Back in 2010, Google put 516
algorithm changes, and this increased through the roaring numbers in 2016 with 1,653 and in 2018 with 3,234. This equally shows how the number is continued to grow high.
When there are 9 algorithm changes every day, how would it be possible to follow it or play the Google game?
So, we are raising the question here, is SEO dead?
Let’s keep a closer look at what the data says and then see what we can do about that.
Did you ever think of the searches put on Google every day?
Well, it is around 5.6 billion searches every day, which is equal to 2 trillion every year. If there are these high searches, we can say the number of contents is also very high.
Looking at that gives a number of 1 billion blogs being created and put on the web. And there are also certain topics that have a greater number of blogs on.
Like, if there is a question on the search, “what is digital marketing?” which has 11,300 global searches per month, but if you find the number of content on that topic, you will be thrilled to find that there are 665,000 contents trying to focus that question.
Which equally defines, how the supply is exceeding the demand.
See, for yourself, even the common word “banana” has got potential.
640,300 number on the global searches seems high, but the contents overly exceeding it with 880,000,000 million results. It is true, some contents won’t be purely targeting the word banana, but still, there is a lot more to see as compared to the searches.
Of course, there are terms on which searches are high as compared to the results, but it is quickly changing with time with search demand is being surpassed with the content production.
The thing putting everything a more complex is that Google also turning from just being the search engine into an answer engine, where it tries to answer every little question people ask without jumping on the specific website.
The Dejan
SEO gave a clue about the CTRs being drastically decreased soon after Google started to answer questions. See below for yourself, just a little weather query.
As you can see, the weather queries of this website went down from 46% to 7% clicks.
This trend is flourishing with al its glories that even the SEO results, percent traffic through Google’s organic listings, has been going down with time.
So, the question still remains there, is SEO dead? Well, it is not!
SEO is not dead, people! With the enormous number of data, would it be dead already? No!
The thing is marketing channels get their time of being statured, but nobody knows when it is going to happen.
This is the case for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even email marketing.
Do you know which company created the first banner ad on the internet? It was by ATT. The number of clicks it got was 44%, but now the banner ads have a click rate of 0.5%. What a drop!
So, it’s pretty clear, how it goes with channels. See the following Instagram engagement rates.
Whether it is an organic post or sponsored post, the point is that engagement on Instagram is decreasing.
Maybe, it is the reason why people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Grant Cardone are going for phone number promotion on Instagram.
This is the easiest solution for them to directly communicate with their fans overlooking the algorithms and platforms that decrease their engagement.
But you can see, the opposite of it happens with sponsored posts on Instagram, it is increasing with 150%.
What we are trying to point out is that people like to spend money when they see an ROI bringing a lot more values for them.
This is the same case for digital ad spending.
it is easily understandable why the numbers are high, because of generating an ROI!
Even if metrics are pushing you away, it is not necessary that a channel is dead.
Marketers still have to face Google’s algorithm and still, they can grow the search traffic even with decreasing Google’s CTRs.
People use different other search engines too other than Google, but the point is Google has a prominent position in the market with about 94%.
Google is still the top preference of people as a search engine, however, the way Google is used has changed now.
For the last time, Google was used as a means of commerce (purchasing) and Instagram for discovery.
Now, the opposite happens, Instagram is now used for commerce and Google is being seen among the people for discovery.
Let’s look at the case study done by Olay.
Olay sells cosmetic products. One of their skincare products is meant to cure dark circles. So, they focus on ads for selling their products directly.
But as soon as they change their strategy, everything changed. They started educating people on how to get rid of dark circles instead of crippling them to buy their products. This was the turning point as their ROI got to the highest point.
When they chose education-based content and then letting people buy their product through the content, their clicks increased by 97% followed by decreased cost per click by 30% and finally, increase conversions through 100%.
This example clears the view of people using Google as a discovery engine rather than a commerce engine.
Now, you become aware of Google’s new face, a discovery engine, including both paid and organic listings. Besides that, there are many other things you need to know for holding a prominent position in the organic listings.
Google’s main idea is not an algorithm, backlinks, keyword density, or SEO metric, it focuses on the user experience.
If your site has millions of backlinks but people don’t like it, you are not going to work well on the rankings.
This is the case study by “best-grilled steaks.”
Rand Fishkin made his followers do the following things:
It was a matter of about 70 minutes and the listing was roaring like hell.
This is what the user signal is, you as a user, controls the Google listings.
Google is fully aware that you use your mobile device for hours, or you go check other sites and apps that aren’t powered by Google.
So, when Google ranks the sites, it isn’t just relying upon their own dataset.
Google goes for social media, focuses on social signals to make the results stand true and accurate.
So, it is clear, you hate social web, but still, you can’t think of going without it. Because it is necessary for your site’s indexing and brand building, which ultimately enhances your rankings.
This is true, see for yourself, these quotes are by Google’s ex-CEO and ex-head of webspam.
They see brands as glitters and diamonds. So, when your brand grows, you will see your rankings also increase by leaps and bounds.
This is how people see the site through search.
Similarly, when you type “men’s running shoes” in the search bar of Google, you will see Nike, Adidas, and Asics, because, yes, Google loves brands.
Rankings are quite based on branded search volume rather on links and domain authority.
Sometimes back there was a site called About.com. This site had seen times when it was lowering in Google rankings with no business. Let me tell you why:
- The site didn’t have a particular niche, rater it talked about everything.
- The content was so ordinary that it failed to give detailed information, and everything was so at the surface level.
- There were so many contents being produced by the site, so it lost its importance.
They didn’t stop but came up with Dotdash and started focusing on the niche. They created a break at the content of About.com and originated six specific vertical sites with that. What they found was some of the content didn’t fall into any of the six categories and failed to stand with the new high quality. So, what they did was to delete around 900,000 articles.
The above data revealed that when they chose the niche-based content, they got more traffic.
It was an outstanding success for them, so they created another three niche sites from one of the vertical sites. See the results:
They saw their ravishing revenue of about 140%.
If you want to stand unique in the world of SEO, you need to go for a niche. Because not only Google, people, too, love to see topic-specific sites.
Like for example, what would you consult for medical queries; WebMD or About.com? of course, WebMD!
Did you ever suspect that when you and your friend search something the same on Google, you both get different answers/results? It is because Google makes everything personalize for you.
it is not only the Google search, but it is on wherever you use Google device; it could be from your smartphone, Google Home, or maybe an autonomous car.
Whatever amount of data they have, they make it customize for you according to your preferences, and that’s why you get different results
Let me make it simple, wherever places you go with your mobile phone, especially the Android device, Google has taken everything at the back, gathering information to provide better results to you.
if you make everything personalize with your website and the users, you will see yourself ranking better in the list and your user metrics also will shine. So, try to personalize with every user without using the same everything to everyone.
So, the summary of everything discussed earlier is that SEO is not dead, it is just in the phase of a change. Even when there is a change in the click-through rates or if Google is changing the algorithms.
Google has made everything easy and simple only for you to be able to focus on your target audience via SEO or paid ads.
Google was like a difficult thing back in times, which may be the reason for their potential of getting 100 billion dollars per year in advertising revenue.
You just have to be adjustable, not everything that comes along is in your control, otherwise, your traffic and business will be long gone away.
