive markets. 90% of my work comes from clients who have had previous SEO consulting only to discover that they needed much more refined solutions.

http://www.elieseidman.com Elie Seidman

No doubt it’s a very hard problem.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Elie,

Read my last reply to you. Quality search of billions of pages of content is not such an easy task to get right. It’s made worse when site owners believe they claim “knowing more than enough about the mechanics of SEO” even though their sites are not truly optimized.

The reason many in the SEO community take the position that “”you just know how to do it right” and advocate that site owners need to “work with the right people who understand SEO” is because those are very important truths.

I also do acknowledge that just because someone claims to know SEO does not mean they know it well enough to provide the best answers for highly competitive markets. 90% of my work comes from clients who have had previous SEO consulting only to discover that they needed much more refined solutions.

http://twitter.com/gibgoff Gibson Goff

You’re trying to tell a self-professed Guru they’re not a Guru. Lot’s of Guru’s here.

Great discussion!

Pingback: Almost Everything is Unprofitable
Anonymous

I guess my question is the following then ….what do start up sites, that promote not blog content but actual products and are looking for customer acquisitions, do?? We built our site keeping in mind SEO yes, and use Google Analytics as well to see progress … but we are not sure why the, http://themeglio.com, and it’s pairing with the kickstater.com is not working or bringing in folks as we anticipated. Large volume sites like TechCrunh or Wired it would seem would not be picking up and featuring the site on their blogs and pages, so what is the best way to approach the blogs, web-sites, when asking them to take a look @ us.

Feedback appreciated
http://mtkd.github.com mtkd

The sentiment of this article is bang-on. Google is ranking high linked and gamed sites higher than new sites with really high quality content and navigation.

Consequently, to rank, the high quality sites start ramming more and more content on the page, start optimising that content for rankings and the customer experience suffers. You even see Amazon making changes to optimise now.

The problem for Google is that every signal they could use to fix this issue is gameable.

Maybe the future is in some kind of system where you can opt-in to user groups (maybe via LinkedIn/FB?) and allow more signals to be used from that group e.g. people you know directly/indirectly – to push popular sites up higher in your results.
Pingback: SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone
Anonymous

Reading this article and the comments does prove that no one knows for sure what is SEO-right and SEO-wrong. Perhaps now I’m more in favor of Google opening up a bit more.
Pingback: Almost Everything is Unprofitable | Aitir Google Lab
Pingback: Almost Everything is Unprofitable | WordPress Leaks | Moteur Dofollow
http://www.wadhwa.com Vivek Wadhwa

Despite all the criticism here, I think that Chris is right. Looking forward, startups and legitimate websites will need to find new ways of reaching potential customers. When everyone was throwing a little big of garbage into the stream that is the Web, it was okay. But now, because of the financial incentives, we are dealing with dump trucks full of waste.

We need new technologies for search–new paradigms. So startups need to start looking forward rather than backward to how things were a decade ago.

Blah

Oh please Vivek. “throwing a little big(t) of garbage into the stream” makes it sound like you consider any SEO strategy as a cheap way of sending random print catalogs to mailboxes. TechCrunch called and they want their shoddy under-researched writers back…move along.

Learn about real SEO

http://www.webcoconut.com alex

this just talks about the big companies, which doesnt necessarily correlate with smaller startups or small businesses.
http://www.elieseidman.com Elie Seidman

(I’m the CEO and a co-founder of Oyster)

I’m really glad to see that this issue – in the hotel category in particular – is getting attention. The hotel and travel category is a very valuable online category and yet is manifesting important problems with the quality of Google search results. If it’s like this is as high a value a category as travel/hotels, I can only imagine what it’s like in other categories.

By way of context on Oyster and SEO, here’s a bit about how we thought about the problem when we started.

During the summer and fall of 2007, while doing hotel searches for our own hotel and travel needs, we found that the quality of results in Google was lacking. We felt that outside of TripAdvisor, most of what we saw in the Google results was low quality, redundant, information that did not help customers make better decisions more quickly. We also had our issues with the challenges of using TripAdvisors’s UGC to make decisions but we never made a bet that TripAdvisor has to lose so that we could win. On the contrary, we believed at the time – and still believe – that both original UGC and Oyster’s expert content should be surfaced by Google in their first results though we feel strongly that Oyster expert approach is superior to UGC in a variety of critical ways. Original UGC was not a problem that needed solving – TripAdvisor had already done that – and we were passionate about solving the consumer problem with an expert perspective so we founded Oyster in early 2008 and launch in late June 2009 with a subset of the hotel coverage you see on Oyster today.

One of our co-founders, Eytan Seidman, (http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-live-search-core-relevance-program-management-director-eytan-seidman-moves-on-13320) had worked on relevance and relevance measurement in product management at Microsoft Bing so we were well grounded in the tactics of SEO. We did expect that unique, high quality, original hotel coverage that helps customers solve a very real problem would rank well in Google and other search engines. For the most part, we’ve been very surprised by how long it has taken the search engines to rank us. This is despite our having received a significant amount of press attention (http://www.oyster.com/about/videos-about-oyster/) and customer love. The first page (and typically the second, third and fourth page as well) of Google results for basically any hotel Oyster covers is still covered with content/product that a panel of human relevance rankers would find, as you’ve found, inferior to the Oyster product. At 20 or so months since launch this is no longer my subjective opinion – it’s something I can back up with the feedback from the large pool of users who have found, used, and enjoyed Oyster.

There were other startups in the travel space of a similar vintage to Oyster – Uptake and Dealbase come to mind – where SEO was most, if not all, of their strategy. At Oyster, SEO was something we knew we needed to understand as a tactic but it was never our strategy – our strategy was to solve the problems that a customer trying to make a hotel decision faces. That’s where we were focused and that’s where we continue to be focused. As we iterate on and update our product, we continue to be very sensitive to the realities of SEO. We often find ourselves having to balance product decisions with the needs of SEO and the needs of our customers.

We came to the table with a strong understanding of the tactics of SEO. We’ve kept the tactical needs of SEO closely in mind as we’ve built and iterated on our product. We’ve definitely benefited from receiving search traffic (in any given month about 50% of our traffic comes from search) but have been surprised by how long it has taken our coverage to rank and rank well. What I believe is that search engines are failing customers by not quickly enough finding the better solution that’s available. It certainly seems that this issue – in the travel vertical in particular – has Google’s attention and that they’re aware that their product can, and needs to, do a better job for customers.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

thanks elie. I hear this frustration again and again from startups these days.
http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Elie,

I applaud Oyster for taking the true business marketing approach and not focusing exclusively on any single channel. I need to say, however, that for all of the flaws that come from so many “top tier” phrases providing less quality in the results, Having 50% of your visits come from search can not by any stretch be an indicator that search fails to produce quality results.

In fact, I’d venture to say that many of those visits that come, do so from more specific search phrases, known in our industry as “the long tail”, which most likely means in many cases, a more relevant visit than just some generic two word search, which more often than not is just people poking around, in the very early stage of the process.

And even if search engines were to eliminate all the noise, there’s too many businesses in most niche markets for everyone to end up on the 1st page of results anyhow, which means it will always be a competitive battle for eyeballs.

http://www.elieseidman.com Elie Seidman

Alan – not sure I understand your argument. I’ve studied the search results carefully – both for tail and head terms. In this category, for both head terms (e.g. Four Seasons Hotel New York) or for tail terms (e.g. four seasons superior room king bed minibar) the first, second and third pages are ranked in such a way that a human panel would not agree with them. To me that’s the “failing” of search – the engines are not ranking things as well as they should.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

Elie,

I don’t disagree with the position that the engines fail miserably in many ways. Only in the notion that for all their failings, there’s still an unbelievable amount of good that comes from their current algorithms. It’s too easy to purely complain about the lack of quality where it exists in comparison to where they used to be.

I also need to point out that Oyster is not necessarily truly optimized, either for search or user experience.

I just tried to find Four Seasons Hotel New York on your site using your own search form and got a “Sorry” page. (User Experience Fail). I then poked around and could not find any easily discoverable link to the Four Seasons (search discoverability fail).

So while the engines are lacking in some critical abilities, this particular situation could very well be your own SEO failings.

http://www.elieseidman.com Elie Seidman

There is no argument from me that search engines do an amazing amount of good. I remember well the days of Yahoo’s link farm – we are way ahead of where we were then and that’s a fantastic thing. In my mind, the value of the critique is to help make the engines better. I don’t think the answer to that is that product people need to understand SEO better.

Whether we agree or disagree on how well optimized Oyster is for SEO – and if we ask 5 SEOs we’ll get 5 different nuanced answers in my experience – the point that the debate really highlights is that entrepreneurs have to spend a lot of their time and resources optimizing not for a better customer experience but rather in making it easier for search engines to figure out what to do.

Not sure what you did on Oyster exactly – there is an autofill that kicks in as you type Four Seasons and the New York Four Seasons is right there on the list. If you click on it, you’ll get taken to a search results page and the Four Seasons is at the top of that page. The Four Seasons New York is here:

http://www.oyster.com/new-york-city/hotels/four-seasons-new-york/

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

I copied the phrase you referred to here. I pasted it in. Your suggest system doesn’t kick in under that method. I copy and paste in searches all the time. It’s one of many user mind models. Because I included “hotel” in the search, your system failed. When I tried without the “hotel”, it worked. Hotel is one of the most important words in many peoples minds when they’re searching for a hotel.

I then typed it manually – Four Seasons Hotel only brings up the Las Vegas and Beverly Hills suggestions. Which proves that it’s not just the search engines needing improvement.

To take the position that site owners responsible for complex data don’t themselves need to comprehend information retrieval based on the complex mind model variations is purely pointing fingers and not owning the responsibility that comes with owning such a robust site.

http://www.elieseidman.com Elie Seidman

Thanks for the user feedback – I’ll take a look.

I’m by no means pointing fingers. I’m trying to add my experience to the debate. And like Google, Oyster is far from being perfect – we can ALWAYS improve.

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com alanbleiweiss

I hear you Elie. It’s frustrating to say the least, when a company offers truly high quality content. Drives me nuts as much as everyone else. Both as a user and SEO professional. It’s just that this whole post title and core message doesn’t help unsuspecting people who are just as frustrated and being human, look for a reason to bitch and moan before they get enough quality input about other aspects.

As much as many of us take the time to read all the comments, many more do not. That’s the bigger tragedy in this. At least Oyster has the capacity, and the business leadership to drive the opportunity in enough ways to at least offset much of the problem the engines have a direct hand in.Most startups do not. And if they don’t read all these comments, it’s tragic if they then throw up their hands and walk away from SEO altogether.

http://www.elieseidman.com Elie Seidman

Always a good idea to read the fine print and pay attention to the details

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com AJ Kohn

Elie,

Oyster is in a very competitive vertical and there’s no doubt that a lot of your competitors have abused the link graph and manipulated trust and authority to gain high rankings. The link graph is in disrepair, no doubt about it.

You’re also attacking the vertical in a way that is not perfectly aligned with search – photos. I run Blind Five Year Old, a consultancy named for my view of search engines. Googlebot is not impressed with your gorgeous photos. It doesn’t really ‘see’ them.

That’s not to say they can’t be optimized nor that they aren’t useful to a human user. But even from a user perspective, a photo dominates perhaps 60% or more of what is above the fold. It’s interesting and certainly appealing to many users, but does it communicate, in a glance, what you’re going to find on that page?

If I do scroll and scan what the page is about I find ‘Why Book This Hotel’ and ‘Oyster Hotel Photos’. For a time-compressed user (aren’t we all these days) who might be new to your site, this doesn’t reinforce the idea that I’ve found the right page. Is this the Four Seasons New York or the Oyster Hotel? Sounds silly, but you only have a few seconds to capture that user and capitalize on their intent.

Might it be better for the user if those two headers said ‘Why Book The Four Seasons New York’ and ‘Four Seasons New York Photos’. Yes, it will help with SEO, but isn’t it better for users too? Anything that makes me stumble is probably a bad thing. Steve Krug is right – don’t make me think.

In a larger context, I challenge folks to think about how SEO compliments UX and not regard it as a trade-off against good product.

Eytan Seidmam

Hi AJ,
My name is Eytan and I am a co-founder of Oyster and work on the product user experience.

I think it is worth clarifying a couple of things. First off, while photos are a key part of what we do they are by no means the only thing. On the page that Chris mentions we have a 2,000+ review from our first hand experience there. In addition on many hotels we also allow user comments. So there is a lot of content for Googlebot to index which will be helpful to users.

On your point re: repeating the word “Why Book the Four Seasons”. I worked on Bing (previously Live Search) for a number of years and saw lot of folks do this in the name of UX and SEO. And I would argue that in many cases repeating the word no longer helps the user and it just becomes a case of keyword stuffing and it looks spammy and desperate. When a user types in [Four Seasons New York] and lands on our page we rely on the page heading, which uses 21 point font, and says “Four Seasons New York” to help them realize that they have landed on a page that can help them.

I hope that helps.

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com AJ Kohn

Eytan,

It’s good to see you defend your product passionately. I do understand photos are not the only thing you do. I was simply commenting that an average user might not get that impression right away.

Your complaint that ‘it just becomes a case of keyword stuffing and it looks spammy and desperate’ is a common reaction. That’s a complaint I rarely hear from the user.

There’s quite a bit more I could say but I don’t think a public debate benefits anyone.

Pingback: SEO и стартапы « александр.moskalyuk.name
Pingback: SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone | How to Business
Vr

another dumb post to get attention to your portfolio company.
just focus on running your companies,you dumbass…
Pingback: SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone – gpkendall.com
NEOSEO2011

Was there a date error with this site? I have read this EXACT same post, every year since 2000.

Get a clue people – get a clue.
http://www.yougomedia.com James Cordeiro

You did one thing right with this post, which is part of SEO development process. You grabbed a lot of attention probably providing you with many “natural” backlinks to your article. Traffic from everywhere not meant to happen, but does. This cdixon is natural SEO, focus on the user and all else will follow.

Guessing you should be experiencing the natural effects of online marketing and copywriting. My suggestion, change the title for search exposure, other than that… great job getting user interaction on this article! Impressed
http://www.technokyle.com kyle

SEO is just a catalyst. If your startup is really good in terms delivering great user experience then success will just follow up. So what I believe is

GREAT startup = Good
GREAT startup + Good SEO = Much Better
Pingback: Chris Dixon asked for it- SEO and Startups « ECPM BLOG
http://www.ourbananamoments.com Marsha

I agree, sites many sites are busy with so many ads that the content gets muted. I am trying to build a versatile start up site, but, the need to use Google ads and affiliate marketing makes it a difficult balance.

Marsha
http://www.ourbananamoments.com
Pingback: Almost Everything is Unprofitable « Designs By Brian
Adrian Meli

Timely post-although I would tend to disagree that SEO is not important, I think it is a very fair and important point that companies can no longer rely on SEO because there are so many companies competing on SEO and it does not seem to be a smart long term business model to have to rely on Google for your business. Tripadvisor is a good example because Google’s Places and Google’s purchase of Kayak may put a significant dent in that business long-term or it just may cause TA to step up its game. Either way, a company needs to be able to control its own destiny and Google’s increasing entry into vertical search from travel to interest rates, etc makes it all the more important to focus on other things besides SEO. – Adrian Meli
Pingback: SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone :: I Like Payday
Pingback: SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone | Search Engine Daily
Pingback: SEO Is No Longer A Viable Marketing Strategy For Startups | Total Stuff for Geekery
http://twitter.com/Webprotech WebPro Technologies

In fact I have the total opposite perspective to this. In fact I think that the startups and SMEs who have limited marketing budgets but are looking for long term valuable web presence then SEO is that branch of SEM that is the most viable online marketing strategy.

Agreed they may not get immediate quick response as a result of SEO but then SEO was never meant for that. It was and is always a slow, steady but a sure path to follow if you want to have a quality presence on the search engines and also build a brand online.

And that is what is important for startups and SMEs, as building an online brand and developing an online identity and reputation is what is important in the long run to assure you of increasing magnitude of online business.

The growth of any business depends on the increase in business volume over a period of time and that is what genuine SEO helps to acheive. In fact the search engine is the only place where a multi-national company having huge infra-structure and a local company with a very modest set up can have the possibility of equal business opportunity.

SEO is much beyond only SERPs and rankings now and has many more dimensions to it especially with social media getting integrated with search.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-is-about-putting-your-best-foot-forward-on-the-web/24238/
http://www.springboardseo.com Springboard SEO

The vast majority pushing “SEO” are just trying to cash in on something they don’t understand. I’m talking 95% here, maybe more. Don’t let the huge numbers of pretenders convince you that SEO is how they represent it.

I engage regularly with some of the people that have posted comments in here. I know for a fact that Alan Bleiweiss, Laura Lippay, AJ Kohn, Dharmesh Shah, and Andrew Shotland understand the value of compelling web content and UX. And most of these people are–guess what–SEOs.

This is 2011. Longterm search visibility walks hand in hand with a user-friendly content strategy. It sounds like you get your views of SEO from Fox News and your spam box.

I consider myself an “SEO”, but rarely use the term; it’s been dragged through the mud by too many pretenders and sales teams. I’m an “SEO”, but beyond keyword research there’s Web usability, content strategy, social media, web analytics, web standards, accessibility, semantics, content marketing, etc.

You’re on just as much of a bandwagon with this post as all the doofuses selling search engine submissions and bulk directory submissions are.
Tuxmiller

Interesting but only applicable to a few, not the mass business population. As geographic search grows organically and as more businesses claim their stake, of course it will become more difficult to compete. Making a blanket statement like the one this headline proclaims is like saying “There’s no more West” after we signed the Louisiana Purchase. Still a lot of gold in them thar hills!
Pingback: Programmazione, SEO, Startup - Il Meglio della Settimana #3
Pingback: renaissance chambara | Ged Carroll. - Links of the day | 在网上找到
http://www.chotrul.com/ Chotrul

This article is so far wide of the mark that it’s almost laughable. Sorry to say that.

SEO, the search engines and the users are broadly in alignment. The search engine algorithms are designed to reward the sort of website that the users would like to see. SEO’s are like any other form of marketing – they help clients reach out to potential customers. There’s nothing black hat or odd about that. It’s the nature of marketing, and we are quite comfortable with it in any other guise.

This piece really is very trivialising.
Pingback: Social and Search ARE Viable Marketing Strategies for Startups, But What’s Next?
Pingback: SEO Remains A Viable Marketing Strategy For Anyone | | SEO WorkSEO Work
http://www.podglo.com Anonymous

So what is a viable marketing strategy if SEO is not? Social?
http://twitter.com/NikolicDragan Dragan Nikolic

It’s only fair that we, the “startups”, say something on this matter. I don’t consider SEO to be an option of any kind, viable or not. It’s simply showing good manners, as you would to a stranger (robot), or to a friend (human).

I’m aware it’s still considered to be a mean of manipulation where in the end “TripAdvisor” is ranked higher than “Oyster”, where SEO should really be a part of accessibility and usability campaign, but it’s always been that way –

Google will continue to improve its ranking algorithm and we’ll continue trying to figure it out, as you did in this article.
Pingback: Is SEO Dead or Just Misunderstood? | Selland Capital
Pingback: Is SEO Dead? | Rev2.org
Vision

Big kudos for hitting a nerve – my head’s about to explode from all the responses/comments!

Anonymous

This is one of the most interesting threats i read in the last week with lots of quality responses that all contain part of the truth (which im not going to reveal here).

Seo certainly is one of the most important marketing tools a startup can apply where they should surelynot rely on it in order not to be at the realms of google only. Social media not only becomes much more important to generate traffic it also makes a compless funerable to a possible ranking mishap.

Seo in this sence also means page optimization for better search positioning but more important for a better user experience

Pingback: SEO for startups
Samir Balwani

Hi Chris, I disagree whole heartedly – in the short run SEO is not valuable to a startup, but if you expect to be around for long you need it.

You make seem to make the argument that only older sites get links, but if someone started a platform that gave better advice than Trip Advisor, you’d start to gain links faster than Trip Advisor. Google takes link velocity into account when assigning authority. So if Trip Advisor has 1000000 inbound links and grows at a rate of 10 links per month, but our startup has 100 links but grows at a rate of 100 links per month – we’ll begin to be seen as relevant for the same terms, if not more relevant. As much as its true that Google trusts old sites, Google also rewards innovation and the new.

Also, as long as people use Google – SEO will be important. Word of mouth and social media is great, but it lacks intent. From a sales and conversions POV, nothing is better than SEM / SEO. I can tell you about this great site called TripIt that lets you plan your vacation itineraries, but you might not have a need for it – which means you never sign up for it (no conversion). On the other hand, when you’re getting ready to plan your trip to SXSW and realize you need an itinerary tracker, you might search something like “itinerary planner” – see TripIt and convert because its exactly what you were looking for.

If a startup is based web based (not mobile) and relies on content, community, or any type of affiliate marketing and doesn’t invest in SEO, once the press and publicity of being a startup wears off and no one is
really talking about them, how will they get traffic aside from SEO or paying for it?

Samir Balwani
Director of Acquisition Marketing
StyleCaster Media Group
Pingback: Chris Dixon’s SEO Post: Classic Round Trip Fallacy | StatSpotting!

Chris Dixon