SEO isn't important for marketing

[fisicx]

A nice clickbait worthy title to the thread and one I'm sure will be argued from both sides.

But let me explain my reasoning.

According to my analytics only 25% of my visitors come from search engines. The rest come from a variety of sources.

When I want to buy anything I use bookmarked sites which includes eBay, Amazon and places where I get regular shipments.

I use Google when I want information or am doing research but very rarely to search for products. I use forums a lot to ask for suggestions and will often go with recommendations and referrals.

So while search is important, it may not be as important for some as other types of marketing.

As an aside, those who think FB is the centre of the universe for everything, read this. Or this article that shows 35% of traffic comes from search. Or here where paid advertising outperforms organic.

I'm sure for some organic ranking is key to success but there is an awful lot more traffic from other sources.

 

[james_firmsites]

According to my analytics only 25% of my visitors come from search engines. The rest come from a variety of sources.

But where do your conversions come from? You could have 1% of your traffic from search engines and still have 99% of your business from them. Search is still a highly relevant form, hence the value of adwords, but obviously varies from business to business.

So I agree SEO is not as valuable as many marketers make out, but the key take away in my honest view of this is not that search is less valuable but that we should be focused on understanding where sales/conversions come from and chasing the quality traffic rather than the vanity of volume traffic.

 

[fisicx]

I agree totally. It's why I tell clients to focus on the things that make money (ie: conversions).

Note that my title did say SEO not Search. Searching (of all sorts of platforms) is important. Get your AdWords right and you generate a lot of business - more than you can using just organic ranking - because you can cheaply cover a huge range of keywords and never have to worry about Google updating the search algo.

 

[Peter Bowen]

I'm an AdWords (now Google Ads) guy so I'm a little biased, but it's always seemed to me that SEO is the homeopathy of the marketing world.

 

[dave_endsor]

Completely disagree.

Get your SEO in order and you'll rank high for those keywords naturally, SAVING you money on Adwords.

Both are crucial.

You may not use Google for product searches, but a hell of a lot of people do. If I could be so bold, I took a look at your site fisicx and it ranks for only two words in the top 10 of Google, and they were 5th and 8th. If you work off the assumption that position 1st generates 15-25% clickthrough, 2nd and 3rd get 10-15%, you'll struggle to get anything in those positions. (Data: from Smart Insights)

Underestimating the power of SEO is folly.

 

[fisicx]

Your analysis of my site is wrong. It ranks for the keywords I’m targeting so no worries there.

My point was that visitors come from a variety of sources and for many this has nothing to do with the search engines.

 

[Tin]

and for many this has nothing to do with the search engines.

and for many this has everything to do with search engines

 

[dave_endsor]

Your analysis of my site is wrong. It ranks for the keywords I’m targeting so no worries there.

My point was that visitors come from a variety of sources and for many this has nothing to do with the search engines.

I wholeheartedly agree there are multiple sources, but underestimating SEO, or over-valuing other channels is dangerous.

As my analysis of your site, it's not wrong but I'm not going to argue about it.

 

[fisicx]

and for many this has everything to do with search engines

Quite correct Ray. It's just that I'm finding for more and more clients they are getting more traffic from other sources. If you rank well for your chosen keywords then that's great but for a client I was working with last week those keywords account for under 20% of their converting traffic.

As my analysis of your site, it's not wrong but I'm not going to argue about it.

I'm sure you are correct for the keywords you analysed but as you don't know which site brings in the most money it's not really that useful.

 

[Devin Murphy]

Well SEO is an important part of the business in the beginning because you need to focus on other things of lead and value generation instead of just Focusing on Keywords. it is important but Branding should be given more emphasis in the Long term because you cannot rely only on search results alone. Basically the searches are of 3 types. 1) Navigational 2) informative and 3) Transnational. The transnational searches are dominated by big e-commerce companies like amazon. but Because of brands like Amazon, ebay, alibaba etc. we never feel to go for search to buy a product.

 

[fisicx]

Not really sure what you are saying there @Devin Murphy. If eBay or amazon are your prime sources of traffic then you don’t need SEO nor do you really need brand awareness. Or have I missed something?

 

[websensejim]

First off, thats a very good clickbaity title, Graham

I expect you'll get the usual yeas and nays from members depending on whether they're SEOs or not. Anyway, here's my tuppence. I couldn't disagree more with the assertion.

For me, SEO is very much a marketing discipline. I feel its been hijacked in recent years by the technical SEO guys. most of who are techies, not marketers. If you want to restrict it to just technical SEO, then I might agree - its impact on marketing is limited. But you can't just restrict it to a technical discipline, technical SEO is just part of a wider SEO discipline, most of which is concerned with marketing. And I'm not confusing it with SEM either, since that brings in PPC, Adwords etc. I'm talking about organic SEO - and that is very much about marketing. Here's why I believe SEO is so important (critical in many cases) for marketing.

Organic search is the greatest marketing channel on the planet. For the vast majority of businesses, organic search represents the biggest opportunity, to reach the widest possible audience at the best possible time (when they are actively seeking your products or services). Not only that, search also gives you the opportunity of putting your brand, your business in front of potential customers at every single stage of the buyers journey. So with SEO you can also target people at the very early stages of research behaviour (building awareness which might be lead to conversions on future visits).

In terms of volume alone, no other channel gets near organic search (not paid and certainly not social). Its not even close. Do a quick search on SimilarWeb and plug in some of your competitors URLs, or some big brands from your industry or any industry - now look at their traffic sources. Organic search wins every time (about 99% of the time anyway).

Nobody is arguing you should be relying on Google traffic (that is business suicide) but if you're not taking any slice of organic traffic, you are leaving an awful lot on the table. And that is why SEO is hugely important. Its not dead, or dying, or going anywhere.

As long as people need to search for information and products, no matter how they search or where they search, there will always be a competitive advantage for those who can position their brands to benefit from this incredible channel.

 

[1977]

For me, SEO is my go to for 1 simple reason, trust.

For whatever reason, if you’re on the top half of P1 you’re seen as a trusted source. Coupled with good internal linking and navigation the results are great.

Plus, in my case I offer something that amazon doesn’t, 0% interest (aov’s are high).

What I would say however is that the vast majority (myself included in the past) underestimate what’s involved and the true cost to drive decent numbers through a website.

 

[Peter Bowen]

For whatever reason, if you’re on the top half of P1 you’re seen as a trusted source. Coupled with good internal linking and navigation the results are great.

Genuinely curious about how you deal with the top half of P1 mostly being paid these days. The trend over the last few years has been for more of the top space to be allocated to paid results. This is going to be exacerbated with Google's new ad format - responsive ads which are significantly bigger than the current expanded text ads.

 

[fisicx]

Organic search is the greatest marketing channel on the planet.

I disagree with this. 75% of my converting traffic comes from other sources than Search Engines. There is a good number of marketing reports that show people land on websites from a whole variety of places both originating online and offline.

For whatever reason, if you’re on the top half of P1 you’re seen as a trusted source.

No, this just means you are better at SEO than the competition.

I'm not suggesting we all give up on the search engines. I'm just suggesting there can be a lot more useful traffic from alternate sources. A simple example: a plumber has a van with his phone number and domain name painted on the doors. This can generate a lot of enquiries without ever needing a search engine (other than perhaps people googling the business name). In theory he only needs one good lead per day so spending a lot of time and energy on SEO is pointless.

 

[1977]

Genuinely curious about how you deal with the top half of P1 mostly being paid these days. The trend over the last few years has been for more of the top space to be allocated to paid results. This is going to be exacerbated with Google's new ad format - responsive ads which are significantly bigger than the current expanded text ads.

Sorry, meant top half of organic results. People look past the ads.

 

[fisicx]

People look past the ads.

No they don't.The ads and maps are an excellent source of very targeted traffic.

 

[1977]

Well they do in my niche

 

[Peter Bowen]

I understand that in some niches the searchers may be both:

• technically sophisticated enough to tell the difference between ads and organic links,
• and sufficiently anti-Google to scroll down past paid links to the organic links.

Well they do in my niche

Again, genuinely curious, how do you know this? How do you measure clicks you didn't get?

 

[fisicx]

Well they do in my niche

How do you know? They could be clicking on all sorts of adverts and not clicking on your links.

And your competitors could be getting a whole load of referral traffic, direct links and so on that you know nothing about.

If Adwords weren't working google would be broke. Just because you don't click doesn't mean millions of people feel the same.

 

[Alan]

A simple example: a plumber has a van with his phone number and domain name painted on the doors. This can generate a lot of enquiries without ever needing a search engine

I think this is a myth ( sign writing a van brings in leads for trades ). It might help convert leads because a sign written van looks more trustworthy than a plain van. And may help with local brand awareness too.

I don't have any large sample of data for this, only one family member that set up a business that involves a van ( and the competitors heavily sign write their vans too, so they think sign writing works! ). In the 2 years of operation, only 1 call has been 'I saw your van' and even then the potential customer was not a target customer. Every other cold lead ( i.e. not referrals ) has been from initially adwords and now SEO has kicked. SEO, and it is pretty even between adwords and SEO. And a website is much better at automatically pre qualifying leads than a van as you can provide and structure much more information to draw in the 'right type of customer' and put off the 'wrong sort of customer'.

 

[fisicx]

On the other hand there is a local man and van who gets pretty much all his work from people seeing his van with his name painted on the side. He doesn’t have a website but he is listed in a couple of local directories.

There is never going to be one way of doing things for everybody. It’s just that I’m seeing more and more clients getting good traffic from sources other than through google organic.

 

[Ian J]

There is never going to be one way of doing things for everybody. It’s just that I’m seeing more and more clients getting good traffic from sources other than through google organic.

A few years ago when my web site was on page one of Google I had enquiries coming out of my ears but ever since the search engine changed it's algorithm to prefer big brands my enquiry level slumped.

In recent years I have been getting quite a few enquiries from the Startups forum but unfortunately they pulled the plug on their forum last month so that source has now dried up

 

[OliviaCaitlin]

Well its not like SEO is not important for the business. This all depends on the business to business. SEO is a long term activity and if you are focusing on brand building then in long term SEO doesn't hold much significance. Because your brand speaks instead of focusing on the keywords. if you are getting referral traffic from other sources then you should focus on getting maximum benefits from the like social media.
I have seen throughout the discussion that People are suggesting Adword but if you are clear about your idea and your audience and keywords where you want to focus only then use then Adwords because adword are supper effective in Transnational searches but in for information purpose and to increase the traffic it wil;l cost you more.

 

[SEOpie]

I'm concerned that nobody has mentioned multi-funnel conversions in all of this, and how good organic search rankings help whatever the final interaction before checkout.

For the majority of my clients, organic search traffic converts to a much higher degree than traffic from all other sources. However, often it's the combination of marketing efforts that make the sale happen. SEO is not always the be-all and end-all. Agreed.