Lesson #335: The Death of Search Engine Optimization

I have been a digital marketer for over 20 years now, which seems like an eternity at this point!  Google has always been a staple of any good digital marketing strategy, especially for search engine optimization (SEO), to attract free organic traffic based on the quality of the content on your page.  But, when we recently started to see our SEO traffic start to decline, we asked our SEO consultant to investigate what was the root cause, and he said it was due to a recent Google Search page redesign, moving the free organic links further to the bottom of the search results page.  What was more troubling, was when I asked him how best to fix the situation, he said, “start spending more money advertising with Google, to get back up to the top of the page”, which was a very strange thing for an SEO expert to say, as he isn’t needed in that scenario.  This means SEO as a strategy for ecommerce driven companies is potentially dying, and paid search marketing has become your primary way to gain an audience through the search engines, at least through industry leading Google.  Allow me to further explain.

A Quick History of Google Search

Ever since Google hit the scene in 1998, Google has been a staple of any good digital marketing strategy.  Originally, it was simply having a good SEO plan, to help you go up the free organic rankings—onto the top of the first page of the search results.  The search results were very straight forward and uncluttered, and looked similar to this example below, with only organic free results appearing on the Google page based on the content of your page, and its relevancy to the keyword being searched (in this example, a search result for the word “technology”):

Then, Google launched Google Adwords (now called Google Ads) in 2000, which was your way to “buy” your way to the top of the search results with paid text ads.  Which meant, now you needed both a good SEO strategy for free organic traffic (for the links at the bottom of the first page), and a good keyword bidding strategy for paid traffic (for the links at the top of the first page), as seen in this example search result for the keyword “text”.  

Then, in 2002, Google launched Google Shopping, which gave ecommerce companies the opportunity to “feed” their product listings to Google, also on a pay-per-click model, adding a third dimension to their mix, but largely separated into its own “Shopping” tab on Google.  At the time, it didn’t really impact the traditional search results at all.  And, finally in 2004, Google launched Google Local, which allowed businesses with multiple retail locations the abilities to advertise and promote their various locations, in addition to the corporate parent company.  This change simply localized the advertising, to the location of the user (e.g., instead of seeing a national ad, they saw an ad for a nearby local business).  Again, it really didn’t materially impact the page design.  

Google Today

But, in the last several months, Google has materially changed its page design for Google Search.  And, previous “sacred ground” rules like “stay true to our organic search roots, and don’t clutter the page with a bunch of advertising” got completely flushed down the toilet.  As you can see in this example of a keyword search result for “restaurant furniture”.

Notice what has happened to the page design—today, there is not one free organic search result anywhere to be seen on the first page, above the fold (where the computer screen breaks the page).  Every single link on this page, is now a paid advertisement—the links in the upper left coming from Google Ads, the links in the lower left map coming from Google Local and the links in the right coming from the Google Shopping product feed.  Every single one a paid placement, which is great for Google maximizing their ad revenues.  But, if you want to see an organic search result that is truly based on the quality of the content of the landing page, you need to scroll down “below the fold”, and even then, they don’t start until the bottom of that second screen view after you page down.

The Death of Search Engine Optimization

So, what does this all mean for you commerce companies selling products or services . . . it means search engine optimization as a strategy is on “life support”.  Most Google users focus on the first page of results, mostly on the links that appear “above the fold”.  If there is no way now, to get your organic search result into that position, based on the current Google page design, then why focus on doing SEO at all?  All your focus needs to be on shelling out a lot of money to Google, to make sure your business is promoted in Google Ads, Google Local and Google Shopping placements on the page.  Which is exactly what Google wants, their cash register to ring with each click on their site!!

Now that paints a pretty extreme picture.  Yes, you can still be doing traditional SEO for organic rankings, especially for sites other than Google (e.g., Bing, Yahoo).  Yes, there are still a minority of Google users that will scroll down the first page, and an even smaller amount of users that will click beyond the first page, to page two or three.    But, the amount of SEO traffic you will receive from free organic SEO efforts has become materially less than you would have received prior to the Google page redesign, especially given its dominant market share position in the search industry.  That is the point here:  yes, SEO still can play a role, but a much less impactful one if you are in the ecommerce world.

Also, worth adding, Google is using its new page design on their largest trafficked search terms (e.g., “restaurant furniture”), there may still be SEO value by focusing on “long tail” search terms that Google uses a more traditional search result page design (e.g., like this one below, for “30 x 30 table top”).  

But, I think this is only a matter of time, before Google figures out how to take over advertising on every single one of their page results, including the “long tail” keywords.  Even in the above example, Google Shopping has five paid links at the top of the page, Google Ads has one paid link in the middle of the page, and there are only two free organic results at the bottom of the first page, “above the fold”.

Concluding Thoughts

So, as you are trying to figure out how best to spend your limited marketing dollars, the 20 year “staple” of optimizing your website for free organic traffic, has become a much less effective use of your time and efforts.  It just doesn’t bring the same “bang for the buck” that it used to, which means it is much harder to drive a ROI.  Whether or not this helps or hurts Google in the long term, will be determined in the future.  But, you can bet Google’s competitors, like Duck Duck Go, are going to try to win over internet searchers with their largely free organic search results (which you can see this below example for “restaurant furniture”), promoted as protecting your privacy from the evil Google advertising empire.  

Let’s see if Google’s attempt to fleece all of its advertisers for even more money, and further clutter up its user experience, will open up a door for one of their competitors to start growing share in the search industry.  But, until then, the grim reaper is sharpening his blade for the SEO industry.  R.I.P. my dear friend.

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