Google Updates, 5/2014

[enlytend]

Two new Google updates were rolled out in the last couple of days, confirmed by Google ...
- A "Payday Loans" update over the weekend - this would only affect very spammy verticals, which would explain why BH'ers saw it first .
- Followed by Panda 4.0 - too early to draw any conclusions. Some reports of eBay losing rankings on thousands of terms.

Wouldn't surprise me if they threw in another update (penguin?) in the next day or two - they like to group updates to obfuscate the effects.

 

[iowadawg]

I wonder how many is "Many businesses rely on search"?
Look carefully around you, your city, town, county and state.
Not that many are worried about search!
Both small and large businesses.
ANd only reason large businesses spend money to be at top of search?
Same reason they still advertise in phone books, magazines, newspapers.
To keep their NAME out there.
They really, I think, care if people see them on search and go to their website.
COKE for example.
They probably do not care about how many people come to their site via search.
They do care about how many people see their brands and BUY a coke somewhere.

 

[DU]

I refuse to agree with Dawg....... but dammnnnnnn...

Sometimes a business card at the right venue > $1,000s in adwords and they cost less than a $1

 

[iowadawg]

Few on this forum agree with me when it comes to google and search and serps and page rank and pandas sucking up to hamsters who ate the hummingbirds.

 

[-EM-]

They probably do not care about how many people come to their site via search.
They do care about how many people see their brands and BUY a coke somewhere.

You are confusing things badly.
They do care, especially the promoting department of the company. They track every visitor who visits their site.

DU, I don't think you can get gift cards of $1k for $1, but if you can find me I'd buy them from you 10x more.
Last time I advertised at google, I received a $50 free gift card and I spent an other $50 (real money). The result was good.

 

[enlytend]

I wonder how many is "Many businesses rely on search"?
Look carefully around you, your city, town, county and state.
Not that many are worried about search!
Both small and large businesses.
ANd only reason large businesses spend money to be at top of search?
Same reason they still advertise in phone books, magazines, newspapers.
To keep their NAME out there.
They really, I think, care if people see them on search and go to their website.
COKE for example.
They probably do not care about how many people come to their site via search.
They do care about how many people see their brands and BUY a coke somewhere.

Advertising can be done either for branding or direct response (I'm lumping any action - lead generation,sales, newsletter signups, etc. into the latter). You can accomplish both through search traffic (organic or paid.)

Businesses who aren't worried about search should be. Nobody uses the phone books any more. Except maybe to flatten things. It's a dying cash-cow for the companies that publish them and they're aggressively promoting their online directories to current customers. Newspapers, magazines, direct mail? Loser, loser and loser for small biz - you pay for a lot of views from people who aren't the least bit interested.

Let's say you have a dojo in Podunk and offer martial arts classes for kids. In print media, you're paying for people who don't read the material, don't have kids, and have no interest in in your classes, Whereas if someone searches for "childrens karate classes in Podunk" you've got a live one.

Social media? Good for some things, not for everything. And not every business owner has the time or inclination to use it.

As far as people in my city/town/county/state, my clients get good business from search. One of my clients used to be a BIG spender on the phone book ads. You know what he was getting from that? Maybe 2-3 calls a month, mostly from senior citizens in one big city (his service covers most of the northern half of the state). He ditched the phone book completely - he's getting far more business from his Adwords ads at a lower cost. Gets some from organic search now too, but Google puts their advertisers first and targeting is more predictable.

 

[iowadawg]

Your entire premise is so wrong enlytend.
But one thing I have found, those who are in the business of convincing people and companies to pour money into searches?
Will never change their minds.

So for me, this is the end of this discussion.

 

[enlytend]

Your entire premise is so wrong enlytend.
But one thing I have found, those who are in the business of convincing people and companies to pour money into searches?
Will never change their minds.

I see. Do you help small businesses make money? Do you have some case studies you'd like to share?

My only "premise" in this discussion (which has strayed far enough from the original post we should make it a thread of its own) is that people use search engines to find everything. If you come up in search results (organic or paid) for something you have to offer and someone selects your listing, you have a highly targeted lead.

The client I mentioned who quit the Yellow pages got 382 targeted visitors last week and 43 calls. Compare that to his getting only 1-2 calls from the pnone book a MONTH. He's making money from search traffic, and its costing him less. Is that not in his best interests?

Sorry, but if you wamt to "change my mind" (about ... what???) you need to show me some data.

 

[DU]

Whereas if someone searches for "childrens karate classes in Podunk" you've got a live one.

Not saying that there's no part of search that matters; however, my point is that I talked to a local small businessman who told me that he gets 90% of his clients through word of mouth referrals. I spoke to another guy who basically gets all his work from ranking quite high on some terms on Angie's List.

To them search might provide some benefit but nothing like other marketing means. There's still a lot of marketing that happens OFFLINE and a lot that happens in OTHER SEARCH forums.

I hate the term SEO and prefer DMO but DMO got taken over by destination marketing

 

[enlytend]

Angie's list and other 3rd party online directories are part of local search strategy - have a complete profile and get reviews from your customers. Word of mouth is great and normally has a very high conversion rate, but taking advantage of the volume in search expands your pool of leads beyond that.

 

[DU]

Angie's list and other 3rd party online directories are part of local search strategy - have a complete profile and get reviews from your customers. Word of mouth is great and normally has a very high conversion rate, but taking advantage of the volume in search expands your pool of leads beyond that.

It also clearly depends on your business (I don't know why I'm saying this to you who is clearly better at this than me) but someone who builds a reputation on building custom pools and not subbing out work has a limit to the number of new clients they can take on

Though I can see where back linking their SEO keyword with quality link content is useful! Thanks!

 

[enlytend]

someone who builds a reputation on building custom pools and not subbing out work has a limit to the number of new clients they can take on

Absolutely - doesn't pay to overpromote if you can't scale up. Not everything works for everyone . And some niches are insanely competitive and too expensive for the average "little guy" realistically compete online.

Hopefully that person at least has a nice web site with a some examples of their work - really all they need.

 

[SimpleDomaining]

There is a huge difference between advertising with Google and Bing. For instance, Bing tells me to spend minimum of $5k a month on image ads to consider showing them, while Google Adwords won't put any minimum plank on me per month. this is why me and bunch of other businesses stay with google ads. and here is your 67% of the result vs 18%.

Bing's gaining, but Google still has over 67% of the search market share ( as opposed to Bing at18%.)

 

[iowadawg]

Okay, two businesses I know the owners.
Both barber shops.
Both have no need of a website, searches, third party sites, blah blah blah.
Because hey, they have all the business they can handle.

Then our neighbor.
His business is local.
He does painting, carpentry,plumbing, electrical work.
No website, no need to waste money on google or anything else on the net.
Again, he has all the business he can handle.

Many more examples like that.

 

[DU]

Then our neighbor.
His business is local.
He does painting, carpentry,plumbing, electrical work.
No website, no need to waste money on google or anything else on the net.
Again, he has all the business he can handle.

Where does his business come from? How do people find him? What happens when he hits a slow time?

I agree with you in principle as I stated above - but no one I know survives off referrals in that business.. except my neighbor has one on call seemingly 24x7

 

[iowadawg]

Son, if you know nothing about small businesses and how they do operate, etc.
Go back to econ 1, or something.
You must know horrible people who can not do business right.
Which is a different can of worms.
Neighbor gets more than enough business as he does mostly apartments and office buildings, etc.
Always enough business.